Friends are just beginning to discuss giving higher education to girls.
This is a fact especially significant in our discussion, because it has always been claimed that the Quaker doctrine that "souls have no s.e.x" led them to place woman on an "equality" with man before other sects had thought of allowing that they were equals. Lucretia Mott, Susan Anthony, Abby Kelley, and a great body of the women who adopted the resolution that set forth the uselessness of educating woman until she could vote, and who clamored for her entrance to men"s inst.i.tutions, were all of this sect that has kept its women generally far behind in the acquisition of knowledge.
In 1845 Mrs. Willard was invited to address the Teachers" Convention that met in Syracuse. She prepared a paper in which she set forth the idea that, "women, now sufficiently educated, should be employed and furnished by the men as committees, charged with the minute cares and supervision of the public schools," but declined the honor tendered her of delivering it in person. Sixty gentlemen from the convention visited her at the hotel, and, at their earnest request, she read the essay, which met with their emphatic approval of the plan she proposed. The employment of women in the common schools, and the system of normal schools, were projected by her.
A Teachers" Convention was held in Rochester in 1852. Miss Anthony, though a teacher, was not in attendance upon it, but she records that she went in and listened for a few hours to a discussion of the causes that led to their profession being held in less esteem than those of the doctor, lawyer, and minister. In her judgment, the kernel of the matter was not alluded to, so she arose and said: "Mr. President." She records that "at length President Davies stepped to the front and said in a tremulous, mocking tone," "What will the lady have?" "I wish, sir," she said, "to speak to the question." "What is the pleasure of the convention?" asked Mr. Davies. A gentleman moved that she be heard; another seconded the motion; whereupon, she records, "a discussion, pro and con, followed, lasting full half an hour, when a vote was taken of the men only, and permission was granted by a small majority." She adds that it was lucky for her that the thousand women crowding that hall could not vote on the question, for they would have given a solid "No." The president then announced "The lady can speak." "It seems to me, gentlemen," said she, "that none of you quite comprehend the cause of the disrespect of which you complain. Do you not see 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, every man of you who chooses this profession tacitly acknowledges that he has no more brains than a woman? Would you exalt your profession, exalt those who labor with you. Would you make it more lucrative, increase the salaries of the women engaged in the n.o.ble work of educating our future Presidents, Senators, and Congressmen."
Several thoughts arise in regard to this scene, which was so strongly in contrast with the conduct of Mrs. Willard or any of the great educators.
Miss Anthony gave no reason for her belief that the entrance of woman upon the other professions would raise either the status or the wages of those engaged in the teacher"s profession, and as a matter of fact they have not done so. It was not the society that cast scorn at woman"s "lack of brains" which a.s.sisted to remove the natural prejudice against her a.s.suming duties that had been deemed unsuited to her physique and her necessary work.
Meantime, one year before the Rochester meeting was held, the first college for women had been chartered at Auburn, New York, under the name of "Auburn Female University." In 1853 it was transferred to Elmira, and it was formally opened in 1855. It was placed under the care of the Congregational Church, but its charter required that it should have representative trustees from five other denominations. Its course of study for the degree of A. B. was essentially the same that was then pursued in the men"s colleges of the State. It was expected to rely upon endowment, which put woman"s education upon a new and more secure footing.
Suffrage leaders lose no opportunity to represent the Church as an enemy to woman"s advancement. Nothing can be further from the truth; and in striking evidence stand the colleges, which, while unsectarian in spirit and in method, have been established and cared for by special religious denominations. Dr. Jacobi, in her book "Common Sense," takes up the tale and says: "The Mount Holyoke Seminary, the immediate successor of that at Troy, was opened in 1837 by Miss Lyon, in spite of the opposition of the clergy." Many besides the clergy were opposed to the plan for which Miss Lyon was endeavoring to raise money. Her idea that the entire domestic work of the establishment could be done by pupils and teachers, was thought unwise and hopeless. In that n.o.ble school, where thousands of women have been educated, a great number have become missionaries. When a Suffrage convention in session in Worcester wrote to Miss Lyon, asking her to interest herself in the wrongs of her s.e.x, she answered, "I cannot leave my work." Neither was Va.s.sar College founded from any impulse or suggestion of Suffrage agitators, but in a spirit exactly the opposite.
The real impetus to its founding came from Milo Parker Jewett, who was born in Vermont in 1808, and was graduated at Dartmouth College and at Andover Theological Seminary. He was active in the formation of the common-school system of Ohio, and in 1839 he founded The Judson Female Inst.i.tute in Marion, Alabama. He established a seminary for girls in Poughkeepsie in 1855. He had studied law, and became the friend and legal adviser of Matthew Va.s.sar, who, being unmarried, was casting about for a method of disposing of his fortune. He suggested to Mr. Va.s.sar an endowed college for women, and visited the universities and libraries of Europe with a plan of organization in mind. Mr. Va.s.sar gladly accepted this great enlargement upon an idea that had lain dormant in his own mind, and Va.s.sar College was founded, Dr. Jewett becoming its first president in 1862.
I may claim to have been beside the cradle of Va.s.sar College; for when Dr.
Jewett resigned the presidency in 1864, my father named the successor who was appointed, Dr. John H. Raymond, his life-long friend. Dr. Raymond came to Rochester to discuss a plan of work, and, knowing my father"s interest, I was on tiptoe to hear about the new college. At my earnest solicitation, he and Dr. Raymond and Prest. Anderson permitted me to be present at their discussions. I learned to comprehend the value of womanliness to the world by the estimate that those n.o.ble educators put upon it. It was evident that they were arranging for those for whose minds they felt respect. They made no foolish remarks about the superiority, inferiority, or equality of the s.e.xes, and had no contempt to throw upon the old education of tutor, and library, and young ladies" seminary. They did not sneer at the "female mind," but they did talk of the feminine mind as of something as distinct in its essence from the masculine mind as the feminine form is distinct in its outlines. To "preserve womanliness" was a task they felt they must fulfil, or the women for whose good they labored would one day call them to account. The dictum so frequently in the mouths of Suffrage leaders, "There is no s.e.x in brain," would have been abhorrent to them. In their view, there was as much s.e.x in brain as in hand; and the education that did not, through cultivation, emphasize that fact, would be a lower and not a higher product. They laid that intellectual corner-stone in love, and in the faith that the same womanly spirit which, when there was not college education enough to go round, had said, "Give it to the boys, because their work must be public," would find, through the glad return the boys were making, a way to teach the world still higher lessons of womanly character and influence. Since that time, college after college has arisen without a dream on the part of the founders, faculties, or students that "every effort to educate woman, until you accord to her the right to vote, is futile and a waste of labor," and it may well be that the women educated in these colleges will decide that, because political rights do acknowledge s.e.x, therefore the word "male" should not be stricken from any State const.i.tution.
Before the committee of the New York State Const.i.tutional Convention in 1894, Mr. Edward Lauterbach, who was arguing in favor of woman suffrage, said: "It was only after the establishment of the Willard School at Troy, only after its n.o.ble founder, believing that women and men were formed in the same mould, successfully tried the experiment of educating women in the higher branches, that steps for higher education became generally taken." If Mr. Lauterbach imagines that Mrs. Willard was in the most distant way an advocate of woman"s doing the same work as man in the same way, he is unfamiliar with her life and work. Mrs. Willard, in setting forth her ideal of woman"s education, said "Education should be adapted to female character and duties. To do this would raise the character of man.... Why may not housewifery be reduced to a system as well as the other arts? If women were properly fitted for instruction, they would be likely to teach children better than the other s.e.x; they could afford to do it cheaper; and men might be at liberty to add to the wealth of the nation by any of the thousand occupations from which women are necessarily debarred." Old-fashioned wisdom, but choicely good. Mr. Lauterbach further said: "What wonder that, being so fully equipped in every mental attribute, in every intellectual qualification, they will be able not only to cast a vote but to take practical part in the administration of the government?"
A female Solon would be a woman still, and in a democracy the intellectual is not the only qualification needed. This certainly was the belief of Mrs. Willard, and in 1868, when the Suffrage leaders were holding a convention in Washington, and were urging that Congress should pa.s.s a sixteenth amendment admitting women to suffrage, Almira Lincoln Phelps, sister of Mrs. Willard, herself an educator and an author of text-books, wrote to Isabella Beecher Hooker: "Hoping you will receive kindly what I am about to write, I will proceed without apologies. I have confidence in your n.o.bleness of soul, and that you know enough of me to believe in my devotion to the best interests of woman. I can scarcely realize that you are giving your name and influence to a cause which, with some good, but, as I think, misguided women, numbers among its advocates others with loose morals.... If we could with propriety pet.i.tion the Almighty to change the condition of the s.e.xes, and let men take a turn in bearing children and in suffering the physical ailments peculiar to women, which render them unfit for certain positions and business, why, in this case, if we really wish to be men, and thought G.o.d would change the established order, we might make our pet.i.tion; but why ask Congress to make us men? Circ.u.mstances drew me from the quiet domestic life while I was yet young, but success in labors which involved publicity, and which may have been of advantage to society, was never considered as an equivalent to my own heart for such a loss of retirement. In the name of my sainted sister, Emma Willard, and of my friend Lydia Sigourney, and, I think I might say, in the name of the women of the past generation who have been prominent as writers and educators (the exception may be made of Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, and a few licentious French writers) in our own country and in Europe, let me urge the high-souled and honorable of our s.e.x to turn their energies into that channel which will enable them to act for the true interests of their s.e.x."
In a woman"s club, last winter, a New York teacher, Miss Helen Dawes Brown, a graduate of Va.s.sar College, founder of the Woman"s University Club and also one of the founders of Barnard College, in a speech said in part: "The young girl who doesn"t dance, who doesn"t play games, who can"t skate and can"t row, is a girl to be pitied. She is losing a large part of what Chesterfield calls the "joy and t.i.tivation of youth." If our young girl has learned to be good, teach her not to disregard the externals of goodness. Let our girls, in college and out, learn to be agreeable. A girl"s education should, first of all, be directed to fitting her for the things of home. We talk of woman as if the only domestic relations were those of wife and mother. Let us not forget that she is also a granddaughter, a daughter, a sister, an aunt. I should like to see her made her best in all these characters, before she undertakes public duties. The best organization in the world is the home. Whatever in the education of girls draws them away from that, is an injury to civilization."
At the close of an article in the "Outlook," written by Elizabeth Fisher Read, of Smith College, she said, speaking of their last adaptation of athletics: "From the beginning, the policy of Smith College has been, not to duplicate the means of development offered in men"s colleges, but to provide courses and methods of study that should do for women what the men"s courses did for them. Emphasis has been put, not on the resemblances between men and women, but rather on the differences. The effort has not been to turn out new women, capable of doing anything man can do, from walking thirty miles to solving the problems of higher mathematics.
Instead of this, the college has tried to develop its students along natural womanly lines, not along the lines that would naturally be followed in training men."
This sounds strangely like Mrs. Willard, who would be the first to rejoice in the new education and in the old spirit that it can develop. Of course Suffrage claims to have the same end in view. Every college woman must decide for herself where she will stand on the question. So far, there never has been any open affiliation between the colleges and the Suffrage movement. We wait to hear a final verdict.
A contributor to the Suffrage department of the Woman"s Edition of the Rochester "Post-Express," March 26, 1896, said: "Will Rochester give to its daughters the same advantages as to its sons, or will it say to the girls who have no money to leave home and seek in Smith and Wellesley the culture they cannot procure here: "You cannot be thoroughly educated; you have no money; you can have no education; sit and spin; bake and brew--but don"t bother about higher education," or will the University of Rochester recognize the one splendid opportunity that awaits it, the one last chance to take its proper place and become all that the highest American standards demand for a University?"
The time has not yet fully come when these same sentimentalists shall say to the faculty and trustees of Va.s.sar, Wellesley and Smith: "Will you not give to the boys of Poughkeepsie, Northhampton, and Wellesley the same advantages as to the girls? Or will you say to them: "You cannot be thoroughly educated; you have no money; you can have no education; work in the shop or on the farm, but don"t bother about higher education."" This is Suffrage logic, and there is no more reason why the educational inst.i.tutions in which men study from the age of eighteen to twenty-two should be invaded by women of that age, than why women"s inst.i.tutions should be invaded by men. Yet this would be the destruction of our women"s colleges. When Miss Anthony headed a delegation that went bodily to force co-education on Rochester University, she was told that cla.s.ses open to women had been connected with the college for years.
The kind of education best suited to the idea of Suffrage is a training in political history and present political issues; but the women who have talked loudly and vaguely of the right of suffrage for years have been the last to present such knowledge. I have read their "History," attended their conventions, glanced at their magazines, but never have come upon the discussion of a single public issue. I think those most familiar with it will bear me out if I make the statement that their princ.i.p.al periodical, "The Woman"s Journal," edited by Mary A. Livermore, Julia Ward Howe, Mr. Blackwell, and Alice Stone Blackwell, has not contained any presentations of questions of public policy in the past ten years.
Those whose names are signed to the Suffrage Woman"s Bible, and who are therefore responsible for that disgraceful effusion, have little right to claim to be intelligent instructors of their s.e.x. With an ignorance that is monumental, Frances Ellen Burr glories in the fact that "the Revising Committee refer to a woman"s translation of the Bible as their ultimate authority for the Greek, Latin, and Hebrew text," and they add that "Julia Smith, this distinguished scholar," is the only person, man or woman, who ever made a translation of the Bible without help. They say: "Wycliff made a translation from the Vulgate a.s.sisted by Nicholas of Hereford. He was not sufficiently familiar with Hebrew and Greek to translate from those tongues. Coverdale"s translation was not done alone. Tyndale, in his translation, had the a.s.sistance of Frye, of William Roye, and also of Miles Coverdale. Julia Smith translated the whole Bible absolutely alone, without consultation with any one"! Again they say, "King James appointed fifty-four men of learning to translate the Bible. Seven of them died, and forty-seven carried the work on. Compare this corps of workers with one little woman performing the Herculean task without one suggestion or word of advice from mortal man "! Yes, compare it! Uncultured Julia Smith, stirred by the Millerite prophecies, did the best she could to enlighten her own mind, and should be honored for so doing; but what is to be said of the women who in this day, in cool print, are willing to show that they have no comprehension of her grotesque errors or of the difficulties that beset a real scholar in his n.o.ble task? Protest at woman"s educational deprivation comes with ill-grace from those who have thus revealed their own lack of knowledge of the oldest literature in the world, the model of poetry and prose, the guardian of the purity of our English speech.
Educated women desire that woman should do all that strength and time allow in the care of the public schools. The school suffrage ought to be a boon for them. But it does not, so far, look as if women could make it so.
The figures of the school vote of women in Connecticut, for three years, occasion serious question whether the use of the ballot is the way in which woman is to effect anything. In Staten Island, ignorance in women voted out education, and a tremendous effort had to be made to vote it in again. The number of men who voted at the last general election in Connecticut was about 164,000. The women outnumber the men, but the following table represents the school vote in the State of Emma Willard.
It certainly does not represent the amount of interest taken in education, nor in the common schools:
COUNTIES. 1893. 1894. 1895.
Hartford. 1293 1186 689 New Haven. 973 949 570 New London. 364 873 185 Fairneld. 273 198 126 Windham 176 182 148 Litchfield 159 85 50 Middles.e.x 60 136 101 Tolland 372 137 37
This gives the results from all but three or four towns in the State.
Aside from any other considerations, the uncertainty attending the vote of an element whose first call is elsewhere than at the polls, is a menace to the welfare of the schools as well as of republican inst.i.tutions.
One of the grievances of the Suffrage leaders lay in the fact that the literary women of the country would express no sympathy with their efforts. Poets and authors in general were denounced. Gail Hamilton, who had the good of woman in her heart, who was better informed on public affairs than perhaps any woman in the United States, and whose trenchant pen cut deep and spared not, always reprobated the cause. Mrs. Stowe stood aloof, and so did Catherine Beecher, though urged to the contrary course by Henry Ward Beecher and Isabella Beecher Hooker. In a letter to Mrs.
Cutler, Catherine Beecher said: "I am not opposed to women"s speaking in public to any who are willing to hear, nor am I opposed to women"s preaching, sanctioned as it is by a prophetic apostle--as one of the millennial results. Nor am I opposed to a woman"s earning her own independence in any lawful calling, and wish many more were open to her which are now closed. Nor am I opposed to the organization and agitation of women, as women, to set forth the wrongs suffered by great mult.i.tudes of our s.e.x, which are multiform and most humiliating. Nor am I opposed to women"s undertaking to govern boys and men--they always have, and they always will. Nor am I opposed to the claim that women have equal rights with men. I rather claim that they have the sacred superior rights that G.o.d and good men accord to the weak and defenceless, by which they have the easiest work, the most safe and comfortable places, and the largest share of all the most agreeable and desirable enjoyments of this life. My main objection to the Woman-Suffrage organization is this, that a wrong mode is employed to gain a right object. The right object sought is, to remedy the wrongs and relieve the sufferings of great mult.i.tudes of our s.e.x; the wrong mode is that which aims to enforce by law, instead of by love. It is one which a.s.sumes that man is the author and abettor of all these wrongs, and that he must be restrained and regulated by const.i.tutions and laws, as the chief and most trustworthy methods. I hold that the fault is as much, or more, with women than with men, inasmuch as we have all the power we need to remedy the wrongs complained of, and yet we do not use it for that end. It is my deep conviction that all reasonable and conscientious men of our age, and especially of our country, are not only willing but anxious to provide for the good of our s.e.x. They will gladly bestow all that is just, reasonable, and kind, whenever we unite in asking in the proper spirit and manner. In the half a century since I began to work for the education and relief of my s.e.x, I have succeeded so largely by first convincing intelligent and benevolent women that what I aimed at was right and desirable, and then securing their influence with their fathers, brothers, and husbands, and always with success. Why not take the shorter course, and ask to have the men do for us what we might do for ourselves if we had the ballot? Now if women are all made voters, it will be their duty to vote, and also to qualify themselves for that duty. But already women have more than they can do well in all that appropriately belongs to them, and, to add the civil and political duties of men, would be deemed a measure of injustice and oppression by those who are opposed."
Miss Beecher, like Mrs. Willard and Mrs. Phelps, made text-books for the use of her own seminaries, and her Arithmetic, and Mental and Moral Philosophy, and Applied Theology, were among the educational forces of her day. It is one of the significant signs of the times that science and education, as well as philanthropy, are occupying themselves just now with childhood and motherhood and housewifery. Mrs. Willard"s high ideal of womanliness is beginning to be set forth by the electric light of modern thought.
CHAPTER IX.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND THE CHURCH.
The eighth count in the Suffrage indictment reads: "He allows her in Church, as well as in State, but a subordinate position, claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry, and, with some exceptions, from any public partic.i.p.ation in the affairs of the Church."
More than thirty years later than this, Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, and Mrs. Gage wrote in the preface to their "History of Woman Suffrage:"
"American men may quiet their consciences with the delusion that no such injustice exists in this country as in Eastern nations. Though, with the general improvement in our inst.i.tutions, woman"s condition must inevitably have improved also, yet the same principle that degrades her in Turkey insults her here. Custom forbids a woman there to enter a mosque, or call the hour for prayers; here it forbids her a voice in Church councils or State legislatures.... The Church, too, took alarm, knowing that with the freedom and education acquired in becoming a component part of the Government, woman would not only outgrow the power of the priesthood, and religious superst.i.tions, but would also invade the pulpit, interpret the Bible anew from her own standpoint, and claim an equal voice in all ecclesiastical councils. With fierce warnings and denunciations from the pulpit, and false interpretations of Scripture, women have been intimidated and misled, and their religious feelings have been played upon for their more complete subjugation. While the general principles of the Bible are in favor of the most enlarged freedom and equality of the race, isolated texts have been used to block the wheels of progress in all periods; thus bigots have defended capital punishment, intemperance, slavery, polygamy, and the subjection of woman. The creeds of all nations make obedience to man the corner-stone of her religious character.
Fortunately, however, more liberal minds are now giving us higher and purer expositions of the Scriptures."
It is fifteen years since these statements were made, and we have now the first instalment of "the Bible interpreted anew from her own standpoint,"
which presumably issues, in their view, from more liberal minds, and is higher and purer than the old one. In the Introduction to that Suffrage Woman"s Bible (which is as yet only a commentary on the Pentateuch), Mrs.
Stanton says: "From the inauguration of the movement for woman"s emanc.i.p.ation the Bible has been used to hold her in her" divinely appointed sphere" prescribed by the Old and New Testaments. The canon and civil law, Church and State, priests and legislators, all political parties and religious denominations, have alike taught that woman was made after man, of man, and for man,--an inferior being, subject to man.
Creeds, codes, Scriptures, and statutes are all based on this idea. The fashions, forms, ceremonies, and customs of society, church ordinances, and discipline, all grow out of this idea.... So perverted is the religious element in her nature, that with faith and works she is the chief support of the Church and Clergy,--the very powers that make her emanc.i.p.ation impossible."
I know that many believers in Suffrage are also believers in the Bible and in denominational Christianity. Mrs. Helen Montgomery says, in the Woman"s edition of the Rochester "Post-Express," that one reason for her favorable consideration of it is, that "Two-thirds of the membership of the Christian church cannot express their conviction at the polls, since women may not vote." "Much of the callousness of politicians to church opinion,"
she adds, "comes from the knowledge that that opinion is backed by few votes." I also know that many of those who disbelieve in Suffrage may also disbelieve in the Bible, the clergy, and the Church. I further recognize the fact that the church and religion are not synonymous terms. I have no attacks to make, and no special pleading to do. I am discussing the question of Suffrage as I find it in the writing and the speech of its proposers and its present conspicuous advocates. Each American woman has this mighty problem before her, and she must settle it according to her own conscience and best enlightenment.
Mrs. Stanton admits with shame that woman is one of the chief supporters of the Church. Mrs. Montgomery says with delight that she forms two-thirds of the Christian Church. Individual members of Suffrage organizations may be in sympathy with Christianity, or against it; but the movement itself cannot be on both sides of this question. What is its record? I will endeavor to trace it, and will then, as best I may, attempt to say a few words upon the general subject of the "subordination of woman."
In the course of the first clause of their accusation, the women say: "Claiming Apostolic authority for her exclusion from the ministry." In view of the fact that Paul frequently alludes to the teaching and ministrations of women, it has come to be generally thought among Christian scholars, I believe, that this injunction that they "keep silence in the churches," referred to the propriety of their conduct in the moral,--or rather the immoral,--atmosphere by which the Church at Corinth was surrounded. This seems reasonable, because it may be observed that, in writing to Timothy, who was in Macedonia, to t.i.tus, who was in Crete, and to the Church at Ephesus, while he repeats his general injunctions of woman"s submission to man, and especially to her husband, he says nothing relative to her public work in the church. But if Paul had been writing to the church in New England, in 1634, and in New York in 1774, his injunction to silence might well have been applied to the first woman preachers to whom Americans were called upon to listen. When Anne Hutchinson, in Boston, preached that "the power of the Holy Spirit dwelleth perfectly in every believer, and the inward revelations of her own spirit, and the conscious judgment of her own mind are of authority paramount to any word of G.o.d," she shook the young colony to its foundation, as no man had shaken it. The militia that had been ordered to the Pequot war refused to march, because she had proclaimed their chaplain to be "under a covenant of works, and not under a covenant of grace." Her influence, and not her ballot, if she had one, threatened anarchy in the state, and caused a schism in the church such as might have crushed out the life from the infant body to which Paul was writing.
In 1774 appeared the next public woman preacher, Ann Lee. She proclaimed that G.o.d was revealed a dual being, male and female, to the Jews; that Jesus revealed to the world G.o.d as a Father; and that she,--Ann Lee, "Mother Ann,"--was G.o.d"s revelation of the Mother, "the bearing spirit of the creation of G.o.d." She founded the sect of Shakers, whose main articles of belief, besides the one above mentioned, were: community of goods; non- resistance to force, even in self-defence; the sinfulness of all human authority, and consequently the sinfulness of partic.i.p.ation in any form of government; absolute separation of the s.e.xes, and consequently no marriage inst.i.tution. Her mission as "the Christ of the Second Appearing," began with her announcement of G.o.d"s, wrath upon all marriage, and the public renunciation of her own. In New York, as in New England, her proclamations against government and war tended directly to anarchy, and in the momentous year 1776 she was for that reason imprisoned in Poughkeepsie, whence she was released by Governor Clinton"s pardon.
The next pulpitless preacher, in the succession we are considering, appeared in this country in 1828. Her name was Frances Wright. She was a person of totally different mind and methods from Anne Hutchinson and Ann Lee. She was professedly an enemy of religion. Anne Hutchinson attacked church and state in the name of Christian human perfection. Ann Lee attacked church and state in the name of woman; she preached communism and separation of the s.e.xes in the name of Christ; she taught the abolition of marriage. Frances Wright preached communism and s.e.x license in the name of irreligion. In opening the columns of the "Free Inquirer" to discussion, in New York, in 1828, she said: "Religion is true--and in that case the conviction of its truth should dictate every human word and govern every sublunary action,--or it is a deception. If it is a deception, it is not useless only, it is mischievous; it is mischievous by its idle terrors; it is mischievous by its false morality; it is mischievous by its hypocrisy; by its fanaticism; by its dogmatism; by its threats; by its hopes; by its promises; and last, though not least, by its waste of public time and public money." While deciding that it was a deception, she revealed the evil results to which abandonment of all faith can lead a woman with a clever brain and a fearless tongue. She constantly denounced religion as the source of all injustice and bigotry and of the "enslavement of women."
The editors of the "Suffrage History" say: "As early as 1828 the standard of the Christian party in politics was openly unfurled. Frances Wright had long been aware of its insidious efforts, and its reliance upon women for its support. Ignorant, superst.i.tious, devout, woman"s general lack of education made her a fitting instrument for the work of thus undermining the republic. Having deprived her of her just rights, the country was now to find in woman its most dangerous foe. Frances Wright lectured that winter in the large cities of the western and middle States, striving to rouse the nation to the new danger which threatened it. The clergy at once, became her most bitter opponents. The cry of "infidel" was started on every side, though her work was of vital importance to the country and undertaken from the purest philanthropy."
It was high time that a Christian and a non-Christian party in politics should unfurl a banner; for to the dauntless courage of the land from which she came--Scotland--she added the polished manner of the country from which came D"Arusmont, the husband from whom she was soon parted. To the zeal of the Covenanter, the moral blackness of the infidel, and the political creed of the Commune, she united the doctrine of Free Love. As she set these forth with blandishments of speech and manner, the country did indeed find in this woman a most dangerous foe. When "f.a.n.n.y Wright societies" sprang up in New York and the West, horror might well be felt by lovers of the Republic.
Lucretia Mott was the next public preacher in this succession. Pure in personal character, lofty in spirit, winning in address, she took for her motto, "Truth for Authority, not Authority for Truth." As authority for that truth, she took Elias Hicks.
Dr. Jacobi, in "Common Sense," says: "The abolitionists were declared to have set aside the laws of G.o.d when they allowed women to speak in public: and, by a pastoral letter, the Congregational churches of Ma.s.sachusetts were directed to defend themselves against heresy, by closing their doors to the innovators. The Methodists denounced the Garrisonian societies as no-government, no-Sabbath, no-church, no-Bible, no-marriage, women"s rights societies." Not the Methodists alone, but the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, the Baptists, the Unitarians, the Universalists, and the Quakers so denounced that faction of them in which culminated many of the doctrines of Anne Hutchinson, Ann Lee, Frances Wright, and Lucretia Mott.
In an appeal to the women of New York, in 1860, signed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lydia Mott, Ernestine Rose, Martha C. Wright, and Susan B.
Anthony, we read: "The religion of our day teaches that, in the most sacred relations of the race, the woman must ever be subject to the man; that in the husband centres all power and learning; that the difference in position between husband and wife is as vast as that between Christ and the Church; and woman struggles to hold the n.o.ble impulses of her nature in abeyance to opinions uttered by a Jewish teacher, which, alas! the ma.s.s believe to be the will of G.o.d."
In 1895, among the names of those responsible for the Suffrage Woman"s Bible, we find three to which the t.i.tle "Rev." is prefixed. The opening commentary on the first verses of Genesis, where the creation of man is described, says: "Instead of three male personages, as generally represented, a Heavenly Father, Mother, and Son would seem more rational.
The first step in the elevation of woman to her true position, as an equal factor in human progress, is the cultivation of the religious sentiment in regard to her dignity and equality, the recognition by the rising generation of an ideal Heavenly Mother, to whom their prayers should be addressed, as well as to a Father." Here is Ann Lee"s doctrine revived with a mocking suggestion that savors more of Frances Wright than of its poor, half-crazed author. The soul-sufficiency of Ann Hutchinson, the spiritual anarchy of Lucretia Mott, the infidelity and the veiled coa.r.s.eness of Frances Wright, have all found fit setting in this commentary on the Pentateuch. I know that Miss Anthony repudiates the Suffrage Woman"s Bible in the name of the a.s.sociation of which she is President. It certainly does not represent the faith or the culture or the doctrines of many who belong to that body; but she cannot really repudiate it for herself or for them. It was promised in the History of which she is co-editor, it was foreshadowed in her circular quoted above, as well as in innumerable speeches of hers in convention. Those Christian and philanthropic bodies that have attached themselves to the Suffrage movement have this book to account for and with. Whatever they may personally decide to think or say of it, it is the consummate blossom of the spirit of the Suffrage movement, and the names it bears upon its t.i.tle-page represent the varied cla.s.ses that have worked for the political enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman. By the world outside it will so be dealt with.
Few movements have been started, especially among women, that did not professedly stand upon high moral and religious ground. Fourierism was superhuman in its intention,--in this country, at least. Free-thinking hopes to deliver the soul from the bondage of superst.i.tion in all religion. Mormonism was founded as "the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter- Day Saints." Communism at Oneida was professedly built upon the doctrine of human perfection in Christian love. The disaster to the soul is in proportion to the amount of perversion of a living faith. Every movement must be judged, not by what its advocates suppose themselves to believe, but by that which time proves they do believe.