The Complete History of the Women's Suffrage Movement in U.S.. Jane Addams
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year to year, at Oswego, Utica, Poughkeepsie, Lockport, Syracuse, making the same demands for equal place and pay, until she had the satisfaction to see every right conceded. Women speaking and voting on all questions; appointed on committees, and to prepare reports and addresses, elected officers of the Association, and seated on the platforms. In 1856, she was chairman of a committee herself, to report on the question of co-education; and at Troy, before a magnificent audience of the most intelligent men and women of the State, she read her report, which the press pronounced able and conclusive. The President, Mr. Hazeltine, of New York, congratulating Miss Anthony on her address, said: "As much as I am compelled to admire your rhetoric and logic, the matter and manner of your address and its delivery, I would rather follow a daughter of mine to her grave, than to have her deliver such an address before such an assembly." Superintendent Randall, overhearing the President, added: "I should be proud, Madam, if I had a daughter capable of making such an eloquent and finished argument, before this or any assembly of men and women. I congratulate you on your triumphant success."
In 1857, at Binghamton, Professor Fowler, of Rochester, took up the gauntlet thrown down by Miss Anthony, and presented the other side of the question, taking the ground that boys and girls should not be educated together, and that women should not be paid equal wages even for equally good work. The gentlemen who sustained the side demanding equal rights for women in these conventions, were Randall, Rice, Cruttenden, Cavert, Fanning, Johonett, Coburn, Wilder, and Farnham. The opposition was led by Davies, Valentine, Buckley, Anthony (not S. B. A.), Ross, an old bachelor, the butt of ridicule, the clown of the Convention; and McElligott, the latter hardly ranking with the rest, for though opposed, he was always a gentleman, the others being ofttimes so coarse in their sneers and innuendoes, that they disgraced the positions they occupied, as the educators of the youth of the State. In the discussion at Binghamton, where Miss Anthony introduced a resolution in favor of co-education, Mr. McElligott said "he was in favor of allowing her full and equal opportunity with any other member to present resolutions, or to call them up for discussion. Standing up as she does before large audiences, to advocate what she conscientiously considers the rights and privileges of her sex, gives a touch of moral sublimity to our proceedings worthy the admiration of all."
Professor Davies denounced the resolutions in the strongest terms. "He had for four years been trying to escape this discussion; but if the question must come, let it be boldly met and disposed of. These resolutions involve a great social rather than an educational question, calculated to introduce a vast social evil; they are the first step in that school which seeks to abolish marriage, and behind the picture presented by them, I see a monster of deformity."102
In view of the grand experiment of co-education, so successful in every part of our country, the fears of those timid men thirty years ago provoke nothing now but a passing smile. How few of them with a sober face could at this time defend their old positions. It is creditable to the stronger sex that so many men in all those encounters, took no counsel with their fears nor prejudices, but seeing the principle steadfastly maintained it.
But the temperance and educational conventions, the clergy and the pedagogues, were alike abandoned now for the legislators. All this escapading of Miss Anthony's was mere child's play, compared with the steady bombardment kept up until the war on the legislators of the Empire State. Calls, appeals, petitions to rouse the women, fell like snow-flakes in every county, asking for the civil and political rights of woman; they were carried into the Legislature, frequent hearings secured, the members debating the question as hotly there as it had already been discussed in popular conventions. As New York could boast a larger number of strong-minded women than any other State, whose continuity of purpose knew no variableness nor shadow of turning, the agitation was persistently continued in all directions.
THE SYRACUSE NATIONAL CONVENTION,
September 8, 9, and 10, 1852.
This Convention, lasting three days, was in many respects remarkable, even for that "City of Conventions." It called out immense audiences, attracted many eminent persons from different points of the State, and was most favorably noticed by the press; the debates were unusually earnest and brilliant, and the proceedings orderly and harmonious throughout. Notwithstanding an admission fee of one shilling, the City Hall was densely packed at every session, and at the hour of adjournment it was with difficulty that the audience could gain the street. The preliminary103 editorials of the city papers reflected their own conservative or progressive tendencies.
In no one respect were the participants in these early Conventions more unsparingly ridiculed, and more maliciously falsified, than in their personal appearance; it may therefore be wise to say that in dignity and grace of manner and style of dress, the majority of these ladies were superior to the mass of women; while the neat and unadorned Quaker costume was worn by some, many others were elegantly and fashionably attired; two of them in such extreme style as to call forth much criticism from the majority, to whom a happy medium seemed desirable.
The Convention was called to order by Paulina Wright Davis, chairman of the Central Committee, and prayer offered by the Rev. Samuel J. May, pastor of the Unitarian Church in Syracuse.
Although this was the first Woman's Rights Convention at which Mr. May was ever present, he had been represented in nearly all by letter, and as early as 1845 had preached an able sermon advocating the social, civil, and political rights of woman. He had been an early convert to this doctrine, and enjoyed telling the manner of his conversion. Speaking once in Providence on the question of slavery, he was attracted by the earnest attention he received from an intelligent-looking woman. At the close of the meeting, she said to him: "I have listened to you with an interest that only a woman can feel. I doubt whether you see how much of your description of the helpless dependence of slaves applies equally to all women." She ran the parallel rapidly, quoting law and custom, maintaining her assertion so perfectly that Mr. May's eyes were opened at once, and he promised the lady to give the subject his immediate consideration.
Lucy Stone read the call104 and expressed the wish that every one present, even if averse to the new demands by women, would take part in the debates, as it was the truth on this question its advocates were seeking. Among the most noticeable features of these early Conventions was the welcome given to opposing arguments.
The Nominating Committee reported the list of officers,105 with Lucretia Mott as permanent President. She asked that the vote be taken separately, as there might be objections to her appointment. The entire audience (except her husband, who gave an emphatic "No!") voted in her favor. The very fact that Mrs. Mott consented, under any circumstances, to preside over a promiscuous assemblage, was proof of the progress of liberal ideas, as four years previously she had strenuously opposed placing a woman in that position, and as a member of the Society of Friends, by presiding over a meeting to which there was an admission fee, she rendered herself liable to expulsion. The vote being taken, Mrs. Mott, who sat far back in the audience, walked forward to the platform, her sweet face and placid manners at once winning the confidence of the audience. This impression was further deepened by her opening remarks. She said she was unpracticed in parliamentary proceedings, and felt herself incompetent to fulfill the duties of the position now pressed upon her, and was quite unprepared to make a suitable speech. She asked the serious and respectful attention of the Convention to the business before them, referred to the success that had thus far attended the movement, the respect shown by the press, and the favor with which the public generally had received these new demands, and closed by inviting the cordial co-operation of all present.
In commenting upon Mrs. Mott's opening address, the press of the city declared it to have been "better expressed and far more appropriate than those heard on similar occasions in political and legislative assemblages." The choice of Mrs. Mott as President was pre-eminently wise; of mature years, a member of the Society of Friends, in which woman was held as an equal, with undoubted right to speak in public, and the still broader experience of the Anti-Slavery platform, she was well fitted to guide the proceedings and encourage the expression of opinions from those to whom public speaking was an untried experiment. "It was a singular spectacle," said the Syracuse Standard, "to see this gray-haired matron presiding over a Convention with an ease, dignity, and grace that might be envied by the most experienced legislator in the country."
Delegates