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CLARINA HOWARD NICHOLS FOR WOMEN'S
RIGHTS
The Responsibilities of Woman
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Clarina Howard Nichols.
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Howard Nichols' Responsibilities of
Woman speech.
It follows the full text transcript of
Clarina Howard Nichols' The Responsibilities of
Woman speech, delivered at Worcester, Massachusetts -
October 15, 1851.
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My friends, I have
made no preparation to address you. |
I left home,
feeling that, if I had anything to do here, I
should have the grace given me to do it; or if
there should be any branch of the subject not
sufficiently presented, I would present it.
And now, friends,
in following so many speakers, who have so well
occupied the ground, I will come as a gleaner,
and be as a Ruth among my fellow-laborers.
I commenced life with the most refined notions
of woman's sphere. My pride of womanhood lay
within this nice sphere. I know now how it was,
perhaps because I am of mountain growth, but I
could, even than, see over the barriers of that
sphere, and see that, however easy it might be
for me to keep within it, as a daughter, a great
majority of women were outside its boundaries;
driven thither by their own, or invited by the
necessities and interests of those they loved. I
saw our farmers' wives, women esteemed for every
womanly virtue, impelled by emergencies, helping
their husbands in labors excluded from the
modern woman's sphere. I was witness, on one
occasion, to a wife's helping her husband who
was ill and of feeble strength, and too poor to
hire, to pile the logs, preparatory to clearing
the ground that was to grow their daily bread;
and my sympathies, which recognized in her act
the self-sacrificing love of woman, forbade that
I should judge her out of her sphere. For I felt
in my heart that, if I were a wife and loved my
husband, I, too, would help him when he needed
help, even if it were to roll logs; and what
true-hearted woman would not do the same?
But, friends, it is only since I have met the
varied responsibilities of life, that I have
comprehended woman's sphere; and I have come to
regard it as lying within the whole
circumference of humanity. If, as is claimed by
the most ultra opponents of the wife's legal
individuality, claimed as a conclusive, argument
in favor of her legal nonentity, the interests
of the parties are identical, then I claim, as a
legitimate conclusion, that their spheres are
also identical. For interests determine duties,
and duties are the landmarks of spheres.
Wherever a man may rightfully go, it is proper
that woman should go, and share his
responsibilities. Wherever my husband goes,
thither would I follow him, if to the
battlefield.
No, I would not
follow him there; I would hold him back by his
coat-skirts, and say, "Husband, this is wrong.
What will you gain by war? It will cost as much
money to fight for a bag of gold, or a lot of
land, as it will to pay the difference; and if
you fight, our harvests are wasted, our hearths
made desolate, our homes filled with sorrow, and
vice and immorality roll back upon us from the
fields of human slaughter." This is the way I
would follow my husband where he cannot
rightfully go.
But I may not dwell longer on woman's sphere. I
shall say very little of woman's rights; but I
would lay the axe at the root of the tree. I
would impress upon you woman's responsibilities,
and the means fitly to discharge them before
Heaven.
I stand before you, a mother , a sister, a
daughter; filling every relation that it is
given to woman to fill. And by the token that I
have a husband, a father and brothers, whom I
revere for their manliness, and love for their
tenderness, I may speak to you with confidence,
and say, I respect manhood. I love it when it
aspires to the high destiny which God has opened
to it. And it is because I have confidence in
manhood, that I am here to press upon it the
claims of womanhood. My first claim for woman is
the means of education, that she may understand
and be able to meet her responsibilities.
We are told very much of "Woman's Mission."
Well, every mission supposes a missionary. Every
missionary whom God sends out, every being who
is called of God to labor in the vineyard of
humanity, recognizes his call before the world
does. Not the world, not even God's chosen
people, recognized the mission of his Son, till
he had proclaimed that mission, and sealed it
with his dying testimony. And the world has not
yet fully recognized the saving power of the
mission of Jesus Christ. Now, if woman has a
mission, she must first feel the struggle of the
missionary in her own soul, and reveal it to her
brother man, before the world will comprehend
her claims, and accept her mission. Let her,
then, say to man "Here, God has committed to me
the little tender infant to be developed in body
and mind to the maturity of manhood, womanhood,
and I am ignorant of the means for accomplishing
either.
Give me knowledge,
instruction, that I may develop its powers,
prevent disease, and teach it the laws of its
mental and physical organism." It is you,
fathers, husbands, who are responsible for this
instruction; your happiness is equally involved
with ours. Yourselves must reap the harvest of
our ignorance or knowledge. If we suffer, you
suffer also; both must suffer or rejoice in our
mutual offspring.
I have introduced this subject of woman's
responsibilities, that I might, if possible,
impress upon you a conviction of the expediency
and duty of yielding our right to the means that
will enable us to be the helpers of men, in the
true sense of helpers. A gentleman said to me,
not long since, "I like your woman's rights,
since I find it is the right of women to be good
for something and help their husbands." Now, I
do not understand the term helpmeet, as applied
to woman, to imply all that has come to be
regarded as within its signification. I do not
understand that we are at liberty to help men to
the devil.
[Loud cheering]
I believe it is
our mission to help them heavenward, to the full
development and right enjoyment of their being.
I would say, in reference to the rights of
woman, it has come to be forgotten that, as the
mother of the race, her rights are the rights of
men also, the rights of her sons. As a mother, I
may speak to you, freeman, fathers, of the
rights of my sons, of every mother's sons, to
the most perfect and vigorous development of
their energies which the mother can secure to
them by the application and through the use of
all her God-given powers of body or of mind. It
is in behalf of our sons, the future men of the
republic, as well as for our daughters, its
future mothers, that we claim the full
development of our energies by education, and
legal protection in the control of all the
issues and profits of ourselves, called
property.
As a parent, I have educated myself with
reference to the wants of my children, that if,
by the bereavements of life, I am left their
sole parent, I can train them to be good and
useful citizens. Such bereavement has left me
the sole parent of sons by a first marriage. And
how do the laws of the state protect the right
of these sons to their mother's fostering care?
The laws say that, having married again, I am a
legal nonentity and cannot "give bonds" for the
faithful discharge of my maternal duties;
therefore I shall not be their guardian. Having,
in the first instance, robbed me of the property
qualification for giving bonds, alienating my
right to the control of my own earnings, the
state makes its own injustice the ground for
defrauding myself and children of the mutual
benefits of our God-ordained relations; and
others, destitute of every qualification and
motive which my mother's love insures to them,
may "give bonds" and become the legal guardians
of my children!
I address myself to you, fathers, I appeal to
every man who has lived a half- century, if the
mother is not the most faithful guardian of her
children's interests? If you were going on a
long journey, to be absent for years, in the
prosecution of business, or in the army or navy,
would you exclude your wives from the care and
guardianship of your children? Would you place
them and the means for their support in any
other hands than the mother's? If you would, you
have married beneath yourselves.
[Cheers]
Then I ask you how
it happens that, when you die, your estates are
cut up, and your children, and the means for
their support, consigned to others'
guardianship, by laws which yourselves have made
or sworn to defend? Do you reply that women are
not qualified by education for the business
transactions involved in such guardianship? It
is for this I ask that they may be educated.
Yourselves must educate your wives in the
conduct of your business. My friends, love is
the best teacher in the world. Fathers,
husbands, you do not know how fast you can
teach, nor what apt scholars you will find in
your wives and daughters, if, with loving
confidence, you call them to your aid, and teach
them those things in which they can aid you, and
acquire the knowledge, which is "power," to
benefit those they love. Would it not soothe
your sick bed, would it not pluck thorns from
your dying pillow, to confide in your wife that
she could conduct the business on which your
family relies for support, and, in case of your
death, keep your children together, and educate
them to go out into the world with habits of
self-reliance and self-dependence? And do you
know that, in withholding from your companions
the knowledge and inducements which would fit
them thus to share your cares, and relieve you
in the emergencies of business, you deny them
the richest rewards of affection? for "it is
more blessed to give than to receive" [Acts
20:35].
Do you know that
they would only cling the closer to you in the
stern conflicts of life, if they were thus
taught that you do not undervalue their devotion
and despise their ability? Call woman to your
side in the loving confidence of equal interests
and equal responsibilities, and she will never
fail you.
But I would return to woman's responsibilities,
and the laws that alienate her means to
discharge them. And here let me call your
attention to my position, that the law which
alienates the wife's right to the control of her
own property, her own earnings lies at the
foundation of all her social and legal wrongs. I
have already shown you how the alienation of
this right defrauds her of the legal
guardianship of her children, in case of the
father's death. I need not tell you, who see it
every day in the wretched family of the
drunkard, that it defrauds her of the means of
discharging her responsibilities to her children
and to society during the husband's life, when
he proves recreant to his obligations, and
consumes her earnings in the indulgence of idle
and sinful habits. I know it is claimed by many,
as a reason why this law should not be
disturbed, that it is only the wives of reckless
and improvident husbands who suffer under it
operation.
But, friends, I
stand here prepared to show that, as an unjust
law of general application, it is even more
fruitful of suffering to the wives of what are
called good husbands, husbands who love and
honor their wives while living, but, dying,
leave them and their maternal sympathies to the
dissecting knife of the law. I refer you to the
legal-provision for the widow. The law gives her
the use only of one-third of the estate which
they have accumulated by their joint industry. I
speak of the real estate; for, in the majority
of estates, the personal property is expended in
paying the debts and meeting the expenses of
settlement. Now, I appeal to any man here, whose
estate is sufficient to support either or both
in comfort, and give them Christian burial, and
yet is so limited that the use of one-third of
it will support neither, whether his wife's
interests are equally protected with his own, by
the laws which "settle" his estate in the event
of his dying first.
Let me tell you a
story to illustrate the "support" which, it is
claimed, compensates the wife for the alienation
of her earnings to the control of the husband.
In my native town lived a single sister, of
middle age. She had accumulated something, for
she was capable in all the handicrafts pursued
by women of her class. She married a worthy man,
poor in this world's goods, and whose children
were all settled in homes of their own. She
applied her means, and, by the persevering use
of her faculties, they secured a snug home,
valued at some five hundred dollars, he doing
what his feeble health permitted towards the
common interest. In the course of years he died,
and two-thirds of that estate was divided among
his grown children; one-third remaining to her.
No, she could only have the use of one-third,
and must keep it in good repair, the law said
so. The use of less than two hundred dollars in
a homestead, on condition of "keeping it in good
repair, " was the legal pittance of this poor
woman, to whom, with the infirmities of age, had
come the desolation of utter bereavement! The
old lady patched and toiled, beautiful in her
scrupulous cleanliness. The neighbors remembered
her, and many a choice bit found its way to her
table. At length she was found in her bed
paralyzed; and never, to the day of her death,
three years, could she lift her hand or make
known the simplest want of her nature; and yet
her countenance was agonized with the appeals of
a clear and sound intellect.
And now, friends,
how did the laws support and protect this poor
widow? I will tell you. They set her up at
auction, and struck her off to the man who had a
heart to keep her at the cheapest rate! Three
years she enjoyed the pauper's support, then
died; and when the decent forms of a pauper's
burial were over, that third was divided, as had
been the other two-thirds, among her husband's
"well-to-do" children.
[Great sensation]
And is it for such
protection that the love of fathers, brothers,
husbands, "represents" woman in the legislative
halls of the freest people on earth? O, release
to us our own, that we may protect ourselves,
and we will bless you! If this old lady had died
first, the laws would have protected her husband
in appropriating the entire estate to his
comfort or his pleasure! I asked a man, learned
and experienced in jurisprudence by a
half-century's discharge of the duties of
legislator, administrator, guardian and probate
judge, why the widow is denied absolute control
of her third, there being no danger of creating
"separate interests" when the husband is in his
grave. He replied that it was to prevent a
second husband from obtaining possession of the
property of a first, to the defrauding of his
children, which would be the result if the widow
married again. Here, the law giving the control
of the wife's earnings to the husband is made
legal reason for cutting her off at his death
with a pittance, so paltry, that, if too infirm
to eke out a support by labor, she becomes a
pauper! For if the law did not give the wife's
earnings to the control and possession of a
first husband, it would have no such excuse for
excluding the second husband, or for defrauding
herself, and her children by a subsequent
marriage, of her earnings in the estate of the
first husband. But having legalized the
husband's claim to the wife's earnings, by a law
of universal application, our legislators have
come to legislate for widows on the ground that
they have no property rights in the estates
which have swallowed up their entire earnings!
They have come to give the preference of rights
to the children of the husband; and sons, as
well as daughters, are defrauded, legislated out
of their interests in their mother's property.
For, the estate not being divided, when the wife
dies, the earnings of a first wife are divided
among the children of a second wife, to the
prejudice of the children of the first wife. We
ask for equal property rights, by the repeal of
the laws which divert the earnings of the wife
from herself and her heirs.
O men! in the enjoyment of well-secured property
rights, you beautify your snug homesteads, and
say within your hearts, "Here I may sit under my
own vine and fig-tree; here have I made the home
of my old age." And it and it never occurs to
you that no such blissful feeling of security
finds rest in the bosom of your wives. The wife
of a small householder reflects that if her
husband should be taken from her by death, that
home must be divided, and a corner in the
kitchen, a corner in the garret, and a
"privilege" in the cellar, be set off to her
use, and she called, in legal phrase, an "incumbrance"!
[Great sensation]
Or if she chooses
the alternative of renting her fractional
accommodations, and removing to other quarters,
her sweet home-associations, all that is left of
her wedded love, are riven. The fireside that
had been hallowed by family endearments, the
chair vacant to other eyes, but to hers occupied
by the loveed husband still, all are desecrated
by the law that drives her from the home which
she had toiled and sacrificed to win for herself
and loved ones, and she goes out to die under a
vine and a fig-tree strange to her affections;
and, it may be, as in the case before mentioned,
to find them wither away like Jonah's gourd, in
absolute pauperism!
But I will tell you a story illustrating how
women view these things. It is not long since a
gentleman of my acquaintance, who had often been
heard give his wife credit for having
contributed equally to his success in laying up
a property, was admonished by disease of the
propriety of making a "will." He called his wife
to him, and addressed her thus: "My dear, I have
been thinking that the care of a third of my
estate will be a burden to you, and that it will
be better for you to have an annuity equal to
your personal wants, and divide the rest among
the children. The boys will supply you, if you
should, from any unforeseen circumstance, need
more. You can trust our boys to do what is
right." "O yes, my dear," replied the wife, "we
have excellent boys. You intrust to them the
care of your business; and I could let them act
as my agents in the care of my thirds. And I
think, husband, that will be better. For there
is this to be considered: We have other
children, and differences obtain in their
circumstances. You have seen these things, and,
when one and another needed, you have opened
your purse and given them help. When you are
gone, there may still occur these opportunities
for aiding them, and I should be glad to have it
in my power to do as you have done. Besides, I
have sometimes thought you had not done so well
by the girls; and it would be very grateful to
my feelings to make up the difference from my
share of what our mutual efforts have
accumulated."
Now, brothers, I appeal to you, whether you do
not as much enjoy conferring benefits as
receiving them? You have a wife whom you love.
You present her with a dress, perhaps. And how
rich you feel, that your love can give gifts!
Women like to receive presents of dresses; I
enjoy to have my husband give me dresses.
[Laughter]
And women like to
give presents to their husbands, a pair of
slippers, or something of that sort. But they
have no money of their own, and their thought
is, "If I give my husband this, he will say to
himself, It's of no account; it all comes out of
my pocket in the end!" That is the feeling which
rankles in the hearts of wives, whose provident
husbands do not dream that they are not better
content with gifts than their rights. We like,
all of us, to give good gifts to those we love;
but we do not want our husbands to give us
something to give back to them. We wish to feel,
and have them feel, that our own good right
hands have won for them the gift prompted by our
affection; and that we are conferring, from our
own resources, the same pleasure and happiness
which they confer on us by benefits given.
[Great cheering]
But I had not
exhausted the wrongs growing out of this
alienation of the wife's right to her earnings.
There is a law in Vermont, and I think it
obtains in its leading features in most, of not
all, the states of the Union, giving to the
widow, whose husband dies childless (she may or
may not be the mother of children by a former
marriage), a certain portion of the estate, and
the remaining portion to his heirs.
Till the autumn of
1850, a Vermont widow, in such cases, had only
one-half the estate, however small; the other
half was set off to her husband's heirs, if he
had any; but, if he had none, the state put it
in its own treasury, leaving the widow to a
pauper's fate, unless her own energies could eke
out a living by economy and hard toil. A worthy
woman in the circle of my acquaintance, whose
property at marriage paid for a homestead worth
five hundred dollars, saw this law divide a half
of it to the brothers and sisters of her husband
at his death, and herself is left, in her old
age, to subsist on the remaining half! In 1850,
this law was so amended that the widow can have
the whole property, if it be not more than one
thousand dollars, and the half of any sum over
than amount; the other half going to the
husband's family; or, if he happen not to leave
any fiftieth cousin Tom, Dick or Harry, in the
old World or the New, she may have it all! Our
legislators tell us it is right to give the
legal control of our earnings to the husband,
because "in law" he is held responsible for our
support, and is obliged to pay our debts and
must have our earnings to do it with.
Ah, I answer, but
why don't the state give us some security, then,
for support during our life; or if it looses the
husband from all obligation to see that we are
supported after he is in his grave, why, like a
just and shrewd business agent, does it not
release to us the "consideration" of that
support, our earnings in the property which he
leaves at his death?
The law taking from the wife the control of her
earnings is a fruitful source of divorces. To
regain control of her earnings for the support
of her children, many a woman feels compelled to
sue for a divorce. I am here in the hope that I
can say something for the benefit of those who
must suffer, because they cannot speak and show
that they have wrongs to be redressed. It would
ill become us, who are protected by love, or
shielded by circumstances, to hold our peace
while our sisters and their dependent children
are mutilated in their hopes and their entire
powers of existence, by wrongs against which we
can protest till the legislators of the land
shall hear and heed.
I was speaking of woman s self-created resources
as necessary means for the discharge of her
duties. Created free agents that we might render
to God an acceptable and voluntary service, our
Maker holds each human being accountable for the
discharge of individual, personal
responsibilities. Man, under his present
disabilities, cannot come up to the full measure
of his own responsibilities; much less can he
discharge his own and woman's too. Hence, in
taking from woman any of the means which God has
given her ability to acquire, he takes from her
the means which God has given her for the
discharge of her own duties, and thereby adds to
the burthen of his own undischarged
responsibilities.
In taking from us
our means of self-development, men expect us to
discharge our duties even as the Jews were
expected to make brick without straw. If we are
not fitted to be capable wives and mothers, as
contended by a gentleman on the stand yesterday,
if we make poor brick, it is because our brother
man has stolen our straw.
Give us back our
straw, brothers, there is plenty of it, and we
will make you good brick. Brick we must make,
men say so; then give us our straw. We cannot
take it.
We are suffering.
The race is suffering from the ill-performance
of our duties. We claim that man has proved
himself incompetent to be the judge of our
needs. His laws concerning our interests show
that his intelligence fails to prescribe means
and conditions for the discharge of our duties.
We are the best judges of the duties, as well as
the qualifications, appropriate to our own
department of labor; and should hold in our own
hands, in our own right, means for acquiring the
one and comprehending the other.
I have spoken of woman's legal disabilities as
wife and mother; and adverted to the law which
diverts from the wife the control of her own
earnings, as a fruitful source of divorces.
Increasing facilities for divorce are regarded
by a majority of Christian men as significant of
increasing immorality, and tending to weaken the
sanctity of the marriage relation. But an
examination of legislative proceedings will show
that sympathy for suffering woman is the real
source of these increasing facilities; and I am
frank to say, that I consider man's growing
consciousness of the wrongs to which wives and
their helpless children are subject, by the laws
which put it in the power of the husband and
father to wrest from them the very necessaries
of life, consuming their sole means of support
-- the earnings of the mother, -- as heralding a
good time coming, when every woman, as well as
every man, "may sit under her own vine" [Micah
4:4]. Let me illustrate by relating one, among
many incidents of the kind, which have fallen
under my observation.
In travelling, some eighteen years ago, across
the Green Mountains from Albany, a gentleman
requested my interest in behalf of a young
woman, whose history he gave me before placing
her under my care, as a fellow-passenger. Said
he, She was born here; is an orphan, and the
mother of two young children, with no means of
support but her earnings. She was a capable
girl, and has been an irreproachable wife. From
a love of the social glass, her husband in a few
years became a drunkard and a brute; neglected
his business, and expended their entire living.
She struggled bravely, but in vain. At length,
just before the birth of her youngest child! he
pawned the clothing which she had provided for
herself and babes, sold her only bed, and drove
her into the streets to seek from charity aid in
her hour of trial. After her recovery, she went
to service, keeping her children with her. But
he pursued her from place to place annoying her
employers, collecting her wages by process of
law, and taking possession of every garment not
on her own or children's persons. Under these
circumstances, and by the help of friends who
pitied her sorrows, she, with her hatless and
shoeless children, was flying from their "legal
protector," half clothed, to New Hampshire,
where friends were waiting to give her
employment in a factory, till a year's residence
should enable her to procure a divorce! Now,
friends, if under New York laws this poor woman
had enjoyed legal control of her own earnings,
she might have retained her first home,
supported her children, and, happy as a mother,
endured hopefully the burden of unrequited
affection, instead of flying to New Hampshire to
regain possession of her alienated property
rights, by the aid of "divorce facilities."
But, alas! not yet have I exhausted that
fountain of wrongs growing out of the alienation
of the wife's property rights. It gives to
children criminals for guardians, at the same
time that it severs what God hath joined
together -- the mother and her child! By the
laws of all these United States, the father is
in all cases the legal guardian of the child, in
preference to the mother; hence, in cases of
divorce for the criminal conduct of the father,
the children are confided, by the natural
operation of the laws, to the guardianship of
the criminal party. I have a friend who, not
long since, procured a divorce from her husband,
a libertine and a drunkard, and by the power of
law he wrested from her their only child, a son
of tender age.
Think of this,
fathers, mothers! It is a sad thing to sever the
marriage relation when it has become a curse, a
demoralizing thing. But what is it to sever the
relation between mother and child, when that
relation is a blessing to both, and to society?
What is it to commit the tender boy to the
training of a drunken and licentious father? The
state appoints guardians for children physically
orphaned; and much more should it appoint
guardians for children morally orphaned. When it
uses its power to imprison and hang the man, it
is surely responsible for the moral training of
the boy! But to return. I have asked learned
judges why the state decrees that the father
should retain the children, thus throwing upon
the innocent mother the penalty which should
fall upon the guilty party only?
Say they, "It is
because the father has the property; it would
not be just to burden the mother with the
support of his children." O justice, how art
thou perverted! Here again, is the unrighteous
alienation of the wife's earnings made the
reason for robbing the suffering mother of all
that is left to her of a miserable marriage, her
children.
I appeal to
Christian men and women, who would preserve the
marriage relation inviolate, by discouraging
increased divorce facilities, if prevention of
the necessity be not the better and more hopeful
course, prevention by releasing to the wife
means for the independent discharge of her
duties as a mother. And I appeal to all present,
whether, sacred as they hold the marriage
relation, Christian men have not proved to the
world that there is a something regarded by them
as even more sacred, the loaf.
The most
scrupulous piety cites Bible authority for
severing the marriage tie; but when has piety or
benevolence put forth its hand to divide to
helpless and dependent woman an equal share of
the estate which she has toiled for, suffered
for, in behalf of her babes, as she would never
have done for herself -- only to be robbed of
both? If the ground of the divorce be the
husband's infidelity, the law allows him to
retain the children and whole estate; it being
left with the court to divide to the wife (in
answer to her prayer to that effect) a pittance
called alimony, to keep starvation at bay. If
the babe at her breast is decreed to her from
its helplessness, it is, at her request,
formally laid before the court; and the court
has no power even to decree a corresponding
pittance for its support. The law leaves her one
hope of bread for her old age which should not
be forgotten -- if he dies first, she is
entitled to dower. But let the wife's infidelity
be the ground of divorce, and the laws send her
Out into the world, childless, without alimony,
and cut off from her right of dower; and
property which came by her remains his forever!
What a contrast! He, the brutal husband, sits in
the criminal's bench to draw a premium, be rid
of an incumbrance; for what cares he for the
severing of a tie that had ceased to bind him to
his wife, that perhaps divided between him and a
more coveted companion. If we are the weaker
sex, give us equal protection with the stronger
sex!
Now, my friends, you will bear me witness that I
have said nothing about woman's right to vote or
make laws. I have great respect for manhood. I
wish to be able to continue to respect it. And
when I listen to Fourth-of-July orations and the
loud cannon, and reflect that these are tributes
of admiration paid to our fathers because they
compelled freedom for themselves and sons from
the hand of oppression and power, I look forward
with greater admiration on their sons who, in
the good time coming will have won for
themselves the unappropriated glory of having
given justice to the physically weak; to those
who could not, if they would, and would not, if
they could, compel it from the hands of fathers,
brothers, husbands and sons! I labor in hope;
for I have faith that when men come to value
their own rights, as means of human happiness,
rather than of paltry gain, they will feel
themselves more honored in releasing than in
retaining the "inalienable rights" of woman.
Brothers, you ask us to accept the protection of
your LOVE, and the law says that is sufficient
for us, whether it feeds or robs us of our
bread. You admit that woman exceeds man in
self-sacrificing love; her devotion to you has
passed into a proverb. Yet, for all this, you
refuse to intrust your interests to her love.
You do not feel safe in your interests without
the protection of equal laws. You refuse to
trust even the mother's love with the interests
of her children! How, then, do you ask of us,
you, who will not trust your interests to the
love of a mother, wife, daughter, or sister, why
do you ask of us to dispense with the protection
of equal laws, and accept instead the protection
of man's affection?
I would offer, in conclusion, a few thoughts on
education. I would say to my sisters, lest they
be discouraged under existing disabilities from
attempting it, we can educate ourselves.
It may be that you
hesitate, from a supposed inferiority of
intellect. Now, I have never troubled myself to
establish woman's intellectual equality. The
inequality of educational facilities forbids us
to sustain such a position by facts. But I have
long since disposed of this question to my own
satisfaction, and perhaps my conclusion will
inspire you with confidence to attempt equal, I
would hope superior, attainments, for man falls
short of the intelligence within reach of his
powers. We all believe that the Creator is both
omniscient and omnipotent, wise and able to
adapt means to the ends he had in view. We hold
ourselves created to sustain certain relations
as intelligent beings, and that God has endowed
us with capabilities equal to the discharge of
the duties involved in these relations.
Now, let us survey
woman's responsibilities within the narrowest
sphere to which any common-sense man would limit
her offices. As a mother, her powers mould and
develop humanity, intellectual, moral and
physical. Next to God woman is the creator of
the race as it is and as it shall be. I ask,
then, Has God created woman man's inferior? If
so, he has been false to his wisdom, false to
his power, in creating an inferior being for
superior work. But if it be true, as all admit,
that woman's responsibilities are equal to
man's, I claim that God has endowed her with
equal powers for their discharge.
And how shall we develop these powers? My
sisters, for your encouragement, I will refer to
my own experience in this matter. I claim to be
self-educated. Beyond a single year's
instruction in a high school for young men and
women, I have enjoyed no public educational
facilities but the common school which our Green
Mountain state opens to all her sons and
daughters. Prevented by circumstances from
availing myself of the discipline of a classical
school of the highest order, and nerved by faith
in my ability to achieve equal attainments with
my brother man, I resorted to books and the
study of human nature, with direct reference to
the practical application of my influence and my
acquirements to my woman's work, -- the
development of the immortal spirit for the
accomplishment of human destiny. And my own
experience is, that the world in which we live
and act, and by which we are impressed, is the
best school for woman as well as man. Practical
life furnishes the best discipline for our
powers. It qualifies us to take life as we find
it, and leave it better than we found it.
I have been
accustomed to look within my own heart to learn
the springs of human action. By it I have read
woman, read man; and the result has been a fixed
resolution, an indomitable courage to do with my
might what my hands find to do for God and
humanity. And in doing, I have best learned my
ability to accomplish, my capacity to enjoy. In
the light of experience, I would say to you, my
sisters, the first thing is to apply ourselves
to the intelligent discharge of present duties,
diligently searching out and applying all
knowledge that will qualify us for higher and
extended usefulness. Be always learners, and
don't forget to teach. As individuals, as
mothers, we must first achieve a knowledge of
the laws of our physical and mental organisms;
for these are the material which we work upon
and the instruments by which we work; and, to do
our work well, we must understand and be able to
apply both. Then we need to understand the
tenure of our domestic and social relations, the
laws by which we are linked to our kind. But I
cannot leave this subject without briefly
calling your attention to another phase of
education.
Early in life, my attention was called to
examine the value of beauty and accomplishments
as permanent grounds of affection. I could not
believe that God had created so many homely
women, and suffered all to lose their beauty in
the very maturity of their powers, and yet made
it our duty to spend our best efforts in trying
to look pretty. We all desire to be loved; and
can it be that we have no more lasting claims to
admiration than that beauty and those
accomplishments which serve us only in the
spring-time of life? Surely our days of dancing
and musical performance are soon over, when
musical instruments of sweeter tone cry
"Mother."
[Loud cheers]
What, then, shall
we do for admiration when stricken in years? Has
not God endowed us with some lasting hold upon
the affections? My sister, I can only find
lasting charms in that thorough culture of the
mind and heart which will enable us to win upon
man's higher and better nature. If you have
beauty and accomplishments, these address
themselves to man's lower nature, his passions;
and when age has robbed you of the one, and him
of the other, you are left unloved and unlovely.
Cultivate, then, your powers of mind and heart,
that you may become necessary to his better and
undying sympathies. Aid him in all the earnest
work of life; and secure his aid in your
self-development for noble purposes, by
impressing upon him that you are in earnest.
Sell your jewelry, if need be, abate your
expenditures for show; and appropriate your
means, and time spent in idle visiting, to the
culture of your souls. Then will his soul
respond to your worth, and the ties that bind
you endure through time, and make your
companions in eternity.
Let the daughters be trained for their
responsibilities; and though you may say, "We do
not know whom they will marry, whether a lawyer,
a doctor, or farmer," if you educate them for
practical life, by giving them general useful
knowledge, their husbands can teach them the
details of their mutual business interests, as
easily as the new responsibilities of maternity
will teach them the ways and means of being
qualified to discharge its duties.
Educate your daughters for practical life, and
you have endowed them better than if you had
given them fortunes. When a young girl of
fourteen, I said to my father, Give me
education, instead of a "setting out in the
world, if you can give me but one. If I marry,
and am poor in this world's goods, I can educate
my children myself. If my husband should be
unfortunate, the sheriff can take his goods; but
no creditor can attach the capital invested
here.
[Touching her
forehead, loud cheers]
And my education
has not been only bread, but an inexhaustible
fund of enjoyment, in all the past of my life.
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