The Complete History of Women's Suffrage – All 6 Volumes in One Edition (Illustrated Edition). Elizabeth Cady Stanton
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 in the World's Temperance Convention, which may be called our Waterloo in that reform.
BRICK CHURCH MEETING.
May 12th, 1853, the friends of temperance assembled in New York to make arrangements for a World's Temperance Convention. The meeting was held in Dr. Spring's old Brick Church, on Franklin Square, where the New York Times building now stands. It was organized by nominating the Hon. A. C. Barstow, of Rhode Island, chairman; the Rev. R. C. Crampton, of New York, and the Rev. George Duffield, of Pennsylvania, secretaries. The meeting opened with prayer, "asking God's blessing on the proceedings."99 A motion was made that all gentlemen present be admitted as delegates. Dr. Trall, of New York, moved an amendment that the word "ladies" be inserted, as there were delegates present from the Woman's State Temperance Society. The motion was carried, and credentials received, and every man and woman became members of the convention. A business committee of one from each State was appointed. A motion was made that Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of the Woman's State Temperance Society, be added to the business committee. Then the war commenced in earnest. D.D.'s, M.D.'s, and Honorables were horrified. Speech followed speech in rapid succession, with angry vehemence. As the committee was already full, the motion was ruled out of order. Thomas Wentworth Higginson asked that he be excused from serving on the committee, and moved that Lucy Stone be added in his place. Then the confusion was increased. Abby Kelly Foster arose and tried to explain, but shouts of "order" drowned her voice, and after persisting in her attempt to speak for ten minutes the uproar was frightful, and she was compelled to sit down. Emily Clark made a similar attempt, with the same result.
Hon. Bradford R. Wood, of Albany, then moved, that as there was a party present determined to introduce the question of woman's rights, and to run it into the ground, that this convention adjourn sine die; but on request he withdrew it, and moved that a committee on credentials be appointed to decide who were members of the convention. This committee, consisting of Rev. John Chambers, of Philadelphia, Hon. B. R. Wood, of Albany, and Dr. Condit, of New Jersey, were absent fifteen minutes, and then reported that, as in their opinion, the call for this meeting was not intended to include female delegates, and custom had not sanctioned the public action of women in similar situations, the credentials of the ladies should be rejected. The report was received, and after a disgraceful contest on the part of those from whom we look for honor, truth, and nobleness, and every Christian virtue, on account of their sacred calling and high position, it was adopted by a vote of 34 to 32, ten of those voting in the negative being women. During the progress of the discussion—if discussion it could be called, where all the women who attempted to speak were silenced, and the men who attempted to speak for them were almost as rudely treated—Mayor