BLACKWELL FAMILY  Henry B. Blackwell  Articles1874   Blackwell, Henry B.
Sept. 24
Reply to appeal for help in Mich.
Copy of W. Journal article urging 
local work.
copy in handwriting of Ida Porter Boyer(Letter from Sr. Joseph, Mich. Sep. 24, 1874
(asking for help in suffrage work.)
Henry B Blackwell replied in journal;
The friends of Woman Suffrage, outside of
Michigan have done what they could, to help the
friends in that State. The societies of New England
and Missouri alone have sent tracts, newspapers
and speakers at a cost of over $1000 in cash
already. But many newspapers of the State have
objected to the introduction of "imported talent",
and have declared that they do not want
"outsiders" to meddle with their affairs.
If the friends in Michigan wish to succeed
they must go to work for themselves. In your
own County of Berrien, for instance, you are
the persons who can and ought to organize. Do
not wait for your Stake Committee, who are
doing all they can, but who cannot do your
work. It is your women who must be
roused to action, and your men whose


votes will carry, or defeat the question.
Michigan cannot be saved by outsiders, her
own citizens will have to do the work for
themselves.
H.B.B.Woman's Journal (1899) p.204
"Ignoble Peace"-Women and War.
In an article in last week's N.Y Independent,
headed "Ignoble Peace" by Prof. Goldwin Smith,
LL. D., Governor Roosevelt is sharply arraigned
for his declaration that national character can
only be maintained by "strenuous endeavor" - a
phrase which Professor Smith, a woman
hater, destroys the moral effect of his otherwise excellent
article by the following astounding tissue of mis-statements:
It is not in manly hearts, but in those of
women or of men of feminine temperament, that
the war fever most fiercely rages and most
clearly manifests its effects. Of this, if your
journals do not misinform us, you have had
some striking proofs. It was always said that
in the War of Secession the spirit of the Southern
women was fiercer than that of the men,

and that the women wished to continue the war
when the men would gladly have accepted peace.
Nothing could be more sanguinary than the
tone of your Yellow Press on a late occasion. Yet
you would say that it was masculine. I remember
still, with abhorrence, how in England our ears
were filled at the time of the Indian mutiny,
with the yells of sentimental eunuchs for more
blood."
Surely, this man must be a little beside
himself! Where are "the women or men
of feminine temperament," who have figured
among the jingoes? It is Clara Barton
and her Red Cross nurses, the women of
the Volunteer Aid Association, or the Women's
Relief Corps that he thus characterizes? What
are the "striking proofs" of women's advocacy
of war, which he finds in American
Journals? What evidence has he that the
women of the South were fiercer thanmen in the War of Secession? Does he
really believe that our "Yellow Press" - the
New York Journal and World, for instance
are under feminist supervision? Who are
the "sentimental eunuchs" who filled the
professor's ears with yells for more blood
at the time of the Indian mutiny? And,
is it possible he believes that eunuchs are
women? If Goldwin Smith continues to
write in this strain, people will begin to
suspect that his title of LL. D. really means
not "Doctor of Laws" but "Disseminator
of Libellous Lies" against all women.
War is the natural and inevitable
consequence of the disenfranchisement of women.
The male animal, everywhere throughout Nature,
is the fighting animal. Every class that votes
makes itself felt in the government. Nature,
reason, justice and commonsense all
affirm that "governments derive their

first powers from the consent of the governed."
The only form of consent known 
in a republic is the ballot. One half of the
governed are women. Therefore a government
without women is an unfair government
and represents only the unduly belligerent
spirit of its masculine constituents A
government of men alone never did, never
will and never can keep the peace. And
Prof. Goldwin Smith, with his aversion to
war, is doing his level best to make war
chronic and perpetual in human society
by denying the ballot to women.
H.B.B.Jan - 1900

Inside the American Custom-House
(by H.B.Blackwell)
The present Congress has before it the greatest
question that has come up for settlement since
the close of the Civil War or is likely to come
before it for centuries.
The American people are in possession
of Hawaii, Porto Rico, and the Philippines. What
shall we do with them?
"Give them up," cry the Anti-Imperialists.
"Govern them as subject Colonies," cry the Imperialists.
"Organize them as Territories," say those
who believe in the principles that have made
our country great, prosperous, and happy.
Give to Hawaii, Porto Rico, and Luzon,
all of them civilized communities, the same
kind and measure of home-rule that we
give to New Mexico. Give to each a local legislature,
elected by all the inhabitants who will
take the oath of allegiance to the United States,
and who possess reasonable qualifications of
ages, residence, education, and property,


irrespective of race or sex. Bring each of these
 communities inside the American custom-house,
establishing with it precisely the same
reciprocal freedom of trade as exists between
Kansas and Oklahoma or between Massachusetts
and Florida. Each of these Territorial
Legislatures should have the right to enact local
laws, subject to Congressional veto when necessary;
each should elect a delegate to sit in the House of
Representatives without a vote, like the delegates of
New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Arizona; each should
have a Governor and a Judiciary appointed by
the President with the advice and consent of the
U. S. Senate; each should have unrestricted
commerce with all other parts of our country.
This condition of affairs would bring, alike
to ourselves and to these new possessions, an
unparalleled agricultural prosperity - a free
interchange of temperate and tropical products,
upon a scale hitherto unknown, at prices
mutually beneficial - a permanent and increasing
market for American manufactures, a continuous field of investment for American
capital and enterprise, and a commerce
such as no nation has ever before enjoyed.
This natural commerce between the Temperate and
Torrid zones would create a fleet of American
vessels not dependent upon subsidies for prosperity,
and would vastly enlarge the traffic upon our
railroads, canals, and lake and river steamers.
Our flour, beef, pork, mutton, cattle, hay, wheat,
corn, oats, and dairy products, our cotton and
linen goods, machinery, agricultural tools, hardware,
coal, petroleum, lumber, building materials,
and a thousand articles of comfort, taste and
luxury, would be freely exchanged for sugar,
tobacco, tea, coffee, chocolate, rice, india rubber,
mahogany, hemp, jute, spices, and tropical fruits,
all of which would be supplied at far lower prices
than now prevail. Compared with these widely
diffused benefits to consumers, the loss of sugar
duties, the opposition of the sugar-trust, and
the outcry of a few would-be monopolists of tobacco
and oranges are insignificant indeed!
Moreover, it would secure in our


new possessions permanent loyalty to our flag, and
universal satisfaction based upon general
prosperity and enlightened self-interest. It would
bring about an eventual unity of language, laws,
manners, and institutions with our own. The
only way to govern wisely these now alien communities 
is to enable them to govern themselves
as Territories under Congressional supervision.
This course should be adopted at once
by common consent of both the great political
parties of the country. The Republic Party,
having now the control of all departments of
the National government, can organize these
new possessions as self governing Territories,
and secure thereby continued National supremacy.
If it refuse or fail to do so, at the behest
of hostile trusts and monopolies, it will give
the Democratic Party a National issue upon
which eventual victory will be as certain as
sunrise. The only cure for the present discontent 
of these new possessions, the only
condition upon which "benevolent assimilation"


can be effected, is their admission to our continental  system of unrestricted  domestic's free trade inside the American's Custom-house. "Rome rule for our new Territories" Should be the matchword of 1900, and will become the settled principle of the Twentieth Century.

                 
                         Henry B. Blackwell

               Dorchester Jan 1, 1900

____________________________________
Woman's Journal
Mar. 15 - 1902                          p. 84
A Mother's Right to Her Child.
On March 11, the Committee of the Massachusetts
Legislature on Probate and Chancery gave a
hearing to the Massachusetts Woman Suffrage Association,
the Federation of Women's Clubs, the Woman's
Relief Corps, Children's Friends' Society
and other petitioners for a law to equalize the 
rights of parents in the care, custody, and control
of their minor children. --- Among the speakers,
Henry B. Blackwell who said:  "This is

a question of great dignity and importance.
It concerns the personal rights of one-half the
American people.  The present law, which gives
the husband and father the sole legal custody
and control of minor children during the 
continuance of the marriage, is a relic of
barbarism, wholly inconsistent with our social
and political principles.  We have to-day in
Massachusetts law a monarchial family in a
republican State.  As citizens, we are all on a 
footing of democratic equality, but in the family
the husband is the sole head, and the wife is
the subordinate.  A home conducted on that
principle cannot educate children to become
good American citizens.  Fortunately we have
outgrown the law.  In a long life I have
known hundreds of families.  I have never
known one in which the husband and wife
have lived as equals, which has not been
harmonious.  I have  never known onewhere the husband has asserted his legal 
right to domineer, where domestic happiness 
has resulted. Fifty years ago the woman whom 
I had the good fortune to persuade to 
become my wife was so unwilling to accept 
the subordinate position which the law prescribes, 
that, in order to act in consistency 
with our principles, we united in a written 
protest, in which we pledged ourselves never to appeal
to the unjust law in case of disagreement. We regarded
marriage as a life-long partnership of equals., 
with reciprocal rights and duties. As a result 
I look back over forty years of ideal happiness 
and mutual affection. In the name of the home, 
therefore, I ask you to do away with this inequality. You 
have just equalized property-rights,_ equalize also
the rights of parents to their children. I ask if for the 
sake of  men and women and of society. Most 
people measure their ideas of right by the law. 
They accept that as their rule of action. There is a

vast amount of domestic despotism which never 
gets in the newspapers. [Men come from countries where 
wife-beating is legal, and suppose they have 
the same right to use physical coercion here.] 
The fault of the present law is that it establishes 
an injustice, and there provides an inadequate 
remedy. Women have not the money to employ 
a lawyer. They dread a legal separation, which 
deprives them of the bread-winner; they are uncertain 
as to being awarded the custody of 
their children. So, in almost every case, they 
submit to abuse and privation for the sake 
of their children.June 14 -1902 p.188
The Mother's Right to Her Child 
Massachusetts has at first conceded a
mother's right to her child! The enactment,
last week, of a law giving fathers and
mothers equal custody and control of their


minor children, and last year's law which
equalized the rights of husbands and wives
in regards to property, have changed the
character of marriage. From being a
relation of masculine superiority and feminine
subordination, it will hereafter be a 
permanent partnership of equals with reciprocal
rights and duties. The husband is no longer the
sole head of the household in the Old Bay State
Every family will in the future have two heads,
and "two heads are better than one."
Few, even of the advocates of the new law
seem fully aware of the importance of these
changes. Hither to we have had the anomaly
of a monarchial family in a Republican
State; henceforth the family will itself be a miniature
Republic two life-long partners sharing common
rights, duties and responsibilities. Hereafter the
demand for equal suffrage in Massachusetts will
have a logical consistency hitherto lacking. So longas every married woman was legally a subordinate
in the home, it seemed natural that she should be
a subordinate in the State.  So long as she could
not control her own children, it was logically inconsistent
that she should control other people's children
by taking part in government.  Equality in
the home, on the other hand, should go hand in
hand with equality in the State, for the State is
nothing more, nor less than an aggregation of
homes. ---- For more than fifty years the 
brave workers for women's enfranchisement have
appealed to the Legislature for equal guardianship
of children, only to receive "leave to withdraw."  But
the rising tide of social equality has at last
obliterated the ancient landmarks and over-flowed
the time-honored barriers.  If the souls of Lucy
Stone, Samuel E. Small, and Ellis Gray Loring,
of Garrison and Phillips, of Abby H. May, Eliza
J. Eddy, and Louisa M. Alcott are cognizant
of what takes place in their native State,


they join in our rejoicing, and see in this beneficient
enactment the fruitage of the labors
and sacrifices. ----
W. B. B.
-Woman's Journal, July 19- 1902    p.228
Militarism vs. Woman Suffrage
Women's subordination to men in the
past has been largely due to the supremacy
of brute force. Moral and intellectual agencies
have been held secondary, and women, as noncombatants,
have been regarded and have regarded
themselves as political nonentities.
Just in proportion as brute force
is in the ascendant, will women's rights be disregarded
and ignored. Militarism - the 
domination of brute force organized in armies
and navies and all the appliances of destruction
warfare, - is the insidious and implacable foe
of republican institutions, which logically demand
the social, industrial, legal, political, and religious
equality of all citizens irrespective of sex.
It is a significant fact that only
in communities which have been founded and
maintained by peaceful agencies, has full


woman suffrage as yet been established. In the
United States, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and Idaho
have never witnessed the tramp of contending
armies. In the Southern Hemisphere, New Zealand,
Tasmania, New South Wales, South Australia, Victoria
and Queensland have never seen a pitched battle
or an organized conflict. The Isle of Man
has had from time immemorial a popular government.
Partial woman suffrage is as yet attained
or seriously advocated only in English-speaking
communities and in Norway, which for more
than a century have enjoyed domestic peace
and institutions in some degree representation.
Conversely, the beneficent result
of peace principles, coupled with a practical
recognition of the equality of women in home
and church relations, has been strikingly shown
in the early colonial history of Pennsylvania,
which was originally founded by the Quakers, and
so long as Quaker influence prevailed, maintainedfriendly relations with the Indians, in contrast with 
the other twelve colonies. ----
Not until belligerent Scotch-Irish
Presbyterians colonized the wilds of Western Pennsylvania
disregarding Quaker counsels and
defying Quaker control, did the bloody conflict
begin between the backwoods men and the aboriginies,
which brought ruin and desolation to the banks
of the Susquehanna.
Let it never be forgotten that Quaker
emigrants from Pennsylvania framed the
original constitution of New Jersey in 1776 upon
the basis of equal suffrage for men and women,
using in their election law the words "he or she" 
and "his or her" ballot. In that immortal
act of legislation in the eighteenth century, the 
Quaker reaction against militarism reached
its logical culmination. 
H. B. B.

Harmai Journal, July 26-1902, 
Speedy Success Attainable. 
     Two things are needed in order to effect any great social and political change- agitation to create public opinion, and organization to make potential and effective the body of opinion already created.
     The first is necessarily a slow process. When  
Lucy Stone, in 1847, on her return from Oberlin
College, began her series of thrilling and impassioned lectures on "the disabilities of women,"
she owed her great and growing popularity
partly to the rarity of a woman speaker, partly
to the novelty of her theories, partly to a (?)
(?) persuasive eloquence, and partly to a charming
personality, an apostolic fervor, an [intensity?]
of conviction and a beautiful dignity and simplicity
of character. At first her audiences
were small, composed almost wholly of
abolitionists, themselves an unpopular minority,and of persons drawn by curiosity. She
was confronted at the beginning by rows of
jeering faces, but "those who came to scoff
remained to pray." It has taken more than
half a century of agitation to convert one-third
of the American people on an average to a
belief in woman's equality. The proportion varies
according to the community. In the States went
of the Missouri River about one-half of the
voters - a majority outside of the slums
of San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Kansas City 
and Leavenworth, and of the stolid Russians 
and other foreigners, believe in woman suffrage.
This is a evidenced by the recent popular majorities
outside of the large cities in California,
Oregon and South Dakota. - - - -

H.B.B.


Woman's Journal    Sept. 2 - 1902    p.244
Women's Clubs Suffrage Allies,
The outcome of women's clubs is to arouse
and increase women's interest in public affairs.
Therefore all such clubs are inevitable allies of
the woman suffrage movement. Some of them
refuse to discuss the suffrage question, and even
adopt constitutional limitations against its consideration.
Some of them "taboo" all political and
religious topics. No matter! Any activity of mind,
any exercise of though, any comparison of views,
assures eventual contact with human affairs.
And contact with human affairs is precisely
what is needed to prepare women for suffrage.
For this reason I am glad when
women cooperate in any form of activity, mental
or moral. The main reason why they
have been so generally excluded from
political activity has been their isolation.
The nunnery is not solely a RomanCatholic institution. It exists practically in a
hundred thousand homes where the wife and
daughter are segregated from the outside world. This
can only overcome by a freak acceptance of wider
interests. Therefore even a Browning, or a
Shakespeare Club, a church sociable, or an Old
Ladies Home is, so to speak, a suffrage kindergarten. 
Village Improvement Societies, Granges,
Working Girls Clubs, Women's Relief Corps, Ladies of
the Maccabees, Women's Home and Foreign Missions,
Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, King's
Daughters, Charity Clubs,-- a thousand societies
for special objects,-- all lift women out of mental
torpor and stagnation. Just in proportion as
women learn to think and feel are they inspired
to act and to do. Suffrage itself is
only the authoritative expression of individual opinion.
When women have opinions, the expression of these opinions
is only a question of time, and the ballot-box will finally
register that opinion. 
H.B.B.


Woman's Journal, Nov. 15, 1902.     p.364
Domestic Imperialism.
We have heard much about "Imperialism"
during the past five years. As the word is usually
applied, it means the governing of alien races or
peoples against their will. But in a larger sense
it means despotism in all its phases.
As a matter of fact, all human
government seems to have originated in imperialism.
In the earlier forms of society supreme
power is always vested in some individual ruler
who is recognized as the final authority. But
history invariably teaches the same lesson:- irresponsible
power corrupts its possessor: it is
always abused; and it leaves its subjects
degraded and enslaved. Yet, because "order
is heaven's first law," even despotism is
better than anarchy, and political progress there
by becomes possible. In the orderly evolution
of society the despotism gives place to aristocracy ofbirth, and that in turn is widened into an aristocracy
of wealth. Such was the highest type of organized
society a hundred and fifty years ago. Even to-day
we have, in many of our States, a social and political
aristocracy of race, and in every State but four
an aristocracy of sex.
Imperialism therefore is nothing new. Nor
is its exercise over the Filipino, the Porto Rican,
or the Hawaiian, anything more than an application
of our existing institution in a wider field.
But there is a domestic despotism
to which less attention has been given. In every State
and nation, from time immemorial, it has governed
the relation of the sexes. In some it exists in its
grosser forms of polygamy, polyandry, child marriage,
and the seclusion of women from every possible
form of publicity. Even in the English-speaking
races, while greater independence has been
asserted and maintained among men, society
is just beginning to extend social and legal


liberty to women. Many of the men who call themselves
anti-imperialists," and denounce most
vigorously the control of alien races abroad, have
no word of censure for similar control of one
half of our own citizens at home. To deny an
ignorant Filipino a voice in the management
of his own affairs is tyranny; to deny the wives
and mothers of Boston a vote on district option
is a matter of course. Until within six
months the enlightened Commonwealth of
Massachusetts deprived every married mother
of any legal right to the care and custody of
her minor children so long as she lived with
her husband. Only by effecting a legal separation
and breaking up the home could a mother
secure the right to her own offspring. and
it took a shocking case of insanity, murder,
and attempted suicide of an outraged mother
to wring from our Legislature a reluctant
concession of a woman's legal right to sharein the control of her own children. Yet a woman is
a citizen of the United States and of the State in
which she resides.
Taken as a general fact to-day, all
over the world, women are living under domestic
imperialism, and in the vast majority of cases they
make no audible protest. But there can never
be a true republic until domestic imperialism
ceases to exist, and woman takes her rightful
place beside man in the home, and in society,
in church and State, and nation.
H.B.B.


Journal, Apr. 18, 1903
Suffrage and Political Reform
The conditions of our country, north and
south alike, require enlightened statesmanship
for their improvement. Along with great
material progress there is a growing disparity
of material conditions, and also a growing
laxity of public morals. The masses of
our people, upon whom depend the perpetuity
of democratic institutions, are not accumulating
property. They are engaged in a life-long
struggle for daily bread. The gulf between
rich and poor steadily widens. We already
have distinct classes alien in sympathies, habits,
and tastes.
The only hope of a peaceable solution of
this war of classes lies in the introduction
into American politics of an element of
integrity and public spirit greater than now 
exists. This element we can find only bythe participation of intelligent, responsible,
conservative women in public affairs.
stream can rise higher than its fountain,
no lasting political reform is possible without
a reform in the voting constituency.

H.B.B.


Woman's Journal, June 6, 1903    p. 180
The Forgotten Woman
It is to be regretted that Emerson's biographies;
except Kennedy and Cooke, have
failed to mention his approval and support
of woman suffrage. Indeed, in one of these
biographies, an early letter of Emerson against
woman suffrage is quoted, while his later
affirmative utterances are omitted, thus
leaving readers under the impression that
Emerson was opposed to the enfranchisement
of women.
But it does not follow that such
biographies intentionally misrepresented or
suppressed the truth. The high personal
character of Mr. Cabot would make such an
inference in his case improbably. But it
indicates an extraordinary "arrest of thought"
on their part, and on that of the public, where
the right of women are concerned, which is aserious obstacle to the advance of the woman suffrage
cause. The woman is overlooked and forgotten.
------ If this ignoring of women's rights and
interests were confined to Emerson's biographers,
it would be a matter of small importance. But
unfortunately similar omissions are the rule,
not the exception. They occurred quite recently
in the obituaries of Thomas B. Reid and
Alice Freeman Palmer, and earlier in those
of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wendell Phillips, Henry
Ward Beecher, and L. Maria Child. We find
similar omissions in the biographies of Theodore
Parker, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, and
Abraham Lincoln. This general and persistent
silence indicates that a positive "arrest of
thought" too generally prevails in regard to
the equal rights of women. ------
--- Let the friends of equal rights be
prompt to expose this sin of omission. Let
them demand that our admitted self-evident


principles be applied in the case of women. An
aristocracy of sex should no longer be permitted
to masquerade unchallenged in the garb of a 
republic.-

H.B.B.