Perhaps from such opponents I might obtain answers to certain questions which have harassed my mind, and are the following:
If there be a woman's sphere, as a man's sphere, why has not woman an equal voice in fixing the limits? If it be unwomanly for a girl to have a whole education, why is it not unwomanly for her to have even a half one? Should she not be left where the Turkish women are left? If women have sufficient political influence through their husbands and brothers, how is it that the worst laws are confessedly those relating to female property? If politics are necessarily corrupting, ought not good men, as well as good women, to be exhorted to quit voting?
If, however, man's theory be correct—that none should be appointed jurors but those whose occupations fit them to understand the matters in dispute—where is the propriety of empanneling a jury of men to decide on the right of a divorced mother to her child? If it be proper for a woman to open her lips in jubilee to sing nonsense, how can it be improper for her to open them and speak sense? These afford a sample of the questions to which I have been trying in vain to find an answer. If the reasonings of men on this subject are a fair specimen of the masculine intellect of the nineteenth century, I think it is certainly quite time to call in women to do the thinking.
T. W. Higginson.
Yours, respectfully and cordially,
Miss Lucy Stone.
Matilda Joslyn Gage cited the Convention to a case recently tried before the Court of Common Pleas of New York, as illustrating the husband's ownership of the wife, the Court deciding that the friends of a woman who had "harbored" and detained her from her husband, though with her own consent and desire, should pay him $10,000. He recovered this sum on the principle of ownership; the wife's services were due him, and he recovered their value.
Mrs. Gage also commented on the divorce laws, which she declared were less just in Christian than in Mohammedan countries. In those countries if the husband sues for a divorce he is obliged to restore the dower, but in Christian America the husband not only retains all the property in case he sues for a divorce, but where the wife, being the innocent party, sues, she even then receives neither property nor children, unless by an express decree of the court. She is alike punished, whether innocent or guilty. Mrs. Gage also discussed the question so often put, "What has woman to do with politics?" She said the country must look to women for its salvation.
Sojourner Truth, a tall colored woman, well known in anti-slavery circles, and called the Lybian Sybil, made her appearance on the platform. This was the signal for a fresh outburst from the mob; for at every session every man of them was promptly in his place, at twenty-five cents a head. And this was the one redeeming feature of this mob—it paid all expenses, and left a surplus in the treasury. Sojourner combined in herself, as an individual, the two most hated elements of humanity. She was black, and she was a woman, and all the insults that could be cast upon color and sex were together hurled at her; but there she stood, calm and dignified, a grand, wise woman, who could neither read nor write, and yet with deep insight could penetrate the very soul of the universe about her. As soon as the terrible turmoil was in a measure quelled
She said: Is it not good for me to come and draw forth a spirit, to see what kind of spirit people are of? I see that some of you have got the spirit of a goose, and some have got the spirit of a snake. I feel at home here. I come to you, citizens of New York, as I suppose you ought to be. I am a citizen of the State of New York; I was born in it, and I was a slave in the State of New York; and now I am a good citizen of this State. I was born here, and I can tell you I feel at home here. I've been lookin' round and watchin' things, and I know a little mite 'bout Woman's Rights, too. I come forth to speak 'bout Woman's Rights, and want to throw in my little mite, to keep the scales a-movin'. I know that it feels a kind o' hissin' and ticklin' like to see a colored woman get up and tell you about things, and Woman's Rights. We have all been thrown down so low that nobody thought we'd ever get up again; but we have been long enough trodden now; we will come up again, and now I am here.
I was a-thinkin', when I see women contendin' for their rights, I was a-thinkin' what a difference there is now, and what there was in old times. I have only a few minutes to speak; but in the old times the kings of the earth would hear a woman. There was a king in the Scriptures; and then it was the kings of the earth would kill a woman if she come into their presence; but Queen Esther come forth, for she was oppressed, and felt there was a great wrong, and she said I will die or I will bring my complaint before the king. Should the king of the United States be greater, or more crueler, or more harder? But the king, he raised up his sceptre and said: "Thy request shall be granted unto thee—to the half of my kingdom will I grant it to thee!" Then he said he would hang Haman on the gallows he had made up high. But that is not what women come forward to contend. The women want their rights as Esther. She only wanted to explain her rights. And he was so liberal that he said, "the half of my kingdom shall be granted to thee," and he did not wait for her to ask, he was so liberal with her.
Now, women do not ask half of a kingdom, but their rights, and they don't get 'em. When she comes to demand 'em, don't you hear how sons hiss their mothers like snakes, because they ask for their rights; and can they ask for anything less? The king ordered Haman to be hung on the gallows which he prepared to hang others; but I do not want any man to be killed, but I am sorry to see them so short-minded. But we'll have our rights; see if we don't; and you can't stop us from them; see if you can. You may hiss as much as you like, but it is comin'. Women don't get half as much rights as they ought to; we want more, and we will have it. Jesus says: "What I say to one, I say to all—watch!" I'm a-watehin'. God says: "Honor your father and your mother." Sons and daughters ought to behave themselves before their mothers, but they do not. I can see them a-laughin', and pointin' at their mothers up here on the stage. They hiss when an aged woman comes forth. If they'd been brought up proper they'd have known better than hissing like snakes and geese. I'm 'round watchin' these things, and I wanted to come up and say these few things to you, and I'm glad of the hearin' you give me. I wanted to tell you a mite about Woman's Rights, and so I came out and said so. I am sittin' among you to watch; and every once and awhile I will come out and tell you what time of night it is.
The Times next day commented as follows:
The New York Times, Sept. 9, 1853.
The Row of Yesterday.—Row No. 3 was a very jolly affair, a regular break-down, at the Woman's Convention. The women had their rights, and more beside. The cause was simply that the rowdyish diathesis is just now prevalent. True, a colored woman made a speech, but there was nothing in that to excite a multitude; she did not speak too low to be heard; she did not insult them with improper language; nor did the audience respond at all insultingly. They did not curse, they only called for "half a dozen on the shell." They did not swear, they only "hurried up that stew." They did wrong, however.
If we had our own way every rascally rowdy among them should have Bloomers of all colors preaching at them by the year—a year for every naughty word they uttered, a score of them for every hiss. Out upon the villains who go to any meeting to disturb it. Let anybody who can hire a house and pay for it have his way, and let none be disturbed; the opposers can stay away. But for us, let us be thankful that in such hot weather there is something to amuse us, something to season our insipid dishes, something to spice our dull days with. Mem. It was cooler in the evening.
Caroline M. Severance, of Ohio, presented an argument and appeal based upon the following propositions: That as the manifest dissimilarities which cause the nations of the earth to differ, physically, and in degree of mental and moral development and cultivation, are not found justly to invalidate their claim to a place in the vast brotherhood of man—to fullness of family communion and rights; so there are no radical differences of the sexes in these respects, which can at all impair the integrity of an equal humanity—no sufficient basis for a distinction in so comprehensive a classification.
The fundamental
