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BALANCING ACTIVISM & FAMILY LIFE -
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON IN 1854
The Rights of Married Women
It follows the full text transcript of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton's Address to the New York
State Legislature, also titled The Rights of Married
Women, adopted by the State Woman's Rights Convention,
held at Albany, on February 14 and 15, 1854, and submitted
on February 20, 1854.
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To the Legislature
of the State of New York: |
"The thinking minds of all nations call for
change. There is a deep-lying struggle in
the whole fabric of society; a boundless,
grinding collision of the New with the Old."
The tyrant, Custom, has been summoned before the
bar of Common Sense. His Majesty no longer awes
the multitude — his scepter is broken — his crown
is trampled in the dust — the sentence of death
is pronounced upon him. All nations, ranks and
classes have, in turn, questioned and repudiated
his authority; and now, that the monster is
chained and caged, timid woman, on tiptoe, comes
to look him in the face, and to demand of her
brave sires and sons, who have struck stout
blows for liberty, if, in this change of
dynasty, she, too, shall find relief.
Yes, gentlemen, in republican America, in the
19th century, we, the daughters of the
revolutionary heroes of '76, demand at your
hands the redness of our grievances — a revision
of your state constitution — a new code of laws.
Permit us then, as briefly as possible, to call
your attention to the legal disabilities under
which we labor.
1st, Look at the position of woman as woman. It
is not enough for us that by your laws we are
permitted to live and breathe, to claim the
necessaries of life from our legal
protectors — to pay the penalty of our crimes; we
demand the full recognition of all our rights as
citizens of the Empire State. We are persons;
native, free-born citizens; property-holders,
tax-payers; yet are we denied the exercise of
our right to the elective franchise. We support
ourselves, and, in part, your schools, colleges,
churches, your poor-houses, jails, prisons, the
army, the navy, the whole machinery of
government, and yet we have no voice in your
councils. We have every qualification required
by the constitution, necessary to the legal
voter, but the one of sex. We are moral,
virtuous and intelligent, and in all respects
quite equal to the proud white man himself, and
yet by your laws we are classed with idiots,
lunatics and negroes; and though we do not feel
honored by the place assigned us, yet, in fact,
our legal position is lower than that of either;
for the negro can be raised to the dignity of a
voter if he possess himself of $250; the lunatic
can vote in his moments of sanity, and the
idiot, too, if he be a male one, and not more
than nine-tenths a fool; but we, who have guided
great movements of charity, established
missions, edited journals, published works on
history, economy and statistics; who have
governed nations, led armies, filled the
professor's chair, taught philosophy and
mathematics to the savans of our age, discovered
planets, piloted ships across the sea, are
denied the most sacred rights of citizens,
because, forsooth, we came not into this
republic crowned with the dignity of manhood!
Woman is theoretically absolved from all
allegiance to the laws of the state. Sec. 1,
Bill of Rights, 2 R.S., 301, says that no
authority can, on any pretence whatever, be
exercised over the citizens of this state but
such as is or shall be derived from, and granted
by, the people of this state.
Now, gentlemen, we would fain know by what
authority you have disfranchised one-half the
people of this state? You who have so boldly
taken possession of the bulwarks of this
republic, show us your credentials, and thus
prove your exclusive right to govern, not only
yourselves, but us. Judge Hurlburt, who has long
occupied a high place at the bar in this state,
and who recently retired with honor from the
bench of the Supreme Court, in his profound work
on human rights, has pronounced your present
position rank usurpation. Can it be that here,
where are acknowledged no royal blood, no
apostolic descent, that you, who have declared
that all men were created equal — that
governments derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed, would willingly build
up an aristocracy that places the ignorant and
vulgar above the educated and refine — the alien
and the ditch-digger above the authors and poets
of the day — an aristocracy that would raise sons
above the mothers that bore them? Would that the
men who can sanction a constitution so opposed
to the genius of this government, who can enact
and execute laws so degrading to womankind, had
sprung, Minerva-like, from the brains of their
fathers, that the matrons of this republic need
not blush to own their sons! Woman's position,
under our free institutions, is much lower than
under the monarchy of England.
In England the idea of woman holding official
station is not so strange as in the United
States. The Countess of Pembroke, Dorset and
Montgomery held the office of hereditary sheriff
of Westmoreland, and exercised it in person. At
the assizes at Appleby, she sat with the judges
on the bench. In a reported case, it is stated
by counsel, and substantially assented to by the
court, that a woman is capable of serving in
almost all the offices of the kingdom, such as
those of queen, marshal, great chamberlain and
constable of England, the champion of England,
commissioner of sewers, governor of work house,
sexton, keeper of the prison, of the gate house
of the dean and chapter of Westminster,
returning officer for members of parliament, and
constable, the latter of which is in some
respects judicial. The office of jailor is
frequently exercised by a woman. In the United
States a woman may administer on the effects of
her deceased husband, and she has occasionally
held a subordinate place in the post office
department. She has therefore a sort of post
mortem, post mistress notoriety; but with the
exception of handling letters of administration
and letters mailed, she is the submissive
creature of the old common law.
True, the unmarried woman has a right to the
property she inherits and the money she earns,
but she is taxed without representation. And
here again you place the negro, so unjustly
degraded by you, in a superior position to your
own wives and mothers; for colored males, if
possessed of a certain amount of property and
certain other qualifications, can vote, but if
they do not have these qualifications they are
not subject to direct taxation; wherein they
have the advantage of woman, she being subject
to taxation for whatever amount she may possess.
(Constitution of N.Y. article 2, sec. 2.) But,
say you, are not all women sufficiently
represented by their fathers, husbands and
brothers? Let your statute books answer the
question.
Again we demand, in criminal cases, that most
sacred of all rights, trial by a jury of our own
peers. The establishment of trial by jury is of
so early a date that its beginning is lost in
antiquity; but the right of trial by a jury of
one's own peers is a great, progressive step of
advanced civilization. No rank of men have ever
been satisfied with being tried by jurors higher
or lower in the civil or political scale than
themselves; for jealousy on the one hand, and
contempt on the other, has ever effectually
blinded the eyes of justice. Hence, all along
the pages of history, we find the king, the
noble, the peasant, the cardinal, the priest,
the layman, each in turn protesting against the
authority of the tribunal before which they were
summoned to appear. Charles the First refused to
recognized the competency of the tribunal which
condemned him: For how, said he, can subjects
judge a king? The stern descendants of our
Pilgrim Fathers refused to answer for their
crimes before an English Parliament. For how,
said they, can a king judge rebels? And shall
woman here consent to be tried by her liege
lord, who has dubbed himself law-maker, judge,
juror, and sheriff, too? — whose power, though
sanctioned by Church and State, has no
foundation in justice and equity, and is a bold
assumption of our inalienable rights. In England
a parliament-lord could challenge a jury where a
knight was not empanelled. An alien could
demand a jury composed half of his own
countrymen; or, in some special cases, juries
were even constituted entirely of women. Having
seen that man fails to do justice to woman in
her best estate, to the virtuous, the noble, the
true of our sex, should we trust to his tender
mercies, the weak, the ignorant, the morally
insane? It is not to be denied that the
interests of man and woman in the present
undeveloped state of the race, and under the
existing social arrangements, are and must be
antagonistic. The nobleman cannot make just laws
for the peasant; the slaveholder for the slave;
neither can man make and execute just laws for
woman, because in each case, the one in power
fails to apply the immutable principles of right
to any grade but his own. Shall an erring woman
be dragged before a bar of grim-visaged judges,
lawyers and jurors, there to be grossly
questioned in public on subjects which women
scarce breathe in secret to one another? Shall
the most sacred relations of life be called up
and rudely scanned by men who, by their own
admission, are so coarse that women could not
meet them even at the polls without
contamination? and yet shall she find there no
woman's face or voice to pity and defend? Shall
the frenzied mother who, to save herself and
child from exposure and disgrace, ended the life
that had but just begun, be dragged before such
a tribunal to answer for her crime? How can man
enter into the feelings of that mother? How can
be judge of the mighty agonies of soul that
impelled her to such an outrage of maternal
instincts? How can he weigh the mountain of
sorrow that crushed that mother's heart when she
wildly tossed her helpless babe into the cold
waters of the midnight sea? Where is he who by
false vows thus blasted this trusting woman? Had
that helpless child no claims on his protection?
Ah, he is freely abroad in the dignity of
manhood, in the pulpit, in the bench, in the
professor's chair. The imprisonment of his
victim and the death of his child, detract not a
tithe from his standing and complacency. His
peers made the law, and shall law-makers lay
nets for those of their own rank? Shall laws
which come from the logical brain of man take
cognizance of violence done to the moral and
affectional nature which predominates, as is
said, in woman? Statesmen of New-York, whose
daughters, guarded by your affection, and lapped
amidst luxuries which your indulgence spreads,
care more for their nodding plumes and velvet
trains than for the statute laws by which their
persons and properties are held — who, blinded by
custom and prejudice to the degraded position
which they and their sisters occupy in the civil
scale, haughtily claim that they already have
all rights they want, how, think ye, you would
feel to see a daughter summoned for such a
crime — and remember these daughters are but
human — before such a tribunal? Would it not, in
that hour, be some consolation to see that she
was surrounded by the wise and virtuous of her
own sex; by those who had known the depth of a
mother's love and the misery of a lover's
falsehood; to know that to these she could make
her confession, and from them receive her
sentence? If so, then listen to our just demands
and make such a change in your laws as will
secure to every woman tried in your courts, an
impartial jury. At this moment among the
hundreds of women who are shut up in prisons in
this state, not one has enjoyed that most sacred
of all rights — that right which you would die to
defend for yourselves — trial by a jury of one's
peers.
2d., Look at the position of woman as wife. Your
laws relating to marriage — founded as they are
on the old common law of England, a compound of
barbarous usages, but partially modified by
progressive civilization — are in open violation
of our enlightened ideas of justice, and of the
holiest feelings of our nature. If you take the
highest view of marriage, as a Divine relation,
which love alone can constitute and sanctify,
then of course human legislation can only
recognize it. Man can neither bind or loose its
ties, for that prerogative belongs to God alone,
who makes man and woman, and the laws of
attraction by which they are united. But if you
regard marriage as a civil contract, then let it
be subject to the same laws which control all
other contracts. Do not make it a kind of
half-human, half-divine institution, which you
may build up but cannot regulate. Do not, by
your special legislation for this one kind of
contract, involve yourselves in the greatest
absurdities and contradictions.
So long as by your laws no man can make a
contract for a horse or piece of land until he
is twenty-one years of age, and by which
contract he is not bound if any deception has
been practiced, or if the party contracting has
not fulfilled his part of the agreement — so long
as the parties in all mere civil contracts
retain their identity and all the power and
independence they had before contracting, with
the full right to dissolve all partnerships and
contracts for any reason, at the will and option
of the parties themselves, upon what principle
of civil jurisprudence do you permit the boy of
fourteen and the girl of twelve, in violation of
every natural law, to make a contract more
momentous in importance than any other, and then
hold them to it, come what may, the whole of
their natural lives, in spite of disappointment,
deception and misery? Then, too, the signing of
this contract is instant civil death to one of
the parties. The woman who but yesterday was
sued on bended knee, who stood so high in the
scale of being as to make an agreement on equal
terms with a proud Saxon man, to-day has no
civil existence, no social freedom. The wife who
inherits no property holds about the same legal
position that does the slave on the southern
plantation. She can own nothing, sell nothing.
She has no right even to the wages she earns;
her person, her time, her services are the
property of another. She cannot testify, in many
cases, against her husband. She can get no
redress for wrongs in her own name in any court
of justice. She can neither sue nor be sued. She
is not herd morally responsible for any crime
committed in the presence of her husband, so
completely is her very existence supposed by the
law to be merged in that of another. Think of
it; your wives may be thieves, libelers,
burglars, incendiaries, and for crimes like
these they are not held amenable to the laws of
the land, if they but commit them in your dread
presence. For them, alas! there is no higher law
than the will of man. Herein behold the bloated
conceit of these Petruchios of the law, who seem
to say:
"Nay, look not big, nor stamp, nor stare, nor
fret, I will be master of what is mine own; She
is my goods, my chattels; she is my house, My
household stuff, my field, my barn, My horse, my
ox, my ass, my anything; And here she stands,
touch her whoever dare; I'll bring my action on
the proudest be, That stops my way, in Padua."
How could man ever look thus on woman? — She, at
whose feet Socrates learned wisdom — she, who
gave to the world a Savior, and witnessed alike
the adoration of the Magi and the agonies of the
Cross. How could such a being, so blessed and
honored, ever become the ignoble, servile,
cringing slave, with whom the fear of man could
be paramount to the sacred dictates of
conscience and the holy love of Heaven? By the
common law of England, the spirit of which has
been but too faithfully incorporated into our
statute law, a husband has a right to whip his
wife with a rod not larger than his thumb, to
shut her up in a room, and administer whatever
moderate chastisement he may deem necessary to
insure obedience to his wishes, and for her
healthful moral development! He can forbid all
persons harboring or trusting her on his
account. He can deprive her of all social
intercourse with her nearest and dearest
friends. If by great economy she accumulates a
small sum, which for future need she deposit,
little by little, in a savings bank, the husband
has a right to draw it out, at his option, to
use it as he may see fit.
Husband is
entitled to wife's credit or business talents
(whenever their intermarriage may have
occurred); and goods purchased by her on her own
credit, with his consent, while cohabiting with
him, can be seized and sold in execution against
him for his own debts, and this, though she
carry on business in her own name.
No letters of administration shall be granted
to a person convicted of infamous crime; nor to
any one incapable by law of making a contract;
nor to a person not a citizen of the United
States, unless such person reside within the
state; nor to any one who is under twenty-one
years of age; nor to any person who shall be
adjudged incompetent by the surrogate to execute
duties of such trust, by reason of drunkenness,
improvidence, or want of understanding, nor any
married woman; but where a married woman is
entitled to administration, the same may be
granted to her husband in her right and behalf.
(7 Howard's Practice, Reports, 105, Levett agt. Robinson and Witbeck, sheriff, &c.)
There is nothing that an unruly wife might do
against which the husband has not sufficient
protection in the law. But not so with the wife.
If she have a worthless husband, a confirmed
drunkard, a villain or a vagrant, he has still
all the rights of a man, a husband and a father.
Though the whole support of the family be thrown
upon the wife, if the wages she earns be paid to
her by her employer, the husband can receive
them again. If, by unwearied industry and
perseverance, she can earn for herself and
children a patch of ground and shed to cover
them, the husband can strip her of all her hard
earnings turn her and her little ones out in the
cold northern blast, take the clothes from their
backs, the bread from their mouths; all this by
your laws may he do, and has he done, oft and
again, to satisfy the rapacity of that monster
in human form, the rum-seller.
But the wife who is so fortunate as to have
inherited property, has, by the new law in this
state, been redeemed from her lost condition.
She is no longer a legal nonentity. This
property law, if fairly construed, will overturn
the whole code relating to woman and property.
The right to property implies the right to buy
and sell, to will and bequeath, and herein is
the dawning of a civil existence for woman, for
now the "femme covert" must have the right to
make contracts. So, get ready, gentlemen; the
"little justice" will be coming to you one day,
deed in hand, for your acknowledgment. When he
asks you "if you sign without fear or
compulsion," say yes, boldly, as we do. Then,
too, the right to will is ours. Now what becomes
of the "tenant for life?" Shall he, the happy
husband of a millionaire, who has lived in
yonder princely mansion in the midst of plenty
and elegance, be cut down in a day to the use of
one-third of this estate and a few hundred a
year, as long as he remains her widower? And
should he, in spite of this bounty on celibacy,
impelled by his affections, marry again,
choosing for a wife a woman as poor as himself,
shall he be thrown penniless on the cold
world — this child of fortune, enervated by ease
and luxury, henceforth to be dependent wholly on
his own resources? Poor man! He would be rich,
though, in the sympathies of many women who have
passed through just such an ordeal. But what is
property without the right to protect that
property by law? It is mockery to say a certain
estate is mine, if, without my consent, you have
the right to tax me when and how you please,
while I have no voice in making the
tax-gatherer, the legislator or the law. The
right to property will, of necessity, compel us
in due time to the exercise of our right to the
elective franchise, and then naturally follows
the right to hold office.
3d., Look at the position of woman as widow.
Whenever we attempt to point out the wrongs of
the wife, those who would have us believe that
the laws cannot be improved, point us to the
privileges, powers and claims of the widow. Let
us look into these a little. Behold in yonder
humble house a married pair, who, for long
years, have lived together, childless and alone.
Those few acres of well-tilled land, with the
small white house that looks so cheerful through
its vines and flowers, attest the honest thrift
and simple taste of its owners. This man and
woman, by their hard days' labor, have made this
home their own. Here they live in peace and
plenty, happy in the hope that they may dwell
together securely under their own vine and fig
tree for the few years that remain to them, and
that under the shadow of these trees, planted by
their own hands, and in the midst of their
household gods, so loved and familiar, here may
take their last farewell of earth. But, alas for
human hopes! the husband dies, and without will,
and the stricken widow, at one fell blow, loses
the companion of her youth, her house and home,
and half the little sum she had in bank. For the
law, which takes no cognizance of widows left
with twelve children and not one cent, instantly
spies out this widow, takes account of her
effects, and announces to her the startling
intelligence that but one-third of the house and
lot, and one-half the personal property, are
hers. The law has other favorites with whom she
must share the hard-earned savings of years. In
this dark hour of grief, the coarse minions of
the law gather round the widow's hearthstone,
and, in the name of justice, outrage all natural
sense of right; mock at the sacredness of human
love, and with cold familiarity proceed to place
a moneyed value on the old arm chair, in which,
but a few brief hours since, she closed the eyes
that had ever beamed on her with kindness and
affection; on the solemn clock in the corner,
that told the hour he passed away; on every
garment with which his form and presence were
associated, and on every article of comfort and
convenience that the house contained, even down
to the knives and forks and spoons — and the
widow saw it all — and when the work was done,
she gathered up what the law allowed her and
went forth to seek her another home! This is the
much talked of widow's dower. Behold the
magnanimity of the law in allowing the widow to
retain a life interest in one-third the landed
estate, and one-half the personal property of
her husband, and taking the lion's share to
itself! Had she died first, the house and land
would all have been the husband's still. No one
would have dared to intrude upon the privacy of
his home or to molest him in his sacred retreat
of sorrow.
How, I ask you, can that be called justice,
which makes such a distinction as this between
man and woman?
By management, economy and industry, our widow
is able, in a few years, to redeem her house and
home. But the law never loses sight of the
purse, no matter how low in the scale of being
its owner may be. It sends it officers round
every year to gather in the harvest for the
public crib, and no widow who owns a piece of
land two feet square ever escapes this
reckoning. Our widow, too, who has now twice
earned her home, has her annual tax to pay
also — a tribute of gratitude that she is
permitted to breathe the free air of this
republic, where "taxation without
representation," by such worthies as John
Hancock and Samuel Adams, has been declared
"intolerable "tyranny." Having glanced at the
magnanimity of the law in its dealings with the
widow, let us see how the individual man, under
the influence of such laws, doles out justice to
his helpmate. The husband has the absolute right
to will away his property as he may see fit. If
he has children, he can divide his property
among them, leaving his wife her third only of
the landed estate, thus making her a dependent
on the bounty of her own children. A man thirty
thousand dollars in personal property, may leave
his wife but a few hundred a year, as long as
she remains his widow.
The cases are without number where women, who
have lived in ease and elegance, at the death of
their husbands have, by will, been reduced to
the bare necessaries of life. The man who leaves
his wife the sole guardian of his property and
children is an exception to the general rule.
Man has ever manifested a wish the world should
indeed be a blank to the companion whom he
leaves behind him. The Hindu makes that wish a
law, and burns the widow on the funeral pile of
her husband; but the civilized man, impressed
with a different view of the sacredness of life,
takes a less summary mode of drawing his beloved
partner after him; he does it by the deprivation
and starvation of the flesh, and the humiliation
and mortification of the spirit. In bequeathing
to the wife just enough to keep soul and body
together, man seems to lose sight of the fact
that woman, like himself, takes great pleasure
in acts of benevolence and charity. It is but
just, therefore, that she should have it in her
power to give during her life, and to will away
at her death, as her benevolence or obligations
might prompt her to do.
4th., Look at the position of woman as mother.
There is no human love so generous, strong and
steadfast as that of the mother for her child;
yet behold how cruel and ruthless are your laws
touching this most sacred relation.
Nature has clearly made the mother the guardian
of the child; but man, in his inordinate love of
power, does continually set nature and nature's
laws at open defiance. The father may apprentice
his child, bind him out to a trade or labor,
without the mother's consent — yea, in direct
opposition to her most earnest entreaties, her
prayers and tears.
He may apprentice his son to a gamester or
rum seller, and thus cancel his debts of honor.
By the abuse of this absolute power, he may bind
his daughter to the owner of a brothel, and, by
the degradation of his child, supply his daily
wants; and such things, gentlemen, have been
done in our very midst. Moreover, the father,
about to die, may bind out all his children
wherever and to whomsoever he may see fit, and
thus, in fact, will away the guardianship of all
his children from the mother. The Revised
Statutes of New-York provide that
every father,
whether of full age or a minor, of a child to be
born, or of any
living child under the age of twenty-one years,
and unmarried, may be his deed or last will,
duly executed, dispose of the custody and
tuition of such child during its minority, or
for any less time, to any person or persons, in
possession or remainder.
(2 R. S., page 150, sec.
1.)
Thus, by your laws, the child is the absolute
property of the father, wholly at his disposal
in life or at death.
In case of separation, the law gives the
children to the father; no matter what his
character or condition. At this very time we can
point you to noble, virtuous, well educated
mothers in this state, who have abandoned their
husbands for their profligacy and confirmed
drunkenness. All these have been robbed of their
children, who are in the custody of the husband,
under the care of his relatives, whilst the
mothers are permitted to see them but at stated
intervals. But, said one of these mothers, with
a grandeur of attitude and manner worthy the
noble Roman matron in the palmiest days of that
republic, I would rather never see my child
again, than be the medium to hand down the low,
animal nature of it father, to stamp degradation
on the brow of another innocent being. It is
enough that one child of his shall call me
mother. If you are far sighted statesmen, and do
wisely judge of the interests of this
commonwealth, you will so shape your future laws
as to encourage woman to take the high moral
ground that the father of her children must be
great and good.
Instead of your present laws, which make the
mother and her children the victims of vice and
license, you might rather pass-laws prohibiting
to all drunkards, libertines and fools, the
rights of husbands and fathers. Do not the
hundreds of laughing idiot that are crowding
into our asylums, appeal to the wisdom of our
statesmen for some new laws on marriage — to the
mothers of this day for a higher, purer
morality?
Again, as the condition of the child always
follows that of the mother, and as by the abuse
of your laws the father may best the mother, so
may he the child. What mother cannot bear me
witness to untold sufferings. Which cruel,
vindictive fathers have visited upon their
helpless children? Who ever saw a human being
that would not abuse unlimited power? Base and
ignoble must that man be, who, let the
provocation be what it may, would strike a
woman; but he who would lacerate a trembling
child is unworthy the name of man. A mother's
love can be no protection to a child; she cannot
appeal to you to save it from a father's
cruelty, for the laws take no cognizance of the
mother's most grievous wrongs. Neither at home
or abroad can a mother protect her son. Look at
the temptations that surround the paths of our
youth at every step; look at the gambling and
drinking saloons, the club rooms, the dens of
infamy and abomination that infest all our
villages and cities — slowly but surely sapping
the very foundations of all virtue and strength.
By your laws, all these abominable resorts are
permitted. It is folly to talk of a mother
molding the character of her son, when all
mankind, backed up by law and public sentiment,
conspire to destroy her influence. But when
woman's moral power shall speak through the
ballot-box, then shall her influence be seen and
felt; then, in our legislative debates, such
questions as the canal tools on salt, the
improvement of rivers and harbors, and the
claims, of Mr. Smith for damages against the
states, would be secondary to the consideration
of the legal existence of all these public
resorts, which lure our youth on to excessive
indulgence and destruction.
Many times and oft it has been asked us, with
unaffected seriousness, "what do you women want?
What are you aiming at?" Many have manifested a
laudable curiosity to know what the wives and
daughters could complain of in republican
America, where their sires and sons have so
bravely fought for freedom and gloriously
secured their independence, trampling all
tyranny, bigotry and caste in the dust, and
declaring to a waiting world the divine truth
that all men are created equal. What can woman
want under such a government? Admit a radical
differences in sex and you demand different
spheres — water for fish, and air for birds.
It is impossible to make the southern planter
believe that his slave feels and reasons just as
he does — that injustice and subjection are as
galling as to him — that the degradation of
living by the will of another, the mere
dependent on his caprice, at the mercy of his
passions, is as keenly felt by him as his
master. If you can force on his unwilling vision
a vivid picture of the negro's wrongs, and for a
moment touch his soul, his logic brings him
instant consolation. He says, the slave does not
feel this as I would. Here, gentlemen, is our
difficulty: When we plead our cause before the
law makers and savans of the republic, they
cannot take in the idea that men and women are
alike; and so long as the mass rest in this
delusion, the public mind will not be so much
startled by the revelation made of the injustice
and degradation of woman's position as by the
fact that she should at length wake up to a
sense of it.
If you, too, are thus deluded, what avails it
that we show by your statute books that your
laws are unjust — that woman is the victim of
avarice and power? What avails it that we point
out the wrongs of woman in social life; the
victim of passion and lust? You scorn the
thought that she has any natural love of freedom
burning in her breast, any clear perception of
justice urging her on to demand her rights.
Would to God you could know the burning
indignation that fills woman's soul when she
turns over the pages of your statute books, and
sees there how like feudal barons you freemen
hold your women. Would that you could know the
humiliations she feels for her sex, when she
thinks of all the beardless boys in your law
offices, learning these ideas of one-sided
justice — taking their first lessons in contempt
for all womankind — being indoctrinated into the
incapacities of their mothers, and the lordly,
absolute rights of man over all women, children
and property, and to know that these are to be
our future Presidents, Judges, Husbands and
Fathers; in sorrow we exclaim, alas! for that
nation whose sons bow not in loyalty to woman.
The mother is the first object of the child's
veneration and love, and they who root out this
holy sentiment, dream not of the blighting
effect, it has on the boy and the man. The
impression left on law students, fresh from your
statute books, is most unfavorable to woman's
influence; hence you see but few lawyers
chivalrous and high-toned in their sentiments
towards woman. They cannot escape the legal view
which, by constant reading, has become
familiarized to their minds: "Femme covert,"
"downer," "widow's claims," "protection,"
"incapacities," "encumbrance," is written on the
brow of every woman they meet.
But if, gentlemen, you take the ground that the
sexes are alike, and, therefore, you are our
faithful representative — then why all these
special laws for woman? Would not one code
answer for all of like needs and wants? Christ's
golden rule is better than all the special
legislation that the ingenuity of man can
devise: "Do unto others as you would have others
do unto you." This, men and brethren, is all we
ask at your hands. We ask no better laws than
those you have made for yourselves. We need no
other protection than that which yourself
present law secure to you.
In conclusion, then, let us say, in behalf of
the women of this state, we ask for all that you
have asked for yourselves in the progress of
your development, since the May Flower cast
anchor side Plymouth rock; and simply on the
ground that the rights of every human being are
the same and identical. You may say that the
mass of the women of this state do not make the
demand; it comes from a few sour, disappointed
old maids and childless women.
You are mistaken; the mass speak through us. A
very large majority of the women of this state
support themselves and their children, and many
their husbands too. Go into any village you
please, of three of four thousand inhabitants,
and you will find as many as fifty men or more,
whose only business is to discuss religion and
politics, as they watch the trains come and go
at the depot, or the passage of a canal boat
through a lock; to laugh at the vagaries of some
drunken brother, or the capers of a monkey,
dancing to the music of his master's organ. All
these are supported by their mothers, wives or
sisters.
Now, do you candidly think these wives do not
wish to control the wages they earn — to own the
land they buy — the houses they build? to have at
their disposal their own children, without being
subject to the constant interference and tyranny
of an idle, worthless profligate? Do you suppose
that any woman is such a pattern of devotion and
submission that she willingly stitches all day
for a small sum of fifty cents, that she may
enjoy the unspeakable privilege, in obedience to
your laws, of paying for her husband's tobacco
and rum? Think you the wife of the confirmed,
beastly drunkard would consent to share with him
her home and bed, if law and public sentiment
would release her from such gross companionship?
Verily, no! Think you the wife, with whom
endurance has ceased to be a virtue, who through
much suffering has lost all faith in the justice
of both Heaven and earth, takes the law in her
own hand, severs the unholy bond and turns her
back forever upon him whom she once called
husband, consents to the law that in such an
hour tears her child from her — all that she has
left on earth to love and cherish? The
drunkards' wives speak through us, and they
number 50,000. Think you that the woman who has
worked hard all her days, in helping her husband
to accumulate a large property, consents to the
law that places this wholly at his disposal?
Would not the mother, whose only child is bound
out for a term of years, against her expressed
wishes, deprive the father of this absolute
power if she could?
For all these, then, we speak. If to this long
list you add all the laboring women, who are
loudly demanding remuneration for their unending
toil — those women who teach in our seminaries,
academies and common schools for a miserable
pittance; the widows, who are taxed without
mercy; the unfortunate ones in our work houses,
poor houses and prisons; who are they that we do
not now represent? But a small class of
fashionable butterflies, who, through the short
summer days, seek the sunshine and the flowers;
but the cool breezes of autumn and the hoary
frosts of winter will soon chase all these away;
then, they too will need and seek protection,
and through other lips demand, in their turn,
justice and equity at your hands.
Here is more on
Human Rights in History
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