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PAGE

PRECEDING CAUSES.

WOMAN IN NEWSPAPERS.

THE WORLD'S ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION, LONDON, JUNE 13, 1840.

Individualism rather than Authority--Personal appearance of Abolitionists--Attempt to silence Woman--Doable battle against the tyranny of sex and color--Bigoted Abolitionists--James G. Birney likes freedom on a Southern plantation, but not at his own fireside--John Bull never dreamt that Woman would answer his call--The venerable Thomas Clarkson received by the Convention standing--Lengthy debate on "Female" delegates--The "Females" rejected--William Lloyd Garrison refusing to sit in the Convention 50

NEW YORK.

The First Woman's Rights Convention, Seneca Falls, July 19-80, 1848--Property Bights of Women secured--Judge Fine, George Geddes, and Mr. Hadley pushing the Bill through--Danger of meddling with well-settled conditions of domestic happiness--Mrs. Barbara Hertell's will--Richard Hunt's tea-table--The eventful day--James Mott President--Declaration of sentiments--Convention in Rochester-- Opposition with Bible arguments 63

MRS. COLLINS' REMINISCENCES.

The first Suffrage Society--Methodist class-leader whips his wife--Theology enchains the soul--The status of women and slaves the same--The first medical college opened to women--Petitions to the Legislature laughed at, and laid on the table--Dependence woman's best protection; her weakness her sweetest charm--Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell's letter--Sketch of Ernestine L. Rose 88

OHIO.

WISCONSIN: Woman's State Temperance Society--Lydia F. Fowler in company--Opposition of Clergy--"Woman's Rights" wouldn't do--Advertised "Men's Rights."

KANSAS: Free State Emigration, 1854--Gov. Robinson and Senator Pomeroy--Woman's Rights speeches on Steamboat, and at Lawrence--Constitutional Convention, 1859--State Woman Suffrage Association--John O. Wattles, President--Aid from the Francis Jackson Fund--Canvassing the State--School Suffrage gained.

MISSOURI: Lecturing at St. Joseph, 1858, on Col. Scott's Invitation--Westport and the John Brown raid, 1859--St. Louis, 1854--Frances D. Gage, Rev. Wm. G. Eliot, and Rev. Mr. Weaver 171

MASSACHUSETTS.

INDIANA AND WISCONSIN.

Indiana Missionary Station--Gen. Arthur St. Clair--Indian surprises--The terrible war-whoop--One hundred women join the army, and are killed fighting bravely--Prairie schooners--Manufactures in the hands of women--Admitted to the Union in 1816--Robert Dale Owen--Woman Suffrage Conventions--Wisconsin--C. L. Sholes' report 290

PENNSYLVANIA.

William Penn--Independence Hall--British troops--Heroism of women--Lydia Darrah--Who designed the Flag--Anti-slavery movements in Philadelphia--Pennsylvania Hall destroyed by a mob--David Paul Brown--Fugitives--Millard Fillmore--John Brown--Angelina Grimk?--Abby Kelly--Mary Grew--Temperance in 1848--Hannah Darlington and Ann Preston before the Legislature--Medical College for Women in 1850--Westchester Woman's Rights Convention, 1852--Philadelphia Convention, 1854--Lucretia Mott answers Richard H. Dana--Jane Grey Swisshelm--Sarah Josepha Hale--Anna McDowell--Rachel Foster searching the records--Sketch of Angelina Grimk? 320

LUCRETIA MOTT.

NEW JERSEY.

Tory feeling in New Jersey--Hannah Arnett rebuked the traitor spirit--Mrs. Dissosway rejects all proposals to disloyalty--Triumphal arch erected by the ladies of Trenton in honor of Washington--His letter to the ladies--The origin of Woman Suffrage in New Jersey--A paper read by William A. Whitehead before the Historical Society--Defects in the Constitution of New Jersey--A singular pamphlet called "Eumenes"--Opinion of Hon. Charles James Fox--Mr. Whitehead reviewed 441

MRS. STANTON'S REMINISCENCES.

Mrs. Stanton's and Miss Anthony's first meeting--An objective view of these ladies from a friend's standpoint--A glimpse at their private life--The pronunciamentos they issued from the fireside--Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Seward, Mrs. Worden, Mrs. Mott, in council--How Mrs. Worden voted--Ladies at Newport dancing with low necks and short sleeves, and objecting to the publicity of the platform--Senator Seward discussing Woman's Rights at a dinner-party--Mrs. Seward declares herself a friend to the reform--A magnetic circle in Central New York--Matilda Joslyn Gage: her early education and ancestors--A series of Anti-Slavery Conventions from Buffalo to Albany--Mobbed at every point--Mayor Thatcher maintains order in the Convention at the Capital--Great excitement over a fugitive wife from the insane asylum--The Bloomer costume--Gerrit Smith's home 456

NEW YORK.

WOMAN, CHURCH, AND STATE.

Woman under old religions--Woman took part in offices of early Christian Church Councils--Original sin--Celibacy of the clergy--Their degrading sensuality--Feudalism--Marriage--Debasing externals and daring ideas--Witchcraft--Three striking points for consideration-- Burning of Witches--Witchcraft in New England--Marriage with devils--Rights of property not recognized in woman--Wife ownership--Women legislated for as slaves--Marriage under the Greek Church--The Salic and Cromwellian eras--The Reformation--Woman under monastic rules in the home--The Mormon doctrine regarding woman; its logical result--Milton responsible for many existing views in regard to woman--Woman's subordination taught to-day--The See trial--Right Rev. Coxe--Rev. Knox-Little--Pan-Presbyterians--Quakers not as liberal as they have been considered--Restrictive action of the Methodist Church--Offensive debate upon ordaining Miss Oliver--The Episcopal Church and its restrictions--Sunday-school teachings--Week-day school teachings--Sermon upon woman's subordination by the President of a Baptist Theological Seminary--Professor Christlieb of Germany--"Dear, will you bring me my shawl?"--Female sex looked upon as a degradation--A sacrilegious child--Secretary Evarts, in the Beecher-Tilton trial, upon woman's subordination--Women degraded in science and education--Large-hearted men upon woman's degradation-- Wives still sold in the market-place as "mares," by ahalter around their necks--Degrading servile labor performed by woman in Christian countries--A lower degradation--"Queen's women"--"Government women"--Interpolations in the Bible--Letter from Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D. 752

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

FRANCES WRIGHT Frontispiece ERNESTINE L. WRIGHT page 97 FRANCES D. GAGE 129 CLARINA HOWARD NICHOLS 193 PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS 273 LUCRETIA MOTT 369 ANTOINETTE L. BROWN 449 AMELIA BLOOMER 497 SUSAN B. ANTHONY 577 MARTHA C. WRIGHT 641 ELIZABETH CADY STANTON 721 MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE 753

INTRODUCTION.

The prolonged slavery of woman is the darkest page in human history. A survey of the condition of the race through those barbarous periods, when physical force governed the world, when the motto, "might makes right," was the law, enables one to account, for the origin of woman's subjection to man without referring the fact to the general inferiority of the sex, or Nature's law.

Writers on this question differ as to the cause of the universal degradation of woman in all periods and nations.

One of the greatest minds of the century has thrown a ray of light on this gloomy picture by tracing the origin of woman's slavery to the same principle of selfishness and love of power in man that has thus far dominated all weaker nations and classes. This brings hope of final emancipation, for as all nations and classes are gradually, one after another, asserting and maintaining their independence, the path is clear for woman to follow. The slavish instinct of an oppressed class has led her to toil patiently through the ages, giving all and asking little, cheerfully sharing with man all perils and privations by land and sea, that husband and sons might attain honor and success. Justice and freedom for herself is her latest and highest demand.

Another writer asserts that the tyranny of man over woman has its roots, after all, in his nobler feelings; his love, his chivalry, and his desire to protect woman in the barbarous periods of pillage, lust, and war. But wherever the roots may be traced, the results at this hour are equally disastrous to woman. Her best interests and happiness do not seem to have been consulted in the arrangements made for her protection. She has been bought and sold, caressed and crucified at the will and pleasure of her master. But if a chivalrous desire to protect woman has always been the mainspring of man's dominion over her, it should have prompted him to place in her hands the same weapons of defense he has found to be most effective against wrong and oppression.

It is often asserted that as woman has always been man's slave--subject--inferior--dependent, under all forms of government and religion, slavery must be her normal condition. This might have some weight had not the vast majority of men also been enslaved for centuries to kings and popes, and orders of nobility, who, in the progress of civilization, have reached complete equality. And did we not also see the great changes in woman's condition, the marvelous transformation in her character, from a toy in the Turkish harem, or a drudge in the German fields, to a leader of thought in the literary circles of France, England, and America!

In an age when the wrongs of society are adjusted in the courts and at the ballot-box, material force yields to reason and majorities.

Woman's steady march onward, and her growing desire for a broader outlook, prove that she has not reached her normal condition, and that society has not yet conceded all that is necessary for its attainment.

Moreover, woman's discontent increases in exact proportion to her development. Instead of a feeling of gratitude for rights accorded, the wisest are indignant at the assumption of any legal disability based on sex, and their feelings in this matter are a surer test of what her nature demands, than the feelings and prejudices of the sex claiming to be superior. American men may quiet their consciences with the delusion that no such injustice exists in this country as in Eastern nations, though with the general improvement in our institutions, woman's condition must inevitably have improved also, yet the same principle that degrades her in Turkey, insults her in this republic. Custom forbids a woman there to enter a mosque, or call the hour for prayers; here it forbids her a voice in Church Councils or State Legislatures. The same taint of her primitive state of slavery affects both latitudes.

The condition of married women, under the laws of all countries, has been essentially that of slaves, until modified, in some respects, within the last quarter of a century in the United States. The change from the old Common Law of England, in regard to the civil rights of women, from 1848 to the advance legislation in most of the Northern States in 1880, marks an era both in the status of woman as a citizen and in our American system of jurisprudence. When the State of New York gave married women certain rights of property, the individual existence of the wife was recognized, and the old idea that "husband and wife are one, and that one the husband," received its death-blow. From that hour the statutes of the several States have been steadily diverging from the old English codes. Most of the Western States copied the advance legislation of New York, and some are now even more liberal.

The broader demand for political rights has not commanded the thought its merits and dignity should have secured. While complaining of many wrongs and oppressions, women themselves did not see that the political disability of sex was the cause of all their special grievances, and that to secure equality anywhere, it must be recognized everywhere. Like all disfranchised classes, they begun by asking to have certain wrongs redressed, and not by asserting their own right to make laws for themselves.

Overburdened with cares in the isolated home, women had not the time, education, opportunity, and pecuniary independence to put their thoughts clearly and concisely into propositions, nor the courage to compare their opinions with one another, nor to publish them, to any great extent, to the world.

It requires philosophy and heroism to rise above the opinion of the wise men of all nations and races, that to be unknown, is the highest testimonial woman can have to her virtue, delicacy and refinement.

A certain odium has ever rested on those who have risen above the conventional level and sought new spheres for thought and action, and especially on the few who demand complete equality in political rights. The leaders in this movement have been women of superior mental and physical organization, of good social standing and education, remarkable alike for their domestic virtues, knowledge of public affairs, and rare executive ability; good speakers and writers, inspiring and conducting the genuine reforms of the day; everywhere exerting themselves to promote the best interests of society; yet they have been uniformly ridiculed, misrepresented, and denounced in public and private by all classes of society.

Woman's political equality with man is the legitimate outgrowth of the fundamental principles of our Government, clearly set forth in the Declaration of Independence in 1776, in the United States Constitution adopted in 1784, in the prolonged debates on the origin of human rights in the anti-slavery conflict in 1840, and in the more recent discussions of the party in power since 1865, on the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the National Constitution; and the majority of our leading statesmen have taken the ground that suffrage is a natural right that may be regulated, but can not be abolished by State law.

Under the influence of these liberal principles of republicanism that pervades all classes of American minds, however vaguely, if suddenly called out, they might be stated, woman readily perceives the anomalous position she occupies in a republic, where the government and religion alike are based on individual conscience and judgment--where the natural rights of all citizens have been exhaustively discussed, and repeatedly declared equal.

From the inauguration of the government, representative women have expostulated against the inconsistencies between our principles and practices as a nation. Beginning with special grievances, woman's protests soon took a larger scope. Having petitioned State legislatures to change the statutes that robbed her of children, wages, and property, she demanded that the Constitutions--State and National--be so amended as to give her a voice in the laws, a choice in the rulers, and protection in the exercise of her rights as a citizen of the United States.

While the laws affecting woman's civil rights have been greatly improved during the past thirty years, the political demand has made but a questionable progress, though it must be counted as the chief influence in modifying the laws. The selfishness of man was readily enlisted in securing woman's civil rights, while the same element in his character antagonized her demand for political equality.

Fathers who had estates to bequeath to their daughters could see the advantage of securing to woman certain property rights that might limit the legal power of profligate husbands.

Husbands in extensive business operations could see the advantage of allowing the wife the right to hold separate property, settled on her in time of prosperity, that might not be seized for his debts. Hence in the several States able men championed these early measures. But political rights, involving in their last results equality everywhere, roused all the antagonism of a dominant power, against the self-assertion of a class hitherto subservient. Men saw that with political equality for woman, they could no longer keep her in social subordination, and "the majority of the male sex," says John Stuart Mill, "can not yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal." The fear of a social revolution thus complicated the discussion. The Church, too, took alarm, knowing that with the freedom and education acquired in becoming a component part of the Government, woman would not only outgrow the power of the priesthood, and religious superstitions, but would also invade the pulpit, interpret the Bible anew from her own stand-point, and claim an equal voice in all ecclesiastical councils. With fierce warnings and denunciations from the pulpit, and false interpretations of Scripture, women have been intimidated and misled, and their religious feelings have been played upon for their more complete subjugation. While the general principles of the Bible are in favor of the most enlarged freedom and equality of the race, isolated texts have been used to block the wheels of progress in all periods; thus bigots have defended capital punishment, intemperance, slavery, polygamy, and the subjection of woman. The creeds of all nations make obedience to man the corner-stone of her religious character. Fortunately, however, more liberal minds are now giving us higher and purer expositions of the Scriptures.

As the social and religious objections appeared against the demand for political rights, the discussion became many-sided, contradictory, and as varied as the idiosyncrasies of individual character. Some said, "Man is woman's natural protector, and she can safely trust him to make laws for her." She might with fairness reply, as he uniformly robbed her of all property rights to 1848, he can not safely be trusted with her personal rights in 1880, though the fact that he did make some restitution at last, might modify her distrust in the future. However, the calendars of our courts still show that fathers deal unjustly with daughters, husbands with wives, brothers with sisters, and sons with their own mothers. Though woman needs the protection of one man against his whole sex, in pioneer life, in threading her way through a lonely forest, on the highway, or in the streets of the metropolis on a dark night, she sometimes needs, too, the protection of all men against this one. But even if she could be sure, as she is not, of the ever-present, all-protecting power of one strong arm, that would be weak indeed compared with the subtle, all-pervading influence of just and equal laws for all women. Hence woman's need of the ballot, that she may hold in her own right hand the weapon of self-protection and self-defense.

Again it is said: "The women who make the demand are few in number, and their feelings and opinions are abnormal, and therefore of no weight in considering the aggregate judgment on the question." The number is larger than appears on the surface, for the fear of public ridicule, and the loss of private favors from those who shelter, feed, and clothe them, withhold many from declaring their opinions and demanding their rights. The ignorance and indifference of the majority of women, as to their status as citizens of a republic, is not remarkable, for history shows that the masses of all oppressed classes, in the most degraded conditions, have been stolid and apathetic until partial success had crowned the faith and enthusiasm of the few.

The insurrections on Southern plantations were always defeated by the doubt and duplicity of the slaves themselves. That little band of heroes who precipitated the American Revolution in 1776 were so ostracised that they walked the streets with bowed heads, from a sense of loneliness and apprehension. Woman's apathy to the wrongs of her sex, instead of being a plea for her remaining in her present condition, is the strongest argument against it. How completely demoralized by her subjection must she be, who does not feel her personal dignity assailed when all women are ranked in every State Constitution with idiots, lunatics, criminals, and minors; when in the name of Justice, man holds one scale for woman, another for himself; when by the spirit and letter of the laws she is made responsible for crimes committed against her, while the male criminal goes free; when from altars where she worships no woman may preach; when in the courts, where girls of tender age may be arraigned for the crime of infanticide, she may not plead for the most miserable of her sex; when colleges she is taxed to build and endow, deny her the right to share in their advantages; when she finds that which should be her glory--her possible motherhood--treated everywhere by man as a disability and a crime! A woman insensible to such indignities needs some transformation into nobler thought, some purer atmosphere to breathe, some higher stand-point from which to study human rights.

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