History of Woman Suffrage
Chapter 83 : If the right to vote was granted to woman--from which I do not see how we can escape--I

If the right to vote was granted to woman--from which I do not see how we can escape--I do not suppose that all women would go to the polls, for I know that many men do not, although they have much to say about the great privilege which every man enjoys, of having a voice in the government, and the responsibility of a voter. Things would remain much as now if to-morrow every obstacle were removed from woman's path. Only gradually would the change occur, as individual after individual found larger room for action than that in which she is now pent. As this discussion has been going on, woman after woman has been enlarging the sphere allowed her. Women write admirable books, paint admirable pictures, chisel admirable statues, make most excellent and well-instructed physicians. Women are doing everything which it is now claimed they have the right to do, except voting, which they are not yet permitted to do; and I am not sure, in regard to that, that the best plan would not be, as our Platonic friend in New England once said, for the women to go quietly and vote, without waiting to be asked or told that they would be permitted to do so. To be sure, he said, their votes could not be counted, but there they would be, and they would have their force. He thought that the moral influence of those votes would go a great ways, and it is quite possible that they would have that effect.

But I hope, whether in that way or some other--perhaps before that step is taken--men will be led to see, that in the sphere of politics, as well as in the sphere of literature and art, woman's influence is needed; and all the objections that are made to woman's voting are of the most trivial character, that would not stand a day before any serious desire that she should have her simple right in this matter, so far as she chooses to claim it.

And her right lies simply in these old propositions, so dear to our fathers--upon which they stood and fought an eight years'

war--"Taxation without representation is tyranny," and that "all just powers of government are derived from the consent of the governed." And there is nothing in these two propositions which confines their application to man; there is nothing in them which does not demand that woman should be included as well as man.

Wherever woman is taxed, she has a right to vote, by this fundamental principle of our government; and wherever she is legislated for and governed, she is ent.i.tled to a voice in that legislation and government.

This is a very simple matter. To-day, it is only a question of time, when, from a matter of speculation, it will become a matter of fact, the details of which can be managed as well as anything in the world. Women will not be obliged to enter into a scramble with dirty and fighting men at the polls--though it is possible, if she went where such men are, they would be put on their good manners, and be as well-behaved as anybody; but she could have a separate place to vote, and go to the polls as quietly, and with as little loss of time, as she now goes to the post-office, or walks the streets, where rough, rude men congregate, but where she has enough room to go and purchase her silks and satins and laces in Broadway. (Applause). I congratulate those who, taking an interest in this cause, espoused it when it was a great cross to bear--who took it up with the simple courage of woman, the patient perseverance of woman, and have carried it through as far as it has gone now--upon the advances which it has made, upon the opening and enlightenment of the public mind, and upon its favorable reception, spite of all the obstacles that still remain. I bid them be of good cheer, and remember that the great law of progress is a law of steps; so that we must needs all be patient, while we must also all needs be persevering. It is but a question of time and of steps. The great psalm of human progress is (to borrow a phrase from the Hebrew Bible) a psalm of degrees.

By patient steps man rises out of falsehood into truth, out of wrongs into rights. So it is with woman, as a part of humanity.

Let every woman be true to this as her mission; let no woman dare to place any obstacle or coldness in the way of this movement; but let all calmly consider it, hear the arguments that are made, and allow them to have their full weight; look at the simple facts, and decide. Then we may, perhaps, all of us live to see the day when, throughout all the spheres of his life, and all the departments of his action, side by side with man and the manly quality, there shall be woman and the womanly quality, and a new Eden begin on earth. (Applause).

The President said:--Before introducing the next speaker, I want to express the grat.i.tude which we women feel to Mr. Longfellow and the other gentlemen who have identified themselves with an unpopular and ridiculed cause. Permit me to say one word in relation to this matter of woman's sphere. There is a lady in my neighborhood, who was speaking to me not long since, in the most enthusiastic terms, of this recent law that has pa.s.sed through our Legislature, and of grat.i.tude toward Susan B. Anthony, through whose untiring exertions and executive ability, aided by two or three other women, this law has been secured. After she had expatiated for a while on this subject, her husband said, "Miss Anthony had a great deal better have been at home, taking care of her husband and children." Thank Heaven! there is one woman who has leisure to care for others as well as herself.

(Applause).

Elizabeth Cady Stanton then presented a series of resolutions,[168] in support of which she addressed the Convention as follows:

Mrs. PRESIDENT:--In our common law, in our whole system of jurisprudence, we find man's highest idea of right. The object of law is to secure justice. But inasmuch as fallible man is the maker and administrator of law, we must look for many and gross blunders in the application of its general principles to individual cases.

The science of theology, of civil, political, moral, and social life, all teach the common idea, that man ever has been, and ever must be, sacrificed to the highest good of society; the one to the many--the poor to the rich--the weak to the powerful--and all to the inst.i.tutions of his own creation. Look, what thunderbolts of power man has forged in the ages for his own destruction!--at the organizations to enslave himself! And through those times of darkness, those generations of superst.i.tion, behold all along the relics of his power and skill, that stand like mile-stones, here and there, to show how far back man was great and glorious! Who can stand in those vast cathedrals of the old world, as the deep-toned organ reverberates from arch to arch, and not feel the grandeur of humanity? These are the workmans.h.i.+p of him, beneath whose stately dome the architect himself now bows in fear and doubt, knows not himself, and knows not G.o.d--a mere slave to symbols--and with holy water signs the Cross, whilst He who died thereon declared man G.o.d.

I repudiate the popular idea of man's degradation and total depravity. I place man above all governments, all inst.i.tutions--ecclesiastical and civil--all const.i.tutions and laws. (Applause). It is a mistaken idea, that the same law that oppresses the individual can promote the highest good of society.

The best interests of a community never can require the sacrifice of one innocent being--of one sacred right. In the settlement, then, of any question, we must simply consider the highest good of the individual. It is the inalienable right of all to be happy. It is the highest duty of all to seek those conditions in life, those surroundings, which may develop what is n.o.blest and best, remembering that the lessons of these pa.s.sing hours are not for time alone, but for the ages of eternity. They tell us, in that future home--the heavenly paradise--that the human family shall be sifted out, and the good and pure shall dwell together in peace. If that be the heavenly order, is it not our duty to render earth as near like heaven as we may?

For years, there has been before the Legislature of this State a variety of bills, asking for divorce in cases of drunkenness, insanity, desertion, cruel and brutal treatment, endangering life. My attention was called to this question very early in life, by the sufferings of a friend of my girlhood, a victim of one of those unfortunate unions, called marriage. What my great love for that young girl, and my holy intuitions, then decided to be right, has not been changed by years of experience, observation, and reason. I have pondered well these things in my heart, and ever felt the deepest interest in all that has been written and said upon the subject, and the most profound respect and loving sympathy for those heroic women, who, in the face of law and public sentiment, have dared to sunder the unholy ties of a joyless, loveless union.

If marriage is a human inst.i.tution, about which man may legislate, it seems but just that he should treat this branch of his legislation with the same common-sense that he applies to all others. If it is a mere legal contract, then should it be subject to the restraints and privileges of all other contracts. A contract, to be valid in law, must be formed between parties of mature age, with an honest intention in said parties to do what they agree. The least concealment, fraud, or deception, if proved, annuls the contract. A boy can not contract for an acre of land, or a horse, until he is twenty-one, but he may contract for a wife at fourteen. If a man sell a horse, and the purchaser find in him great incompatibility of temper--a disposition to stand still when the owner is in haste to go--the sale is null and void, and the man and his horse part company. But in marriage, no matter how much fraud and deception are practiced, nor how cruelly one or both parties have been misled; no matter how young, inexperienced, or thoughtless the parties, nor how unequal their condition and position in life, the contract can not be annulled. Think of a husband telling a young and trusting girl, but one short month his wife, that he married her for her money; that those letters so precious to her, that she had read and re-read, and kissed and cherished, were written by another; that their splendid home, of which, on their wedding-day, her father gave him the deed, is already in the hands of his creditors; that she must give up the elegance and luxury that now surround her, unless she can draw fresh supplies of money to meet their wants! When she told the story of her wrongs to me--the abuse to which she was subject, and the dread in which she lived--I impulsively urged her to fly from such a monster and villain, as she would before the hot breath of a ferocious beast of the wilderness. (Applause). And she did fly; and it was well with her. Many times since, as I have felt her throbbing heart against my own, she has said, "Oh, but for your love and sympathy, your encouragement, I should never have escaped from that bondage. Before I could, of myself, have found courage to break those chains my heart would have broken in the effort."

Marriage, as it now exists, must seem to all of you a mere human inst.i.tution. Look through the universe of matter and mind--all G.o.d's arrangements are perfect, harmonious, and complete! There is no discord, friction, or failure in His eternal plans.

Immutability, perfection, beauty, are stamped on all His laws.

Love is the vital essence that pervades and permeates, from the center to the circ.u.mference, the graduating circles of all thought and action. Love is the talisman of human weal and woe--the open sesame to every human soul. Where two beings are drawn together, by the natural laws of likeness and affinity, union and happiness are the result. Such marriages might be Divine. But how is it now? You all know our marriage is, in many cases, a mere outward tie, impelled by custom, policy, interest, necessity; founded not even in friends.h.i.+p, to say nothing of love; with every possible inequality of condition and development. In these heterogeneous unions, we find youth and old age, beauty and deformity, refinement and vulgarity, virtue and vice, the educated and the ignorant, angels of grace and goodness, with devils of malice and malignity: and the sum of all this is human wretchedness and despair; cold fathers, sad mothers, and hapless children, who s.h.i.+ver at the hearthstone, where the fires of love have all gone out. The wide world, and the stranger's unsympathizing gaze, are not more to be dreaded for young hearts than homes like these. Now, who shall say that it is right to take two beings, so unlike, and anchor them right side by side, fast bound--to stay all time, until G.o.d shall summon one away?

Do wise, Christian legislators need any arguments to convince them that the sacredness of the family relation should be protected at all hazards? The family, that great conservator of national virtue and strength, how can you hope to build it up in the midst of violence, debauchery, and excess? Can there be anything sacred at that family altar, where the chief-priest who ministers makes sacrifice of human beings, of the weak and the innocent? where the incense offered up is not to the G.o.d of justice and mercy, but to those heathen divinities, who best may represent the lost man in all his grossness and deformity? Call that sacred, where woman, the mother of the race--of a Jesus of Nazareth--unconscious of the true dignity of her nature, of her high and holy destiny, consents to live in legalized prost.i.tution!--her whole soul revolting at such gross a.s.sociation!--her flesh s.h.i.+vering at the cold contamination of that embrace, held there by no tie but the iron chain of the law, and a false and most unnatural public sentiment? Call that sacred, where innocent children, trembling with fear, fly to the corners and dark places of the house, to hide themselves from the wrath of drunken, brutal fathers, but, forgetting their past sufferings, rush out again at their mother's frantic screams, "Help, oh help"? Behold the agonies of those young hearts, as they see the only being on earth they love, dragged about the room by the hair of the head, kicked and pounded, and left half dead and bleeding on the floor! Call that sacred, where fathers like these have the power and legal right to hand down their natures to other beings, to curse other generations with such moral deformity and death?

Men and brethren, look into your asylums for the blind, the deaf and dumb, the idiot, the imbecile, the deformed, the insane; go out into the by-lanes and dens of this vast metropolis, and contemplate that reeking ma.s.s of depravity; pause before the terrible revelations made by statistics, of the rapid increase of all this moral and physical impotency, and learn how fearful a thing it is to violate the immutable laws of the beneficent Ruler of the universe; and there behold the terrible retributions of your violence on woman! Learn how false and cruel are those inst.i.tutions, which, with a coa.r.s.e materialism, set aside those holy instincts of the woman to bear no children but those of love! In the best condition of marriage, as we now have it, to woman comes all the penalties and sacrifices. A man, in the full tide of business or pleasure, can marry and not change his life one iota; he can be husband, father, and everything beside; but in marriage, woman gives up all. Home is her sphere, her realm.

Well, be it so. If here you will make us all-supreme, take to yourselves the universe beside; explore the North Pole; and, in your airy car, all s.p.a.ce; in your Northern homes and cloud-capt towers, go feast on walrus flesh and air, and lay you down to sleep your six months' night away, and leave us to make these laws that govern the inner sanctuary of our own homes, and faithful satellites we will ever be to the dinner-pot, the cradle, and the old arm-chair. (Applause).

Fathers, do you say, let your daughters pay a life-long penalty for one unfortunate step? How could they, on the threshold of life, full of joy and hope, believing all things to be as they seemed on the surface, judge of the dark windings of the human soul? How could they foresee that the young man, to-day so n.o.ble, so generous, would in a few short years be transformed into a cowardly, mean tyrant, or a foul-mouthed, bloated drunkard? What father could rest at his home by night, knowing that his lovely daughter was at the mercy of a strong man drunk with wine and pa.s.sion, and that, do what he might, he was backed up by law and public sentiment? The best interests of the individual, the family, the State, the nation, cry out against these legalized marriages of force and endurance. There can be no heaven without love, and nothing is sacred in the family and home, but just so far as it is built up and anch.o.r.ed in love. Our newspapers teem with startling accounts of husbands and wives having shot or poisoned each other, or committed suicide, choosing death rather than the indissoluble tie; and, still worse, the living death of faithless wives and daughters, from the first families in this State, dragged from the privacy of home into the public prints and courts, with all the painful details of sad, false lives.

What say you to facts like these? Now, do you believe, men and women, that all these wretched matches are made in heaven? that all these sad, miserable people are bound together by G.o.d? I know Horace Greeley has been most eloquent, for weeks past, on the holy sacrament of ill-a.s.sorted marriages; but let us hope that all wisdom does not live, and will not die with Horace Greeley. I think, if he had been married to _The New York Herald_, instead of the Republican party, he would have found out some Scriptural arguments against life-long unions, where great incompatibility of temper existed between the parties. (Laughter and applause).

Our law-makers have dug a pit, and the innocent have fallen into it; and now will you coolly cover them over with statute laws, _Tribunes_, and Weeds,[169] and tell them to stay there and pay the life-long penalty of having fallen in? Nero was thought the chief of tyrants, because he made laws and hung them up so high that his subjects could not read them, and then punished them for every act of disobedience. What better are our Republican legislators? The ma.s.s of the women of this nation know nothing about the laws, yet all their specially barbarous legislation is for woman. Where have they made any provision for her to learn the laws? Where is the Law School for our daughters? where the law office, the bar, or the bench, now urging them to take part in the jurisprudence of the nation?

[Ill.u.s.tration: ELIZABETH CADY STANTON (with autograph).]

But, say you, does not separation cover all these difficulties?

No one objects to separation when the parties are so disposed.

But, to separation there are two very serious objections. First, so long as you insist on marriage as a divine inst.i.tution, as an indissoluble tie, so long as you maintain your present laws against divorce, you make separation, even, so odious, that the most n.o.ble, virtuous, and sensitive men and women choose a life of concealed misery, rather than a partial, disgraceful release.

Secondly, those who, in their impetuosity and despair, do, in spite of public sentiment, separate, find themselves in their new position beset with many temptations to lead a false, unreal life. This isolation bears especially hard on woman. Marriage is not all of life to man. His resources for amus.e.m.e.nt and occupation are boundless. He has the whole world for his home.

His business, his politics, his club, his friends.h.i.+ps with either s.e.x, can help to fill up the void made by an unfortunate union or separation. But to woman, marriage is all and everything; her sole object in life--that for which she is educated--the subject of all her sleeping and her waking dreams. Now, if a n.o.ble, generous girl of eighteen marries, and is unfortunate, because the cruelty of her husband compels separation, in her dreary isolation, would you drive her to a nunnery; and shall she be a nun indeed? Her solitude is nothing less, as, in the present undeveloped condition of woman, it is only through our fathers, brothers, husbands, sons, that we feel the pulsations of the great outer world.

One unhappy, discordant man or woman in a neighborhood, may mar the happiness of all the rest. You can not shut up discord, any more than you can small-pox. There can be no morality where there is a settled discontent. A very wise father once remarked, that in the government of his children, he forbade as few things as possible; a wise legislation would do the same. It is folly to make laws on subjects beyond human prerogative, knowing that in the very nature of things they must be set aside. To make laws that man can not and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt. It is very important in a republic, that the people should respect the laws, for if we throw them to the winds, what becomes of civil government? What do our present divorce laws amount to? Those who wish to evade them have only to go into another State to accomplish what they desire. If any of our citizens can not secure their inalienable rights in New York State, they may in Connecticut and Indiana. Why is it that all agreements, covenants, partners.h.i.+ps, are left wholly at the discretion of the parties, except the contract, which of all others is considered most holy and important, both for the individual and the race? This question of divorce, they tell us, is hedged about with difficulties; that it can not be approached with the ordinary rules of logic and common-sense. It is too holy, too sacred to be discussed, and few seem disposed to touch it. From man's standpoint, this may be all true, as to him they say belong reason, and the power of ratiocination. Fortunately, I belong to that cla.s.s endowed with mere intuitions, a kind of moral instinct, by which we feel out right and wrong. In presenting to you, therefore, my views of divorce, you will of course give them the weight only of the woman's intuitions. But inasmuch as that is all G.o.d saw fit to give us, it is evident we need nothing more. Hence, what we do perceive of truth must be as reliable as what man grinds out by the longer process of reason, authority, and speculation.

Horace Greeley, in his recent discussion with Robert Dale Owen, said, this whole question has been tried, in all its varieties and conditions, from indissoluble monogamic marriage down to free love; that the ground has been all gone over and explored. Let me a.s.sure him that but just one-half of the ground has been surveyed, and that half but by one of the parties, and that party certainly not the most interested in the matter. Moreover, there is one kind of marriage that has not been tried, and that is, a contract made by equal parties to live an equal life, with equal restraints and privileges on either side. Thus far, we have had the man marriage, and nothing more. From the beginning, man has had the sole and whole regulation of the matter. He has spoken in Scripture, he has spoken in law. As an individual, he has decided the time and cause for putting away a wife, and as a judge and legislator, he still holds the entire control. In all history, sacred and profane, the woman is regarded and spoken of simply as the toy of man--made for his special use--to meet his most gross and sensuous desires. She is taken or put away, given or received, bought or sold, just as the interest of the parties might dictate. But the woman has been no more recognized in all these transactions, through all the different periods and conditions of the race, than if she had had no part nor lot in the whole matter. The right of woman to put away a husband, be he ever so impure, is never hinted at in sacred history. Even Jesus himself failed to recognize the sacred rights of the holy mother of the race. We can not take our gauge of womanhood from the past, but from the solemn convictions of our own souls, in the higher development of the race. No parchments, however venerable with the mould of ages, no human inst.i.tutions, can bound the immortal wants of the royal sons and daughters of the great I Am,--rightful heirs of the joys of time, and joint heirs of the glories of eternity.

If in marriage either party claims the right to stand supreme, to woman, the mother of the race, belongs the scepter and the crown.

Her life is one long sacrifice for man. You tell us that among all womankind there is no Moses, Christ, or Paul,--no Michael Angelo, Beethoven, or Shakspeare,--no Columbus, or Galileo,--no Locke or Bacon. Behold those mighty minds attuned to music and the arts, so great, so grand, so comprehensive,--these are our great works of which we boast! Into you, O sons of earth, go all of us that is immortal. In you center our very life-thoughts, our hopes, our intensest love. For you we gladly pour out our heart's blood and die, knowing that from our suffering comes forth a new and more glorious resurrection of thought and life. (Loud applause).

Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell followed, and prefaced her remarks by saying: "Ours has always been a free platform. We have believed in the fullest freedom of thought and in the free expression of individual opinion. I propose to speak upon the subject discussed by our friend, Mrs. Stanton. It is often said that there are two sides to every question; but there are three sides, many sides, to every question.

Let Mrs. Stanton take hers; let Horace Greeley take his; I only ask the privilege of stating mine. (Applause). I have embodied my thought, hastily, in a series of resolutions,[170] and my remarks following them will be very brief."

Mrs. Blackwell continued:

I believe that the highest laws of life are those which we find written within our being; that the first moral laws which we are to obey are the laws which G.o.d's own finger has traced upon our own souls. Therefore, our first duty is to ourselves, and we may never, under any circ.u.mstances, yield this to any other. I say we are first responsible to ourselves, and to the G.o.d who has laid the obligation upon us, to make ourselves the grandest we may.

Marriage grows out of the relations of parties. The law of our development comes wholly from within; but the relation of marriage supposes two persons as being united to each other, and from this relation originates the law. Mrs. Stanton calls marriage a "tie." No, marriage is a _relation_; and, once formed, that relation continues as long as the parties continue with the natures which they now essentially have. Let, then, the two parties deliberately, voluntarily consent to enter into this relation. It is one which, from its very nature, must be permanent. Can the mother ever destroy the relation which exists between herself and her child? Can the father annul the relation which exists between himself and his child? Then, can the father and mother annul the relation which exists between themselves, the parents of the child? It can not be. The interests of marriage are such that they can not be destroyed, and the only question must be, "Has there been a marriage in this case or not?" If there has, then the social law, the obligations growing out of the relation, must be life-long.

But I a.s.sert that every woman, in the present state of society, is bound to maintain her own independence and her own integrity of character; to a.s.sert herself, earnestly and firmly, as the equal of man, who is only her peer. This is her first right, her first duty; and if she lives in a country where the law supposes that she is to be subjected to her husband, and she consents to this subjection, I do insist that she consents to degradation; that this is sin, and it is impossible to make it other than sin.

True, in this State, and in nearly all the States, the idea of marriage is that of subjection, in all respects, of the wife to the husband--personal subjection, subjection in the rights over their children and over their property; but this is a false relation. Marriage is a union of equals--equal interests being involved, equal duties at stake; and if any woman has been married to a man who chooses to take advantage of the laws as they now stand, who chooses to subject her, ign.o.bly, to his will, against her own, to take from her the earnings which belong to the family, and to take from her the children which belong to the family, I hold that that woman, if she can not, by her influence, change this state of things, is solemnly obligated to go to some State where she can be legally divorced; and then she would be as solemnly bound to return again, and, standing for herself and her children, regard herself, in the sight of G.o.d, as being bound still to the father of those children, to work for his best interests, while she still maintains her own sovereignty. Of course, she must be governed by the circ.u.mstances of the case.

She may be obliged, for the protection of the family, to live on one continent while her husband is on the other: but she is never to forget that in the sight of G.o.d and her own soul, she is his wife, and that she owes to him the wife's loyalty; that to work for his redemption is her highest social obligation, and that to teach her children to do the same is her first motherly duty.

Legal divorce may be necessary for personal and family protection; if so, let every woman obtain it. This, G.o.d helping me, is what I would certainly do, for under no circ.u.mstances will I ever give my consent to be subjected to the will of another, in any relation, for G.o.d has bidden me not to do it. But the idea of most women is, that they must be timid, weak, helpless, and full of ign.o.ble submission. Only last week, a lady who has just been divorced from her husband said to me--"I used to be required to go into the field and do the hardest laborer's work, when I was not able to do it; and my husband would declare, that if I would not thus labor, I should not be allowed to eat, and I was obliged to submit." I say the fault was as much with the woman as with the man; she should never have submitted.

Our trouble is not with marriage as a relation between two; it is all individual. We have few men or women fit to be married. They neither fully respect themselves and their own rights and duties, nor yet those of another. They have no idea how n.o.ble, how G.o.dlike is the relation which ought to exist between the husband and wife.

Tell me, is marriage to be merely a contract--something entered into for a time, and then broken again--or is the true marriage permanent? One resolution read by Mrs. Stanton said that, as men are incompetent to select partners in business, teachers for their children, ministers of their religion, or makers, adjudicators, or administrators of their laws, and as the same weakness and blindness must attend in the selection of matrimonial partners, the latter and most important contract should no more be perpetual than either or all of the former. I do not believe that, rightly understood, she quite holds to that position herself. Marriage must be either permanent, or capable of being any time dissolved. Which ground shall we take? I insist that, from the nature of things, marriage must be as permanent and indissoluble as the relation of parent and child. If so, let us legislate toward the right. Though evils must sometimes result, we are still to seek the highest law of the relation.

Self-devotion is always sublimely beautiful, but the law has no right to require either a woman to be sacrificed to any man, or a man to be sacrificed to any woman, or either to the good of society; but if either chooses to devote himself to the good of the other, no matter how low that other may have fallen, no matter how degraded he may be, let the willing partner strive to lift him up, not by going down and sitting side by side with him--that is wrong--but by steadily trying to win him back to the right: keeping his own sovereignty, but trying to redeem the fallen one as long as life shall endure. I do not wish to go to the other state of being, and state what shall be our duty there, but I do say, that where there is sin and suffering in this universe of ours, we may none of us sit still until we have overcome that sin and suffering. Then if my husband was wretched and degraded in this life, I believe G.o.d would give me strength to work for him while life lasted. I would do that for the lowest drunkard in the street, and certainly I would do as much for my husband. I believe that the greatest boon of existence is the privilege of working for those who are oppressed and fallen; and those who have oppressed their own natures are those who need the most help. My great hope is, that I may be able to lift them upwards. The great responsibility that has been laid upon me is the responsibility never to sit down and sing to myself psalms of happiness and content while anybody suffers. (Applause). Then, if I find a wretched man in the gutter, and feel that, as a human sister, I must go and lift him up, and that I can never enjoy peace or rest until I have thus redeemed him and brought him out of his sins, shall I, if the man whom I solemnly swore to love, to a.s.sociate with in all the interests of home and its holiest relations--shall I, if he falls into sin, turn him off, and go on enjoying life, while he is sunk in wretchedness and sin? I will not do it. To me there is a higher idea of life. If, as an intelligent human being, I promised to co-work with him in all the higher interests of life, and if he proves false, I will not turn from him, but I must seek first to regenerate him, the nearest and dearest to me, as I would work, secondly, to save my children, who are next, and then my brothers, my sisters, and the whole human family. (Applause).

Mrs. Stanton asks, "Would you send a young girl into a nunnery, when she has made a mistake?" Does Mrs. Stanton not know that nunneries belong to a past age, that people who had nothing to do might go there and try to expiate their own sins? I would teach the young girl a higher way. I do not say to her, "If you have foolishly united yourself to another" (not "if you have been tied by the law"; for, remember, it was not the law that tied her; she said, "I will do it," and the law said, "So let it be!")--"sunder the bond"; but I say to her, that her duty is to reflect, "Now that I see my mistake, I will commence being true to myself; I will become a true unit, strong and n.o.ble in myself; and if I can never make our union a true one, I will work toward that good result, I will live for this great work--for truth and all its interests." Let me tell you, if she is not great enough to do this, she is not great enough to enter into any union!

Look at those who believe in thus easily dissolving the marriage obligation! In very many cases they can not be truly married, or truly happy in this relation, because there is something incompatible with it in their own natures. It is not always so; but when one feels that it is a relation easily to be dissolved, of course, incompatibility at once seems to arise in the other, and every difficulty that occurs, instead of being overlooked, as it ought to be, in a spirit of forgiveness, is magnified, and the evil naturally increased. We purchase a house, the deed is put into our hands, and we take possession. We feel at once that it is really very convenient. It suits us, and we are surprised that we like it so much better than we supposed. The secret is, that it is our house, and until we are ready to part with it, we make ourselves content with it as it is. We go to live in some country town. At first we do not like it; it is not like the home we came from; but soon we begin to be reconciled, and feel that, as Dr.

Holmes said of Boston, our town is the hub of the universe. So, when we are content to allow our relations to remain as they are, we adapt ourselves to them, and they adapt themselves to us, and we constantly, unconsciously (because G.o.d made us so) work toward the perfecting of all the interests arising from those relations. But the moment we wish to sell a house, or remove from a town, how many defects we discover! The place has not the same appearance to us at all; we wish we could get out of it; we feel all the time more and more dissatisfied. So, let any married person take the idea that he may dissolve this relation, and enter into a new one, and how many faults he may discover that otherwise never would have been noticed! The marriage will become intolerable. The theory will work that result; it is in the nature of things, and that to me is everything.

Of course, I would not have man or woman sacrificed--by no means.

First of all, let every human being maintain his own position as a self-protecting human being. At all hazards, let him never sin, or consent to be sacrificed to the hurt of himself or of another; and when he has taken this stand, let him act in harmony with it.

Would I say to any woman, "You are bound, because you are legally married to one who is debased to the level of the brute, to be the mother of his children?" I say to her, "No! while the law of G.o.d continues, you are bound never to make one whom you do not honor and respect, as well as love, the father of any child of yours. It is your first and highest duty to be true to yourself, true to posterity, and true to society." (Applause). Thus, let each decide for himself and for herself what is right. But, I repeat, either marriage is in its very nature a relation which, once formed, never can be dissolved, and either the essential obligations growing out of it exist forever, or the relation may at any time be dissolved, and at any time those obligations be annulled. And what are those obligations? Two persons, if I understand marriage, covenant to work together, to uphold each other in all excellence, and to mutually blend their lives and interests into a common harmony. I believe that G.o.d has so made man and woman, that it is not good for them to be alone, that they each need a co-worker. There is no work on G.o.d's footstool which man can do alone and do well, and there is no work which woman can do alone and do well. (Applause). We need that the two should stand side by side everywhere. All over the world, we need this co-operation of the two cla.s.ses--not because they are alike, but because they are unlike--in trying to make the whole world better. Then we need something more than these cla.s.s workers. Two persons need to stand side by side, to stay up each other's hands, to take an interest in each other's welfare, to build up a family, to cl.u.s.ter about it all the beauties and excellencies of home life; in short, to be to each other what only one man and one woman can be to each other in all G.o.d's earth.

No grown-up human being ought to rush blindly into this most intimate, most important, most enduring of human relations; and will you let a young man, at the age of fourteen, contract marriage, or a young maiden either? If the law undertakes to regulate the matter at all, let it regulate it upon principles of common-sense. But this is a matter which must be very much regulated by public opinion, by our teachers. What do you, the guides of our youth, say? You say to the young girl, "You ought to expect to be married before you are twenty, or about that time; you should intend to be; and from the time you are fifteen, it should be made your one life purpose; and in all human probability, you may expect to spend the next ten or twenty years in the nursery, and at forty or fifty, you will be an old woman, your life will be well-nigh worn out." I stand here to say that this is all false. Let the young girl be instructed that, above her personal interests, her home, and social life, she is to have a great life purpose, as broad as the rights and interests of humanity. I say, let every young girl feel this, as much as every young man does. We have no right, we, who expect to live forever, to play about here as if we were mere flies, enjoying ourselves in the suns.h.i.+ne. We ought to have an earnest purpose outside of home, outside of our family relations. Then let the young girl fit herself for this. Let her be taught that she ought not to be married in her teens. Let her wait, as a young man does, if he is sensible, until she is twenty-five or thirty. (Applause). She will then know how to choose properly, and probably she will not be deceived in her estimate of character; she will have had a certain life-discipline, which will enable her to control her household matters with wise judgment, so that, while she is looking after her family, she may still keep her great life purpose, for which she was educated, and to which she has given her best energies, steadily in view. She need not absorb herself in her home, and G.o.d never intended that she should; and then, if she has lived according to the laws of physiology, and according to the laws of common-sense, she ought to be, at the age of fifty years, just where man is, just where our great men are, in the very prime of life! When her young children have gone out of her home, then let her enter in earnest upon the great work of life outside of home and its relations. (Applause).

It is a shame for our women to have no steady purpose or pursuit, and to make the mere fact of womanhood a valid plea for indolence; it is a greater shame that they should be instructed thus to throw all the responsibility of working for the general good upon the other s.e.x. G.o.d has not intended it. But as long as you make women helpless, inefficient beings, who never expect to earn a farthing in their lives, who never expect to do anything outside of the family, but to be cared for and protected by others throughout life, you can not have true marriages; and if you try to break up the old ones, you will do it against the woman and in favor of the man. Last week I went back to a town where I used to live, and was told that a woman, whose husband was notoriously the most miserable man in the town, had in despair taken her own life. I asked what had become of the husband, and the answer was, "Married again." And yet everybody there knows that he is the vilest and most contemptible man in the whole neighborhood. Any man, no matter how wretched he maybe, will find plenty of women to accept him, while they are rendered so helpless and weak by their whole education that they must be supported or starve. The advantage, if this theory of marriage is adopted, will not be on the side of woman, but altogether on the side of man. The cure for the evils that now exist is not in dissolving marriage, but it is in giving to the married woman her own natural independence and self-sovereignty, by which she can maintain herself.

Yes, our women and our men are both degenerate; they are weak and ign.o.ble. "Dear me!" said a pretty, indolent young lady, "I had a great deal rather my husband would take care of me, than to be obliged to do it for myself." "Of course you would," said a blunt old lady who was present; "and your brother would a great deal rather marry an heiress, and lie upon a sofa eating lollypops, bought with her money, than to do anything manly or n.o.ble. The only difference is, that as heiresses are not very plenty, he may probably have to marry a poor girl, and then society will insist that he shall exert himself to earn a living for the family; but you, poor thing, will only have to open your mouth, all your life long, like a clam, and eat." (Applause and laughter). So long as society is const.i.tuted in such a way that woman is expected to do nothing if she have a father, brother, or husband able to support her, there is no salvation for her, in or out of marriage. When you tie up your arm, it will become weak and feeble; and when you tie up woman, she will become weak and helpless. Give her, then, some earnest purpose in life, hold up to her the true ideal of marriage, and it is enough--I am content! (Loud applause).

ERNESTINE L. ROSE said:--Mrs. President--The question of a Divorce law seems to me one of the greatest importance to all parties, but I presume that the very advocacy of divorce will be called "Free Love." For my part (and I wish distinctly to define my position), I do not know what others understand by that term; to me, in its truest significance, love must be free, or it ceases to be love. In its low and degrading sense, it is not love at all, and I have as little to do with its name as its reality.

The Rev. Mrs. Blackwell gave us quite a sermon on what woman ought to be, what she ought to do, and what marriage ought to be; an excellent sermon in its proper place, but not when the important question of a Divorce law is under consideration. She treats woman as some ethereal being. It is very well to be ethereal to some extent, but I tell you, my friends, it is quite requisite to be a little material, also. At all events, we are so, and, being so, it proves a law of our nature. (Applause).

It were indeed well if woman could be what she ought to be, man what he ought to be, and marriage what it ought to be; and it is to be hoped that through the Woman's Rights movement--the equalizing of the laws, making them more just, and making woman more independent--we will hasten the coming of the millennium, when marriage shall indeed be a bond of union and affection. But, alas! it is not yet; and I fear that sermons, however well meant, will not produce that desirable end; and as long as the evil is here, we must look it in the face without shrinking, grapple with it manfully, and the more complicated it is, the more courageously must it be a.n.a.lyzed, combated, and destroyed.

(Applause).

Mrs. Blackwell told us that, marriage being based on the perfect equality of husband and wife, it can not be destroyed. But is it so? Where? Where and when have the s.e.xes yet been equal in physical or mental education, in position, or in law? When and where have they yet been recognized by society, or by themselves, as equals? "Equal in rights," says Mrs. B. But are they equal in rights? If they were, we would need no conventions to claim our rights. "She can a.s.sert her equality." Yes, she can a.s.sert it, but does that a.s.sertion const.i.tute a true marriage? And when the husband holds the iron heel of legal oppression on the subjugated neck of the wife until every spark of womanhood is crushed out, will it heal the wounded heart, the lacerated spirit, the destroyed hope, to a.s.sert her equality? And shall she still continue the wife? Is that a marriage which must not be dissolved? (Applause).

According to Mr. Greeley's definition, viz., that there is no marriage unless the ceremony is performed by a minister and in a church, the tens of thousands married according to the laws of this and most of the other States, by a lawyer or justice of the peace, a mayor or an alderman, are not married at all. According to the definition of our reverend sister, no one has ever yet been married, as woman has never yet been perfectly equal with man. I say to both, take your position, and abide by the consequences. If the few only, or no one, is really married, why do you object to a law that shall acknowledge the fact? You certainly ought not to force people to live together who are not married. (Applause).