It was not until 1848 that the compact, made in 1840 by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, to call a woman's rights convention was carried out. Mrs. Mott was occupied with religious and reform obligations, Mrs. Stanton with a family of young children. The project was revived while Mrs. Mott was visiting her sister, Martha C. Wright, in Seneca Falls, New York, where Mrs. Stanton also had become a resident. Action followed so shortly upon the decision to call a convention that the news had not spread through the neighborhood when an astonished public read a notice in the town paper on July 14 that a Woman's Rights Convention would be held in the Wesleyan Chapel on the 19th and 20th of the month. The program of the first day as announced was to be exclusively for women, and of the second day for the general public, when “Lucretia Mott and others” would speak. The call was unsigned.
The five days intervening were busy ones for the four sponsors, Mrs. Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs. Ann McClintock and Mrs. Martha C. Wright. Having called the convention, they set themselves at work to compose a program and policy for it. In the McClintock parlor, around a small table now in the Smithsonian Institution, they discussed women's wrongs and how to lay them before the world in orderly fashion, until finally they hit upon the happy idea of framing their grievances against the nation in imitation of the Declaration of Independence. Finding as many grievances against the government of men as the Colonists had against the government of King George, they promptly drew up the Declaration of Women's Rights. Fortified by this document and four speeches, for each of the four had prepared one, they were on hand at the appointed hour.
Although the hurried and timid call had not been heard far away, the small Chapel was filled. At first the women were disconcerted to find that men had not taken their exclusion seriously and were present in considerable numbers, but when they reflected that no woman had ever presided over a convention they welcomed the men cordially and elected one of them, James Mott, chairman. The Declaration was adopted. It named as the first of the grievances, “the denial of the elective franchise,” and it was signed by one hundred men and women. So inadequate did the two days prove for the discussion of a subject so extensive that the convention adjourned to meet in Rochester two weeks later. There the Declaration was again adopted and signed by large numbers of influential men and women.
These two conventions had in no sense been national in scope but newspapers throughout the country regarded them as an innovation worthy of comment and full press accounts were carried far and wide. Preceding events had prepared the country for controversy centered upon the subject of woman's rights apart from the anti-slavery and temperance causes, and a widespread discussion for and against the long list of liberties claimed was inaugurated by the two conventions.
Never in all history did so small a beginning produce so great an effect in so short a time.
Emily P. Collins immediately formed a local suffrage society at South Bristol, New York, the first in the world, and the baby club, wasting no time, sent a woman suffrage petition to the New York Legislature in January, 1849, with sixty-two signatures. Encouraged by the knowledge that other women were rising, organized groups sprang into being in all parts of the country with no other incentive than the ripeness of the time, and no other connection with the original movers than the announcements of the press.
Meantime year by year, and State by State, the legal disabilities of women had been seriously debated. Between 1844 and 1848 the Legislatures of Maine, Mississippi, New York and Pennsylvania, in the order named, granted property rights to women. The right to make a will had been granted in some States.
In the educational realm the graduation of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell from the Geneva Medical College made a tremendous sign-post for the year 1848. Public hostility to her course may be measured by the fact that the women at her boarding house refused to speak to her during her three years of study; on the streets they drew aside their skirts if they chanced to meet her, lest they be contaminated by contact. The controversy created by the events of the year was excited and widespread. Clergymen were alarmed and very generally denounced the “masculine, strong-minded women” who were attempting to drive men from their God-ordained sphere. The press took sides and contributed, as usual, both understanding and confusion to the discussion.
From that date, some new wonder was continually emanating from the woman's camp to give fresh impulse and direction to the agitation. Three young women had been graduated from Oberlin in 1841, and each year brought the announcement of more graduates. Women were lecturing in all parts of the country on anti-slavery, temperance, physiology, and woman's rights, and were drawing and edifying large audiences. The most reckless escape from traditional discipline occurred in 1846, when, the license law having been repealed in New York, women alone or in groups entered saloons, “breaking windows, glasses, bottles, and emptying demijohns and barrels into the streets. Coming like whirlwinds of vengeance, drunkards and rum sellers stood paralyzed before them.” These episodes continued spasmodically for some years. A lively total abstinence movement conducted by men had been in progress for fifty years and out of it had grown the demand for various reforms, including legalized prohibition. Women circulated and presented petitions to town councils and the Legislatures, asking revision of liquor laws. What was called “the wave of temperance excitement” passed over the country in 1852-1855, beginning in Maine, which passed a prohibition law.
In 1840, the Sons of Temperance were organized and the Daughters of Temperance quickly followed. Argument on woman's place in human society was passing from the anti-slavery to the temperance societies. The Sons of Temperance, meeting at Albany in 1852, gallantly admitted delegates from the Daughters of Temperance, but when one of them, Susan B. Anthony, arose to speak to a motion, the chairman informed her that “the sisters were not invited there to speak but to listen and learn,” a fact which led the women to withdraw and form the Woman's State Temperance Society, with Elizabeth Cady Stanton as president, and Susan B. Anthony as secretary. It held important meetings during the next two years and was addressed by many distinguished men and women. The example set by New York was followed in other states and several similar societies came into existence.
Later in the same year, a New York State Temperance Convention was held in Syracuse. Susan B. Anthony and Amelia Bloomer, accredited delegates from the Woman's State Temperance Society, were refused admission, after a debate described as “a perfect pandemonium.” The women had an unintentional revenge; a liberal clergyman publicly offered his church for a meeting and announced that the two rejected delegates would speak there; whereupon the convention was deserted and the church was packed.
In 1853 “the friends of temperance” met in New York at the Brick Church to arrange for a World's Temperance Convention. Women delegates were present and were accepted by a vote. A motion was made that Susan B. Anthony should be added to the business committee, whereupon a discussion arose upon the right of women to such posts. The discussion was marked by the usual vituperation and insult and ended by the appointment of a committee to decide the matter. The committee recommended that the women be excluded from the convention and the report was adopted. Thomas Wentworth Higginson at once requested all persons who wished to call a whole world's Temperance Convention to meet elsewhere. The ten women delegates and a number of liberal-minded men left the room. After their departure a further discussion followed, condemning all public action of women, one reverend gentleman expressing pleasure at being “now rid of the scum of the convention.”
It therefore happened that there were two World's Temperance Conventions held in New York in September, one arranged and attended by men and women and the other held under the auspices of the Brick Church meeting. Antoinette Brown was sent by two societies to the last named convention. The credential committee omitted her name from the list of delegates, whereupon it was moved that she should be admitted. A furious discussion followed, in which every phase of the “Woman's Rights movement” was given attention. The discussion covered the greater part of two days, ending in a vote upon the question. By a small majority Miss Brown was admitted. It was then moved and carried by the same majority that she be given ten minutes in which to address the convention. She came to the plat-form, cheered by a “Take courage!” from Wendell Phillips, and a “God bless you!” from Rev. William Henry Channing. The minority, however, were not to be overcome so easily. She was greeted with sneers, hisses, shouting and stamping. The confusion, appropriate only to a mob, continued for three hours, at which time the convention adjourned. During this period the courageous young woman stood firm and unshaken, although the fingers of men from all over the house were pointing at her and shouts of “Shame on the woman!” assailed her continually.
When asked why she went to the convention, she replied: “I asked no favor as a woman or in behalf of women; no favor as a woman advocating temperance; no recognition of the cause of woman above the cause of humanity; the endorsement of no issue and of no measure; but I claimed, in the name of the world, the rights of a delegate in a world's convention.” A clergyman (nearly all the delegates were clergymen) when asked why the convention acted as it did, replied that “it was the principle of the thing.” Practically the whole time of this World's Convention was expended in rude and quarrelsome discussion over the question of permitting women to speak and work for temperance.
An Ohio Woman's Temperance Convention was called at Dayton the same year. The Sons of Temperance permitted the use of their hall, “provided no men were admitted to their meeting.” No sooner had the first session opened than “A column of well dressed ladies, very fashionable and precise, marched in two and two and spread themselves in a half circle in front of the platform, requesting to be heard.” Permission being granted they informed the delegates that they had come to read a remonstrance against the unseemly and un-Christian position assumed by women who called conventions, “taking places on platforms and seeking notoriety by making yourselves conspicuous before men.” They condemned the disgraceful conduct of Antoinette Brown at the New York convention and, having presented their views, turned and walked out.
The convention went right on.
The right of women to work for temperance was now a dominating question of the temperance movement, as a decade before it had been a mooted question of the abolition movement. The conflict over women's rights, however, was by no means confined to these two great reforms. The same year Susan B. Anthony attended the New York Teacher's Convention in Rochester. Although a member on equal footing with others, she caused a sensation by rising to speak to the question, “Why the profession of teacher was not as much respected as that of minister, lawyer or doctor,” which had been discussed for some hours. It had been the custom in these conventions for men to discuss all motions and to vote upon them, although women composed a large portion of the membership. “At length President Davis of West Point, in full dress, buff vest, blue coat, gilt buttons, stepped to the front and said in tremulous mocking tone ‘What will the lady have?’—‘I wish, Sir, to speak to the question under discussion,’ Miss Anthony replied. The Professor, still more perplexed, said, ‘What is the pleasure of the convention?’ A gentleman moved that she should be heard, another seconded the motion, whereupon a discussion pro and con followed, lasting fully half an hour, when a vote of the men only was taken and permission granted by a small majority.” Miss Anthony arose and said: “Do you not see, gentlemen, that so long as society says a woman is incompetent to be a lawyer, minister, or doctor, but has ample ability to be a teacher, that every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman?” For this speech she was bitterly denounced by nearly all the men and women present, but the next morning's Rochester Democrat said: “Whatever the schoolmasters may think of Miss Anthony, it is evident that she hit the nail on the head.”
While much discussion within other organizations was centring about Woman's Rights, the movement was rapidly solidifying into an organization of its own. The first National Woman's Rights Convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts, October, 1850. Unlike that of 1848, which was not heralded as national, it was carefully arranged and well advertised. The call was signed by 89 prominent men and women. Eleven States were represented at the convention, which provided for another the following year. The importance of the persons connected with it, and the high tone of all its deliberations secured widespread comment. A report of the convention reaching England, Mrs. Taylor (afterwards Mrs. John Stuart Mill) sent an account to the Westminster Review, from which dates the organized woman suffrage movement in England.
From 1850 to 1860, a national suffrage convention was held in the United States each year, with one exception. State conventions, attended by some of the leading spirits, were held in Ohio, Indiana, Pennsylvania, New York, Massachusetts, out of which grew State organizations with local auxiliaries. Indiana boasts the first State organization.
The New York convention of 1853 was afterwards called the Mob Convention. The week had begun with an anti-slavery meeting, opened on Sunday morning when Antoinette Brown addressed five thousand people, and the fact that she had done so “called out the denunciations of the religious press.” During the week many meetings devoted to reforms were held, public condemnation growing in hostility until it broke in rampant violence upon the suffrage issue, which was last of the series. The mob was present at every session and met each motion and each speaker with hisses, yells and stamping of feet. The suffragists themselves said that “owing to the turmoil we have no fair report of the proceedings” and even “the representatives of the press could not catch what was said.”
The contrasting comment on the convention was well presented by the Tribune and the Herald. Said the Tribune (Horace Greeley), September 7, 1853: “It was never so transparent that a hiss or a blackguard yell was the only answer that the case admitted of, and when Lucy Stone closed the discussion with some pungent, yet pathetic remarks on the sort of opposition that had been manifest, it was evident that if any of the rowdies had had an ant hole in the bottom of his boot he would inevitably have sunk through it and disappeared forever.” Said the Herald (James Gordon Bennett) September 7, 1853: “The assemblage of rampant women which convened at the Tabernacle yesterday was an interesting phase in the comic history of the Nineteenth Century . . . a gathering of unsexed women, unsexed in mind, all of them publicly propounding the doctrine that they should be allowed to step out of their appropriate sphere to the neglect of those duties which both human and divine law have assigned to them. Is the world to be depopulated?” There was one immediate redeeming feature of the occasion for, at 25 cents per admission, the mob had not only paid the entire expenses of the convention, but it had left a surplus in the treasury with which to continue suffrage work.
The experiences of that week had not intimidated the women but had, instead, stirred their minds to clearer conviction and united their hands to more constructive action. Mobs seem a divine instrument for the furtherance of good causes. No mob ever destroyed an idea, but many a mob has given one a fresh impulse, and this one sent every delegate home with her soul afire.
Lucy Stone, silver-voiced, gentle to look upon but with the courage of a lioness, had graduated from Oberlin in 1847 and started forth single-handed and alone to conquer the world for Woman's Rights. She now went through Massachusetts from town to town engaging the town hall, nailing up her own advertising and conducting her own meetings. Her auditors came “to scorn and went away to praise.” The press gave her such titles as “she hyena”; the clergy thundered at her; the average man and woman regarded her as a freak; but the liberal-minded listened and endorsed. In time she formed committees to carry the work forward. From Massachu-setts as a centre, lecturing and organizing spread all over New England, and in 1854 a New England convention was held in Boston, and became an annual feature of the May anniversaries for sixty years thereafter.
In the period from August, 1854 to 1855, Miss Anthony had held meetings in 54 of the 61 counties of New York, and conventions at Saratoga, then a favorite summer resort of the leisurely well-to-do, had already become an established and exceedingly popular feature. In 1854, the first convention designed to influence suffrage legislative action was held in Albany, and petitions of 10,000 names asking for woman suffrage were presented from two counties alone, Onondaga and Warren. Mrs. Stanton addressed the Legislature with so masterly a speech that the legislators pronounced it unanswerable. In 1856, Legislative Committees in Ohio and Wisconsin reported favorably “right to suffrage” bills, recommending that they “do pass,” and legislators in many other States publicly pronounced their conversion.
Lecture courses were organized in many States by these women, in which Anti-Slavery, Temperance and Woman's Rights were presented, the speakers endorsing all three. Theodore Parker, William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Ward Beecher, were among those who spoke.
After one convention, Grace Greenwood, a distinguished writer, said: “Lucretia Mott may be said to be the soul of this movement, and Mrs. Stanton the mind, the swift, keen intelligence. Miss Anthony alert, aggressive and indefatigable, is its nervous energy, its propulsive force.” All three were at work, lecturing, inspiring, organizing, planning, raising money. There were many others—Paulina Wright Davis, Ernestine L. Rose, Clarinda I. Nichols, Lucy Stone, Frances D. Gage, Hannah Tracy Cutler,—all able advocates of the cause. On the Anti-Slavery and the Temperance platforms still other women were speaking, and giving sledge-hammer blows at the old prejudices. There were few towns of consequence which were not reached by one or more of these resolute souls in the North and West. One by one the States were fast amending the “woman laws.” Wisconsin, California, Minnesota, Oregon and Kansas, coming into statehood during this period, began with liberal codes of law for women and their example proved so infectious that no new State thereafter went back to the old legal sources for its guidance concerning women.
At the tenth annual national suffrage convention held in New York, May, 1860, Miss Anthony, chairman of the Finance Committee, made an elaborate report and announced that “the press has changed its tone. Instead of ridicule we now have grave debate.” She reported the many legal changes already made, the aroused and sympathetic public opinion, and predicted that New York would “enfranchise its women when it revises its constitution six years hence.” Already, said she, the State has been thoroughly canvassed and “every county visited by lecturers, and tracts and petitions by the hundreds of thousands have been sent to the Legislature asking for the right to vote, the right to her person, her wages, her children. During the past year we have had six women lecturing in New York for several months each. Conventions have been held in 40 counties and one or more lectures delivered in one hundred and fifty towns and villages.”
Many bills for women's rights had by now been passed by State Legislatures, including women's right to their earnings, their property and their children. Men of prominence in large numbers had publicly espoused the cause, and hope for continued triumph of the movement was exuberant.
No cause ever made such rapid strides as that of Woman's Rights from 1850 to 1860. Women had proved their value as reform propagandists, and apparently all the leaders of the abolition and temperance movements were at length united in recognizing that fact, and all espoused their cause. “The more reflection I give, the more my mind becomes convinced that in a Republican Government, we have no right to deny to woman the privileges she claims,” wrote a member of the New York Legislature, and his views were reported by suffrage workers as becoming common. Anti-Slavery and Anti-Liquor had fought their way to the centre of the nation's thought, and Woman's Rights had sprung from the two “full armed” and exceeded both in legislative concessions.
Jubilant with success, despite the hard work and unhappy experiences of the early days, suffragists pushed on expectantly. The goal was in sight. The race was all but run. Few of this generation, even among suffragists, realize how close to victory were the women of that earlier suffrage crisis. Through disrepute and abuse and mob violence, they had brought the woman suffrage question out upon a new plane. The rotten eggs, the jeers, the hisses and vile epithets of the beginning were by-gones. Able and widely influential men had come to the support of the suffrage cause. Suffrage meetings wherever held were calling forth enthusiastic crowds and favorable reports by the press, with editorials pro and con. The whole world had grown friendly and tolerant. In political interest woman suffrage was ranking second only to the question of slavery. Both were fairly up to the doors of the national congress. Had the nation moved forward in the mood of those times, women assuredly would have been enfranchised soon, consistently with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the liberal progressive spirit which inspired the period.
Alas, before the date for the next annual suffrage convention the nation was plunged into the tragic depths of Civil War over the slavery issue; and thereafter woman suffrage was so hopelessly enmeshed in the politics of the Negro question as to be inextricable for long years to come.
Before the Civil War, there was no movement in the United States to secure Negro suffrage. Of the “thirty seven States which composed the Union at the time of the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment, all save six used the word ‘white’ as descriptive of the elector. Five of the six were in New England, and the sixth was Kansas.”
The war aftermath presented two imperative and difficult problems which demanded immediate attention; one, the reinstatement of the seceding States in the Union, the other, the determination of the status of the Negro. Both led inevitably to the discussion of questions involved in the right to vote. Representation in Congress had been apportioned to the Southern States by the federal constitution (Article 1, Section 2) according to the number of free persons, plus three-fifths of all other persons, meaning slaves. It was clear that no such apportionment could continue. Slaves within the seceding States had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation issued by President Lincoln as a military emergency, January 1, 1863. Some months before the close of the war, the Thirteenth Amendment to the federal constitution, forever abolishing slavery throughout the entire Union, was submitted to the several Legislatures and was proclaimed as ratified, December 18, 1865, some months after the close of the war.
Sec. 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Sec. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
The Congress then asked itself what is now the status of the Negro, and answered its own question in lengthy debate, the crux of which was that “He is no longer a chattel, but although a freeman, he is neither alien nor citizen.” The Republican party, “the party that had won the war and freed the slaves,” felt keenly that the Negro was a charge upon it. Many proposals were offered in that Congress for the settlement of these two momentous problems, each involving almost endless subsidiary controversies. Each proposal was defended and opposed by earnest, sincere groups, and into every discussion the question, “Shall the Negro be enfranchised,” injected itself. At no time since the convention which drafted the Declaration of Independence had political debate reached so high a level. The rights of man had again come into the foreground of the nation's chief consideration. The principles of human rights were quoted, analyzed and applied. Rights, freedom, liberty, and, most frequently of all, the “consent of the governed,” were the expressions which marked the trend of the debate.
The Northern victors were in a forgiving and magnanimous mood. The nation's orators painted fascinating pictures of a restored and contented nation, with slavery abolished, with full and complete justice given all races, classes, and both sexes, and with a patriotic unity of service for the common welfare. To be sure, the details were blurred or wanting, but the picture was heartening and inspiring. Despite the oppressively high cost of living, the looming burden of taxes and the many homes of mourning, a comforting belief was widespread that great and amazing good had come to the nation out of the terrible suffering and sacrifices of the war. A very definite impulse to extend to all a far greater need of justice than the world had yet dreamed possible seized the people. They were inspired to this end by the great men upon whose leadership the country had learned to rely with confidence. Negroes were justified in trusting for protection to the party that had freed them, nor was it to be altogether a concession of the strong to the weak, for during the war a quarter of a million black men had been enlisted and trained for the Union Army.
Women were equally justified in the hope that the lofty expressions of sentiment and frank admissions of gratitude for their war sacrifices would be written into law. They too had not only served in the hour of danger but their services had frequently been decisive in character. As in all modern war, women had quietly taken the places of men in stores, shops, factories and fields, and kept the nation's needs supplied by their unremitting, although often unskilled toil. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, returning to the United States from England where she had engaged in practice, had organized the scattered efforts of women into a nationwide constructive force. This had been accomplished in June, 1861, under the name of The Sanitary Commission, which was placed under Government authority. Scraping lint, making bandages, packing boxes and gathering materials to go to the front, had absorbed the time of thousands of women. The organization had been supported entirely by women's work and during the war had raised ninety two millions of dollars to aid in the care of the sick and wounded of the army. It was the forerunner of the Red Cross, and its work was so much more thoroughly done than anything before attempted by women as to call forth expressions of astonishment from foreign observers.
While the Sanitary Commission had been supporting the Union, the women of the South had been as devotedly and ably supporting their side of the nation's controversy. Nurses in the army hospitals —North and South—knew no respite and gave all the possibilities of their strength to temper the suffering of the wounded men.
Nor had the war work of women been confined to these usual feminine services. During the early years of the war a constant demand had been made by the abolitionists for the emancipation of the slaves. The replies of President Lincoln indicating that the country had given no mandate for such an act, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the woman suffrage leaders, organized a National Loyal League and set themselves the task of supplying that mandate. When Senator Charles Sumner presented the first instalment, 100,000 signatures, he said: “I offer a petition now lying on the desk before me. It is too bulky for me to take up. I need not add that it is too bulky for any of the pages of this body to carry.” The petition eventually presented to Congress numbered 300,000 signers and was acknowledged by President Lincoln and members of Congress as furnishing an authoritative public demand for the Emancipation Proclamation.
The Civil War developed military heroines, too, though the greatest of them died unacknowledged by her nation. Anna Ella Carroll proposed, urged and finally persuaded the military authorities to substitute the Tennessee River for the Mississippi as the base of operation and this strategy was generally admitted as having more speedily won the war. Colonel Scott, Assistant Secretary of War, pressed upon Judge Evans, a friend of Miss Carroll, the necessity of keeping the origin of the Tennessee campaign a secret while the struggle lasted. Men of high positions in military affairs of the government, including President Lincoln, also made it clear to Miss Carroll that it would be dangerous to success to make known the fact that the Government was proceeding under the advice of a civilian and especially a woman civilian.” The war over, the story leaked out, but before a demand was made for congressional recognition of her service, death had claimed those who knew it best.
Women had also participated in the civic and political life of the nation in ways hitherto unknown. Women for the first time were appointed, during the war, to positions in federal departments of government and filled them with credit. The Freedman's Bureau upon which Congress first tried to build the reconstruction measures was the idea of Mrs. Josephine Griffing. In the second Lincoln election there was grave anxiety on the part of Republicans as to the outcome, since loyal voters were at the front. Then Anna Dickinson entered the campaign, young, eloquent and soul-stirring, speaking “as if her lips had been touched with a live coal from the altars of Heaven.” Numerous Republican leaders gave her frank credit for having turned some of the doubtful States.
And the climax of the men's gratitude?
In the midst of this early after-war period, so pregnant with hope for the future, wherein speeches, interviews and press articles were common and fulsome in praise of the unexpected but admittedly decisive help that women had given to the Civil War, Susan B. Anthony was visiting her brother in Leavenworth, Kansas. One day, while quietly perusing the morning paper, she received a shock. She read that a proposal had been made to introduce the word “male” into a forthcoming amendment to the federal constitution. The Thirteenth Amendment was not yet ratified. Another amendment was predicted. What form it might take no one knew, yet she was quick to see that if this phrasing went into it, it would stamp women as a definitely disfranchised class throughout the land and degrade them to a political status inferior to the one they then occupied. Still wearied from the constant toil and anxiety of war work, she waited to learn no more but hastened at once to her home in Rochester, New York, stopping at several points on the way to confer with men and women who before the war had been sincere champions of the cause of woman suffrage. Nowhere did she find encouragement that the earlier zeal for women's rights could be revived, but her intrepid soul was undaunted. She arrived at her home September 23, 1865, and the next morning began a campaign that was not to end until a proclamation announced the ratification of a woman suffrage federal amendment, fifty-five years later.
She visited every town where before the war there had been an influential group who stood for women's rights, held meetings, aroused old friends and inspired new ones into activity, secured favorable press comment and everywhere started the circulation of petitions to Congress. When Congress convened on December 4, petitions were already arriving, protesting against the introduction into the constitution of the word “male.” Few Senators or Representatives escaped a bombardment of letters and petitions urging that the nation should take no such backward step as to write the word male into the constitution.
Throughout the winter the congressional debate in Washington continued, often much jumbled and wandering far afield, but with the Fourteenth Amendment very slowly and very definitely emerging from the chaos of thought as the final congressional deduction.
Miss Anthony without respite traveled, planned and aroused, Mrs. Stanton wrote and inspired, and the women at home sought signers to the petitions, which poured into the Congress incessantly. Groups of women, watching and working, followed the debate from every great centre of population, and higher and higher rose the justifiable expectation that the noble expressions of faith in the just application of sacred American principles made by Congressmen, party officials and leaders of popular thought were to be written into law. The climax of hope was reached when Senator Charles Sumner, long a tried and supposedly true friend of the woman's cause, delivered a speech which literally “rang around the world.” “Equal Rights for All” was the theme, and every possible plea for the ballot was reviewed, unanswerably, eloquently and passionately. Indeed in after years he replied to an appeal for a message on woman suffrage as follows: “Take that address,” said he, “substitute sex for color and you have the best speech I could make on your platform.”
The great speech did not definitely mention women but no word excluded them, and those who believed he meant all when he said so, found in it nothing to shake their faith.
A few days later, while the noble and stirring appeal of this address was still ringing in their ears, each watching group of women was chilled to the soul with the apprehension of coming disaster. Senator Sumner, in presenting a petition for suffrage for women constituents led by Lydia Maria Child, one of the most gifted and cultured women in the land, apologized for it as “untimely and injudicious.” That this advocate of “Equal Rights for All,” and long time defender of “woman's rights” would repudiate the women's claims at the first opportunity to translate theory into reality was an outcome no woman had suspected. Did his defection signify apostacy of other friends, the women asked each other in alarm, and worked the harder to avert that possibility.
In May, 1866, the first Woman's Rights Convention since that of May, 1860, was held in New York. Suffrage forces had been reorganized, and new recruits had taken the places of defections. At the opening of the convention, resolutions were adopted calculated to fix the purpose of the convention, which was to plead with Congress to consider suffrage for women as a question of immediate importance, and if nothing more could be achieved to protest against putting the word male in the constitution as defining electors. Twice resolutions were passed and delivered to Congress, fortifying the appeals that were being sent in by petition. An address to Congress prepared by Miss Anthony was also read, adopted and later laid upon the desk of every Senator and Representative. In part, Miss Anthony said:
“Men and parties must pass away, but justice is eternal; and they only who work in harmony with its laws are immortal. All who have carefully noted the proceedings of this congress, and contrasted your speeches with those made under the old régime of slavery, must have seen the added power and eloquence that greater freedom gives. But still you propose no action on your grand ideas. Your joint resolutions, your reconstruction reports do not reflect your highest thought. The constitution in basing representation on ‘respective numbers’ covers a broader ground than any you have yet proposed, but the only tenable ground of representation is universal suffrage, as it is only through universal suffrage that the principle of ‘Equal Rights to All’ can be realized. With you we have just passed through the agony of death, the resurrection and triumph of another revolution, doing all in our power to mitigate its horrors and gild its glories. And now think you, we have no souls to fire, no brains to weigh your arguments; that after education such as this, we can stand silent witnesses while you sell our birthright of liberty? ... Our demand must ever be: ‘No compromise of human rights. No admission in the constitution of inequality of rights, or disfranchisement on account of color or sex.’”
Three conspicuous figures upon the program at this convention were Theodore Tilton, Henry Ward Beecher and Wendell Phillips. There were no men who exercised a more compelling political leadership than they at that moment. No voices in the land were so eloquent as those of Beecher and Phillips, and their influence was enormous, with the people, with Congress and the Republican party. In the light of what happened afterwards, their speeches were fraught with historic significance. Said Henry Ward Beecher:
“I can scarcely express my sense of the leap the public mind and the public moral sense have taken within this time. The barrier is out of the way (slavery abolished). That which made the American mind untrue logically to itself is smitten down by the hand of God; and there is just at this time an immense tendency in the public mind to carry out all principles to their legitimate conclusions, go where they will. There never was a time when men were so practical, and so ready to learn. I am not a farmer, but I know that the spring comes but once a year. When the furrow is open is the time to put in your seed if you would gather a harvest in its season. Now, when the red-hot plowshare of war has opened a furrow in this nation, is the time to put in the seed. If any man says to me ‘Why will you agitate the woman question, when it is the hour for the black man?’ I answer, it is the hour for every man, black or white. When the public mind is open, if you have anything to say, say it. If you have any radical principles to urge, any organizing wisdom to make known, don't wait until quiet times come. Don't wait until the public mind shuts up altogether. Progress goes by periods, by jumps and spurts. We are in the favored hour. I, therefore, say whatever truth is to be known for the next fifty years in this nation let it be spoken now— ... I therefore advocate no sectional rights, no class rights, no sex rights, but the most universal form of right for all that live and breathe on the continent. ... I propose that you take expediency out of the way, and that you put a principle that is more enduring than expediency in the place of it—manhood and womanhood suffrage for all. You may just as well meet it now as at any other time. You never will have so favorable an occasion, so sympathetic a heart, never a public reason so willing to be convinced, as today.”
So far, splendid!
But the speech of Wendell Phillips sounded alarm anew for the women. His had been the staunchest, most uncompromising soul among the many great men friends of women's rights. Now he pleaded with the same culture and eloquence for ultimate justice that always characterized his addresses, but he seemed to put the date afar off, subtly and skillfully skirting around the practical questions of immediate policies.
Interviews with Congressmen, begging them to heed the petitions which were pouring in, followed the convention. The work did not cease until June 16, 1866, when Congress submitted the Fourteenth Amendment. It was an omnibus and a compromise amendment covering all the mooted points and contained the word male three times. Nationwide protest was expressed by press and platform. Said the Springfield Republican: “No one can deny that it was a mean thing to put the word male into the Fourteenth Amendment, it was an implied denial of suffrage to women.”
Sec. 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United Stàteś and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without the process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Sec. 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any male inhabitants of such State, being twentyone years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
Sec. 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Sec. 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.
Sec. 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.
Thaddeus Stevens, author of the amendment and majority leader of the House, had based representation upon the number of legal voters in the original draft, but conservatives made such vigorous protest that he was forced to introduce the word male. These protests were especially vigorous from California, Oregon and Nevada, where the possibility of Chinese preponderance was feared. Charles Sumner afterwards confessed that he had covered nineteen pages of foolscap in his effort to formulate the amendment so as to omit the word male.