The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 57

[190] _President_, Mrs. Armenia S. White. _Vice-Presidents_, Rev.

J.F. Lovering, Concord; Mrs. A.L. Thomas, Laconia; Ossian Ray, Lancaster; Mrs. S. Pillsbury, Concord; J.V. Aldrich, West Concord; Mrs. Mary Worcester, Nashua; Mrs. Mary Barker, Alton; Peter Kimball, Grafton; E.J. Durant, Lebanon; Mrs. Fannie V. Roberts, Dover; Miss A.C. Payson, Peterboro; Mrs. E.A. Bartlett, Kingston; Mr. Springfield, South Wolfboro; Galen Foster, Canterbury; Mrs.

R.M. Miller, Manchester; Mrs. Nancy Gilman, Tilton; C. Ballou, North Weare; D. Burnham, Plymouth. _Executive Committee_, Nathaniel White, Mrs. E.C. Lovering, Col. J.E. Larkin, Concord; Mrs. J. Abby Ela, Rochester; Rev. Wm. T. Savage, Franklin; Mrs. Eliza Morrill, Mrs. Daniel Holden, West Concord; Miss Caroline Foster, Canterbury; P.B. Cogswell, Mrs. Louisa Wood, Mrs. M.M. Smith, Concord; Dr.

M.V.A. Hunt, Manchester. _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. E.C. Lovering, Concord. _Corresponding Secretary_, Dr. J. Gallinger. _Treasurer_, Jas. H. Chase.

[191] Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Frederick Hinckley, Lucy Stone, Frances Ellen Harper, Dr. Sarah H. Hathaway, Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Rev. Mr. Connor, Rev. Ada C. Bowles, Emma Coe Still, Rev. Lorenza Haynes, Mary Grew, Mary A. Livermore, Elizabeth K. Churchill, Margaret W. Campbell, Anna d.i.c.kinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Rev.

Olympia Brown, Lillie Devereux Blake, Elizabeth A. Meriwether, Elizabeth Lisle Saxon, Susan B. Anthony.

[192] The speakers at this hearing were Mr. Galen Foster of Canterbury, Senators Gallinger and Shaw, Mrs. Abby Goold Woolson, H. P. Rolfe, S. B. Page, Rev. E. L. Conger and Mrs. Armenia S.

White.

[193] Reelected to the Senate, June, 1885.

CHAPTER x.x.xVI.

VERMONT.

Clarina Howard Nichols--Council of Censors--Amending the Const.i.tution--St. Andrew's Letter--Mr. Reed's Report--Convention Called--H. B. Blackwell on the _Vermont Watchman_--Mary A.

Livermore in the _Woman's Journal_--Sarah A. Gibbs' Reply to Rev.

Mr. Holmes--School Suffrage.

After the miseries growing out of the civil war were in a measure mitigated, there was a general awakening in the New England States on the question of suffrage for women, and in 1868 one after another organized for action. What Nathaniel P. Rogers was to New Hamps.h.i.+re in the anti-slavery struggle that was Clarina Howard Nichols[194] to Vermont in early calling attention to the unjust laws for woman. From 1843 to 1853 she edited the _Windham County Democrat_, in which she wrote a series of editorials on the property rights of women, and from year to year made her appeals in person to successive legislatures. Her patient labors for many years prepared the way for the organized action of 1868. The women of that State can never too highly appreciate all that it cost that n.o.ble woman to stand alone, as she did, through such bitter persecutions, vindicating for them the great principles of republican government.

And now, after a quarter of a century, instead of that one solitary voice in the district school-house and the State capitol, are heard in all Vermont's towns and cities, echoing through her valleys and mountains, the clarion voices of a whole band of distinguished men and women from all the Eastern States. The revival of the woman question in Vermont began with propositions to amend the const.i.tution. We are indebted to a series of letters, written by a citizen of Burlington, signed "St. Andrew," for many of the interesting incidents and substantial facts as to the initiative steps taken in this campaign. He said:

The only way of amending the const.i.tution is for the people (meaning the male voters) to elect, every seventh year, a board called the Council of Censors, consisting of thirteen persons.

This council can, within a certain time, propose amendments to the const.i.tution, and call a convention of one delegate from each town, elected by the freemen, to adopt or reject the articles of amendment proposed by the council. The Council of Censors, elected in March, 1869, proposed six amendments: (1) In relation to the creation of corporations; (2) in relation to biennial sessions and elections; (3) in relation to filling vacancies in the office of senators and town representatives; (4) in relation to the appointment, terms, etc., of judges of the Supreme Court; (5) providing that women shall be ent.i.tled to vote, and with no other restrictions than the law shall impose on men; (6) in relation to the manner of amending the const.i.tution.

The election of delegates occurs on Tuesday, May 10, and the convention meets on the first Wednesday in June. There is no general excitement in the State in relation to any of the proposed changes; and now, upon the eve of the election, it is impossible for the most sagacious political observer to predict the fate of any of the amendments. The fifth is the only one in support of which public meetings have been held, and those took place the early part of the spring at the larger places in the State. The friends have never expected to obtain a majority, nor even a considerable vote in the convention, and the meetings that have been held were not expected to settle the question, but to awaken the public mind upon the subject. These meetings have been a decided success, attended by hundreds of intelligent citizens, many of whom for the first time listened to an address upon the subject. It is true that ladies were advised to remain away, but such advice generally resulted in a larger attendance; and to-day the measure has a firmer support than ever before, and its advocates are more confident of final success. We may not have more than "_ten righteous_" men elected to the convention, but that number was enough to save the cities of the _plain_, and we have full faith that as small a number can save the cities of the _mountains_.

The press of the State is divided on the subject. We have two dailies--one, the _Rutland Herald_, the oldest paper in the State, in favor of the movement, and the _Free Press_ of Burlington, opposed to it. After the coming convention, no change can be made in our const.i.tution for seven years, at least, and if the sixth amendment be adopted, not for ten years. But, in the meantime, the question will a.s.sume more importance by a constant agitation as to the equality of the s.e.xes, the admission of women to the State University, the professions, and other rights to which men are ent.i.tled. Vermont can never emulate in wealth and population the manufacturing States of the seaboard, or the prairie States of the West; but she can win a n.o.bler preeminence in the quality of her inst.i.tutions. She may be the first State, as Wyoming already is the first territory, to give political equality to woman, and to show the world the model of a true republic.

ST. ANDREW.

_Burlington, Vt., May 1, 1870._

Mr. Reed of Was.h.i.+ngton county submitted the report in favor of the woman suffrage amendment, from which we give the following:

One-half of the people of our State are denied the right of suffrage. Yet woman has all the qualifications--the capacity, the desire for the public welfare, that man has. She is among the governed. She pays taxes. Even-handed justice, a fair application of the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of our State const.i.tution, give woman the ballot. There is no reason why woman should not be allowed to do what she is so eminently fit to do. We know no good reason why the most ignorant man should vote and the intelligent woman be refused. Our present political inst.i.tutions were formed and shaped when men had their chief interests and pursuits out of doors, and women remained the humble slaves at home. The social change has been immense. Now woman sits by the side of man, is his companion and a.s.sociate in his amus.e.m.e.nts, and in his labors, save the one of governing the country. And it is time that she should be in this.

The position of woman in regard to the common schools of the State is the most unjust. She must always be the chief instructor of the young in point of time and influence. She is their best teacher at home and in the school. And her share in this ever-expanding work is becoming vaster every day. Woman as mother, sister, teacher, has an intelligence, a comprehension of the educational needs of our youth, and an interest in their development, far in advance of the other s.e.x. She can organize, control and teach the most difficult school in the State; yet she has no vote in the selection of teachers, the building, arrangements and equipments of school-houses, nor in the method and extent of instruction. She can pay her share of the expenses of schools, but can have no legal voice in their management. She can teach, but she can have no vote in determining what shall be taught. She is the very corner-stone of inst.i.tutions which she has no power in shaping. Let us have her open, avowed and public cooperation--always safer than indirect influence.

The submission of an amendment to the const.i.tution necessarily aroused a general agitation on the proposed changes. The fifth amendment decided on by the board of censors seemed to create a more general interest than either of the others, and accordingly a meeting was called for its full consideration, that efficient steps might be taken for a thorough canva.s.s of the State, preparatory to the May election, and issued the following call:

The friends of woman suffrage in Vermont are requested to meet in ma.s.s convention at Montpelier on Wednesday, February 2, at 10 o'clock, for the purpose of considering and advancing the best interests of the cause in this State, in view of the const.i.tutional amendment proposed by the council of censors. The convention will be addressed by several ladies and prominent gentlemen of this State, and by William Lloyd Garrison, Julia Ward Howe and Rev. Ada C. Bowles of Ma.s.sachusetts; Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell of New Jersey, and Mary A. Livermore of Illinois. A public meeting will also be held the evening before the convention, which will be addressed by some of the eminent speakers above named. The Hutchinson family will be present and sing their woman suffrage songs. The Vermont Central, Pa.s.sumpsic, Rutland and Burlington and Bennington and Rutland lines of railroad will extend the courtesy of free return checks, provided they shall be applied for by twenty-five or more persons paying full fare one way over an average distance of each of their respective roads, which will be determined by the secretary.

C. W. WILLARD, JAMES HUTCHINSON, JR., GEORGE H. BIGELOW, CHARLES REED, NEWMAN WEEKS, JONATHAN ROSS, JAMES S. PECK.

_Ex. Com. Vermont Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation_.[195]

_Montpelier_, January 10, 1870.

It is a noticeable fact that the movement for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman in Vermont was inaugurated wholly by men. Not a woman was on its official board, nor was there one to speak in the State. Men called the first woman's rights convention, and chose Hon. Charles Reed of Montpelier as its presiding officer, as well as president of the State a.s.sociation.

However, these gentlemen invited ladies from other States, and a series of meetings[196] was inaugurated through the chief towns and cities of Vermont. The speakers[197] were heartily welcomed at some points and rudely received at others. The usual "free-love" cry was started by some of the opposition papers--a cry that like "infidel"

in the anti-slavery days, oft' times frightened even the faithful from their propriety. Henry B. Blackwell came to the rescue, and ably answered the _Vermont Watchman_:

The _Vermont Watchman_ evades the discussion of the question whether women shall be ent.i.tled to vote, by raising false issues.

The editor a.s.serts that "many of the advocates of suffrage have thrown scorn upon marriage and upon the Divine Word." That a.s.sertion we denounced as an unfounded and wicked calumny. We also objected to it as an evasion of the main question. Thereupon the _Watchman_, instead of correcting its mistake and discussing the question of suffrage, repeats the charge, and seeks to sustain it by garbled quotations and groundless a.s.sertions, which we stigmatized accordingly. The _Watchman_ now calls upon us to retract the stigma. We prefer to prove that our censure is deserved, and proceed to do so.

The first quotation of the _Watchman_ is from an editorial in the _Woman's Journal_, ent.i.tled "Political Organization." The object of which was to show the propriety of doing what the _Watchman_ refuses to do--viz.: of discussing woman suffrage upon its own merits. It showed the unfairness of complicating the question with other topics upon which friends of woman suffrage honestly differ. It regretted that "many well-meaning people insist on dragging in their peculiar views on theology, temperance, marriage, race, dress, finance, labor, capital--it matters not what." It condemned "a confusion of ideas which have no logical connection," and protested "against loading the good s.h.i.+p, Woman Suffrage, with a cargo of irrelevant opinions." The _Watchman_ cites this article as an admission that some of the friends of suffrage advocate free-love. Not at all. The editor of the _Watchman_ is himself one of the well-meaning people alluded to.

He insists on dragging in irrelevant theological and social questions. He refuses to confine himself to the issue of suffrage. The _Watchman_ quotes a single sentence of the following statement:

The advocates of woman's equality differ utterly upon every other topic. Some are abolitionists, others hostile to the equality of races. Some are evangelical Christians; others Catholics, Unitarians, Spiritualists, or Quakers. Some hold the most rigid theories with regard to marriage and divorce; others are lat.i.tudinarian on these questions. In short, people of the most opposite views agree in desiring to establish woman suffrage, while they antic.i.p.ate very different results from the reform, when effected.

The above is cited as evidence against us. How so? A man may hold "lat.i.tudinarian theories in regard to marriage and divorce"

without "throwing scorn upon the marriage relation," or having the slightest sympathy with free-love. For instance: The present law of Vermont is lat.i.tudinarian is these very particulars. It grants divorce for many other causes than adultery. Measured by the more conservative standard of Henry Ward Beecher and Mary A.

Livermore, it allows divorce upon insufficient grounds. This law represents the public sentiment of a majority of the people of Vermont. Will the _Watchman_ a.s.sert that the people of Vermont "throw scorn on the marriage relation"? Or that he is in "low company" because he is surrounded by the citizens of a State who entertain views upon the marriage relation less rigid than his own? Our indignant protest against the injustice of the common law, which subjects the person, property, earnings and children of married women to the irresponsible control of their husbands, is not a protest against marriage. It is a vindication of marriage, against the barbarism of the law which degrades a n.o.ble and life-long partners.h.i.+p of equals into a mercenary and servile relation between superior and dependant.

The _Watchman_ a.s.sails prominent supporters of woman suffrage, and misquotes and misrepresents them. Because Theodore Tilton is unwilling "that men or women shall be compelled to live together as husband and wife against the inward protest of their own souls," therefore he is charged with advocating free-love. Is it possible that the editor regards such a relation of protest and disgust as consistent with the unity of Christian marriage? Is it right that a pure and n.o.ble man, the tender husband of a happy wife, the loving father of affectionate children, should be thus causelessly traduced for showing that the essential fact of marriage is in that unity of soul which is recognized and affirmed by the outward form? When the _Watchman_ undertakes to brand men and women of irreproachable character for an intellectual difference, he is engaged in a very unworthy business. When he charges immorality upon the _New York Independent_ and infidelity upon John Stuart Mill, he forgets that his readers have minds of their own.

But, suppose it were true that newspapers and individuals who believe in woman suffrage held objectionable views on other subjects, what has this to do with the merit of the proposed reform? There are impure and intemperate men in the Republican party. Is the Republican party therefore "low company"? There are brutal and ignorant and disloyal men in the Democratic party.

Does this prove that Dr. Lord and every other Democrat in the State of Vermont is brutal and ignorant and disloyal? The Supreme Court of the United States has just decided that a divorce obtained under the laws of Indiana is legal and binding in every other State. In thus affirming Mrs. McFarland's right to marry Mr. Richardson, has the Supreme Court of the United States sanctioned free-love? Will the _Watchman_ call Chief-Justice Chase and the Supreme Court free-lovers? We have very little hope that the _Watchman_ will treat this question with fairness or candor. Our cause is too strong. The argument from reason, from revelation, from nature, from history, is on our side. The _Watchman_ is fighting against the Declaration of Independence, the bill of rights of the State of Vermont, and the principles of representative government. No wonder that it raises false issues.

No wonder that it evades the question.

H. B. B.

The following editorial in the _Woman's Journal_, from the pen of Mary A. Livermore, does not give a very rose-colored view of the reception of the Ma.s.sachusetts missionaries on their first advent into Vermont:

The Vermont const.i.tutional convention has rejected a proposition to give the ballot to woman, by a vote of 231 to 1. It flouted all discussion of the question, and voted it down with the utmost alacrity. No one cognizant of the bigotry, narrowness and general ignorance that prevail there will be surprised at this result. It is not a progressive State, but the contrary. Great stress has been laid on the fact that "Vermont never owned a slave"--and from this it has been argued that the Green Mountain State is and has been especially liberty-loving. But during the two brief visits we made last winter, we were told again and again, by Vermont men, that the only reason for the non-introduction of slavery was the impracticability of that form of labor among the Green Mountains--that slavery could never have been made profitable there, and that this, and not principle and heroic love of freedom, prevented Vermont from ever being a slave State.

Nowhere, not even in the roughest and remotest West, have we met with such vulgar rudeness, ill-manners and heroic lying as we encountered in Vermont. The lecturers who were invited into the State by the Vermont Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation, composed wholly of men, were in many instances left unsupported by them, allowed to meet the frequently rough audiences as best they could, to pay their own bills, and to manage the campaign as they might. At the very first intimation of opposition on the part of the _Montpelier Argus_, the _Watchman_ and the _Burlington Free Press_--an unworthy trio of papers that appear to control the majority--many members of the State a.s.sociation showed the "white feather," and either apologetically backed out of the canva.s.s, or ignominiously kept silent in the background. There was, therefore, nothing like a thorough discussion of the question, no fair meeting of truth and error, not even an attempt to canva.s.s the State. For, not ambitious to waste their efforts on such flinty soil, the men and women who were invited to labor there shook off the dust (snow) of Vermont from their feet, and turned to more hopeful fields of labor.

Let it not be supposed, however, that this vote of the delegates of the const.i.tutional convention is any indication of the sentiment of the women on this question. The fact that 231 women of lawful age, residents of Brattleborough, and 96 of Newfane, sent a pet.i.tion for woman suffrage, with their reasons for asking it, to Charles K. Field, delegate from that town to the const.i.tutional convention; that pet.i.tions from other hundreds of women have been forwarded to congress, praying for a sixteenth amendment; that, by letters and personal statements, we know the most intelligent and thoughtful women everywhere rebel against the State laws whose heathenism, despotism and absurdity were so well shown by Mrs. Nichols in 1845--all these facts are proofs that the sentiment of Vermont women is not represented by the const.i.tutional convention now in session at Montpelier.--[M. A.

L.

August 12, 1871, our Burlington correspondent says:

While conventions, picnics and bazar meetings, in the cause of woman suffrage, have been held in our sister States, an event has very quietly occurred with us which we deem an important step in the right direction, viz.: the admission of women to the University. By an almost unanimous vote of the corporation, a few conservatives opposing it, the matter was referred to the faculty, who are understood to be heartily in favor of the "new departure." The college that has thus thrown its doors wide open to all, is the University of Vermont and State Agricultural College, founded by the munificence of General Ira Allen in 1791.

It commenced operations in 1800; the Federal troops used its buildings for barracks in the war of 1812; the buildings (and library) were burned in 1824, and reconstructed in the following year, when the corner-stone was laid by General Lafayette. It sent forth nearly all its sons to the great rebellion. Indeed, at one time its condition served to remind one of the lines of Holmes--

"Lord, how the _Senior_ knocked about That Freshman cla.s.s of _one_."

It has graduated such men as the late Senator Collamer, John G.

Smith, president of the Northern Pacific Railroad; William G. T.

Shedd, the learned theologian; the late Henry J. Raymond of the New York _Times_; John A. Ka.s.son of Iowa, Frederick Billings, and a host of others, eminent in all the walks of life. Its late president, who was an "Angell from Providence," and has just been elected president of Michigan University, is heartily in favor of the movement, and the president-elect, Matthew H. Buckham, is no less so. With its new president and its "new departure" the future bids fair even to outs.h.i.+ne the past.

It may be well to inquire the reason why a college located in a State regarded by outsiders "as the most conservative of the Union on the woman suffrage question," should take a step so far in advance of what has been deemed the prevailing sentiment.