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WOMAN'S HOLY WAR, GRAND CHARGE ON
THE ENEMY'S WORKS.
Temperance and Women's Rights
It follows the full text transcript of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Temperance and
Women's Rights
speech, delivered at Rochester, New York — June 1, 1853.
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A little more than
one year ago, |
in this same hall,
we formed the first Woman's State Temperance
Society. We believed that the time had come for
woman to speak on this question, and to insist
on her right to be heard in the councils of
Church and State.
It was proposed at
that time that we, instead of forming a society,
should go en masse into the Men's State
Temperance Society. We were assured that in
becoming members by paying the sum of $1, we
should thereby secure the right to speak and
vote in their meetings.
We who had watched
the jealousy with which man had ever eyed the
slow aggressions of woman, warned you against
the insidious proposition made by agents from
that Society. We told you they would no doubt
gladly receive the dollar, but that you would
never be allowed to speak or vote in their
meetings.
Many of you
thought us suspicious and unjust toward the
temperance men of the Empire State. The fact
that Abby Kelly had been permitted to speak in
one of their public meetings was brought up as
an argument by some agent of that Society to
prove our fears unfounded. We suggested that she
spoke by favor and not right, and our right
there as equals to speak and vote, we well knew
would never be acknowledged. A long debate saved
you from that false step, and our predictions
have been fully realized in the treatment our
delegates received at the annual meeting held at
Syracuse last July, and at the recent Brick
Church meeting in New York.
In forming our Society, the mass of us being
radical and liberal, we left our platform free;
we are no respecters of persons, all are alike
welcome here without regard to sect, sex, color,
or caste. There have been, however, many
objections made to one feature in our
Constitution, and that is, that although we
admit men as members with equal right to speak
in our meetings, we claim the offices for women
alone. We felt, in starting, the necessity of
throwing all the responsibility on woman, which
we knew she never would take, if there were any
men at hand to think, act, and plan for her.
The result has
shown the wisdom of what seemed so objectionable
to many. It was, however, a temporary expedient,
and as that seeming violation of man's rights
prevents some true friends of the cause from
becoming members of our Society, and as the
officers are now well skilled in the practical
business of getting up meetings, raising funds,
etc., and have fairly learned bow to stand and
walk alone, it may perhaps be safe to raise man
to an entire equality with ourselves, hoping,
however, that he will modestly permit the women
to continue the work they have so successfully
begun. I would suggest, therefore, that after
the business of the past year be disposed of,
this objectionable feature of our Constitution
be brought under consideration.
Our experience thus far as a Society has been
most encouraging. We number over two thousand
members. We have four agents who have traveled
in various parts of the State, and I need not
say what is well known to all present, that
their labors thus far have given entire
satisfaction to the Society and the public. I
was surprised and rejoiced to find that women,
without the least preparation or experience, who
had never raised their voices in public one year
ago, should with so much self-reliance, dignity,
and force, enter at once such a field of labor,
and so ably perform the work.
In the metropolis
of our country, in the capital of our State,
before our Legislature, and in the country
schoolhouse, they have been alike earnest and
faithful to the truth. In behalf of our Society,
I thank you for your unwearied labors during the
past year. In the name of humanity, I bid you go
on and devote yourselves humbly to the cause you
have espoused. The noble of your sex everywhere
rejoice in your success, and feel in themselves
a new impulse to struggle upward and onward; and
the deep, though silent gratitude that ascends
to Heaven from the wretched outcast, the wives,
the mothers, and the daughters of brutal
drunkards, is well known to all who have
listened to their tales of woo, their bitter
experience, the dark, sad passages of their
tragic lives.
I hope this, our first year, is prophetic of a
happy future of strong united, and energetic
action among the women of our State. If we are
sincere and earnest in our love of this cause,
in our devotion to truth, in our desire for the
happiness of the race, we shall ever lose sight
of self; each soul will, in a measure, forget
its own individual interests in proclaiming
great principles of justice and right. It is
only a true, a deep, and abiding love of truth,
that can swallow up all petty jealousies,
envies, discords, and dissensions, and make us
truly magnanimous and self-sacrificing. We have
every reason to think, from reports we hear on
all sides, that our Society has given this cause
a new impulse. And if the condition of our
treasury is a test, we have abundant reason to
believe that in the hearts of the people we are
approved, and that by their purses we shall be
sustained.
It has been objected to our Society that we do
not confine ourselves to the subject of
temperance, but talk too much about woman's
rights, divorce, and the Church. It could be
easily shown how the consideration of this great
question carries us legitimately into the
discussion of these various subjects. One class
of minds would deal with effects alone. Another
would inquire into causes. The work of the
former is easily perceived and quickly done;
that of the latter requires deep thought, great
patience, much time, and a wise self-denial.
Our physicians of
the present day are a good type of the mass of
our reformers. They take out cancers, cut off
tonsils, drive the poison which nature has
wisely thrown to the surface, back again, quiet
unsteady nerves with valerian, and by means of
ether infuse an artificial courage Into a
patient that he may bravely endure some painful
operation. It requires but little thought to
feel that the wise physician who shall trace out
the true causes of suffering; who shall teach us
the great, immutable laws of life and health;
who shall show us how and where in our every-day
life, we are violating these laws, and the true
point to begin the reform, is doing a much
higher, broader, and deeper work than he who
shall bend all his energies to the temporary
relief of suffering.
Those temperance
men or women whose whole work consists in
denouncing rum-sellers, appealing to
legislatures, eulogizing Neal Dow, and shouting
Maine Law, are superficial reformers, mere
surface-workers. True, this outside work is
well, and must be done; let those who see no
other do this, but let them lay no hindrances in
the way of that class of mind, who, seeing in
our present false social relations the causes of
the moral deformities of the race, would fain
declare the immutable laws that govern mind as
well as matter, and point out the true causes of
the evils we see about us, whether lurking under
the shadow of the altar, the sacredness of the
marriage institution, or the assumed superiority
of man.
We have been obliged to preach woman's rights,
because many, instead of listening to what we
had to say on temperance, have questioned the
right of a woman to speak on any subject. In
courts of justice and legislative assemblies, if
the right of the speaker to be there is
questioned, all business waits until that point
is settled. Now, it is not settled in the mass
of minds that woman has any rights on this
footstool, and much less a right to stand on an
even pedestal with man, look him in the face as
an equal, and rebuke the sins of her day and
generation. Let it be clearly understood, then,
that we are a woman's rights Society; that we
believe it is woman's duty to speak whenever she
feels the impression to do so; that it is her
right to be present in all the councils of
Church and State. The fact that our agents are
women, settles the question of our character on
this point.
Again, in discussing the question of temperance,
all lecturers, from the beginning, have made
mention of the drunkards' wives and children, of
widows' groans and orphans' tears; shall these
classes of sufferers be introduced but as themes
for rhetorical flourish, as pathetic touches of
the speaker's eloquence; shall we passively shed
tears over their condition, or by giving them
their rights, bravely open to them the doors of
escape from a wretched and degraded life? Is it
not legitimate in this to discuss the social
degradation, the legal disabilities of the
drunkard's wife?
If, in showing her
wrongs, we prove the right of all womankind to
the elective franchise, to a fair representation
in the government, to the right in criminal
cases to be tried by peers of her own choosing,
shall it be said that we transcend the bounds of
our subject? If in pointing out her social
degradation, we show you how tile present laws
outrage the sacredness of the marriage
institution; if in proving to you that justice
and mercy demand a legal separation from
drunkards, we grasp the higher idea that a unity
of soul alone constitutes and sanctifies true
marriage, and that any law or public sentiment
that forces two immortal, high-born souls to
live together as husband and wife, unless held
there by love, is false to God and humanity; who
shall say that tile discussion of this question
does not lead us legitimately into the
consideration of tile important subject of
divorce?
But why attack the Church ? We do not attack the
Church. We defend ourselves merely against its
attacks. It is true that tile Church and
reformers have always been in an antagonistic
position from the time of Luther down to our own
day, and will continue to be until the
devotional and practical types of Christianity
shall be united in one liarinonious whole.
To those who see
the philosophy of this position, there seems to
be no cause for fearful forebodings or helpless
regret. By the light of reason and truth, in
good time, all these seeming differences will
pass away. I have no special fault to find with
that part of humanity that gathers into our
churches; to me, human nature seems to manifest
itself in very much the same way in the Church
and out of it. Go through any community you
please-into the nursery, kitchen, the parlor,
the places of merchandise, the market-place, and
exchange, and who can tell the church member
from the outsider? I see no reason why we should
expect more of them than other men.
Why, say you, they
lay claim to greater holiness, to more rigid
creeds, to a belief in a sterner God, to a
closer observance of forms? The Bible with them
is the rule of life, the foundation of faith,
and why should we not look to them for patterns
of purity, goodness, and truth above all other
men?
I deny the
assumption.
Reformers from all
sides claim for themselves a higher position
than the Church. Our God is a god of justice,
mercy, and truth. Their God sanctions violence,
oppression, and wine-bibbing, and winks at gross
moral delinquencies.
Our Bible commands
us to love our enemies; to resist not evil; to
break every yoke and let the oppressed go free,
and makes a noble life of more importance than a
stern faith. Their Bible permits war, slavery,
capital punishment, and makes salvation depend
on faith and ordinances.
In their creed it
is a sin to dance, to pick up sticks on the
Sabbath day, to go to the theater, or large
parties during Lent, to read a notice of any
reform meeting from the altar, or permit a woman
to speak in the church. In our creed it is a sin
to hold a slave; to hang a man on the gallows;
to make war on defenseless nations, or to sell
rum to a weak brother, and rob the widow and the
orphan of a protector and a home.
Thus may we write
out some of our differences, but from the
similarity in the conduct of the human family,
it is fair to infer that our differences are
more intellectual than spiritual, and the great
truths we hear so clearly uttered on all sides,
have been incorporated as vital principles into
the inner life of but few indeed.
We must not expect the Church to leap en
masse to a higher position. She sends forth
her missionaries of truth one by one. All of our
reformers have, in a measure, been developed in
the Church, and all our reforms have started
there. The advocates and opposers of the reforms
of our day, have grown up side by side,
partaking of the same ordinances and officiating
at the same altars; but one, by applying more
fully his Christian principles to life, and
pursuing an admitted truth to its legitimate
results, has unwittingly found himself in
antagonism with his brother.
Belief is not voluntary, and change is the
natural result of growth and development. We
would fain have all church members sons and
daughters of temperance. But if the Church, in
her wisdom, has made her platform so broad that
wine-bibbers and rum-sellers may repose in ease
thereon, we who are always preaching liberality
ought to be the last to complain.
More History
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