The Collected Works. Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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EARLY POLITICAL RIGHTS.
In Massachusetts, women voted at an early day. First, under the Old Province Charter, from 1691 to 1780, for all elective officers; second, they voted under the Constitution for all elective officers except the Governor, Council, and Legislature, from 1780 to 1785. The Bill of Rights, adopted with the Constitution of 1780, declared that all men were born free and equal. Upon this, some slaves demanded their freedom, and their masters yielded.31 Restrictions upon the right of suffrage were very great in this State; church membership alone excluded for thirty years three-fourths of the male inhabitants from the ballot-box.32
That women exercised the right of suffrage amid so many restrictions, is very significant of the belief in her right to the ballot, by those early Fathers.33
THE FIRST STEP IN MASSACHUSETTS.
Woman's rights petitions were circulated in Massachusetts as early as 1848. Mary Upton Ferrin, of Salem, in the spring of that year, consulting Samuel Merritt, known as "the honest lawyer of Salem," in regard to the property rights of married women, and the divorce laws, learned that the whole of the wife's personal property belonged to the husband, as also the improvements upon her real estate; and that she could only retain her silver and other small valuables by secreting them, or proving them to have been loaned to her. To such deception did the laws of Massachusetts, like those of most States, based on the Old Common Law idea of the wife's subjection to the husband, compel the married woman in case she desired to retain any portion of her own property.
Mrs. Ferrin reported the substance of the above conversation to Mrs. Phebe King,34 of Danvers, who at once became deeply interested, saying, "If such are the laws by which women are governed, every woman in the State should sign a petition to have them altered."
"Will you sign one if drawn up?" queried Mrs. Ferrin.
"Yes," replied Mrs. King, "and I should think every woman would sign such a petition."
As the proper form of petitions was something with which women were then quite unfamiliar, the aid of several gentlemen was asked, among them Hon. D. P. King and Judge John Heartley, but all refused.
Miss Betsy King then suggested that Judge Pitkin35 possessed sufficient influence to have the laws amended without the trouble of petitioning the Legislature. Strong in their faith that the enactment of just laws was the business of legislative bodies, these ladies believed they but had to bring injustice to the notice of a law-maker in order to have it done away. Therefore, full of courage and hope, Judge Pitkin was respectfully approached. But, to their infinite astonishment, he replied:
"The law is very well as it is regarding the property of married women. Women are not capable of taking care of their own property; they never ought to have control of it. There is already a law by which a woman can have her property secured to her."
"But not one woman in fifty knows of the existence of such a law," was the reply.
"They ought to know it; it is no fault of the law if they don't. I do not think the Legislature will alter the law regarding divorce. If they do, they will make it more stringent than it now is."
Repulsed, but not disheartened, Mrs. Ferrin herself drew up several petitions, circulated them, obtaining many hundred signatures of old and young; though finding the young more ready to ask for change than those inured to ill-usage and injustice. Many persons laughed at her; but knowing it to be a righteous work, and deeming laughter healthful to those indulging in it, Mrs. Ferrin continued to circulate her petitions.
They were presented to the Legislature by Rev. John M. Usher, a Universalist minister of Lynn, and member of the lower House. Although too late in the session for action, these petitions form the initiative step for Woman Suffrage in Massachusetts.
Early the next fall, similar petitions were circulated. It was determined to attack the Legislature in such good season, that lateness of time would not again be brought up as an excuse for non-attention to the prayers of women. Mrs. King's interest continued unabated, and through her advice, Mrs. Ferrin prepared an address to accompany the petitions. Hon. Charles W. Upham, minister of the First Unitarian church of Salem, afterward Representative in Congress, was State Senator that year. From him they received much encouragement. "I concur with you in every sentiment," said he, "but please re-write your address, making two of it; one in the form of a memorial to the Legislature, and the other, an address to the Judiciary Committee, to whom your petitions will be referred." These two documents will be found to suggest most of the important demands, afterward made in every State, for a change of laws relating to woman. The fallacy of "sacredness" for these restrictive laws was shown; the rights of humanity as superior to any outside authority, asserted; and justice made the basis of the proposed reformation. The right of woman to trial by a jury of her peers was claimed, followed by the suggestion that woman is capable of making the laws by which she is governed. The memorial excited much attention, and was printed by order of the Legislature, though the possibility of a woman having written it was denied.36
But in 1850, as in 1849, no action was taken, the petitioners having "leave to withdraw." Petitions of a similar character were again circulated throughout Salem and Danvers, in 1850, '51, '52, '53, making six successive years, in each of which the petitioners had "leave to withdraw," as the only reply to their prayers for relief. The Hon. Mr. Upham, however, remained woman's steadfast friend through all this period, and Mrs. Phebe Upton King was as constantly found among the petitioners.
In 1852 the petitions were signed only by ladies over sixty years of age, women of large experience and matured judgment, whose prayers should have received at least respectful consideration from the legislators of the State. We give the appeal accompanying their petition:
Gentlemen:—Your petitioners, who are tax-payers and originators of these petitions, are upwards of three-score years; ten of them are past three-score years and ten; three of them three-score and twenty. If length of days, a knowledge of the world and the rights of man and woman entitle them to a respectful hearing, few, if any, have prior or more potent claims, for reason has taught them what individual rights are, experience, what woman and her children suffer for the want of just protection in those, and humanity impels them once more to appear before you, it may be for the last time. Let not their gray hairs go down in sorrow to the grave for the want of this justice in your power to extend, as have several of their number whose names are no longer to be found with theirs, whose voices can plead never more in behalf of your own children and those of your constituents.
In 1853 a petition37 bearing only Mrs. King's name was presented. In 1854 the political organization called the "Know Nothings" came into power, and although no petition was presented, a bill securing the control of their own property to all women married subsequent to the passage of the law, was passed. The power to make a will without the husband's consent, was also secured to wives, though not permitted to thus will more than one-half of their personal property. This law also gave to married women having no children, whose husbands should die without a will, five thousand dollars, and one-half of the remainder of the husband's property. The following year the Divorce Law38 was amended, and shortly thereafter two old ladies, nearly seventy years of age, having no future marriage in view, but solely influenced by a desire to secure their own property to their own children, which without such divorce they would be unable to do, although one of their husbands had not provided for his wife in twenty years, nor the other in thirty years, availed themselves of its new privileges.
The first change in the tyrannous