The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Origin of the Movement (Illustrated Edition). Elizabeth Cady Stanton

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СКАЧАТЬ by two separate temperance organizations of men to represent them at this Convention. How she was received, how treated, and how virtually crowded off the platform, our report most faithfully exhibits. They who are sure that the Age of Chivalry is not gone, are urged to ponder this treatment of a pure and high-souled woman, a teacher of Christian truth, an ornament of her sex, and an example to all, by a Convention of Reformers and Gentlemen, many of them from that section of the Union where the defence of woman from insult has been deemed a manly grace, if not a manly duty. We presume the matter will be further considered to-day.

      Of the Whole World's Temperance Convention a correspondent of The Una says: "Throughout, the meeting has been one of intense interest; not a moment's flagging, not a poor or unworthy speech made by either man or woman. Again and again, as we passed into the large hall, filled with eager listeners, we felt it to be one of the most sublime scenes we had ever looked upon. There the audience remained, hour after hour, patient, earnest, full of enthusiasm, and yet hundreds could scarcely hear a single connected sentence. The majority were women, but the larger number of the speakers were men. The right and equality being recognized, there was no longer a necessity for controversy to maintain principle, hence no woman attempted to speak except she had something to say. Mrs. Jackson, of England, Mrs. Nichols, Mrs. Vaughan, Miss Stone, Rev. A. L. Brown, Lucretia Mott, and Mrs. F. D. Gage addressed the Convention during the different sessions."

      The same correspondent says of the World's Temperance Convention: "There was one feature more anomalous than the rejection and gagging of Miss Brown, darker and far more cruel, for it has not the excuse of custom, nor can the Bible be tortured into any justification of it. This was the exclusion of Dr. James McCune Smith, a gentleman, a graduate of the Edinburgh University, a member of a long-established temperance society, and a regularly appointed delegate. And wherefore? simply for the reason that nature had bestowed on his complexion a darker, richer tint than upon some of the sycophants who gathered there; it appears to have been simply to pander to a bigoted priesthood and a corrupt populace."

      In deciding the action of the Convention to be worse in its treatment toward Mr. Smith than toward Miss Brown, we think The Una correspondent makes a grave mistake.

      In point of courtesy the treatment of a lady of culture and refinement, the peer of any man in that assembly, with the unpardonable rudeness they did, was infinitely worse than to have done the same thing to any man, white or black, because by every code of honor or chivalry all men are bound to defend woman. Again, as a question of morals, custom, and prejudice, they occupied the same position in the State and the Church. The "white male" in the Constitutions placed women and black men on the same platform as citizens. The popular interpretation of Scripture sanctioned the same injustice in both cases. In the mouths of the false prophets, "Servants, obey your masters," was used for the same purpose, and with equal effect, as "Wives, be in subjection to your own husbands." "Servant of servants shall he be" has been used with the same prophetic force as the more cruel curse pronounced on woman. The white man's Bible has been uniformly used to show that the degradation of the woman and the black man was in harmony with God's will. On what principle is proscription on account of color more cruel than on account of sex?

      Most of the liberal men and women now withdrew from all temperance organizations, leaving the movement in the hands of time-serving priests and politicians, who, being in the majority, effectually blocked the progress of the reform for the time—destroying, as they did, the enthusiasm of the women in trying to press it as a moral principle, and the hope of the men, who intended to carry it as a political measure. Henceforward women took no active part in temperance until the Ohio crusade revived them again all over the nation, and gathered the scattered forces into "The Woman's National Christian Temperance Union," of which Miss Frances E. Willard is president. As now, so in 1853, intelligent women saw that the most direct way to effect any reform was to have a voice in the laws and lawmakers. Hence they turned their attention to rolling up petitions for the civil and political rights of women, to hearings before legislatures and constitutional conventions, giving their most persistent efforts to the reform technically called "Woman's Rights."

      Susan B. Anthony had a similar battle to fight in the educational conventions. Having been a successful teacher in the State of New York fifteen years of her life, she had seen the need of many improvements in the mode of teaching and in the sanitary arrangements of school buildings; and more than all, the injustice to women in their half-pay as teachers. Her interest in educational conventions was first roused by listening to a tedious discussion at Elmira on the "Divine ordinance" of flogging children, in which Charles Anthony, principal of the Albany Academy, quoted Solomon's injunction, "Spare the rod, and spoil the child."

      In 1853, the annual convention being held in Rochester, her place of residence, Miss Anthony conscientiously attended all the sessions through three entire days. After having listened for hours to a discussion as to the reason why the profession of teacher was not as much respected as that of the lawyer, minister, or doctor, without once, as she thought, touching the kernel of the question, she arose to untie for them the Gordian knot, and said, "Mr. President." If all the witches that had been drowned, burned, and hung in the Old World and the New had suddenly appeared on the platform, threatening vengeance for their wrongs, the officers of that convention could not have been thrown into greater consternation.

      There stood that Quaker girl, calm and self-possessed, while with hasty consultations, running to and fro, those frightened men could not decide what to do; how to receive this audacious invader of their sphere of action. At length President Davies, of West Point, in fall dress, buff vest, blue coat, gilt buttons, stepped to the front, and said, in a tremulous, mocking tone, "What will the lady have?" "I wish, sir, to speak to the question under discussion," Miss Anthony replied. The Professor, more perplexed than before, said: "What is the pleasure of the Convention?" A gentleman moved that she should be heard; another seconded the motion; whereupon a discussion pro and con followed, lasting full half an hour, when a vote of the men only was taken, and permission granted by a small majority; and lucky for her, too, was it, that the thousand women crowding that hall could not vote on the question, for they would have given a solid "no." The president then announced the vote, and said: "The lady can speak."

      We can easily imagine the embarrassment under which Miss Anthony arose after that half hour of suspense, and the bitter hostility she noted on every side. However, with a clear, distinct voice, which filled the hall, she said: "It seems to me, gentlemen, that none of you quite comprehend the cause of the disrespect of which you complain. Do you not see that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman? And this, too, is the reason that teaching is a less lucrative profession, as here men must compete with the cheap labor of woman. Would you exalt your profession, exalt those who labor with you. Would you make it more lucrative, increase the salaries of the women engaged in the noble work of educating our future Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen."

      This said, Miss Anthony took her seat, amid the profoundest silence, broken at last by three gentlemen, Messrs. Cruttenden, Coburn, and Fanning, walking down the broad aisle to congratulate the speaker on her pluck and perseverance, and the pertinency of her remarks. The editor of The Rochester Democrat said the next morning, that "whatever the schoolmasters might think of Miss Anthony, it was evident that she hit the nail on the head."

      To give the women of to-day some idea of what it cost those who first thrust themselves into these conventions, at the close of the session Miss A. heard women remarking: "Did you ever see anything like this performance?" "I was actually ashamed of my sex." "I felt so mortified I really wished the floor would open and swallow me up." "Who can that creature be?" "She must be a dreadful woman to get up that way and speak in public." "I was so mad at those three men making such a parade to shake hands with her; that will just encourage her to speak again." These ladies had probably all been to theatres, concerts, operas, and gone into ecstasies over Fanny Kemble, Rachel, and Jenny Lind; and Fanny Elsler, balanced on one toe, the other foot in СКАЧАТЬ