Elizabeth Cady Stanton SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE Speech before Young Men's Suffrage Assoc., Plympton Hall, 1870 Manuscript of speech delivered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton before the Young Men's Suffrage Association at Plympton Hall in 1870. Manuscript of speech delivered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton before Young Men's Suffrage Association at Plympton Hall in 1870. I believe I have the honor this evening of speaking before the first Young Men's Woman Suffrage organization ever formed. I have watched this movement with much interest, because it forms a new era in our cause. When members of the ruling class, our 2 tyrants, & oppressors so called, shall band together, to break our chains & proclaim liberty throughout the land, just as the Garrisons, Phillips', Birney's & Smiths did for the slaves on the Southern plantations On receiving the first announcement of your existence now, said I, we shall have the reason 2 logic, philosophy, science, & law on this controversy & we shall have done with the intellectual twaddle" & " sentimental gush" of the woman's rights conventions that have so sorely tried the press of our country for thirty years, Men will not fight shadows & windmill's, they will not be [3] 4. governed by prejudices & precedents. but they will base their opinions, & utterances on facts in Nature & not the falsehoods of artificial conditions. Now, thought I, we shall have the broad question of woman's true place in the world, calmly, clearly, impartially, considered: a process 5 more easily conducted when viewing wrongs objectively, than when suffering them in one's own flesh. Hence I heartily welcome these advocates from the ruling class as they can be an immense power in our defense in many ways. We should not have seen the end of African slavery 6. yet, had the black man been left to plead his own case An advocate can say so many things for his client that she could not well say herself, that standing as we now do Plaintiffs against the world, we are indeed grateful that the young men of the nation are espousing our cause 7. To eulogize your own sex seems so much like self-praise, that I confess I have oftimes, in summing up the virtues & victories of woman felt ashamed of the flattering plea I was compelled to make Young men, imbued with the idea of woman's right to life liberty & the pursuit of happiness 8. [Young men, thoroughly imbued with the idea of woman's right to life, liberty, & the pursuit of happiness] can utter so many courteous words, perform so many graceful deeds that I already rejoice that the girls of to day will not be compelled in asking for justice to do & suffer what their mothers have before them. for I take it for granted, 9. young gentlemen, that your example will be followed throughout the country. And now having taken up the gauntlet in our defence, do not be affected by what your seniors, one-sided, half fledged priests philosophers & politicians may say. The opinions of the mass 10. of men in regard to the nature & capacity of women are worth no more in the settlement of this question, than [were] was the opinions of slaveholders, on the great problem of freedom, we have just triumphantly solved; or the opinions of monarchs, emperors & czars on the safety of republican institutions. 11. It is difficult for men who have past the median of life, to divest themselves of the prejudices of education & form new opinions. Hence I am not surprized when even so great a man as Herbert Spencer surrounded with the conservative influences of an old civilization in his new work on "Descriptive Sociology" declares that the foundations "of law are based on the all sufficiency "of man's right: that the woman .12. "that a woman is in the keeping of a man, & that society exists for man only.-- that is for women merely as they are represented by man. And this right of man alone is declared to be the foundation of English law. & as our literature & system of Jurisprudence are [eventually] English, this is the foundation of our American I, for one, am glad to have these statements boldly made. Give me an open battlefield on an open plain. I detest the Indian skulking system so long practiced by men, behind "chivalry," "respect," and "politeness," and other words of high sound but small significance when placed by the side of justice and equality. Herbert Spencer acknowledges that law grew out of the right of feud, and that all legislation has been, and is now, for the purpose of regulating this supposed right of feud. Sir John Lubbock declares that marriage, monogamous marriage at least, grew out of the rights of capture in war, the wife belonging solely to one man, being, in fact, a prisoner whom he had himself captured, and therefore he was recognized as having a right to control her fate. As the children of a slave mother have generally followed the condition of the mother, we see how in our laws the father is recognized as alone having a right to the control of the child. Even among our Anglo-Saxon ancestors, the child's life was in the father's hands. If he was willing the new-born child should live, it was permitted to live; if he ordained its death, there was no other power, in family or in government, to say him nay. Leckey gives cases of mothers pleading in vain for the life of their new-born babes; and relates one instance that history has preserved, where the father started from home on a pleasure excursion with boon companions while his wife was in the pangs of childbirth, leaving orders that if the expected infant proved to be a boy, its life should be saved; if a girl, it should be killed. The expectant mother, whose heart yearned over her possible to be daughter begged that if a girl, its life [??????????] In the light of these facts, I do not hesitate to charge the crimes of foeticide and infanticide upon fathers, and the statisticians who deplore the lessening of the population from these causes, laying the guilt alone on mothers, show alike their ignorance and injustice. In the pursuance of man's own pleasure, comes unwished for motherhood. Angry at his victim through those whose assistant instrumentality additional expense is to be brought upon him, the husband and father, in this day of Christian civilization, actually compels his wife, at hte hazard of her life, to lose her expectant child. I do not speak at random, but of what I know. Who can say that a woman is a woman, and not a household slave? As the daughter follows the condition of the mother, so in case of seduction the moral injury is not dealt with by the law as a crime, but the father can sue and recover damages for the loss of his daughter's service. Only a few days ago in New York City, a father sold his daughter of thirteen --a mere infant-- to prostitution, and the judge before whom the case was brought, decided that there was no cause of action, because the father had given his consent! In this great State of New York, which professes to lead the world on equality of legal rights, a mother has no right to her own child! --that is, a married mother. The law offers a premium for prostitution, by giving the unmarried mother a right over her own child. Is woman free, or a slave? .13. law also. But in .48, New York & Massachusetts, gave this old idea its death blow, when in their Legislatures they passed bills giving married women equal [property] rights. to their property & a few years after to their wages & children, with the right to do business in their own name, to make .14. contracts, to sue, & be sued. [Thus] They took the first step towards the complete recognition of the individual sovereignty of woman. A majority of the States of hte union have copied the advance legislation of New York, & step by step woman is slowly raking her rightful place in [the state, the church & the] world of work. & in .15. the face of the anathemas of the church, the ridicule of the press, & the stern wisdom of scientific thinkers. Had Herbert Spencer lived in America & seen the independence & intelligence of our women, successful barristers in Illinois & Wisconsin, preaching in our pulpits, practicing medicine, writing, reporting & .16. & reviewing books for our leading Journals, editing papers themselves, farming, telegraphing, tea merchants, going themselves to China & bargaining with the natives for their cargos to bring home, could he see all this, he would speedily come to the conclusion, that "the foundations of law based on the .17. all sufficiency of man" must have been completely upheaved by some earthquake in America. And it is a singular fact that simultaneously with our first woman's rights conventions the earthquakes began in California showing that old mother earth sympathizes with our movements. I think I hear some cynic in the corner say, well, if you have secured all this, without the ballot, why not be satisfied. Because gentlemen the more nearly I stand with you, in .18. capacity, power, achievement social position, intellectual acquirement, the more deeply I feel that political degradation, that makes you sovereign, me subject. Goldwin Smith another Englishman at the laying of the corner stone of the Sage building of Cornell University, warned us against .19. doing aught to rouse a feeling of rivalry between men & women. He feared this might be one effect of coeducation. You might as well fear to have boys & girls dance, play, run races, ride horseback together lest a feeling of rivalry should spring up. If a boy dances or waltzes well he seeks the girl that is superior Who objects to women in the theatre or opera lest a feeling of rivalry might spring up. A fine bass wants a soprano of equal skill & power. A McCready, Kembell, Kean, or [Bath], could give added power & pathos to the tragedy, when well sustained by women of equal power. The grand ovation to the queenly Charlotte Cushman last Saturday 20 to him in these accomplishments. We all know the added pleasure of playing a game of chess or billiards with one who plays enough better to stimulate every faculty. Just so in higher departments of thought & effort. Every man before me would have been ten times the man he is to day if every woman evening, shows that sincere earnest women can rise into an atmosphere beyond the reach of rivalry or envy. .21. in his circle of acquaintance had been superior to himself. He would have had an additional [motive] power on every side to urge him to self improvement. The opinions of these wise men on the education of women would be amusing if they were not so readily echoed & acted upon. Before girls conquered a place in the High Schools & colleges, it was said .22. they could not maintain a position in the classics & higher mathematics. When admitted & they took their places at once at the head in any department. Then it was said their minds were taxed at the expense of their bodies: when it was proven from statistics carefully gathered that in a given number of students more young men fell .23. out of the course from ill health than women. Then our philosophers took a broader sweep & said that with higher intelligence & cultivation among women population would necessarily decrease Dr. Clark and the Nation work together, aided by Maudsley and Allen, and other male assistants, to prove that population is lessening in America, attributing this to women, and that the native-born do not procreate as fast as do the foreign-born. J.C. Kennedy, in the Census Compendium of 1860, shows that from the fact of most emigration taking place during the prime of life, foreign-born population, according to statistical law, should increase twenty per cent. faster than native-born; while walker, in the census of 1870, contrary to Clark and his recent climatic statements, says America shows the longest duration of life of any country in the world, its medium length here being 46 years. In England the medium duration is 38 years; in France and Belgium 36; in Switzerland 34; Prussia 29, and Russia 21. I have not to-day to trace these facts to their legitimate conclusions, yet the most casual reader cannot fail to see the visionary character of the broader opportunities for women. Similar results would be likewise shown by looking through the industrial part of the question. The broader opportunities of women .24. much of this talk comes from the common idea that all women are by nature invalids. There was a time when delicacy & weakness were considered the cardinal feminine virtues. Then all women were given to tears, fainting & hysterics but in process of time men grew weary of protracted watching, of those 25 they loved through ill timed fits of fainting & hysteria, & roused a public sentiment against such manifestations & they ceased altogether. This is an encouragement to you, young gentlemen, to cultivate a public sentiment in form of strong minded, strong bodied women, that our philosophers may write I begin of late to think that education is a bad thing for men. Poor fellows! their health does not bear up under the strain of study! There is Huxley, now, who has just given the weight of authority to the Descartian theory that animals are incapable of suffering --are a species of unconscious automata; he wants to come to America and convince Bergh of his philanthropic folly, but just as he is ready to come, his health fails, and we lose him for the year. then poor Emanuel Deutch, a learned old bachelor, who "did not wish to be happy in marriage," he too lost his health, "up and dies" at the age of forty- three, and not only cheated the world out of his long-expected eagerly-desired, and rarely-learned work on the Talmud, but "didn't leave a child" to inherit his genius. Curious, isn't it, that "these intellectual" men have so few children? If giving birth to children is the only thing of value in this world, as Horace Greeley used to teach in regard to women, and as all men boldly insinuate when they speak of intellectual women, I think it is quite time the tables were turned, and some of these wise old bachelors and intellectual married men were taken to task. Few eminent men of the Elizabethan Era have living descendants. They were developed up "in the intellectual region to the injury of the productive." In cookery books, women used to be considered authority, and though Soyer and Blot, and their ilk, are stealing pots and kettles away from women, yet I shall here stick to the domestic adage that "What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander." Agassiz, to be sure, declared that limitation of young was indubitable proof of superiority, though he left a child or two to inherit his genius; but, then, he studied too much, and died before his time. 'Tis passing strange that study should prove so injurious to the male sex! Had Agassiz only lived a calm and quiet life, devoted to the raising of corn and potatoes, the education of his children and providing for their material wants, and not agitated himself by study, disintegrating the molecules of his brain, robbing his vital system of its due needs; had he been content to die a farmer, instead of a man, he might have been alive to day. To be sure, nobody would have cared whether he lived or whether he died -- his life or his death would have been nothing to the world, only in as far as he might have left a great many children to follow in his undistinguished and inglorious footsteps; but as "what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," I will maintain that if all a woman is good for is to give the world children and care for them, so, too, all a man is good for is to give the world children and care for them. If a woman ought not to study, neither ought a man. Dean Swift used to say every soul worth having would wear out its body before old age, which looks as a little as if he was cognizant of hte inability of males to engage in protracted intellectual pursuits, and while acknowledging the the fact, strove to flatter man's vanity at the same time. .26. their books from a new standpoint. & our girls manifest as much zeal in being well, as in looking well. In the discussion of this question begin where you will; the argument invariably drifts from the state to the home, from the woman to hte wife & mother. It does not seem .27. to enter into the minds of men that the civil, political, natural rights of a woman as a citizen of a republic, transcend those of all accidental & transient relations. The whole controversy of the day, religious, social, industrial, and scientific is turning on the place of woman in the world. There is a strong fight to hold fast the old doctrine that woman was created for man, and has not a right outside of what he, in the plenitude of his generosity, sees fit to give her. A certain sarcastic Frenchman recognizing at the last moment how completely his life had been lost in his business, directed the epitaph on his tombstone to be, "Born a man; died a grocer." Now the generality of men in the present battle are not willing to acknowledge the partners of their married life to have been born women, but only housekeepers. .28. Ever since the final woman's rights convention was held in '48 the cry has been this reform will unsex woman, destroy the family annihilate marriage, annul cradles & leave the stockings to be mended by the state. & such fears are still expressed by men who to day take part in the discussion. A Rev. Mr. 29. Buckley in an article lately published in "The Independent" gives his reasons why the right of suffrage should not be extended to woman. He says in substance, that the right of suffrage involves the exercise of hte governing power, which woman should not possess, for if she holds it in the state, she would use it in the home. .30. where two independent individual wills could not exist without the complete disruption of the marriage relation. This man's idea is clearly stated, that the family is & must be based on the "subjection" of woman, a condition he says that would be an insupportable restraint to man, but is not to women .31. in general. How does Mr Buckley know that. Because they endure a condition in which they are held by law, gospel & custom. Does he think they enjoy it? I suppose on the same principle the Mormon woman enjoys Brigham Youngs theocracy, the Turkish woman her life in the harem, the Hindu widow THE GREATEST OF BUGABOOS. LETTER FROM MRS. E. CADY STANTON. You ask for my definition of "Free Love." I hasten to say it means nothing; it is simply the cry of "wolf, wolf," to frighten the timid. Each age has some word of momentous import, with which to hound the lovers of truth and progress. Dr. Foster in his essays, tells us of the terrible power of the epithet "romantic" at one time. To say that a man, woman, or book was "romantic" would consign either to speedy oblivion. Then came "blue-stocking," which had such an appealing effect on all literary women that they wrote under the assumed names of the "stronger sex." Even in our own days Jessie Benton Freemont apologized repeatedly for the impropriety of writing a book. Then came "infidel," that stayed its thousands. Science, philosophy, and reform alike writhed under its torturing blows. Combe, Spurgeon, Comte, Buckle, Spencer, Garrison, Phillips, and Abbey Foster were all made bugbears to the trembling masses by the skillful use of that vague, undefined word "infidel." Then came "strong-minded," that sent the daughters of Eve scampering in all directions. "O, heaven defend us," cry they; "let us be silly, simpering, the feeblest of all created things, anything but strong-minded." Long use, however, has at last dulled somewhat the edge of this long expletive, and some new scare [must be] invented to keep rebellious woman- 32 being burned on the funeral pyre of her husband. There is a divine power in human nature that helps us all to accept with calmness & dignity what we suppose to be inevitable. The worst thing the Rev gentleman says is that freedom for woman would involve wholesale prostitution THE GREATEST OF BUGABOOS. LETTER FROM MRS. E. CADY STANTON. You ask for my definition of "Free Love." I hasten to say it means nothing; it is simply the cry of "wolf, wolf," to frighten the timid. Each age has some word of momentous import, with which to hound the lovers of truth and progress. Dr. Foster in his essays, tells us of the terrible power of the epithet "romantic" at one time. To say that a man, woman, or book was "romantic" would consign either to speedy oblivion. Then came "blue-stocking," which had such an appealing effect on all literary women that they wrote under the assumed names of the "stronger sex." Even in our own days Jessie Benton Freemont apologized repeatedly for the impropriety of writing a book. Then came "infidel," that stayed its thousands. Science, philosophy, and reform alike writhed under its torturing blows. Combe, Spurgeon, Comte, Buckle, Spencer, Garrison, Phillips, and Abbey Foster were all made bugbears to the trembling masses by the skillful use of that vague, undefined word "infidel." Then came "strong-minded," that sent the daughters of Eve scampering in all directions. "O, heaven defend us," cry they; "let us be silly, simpering, the feeblest of all created things, anything but strong-minded." Long use, however, has at last dulled somewhat the edge of this long expletive, and some new scare must be invented to keep rebellious woman- hood in check, and now comes "free love," most freely used by knaves and libertines, to condemn the virtuous and confound the brave. The term cannot be defined; it means nothing: it belongs to the same family with "strong-minded," "infidel," "blue-stocking," and "romantic," and is equally short lived: so let it too run its course, while we, gearing no bugbears, march on to the ballot box; for with the Butlers, Sargants, Chandlers and Ferrys all falling into line, victory must soon be ours. Yours, 32 being burned on the funeral pyre of her husband. There is a divine power in human nature that helps us all to accept with calmness & dignity what we suppose to be inevitable. The worst thing the Rev gentleman says is that freedom for woman would involve wholesale prostitution .33. We have settled the possibility in this country of having a state without a king, a church without a Pope, a good [currency without a gold] basis, & now we are to prove it possible to have a family without a divinely ordained head. John Stuart Mill says the .34. generality of the male sex cannot yet tolerate the idea of living with an equal at the fireside, & here is the secret of the opposition to woman's equality in the state & the church, men are not ready to recognize it in the home. This is the real danger apprehended in giving woman the ballot .35. As long as man makes, interprets, & executes the laws, he controls our political, religious & social life, holds absolute power under any system. Hence when he expresses the opinion that suffrage for woman would upset the family relation he acknowledges that her present condition of subjection is not of .36. her own choosing & that if she had the power, the relation of the sexes would be essentially changed. And this is just what is coming to pass, the kernel of the struggle we witness to day. The ballot is but the outposts of the enemy's stronghold, it is the key to the situation, get that & liberty, political, religious, social shall be ours This is woman's transition period from slavery to freedom & all these social upheavings before which the wisest & bravest stand appalled are but necessary incidents in her progress to equality. Conservatism cries out, we are going to destroy the family. Timid reformers answer the political equality of women will not affect it They are both wrong, it will entirely revolutionize it. When woman is man's equal, the marriage relation cannot stand on the basis it is to day But this change will not destroy it Change is not death, neither is progress destruction. Is family life, with the mass of us, so thoroughly happy & satisfactory that it needs no improvement? We have shifted governments from despotisms & monarchies to republics, without giving up the idea of national life, we Americans firmly believe that greater prosperity & happiness can be realized in a true republic, than under any other form of government. True such changes, from the lower to the higher, have involved debates, dissections, violence, war but the fine institutions you & I enjoy today, more than compensate for the offerings of our Fathers in the May Flower on the wintry sea; the dreary landing on Plymouth rock; the sights of a New England winter; & the hardships of a seven years war. We have changed the foundations of the church, too, without uprooting the religious sentiment in the human soul; or the destruction of all church organizations. Ecclesiastical wars & divisions have filled the world with despair for ages, & deluged nations in blood, but the Protestent doctrine of individual conscience & judgement is the result; & though the cardinal points of our faith have been changed again & again, yet we have a church still, & deep religious sentiments to gladden & refine the human soul. So we shall have the family, that great conservator of national strength & morals, after the present idea of man's headship shall be wholly repudiated, & woman set free. As state constitutions, & statute laws, did not create conjugal, & maternal love, they cannot annul them. It is an all important question, what needs to be done in the home to secure national, virtue strength, & stability? Clearly to establish there a republican form of government, adapting the laws to the best interests, of Husband, wife, children, servants, & not as now, as is too often the case, subjugating all to one will How can we hope to ground republican citizens, in the broad principles of justice, & equality, if we teach the doctrine, in the family, that there must be "one divinely ordained head"? "who can do no wrong", to rule & reign absolutely no matter how disastrous the dynasty may be? This idea was in harmony with that of the church & state in in the feudal regime, but it is all out of joint, with a republican form of government, & the Protestant religion, both of which recognize individual rights, individual conscience, & judgement in all things, temporal & spiritual. As the social lies at the foundation of the religious & political, & as all national faith in divine & human laws has its source in the individual, we cannot too carefully decide the principles on which home life should be based; for whatever code of morals or form of government [are] is adopted there, will be reflected in the religion & politics of the country Many of our theories, & experiments in church, & state have been failures because the family has never been based on the principles of justice & equality, but on the old feudal idea, "that might makes right" And this idea is sedulously educated into the minds of children, not only by their own unreasoned subjection, but by that of one of the parties to whom they are subject. Their first observations of government are often of virtue, & wisdom subject to brute force, or imperious will, to crippling avarice or selfish sensualism. A mother teaching them on one hand moral principles, on the other, respect for the authority of a Father, who in his life & government sets all principles at defiance. They see their mother in her daily life with them calm & dignified, reflecting the beatitudes of a saint: -- with him, anxious & sycophantic, reflecting the servile habits of a slave. They see in their "divinely appointed head", a despot, whose word is law, to whom wife & children must yield without question or debate. Such is life in many households, & such is the accepted theory for all. [But] As human nature, it is not made of such pliant stuff, but is ever in a condition of chronic rebellion against arbitrary authority, we find mother, & children contriving by art, & management, to circumvent the will they dare not meet, & thus secure their wants & needs. And here is the cradle, not only of domestic infidelity, & social duplicity, but of religious hypocrasy, political trickery, & the wholesale bribery & corruption in every department of legislation, commerce & trade, we all deplore too day. Hence to build a republic on the subjection of woman, is basing a nation on burning volcanoes, to end in frightful convulsions & death. It is only in the shadows of despotism, that the seeds of rebellion take root, & grow. Until we substitute the republican theory in the family, for the feudal idea of the past, we cannot take the first step toward political regeneration. And what say you, does the republican idea here involve? I answer the wife's personal freedom, the right of individual judgement, pecuniary independence, & equal partnership in all the inheritance, & joint earnings. As the mothers moral status decides that of her sons, if statesman are to have clear ideas of justice, they must not be cradled in oppression. Social reorganization wishes to enter a revolution in all established theories, as to [?] [?] , that but few thinkers feel Members able to attempt the solution of so vast a problem. The same law of equality that has reorganized the state, building republics on the ruins of despotisms, monarchies, and empires: - that has sent the church, exalting individual judgement above Popes & Bishops, dogmas & traditions, that has freed science & industry from spiritual & temporal domination, making there classes the leaders of civilization, this same fever has aroused new antagonism in social life, kindling the fires of rebellion on every domestic altar, never to be quenched, until woman's personal freedom, is as complete and unquestioned as the man by her side. This is the last and most subtle type of slavery, to be banished from the earth the last link to be broken, in that houry chain of oppression, of oppression that has so long crippled the race. By the same process of development, that man's blind faith in the authority of Kings & Popes has been gradually superceded by new faith, & reliance in himself has woman's blind faith in collective manhood, been substituted by new faith in herself. It is as disastrous to true government in the state, and home, to teach all womankind to submit to the affinity of man, as 'divinely' ordained, as it is to teach all mankind to bow down to the authority of Kings and Popes, as divinely ordained. The accident of a Papal succession, or royal birth, does not necessarily involve the capacity to govern a dominion, or a kingdom, neither does the accident of sex involve the capacity to govern a family. From the general discontent of woman in all countries, it is evident that this last vestige of feudalism must now disappear. We are waging to day the same double warfare, with both the temporal & Spiritual powers, to secure woman freedom, that the industrial & scientific classes have waged, since the eleventh century, to conquer the places they hold to day. They are narrow thinkers, dull readers of the past, who do not see that the demand for each successive reform is but an outcry against violated law, that sooner or later must be heard & obeyed. The momentum that carries nations onward, is not the result of the preconceived plans of individuals & classes, but the accumulated wisdom of the ages, that compels step after step in progress, that cannot be blocked by the puny statutes of legislators, nor perverted by the stale platitudes of theologians. As the true relation[s] of the sexes is the basis of social life, the question is what shall it be: The temporal regime .11. institutions in its codes & constitutions, says "master & subject" the spiritual regime in its creeds & ceremonies, echoes back "master & subject" Even the Positive Philosophers, who gather up the threads of history, & weave them into problems, so clear [& demonstrable,] that all can read the lessons of the past, they too respond "master & subject" From the depths of woman's soul she hurls back this falsehood of the ages, hoary with vice, crime & abominations, to be remembered only as a dark shadow of the dead past, unfit to dim the rising sun of the new civilization, the world welcomes to day. Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.