the important subject of divorce?
But why attack the Church? We do not attack the Church; we defend ourselves merely against its attacks. It is true that the Church and reformers have always been in an antagonistic position from the time of Luther down to our own day, and will continue to be until the devotional and practical types of Christianity shall be united in one harmonious whole. To those who see the philosophy of this position, there seems to be no cause for fearful forebodings or helpless regret. By the light of reason and truth, in good time, all these seeming differences will pass away. I have no special fault to find with that part of humanity that gathers into our churches; to me, human nature seems to manifest itself in very much the same way in the Church and out of it. Go through any community you please—into the nursery, kitchen, the parlor, the places of merchandise, the market-place, and exchange, and who can tell the church member from the outsider? I see no reason why we should expect more of them than other men. Why, say you, they lay claim to greater holiness; to more rigid creeds; to a belief in a sterner God; to a closer observance of forms. The Bible, with them, is the rule of life, the foundation of faith, and why should we not look to them for patterns of purity, goodness, and truth above all other men? I deny the assumption. Reformers on all sides claim for themselves a higher, position than the Church. Our God is a God of justice, mercy, and truth. Their God sanctions violence, oppression, and wine-bibbing, and winks at gross moral delinquencies. Our Bible commands us to love our enemies; to resist not evil; to break every yoke and let the oppressed go free; and makes a noble life of more importance than a stern faith. Their Bible permits war, slavery, capital punishment, and makes salvation depend on faith and ordinances. In their creed it is a sin to dance, to pick up sticks on the Sabbath day, to go to the theater, or large parties during Lent, to read a notice of any reform meeting from the altar, or permit a woman to speak in the church. In our creed it is a sin to hold a slave; to hang a man on the gallows; to make war on defenseless nations, or to sell rum to a weak brother, and rob the widow and the orphan of a protector and a home. Thus may we write out some of our differences, but from the similarity in the conduct of the human family, it is fair to infer that our differences are more intellectual than spiritual, and the great truths we hear so clearly uttered on all sides, have been incorporated as vital principles into the inner life of but few indeed.
We must not expect the Church to leap en masse to a higher position. She sends forth her missionaries of truth one by one. All of our reformers have, in a measure, been developed in the Church, and all our reforms have started there. The advocates and opposers of the reforms of our day, have grown up side by side, partaking of the same ordinances and officiating at the same altars; but one, by applying more fully his Christian principles to life, and pursuing an admitted truth to its legitimate results, has unwittingly found himself in antagonism with his brother.
Belief is not voluntary, and change is the natural result of growth and development. We would fain have all church members sons and daughters of temperance; but if the Church, in her wisdom, has made her platform so broad that wine-bibbers and rum-sellers may repose in ease thereon, we who are always preaching liberality ought to be the last to complain. Having thus briefly noticed some of the objections to our movement, I will not detain the audience longer at this time.
An able report of the Executive Committee was then read by Mrs. Vaughan.
The President, on motion, appointed the various Committees,98 and read a letter from Gerrit Smith to Susan B. Anthony:
Peterboro, May 7, 1853.
Dear Madam:—I thank you for your letter. So constantly am I employed in my extensive private concerns, that I can attend none of the anniversaries this spring. I should be especially happy to attend yours; and to testify by my presence, if not by my words, that woman is in her place when she is laboring to redeem the world from the curse of drunkenness.
I know not why it is not as much the duty of your sex, as it is of mine, to establish newspapers, write books, and hold public meetings for the promotion of the cause of temperance. The current idea, that modesty should hold women back from such services, is all resolvable into nonsense and wickedness. Female modesty! female delicacy! I would that I might never again hear such phrases. There is but one standard of modesty and delicacy for both men and women; and so long as different standards are tolerated, both sexes will be perverse and corrupt. It is my duty to be as modest and delicate as you are; and if your modesty and delicacy may excuse you from making a public speech, then may mine excuse me from making one.
The Quakers are the best people I have ever known—the most serious and chaste, and yet the most brave and resisting. But there is no other people who are so little concerned, lest man get out of his sphere, or lest woman get out of hers. No people make so little difference as they do, between man and woman. Others appear to think that the happiness and safety of the world consist in magnifying the difference. But when reason and religion shall rule the world, there will be felt to be no other difference between man and woman, than that of their physical constitutions. None will then be acknowledged in respect to the intellect, the heart, or the manners.
Gerrit Smith.
Very respectfully, your friend,
The attendance at this Convention was larger than the year previous, and the debates more interesting, as Mrs. Nichols, William Henry Channing, Lucy Stone, Antoinette Brown, and Frederick Douglass all took an active part in the proceedings. During one of the sessions quite a heated discussion took place on the subject of Divorce, Mrs. Stanton and Lucy Stone taking the ground that it was not only woman's right, but her duty, to withdraw from all such unholy relations, Mrs. Nichols and Miss Brown taking the opposite position.
As it was decided at this second convention to admit gentlemen, a schism was the immediate result. By their party tactics, in which they were well versed, they took the initiative steps to scatter the forces so successfully gathered. The Society, with its guns silenced on the popular foes, lingered a year or two, and was heard of no more. It was the policy of these worldly wise men to restrict the debate on temperance within such narrow limits as to disturb none of the existing conditions of society. They said, treat it as a purely moral and religious question; "pray over it," it being too knotty a problem to be solved on earth, they proposed to have the whole case adjusted in the courts of Heaven: very much as the wise men to-day think best to dispose of the temperance reform.
Thus these politic gentlemen manipulated the association, eliminated the woman's rights element per se, which, having been educated in the anti-slavery school of morals, could not be blinded with any male sophistries or considerations of policy. It was the universal plea then as now, in advocating reforms, "Sacrifice principle to numbers, if you would secure victory," forgetting that one company of brave men could clear their path to the enemy quicker than a battalion of cowards. A multitude of timid, undeveloped men and women, afraid of priests and politicians, are a hindrance rather than help in any reform. When Garrison's forces had been thoroughly sifted, and only the picked men and women remained, he soon made political parties and church organizations feel the power of his burning words. The temperance cause has had no organized body of fearless leaders. Psalm singing and prayer it was supposed would accomplish what only could be done by just laws, enlightened public sentiment, and pure religion, applied to the practical interests of mankind. When abolitionists left parties and churches, because of their pro-slavery codes and creeds, they began alike to purify their organizations in order to win back that noble army of patriots. Women were urged to enroll themselves as members of men's associations, pay their initiation fee of one dollar, gather petitions, do all in their power to rouse enthusiasm; but they must not presume to sit on the platform, nor speak, nor vote in the meetings. Those women who had no proper self-respect accepted the conditions; those who had, tested their status on the platform, and not being received as equals, abandoned all temperance organizations, as the same proper pride that forbade them to accept the conditions of a proscribed class in men's conventions, also prevented their affiliation with women who would tolerate such insults to the sex. The long, persistent struggle at last culminated
