The Complete History of the Women's Suffrage Movement in U.S.. Jane Addams
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New York.
Secretaries—Martha C. Wright, New York; Caroline Stanton, Ohio; H. B. Blackwell, Ohio.
Treasurer—T. C. Severance, Ohio.
Business Committee—Ernestine L. Rose, New York; James Mott, Pennsylvania; Lucy Stone, Massachusetts; Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Mass.; Abby Kelly Foster, Mass.; Mary T. Corner, Ohio; C. C. Burleigh, Connecticut; Martha J. Tilden, Ohio; John O. Wattles, Indiana.
Finance Committee—Susan B. Anthony, Rochester; Phebe H. Merritt, Michigan; H. M. Addison, Ohio; Hettie Little, Ohio; E. P. Heaton, Ohio.
Letters were read from distinguished people. Notably the following from Horace Greeley:
New York, Oct. 2, 1853.
Dear Madam:—I have received yours of the 26th, this moment. I do not see that my presence in Cleveland could be of any service. The question to be considered concerns principally woman, and women should mostly consider it. I recognize most thoroughly the right of woman to choose her own sphere of activity and usefulness, and to evoke its proper limitations. If she sees fit to navigate vessels, print newspapers, frame laws, select rulers—any or all of these—I know no principle that justifies man in interposing any impediment to her doing so. The only argument entitled to any weight against the fullest concession of the rights you demand, rests in the assumption that woman does not claim any such rights, but chooses to be ruled, guided, impelled, and have her sphere prescribed for her by man.
I think the present state of our laws respecting property and inheritance, as respects married women, show very clearly that woman ought not to be satisfied with her present position; yet it may be that she is so. If all those who have never given this matter a serious thought are to be considered on the side of conservatism, of course that side must preponderate. Be this as it may, woman alone can, in the present state of the controversy, speak effectively for woman, since none others can speak with authority, or from the depths of a personal experience.
Hoping that your Convention may result in the opening of many eyes, and the elevation of many minds from light to graver themes,
I remain yours,
Horace Greeley.
Mrs. C. M. Severance,
Cleveland, Ohio.
And here let us pay our tribute of gratitude to Horace Greeley. In those early days when he, as editor of the New York Tribune, was one of the most popular men in the nation, his word almost law to the people, his journal was ever true to woman. No ridicule of our cause, no sneers at its advocates, found a place in The Tribune; but more than once, he gave columns to the proceedings of our conventions.
To this letter, Henry B. Blackwell, brother of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, and the future husband of Lucy Stone, pertinently replied, saying:
It is suggested that woman's cause should be advocated by women only. The writer of that letter is a true friend of this reform, and yet I feel that I owe you no apology for standing on this platform. But if I do, this is sufficient, that I am the son of a woman, and the brother of a woman. I know that this is their cause, but I feel that it is mine also. Their happiness is my happiness, their misery my misery.
The interests of the sexes are inseparably connected, and in the elevation of one lies the salvation of the other. Therefore I claim a part in the last and grandest movement of the ages; for whatever concerns woman concerns the race. In every human enterprise the sexes should go hand in hand. Experience sanctions the statement. I know of but few movements in history, which have gone on successfully without the aid of woman. One of these is war—the work of human slaughter. Another has been the digging of gold in California. I have yet to learn what advantages the world has derived from either. Whenever the sexes have been severed in politics, in business, in religion, the result has been demoralization.
Mr. Blackwell spoke with great eloquence for nearly an hour, advocating the political, civil, and moral equality of woman. He showed the power of the ballot in combating unjust laws, opening college doors, securing equal pay for equal work, dignifying the marriage relation, by making woman an equal partner, not a subject. He paid a glowing eulogy to Mary Wollstonecroft. He said:
We need higher ideas of marriage. There is scarcely a young man here who does not hope to be a husband and a father; nor a young woman who does not expect to be a wife and a mother. But who does not revolt at the idea of perpetuating a race inferior to ourselves? For myself I could not desire a degenerate family. I would not wish for a race which would not be head and shoulders above what I had been. Let me say to men, select women worthy to be wives. The world is overstocked with these mis-begotten children of undeveloped mothers. No man who has ever seen the symmetrical character of a true woman, can be happy in a union with such. Ladies! the day is coming when men who have seen more well-developed women, will scorn the present standard of female character. Will you not teach them to do so? You may have to sacrifice much, but you will be repaid. This history of the world is rich with glorious examples. Mary Wollstonecroft, the writer of that brave book, "The Rights of Woman," published two generations ago, dared to be true to her convictions of duty in spite of the prejudices of the world. What was the result? She attained a noble character. She found in Godwin a nature worthy of her own, and left a child who became the wife and worthy biographer of the great poet Shelley. Let us imitate that child of glorious parents—parents who dared to make all their relations compatible with absolute right, to give all their powers the highest development.
People say a married woman can not have ulterior objects; that her position is incompatible with a high intellectual culture; that her thoughts and sympathies must be restricted to the four walls of her dwelling. Why, if I were a woman (I speak only as a man) and believed this popular doctrine, that she who is a wife and a mother, being that, must be nothing more, but must cramp her thoughts into the narrow circle of her own home, and indulge no grander aspirations for universal interests—believing that, I would forswear marriage. I would withdraw myself from human society, and go out into the forest and the prairie to live out my own true life in the communion and sympathy of my God. So far as I was concerned, the race might become worthily extinct—it should never be unworthily perpetuated. I could do no otherwise. For we are not made merely to eat and drink, and give children to the world. We are placed here upon the threshold of an immortal life. We are but the chrysalis of the future. If immortality means anything, it means unceasing progress for individuals and for the race.
Mr. Blackwell complimented those women who were just inaugurating a movement for a new costume, promising greater freedom and health. He thought the sneers and ridicule so unsparingly showered on the "Bloomers," might with more common sense be turned on the "tight waists, paper shoes, and trailing skirts of the fashionable classes."
The facts of history may as well be stated here in regard to the "Bloomer" costume. Mrs. Bloomer was among the first to wear the dress, and stoutly advocated its adoption in her paper, The Lily, published at Seneca Falls, N. Y. But it was introduced by Elizabeth Smith Miller, the daughter of the great philanthropist, Gerrit Smith, in 1850. She wore it for many years, even in the most fashionable circles of Washington during her father's term in Congress. Lucy Stone, Miss Anthony, and Mrs. Stanton, also wore it a few years. But it invoked so much ridicule, that they feared the odium attached to the dress might injure the suffrage movement, of which they were prominent representatives. Hence a stronger love for woman's political freedom, than for their own personal comfort, compelled them to lay it aside. The experiment, however, was not without its good results. The dress was adopted for skating and gymnastic exercises, in seminaries and sanitariums. At Dr. James C. Jackson's, in Dansville, N. Y., it is still worn. Many farmers' wives, too, are enjoying its freedom in their rural homes.
Mrs. Bloomer, editor of The Lily, at Seneca Falls, New York, was introduced at the close of Mr. Blackwell's remarks, and read a well-prepared digest of the laws for married women.
Reporting one of the sessions, the Plain Dealer said:
Mrs. Gage, ever prompt in her place, called the Convention to order at the usual hour. The Melodean at this time contained 1,500 people. We think the women may congratulate