As it was decided at this second convention to admit gentlemen, a schism was the immediate result. By their party tactics, in which they were well versed, they took the initiative steps to scatter the forces so successfully gathered. The Society, with its guns silenced on the popular foes, lingered a year or two, and was heard of no more. It was the policy of these worldly wise men to restrict the debate on temperance within such narrow limits as to disturb none of the existing conditions of society. They said, treat it as a purely moral and religious question; "pray over it," it being too knotty a problem to be solved on earth, they proposed to have the whole case adjusted in the courts of Heaven: very much as the wise men to-day think best to dispose of the temperance reform.
Thus these politic gentlemen manipulated the association, eliminated the woman's rights element per se, which, having been educated in the anti-slavery school of morals, could not be blinded with any male sophistries or considerations of policy. It was the universal plea then as now, in advocating reforms, "Sacrifice principle to numbers, if you would secure victory," forgetting that one company of brave men could clear their path to the enemy quicker than a battalion of cowards. A multitude of timid, undeveloped men and women, afraid of priests and politicians, are a hindrance rather than help in any reform. When Garrison's forces had been thoroughly sifted, and only the picked men and women remained, he soon made political parties and church organizations feel the power of his burning words. The temperance cause has had no organized body of fearless leaders. Psalm singing and prayer it was supposed would accomplish what only could be done by just laws, enlightened public sentiment, and pure religion, applied to the practical interests of mankind. When abolitionists left parties and churches, because of their pro-slavery codes and creeds, they began alike to purify their organizations in order to win back that noble army of patriots. Women were urged to enroll themselves as members of men's associations, pay their initiation fee of one dollar, gather petitions, do all in their power to rouse enthusiasm; but they must not presume to sit on the platform, nor speak, nor vote in the meetings. Those women who had no proper self-respect accepted the conditions; those who had, tested their status on the platform, and not being received as equals, abandoned all temperance organizations, as the same proper pride that forbade them to accept the conditions of a proscribed class in men's conventions, also prevented their affiliation with women who would tolerate such insults to the sex. The long, persistent struggle at last culminated in the World's Temperance Convention, which may be called our Waterloo in that reform.
May 12th, 1853, the friends of temperance assembled in New York to make arrangements for a World's Temperance Convention. The meeting was held in Dr. Spring's old Brick Church, on Franklin Square, where the New York Times building now stands. It was organized by nominating the Hon. A. C. Barstow, of Rhode Island, chairman; the Rev. R. C. Crampton, of New York, and the Rev. George Duffield, of Pennsylvania, secretaries. The meeting opened with prayer, "asking God's blessing on the proceedings."[99] A motion was made that all gentlemen present be admitted as delegates. Dr. Trall, of New York, moved an amendment that the word "ladies" be inserted, as there were delegates present from the Woman's State Temperance Society. The motion was carried, and credentials received, and every man and woman became members of the convention. A business committee of one from each State was appointed. A motion was made that Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of the Woman's State Temperance Society, be added to the business committee. Then the war commenced in earnest. D.D.'s, M.D.'s, and Honorables were horrified. Speech followed speech in rapid succession, with angry vehemence. As the committee was already full, the motion was ruled out of order. Thomas Wentworth Higginson asked that he be excused from serving on the committee, and moved that Lucy Stone be added in his place. Then the confusion was increased. Abby Kelly Foster arose and tried to explain, but shouts of "order" drowned her voice, and after persisting in her attempt to speak for ten minutes the uproar was frightful, and she was compelled to sit down. Emily Clark made a similar attempt, with the same result.
Hon. Bradford R. Wood, of Albany, then moved, that as there was a party present determined to introduce the question of woman's rights, and to run it into the ground, that this convention adjourn sine die; but on request he withdrew it, and moved that a committee on credentials be appointed to decide who were members of the convention. This committee, consisting of Rev. John Chambers, of Philadelphia, Hon. B. R. Wood, of Albany, and Dr. Condit, of New Jersey, were absent fifteen minutes, and then reported that, as in their opinion, the call for this meeting was not intended to include female delegates, and custom had not sanctioned the public action of women in similar situations, the credentials of the ladies should be rejected. The report was received, and after a disgraceful contest on the part of those from whom we look for honor, truth, and nobleness, and every Christian virtue, on account of their sacred calling and high position, it was adopted by a vote of 34 to 32, ten of those voting in the negative being women. During the progress of the discussion—if discussion it could be called, where all the women who attempted to speak were silenced, and the men who attempted to speak for them were almost as rudely treated—Mayor Barstow twice requested the appointment of another chairman in his stead, stating that he would not preside over a meeting where woman's rights were introduced, or women allowed to speak. Having finally silenced them, he was henceforward content to wear the honors of his temporary office.
Mr. Higginson protested against the action of the meeting as disgraceful to the leaders, and tendered his resignation as one of the business committee. He then stated that all persons favorable to calling a whole world's temperance convention were invited to meet at Dr. Trall's office at 2 o'clock. The ladies present, and the gentlemen who had contended for their admission as delegates, then withdrew. Another disgraceful scene occurred on a protest from Dr. Townsend against the action of the convention, and a motion to pay the expenses of the ladies who had come some distance as delegates and been excluded. The motion was seconded. Again shouts of "order," "order," arose, and the confusion was worse than ever. Dr. T. finally withdrew his motion, on being told that the ladies would accept no such favor at the hands of a convention of rowdies.
Several speeches then followed, mostly from, clergymen; all condemning the public action of women in any reforms, and defending the position of the convention, quoting Scripture and the Divine Will to sanction their injustice. One Rev. gentleman stated that he would have nothing to do with the women. Rev. John Chambers said, for one, he rejoiced that the women were gone; they were now rid of the scum of the convention!! Other clergymen spoke in the same strain. A motion was made by Dr. Snodgrass that the committee assign some part of the work of the World's Convention to women, which called out from Mr. Barstow some remarks too indecent for repetition. The motion was withdrawn. The gall and bitterness, the ridicule and vulgarity of the Rev. D.D.'s being expended on some of the grandest women our nation could boast, they adjourned, after deciding to hold a four days' convention, beginning the 6th of September. The other wing of the temperance army decided to do the same, and held a meeting of protest a few days after in the Tabernacle.
The New York Tribune says of the meeting of protest, Saturday evening, May 14, 1852: A grand Temperance demonstration was held in the Broadway Tabernacle Saturday evening. There could not have been less than 3,000 persons present. The floor of the house, the aisles, the galleries, every inch of sitting and standing room was literally packed. The greatest enthusiasm prevailed throughout. The officers of the meeting were:
President—Susan B. Anthony.[100]
Lucy Stone, in a letter to The Una, says: Last week, at New York, we had a foretaste of what woman is to expect when she attempts to exercise her equal rights as a human being. In conformity with a resolution adopted by the Mass Convention recently held in Boston, a call was issued, inviting "the friends of temperance" to meet in New York, May 11th, and prepare for a "World's Convention." Under that call, the Woman's State Society of New York, an active and efficient body, sent delegates; but though regularly elected, their credentials were rejected with scorn. The chairman of the committee reported that those who called the meeting never intended to include women. Think of it, a World's Convention, in which woman is voted not of the world!!
Rev. Dr. Hewitt affirmed it a burning shame for women to be there; and though it was entirely out of order, he discussed the question of "Woman's Rights," taking the ground that women should be nowhere but at home. Rev. E. M. Jackson, gave it as his opinion, that "the women came there expressly to disturb." The Rev. Mr. Fowler, of Utica, showed the same contempt for woman that he did last year, at the N. Y. State Temperance Society, at Syracuse. Rev. Mr. Chambers was particularly bitter.
It would have been well for those women who accept the foolish flattery of men, to have been present to see the real estimate in which woman is held by these men who surely represent a large class. The President of the meeting, Mayor Barstow, of your city, indignantly refused to put the motion made—that Susan B. Anthony should be on a committee, declaring "that he would resign rather than do it." He said it "was not fit that a woman should be in such places." After we left, if the papers reported him correctly, he used language which proved that he was not fit to be where decent people are. It was next to impossible for us or our friends to get a hearing. The "previous question" was called, or we were voted out of order, or half a dozen of the opposing party talked at once to keep us silent. Rev. T. W. Higginson declined serving on a committee from which women were excluded, and when it became apparent that only half of the world could be represented, he entered his protest, and invited those who were in favor of a Whole World's Temperance Convention to meet that afternoon at Dr. Trall's. A large minority withdrew, including several ministers, and arranged for a Convention that shall know "neither male nor female," to be held in New York sometime during The World's Fair.
A large and enthusiastic meeting was held at the Broadway Tabernacle, to protest against the above proceedings, and although twelve and a half cents were charged at the door, every seat was occupied, and much of the "standing room" also.
The same gentlemen who excluded us, held a meeting subsequently in Metropolitan Hall. There your Major Barstow said: "God has placed woman in the moral world where he has the sun in the physical, to regulate, enlighten, and cheer." C. C. Burleigh, alluding to this remark, in our meeting at the Tabernacle, said: "Thus he calls his Convention, in which Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Mercury, and Neptune are appointed a committee of arrangements, and says the Sun shall be excluded."
At this meeting, ladies were especially invited to vote, as though they had a heart in it, and were urged also to give their money to aid these very men by whom every soul of us had been insulted. I am sorry to say some gave. But taught such lessons, by such masters, woman will one day be wiser. Yours, for humanity, without distinction of sex,
After the Brick Church meeting was over, some of the actors being ashamed of themselves, the Rev. John Marsh tried to defend himself and his coadjutors, but Mr. Greeley very summarily brushed his sophistry aside, and placed all the actors in that disgraceful farce in their true colors.
The New York Daily Tribune, Wednesday, May 18, 1853.
THE WORLD'S TEMPERANCE CONVENTION.
To the Editor of the New York Tribune:
Sir:—Your "Inquirer," it appears to me, is bent on throwing firebrands into the temperance ranks, and the worst kind of firebrands, those of vile sectarianism. Will you permit me to answer and remark upon a few of his inquiries?
1. "Are there to be two World's Conventions?"
Answer. That will be, I suppose, as people please. There may be a dozen; and I know not that any harm will be done.
2. "Did Mayor Barstow occasion the schism in the temperance ranks, by refusing to recognize the feminine element in the movement?"
Ans. No. The schism, such as there was, was caused by a proposal of Rev. Mr. Higginson, and a persistence in it, that a representative of the Women's State Society should be added to the Business Committee of one from each State; and this after the Committee was full. With as good reason, it was said, might one be pressed from the Men's State Society or State Alliance. Mr. Higginson pertinaciously pressed the matter; and because he could not have his own way and rule the Convention, he refused to serve on the Committee; and hence arose all the disturbance and the schism.
3. "Did Dr. Hewitt rule out from office Mr. Barnum on the ground that he (Mr. Barnum) was an infidel?"
Ans. No. I am confident he used no such phraseology; and "Inquirer" has no more right to ask such a question, than he has to ask if Dr. Hewitt did not rule him out on the ground that Mr. Barnum was a horse thief. The very question amounts to an assertion (as is announced in the next inquiry) that he did say it; which, if he did not, is calumny. Dr. H. did object to Mr. Barnum, as he had a perfect right to do, as one of the Appointing Committee. It was desirable to find the best men to get up to the World's Convention. I proposed Mr. Barnum as one, knowing his amazing efficiency. Dr. H. objected, on the ground that he (Barnum) was a very exceptionable man in his part of Connecticut, and would do injury to the Convention; and, as harmony was desirable, and unexceptionable men should be put upon the Committee, his name was withdrawn. It was agreed that what was said in Committee should not go abroad.
4. "Does Mr. Barnum's infidelity consist in his attending another church in Bridgeport from Dr. Hewitt's?"
Here appears the cloven foot of sectarianism. One sect is to be held up as persecuted. Here the writer assumes that Dr. Hewitt did say that Mr. B. was an infidel; and, assuming it and knowing it, why does he hypocritically ask whether Dr. H. did say it?
5. "Is it true that Dr. H. refused his pulpit for a temperance lecture by Rev. E. H. Chapin, on the ground that he was a Universalist?"
Sectarianism again! What has all this to do with the meeting at the Brick Chapel? Why is it brought here but to kindle up sectarian fires? A pastor of a church has everywhere conceded to him the control of his pulpit, and no one may contend with him in this matter. Whether that was so or not, I know not, nor is it any concern of mine, nor of the public. Such a rule the world knows does not govern us in selecting temperance speakers. We will not invite speakers to speak at temperance meetings who have something else more at heart than temperance, which they will most offensively thrust in their speech upon the meeting. But we, without hesitation, invite men of all sorts to speak at temperance meetings, who will speak to the point, and do us good and not hurt. Rev. Mr. Chapin, we all know, is of this character, and, without hesitation, I invited him to speak at the late Anniversary of the American Temperance Union (as I did Rev. Mr. Higginson, who differs from me perhaps as much in religious belief), and he (Mr. C.) would have spoken, but was to be out of the city.
6. "How can the proposed Convention be a World's Convention, if women and all who do not belong to a particular Church are to be excluded?"
Sectarianism again! Who has said a word about Church but this writer, and about excluding women from the Convention and all its entertainments? No one. The basis of the Convention has not been settled. It probably will be as broad as the world. The last query I think unworthy an answer. And I must be permitted to say the whole inquiry manifests a very bad spirit, and is calculated to promote evils which the public press should suppress rather than foster.
As I sent you an anonymous communication explaining some of these matters last Saturday, which you declined publishing, because, I suppose, it was anonymous, I feel constrained, though reluctantly, to give this my name.
John Marsh,
Yours, etc.,
Office of Am. Temp. Union, No. 149 Nassau St.
HORACE GREELEY'S REPLY.
Rev. John! we have allowed you to be heard at full length; now you and your set will be silent and hear us.
Very palpably your palaver about Mr. Higginson's motion is a dodge, a quirk, a most contemptible quibble, reluctant as we are to speak thus irreverently of the solemn utterances of a Doctor of Divinity. Right well do you know, reverend sir, that the particular form, or time, or fashion in which the question came up is utterly immaterial, and you interpose it only to throw dust in the eyes of the public. Suppose a woman had been nominated at the right time, and in the right way, according to your understanding of punctilios, wouldn't the same resistance have been made and the same row got up? You know right well that there would. Then what is all your pettifogging about technicalities worth? The only question that anybody cares a button about is this, Shall woman be allowed to participate in your World's Temperance Convention on a footing of perfect equality with man? If yea, the whole dispute turns on nothing, and isn't worth six lines in The Tribune. But if it was and is the purpose of those for whom you pettifog to keep woman off the platform of that Convention, and deny her any part in its proceedings except as a spectator, what does all your talk about Higginson's untimeliness and the Committees being full amount to? Why not treat the subject with some show of honesty?
Now as to Barnum and Hewitt: it is eminently proper that the public should know exactly on what ground H. ruled B. off the Business Committee, and it is self-criminating to plead that a mantle of secrecy was spread over the doings in Committee. If Hewitt protested against Barnum on the assumption that the latter is a sinner, while this is to be a Convention of saints, let that fact be known, so that sinners may keep away from the Convention. If on the assumption that Mr. Barnum is an infidel or a heretic, let that fact come squarely out, so that we may know that infidels or heretics, either or both, are to be proscribed at the Hewitt-Marsh Convention. For if there is to be really and truly a World's Temperance Convention, according to any fair meaning of the phrase, then we say women, as well as men, youth, as well as adults, colored, as well as white, heretic, as well as orthodox, sinners, as well as saints—so that they be earnest and undoubted upholders of total abstinence—should be invited to send delegates, who should be equally welcome to its platform and eligible to its offices. An Orthodox White Male Adult Saints' Convention may be very proper and very useful, but it should be called distinctly as such, and not unqualifiedly as a World's Convention.
Dr. Marsh thinks it nobody's business whether Dr. Hewitt did or did not refuse the use of his church for a temperance-meeting at which Mr. Chapin was to speak, because he (Mr. C.) was a Universalist. Yes, reverend sir, it is a good many people's business if the public are purposely left in doubt as to the character of the World's Convention that is to issue from the Brick Church meeting. For if Dr. Hewitt shut his pulpit against so unexceptionable, assiduous, effective an advocate of temperance as Mr. Chapin confessedly is (see Marsh, above), then we have a cue to his objection to Barnum and to the general bearings of the "World's Convention" to be incubated under his auspices. That single incident of the pulpit-shutting will have a great deal of significance to many other people; wherefore the fact that it has none to Marsh is overruled.
Whenever a real "World's Temperance Convention" shall assemble, an inquiry may be found necessary as to what Dr. Hewitt has done and sacrificed for temperance these five years that should authorize him to rule P. T. Barnum off a temperance committee; also, whether men who live by Temperance, like Dr. Marsh, are in the right position to judge those, like Barnum, who labor and spend money for it. For the present, however, we will leave these inquiries on the General Orders.
One word as to Sectarianism. If "Inquirer," or Mr. Barnum, or Mr. Chapin has proposed or intrigued to keep any one out of office, or otherwise overslaughed in the Brick Church Meeting, or any of its meetings, because of said body's religious opinions or associations, then said intriguer has been guilty of a very faulty and culpable sectarian dodge, which can not be too severely reproached. But if it be in fact t'other fellow's bull that has gored this one's ox, then the facts should come out, and the culprit can not escape censure by raising the stop-thief cry of "Sectarianism." "Thou art the man!"
Let the women of this nation ponder Horace Greeley's arraignment of the reverend gentlemen who were the chief actors in this farce, and remember that in all ages of the world the priesthood have found their pliant tools and most degraded victims in the women of their respective sects. In all of these meetings there were intelligent, sincere women, so blinded by the sophistry and hypocrisy of Marsh, Chambers, Hewitt, et al., that they gave them their countenance and support throughout this disgraceful mob, so-shocking and revolting to the best men of that day and generation.
In consequence of the action in the Brick Church two temperance conventions were called, to meet in New York the first week in September. One designated "The Whole World's Convention," including men and women, black and white, orthodox and heretic; the other the "Half World's Convention," restricted to the "simon pure, white (male) orthodox saints"; which for ribaldry of speech and rudeness of action surpassed in its proceedings the outside mob, that raged and raved through an entire week, making pandemonium of our metropolis.
The opening days of the autumn of this year were days of intense excitement in the city of New York. Added to the numbers attracted by the World's Fair was the announcement of the Anti-Slavery, Woman's Rights, and two Temperance Conventions. The reformers from every part of the country assembled in force, each to hold their separate meetings, though the leaders were to take a conspicuous part in all. The anti-slavery meetings began on Sunday, and every day two or three of these conventions were in session, all drawing crowds to listen or to disturb. William Henry Channing. William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips and Thomas Wentworth. Higginson eloquently pleading for the black man's freedom on the anti-slavery platform, and for the equality of their mothers, wives, and daughters on the woman's rights platform, and for both the woman and the black man on the temperance platform; now face to face with Rynders and his mob, and then with the Rev. John Chambers, Marsh and Hewitt and their mob, the viler of the two.
led by Chambers, Hewitt, and Marsh, was in session in Metropolitan Hall several days. As it was simply an organized mob, we find in the journals of the day no speeches or resolutions on the great question on which they nominally assembled.
In trying to get rid of Antoinette L. Brown, who had been sent as a delegate from two respectable and influential societies, and of James McCune Smith, a colored delegate, they quarrelled through most of the allotted time for the convention over what class of persons could be admitted. In summing up the proceedings of these meetings
Horace Greeley says, in the Tribune, September 7, 1853: "This convention has completed three of its four business sessions, and the results may be summed up as follows:
"First Day—Crowding a woman off the platform.
"Second Day—Gagging her.
"Third Day—Voting that she shall stay gagged. Having thus disposed of the main question, we presume the incidentals will be finished this morning."
Antoinette Brown was asked why she went to that Convention, knowing, as she must, that she would be rejected.
"I went there," she said, "to assert a principle—a principle relevant to the circumstances of that convention, and one which would promote all good causes and retard all bad ones. I went there, as an item of the world, to contend that the sons and daughters of the race, without distinction of sex, sect, class or color, should be recognized as belonging to the world, and I planted my feet upon the simple rights of a delegate. I asked no favor as a woman, or in behalf of woman; no favor as a woman advocating temperance; no recognition of the cause of woman above the cause of humanity; the indorsement of no 'ism' and of no measure; but I claimed, in the name of the world, the rights of a delegate in a world's convention.
"Is it asked. Why did you make that issue at that time? I answer, I have made it at all times and in all places, whenever and wherever Providence has given me the opportunity, and in whatever way it could be made to appear most prominent. Last spring, when woman claimed the supremacy—the right to hold all the offices in the Woman's State Temperance Society—I contended, from this platform, for the equality of man; the equal rights of all the members of this society. I have claimed everywhere the equality of humanity in Church and in State; God helping me, I here pledge myself anew to Him, and to you all, to be true everywhere to the central principle—the soul of the Divine commandment, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.' The temperance cause was not injured by our course at that Convention. We went there with thoughtful hearts. Said Wendell Phillips: 'Take courage, and remember that whether you are received or rejected, you are going to make the most effectual speech for temperance, for woman, and humanity that you have ever made in your life.' 'God bless you,' were the fervent words of Mr. Channing, in a moment when there was most need of Divine assistance; and when I stood on the platform for an hour and a half, waiting to be heard, I could read in the faces of men such as these, and in the faces, too, of our opposers, the calm assurance, 'You are making the most effectual speech for temperance, for woman, and humanity, that you have ever made in your life.' I believed it then; I believe it now."[101]
Rev. William Henry Channing, in giving his report of the World's Temperance Convention to the Toronto Division of Sons of Temperance of the City of Rochester, said:
And now it becomes my disagreeable duty, as one of your delegates, to report to the Toronto Division how my highly honored fellow-delegate was treated. Her credentials were received without dissent; she was, of course, then entitled, equally with every other delegate, to take part in all the proceedings of the Conventions. At a suitable time and in a perfectly orderly manner she rose to speak; the floor was adjudged to her by Hon. Neal Dow, the President, but her right to the platform was questioned. Again and again the President declared your delegate to be in order; again and again appeal was made to the Convention and the decision of the President sustained; but a factious minority succeeded in silencing her voice, and so ended the first session in storm.
On the second morning your delegate wisely waited until the resolutions offered to the convention by the Business Committee were opened for discussion. When the first resolution, declaring the religious character of the Temperance Movement, was submitted to the meeting, Miss Brown rose to speak. She rose calmly in the body of the house; she was a minister of religion, an advocate of temperance; she had it in her heart to press this reformation onward in a religious spirit; she had avoided all disputes on petty points of order, and now wished to address herself earnestly to the momentous theme. Had she not a perfect right to do so? And what fitter occasion could occur? The very topic was of a kind to banish personalities and hush low passions. Your delegate was invited by the President to take the platform; she did so with quiet dignity, but scarcely had she reached the stand when all around her on the platform itself, and among the officers of the Convention, began that disgraceful row, which led an onlooker in the gallery to cry out, "Are those men drunk?" I have no wish to dwell upon that cowardly transaction, but this remark I am bound in honor to make: If any man says that Antoinette Brown forced the subject of "Woman's Rights" on that Temperance Convention in plain Saxon speech, He Lies. She never dreamed of asking any privilege as a woman; she stood there in her right as a delegate; her aim was to urge forward the Temperance Reform. No! the whole uproar on "Woman's Rights" came from the professed friends of Temperance, and began with the insulting cry—from a man on the platform—of, "Shame on the woman!" That man I need hardly tell you was the notorious John Chambers, of Philadelphia—the so-called Rev. John Chambers!—he it was who, with brazen face and clanging tongue, stood stamping until he raised a cloud of dust around him, pointing with coarse finger and rudely shouting "shame on the woman," until he even stood abashed before the indignant cry from the Convention of "shame on John Chambers."
The Reverend John Chambers! Reverend for what? For his piety; manifested in the fact that he, a professed minister of the gospel, could by rowdy tumult drown the voice of another minister of the gospel while she was asserting the religious character of the Temperance Reform! Reverend for what? For his charity; manifested by low cries and insulting gestures, to a gentlewoman who stood there firm yet meek, before him! Strange that he, of all, should thus seek a bad eminence in outraging the decencies of social life; for unless report is false, John Chambers owes whatever position he may have to woman. It is said—I believe on good authority—that he was educated for the ministry by the contributions of women; that he preaches in a church built and endowed by a woman; that his salary is chiefly paid by hard-working needle-women; finally, that he married a rich wife! Now what a sight was there! A man, whose brain had been fed with books by woman, whose body had been fattened with bread by woman, every fragment and stitch of whose ministerial garb, from his collar to his boot-heels, had been paid for by woman, whose very traveling ticket to that convention had been bought by woman, could find no better way to discharge his mission as minister of the gospel than to point his finger and shout, "Shame on the woman!"
Mr. Channing then bore his testimony to the admirable combination of energy and mildness, by which Miss Brown's whole air and manner were distinguished amid these hours of tumult. He said: "Such serene strength comes only from religious principle and life. I know not how it may have been with nerves and pulses—there was no apparent tremor. But of this I am assured, whatever disturbance there was in the outer court of the Temple, in the Holy of Holies was the heart of peace, and the dove of the Spirit brooded in light on the tabernacle of conscience."
In an editorial of The Una, headed "Rev. John Chambers Recommended to Mercy," Mrs. Davis says: "We publish the letter of Rev. Wm. Henry Channing because it is a noble defence of woman and a part of the history of the movement. We do not give Mr. Chambers' reply, 1st, Because we find in it no evidence of penitence nor any testimony as to who was the guilty party—if he was not; and 2d, Because the tone and language of the letter is of a character we trust will never sully the pages of The Una. Mr. Channing's rebuke is severe, but we believe it to have been richly deserved and given in true Christian love."
Rochester, N. Y., Oct. 18, 1853.
Editors Sunday Mercury:—You ask for proof that Rev. John Chambers took part in the brutal insult offered to a Christian gentlewoman at the late "World's Temperance Convention." I was witness of the conduct of that man and his abettors during that cowardly transaction, and I hereby charge him with being a ringleader in that platform row.
When my honored friend and fellow-delegate, the Rev. Antoinette L. Brown, was standing calm, yet firm, amidst those rude scoffers, the words of the Psalmist kept sounding in my ear: "Strong bulls of Bashan have beset me roundabout, gaping upon me with their mouths." I marked the biggest of the herd with the purpose, at the first suitable season, of laying on one blow of the lash with such a will that it should cut through any hide, however callous. That season came when, as a delegate, I was called upon to report to the "Toronto Division of the Sons of Temperance" how my fellow-delegate had been treated.
But having thus indicted the bully and put him on trial in open court, I merely record my testimony and leave him to go to judgment; the public will render a verdict, pass sentence, and inflict the penalty in the pillory where he has placed himself; may their justice be tempered with mercy. It was necessary, in order to protect women in future from the insolence of tyrants, to make this example; yet let him be cordially pardoned as soon as he gives sincere proof of penitence.
William Henry Channing.
Another letter of Mr. Channing's of same date to the editor of The Daily Register:
Sir:—Respect for yourself, your readers, and your paper, prompts me to reply at once to your article headed, "Answer," etc., by Rev. John Chambers, which, through the courtesy of some friend, reached me last evening. I must be frank, but will aim to be brief.
And first, Mr. Birney, a word to yourself. You knew me in "former days as mild," etc., and were not prepared for such a speech; you charitably suggest that its "vindictiveness" may be owing to a substitution of the reporter's language for my own, and "are not without hope of seeing a disclaimer." Now, far from wishing to disclaim the one real accusation made in my remarks, I am ready, anywhere and everywhere, to reiterate that charge. Yet there is no "vindictiveness" in my heart toward the criminal whom I thus arraign, and no emotion which I should not honor any man for feeling toward myself, if I was consciously guilty of having played so base a part. You were not wrong in thinking me "mild in former days"; I trust I am milder now than then. But my mildness never was, and never will be, of that mean quality, which can tamely see a sister insulted, whether by a pugilist from the ring, or by a rowdy from the pulpit. My principle is peace, but I remember the saying, "You can not become an angel till you are first a man.".... Womanhood, as such, claims honorable courtesy of every manly heart; and he is unmanly who does not rejoice to testify this respect. The man who can be rude to even a poor prostitute in the street, will be rude to wife or daughter at his own fireside; while he who is a gentle man to any woman, will be a gentle man to all women. His spirit is brutal, who could ever dream of applying the slang phrase "creature" to any woman under any conceivable conditions. What shall be thought then of the moral grade of him who chose as the mark for his missiles of "contempt," a young lady of rare refinement in her whole presence and manner, of spotless delicacy and gentlest dignity, of commanding talent and philanthropic earnestness, and who stood there before him, serene amid the tumult, clad, even then, in the bright robe of heavenly peace?
And now one word in closing. Let Mr. Chambers, and all of like spirit, be assured, that I am but a representative of a large, rapidly growing, and influential body in every community throughout our land, who are resolved, that women shall no longer be insulted in public assemblies with impunity.
Wm. Henry Channing.
Through this fierce conflict Horace Greeley, with his personal presence on the platform, and his brave editorials in the New York Tribune, fought a great battle for free speech and human equality. Speaking of the Whole World's Convention, he said:
New York Tribune, September 3, 1853.
This has been the most spirited and able Convention on behalf of temperance that was ever held. It has already done good, and can not fail to do more. The scarcity of white neck-ties on the platform so fully atoned for by the presence of such champions of reform and humanity as Antoinette L. Brown, Lucy Stone, and Mrs. Jackson, of England, Mrs. C I. H. Nichols, Mrs. Frances D. Gage, etc., that like the absence of wine from our festive board when it is graced by women, it was the theme of no general or very pointed regret. It was a great occasion, and we know truth was there uttered which will bear fruit through coming years.
Tribune, September 7, 1853.
When the call of the World's Temperance Convention was issued, we were appealed to by valued friends, whom we know as devoted to the temperance cause, to discountenance all efforts to get up a rival Convention. "The call is unexceptionably broad," we were reminded, "it invites all and excludes nobody, then why not accept it and hold but one Convention?" The question was fair and forcible, and had there been no antecedents we should have acceded to its object. But we could not forget the preliminary meeting at the Brick Church Chapel, and we could not take the hazard of having many whom we knew as among the most efficient and faithful laborers in the Temperance cause shut out of a World's Convention of its advocates; so we cast our lot with them about whose catholicity of sentiment and action there could be no dispute, and yesterday's doings at the Metropolitan Convention maintained the conviction created by the whole World's Convention that our decision was right.
We ask especial attention to the proceedings of the World's Convention yesterday morning, particularly with reference to Antoinette Brown, who had been chosen by two separate temperance organizations of men to represent them at this Convention. How she was received, how treated, and how virtually crowded off the platform, our report most faithfully exhibits. They who are sure that the Age of Chivalry is not gone, are urged to ponder this treatment of a pure and high-souled woman, a teacher of Christian truth, an ornament of her sex, and an example to all, by a Convention of Reformers and Gentlemen, many of them from that section of the Union where the defence of woman from insult has been deemed a manly grace, if not a manly duty. We presume the matter will be further considered to-day.
Of the Whole World's Temperance Convention a correspondent of The Una says: "Throughout, the meeting has been one of intense interest; not a moment's flagging, not a poor or unworthy speech made by either man or woman. Again and again, as we passed into the large hall, filled with eager listeners, we felt it to be one of the most sublime scenes we had ever looked upon. There the audience remained, hour after hour, patient, earnest, full of enthusiasm, and yet hundreds could scarcely hear a single connected sentence. The majority were women, but the larger number of the speakers were men. The right and equality being recognized, there was no longer a necessity for controversy to maintain principle, hence no woman attempted to speak except she had something to say. Mrs. Jackson, of England, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Vaughan, Miss Stone, Rev. A. L. Brown, Lucretia Mott, and Mrs. F. D. Gage addressed the Convention during the different sessions."
The same correspondent says of the World's Temperance Convention: "There was one feature more anomalous than the rejection and gagging of Miss Brown, darker and far more cruel, for it has not the excuse of custom, nor can the Bible be tortured into any justification of it. This was the exclusion of Dr. James McCune Smith, a gentleman, a graduate of the Edinburgh University, a member of a long-established temperance society, and a regularly appointed delegate. And wherefore? simply for the reason that nature had bestowed on his complexion a darker, richer tint than upon some of the sycophants who gathered there; it appears to have been simply to pander to a bigoted priesthood and a corrupt populace."
In deciding the action of the Convention to be worse in its treatment toward Mr. Smith than toward Miss Brown, we think The Una correspondent makes a grave mistake.
In point of courtesy the treatment of a lady of culture and refinement, the peer of any man in that assembly, with the unpardonable rudeness they did, was infinitely worse than to have done the same thing to any man, white or black, because by every code of honor or chivalry all men are bound to defend woman. Again, as a question of morals, custom, and prejudice, they occupied the same position in the State and the Church. The "white male" in the Constitutions placed women and black men on the same platform as citizens. The popular interpretation of Scripture sanctioned the same injustice in both cases. In the mouths of the false prophets, "Servants, obey your masters," was used for the same purpose, and with equal effect, as "Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands." "Servant of servants shall he be" has been used with the same prophetic force as the more cruel curse pronounced on woman. The white man's Bible has been uniformly used to show that the degradation of the woman and the black man was in harmony with God's will. On what principle is proscription on account of color more cruel than on account of sex?
Most of the liberal men and women now withdrew from all temperance organizations, leaving the movement in the hands of time-serving priests and politicians, who, being in the majority, effectually blocked the progress of the reform for the time—destroying, as they did, the enthusiasm of the women in trying to press it as a moral principle, and the hope of the men, who intended to carry it as a political measure. Henceforward women took no active part in temperance until the Ohio crusade revived them again all over the nation, and gathered the scattered forces into "The Woman's National Christian Temperance Union," of which Miss Frances E. Willard is president. As now, so in 1853, intelligent women saw that the most direct way to effect any reform was to have a voice in the laws and lawmakers. Hence they turned their attention to rolling up petitions for the civil and political rights of women, to hearings before legislatures and constitutional conventions, giving their most persistent efforts to the reform technically called "Woman's Rights."
Susan B. Anthony had a similar battle to fight in the educational conventions. Having been a successful teacher in the State of New York fifteen years of her life, she had seen the need of many improvements in the mode of teaching and in the sanitary arrangements of school buildings; and more than all, the injustice to women in their half-pay as teachers. Her interest in educational conventions was first roused by listening to a tedious discussion at Elmira on the "Divine ordinance" of flogging children, in which Charles Anthony, principal of the Albany Academy, quoted Solomon's injunction, "Spare the rod, and spoil the child."
In 1853, the annual convention being held in Rochester, her place of residence, Miss Anthony conscientiously attended all the sessions through three entire days. After having listened for hours to a discussion as to the reason why the profession of teacher was not as much respected as that of the lawyer, minister, or doctor, without once, as she thought, touching the kernel of the question, she arose to untie for them the Gordian knot, and said, "Mr. President." If all the witches that had been drowned, burned, and hung in the Old World and the New had suddenly appeared on the platform, threatening vengeance for their wrongs, the officers of that convention could not have been thrown into greater consternation.
There stood that Quaker girl, calm and self-possessed, while with hasty consultations, running to and fro, those frightened men could not decide what to do; how to receive this audacious invader of their sphere of action. At length President Davies, of West Point, in fall dress, buff vest, blue coat, gilt buttons, stepped to the front, and said, in a tremulous, mocking tone, "What will the lady have?" "I wish, sir, to speak to the question under discussion," Miss Anthony replied. The Professor, more perplexed than before, said: "What is the pleasure of the Convention?" A gentleman moved that she should be heard; another seconded the motion; whereupon a discussion pro and con followed, lasting full half an hour, when a vote of the men only was taken, and permission granted by a small majority; and lucky for her, too, was it, that the thousand women crowding that hall could not vote on the question, for they would have given a solid "no." The president then announced the vote, and said: "The lady can speak."
We can easily imagine the embarrassment under which Miss Anthony arose after that half hour of suspense, and the bitter hostility she noted on every side. However, with a clear, distinct voice, which filled the hall, she said: "It seems to me, gentlemen, that none of you quite comprehend the cause of the disrespect of which you complain. Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman? And this, too, is the reason that teaching is a less lucrative profession, as here men must compete with the cheap labor of woman. Would you exalt your profession, exalt those who labor with you. Would you make it more lucrative, increase the salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of educating our future Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen."
This said, Miss Anthony took her seat, amid the profoundest silence, broken at last by three gentlemen, Messrs. Cruttenden, Coburn, and Fanning, walking down the broad aisle to congratulate the speaker on her pluck and perseverance, and the pertinency of her remarks. The editor of The Rochester Democrat said the next morning, that "whatever the schoolmasters might think of Miss Anthony, it was evident that she hit the nail on the head."
To give the women of to-day some idea of what it cost those who first thrust themselves into these conventions, at the close of the session Miss A. heard women remarking: "Did you ever see anything like this performance?" "I was actually ashamed of my sex." "I felt so mortified I really wished the floor would open and swallow me up." "Who can that creature be?" "She must be a dreadful woman to get up that way and speak in public." "I was so mad at those three men making such a parade to shake hands with her; that will just encourage her to speak again." These ladies had probably all been to theatres, concerts, operas, and gone into ecstasies over Fanny Kemble, Rachel, and Jenny Lind; and Fanny Elsler, balanced on one toe, the other foot in the air, without having their delicacy shocked in the least. But a simple Quaker girl rising in a teachers' convention to make a common-sense remark modestly, dressed, making no display of her neck, or arms, or legs, so tried their delicate sensibilities that they were almost afraid to attend the next session.
At the opening of the next morning's session, after Miss Anthony's début, Professor Davies, in all his majesty and pomposity, with his thumbs in the arm-holes of his regulation buff vest, called the Convention to order, and said: "I have been asked by several persons, why no provisions have been made for women to speak, and vote, and act on committees, in these assemblies?" My answer is, "Be hold yonder beautiful pilaster of this superb hall! contemplate its pedestal, its shaft, its rich entablature, the crowning glory of the whole. Each and all the parts in their appropriate place contribute to the strength, symmetry, and beauty of the whole. Could I aid in taking down that magnificent entablature from its proud elevation, and placing it in the dust and dirt that surround the pedestal? Neither could I drag down the mother, wife, and daughter, whom we worship as beings of a higher order, on the common plane of life with ourselves."
If all men were pedestals and shafts capable of holding the women of their households above the dirt and dust of common life, in a serene atmosphere of peace and plenty, the good professor's remarks would have had some significance; but as the burdens of existence rest equally on the shoulders of men and women, and we must ever struggle together on a common plane for bread, his metaphor has no foundation. Miss Anthony attended these teachers' conventions from year to year, at Oswego, Utica, Poughkeepsie, Lockport, Syracuse, making the same demands for equal place and pay, until she had the satisfaction to see every right conceded. Women speaking and voting on all questions; appointed on committees, and to prepare reports and addresses, elected officers of the Association, and seated on the platforms. In 1856, she was chairman of a committee herself, to report on the question of co-education; and at Troy, before a magnificent audience of the most intelligent men and women of the State, she read her report, which the press pronounced able and conclusive. The President, Mr. Hazeltine, of New York, congratulating Miss Anthony on her address, said: "As much as I am compelled to admire your rhetoric and logic, the matter and manner of your address and its delivery, I would rather follow a daughter of mine to her grave, than to have her deliver such an address before such an assembly." Superintendent Randall, overhearing the President, added: "I should be proud, Madam, if I had a daughter capable of making such an eloquent and finished argument, before this or any assembly of men and women. I congratulate you on your triumphant success."
In 1857, at Binghamton, Professor Fowler, of Rochester, took up the gauntlet thrown down by Miss Anthony, and presented the other side of the question, taking the ground that boys and girls should not be educated together, and that women should not be paid equal wages even for equally good work. The gentlemen who sustained the side demanding equal rights for women in these conventions, were Randall, Rice, Cruttenden, Cavert, Fanning, Johonett, Coburn, Wilder, and Farnham. The opposition was led by Davies, Valentine, Buckley, Anthony (not S. B. A.), Ross, an old bachelor, the butt of ridicule, the clown of the Convention; and McElligott, the latter hardly ranking with the rest, for though opposed, he was always a gentleman, the others being ofttimes so coarse in their sneers and innuendoes, that they disgraced the positions they occupied, as the educators of the youth of the State. In the discussion at Binghamton, where Miss Anthony introduced a resolution in favor of co-education, Mr. McElligott said "he was in favor of allowing her full and equal opportunity with any other member to present resolutions, or to call them up for discussion. Standing up as she does before large audiences, to advocate what she conscientiously considers the rights and privileges of her sex, gives a touch of moral sublimity to our proceedings worthy the admiration of all."
Professor Davies denounced the resolutions in the strongest terms. "He had for four years been trying to escape this discussion; but if the question must come, let it be boldly met and disposed of. These resolutions involve a great social rather than an educational question, calculated to introduce a vast social evil; they are the first step in that school which seeks to abolish marriage, and behind the picture presented by them, I see a monster of deformity."[102]
In view of the grand experiment of co-education, so successful in every part of our country, the fears of those timid men thirty years ago provoke nothing now but a passing smile. How few of them with a sober face could at this time defend their old positions. It is creditable to the stronger sex that so many men in all those encounters, took no counsel with their fears nor prejudices, but seeing the principle steadfastly maintained it.
But the temperance and educational conventions, the clergy and the pedagogues, were alike abandoned now for the legislators. All this escapading of Miss Anthony's was mere child's play, compared with the steady bombardment kept up until the war on the legislators of the Empire State. Calls, appeals, petitions to rouse the women, fell like snow-flakes in every county, asking for the civil and political rights of woman; they were carried into the Legislature, frequent hearings secured, the members debating the question as hotly there as it had already been discussed in popular conventions. As New York could boast a larger number of strong-minded women than any other State, whose continuity of purpose knew no variableness nor shadow of turning, the agitation was persistently continued in all directions.
This Convention, lasting three days, was in many respects remarkable, even for that "City of Conventions." It called out immense audiences, attracted many eminent persons from different points of the State, and was most favorably noticed by the press; the debates were unusually earnest and brilliant, and the proceedings orderly and harmonious throughout. Notwithstanding an admission fee of one shilling, the City Hall was densely packed at every session, and at the hour of adjournment it was with difficulty that the audience could gain the street. The preliminary[103] editorials of the city papers reflected their own conservative or progressive tendencies.
In no one respect were the participants in these early Conventions more unsparingly ridiculed, and more maliciously falsified, than in their personal appearance; it may therefore be wise to say that in dignity and grace of manner and style of dress, the majority of these ladies were superior to the mass of women; while the neat and unadorned Quaker costume was worn by some, many others were elegantly and fashionably attired; two of them in such extreme style as to call forth much criticism from the majority, to whom a happy medium seemed desirable.
The Convention was called to order by Paulina Wright Davis, chairman of the Central Committee, and prayer offered by the Rev. Samuel J. May, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Syracuse.
Although this was the first Woman's Rights Convention at which Mr. May was ever present, he had been represented in nearly all by letter, and as early as 1845 had preached an able sermon advocating the social, civil, and political rights of woman. He had been an early convert to this doctrine, and enjoyed telling the manner of his conversion. Speaking once in Providence on the question of slavery, he was attracted by the earnest attention he received from an intelligent-looking woman. At the close of the meeting, she said to him: "I have listened to you with an interest that only a woman can feel. I doubt whether you see how much of your description of the helpless dependence of slaves applies equally to all women." She ran the parallel rapidly, quoting law and custom, maintaining her assertion so perfectly that Mr. May's eyes were opened at once, and he promised the lady to give the subject his immediate consideration.
Lucy Stone read the call[104] and expressed the wish that every one present, even if averse to the new demands by women, would take part in the debates, as it was the truth on this question its advocates were seeking. Among the most noticeable features of these early Conventions was the welcome given to opposing arguments.
The Nominating Committee reported the list of officers,[105] with Lucretia Mott as permanent President. She asked that the vote be taken separately, as there might be objections to her appointment. The entire audience (except her husband, who gave an emphatic "No!") voted in her favor. The very fact that Mrs. Mott consented, under any circumstances, to preside over a promiscuous assemblage, was proof of the progress of liberal ideas, as four years previously she had strenuously opposed placing a woman in that position, and as a member of the Society of Friends, by presiding over a meeting to which there was an admission fee, she rendered herself liable to expulsion. The vote being taken, Mrs. Mott, who sat far back in the audience, walked forward to the platform, her sweet face and placid manners at once winning the confidence of the audience. This impression was further deepened by her opening remarks. She said she was unpracticed in parliamentary proceedings, and felt herself incompetent to fulfill the duties of the position now pressed upon her, and was quite unprepared to make a suitable speech. She asked the serious and respectful attention of the Convention to the business before them, referred to the success that had thus far attended the movement, the respect shown by the press, and the favor with which the public generally had received these new demands, and closed by inviting the cordial co-operation of all present.
In commenting upon Mrs. Mott's opening address, the press of the city declared it to have been "better expressed and far more appropriate than those heard on similar occasions in political and legislative assemblages." The choice of Mrs. Mott as President was pre-eminently wise; of mature years, a member of the Society of Friends, in which woman was held as an equal, with undoubted right to speak in public, and the still broader experience of the Anti-Slavery platform, she was well fitted to guide the proceedings and encourage the expression of opinions from those to whom public speaking was an untried experiment. "It was a singular spectacle," said the Syracuse Standard, "to see this gray-haired matron presiding over a Convention with an ease, dignity, and grace that might be envied by the most experienced legislator in the country."
Delegates were present from Canada and eight different States. Letters were received from Mrs. Marion Reid, of England, author of an able work upon woman; from John Neal, of Maine, the veteran temperance reformer; from William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. William Henry Channing, Rev. A. D. Mayo, Margaret H. Andrews, Sarah D. Fish, Angelina Grimké Weld, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, from G. W. Johnson, chairman of the State Committee of the Liberty party, and Horace Greeley, the world-renowned editor of the Tribune. Mr. Johnson's letter enclosed ten dollars and the following sentiments: 1. Woman has, equally with man, the inalienable right to education, suffrage, office, property, professions, titles, and honors—to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 2. False to our sex, as well as her own, and false to herself and to God, is the woman who approves, or who submits without resistance or protest, to the social and political wrongs imposed upon her in common with the rest of her sex throughout the world.
Mrs. Stanton's letter[106] presented three suggestions for the consideration of the Convention, viz.: That all women owning property should refuse to pay taxes as long as unrepresented; that man and woman should be educated together, and the abuse of the religious element in woman. This letter created much discussion, accompanied as it was by a series of resolutions of the most radical character, which were finally, with one exception, adopted. Thus at that early day was the action of those women, who have since refused to pay taxes, prefigured and suggested. One of the remarkable aspects of this reform, is the fact that from the first its full significance was seen by many of the women who inaugurated it.
HORACE GREELEY'S LETTER.
New York, Sept. 1, 1852.
My Friend:—I have once or twice been urged to attend a Convention of the advocates of woman's rights; and though compliance has never been within my power, I have a right to infer that some friends of the cause desire suggestions from me with regard to the best means of advancing it. I therefore venture to submit some thoughts on that subject. To my mind the Bread problem lies at the base of all the desirable and practical reforms which our age meditates. Not that bread is intrinsically more important to man than Temperance, Intelligence, Morality, and Religion, but that it is essential to the just appreciation of all these. Vainly do we preach the blessings of temperance to human beings cradled in hunger, and suffering at intervals the agonies of famine; idly do we commend intellectual culture to those whose minds are daily racked with the dark problem, "How shall we procure food for the morrow?" Morality, religion, are but words to him who fishes in the gutters for the means of sustaining life, and crouches behind barrels in the street for shelter from the cutting blasts of a winter's night.
Before all questions of intellectual training or political franchises for women, not to speak of such a trifle as costume, do I place the question of enlarged opportunities for work; of a more extended and diversified field of employment. The silk culture and manufacture firmly established and thriftily prosecuted to the extent of our home demand for silk, would be worth everything to American women. Our now feeble and infantile schools of design should be encouraged with the same view. A wider and more prosperous development of our Manufacturing Industry will increase the demand for female labor, thus enhancing its average reward and elevating the social position of woman. I trust the future has, therefore, much good in store for the less muscular half of the human race.
But the reform here anticipated should be inaugurated in our own households. I know how idle is the expectation of any general and permanent enhancement of the wages of any class or condition above the level of equation of Supply and Demand; yet it seems to me that the friends of woman's rights may wisely and worthily set the example of paying juster prices for female assistance in their households than those now current. If they would but resolve never to pay a capable, efficient woman less than two-thirds the wages paid to a vigorous, effective man employed in some corresponding vocation, they would very essentially aid the movement now in progress for the general recognition and conception of Equal Rights to Woman.
Society is clearly unjust to woman in according her but four to eight dollars per month for labor equally repugnant with, and more protracted than that of men of equal intelligence and relative efficiency, whose services command from ten to twenty dollars per month. If, then, the friends of Woman's Rights could set the world an example of paying for female service, not the lowest pittance which stern Necessity may compel the defenceless to accept, but as approximately fair and liberal compensation for the work actually done, as determined by a careful comparison with the recompense of other labor, I believe they would give their cause an impulse which could not be permanently resisted.
Horace Greeley.
With profound esteem, yours,
Mrs. Paulina W. Davis, Providence, R. I.
Mr. Greeley's letter bore two remarkable aspects. First, he recognized the poverty of woman as closely connected with her degradation. One of the brightest anti-slavery orators was at that time in the habit of saying, "It is not the press, nor the pulpit, which rules the country, but the counting-room"; proving his assertion by showing the greater power of commerce and money, than of intellect and morality. So Mr. Greeley saw the purse to be woman's first need; that she must control money in order to help herself to freedom.
Second, ignoring woman's pauperized condition just admitted, he suggested that women engaged in this reform should pay those employed in the household larger wages than was customary, although these very women were dependent upon others for their shelter, food, and clothes; so impossible is it for a governing class to understand the helplessness of dependents, and to fully comprehend the disabilities of a subject class.
The declaration of sentiments[107] adopted at the Westchester Convention was read by Martha C. Wright, and commented upon as follows by
Clarina Howard Nichols: There is no limit to personal responsibility. Our duties are as wide as the world, and as far-reaching as the bounds of human endeavor. Woman and man must act together; she, his helper. She has no sphere peculiar to herself, because she could not then be his helper. It is only since I have met the varied responsibilities of life, that I have comprehended woman's sphere; and I have come to regard it as lying within the whole circumference of humanity. If, as is claimed by the most ultra opponents of the wife's legal individuality, the interests of the parties are identical, then I claim as a legitimate conclusion that their spheres are also identical. For interests determine duties, and duties are the land-marks of spheres. The dependence of the sexes is mutual.
It is in behalf of our sons, the future men of the Republic, as well as of our daughters, its future mothers, that we claim the full development of our energies by education, and legal protection in the control of all the issues and profits of our lives called property. Woman must seek influence, independence, representation, that she may have power to aid in the elevation of the human race. When men kindly set aside woman from the National Councils, they say the moral field belongs to her; and the strongest reason why woman should seek a more elevated position, is because her moral susceptibilities are greater than those of man.
Mrs. Mott thought differently from Mrs. Nichols; she did not believe that woman's moral feelings were more elevated than man's; but that with the same opportunities for development, with the same restrictions and penalties, there would probably be about an equal manifestation of virtue.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith: My friends, do we realize for what purpose we are convened? Do we fully understand that we aim at nothing less than an entire subversion of the present order of society, a dissolution of the whole existing social compact? Do we see that it is not an error of to-day, nor of yesterday, against which we are lifting up the voice of dissent, but that it is against the hoary-headed error of all times—error borne onward from the foot-prints of the first pair ejected from Paradise, down to our own time? In view of all this, it does seem to me that we should each and all feel as if anointed, sanctified, set apart as to a great mission. It seems to me that we who struggle to restore the divine order to the world, should feel as if under the very eye of the Eternal Searcher of all hearts, who will reject any sacrifice other than a pure offering.
We are said to be a "few disaffected, embittered women, met for the purpose of giving vent to petty personal spleen and domestic discontent." I repel the charge; and I call upon every woman here to repel the charge. If we have personal wrongs, here is not the place for redress. If we have private griefs (and what human heart, in a large sense, is without them?), we do not come here to recount them. The grave will lay its cold honors over the hearts of all here present, before the good we ask for our kind will be realized to the world. We shall pass onward to other spheres of existence, but I trust the seed we shall here plant will ripen to a glorious harvest. We "see the end from the beginning," and rejoice in spirit. We care not that we shall not reach the fruits of our toil, for we know in times to come it will be seen to be a glorious work.
Bitterness is the child of wrong; if any one of our number has become embittered (which, God forbid!), it is because social wrong has so penetrated to the inner life that we are crucified thereby, and taste the gall and vinegar with the Divine Master. All who take their stand against false institutions, are in some sense embittered. The conviction of wrong has wrought mightily in them. Their large hearts took in the whole sense of human woe, and bled for those who had become brutalized by its weight, and they spoke as never man spoke in his own individualism, but as the embodied race will speak, when the full time shall come. Thus Huss and Wickliffe and Luther spoke, and the men of '76.
No woman has come here to talk over private griefs, and detail the small coin of personal anecdote; and yet did woman speak of the wrongs, which unjust legislation; the wrongs which corrupt public opinion; the wrongs which false social aspects have fastened upon us; wrongs which she hides beneath smiles, and conceals with womanly endurance; did she give voice to all this, her smiles would seem hollow and her endurance pitiable.
I hope this Convention will be an acting Convention. Let us pledge ourselves to the support of a paper in which our views shall be fairly presented to the world. At our last Convention in Worcester, I presented a prospectus for such a paper, which I will request hereafter to be read here. We can do little or nothing without such an organ. We have no opportunity now to repel slander, and are restricted in disseminating truth, from the want of such an organ. The Tribune, and some other papers in the country, have treated us generously; but a paper to represent us must be sustained by ourselves. We must look to our own resources. We must work out our own salvation, and God grant it be not in fear and trembling! Woman must henceforth be the redeemer, the regenerator of the world. We plead not for ourselves alone, but for Humanity. We must place woman on a higher platform, and she will raise the race to her side. We should have a literature of our own, a printing-press and a publishing-house, and tract writers and distributors, as well as lectures and conventions; and yet I say this to a race of beggars, for women have no pecuniary resources.
Well, then, we must work, we must hold property, and claim the consequent right to representation, or refuse to be taxed. Our aim is nothing less than an overthrow of our present partial legislation, that every American citizen, whether man or woman, may have a voice in the laws by which we are governed. We do not aim at idle distinction, but while we would pull down our present worn-out and imperfect human institutions, we would help to reconstruct them upon a new and broader foundation.
Lucy Stone: It seems to me that the claims we make at these Conventions are self-evident truths. The second resolution affirms the right of human beings to their persons and earnings. Is not that self-evident? Yet the common law which regulates the relation of husband and wife, and which is modified only in a very few instances where there are statutes to the contrary, gives the "custody" of the wife's person to her husband, so that he has a right to her even against herself. It gives him her earnings, no matter with what weariness they have been acquired, or how greatly she may need them for herself or her children. It gives him a right to her personal property, which he may will entirely from her, also the use of her real estate; and in some of the States, married women, insane persons, and idiots are ranked together as not fit to make a will. So that she is left with only one right, which she enjoys in common with the pauper, viz.: the right of maintenance. Indeed when she has taken the sacred marriage vow, her legal existence ceases.
And what is our position politically? Why, the foreigner who can't speak his mother tongue correctly; the negro, who to our own shame, we regard as fit only for a boot-black (whose dead even we bury by themselves), and the drunkard, all are entrusted with the ballot, all placed by men politically higher than their own mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters. The woman who, seeing and feeling this, dare not maintain her rights, is the woman to hang her head and blush. We ask only for justice and equal rights—the right to vote, the right to our own earnings, equality before the law—these are the Gibraltar of our cause.
Rev. Antoinette L. Brown: Man can not represent woman. They differ in their nature and relations. The law is wholly masculine; it is created and executed by man. The framers of all legal compacts are restricted to the masculine stand-point of observation, to the thought, feelings, and biases of man. The law then could give us no representation as woman, and therefore no impartial justice even if the present lawmakers were honestly intent upon this; for we can be represented only by our peers. It is expected then under the present administration, that woman should be the legal subject of man, legally reduced to pecuniary dependence upon him; that the mother should have lower legal claims upon the children than the father, and that, in short, woman should be in all respects the legal inferior of man, though entitled to full equality.
Here is the fact and its cause. When woman is tried for crime, her jury, her judges, her advocates, are all men; and yet there may have been temptations and various palliating circumstances connected with her peculiar nature as woman, such as man can not appreciate. Common justice demands that a part of the law-makers and law executors should be of her own sex. In questions of marriage and divorce, affecting interests dearer than life, both parties in the compact are entitled to an equal voice. Then the influences which arise from the relations of the sexes, when left to be exerted in our halls of justice, would at least cause decency and propriety of conduct to be maintained there; but now low-minded men are encouraged to jest openly in court over the most sacred and most delicate subjects. From the nature of things, the guilty woman can not now have justice done her before the professed tribunals of justice; and the innocent but wronged woman is constrained to suffer on in silence rather than ask for redress.
Clarina Howard Nichols said: There is one peculiarity in the laws affecting woman's property rights, which as it has not to my knowledge been presented for the consideration of the public, except by myself to a limited extent in private conversation and otherwise, I wish to speak of here. It is the unconstitutionality of laws cutting off the wife's right of dower. It is a provision of our National and State Constitutions, that property rights shall not be confiscated for political or other offences against the laws. Yet in all the States, if I am rightly informed, the wife forfeits her right of dower in case of divorce for infidelity to the marriage vow. In Massachusetts and several other States, if the wife desert her husband for any cause, and he procure a divorce on the ground of her desertion, she forfeits her right of dower. But it is worthy of remark that in no case is the right of the husband to possess and control the estate which is their joint accumulation, set aside; no, not even when the wife procures a divorce for the most aggravated abuse and infidelity combined. She, the innocent party, goes out childless and portionless, by decree of law; and he, the criminal, retains the home and the children, by the favor of the same law. I claim, friends, that the laws which cut off the wife's right of dower, in any case do confiscate property rights, and hence are unconstitutional. The property laws compel the wife to seek divorce in order to protect her earnings for the support of her children. A rum-drinker took his wife's clothing to pay his rum bill, and the justice decided that the clothing could be held, because the wife belonged to him.
Only under the Common Law of England has woman been deprived of her natural rights. Instances are frequent where the husband's aged parents are supported by the wife's earnings, and the wife's parents left paupers.
Mrs. Nichols here offered the following resolution:
Resolved, That equally involved as they are in all the Natural Relations which lie at the base of society, the sexes are equally entitled to all the rights necessary to the discharge of the duties of those relations.
Elizabeth Oakes Smith presented the following resolution offered by Lucretia Mott:
Resolved, That as the imbruted slave, who is content with his own lot, and would not be free if he could, if any such there be, only gives evidence of the depth of his degradation; so the woman who is satisfied with her inferior condition, avering that she has all the rights she wants, does but exhibit the enervating effects of the wrongs to which she is subjected.