The Women of the Suffrage Movement. Jane Addams

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СКАЧАТЬ in the industries, alike in the parlor and the kitchen; by statesmen, professors in colleges, editors, bishops; by sailors, and soldiers, and the hard-handed children of toil, building railroads and bridges, and digging canals, and in mines in the bowels of the earth. Petitions, signed by three hundred thousand persons, can now be seen in the national archives in the Capitol at Washington. Three of my sons spent weeks in our office in Cooper Institute, rolling up the petitions from each State separately, and inscribing on the outside the number of names of men and women contained therein. We sent appeals to the President the House of Representatives, and the Senate, from time to time, urging emancipation and the passage of the proposed Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the National Constitution. During these eventful months we received many letters from Senator Sumner, saying, "Send on the petitions as fast as received; they give me opportunities for speech."

      Robert Dale Owen, chairman of the Freedman's Commission, was most enthusiastic in the work of the Loyal League, and came to our rooms frequently to suggest new modes of agitation and to give us an inkling of what was going on behind the scenes in Washington. Those who had been specially engaged in the Woman Suffrage movement suspended their conventions during the war, and gave their time and thought wholly to the vital issues of the hour. Seeing the political significance of the war, they urged the emancipation of the slaves as the sure, quick way of cutting the Gordian knot of the Rebellion. To this end they organized a national league, and rolled up a mammoth petition, urging Congress so to amend the Constitution as to prohibit the existence of slavery in the United States. From their headquarters in Cooper Institute, New York city, they sent out the appeals to the President, Congress, and the people at large; tracts and forms of petition, franked by members of Congress, were scattered like snowflakes from Maine to Texas. Meetings were held every week, in which the policy of the Government was freely discussed, and approved or condemned.

      That this League did a timely educational work is manifested by the letters received from generals, statesmen, editors, and from women in most of the Northern States, fully indorsing its action and principles. The clearness to thinking women of the cause of the War; the true policy in waging it; their steadfastness in maintaining the principles of freedom, are worthy of consideration. With this League abolitionists and Republicans heartily co-operated. A course of lectures was delivered for its benefit in Cooper Institute, by such men as Horace Greeley, George William Curtis, William D. Kelly, Wendell Phillips, E.P. Whipple, Frederick Douglass, Theodore D. Weld, Rev. Dr. Tyng, and Dr. Bellows. Many letters are on its files from Charles Sumner, approving its measures, and expressing great satisfaction at the large number of emancipation petitions being rolled into Congress. The Republican press, too, was highly complimentary. The New York Tribune said: "The women of the Loyal League have shown great practical wisdom in restricting their efforts to one subject, the most important which any society can aim at in this hour, and great courage in undertaking to do what never has been done in the world before, to obtain one million of names to a petition."

      The leading journals vied with each other in praising the patience and prudence, the executive ability, the loyalty, and the patriotism of the women of the League, and yet these were the same women who, when demanding civil and political rights, privileges, and immunities for themselves, had been uniformly denounced as "unwise," "imprudent," "fanatical," and "impracticable." During the six years they held their own claims in abeyance to those of the slaves of the South, and labored to inspire the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the Republican party, they were highly honored as "wise, loyal, and clear-sighted." But when the slaves were emancipated, and these women asked that they should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens of the Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues vanished like dew before the morning sun. And thus it ever is: so long as woman labors to second man's endeavors and exalt his sex above her own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when she dares to demand rights and privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress, personal appearance, and character are subjects for ridicule and detraction.

      Liberty, victorious over slavery on the battlefield, had now more powerful enemies to encounter at Washington. The slaves set free, the master conquered, the South desolate; the two races standing face to face, sharing alike the sad results of war, turned with appealing looks to the general government, as if to say, "How stand we now?" "What next?" Questions our statesmen, beset with dangers, with fears for the nation's life, of party divisions, of personal defeat, were wholly unprepared to answer. The reconstruction of the South involved the reconsideration of the fundamental principles of our Government and the natural rights of man. The nation's heart was thrilled with prolonged debates in Congress and State legislatures, in the pulpits and public journals, and at every fireside on these vital questions, which took final shape in the three historic amendments to the Constitution.

      The first point, his emancipation, settled, the political status of the negro was next in order; and to this end various propositions were submitted to Congress. But to demand his enfranchisement on the broad principle of natural rights was hedged about with difficulties, as the logical result of such action must be the enfranchisement of all ostracized classes; not only the white women of the entire country, but the slave women of the South. Though our senators and representatives had an honest aversion to any proscriptive legislation against loyal women, in view of their varied and self-sacrificing work during the War, yet the only way they could open the constitutional door just wide enough to let the black man pass in was to introduce the word "male" into the national Constitution. After the generous devotion of such women as Anna Carroll and Anna Dickinson in sustaining the policy of the Republicans, both in peace and war, they felt it would come with a bad grace from that party to place new barriers in woman's path to freedom. But how could the amendment be written without the word "male," was the question.

      Robert Dale Owen being at Washington, and behind the scenes at the time, sent copies of the various bills to the officers of the Loyal League, in New York, and related to us some of the amusing discussions. One of the committee proposed "persons" instead of "males." "That will never do," said another, "it would enfranchise wenches." "Suffrage for black men will be all the strain the Republican party can stand," said another. Charles Sumner said, years afterward, that he wrote over nineteen pages of foolscap to get rid of the word "male" and yet keep "negro suffrage" as a party measure intact; but it could not be done.

      Miss Anthony and I were the first to see the full significance of the word "male" in the Fourteenth Amendment, and we at once sounded the alarm, and sent out petitions for a constitutional amendment to "prohibit the States from disfranchising any of their citizens on the ground of sex." Miss Anthony, who had spent the year in Kansas, started for New York the moment she saw the proposition before Congress to put the word "male" into the national Constitution, and made haste to rouse the women in the East to the fact that the time had come to begin vigorous work again for woman's enfranchisement.

      Leaving Rochester, October 11, she called on Martha Wright at Auburn; Phebe Jones and Lydia Mott at Albany; Mmes. Rose, Gibbons, Davis, at New York city; Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell in New Jersey; Stephen and Abby Foster at Worcester; Mmes. Severance, Dall, Nowell, Dr. Harriet K. Hunt, Dr. M.E. Zackesewska, and Messrs. Phillips and Garrison in Boston, urging them to join in sending protests to Washington against the pending legislation. Mr. Phillips at once consented to devote five hundred dollars from the "Jackson Fund" to commence the work. Miss Anthony and I spent all our Christmas holidays in writing letters and addressing appeals and petitions to every part of the country, and, before the close of the session of 1865-66, petitions with ten thousand signatures were poured into Congress.

      One of my letters was as follows:

      "To the Editor of the Standard:

      "Sir: Mr. Broomall of Pennsylvania, Mr. Schenck of Ohio, Mr. Jenckes of Rhode Island, and Mr. Stevens of Pennsylvania, have each a resolution before Congress to amend the Constitution.

      "Article First, Section Second, reads thus: 'Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers.'

      "Mr. СКАЧАТЬ