The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony
1884.—The American Woman Suffrage Association which was organized in Cleveland, Ohio, in November, 1869, held its sixteenth annual meeting, November 19, 20, at Hershey Hall, Chicago. Lucy Stone in the Woman's Journal said:
Beginning with a good-sized audience, it went on increasing in numbers until the gallery, the stairs and the side aisles were literally packed with people.
Reports of the work done by auxiliary and other societies came in from Maine to Oregon and all the way between, showing in some cases very little and in others a great deal of good work. But each one was helpful in its measure to the final success, just as streams of all sizes flow to make great rivers and the seas. There were present some of the oldest workers—Dr. Mary F. Thomas of Indiana and Mrs. Hannah M. Tracy Cutler of Illinois—who, having put their hands to the plow in the beginning of the movement, have never looked back. To supplement and continue the work there were noble and earnest younger women, who came down from Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Michigan and up from Ohio, Missouri, Kansas, Indiana and Illinois, women who can speak well for the cause and whose reports show that they know how to work well for it, too. It was a joy and a comfort to meet them....
Not the least pleasant feature was the cordial friendliness that seemed all-pervasive. Troops of women we had never seen came to shake hands.... A bevy of bright girls stood below the platform on the last evening and, looking up, they said: "We are school-girls now, but we are bound to help." The collections more than paid the expenses, and two hundred memberships were taken.
All the local arrangements had been admirably made by a committee of influential Chicago women.136 The city papers gave friendly reports, those of the Inter-Ocean being especially full.
The convention was not expected to open till Wednesday evening, but so large a number of delegates and friends met in the hall in the afternoon that an informal meeting was held in advance. Mrs. Cutler called the assembly to order, and the Rev. Florence Kollock offered prayer. A telegram was read from Chief-Justice Roger S. Greene, of Washington Territory, saying: "Be assured that woman suffrage has worked well, done good, and been generally exercised by women at our State election."
Brief addresses were made by Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore and Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert. Dr. Mary F. Thomas, in the name of the Indiana W. S. A., the oldest State association in the country, organized in 1851, presented the association with a bouquet of never fading chrysanthemums.
On Wednesday evening Mrs. Helen Ekin Starrett gave the address of welcome. In referring to the influence of the woman suffrage movement upon the legal status of women, she said that Kansas entered the Union as a State with women's personal and property rights legally recognized as never before. This was largely because a delegate to the Kansas constitutional convention which met in Leavenworth, (Mr. Sam Wood), wrote to Lucy Stone at her home in Orange, N. J., asking her to draft a legal form, which she did, with her baby on her knee, and its suggestions were afterwards incorporated in the organic law of that State.137 As one result of School Suffrage in the hands of women, Kansas had the best schools in the United States while the people still lived in cabins.
Mrs. Mary B. Clay, of Kentucky, president of the association, made a special plea for work in the South, saying in part:
Alabama has given married women equal property rights with their husbands. This monied equality I regard as one of the most essential steps to our freedom, for as long as women are dependent upon men for bread their whole moral nature is necessarily warped. There never was a truer thought than that of Alexander Hamilton, when he said, "He who controls my means of daily subsistence controls my whole moral being." I therefore recommend to the Southern women particularly the petitioning for property rights, because pecuniary independence is one of the most potent weapons for freedom, and because that claim has less prejudice to overcome....
Mississippi also has made equal property laws for women; and Arkansas allows married women to hold their own property, and all women to vote on the licensing of saloons within three miles of a church or school-house. A lady writing from there says: "The welcome accorded the law by the women of the State refutes all adverse theories, and establishes the fact that woman's nature possesses an inherent strength and courage which no surroundings can extinguish, and which only need the light of hope and the voice of duty to call them into action." I would recommend that whenever it is possible, we hold our conventions and send our speakers through the South....
Henry B. Blackwell said: "This is not an anti-man society. Suffrage is demanded as much for the sake of men as for the sake of women. What is good for one is good for both;" and Mrs. Livermore said, "Women should have a share in the government because the whole is better than the half."
In the annual report of Mrs. Lucy Stone, chairman of the executive committee, she said in part: "During the past year, the chief effort of the society has been directed to aid the work in Oregon, where a constitutional amendment had been submitted to the voters. One thousand dollars were raised for this purpose by our auxiliary societies, and forwarded to the Oregon Woman Suffrage Association.138 The society has also printed and circulated at cost more than 100,000 tracts and leaflets."
Officers for the next year were elected, as follows: President, the Hon. Wm. Dudley Foulke, State Senator of Indiana; vice-presidents-at-large, Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, the Hon. George William Curtis, N. Y.; the Hon. George F. Hoar, Mass.; Mrs. Mary B. Willard, Mrs. H. M. T. Cutler, Ill.; Mrs. D. G. King, Neb.; Mrs. R. A. S. Janney, O.; Mrs. J. P. Fuller, Mrs. Rebecca N. Hazard, Mo.; Mrs. Martha A. Dorsett, Minn.; Mrs. Mary J. Coggeshall, Ia.; Mrs. Mary B. Clay, Ky.; foreign corresponding secretary, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe; corresponding secretary, Henry B. Blackwell; recording secretary, Mrs. Margaret W. Campbell; treasurer, Mrs. Abbie T. Codman; chairman executive committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone.139
Mr. Blackwell, chairman of the committee, reported resolutions which were adopted with a few changes as follows:
Resolved, In the words of Abraham Lincoln, That "we go for all sharing the privileges of the government who assist in bearing its burdens, by no means excluding women;" that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, must be a government of men and women, by men and women, for men and women; and that any other form of government is unreasonable, unjust and inconsistent with American principles.
Resolved, That we rejoice in the triumph of woman suffrage in Washington Territory; in the continued success of woman suffrage in Wyoming; in the exercise of School Suffrage by the women of twelve States; in the establishment of Municipal Woman Suffrage by Nova Scotia and Ontario, and in the steady growth of woman suffrage during the past year as shown by more than 21,000 petitioners for it in Massachusetts, by increased activity in Connecticut, New York, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Nebraska, Kentucky, Minnesota and Oregon, by the recent formation of an active State association in Vermont, and by the presence with us to-day of sixty-six delegates from organized societies in fifteen States.
Resolved, That the American Association is non-partisan; that success will be promoted by refusing to connect woman suffrage with any political party, or to take sides as suffragists in any party conflict; but that we will question candidates of all parties for State Legislatures, and use every honorable effort to secure the election of suffragists as legislators irrespective of party lines, provided they be men of integrity.
Resolved, That this association expresses its appreciation of the services rendered by the co-workers who since our last meeting have been gathered with the honored dead: Mrs. Frances D. Gage, who from the beginning of our movement until the last week of her life never ceased to do what she could for its success; Wendell Phillips, who as early as 1850 attended a woman's rights convention at Worcester, Mass., and made an argument which covered the whole ground of statement and defense, and with serene faith advised: "Take your part with the perfect and abstract right and trust God to see that it shall prove the expedient." Besides these we record the names