shouted from the audience, "She'd a great deal better have been at home taking care of her husband and children." The proceedings were pleasant and harmonious, but next morning the whole atmosphere was changed and Elizabeth Cady Stanton did it with a little set of resolutions declaring that, under certain conditions, divorce was justifiable. She supported them by an address which for logic of argument, force of expression and beauty of diction never has been, never can be surpassed. No such thoughts ever before had been put into words. She spoke on that day for all the women of the world, for the wives of the present and future generations. The audience sat breathless and, at the close of the following peroration, burst into long-continued applause:
We can not take our gauge of womanhood from the past but from the solemn convictions of our own souls, in the higher development of the race. No parchments, however venerable with the mold of ages, no human institutions, can bound the immortal wants of the royal sons and daughters of the great I Am—rightful heirs of the joys of time and joint heirs of the glories of eternity. If in marriage either party claim the right to stand supreme, to woman, the mother of the race, belongs the scepter and the crown. Her life is one long sacrifice for man. You tell us that among all womankind there is no Moses, Christ or Paul—no Michael Angelo, Beethoven or Shakespeare—no Columbus or Galileo—no Locke or Bacon. Behold those mighty minds so grand, so comprehensive—they themselves are our great works! Into you, O sons of earth, goes all of us that is immortal. In you center our very life, our hopes, our intensest love. For you we gladly pour out our heart's blood and die, knowing that from our suffering comes forth a new and more glorious resurrection of thought and life.
This speech set the convention on fire. Antoinette Blackwell spoke strongly in opposition, Mrs. Rose eloquently in favor. Mr. Phillips was not satisfied even with the motion to lay the resolutions on the table but moved to expunge them from the journal of the convention, which, he said, had nothing to do with laws except those that rested unequally upon women and the laws of divorce did not. It seems incredible that Mr. Phillips could have taken this position, when by the law the wife had no legal claim upon either property or children in case of divorce, and, even though the innocent party, must go forth into the world homeless and childless; in the majority of States she could not sue for divorce in her own name nor could she claim enough of the community property to pay the costs of the suit. Miss Anthony said:
I hope Mr. Phillips will withdraw his motion. It would be contrary to all parliamentary usage that when the speeches which advocated them are published in the proceedings, the resolutions should not be. I wholly dissent from the point that this question does not belong on our platform. Marriage has ever been a one-sided contract, resting most unequally upon the sexes. Woman never has been consulted; her wish never has been taken into consideration as regards the terms of the marriage compact. By law, public sentiment and religion, woman never has been thought of other than as a piece of property to be disposed of at the will and pleasure of man. This very hour, by our statute books, by our so-called enlightened Christian civilization, she has no voice whatever in saying what shall be the basis of this relation. She must accept marriage as man proffers it, or not at all.
And then again, on Mr. Phillips' own ground, the discussion is perfectly in order, since nearly all the wrongs of which we complain grow out of the inequality, the injustice of the marriage laws, that rob the wife of the right to herself and her children and make her the slave of the man she marries. I hope, therefore, the resolutions will be allowed to go out to the public, that there may be a fair report of the ideas which actually have been presented here and that they may not be left to the mercy of the press.
Abby Hopper Gibbons supported Mr. Phillips, but Mr. Garrison favored the publication of the resolutions. The motion to expunge them from the minutes was lost.
This discussion stirred the country from center to circumference, and all the prominent newspapers had editorials favoring one side or the other. It produced the first unpleasantness in the ranks of those who had stood together for the past decade. Greeley launched thunderbolts against the right of divorce under any circumstances, and Mrs. Stanton replied to him in his own paper. Lucy Stone, who just before the convention had written to Mrs. Stanton, "That is a great, grand question, may God touch your lips," now took sides with Phillips. To Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony came letters from far and wide, both approving and condemning. Mrs. William H. Seward and her sister, Mrs. Worden, wrote that it not only was a germane question to be discussed at the convention but that there could be no such thing as equal rights with the existing conditions of marriage and divorce. From Lucretia Mott came the encouraging words: "I was rejoiced to have such a defense of the resolutions as yours. I have the fullest confidence in the united judgment of Elizabeth Stanton and Susan Anthony and I am glad they are so vigorous in the work." Parker Pillsbury sent a breezy note: "What a pretty kettle of hot water you tumbled into at New York! Your marriage and divorce speeches and resolutions you must have learned in the school of a Wollstonecraft or a Sophie Arnaut. You broke the very heart of the portly Evening Post and nearly drove the Tribune to the grave."
For the censure of the world at large they did not care, but Phillips' defection almost broke their hearts. He was their ideal of the brave and the true and always before they had had his approval and assistance in every undertaking. Miss Anthony wrote Mrs. Stanton: "It is not for you or for me, any more than for Mr. Phillips, to dictate our platform; that must be fixed by the majority. He is evidently greatly distressed. I find my only comfort in that glorious thought of Theodore Parker: 'All this is but the noise and dust of the wagon bringing the harvest home.' These things must be, and happy are they who see clearly to the end." And to her friend Amy Post: "It is wonderful what letters of approval we are receiving, some of them from the noblest women of the State, not connected in any way with our great movement but sympathizing fully with our position on the question of divorce. I only regret that history may not see Wendell Phillips first and grandest in the recognition of this great truth; but he is a man and can not put himself in the position of a wife, can not feel what she does under the present marriage code. And yet in his relations to his own wife he is the embodiment of chivalry, tenderness and love."
In a letter to Miss Anthony, Mrs. Stanton said: "We are right. My reason, my experience, my soul proclaim it. Our religion, laws, customs, all are founded on the idea that woman was made for man. I am a woman, and I can feel in every nerve where my deepest wrongs are hidden. The men know we have struck a blow at their greatest stronghold. Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth I have uttered. One word of thanks from a suffering woman outweighs with me the howls of Christendom."
Notwithstanding all that had passed, Miss Anthony wrote Mr. Phillips for money from the Hovey fund to publish the report of the convention containing these very resolutions, and he sent it accompanied with a cordial letter. With his generous disposition he soon recognized the fact that it was eminently proper to agitate this question of divorce, in order to make it possible for a woman to secure release from a habitual drunkard, or a husband who treated her with personal violence or willfully abandoned her, and to have some claim on their property and a right to their children, if she were the innocent party. Before three months he wrote Miss Anthony, "Go ahead, you are doing grandly," and he spoke many times afterwards on their platform. During the height of this discussion Miss Anthony was in Albany and Rev. Mayo, thinking to annihilate her, said: "You are not married, you have no business to be discussing marriage." "Well, Mr. Mayo," she replied, "you are not a slave, suppose you quit lecturing on slavery."
As a result of this agitation a little clique of women in Boston, led by Caroline H. Dall, announced that they would hold a convention which should not be open to free discussion but should be "limited to the subjects of Education, Vocation and Civil Position." They drew to themselves a small body of conservatives and it was thought might start a new movement, but the meeting had no permanent results. Parker Pillsbury said of it: "With the exception of Phillips, no soul kindled with volcanic fire was permitted a solitary spark. O, such a meeting! Beautiful as parlor theatricals, but as a bold shriek for freedom or a protest against tyrant laws, not a sparrow on the housetop could have been more harmless." Miss Anthony wrote at this time: "Cautious, careful people, always casting about to preserve their reputation
