The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 46

[131] For summary of voting laws relating to women from 1691 to 1822, see "Ma.s.sachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement," by Harriet H. Robinson: Roberts Brothers, Boston.

[132] Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Lucy Stone, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and other speakers of ability, presented able arguments in favor of giving women the right to vote.

[133] This memorial was printed by order of the legislature (Leg.

Doc. Ho. 57) and is called "Memorial of the Female Signers of the Several Pet.i.tions of Henry A. Hardy and Others," presented March 1, 1849. The doc.u.ment is not signed and Mrs. Ferrin's name is not found with it upon the records, neither does her name appear in the journal of the House in connection with any of the pet.i.tions and addresses she caused to be presented to the legislature of the State. But for the loyal friends.h.i.+p of the few who knew of her work and were willing to give her due credit, the name of Mary Upton Ferrin [see Vol. I., page 208] and the memory of her labors as well as those of many another silent worker, would have gone into the "great darkness."

[134] The committee was addressed by Wendell Phillips, Julia Ward Howe, Lucy Stone, Rev. James Freeman Clarke and Hon. George F.

h.o.a.r.

[135] Two years before (1869), while sitting as visitor in the gallery of the House of Representatives, I heard the whole subject of woman's rights referred to the (bogus) committee on graveyards!

[136] It was perhaps intended to serve as a means of renstating Abby W. May and other women who had been defeated as candidates for reelection on the Boston school-board. The names of Isa E. Gray, Mrs. C. B. Richmond, Elizabeth P. Peabody and John M. Forbes led the lists of pet.i.tioners.

[137] At the first annual election for school committees in cities and towns in 1879-80, about 5,000 women became registered voters.

[138] Lucretia P. Hale, Abby W. May, Lucia M. Peabody, Mary J. S.

Blake, Kate G. Wells, Lucretia Crocker.

[139] This act, so brief and so _expressive_, is worthy to be remembered. It simply reads: "_Be it enacted, etc., as follows_:

SEC. 1. No person shall be deemed ineligible to serve upon a school committee by reason of s.e.x.

SEC. 2. This act shall take effect upon its pa.s.sage. (_Approved June 30, 1874._)

By force of habit, the legislature said not a word in the law about _women_. There are now (1885) 102 women members of school-boards in Ma.s.sachusetts.

[140] See "Women under the law of Ma.s.sachusetts," Henry H. Sprague.

Boston: W. B. Clarke & Carruth.

[141] The authority for this old "thumb" tradition, that "a man had the right to whip his wife with a stick no bigger than his thumb,"

is found in an early edition of _Phillip's Evidence_. That book was authority in English common law and in it Phillips is quoted as saying, that according to the law of his day a husband "might lawfully chastise his wife with a reasonable weapon, as a _broomstick_," adding, however, "but if he use an unreasonable weapon, such as an iron bar, and death ensue, it would be murder."--[Chamberlin, p. 818.

[142] In an old will, made a hundred and fifty years ago, a husband of large means bequeathed to his "dearly beloved wife" $50 and a new suit of clothes, with the injunction that she should return to her original, or family home. And with this small sum, as her share of his property, he returned her to her parents.

[143] The little actual gain in votes since 1874, in favor of munic.i.p.al or general suffrage for women, might cause the careless observer to draw the inference that no great progress had been made in legislative sentiment during all these years. In 1870 the vote in the House of Representatives on the General Woman Suffrage Bill was 133 to 68. In 1885 the bill giving munic.i.p.al suffrage was defeated in the House by a vote of 130 to 61. But this is not a true index of the progress of public opinion.

[144] Mrs. Ellen M. Richards was the first woman who entered.

[145] The Harvard Annex, so called, began its seventh year with sixty-five young ladies enrolled for study. The enrollment for the preceding six years was as follows: First year, 29: second, 47; third 40; fourth, 39; fifth, 49, sixth, 55. Some of the students come from distant places, but a majority are from the Cambridge and neighboring high-schools. The inst.i.tution occupies this year for the first time a building which has been conveniently arranged for its purposes. The endowment of the a.s.sociation which manages the work now amounts to $85,000.

[146] This lady was Lucy Downing, a sister of the first governor of Ma.s.sachusetts. She was the wife of Emanuel Downing, a lawyer of the Inner Temple, a friend of Governor Winthrop and afterward a man of mark in the infant colony. In a letter to her brother, Lucy Downing expresses the desire of herself and husband to come to New England with their children, but laments that if they do come her son George cannot complete his studies. She says: "You have yet noe societies nor means of that kind for the education of youths in learning. It would make me goe far nimbler to New England, if G.o.d should call me to it, than otherwise I should, and I believe a colledge would put noe small life into the plantation." This letter was written early in 1636, and in October of the same year the General Court of the Ma.s.sachusetts colony agreed to give 400 towards establis.h.i.+ng a school or college in Newtowne (two years later called Cambridge). Soon afterwards Rev. John Harvard died and left one-half of his estate to this "infant seminary," and in 1638 it was ordered by the General Court that the "Colledge to be built at Cambridge shall be called Harvard Colledge."

Early in 1638 Lucy Downing and her husband arrived in New England, and the name of George Downing stands second on the list of the first cla.s.s of Harvard graduates in 1642. The Downings had other sons who do not seem to have been educated at Harvard, and daughters who were put out to service. The son for whom so much was done by his mother, was afterwards known as Sir George Downing, and he became rich and powerful in England. Downing street in London is named for him. In after life he forgot his duty to his mother, who so naturally looked to him for support; and her last letter written from England after her husband died, when she was old and feeble, tells a sad story of her son's avarice and meanness, and leaves the painful impression that she suffered in her old age for the necessaries of life.

It is hard to estimate how much influence the earnest longing of this one woman for the better education of her son, had in the founding of this earliest college in Ma.s.sachusetts. But for her thinking and speaking at the right time the enterprise might have been delayed for half a century. It is to be deplored that Lucy Downing established the unwise precedent of educating one member of the family at the expense of the rest; an example followed by too many women since her time. Harvard College itself has followed it as well, in that it has so long excluded from its privileges that portion of the human family to which Lucy Downing belonged.

Although women have never been permitted to become students of this college, or of any of the schools connected with it, yet they have always taken a great interest in its pecuniary welfare, and the University is largely indebted to the generosity of women for its endowment and support. From the records of Harvard College, it appears that funds have been contributed by 167 women, which amount, in the aggregate, to $325,000. Out of these funds a proportion of the university scholars.h.i.+ps were founded, and at least one of its professors' chairs. In its Divinity school alone five of the ten scholars.h.i.+ps bear the names of women. Caroline A.

Plummer of Salem gave $15,000 to found the Plummer Professors.h.i.+p of Christian Morals. Sarah Derby bequeathed $1,000 towards founding the Hersey Professors.h.i.+p of Anatomy and Physic. The Holden Chapel was built with money given for that purpose by Mrs. Samuel Holden and her daughters. Anna E. P. Sever, in 1879, left a legacy to this college of $140,000. [See Harvard Roll of Honor for women in _Harvard Register_ in 1880-81.] Other known benefactors of Harvard University are: Lady Moulson, Hannah Sewall, Mary Saltonstall, Dorothy Saltonstall, Joanna Alford, Mary P. Townsend, Ann Toppan, Eliza Farrar, Ann F. Schaeffer, Levina h.o.a.r, Rebecca A. Perkins, Caroline Merriam, Sarah Jackson, Hannah C. Andrews, Nancy Kendall, Charlotte Harris, Mary Osgood, Lucy Osgood, Sarah Winslow, Julia Bullock, Marian Hovey, Anna Richmond, Caroline Richmond, Clara J.

Moore and Susan Cabot.--[H. H. R.

The question is often asked, why are women so much more desirous than men to see their children educated? Because it is a right that has been denied to themselves. To them education means liberty, wealth, position, power. When the black race at the South were emanc.i.p.ated, they were far more eager for education than the poor whites, and for the same reason.--[EDS.

[147] Ruth Barnaby, aged 101 in 1875, Elizabeth Phillips and Hannah Greenway were also members of this branch of the profession. The last was midwife to Mrs. Judge Sewall, who was the mother of nineteen children. Judge Samuel E. Sewall mentions this fact in his diary, recently published.

[148] Dr. Jackson had a large practice in Boston, and filled for five years the chair of professor of diseases of children in the Boston University School of Medicine.

[149] In 1840, a Ma.s.sachusetts woman could not legally be treasurer of even a sewing society without having some man responsible for her. In 1809, it was necessary that the subscriptions of a married woman for a newspaper or for charities should be in the name of her husband.

[150] Olympia Brown's own account of this transaction is as follows: In 1864, soon after my settlement in Weymouth, I solemnized a marriage. It was the first time a woman had officiated in this capacity, and there was so much talk about the legality of the act, that I pet.i.tioned the legislature to take such action as was necessary in order to make marriages solemnized by me legal.

The committee to whom it was referred reported that no legislation was necessary.

[151] This little book is worthy of mention, from the fact that it is probably the first publication of its kind in Ma.s.sachusetts, if not in America. The whole t.i.tle of the book is, "Observations on the Rights of Women, with their appropriate duties agreeable to Scripture, reason and common sense." Mrs. Crocker, in her introduction, says: "The wise author of Nature has endowed the female mind with equal powers and faculties, and given them the same right of judging and acting for themselves as he gave the male s.e.x." She further argues that, "According to Scripture, woman was the first to transgress and thus forfeited her original right of equality, and for a time was under the yoke of bondage, till the birth of our blessed Savior, when she was restored to her equality with man."

This is a very fine beginning, and would seem to savor strongly of the modern woman's rights doctrine; but, unfortunately, the author, with charming inconsistency, goes on to say,--"We shall strictly adhere to the principle of the impropriety of females ever trespa.s.sing on masculine grounds, as it is morally incorrect, and physically impossible."

[152] In 1836 there was a small woman's club of Lowell factory operatives, officered and managed entirely by women. This may be a remote first cause of the origin of the New England Women's Club, since it bears the same relation to that flouris.h.i.+ng inst.i.tution, that the native crab does to the grafted tree. This was the first woman's club in the State, if not in the whole country.

[153] A few ladies met at the house of Dr. Harriot K. Hunt to consider a plan for organization. Its avowed object was "to supply the daily increasing need of a great central resting place, for the comfort and convenience of those who may wish to unite with us, and ultimately become a center for united and organized social thought and action." Its first president was Caroline M. Severance. On the executive board were the names of Julia Ward Howe, Ednah D. Cheney, Lucy G.o.ddard, Harriet M. Pitnam, Jane Alexander, Abby W. May, and many others who have since become well known. This club held its first meetings in private houses, but it has for several years occupied s.p.a.cious club rooms on Park street in Boston. Julia Ward Howe is its president. The club has its own historian, and when this official gives the result of her researches to the public, there will be seen how many projects for the elevation of women and the improvement of social life have had their inception in the brains of those who a.s.semble in the parlors of the New England Woman's Club. In 1874, it projected the movement by which women were first elected on the school committee of Boston, and also prepared the pet.i.tion to be sent to the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature of 1879, the result of which was the pa.s.sage of the law allowing women to vote for school committees. In the _Woman's Journal_ for 1883 will be found a sketch of this club.

[154] "Taxation of Women in Ma.s.sachusetts"; "Woman Suffrage a Right, not a Privilege," and "The Forgotten Woman in Ma.s.sachusetts."

[155] Its projectors were A. Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Professor W. T. Harris, Frank B. Sanborn, Professor Benjamin Pierce, Dr. H. K. Jones, Elizabeth P. Peabody and Ednah D. Cheney.

[156] This act is almost as brief as a certain clause in one of the election laws of the State of Texas, which says: "The masculine gender shall include the feminine and neuter."

[157] We deeply regret that we have been unable to procure a good photograph of our generous benefactor, as it was our intention to make her engraving the frontispiece of this volume, and thus give the honored place to her through whose liberality we have been enabled at last to complete this work. We are happy to state that Mrs. Eddy's will was not contested by any of the descendents of the n.o.ble Francis Jackson, but by Jerome Bacon, a millionaire, the widower of her eldest daughter who survived the mother but one week. When the suit was entered the daughters of Mrs. Eddy, Sarah and Amy, her only surviving children, in a letter to the executor of the estate, Hon. C. R. Ransom, said: "We hereby consent and agree that, in case this suit now pending in the court shall be decided against the claims of Lucy Stone and Susan B. Anthony, we will give to them the net amount of any sum that as heirs may be awarded to us, in accordance with our mother's will."

CHAPTER x.x.xII.

CONNECTICUT.

Prudence Crandall--Eloquent Reformers--Pet.i.tions for Suffrage--The Committee's Report--Frances Ellen Burr--Isabella Beecher Hooker's Reminiscences--Anna d.i.c.kinson in the Republican Campaign--State Society Formed, October 28, 29, 1869--Enthusiastic Convention in Hartford--Governor Marshall Jewell--He Recommends More Liberal Laws for Women--Society Formed in New Haven, 1871--Governor Hubbard's Inaugural, 1877--Samuel Bowles of the _Springfield Republican_--Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Chaplain, 1870--John Hooker, esq., Champions the Suffrage Movement.

While Connecticut has always been celebrated for its puritanical theology, political conservatism and rigid social customs, it was nevertheless the scene of some of the most hotly contested of the anti-slavery battles. While its leading clergymen and statesmen stoutly maintained the letter of the old creeds and const.i.tutions, the Burleighs, the Mays, and the Crandalls strove to ill.u.s.trate the true spirit of religion and republicanism in their daily lives by "remembering those that were in bonds as bound with them."

The example of one glorious woman like Prudence Crandall,[158] who suffered shameful persecutions in establis.h.i.+ng a school for colored girls at Canterbury, in 1833, should have been sufficient to rouse every woman in Connecticut to some thought on the basic principles of the government and religion of the country. Yet we have no record of any woman in that State publicly sustaining her in that grand enterprise, though no doubt her heroism gave fresh inspiration to the sermons of Samuel J. May, then preaching in the village of Brooklyn, and the speeches and poems of the two eloquent reformers, Charles C. and William H. Burleigh. The words and deeds of these and other great souls, though seeming to slumber for many years, gave birth at last to new demands for another cla.s.s of outraged citizens. Thus liberty is ever born of the hateful spirit of persecution. One question of reform settled forever by the civil war, the initiative for the next was soon taken. In _The Revolution_ of January 16, 1868, we find the following well-considered report on woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, presented by a minority of the Committee on Const.i.tutional Amendments to the legislature of Connecticut at its session of 1867:

The undersigned members of the committee believe that the prayer of the pet.i.tioners ought to be granted. It would be much easier for us to reject the pet.i.tion and silently to acquiesce in the opinions of the majority upon the subject to which it relates, but our attention was challenged and an investigation invited by the bold axioms upon which the cause of suffrage for woman was claimed to rest, and the more we have examined the subject the more convinced we have become that the logic of our inst.i.tutions requires a concession of that right. It is claimed by some that the right to vote is not a natural right, but that it is a privilege which some have acquired, and which may be granted to others at the option of the fortunate holders. But they fail to inform us how the possessors first acquired the privilege, and especially how they acquired the rightful power to withhold that privilege from others, according to caprice or notions of expediency. We hold this doctrine to be pernicious in tendency, and hostile to the spirit of a republican government; and we believe that it can only be justified by the same arguments that are used to justify slavery or monarchy--for it is an obvious deduction of logic that if one thousand persons have a right to govern another thousand without their consent, one man has a right to govern all.

Mr. Lincoln tersely said, "If slavery is not wrong nothing is wrong." So it seems to us that if the right to vote is not a natural right, there is no such thing as a natural right in human relations. The right to freedom and the right to a ballot both spring from the same source. The right to vote is only the right to a legitimate use of freedom. It is plain that if a man is not free to govern himself, and to have a voice in the taxation of his own property, he is not really free in any enlightened sense.

Even Edward I. of England said, "It is a most equitable rule that what concerns all should be approved by all." This must rightfully apply to women the same as to men. And Locke, in his essay on civil government, said, "Nothing is more evident than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal, one with another, without subordination or subjection." Talleyrand said, as an argument for monarchy, "The moment we reject an absolutely universal suffrage, we admit the principle of aristocracy." The founders of this nation a.s.serted with great emphasis and every variety of repet.i.tion, the essential equality of human rights as a self-evident truth. The war of the Revolution was justified by the maxim, "Taxation without representation is tyranny"; and all republics vindicate their existence by the claim that "Governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed." Yet woman, in Connecticut, is governed without her consent, and taxed without representation.

Lord Camden, one of England's ablest jurists, long ago declared, "My position is this--taxation and representation are inseparable. The position is founded in a law of nature--nay more, it is itself an eternal law of nature." Our forefathers held to this principle, and fought seven years to establish it.

They maintained their favorite theory of government against immense odds, and transmitted to their posterity the great work of putting it logically into practice. It is acknowledged by this legislature that "taxation without representation is tyranny,"