[130] It is pleasant to record that a few years later Mr. Beecher"s vision was clear on the whole question, and he was often found on the woman"s rights platform, not only speaking himself, but his sister, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, also. On one occasion he conducted Miss Kate Field to the platform in Plymouth Church as gracefully as he ever handed a lady out to dinner, introduced her to the audience, and presided during her address. Sitting there he seemed to feel as much at his ease as if Col. Robert G. Ingersoll had been the speaker.
[131] As this meeting was hastily decided upon, there was no call issued; it was merely noticed in the county papers. _The Saratoga Whig_, August 18, 1854, says:
WOMEN"S RIGHTS.--The series of conventions that have been holding sessions in the village during the week, will close this day with a meeting for the discussion of the social, legal, and political rights of women, at which Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, and Miss Sarah Pellet will appear. The meetings will be held at St.
Nicholas Hall this afternoon at 3 and a half o"clock, and in the evening at 8 o"clock.
[132] Any one but the indomitable Susan B. Anthony would have abandoned all idea of a meeting, but, as it was advertised, she felt bound to make it a fact. This decision may seem the more remarkable in view of other facts, that Miss Anthony had but little experience as a speaker, and was fully aware of her deficiencies in that line; her forte lay in planning conventions, raising money, marshalling the forces, and smoothing the paths for others to go forward, make the speeches, and get the glory. Having listened in St. Nicholas Hall for several days to some of the finest orators in the country, it was with great trepidation that she resolved to attempt to hold such audiences as had crowded all the meetings during the week, and would no doubt continue to do so. However, she had one written speech, which she decided to divide, giving the industrial disabilities of women in the afternoon, and their political rights in the evening, supplementing each with whatever extemporaneous observations might strike her mind as she proceeded. With Mrs. Gage to speak at one session and Miss Pellet at the other, Miss Anthony rounded out both meetings to the general satisfaction. It was thus she always stood ready for every emergency; when n.o.body else would or could speak she did; when everybody wished to speak she was silent.--E. C. S.
[133] _The Daily Saratogian_. August 19th, said: Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, a medium-sized, lady-like looking woman, dressed in a tasty plum-colored silk with two flounces, made the first address upon some of the defects in the marriage laws, quoting Story, Kent, and Blackstone. She closed by speaking of Mrs. Marcet, an able writer on political economy, her book much used in schools. She referred to Miss Pinckney, of South Carolina, who in nullification times, wrote powerfully on that subject. It was said that party was consolidated by the nib of a lady"s pen. She was the first woman in the United States who was honored with a public funeral.
[134] _President_.--Martha C. Wright, of Auburn.
_Vice-Presidents_.--Rev. Samuel J. May, Syracuse; Lydia Mott, Albany; Ernestine L. Rose, New York; Antoinette L. Brown, New York; Susan B.
Anthony, Rochester; Augusta A. Wiggins, Saratoga Springs.
_Secretaries_.--Emily Jaques, Na.s.sau; Aaron M. Powell, Ghent; Mary L.
Booth, Williamsburgh.
_Finance Committee_.--Susan B. Anthony, Marietta Richmond, Mary S.
Anthony, Phebe H. Jones.
_Business Committee_.--Antoinette L. Brown, Ernestine L. Rose, T. W.
Higginson, Charles F. Hovey, of Boston; Phebe Merritt, of Michigan; Hon. William Hay, of Saratoga Springs.
[135] Now the successful editor of _Harper"s Bazar_.
[136] This year Miss Anthony canva.s.sed the State, holding conventions in fifty-four counties, organizing societies, getting signatures to pet.i.tions, and subscribers to _The Una_. At some of these meetings Mrs. Rose, Miss Brown, and Miss Filkins a.s.sisted by turn, but the chief part she carried through alone. She had posters for the entire State printed in Rochester, her father, brother Merritt, and Mary Luther folding and superscribing to all the postmasters and the sheriff of every county. The sheriffs, with but few exceptions, opened the Court Houses for the meetings, posted the bills, and attended to the advertising. Miss Anthony entered on this work without the pledge of a dollar. But with free meetings and collections in the afternoon, and a shilling admission in the evening, she managed to cover the entire expenses of the campaign.
[137] WOMEN"S RIGHTS PEt.i.tION.
_To the Honorable, the Senate and a.s.sembly of the State of New York_:
WHEREAS, the women of the State of New York are recognized as citizens by the Const.i.tution, and yet are disfranchised on account of s.e.x; we do respectfully demand the right of suffrage; a right which involves all other rights of citizenship, and which can not be justly withheld, when we consider the admitted principles of popular government, among which are the following:
1st. That all men are born free and equal.
2d. That government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed.
3d. That taxation and representation should go together.
4th. That those held amenable to laws should have a share in framing them.
We do, therefore, pet.i.tion that you will take the necessary steps so to revise the Const.i.tution of our State, as that all her citizens may enjoy equal political privileges.
[138] The committee were Susan B. Anthony, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette L. Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha C. Wright, Lydia Mott.
[139] At the close of this Convention, Charles F. Hovey, as was his usual custom, planned an excursion for those who had taken part in the meetings. He invited them to take a drive to the lake, a few miles out of Saratoga, gave them a bountiful repast, and together they spent a day rich in pleasant memories. Listening day after day to the wrongs perpetrated on woman by law and Gospel of man"s creation, Mr. Hovey always seemed to feel that he was in duty bound to throw what sunshine and happiness he could into the lives of women, and thus in a measure atone for the injustice of his s.e.x, and most royally he did this whenever an opportunity offered, not only while he lived, but by bequests at his death.
[140] Twenty years after this Mrs. Stanton met a lady in Texas, who told her about this Saratoga Convention. She said her attention was first called to the subject of woman"s rights by some tracts a friend of hers, then living in Georgia, brought home at that time, and that we could form but little idea of the intense interest with which they were read and discussed by quite a circle of ladies, who plied her aunt with innumerable questions about the Convention and the appearance and manners of the ladies who led the movement.
[141] It is now over forty years that the various branches of the Hutchinson family have been singing the liberal ideas of their day on the anti-slavery, temperance, and Woman"s Rights platforms, and they are singing still (1881) with the infusion of some new blood in the second and third generation. Only one year ago traveling in Kansas, on a dreary night train, with no sleeping car attached, I had worried through the weary hours until three o"clock in the morning, when the cars stopped at Fort Scott. I was slowly pacing up and down the aisle, when in came Asa Hutchinson, violin in hand, and a troop of boys and girls behind him. There we stood face to face, both well on the shady side of sixty-five, our locks as white as snow, each thinking the other was too old for such hard journeys, he still singing, I still preaching "equal rights to all." "Well," said I, "Asa, this is a very unchristian hour for you to be skylarking over the prairies of Kansas." "Ah!" said he, dolorously, "this is no skylarking; we sung last night until near eleven o"clock, shook hands, and talked until twelve; arose about two, waited an hour at a cold depot, and we all feel as cross as bears." "I can sympathize with you," I replied; "I spent the hours until twelve as you did, entertaining my countrymen and women, and have been trying to rest ever since." In talking over old times until the day dawned we forgot our fatigue, and as I left the cars they gave me a parting salute with the "good time coming."
How well I remember the power of the young Hutchinsons in the old mob days; four brothers and one sister standing side by side on the platform in Faneuil Hall, Boston. So hated were the Abolitionists and their doctrines, that not even Wendell Phillips or Abby Kelly could get a hearing, but when the sweet singers from the old Granite State came forward silence reigned, to be broken, however, the moment the last notes of harmony died upon their lips. E. C. S.
[142] Saratoga, Niagara, and Trenton Falls; Clifton, Avon, Sharon, and b.a.l.l.ston Springs, Lake George, etc. In making the tour In 1859, Miss Brown and Miss Anthony had some recherche out-door meetings in the groves of Clifton and Trenton that were highly praised by the press and the people, and in the long summer days most charming to themselves.
[143] The speakers were Samuel J. May, Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette L. Brown, Carrie D. Filkins, Lydia A. Jenkins, Aaron M. Powell, Hon.
Wm. Hay, Susan B. Anthony.
[144] If the intestate be a married man living, and having lived with his wife daring marriage, or if the intestate be a married woman living or having lived with her husband during marriage, and shall die without lawful descendants, born or to be born of such marriage, or a prior marriage, the inheritance shall descend to the surviving husband or wife, as the case may be, during his or her natural life, whether the inheritance came to the intestate on the part of the mother or father or otherwise.
[145] _President_.--Lucy Stone.
_Vice-Presidents_.--Lucretia Mott, of Pennsylvania; Elizabeth Jones, of Ohio; Rev. T. W. Higginson, of Ma.s.sachusetts; Cornelia Moore, of New Jersey; A. Bronson Alcott, of New Hampshire; Sarah H. Hallock, of New York.
_Secretaries_.--Martha C. Wright, of New York; Oliver Johnson, of New York; Henrietta Johnson, of New Jersey.
_Business Committee_.--Ernestine L. Rose, Susan B. Anthony, Wendell Phillips, James Mott, Mariana Johnson, T. W. Higginson, William Green, Jr.
_Treasurer_.--Wendell Phillips.
_Finance_.--Susan B. Anthony.
[146] At the close of chapter on Indiana, p. 315.
[147] John C. Fremont"s campaign.
[148] Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont.
[149] 1. _Resolved_, That the close of a Presidential election affords a peculiarly appropriate occasion to renew the demands of woman for a consistent application of Democratic principles.
2. _Resolved_, That the Republican Party, appealing constantly, through its orators, to female sympathy, and using for its most popular rallying cry a female name, is peculiarly pledged by consistency, to do justice hereafter in those States where it holds control.
3. _Resolved_, That the Democratic Party must be utterly false to its name and professed principles, or else must extend their application to both halves of the human race.
4. _Resolved_, That the present uncertain and inconsistent position of woman in our community, not fully recognized either as a slave or as an equal, taxed but not represented, authorized to earn property but not free to control it, permitted to prepare papers for scientific bodies but not to read them, urged to form political opinions but not allowed to vote upon them, all marks a transitional period in human history which can not long endure.
5. _Resolved_, That the main power of the woman"s rights movement lies in this: that while always demanding for woman better education, better employment, and better laws, it has kept steadily in view the one cardinal demand for the right of suffrage; in a democracy the symbol and guarantee of all other rights.
6. _Resolved_, That the monopoly of the elective franchise, and thereby all the powers of legislative government by man, solely on the ground of s.e.x, is a usurpation, condemned alike by reason and common-sense, subversive of all the principles of justice, oppressive and demoralizing in its operation, and insulting to the dignity of human nature.
7. _Resolved_, That while the constant progress of law, education, and industry prove that our efforts for women in these respects are not wasted, we yet proclaim ourselves unsatisfied, and are only encouraged to renewed efforts, until the whole be gained.
[150] During the struggle to extend slavery into that free State.
[151] Jeannette Brown Heath, daughter of Nathan Brown, of Montgomery County, New York. She traveled with Abby Kelly at one time as a companion. Jeannette was a famous horsewoman; the young ladies of the county thought themselves well off when they could purchase a steed that she had trained for the saddle. I remember many an escapade in my youth on a full-blooded black horse from Jeannette"s equery, as I lived in her neighborhood; she is now residing with two sons and one daughter in Rochester, N. Y., enjoying the needed rest after such an eventful life.--E. C. S.
[152] She gave $100,000 to the Observatory in Albany.
[153] EXTRACTS FROM THE WILL OF THE LATE CHARLES F. HOVEY, ESQ.