In asserting that marriage is an equal relation for husbands and wives, Mr. Greeley, like Mr. Phillips, begs the whole question. If it is legitimate to discuss all laws that bear unequally on man and woman in woman's rights conventions, surely those that grow out of marriage, which are the most oppressive and degrading on the statute-book, should command our first consideration. There could be no slaveholders without slaves; the one relation involves the other, and yet it would be absurd to say that slaves might not hold a convention to discuss the inequality of the laws sustaining that relation, and incidentally the whole institution itself, because the slaveholder shared in the evils resulting from it. There never has been a woman's convention held in which the injustice suffered by wives and mothers has not been a topic for discussion, and legitimately so. And if the only way of escape from the infamous laws by which all power is placed in the hands of man, is through divorce, then that is the hospitable door to open for those who wish to escape. No proposition contained in Mrs. Stanton's speech on divorce, viewed in any light, can be a tenth part so shocking as the laws on the statute-books, or the opinions expressed by many of the authorities in the English and American systems of jurisprudence.
It is difficult to comprehend that the release of the miserable from false relations, would necessarily seduce the contented from happy ones, or that the dearest word in the Saxon tongue (home) should have no significance, after drunkards and villains were denied the right to enter it. It is a pleasant reflection, in view of the dolorous results Mr. Greeley foresees from the passage of a divorce law, that the love of men and women for each other and their children in no way depends on the Statutes of New York. In the State of Indiana, where the laws have been very liberal for many years, family life is as beautiful and permanent as in South Carolina and New York, where the tie can be dissolved for one cause only. When we consider how little protection the State throws round the young and thoughtless in entering this relation, stringent laws against all escape are cruel and despotic, especially to woman, for if home life, which is everything to her, is discordant, where can she look for happiness?
APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF NEW YORK.
Women Of New York:—Once more we appeal to you to make renewed efforts for the elevation of our sex. In our marital laws we are now in advance of every State in the Union. Twelve years ago New York took the initiative step, and secured to married women their property, received by gift or inheritance. Our last Legislature passed a most liberal act, giving to married women their rights, to sue for damages of person or property, to their separate earnings and their children; and to the widow, the possession and control of the entire estate during the minority of the youngest child. Women of New York! You can no longer be insulted in the first days of your widowed grief by the coarse minions of the law at your fireside, coolly taking an inventory of your household goods, or robbing your children of their natural guardian.
While we rejoice in this progress made in our laws, we see also a change in the employment of women. They are coming down from the garrets and up from the cellars to occupy more profitable posts in every department of industry, literature, science, and art. In the church, too, behold the spirit of freedom at work. Within the past year, the very altar has been the scene of well-fought battles; women claiming and exercising their right to vote in church matters, in defiance of precedent, priest, or Paul.
Another evidence of the importance of our cause is seen in the deep interest men of wealth are manifesting in it. Three great bequests have been given to us in the past year. Five thousand dollars from an unknown hand,[171] a share in the munificent fund left by that noble man of Boston, Charles F. Hovey, and four hundred thousand dollars by Mr. Vassar, of Poughkeepsie, to found a college for girls, equal in all respects to Yale and Harvard. Is it not strange that women of wealth are constantly giving large sums of money to endow professorships and colleges for boys exclusively—to churches and to the education of the ministry, and yet give no thought to their own sex—crushed in ignorance, poverty, and prostitution—the hopeless victims of custom, law, and Gospel, with few to offer a helping hand, while the whole world combine to aid the boy and glorify the man?
Our movement is already felt in the Old World. The nobility of England, with Lord Brougham at their head, have recently formed a "Society for Promoting the Employments of Women."
All this is the result of the agitation, technically called "Woman's Rights," through conventions, lectures, circulation of tracts and petitions, and by the faithful word uttered in the privacy of home. The few who stand forth to meet the world's cold gaze, its ridicule, its contumely, and its scorn, are urged onward by the prayers and tears, crushed hopes and withered hearts of the sad daughters of the race. The wretched will not let them falter; and they who seem to do the work, ever and anon draw fresh courage and inspiration from the noblest women of the age, who, from behind the scene, send forth good words of cheer and heartfelt thanks.
Six years hence, the men of New York purpose to revise our State Constitution. Among other changes demanded, is the right of suffrage for women—which right will surely be granted, if through all the intervening years every woman does her duty. Again do we appeal to each and all—to every class and condition—to inform themselves on this question, that woman may no longer publish her degradation by declaring herself satisfied in her present position, nor her ignorance by asserting that she has "all the rights she wants."
Any person who ponders the startling fact that there are four millions of African slaves in this republic, will instantly put the question to himself, "Why do these people submit to the cruel tyranny that our government exercises over them?" The answer is apparent—"simply because they are ignorant of their power." Should they rise en masse, assert and demand their rights, their freedom would be secure. It is the same with woman. Why is it that one-half the people of this nation are held in abject dependence—civilly, politically, socially, the slaves of man? Simply because woman knows not her power. To find out her natural rights, she must travel through such labyrinths of falsehood, that most minds stand appalled before the dark mysteries of life—the seeming contradictions in all laws, both human and divine. But, because woman can not solve the whole problem to her satisfaction, because she can not prove to a demonstration the rottenness and falsehood of our present customs, shall she, without protest, supinely endure evils she can not at once redress? The silkworm, in its many wrappings, knows not it yet shall fly. The woman, in her ignorance, her drapery, and her chains, knows not that in advancing civilization, she too must soon be free, to counsel with her conscience and her God.
The religion of our day teaches that in the most sacred relations of the race, the woman must ever be subject to the man; that in the husband centers all power and learning; that the difference in position between husband and wife is as vast as that between Christ and the church; and woman struggles to hold the noble impulses of her nature in abeyance to opinions uttered by a Jewish teacher, which, alas! the mass believe to be the will of God. Woman turns from what she is taught to believe are God's laws to the laws of man; and in his written codes she finds herself still a slave. No girl of fifteen could read the laws, concerning woman, made, executed, and defended by those who are bound to her by every tie of affection, without a burst of righteous indignation. Few have ever read or heard of the barbarous laws that govern the mothers of this Christian republic, and fewer still care, until misfortune brings them into the iron grip of the law. It is the imperative duty of educated women to study the Constitution and statutes under which they live, that when they shall have a voice in the government, they may bring wisdom and not folly into its councils.
We now demand the ballot, trial by jury of our peers, and an equal right to the joint earnings of the marriage copartnership. And, until the Constitution be so changed as to give us a voice in the government, we demand that man shall make all his laws on property, marriage, and divorce, to bear equally on man and woman.
New York State Woman's
Rights Committee.{ E. Cady Stanton, President.
Lydia Mott,[172] Sec. and Treas.
Ernestine L. Rose.
Martha C. Wright.
Susan B. Anthony.
November, 1860.
N. B.—Let every friend commence to get signatures to the petition without delay, and send up to Albany early in January, either to your representative or to Lydia Mott.
How can any wife or mother, who to-day rejoices in her legal right to the earnings of her hands, and the children of her love, withhold the small pittance of a few hours or days in getting signatures to the petition, or a few shillings or dollars to carry the work onward and upward, to a final glorious consummation.
The last Convention before the War was held in Albany. Ernestine L. Rose, Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Rev. Beriah Green, Aaron M. Powell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony were the speakers. They had a hearing also before the Judiciary Committee on the bill then pending asking divorce for various causes.[173] The interest in the question was intense at this time, owing to several very aggravated cases among leading families, both in this country and England. The very liberal bill pending in the Legislature had drawn special attention to it in the Empire State, which not only made the whole question of marriage and divorce a topic of conversation at every fireside, but of many editorial debates in our leading journals. Among others, Horace Greeley, in The New York Tribune, had a prolonged discussion with the Hon. Robert Dale Owen,[174] in which it was generally thought that the weight of argument rested with Mr. Owen; but it was evident that Mr. Greeley did not think so, as he afterward republished the whole controversy at his own expense. The Albany Evening Journal also took strong grounds against the bill. But the opponents invariably discussed the question on the basis that marriage was an equal relation, in which man suffered as much as woman, ignoring the fact that man had made the laws governing it, and all to his own advantage.
From the following letter of Lucretia Mott, we see how clear she was as to the merits of the position we had taken in the discussion of this vital question:
Roadside, near Philadelphia, 4th Mo., 30th, '61.
My Dear Lydia Mott:—I have wished ever since parting with thee and our other dear friends in Albany to send thee a line, and have only waited in the hope of contributing a little "substantial aid" toward your neat and valuable "depository." The twenty dollars enclosed is from our Female Anti-Slavery Society.
I see the annual meeting in New York is not to be held this spring. Sister Martha is here, and was expecting to attend both anniversaries. But we now think the Woman's Rights meeting had better not be attempted, and she has written Elizabeth C. Stanton to this effect.
I was well satisfied with being at the Albany meeting. I have since met with the following from a speech of Lord Brougham's, which pleased me, as being as radical as mine in your stately Hall of Representatives:
"Before woman can have any justice by the laws of England, there must be a total reconstruction of the whole system; for any attempt to amend it would prove useless. The great charter, in establishing the supremacy of law over prerogative, provides only for justice between man and man; for woman nothing is left but common-law, accumulations and modifications of original Gothic and Roman heathenism, which no amount of filtration through ecclesiastical courts could change into Christian laws. They are declared unworthy a Christian people by great jurists; still they remain unchanged."
So Elizabeth Stanton will see that I have authority for going to the root of the evil.
We had a delightful golden-wedding on the 10th inst. All our children and children's children were present, and a number of our friends hereaway. Our sister Mary W. Hicks and her grand daughter May were all of James's relatives from New York. Brother Richard and daughter Cannie could not feel like coming. Brother Silas and Sarah Cornell could not come.
Lucretia Mott.
Love to all,
In 1861 came "the war of the rebellion," the great conflict between the North and the South, the final struggle between freedom and slavery. The women who had so perseveringly labored for their own enfranchisement now gave all their time and thought to the nation's life; their patriotism was alike spontaneous and enduring. In the sanitary movement, in the hospitals, on the battle-field, gathering in the harvests on the far-off prairies—all that heroic women dared and suffered through those long dark years of anxiety and death, should have made "justice to woman" the spontaneous cry on the lips of our rulers, as we welcomed the return of the first glad days of peace. All specific work for her own rights she willingly thrust aside. No Conventions were held for five years; no petitions circulated for her civil and political rights; the action of State Legislatures was wholly forgotten. In their stead, Loyal Leagues were formed, and petitions by the hundred thousand for the emancipation of the slaves rolled up and sent to Congress—a measure which with speech and pen they pressed on the nation's heart, seeing clearly as they did that this was the pivotal point of the great conflict.
Thus left unwatched, the Legislature of New York amended the law of 1860, taking from the mother the lately guaranteed right to the equal guardianship of her children, replacing it by a species of veto power, which did not allow the father to bind out or will away a child without the mother's consent in writing. The law guaranteeing the widow the control of the property, which the husband should leave at death, for the care and protection of minor children, was also repealed. This cowardly act of the Legislature of 1862[175] is the strongest possible proof of woman's need of the ballot in her own hand for protection. Had she possessed the power to make and unmake legislators, no State Assembly would have dared thus to rob the mother of her natural rights. But without the suffrage she was helpless. While, in her loyalty to the Government and her love to humanity, she was encouraging the "boys in blue" to fight for the freedom of the black mothers of the South, these dastardly law-makers, filled with the spirit of slaveholders, were stealing the children and the property of the white mothers in the Empire State!
When Susan B. Anthony heard of the repeal of 1862, she was filled with astonishment, and wrote thus to Miss Lydia Mott:
Dear Lydia:—Your startling letter is before me. I knew some weeks ago that that abominable thing was on the calendar, with some six or eight hundred bills before it, and hence felt sure it would not come up this winter, and that in the meantime we should sound the alarm. Well, well; while the old guard sleep the young "devils" are wide-awake, and we deserve to suffer for our confidence in "man's sense of justice," and to have all we have gained thus snatched from us. But nothing short of this can rouse our women again to action. All our reformers seem suddenly to have grown politic. All alike say, "Have no conventions at this crisis"! Garrison, Phillips, Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Wright Mrs. Stanton, etc., say, "Wait until the war excitement abates"; which is to say, "Ask our opponents if they think we had better speak, or, rather, if they do not think we had better remain silent." I am sick at heart, but I can not carry the world against the wish and the will of our best friends. But what can we do now, when even the motion to retain the mother's joint guardianship is voted, down? Twenty thousand petitions rolled up for that—a hard year's work!—the law secured!—the echoes of our words of gratitude in the capitol have scarce died away, and now all is lost!
And, worse still, in 1871,[176] after the black man was not only emancipated, but enfranchised, by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which, overriding State Constitution and statute law, abolished the property qualification for colored voters in the State of New York, another step of retrogressive legislation was taken against woman, in the repeal of section nine[177] of the Act of 1860, re-enacting the spirit and letter of the old common law, which holds that the children born in legal wedlock belong to the father alone. Had woman held the ballot—that weapon of protection—in her hand to punish legislators, by withholding her vote from those thus derelict to duty, no repeal of the law of 1860 could have possibly taken place.
Albany, April 8, 1881.
Dear Miss Anthony:—Your esteemed favor of the 6th duly received.
The Statute of 1862, Laws of 1862, chapter 90, page 157, repealed the grandest and crowning section of the Statute of 1860, viz: Sections 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11, copies of which sections I herewith inclose you. Had these sections remained, wives in this State would have possessed equal rights with their husbands, save simply the right of voting. It was a great mistake and wrong to repeal them. Had I been a member of the Senate at that time, as I was not, I don't think it would have been done.
I do not know who was the author of the repeal bill, nor did I know of its existence until I saw it in the statute-book. I think Judge Charles J. Folger, now Chief-Justice of the Court of Appeals, was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the bill of 1862 must therefore have passed through the hands of that Committee, in which it originated, or through which it was reported, and by the influence of which it must have been adopted.
Strange that you women, so watchful and so regardful of your rights, should have allowed the repeal of those important sections, without strenuous opposition.
Very sincerely yours,
Andrew J. Colvin.
We were busily engaged rolling up petitions for the Thirteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution, our hearts and hands full of work for the Government in the midst of the war, supposing all was safe at Albany. But how comes it that the author of the bill of 1860, residing at the capital, never heard of its repeal? If the bill was so slyly passed that Mr. Colvin himself did not know of it until he saw it in the statute-book, it is not remarkable that it escaped our notice in time to prevent it.
Genena, N. Y., April 12, 1881.
Miss Anthony, Dear Madam:—I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the New York Senate in 1862-'3-'4-'5-'6-'7-'8-'9. Judge John Willard, of Saratoga County, was a member of the State Senate in that year, and a member of that Committee. He was the author of the Act of 1862. His object, as I have always understood it, was to simplify, make clear, consistent, and practical some of the legislation in regard to married women. I think, with deference I say it, that you are not strictly accurate in calling the legislation of 1862 a repealing one. The first section of the Act of 1862 (chap. 172, p. 343) amends the third section of the Act of 1860 (chap. 90, p. 157), by striking out the provision requiring the assent of the husband, and giving the wife the right (or privilege) to contract and convey as a feme sole, and to covenant for title, etc., etc. That amendment rendered unnecessary the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections of the Act of 1860. They would have fallen of themselves, that is, have been repealed by implication, as inconsistent with the greater power and freedom attained by married women by the amendment of 1862 to the Act of 1860. But ex abundanti cautela, as Judge Willard would have said, there was an express repeal of them. The tenth and eleventh sections of the Act of 1860 were also repealed expressly; but not to the sole detriment of married women. The tenth section gave to married men and married women a life estate in certain cases in one-third of all the real estate of which the wife or husband died seized. The wife had before the Act of 1860, and has now, that estate. The tenth section gave her nothing. The repeal of it took nothing from her. The eleventh section, so far as it gave a life estate, is the same as the tenth. So far as it gave the use of all the real estate of the intestate for the minority of the youngest child, it was an addition to the property rights of the wife, but it was also an addition to the property rights of the husband. I am not able from memory to say why it was repealed; and it is remembrance and not reasoning that you ask for. The third section of the Act of 1862 amends the seventh of the Act of 1860 by striking out the phrase, "except her husband," thus enabling a married woman to protect the property given to her by the husband, in which the Act of 1860 was lame, and in other ways gave more freedom and power to married women. The fourth section of the Act of 1862 amends the eighth section of the Act of 1860, but only in its verbiage. The fifth section of the Act of 1862 does not impair the Act of 1860; it simply puts the woman before the courts, and the law as an entity able to go alone. The sixth section of the Act of 1862 increases the powers of a married woman, by giving her a veto on some acts of her husband. The seventh section is like the fifth. In no other respect than those I have named did the Act of 1862 affect the Act of 1860. In but one thing did it repeal, in the sense of taking away any right or power or privilege or freedom that the Act of 1860 gave. On the contrary, in some respects, it gave more or greater.
I am glad that you wrote to me. I am glad that I have the opportunity to defend the memory of a good man, Judge John Willard. I make bold to ask you to turn to the thirty-seventh volume of Barbour's Supreme Court Reports, Appendix, pp. 670 et seq., and read the words spoken of him by his peers. I am glad also to have the opportunity to speak a word for my Judiciary Committee.
And I will not close this lengthened answer, without suggesting a suspicion, that those who have taken the notion that the Act of 1862 was a retrograde step, have done so without comparing for themselves the two acts.
For myself, I have the distinction of being one of less than half-a-dozen Senators who voted that women have the right to vote for delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1866; and one of about a dozen and a half members of that Convention who voted to erase from the suffrage article the word "male." I have never been convinced of the expediency of giving to females the privilege of suffrage; but I have never been able to see the argument by which they were not as much entitled to the right as males.
Trusting that you will forgive the length of this epistle,
I am with respect, yours, etc., etc.,
Charles J. Folger.
Miss Susan B. Anthony.
As will be seen by the above letters, both Mr. Colvin and Mr. Folger make mistakes in regard to the effect of these bills. In speaking of the complete equality of husbands and wives under the law of 1860, Mr. Colvin said, "All the wife then had to ask was the right of suffrage," quite forgetting that the wife has never had an equal right to the joint earnings of the copartnership, as no valuation has ever been placed on her labor in the household, to which she gives all her time, thought, and strength, the absolute sacrifice of herself, mind and body, all possibility of self-development and self-improvement being in most cases out of the question. Mr. Folger in saying the repeal of section eleven affected man as much as woman, falls into the same mistake, assuming that the joint earnings belong to man. We say that the wife who surrenders herself wholly to domestic life, foregoing all opportunities for pecuniary independence and personal distinction in the world of work, or the higher walks of literature and art, in order to make it possible for the husband to have home and family ties, and at the same time, his worldly successes and ambitions, richly earns the place of an equal partner. In their joint accumulations, her labor and economy should be taken into account.
This is the vital point of interest to the vast majority of married women, since it is only the few who ever possess anything through separate earnings or inheritance. A law securing to the wife the absolute right to one-half the joint earnings, and at the death of the husband, the same control of property and children that he has when she dies, might make some show of justice; but it is a provision not yet on the statute-books of any civilized nation on the globe.
The seeming sophistry of Judge Folger may be traced to the universal fact that man does not appreciate the arduous and unremitting labors of the wife in the household, or her settled dissatisfaction in having no pecuniary recompense for her labors. No man with cultured brain and skilled hands would consider himself recompensed for a life of toil in being provided with shelter, food, and clothes while his employer was living, to be cut down in his old age to a mere pittance; yet such is the fate of the majority of wives and widows under the most beneficent provisions of our statutes in this favored republic. True, the law says "the husband shall maintain the wife in accordance with his circumstances"; he being judge, jury, executive. Though she may toil incessantly, and her duties be far more exhaustive than his, yet he is supposed to maintain her, and the joint property is always disposed of on that basis. Legislation for woman proceeds on the assumption, that all she needs is a bare support; and that she is destitute of the natural human desire to accumulate, possess, and control the results of her own labor.