The Complete History of the Women's Suffrage Movement in U.S.. Jane Addams
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a successful leader of reform. That Mrs. Mott could have maintained her sweetness and charity to the end, is a marvel in view of the varied and protracted persecutions she endured.
Rarely have so many different and superior qualities been combined in one woman. She had great personal beauty; her brow and eye were remarkable. Although small in stature, it is said of her as it was of Channing, he too being of diminutive size, that she made you think she was larger than she was. She had a look of command. The amount of will force and intelligent power in her small body was enough to direct the universe; yet she was modest and unassuming and had none of the personal airs of leadership. Her manners were gentle and self-possessed under all circumstances. Her conversation, though generally serious, earnest and logical, was sometimes playful and always good humored. Her attitude of mind was receptive. She never seemed to think even in her latest years that she had explored all truth. Though she had very clearly defined opinions on every subject that came under her consideration, she never dogmatized.
It was this healthy balance of good qualities that made her great among other women of genius; and the multiplicity of her interests in human affairs that kept her fresh and young to the last. The thinkers, the scholars, the broadest intellects are often the octogenarians, while the narrow selfish souls dry up in their own channels. One of her noble sisters in reform has truly said, "Birth made Victoria a queen, but her own pure, sweet life made Lucretia Mott a queen; queen of a realm on which the sun never sets, the realm of humanity. If ever any one inherited the earth it was this blessed Quaker woman."
Space fails me to tell of all the pleasant memories of our forty years friendship, of the inspiration she has been to those on our platform, of the bond of union to hold us together, of the innumerable conventions over which she has presided, of the many long journeys both North and South to carry the glad tidings of justice, liberty, and equality to all. A missionary who always traveled at her own expense, giving her best thoughts freely, asking nothing in return, neither money, praise, nor honor; for misrepresentation and cruel persecution were the only return she had for years. Both in religion and reform hers was a free gospel to the multitude.
As division has been the law in politics, religion, and reform, woman suffrage proved no exception. But Lucretia Mott and her noble sister, Martha O. Wright, remained steadfast with those who had taken the initiative steps in calling the first Convention, and with the larger and more radical division their sympathies remained, both being prominent officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association at the time of their death. They fully endorsed the great lesson of the war, National protection for United States citizens, applied to woman as well as to the African race, the doctrine the association to which they belonged has so successfully advocated at Washington for twelve years.
Reading the numerous complimentary obituary notices of our long loved friend, so fair, so tender, so full of praise, we have exclaimed, what changes the passing years have wrought in the popular estimate of a woman once considered so dangerous an innovator in the social and religious world; and yet the Lucretia Mott of to-day is only the perfected, well-rounded character of half a century ago. But the slowly moving masses that feared her then as an infidel, a fanatic, an unsexed woman, have followed her footsteps until a broader outlook has expanded their moral vision. The "vagaries" of the anti-slavery struggle, in which she took a leading part, have been coined into law; and the "wild fantasies" of the Abolitionists are now the XIII., XIV., and XV. Amendments to the National Constitution. The prolonged and bitter schisms in the Society of Friends have shed new light on the tyranny of creeds and scriptures. The infidel Hicksite principles that shocked Christendom, are now the corner-stones of the liberal religious movement in this country. The demand for woman's social, civil, and political equality—in which she was foremost—laughed at from the Atlantic to the Pacific, has been recognized in a measure by courts and legislatures, in Great Britain and the United States. The old Blackstone code for woman has received its death-blow, and the colleges, trades, and professions have been opened for her admission.
The name of Lucretia Mott represents more fully than any other in the nineteenth century, the sum of all womanly virtues. As wife, mother, friend, she was marked for her delicate sentiments, warm affections, and steadfast loyalty; as housekeeper, for her rigid economy, cleanliness, order, and exhaustless patience with servants and children; as neighbor, for justice and honor in all her dealings; as teacher, even at the early age of fifteen, for her skill and faithfulness.
One who has lived eighty-eight years 'mid a young, impressible people like ours, ever reflecting the exalted virtues of the true woman, the earnest reformer, the religious teacher, must have left her impress for good in every relation of life. When we remember that every word we utter, every act we perform, the individual atmosphere we create have their effect, not only on all who come within the circle of our daily life, but through them are wafted to innumerable other circles beyond, we can in a measure appreciate the far-reaching influence of one grand life. Great as has been the acknowledged, moral power of Lucretia Mott, it would have been vastly greater, had her opinions been legitimately recognized in the laws and constitutions of the nation; and could she have enjoyed the consciousness of exerting this direct influence, it would have intensified the holy purpose of her life. "The highest earthly desire of a ripened mind," says Thomas Arnold, "is the desire of taking an active share in the great work of government." Those only who are capable of appreciating this dignity can measure the extent to which this noble woman has been defrauded as a citizen of this great Republic. Neither can they measure the loss to the councils of the nation, of the wisdom of such a representative woman.
In the manifold tributes to the memory of our beloved friend, we have yet to see the first mention of her political degradation, which she so keenly felt and so often deplored on our platform. Why are the press and the pulpit, with all their eulogiums of her virtues, so oblivious to the humiliating fact of her disfranchisement? Are political disabilities, accounted such grievous wrongs to the Southern aristocrat, to the emancipated slave, to the proud Anglo-Saxon man in every latitude, of so little value to woman that when a nation mourns the loss of the grandest representative of our sex, no tear is shed, no regret expressed, no mention even made of her political degradation?
We might ask the question why this universal outpouring of tributes to our venerated friend, exceeding all honors hitherto paid to the great women of our nation, who, one by one, have passed away It is because Lucretia Mott was a philanthropist; her life was dedicated to the rights of humanity. When the poet, the novelist, the philosopher, and the metaphysican have been forgotten, the memory of the true reformer will remain engraven on the hearts of the multitude. Behold! the beauty of yonder fountain, after its upward flight, is where it turns again to earth, so is the life of one morally beautiful, ever drawn by a law of its being from the clouds of speculation to the common interests of humanity.
The question is often asked of us on this platform, will the children of these reformers take up the work that falls from their hands? It is more than probable they will not. It is with reformers' children as others, they seldom follow in the footsteps of their parents. As a general thing the son of a farmer hates the plow, the son of a lawyer is not attracted to the bar, nor the son of a clergyman to the pulpit. The daughter of the pattern housekeeper turns to literature or art, and the child of the reformer has no heart for martyrdom. It is philosophical that our sons and daughters should not be here. To a certain extent they have shared the odium and persecution we have provoked, they have been ostracised and ignored for heresies they have never accepted. The humiliation of our children has been the bitterest drop in the cup of reformers. Look around our platform, not one representative of the brave band of women who inaugurated this movement is here! Not one of our kindred has ever yet in these conventions echoed our demands. Nevertheless we are, and shall be represented! We see bright new faces; we hear eloquent new voices; brave young women are gathering round us, to plead our cause in more august assemblies, and to celebrate the victory at last. These are our kindred, by holier ties than blood. As their way through life will be smoother for all our noble friend has dared and suffered, may they by the same courage and conscientious devotion to principle, shed new light on the path of those who follow their footsteps. This is the great moral lesson the life of our dear friend should impress on the coming generation.
Having known Lucretia Mott, not only in the flush of life, when all her faculties were at their zenith, but in the repose