Part 11

The second day’s session was opened with a prayer by the Rev. Mr. May, of Syracuse, who thus far has assumed the spiritual direction of the movement. Mrs. Griffing came forward and said the great object of the meeting was to secure legislation by Congress. The press follows every reform with its scandal. Christ has arisen from the dead, and the women all over the country are making application. Will Congress adhere to the Constitution? She had hope and faith that Congress will hear us. No ray of divine life quickens Congress. Women, raise your voices in prayer. A eulogy to Stanton was pronounced, whom she styled the last of the trinity of martyrs--John Brown, Abraham Lincoln, and Edwin M. Stanton. She said that this discriminating word “male” shall be expunged from every law of the District.

At this point of the speech Professor Wilcox came forward and said that no effort had been put forth by the President to close the Departments so that the clerks would be enabled to attend the woman-suffrage convention. Mrs. Stanton said she had seen the President, and he had said he was too busy to attend the convention, so the cream of the movement was skimmed to confer with the ruler of the Republic. This committee which is to beard the lion in his den is composed of Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Wright, Mrs. Wilbour, Mrs. Davis, Rev. Olympia Brown, Phœbe Couzins, Mrs. Beecher Hooker and several others. After this business matter was finished Miss Anthony came forward to excuse the absence of Miss Lillie M. Peckham, of Milwaukee, by saying she was detained at home by the sickness of her brother. This incident went to prove that strong-minded women have sympathies and feelings like other people. A few letters from obscurity were brought forth, but did not add any brilliancy to the proceedings.

At this point of the meeting Senator Pomeroy, who was on his way to Congress, called in to give a word of encouragement. He said it was a long time before the movement could even get the ear of the public. Men were for making fighting the basis of suffrage. Who are those who are called to bear arms? Would you disfranchise a man because he is over forty-five? The military power is subservient to the civil. This is a government of law, not of force. Who feeds, clothes, and supports the soldiers in the field, and thus secures our victories? Services were rendered by women in those hours who cannot vote. Women have borne arms. In Northampton, Mass., near where the Senator was born, was a tombstone on which was cut in the marble, “Her warfare is accomplished.” This stands there in time-honored memory to prove the military qualities of the sex. There was an inequality in the basis of representation, and if the mothers, wives, and sisters were not so much better than we are, they would not have borne the deprivations of their rights. Remove the obstacle to education; open every hall to black and white, male and female. Remove the obstacles; repeal the law; I am for the sixteenth amendment; a woman is a citizen, and should have the power to legislate in the District of Columbia. There are places of employment not open to women. There are offices under the government which women should have. We must “fight it out on this line,”--but the quotation was left unfinished, and the distinguished Senator sat down. But wishing to see the effect of his glowing words, he moved that those women in the audience who wished to vote should raise their hands. Not a score of hands were to be seen.

At this unfortunate moment Mrs. Stanton came forward to the rescue of the bewildered Senator. “Allow me,” said this lieutenant-general, “to correct the Senator. Those who wish to vote are requested to sit still.”

The command was instantly obeyed. Not a woman was seen to move. The Senator wiped the perspiration from his forehead and looked his thanks to the gallant chief of the staff, whose strategy had saved the day. Afterwards those who did not wish to vote were requested to show their colors. A few women were noticed making themselves conspicuous, but the great mass were not to be deluded into giving an expression either one way or another.

Mrs. Stanton then introduced Madame Anneke, a German woman who could not talk English, but could talk the language of the heart--an immense woman, whose weight would reach the hundreds. The stage shook under her powerful trampings. She made up for language in pantomime. She drew her hands through her short hair as only a poet can describe. She said she had waded fields of blood, but this had not been her greatest trials. She had come from Wisconsin with a heavy load--the petition of many hundreds who wanted to vote. She had come with credentials from “t’ousands and t’ousands.” She appealed in the name of Germany--in the name of all Europe. The enfranchisement of women would be the enfranchisement of the whole human race.

Madame Anneke then retired, giving place to a woman as lean as she was fat--a Quaker woman from Philadelphia. This dear, good old Quakeress looked spiritual enough to be translated. She gave us some good Quaker doctrine, such as Philadelphia knows all about, and her remarks, for this reason, are omitted. She was called Mrs. Rachel Moore Townsend.

After Mrs. Townsend the Rev. Olympia Brown came forward, the brightest, freshest, strongest woman we have ever heard devoted to the “cause.” She is a small woman, and looks exactly as one might imagine Charlotte Bronte--a picture of exquisite nicety, from the dainty point lace collar to the perfect fitting shoe.

She commenced her address to those who did not wish to vote: “You may say you are in comfortable homes, with kind husbands and kind fathers, and you may wonder what these strong-minded women want. The temperance question alone shows the want of the ballot for the drunkard’s wife. Women have been patient too long, and therefore responsible in a degree for the sin of drunkenness. I wish women would stand up and say they would not encourage men who use intoxicating drinks and tobacco. We are seeking a nobler womanhood. It is the duty of every mother to feel that she is responsible for that society into which she sends her son. Our young lady should have something to look forward to. A young lady, upon leaving school, told her companion that she was sorry that school had ended, because she would have nothing to do. ‘Can’t you stay at home and make pretty things to wear?’ was the reply. This assertion and answer covered the whole ground of young ladyhood.” When she first entered the world as a young woman, she consulted her minister as to what she should do. He told her to sit down at home and amuse herself reading, and occasionally engage in a strictly private benevolence. The time will come when women will go forth to make a name and a fortune just as men do to-day. Women are told that Christ died for them; she would tell them that Christ lived for them. He taught women a life of earnestness, and she bade them go forth and follow his example. She compared the workingmen of Europe to our own mechanics--the bone and sinew of the land. “What makes the difference between them? It is the ballot. When tanners can aspire to be President you can see what the ballot can do. If it does so much for the men, it will do equally as much for the women. We want every incentive to make women brave, wise, and good. Let us learn not to fight with guns, but with our tongues. The warfare is not ended until the ballot is in our hands. Vermont will give women the ballot before the year is out, and Connecticut will soon follow, for I have moved down there to accomplish it. Only a perfected womanhood will satisfy the age.”

Mr. Stillman, the only man in the Rhode Island legislature who dared to stand up for woman suffrage, came forward, but want of time prevents an account of his speech.

Phœbe Couzins followed him after the same style of her first speech.

After she had finished Professor Wilcox came forward as the last crowning glory of the day and moved that Harriett Beecher Stowe, in her dire extremity, have the sympathy of the convention. Mrs. Stanton said it was out of order, and the Professor exhaled.

OLIVIA.

ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.

FITTING REPRESENTATIVE OF A DISTINGUISHED FAMILY.

WASHINGTON, _January 20, 1870_.

Wednesday’s evening session opened with the usual brilliant array of distinguished women on the stage. Among the number might have been seen Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, of Connecticut, another candidate for immortality in this family so widely known to fame. Mrs. Hooker is the beauty of the Beecher constellation. She has a dreamy, poetic face, like the picture of Mrs. Browning, and the early snow has been sprinkled among her curls. Mrs. Hooker is orthodox, and draws inspiration from the old Calvinistic doctrines undefiled. She appears timid almost to awkwardness. She says she intends to be a “speaker,” and an assertion from a member of this family, like some kinds of paper, is worth more than its face.

In the obscurest place on the platform sits the genius of the convention, Jennie Collins, the factory girl of New England, with her sad, hungry face. You can only remember the eyes, which look as if there was something fierce and awful behind them ready to spring out and bite.

The meeting is called to order by Mrs. Stanton, and is followed by a few of her well-chosen words. She had hoped to have a company of distinguished Senators and members, but unfortunately the Congressmen were all hoarse. Two Senators had sent their regrets. Senator Ross pleaded prior engagements, but sent his sympathy. Senator Carpenter regretted that official duties prevented his coming, accompanied with the usual condolence.

Mrs. Stanton proceeded to enlighten the audience on the sixteenth amendment, which is simply striking the obnoxious word “male” out of every statute of the land. She said the future great memorable day would occur in March, because it was in this month that Mr. Julian had offered this amendment to the Constitution. In changing the fifteenth amendment the voice of every person should be heard in the land. If women are not people, what are they? We are building a model Republic and it needs a crowning glory. That glory is a perfected womanhood.

Miss Anthony arose and proposed a vote. Those who demand that Congress shall adopt the sixteenth amendment say “aye.” The ayes had it. Miss Susan said she had been interviewing members, but did not stop to tell the result. She said there was a factory girl on the platform, Miss Jennie Collins, of Boston. The movement was not to benefit those who had fathers and husbands, but those who had to earn their own living.

Miss Collins was then introduced. She said she had not come to make a speech, but to lay her offering at the feet of the imperial Susan. We have a class of women who have not brains enough to comprehend a comic almanac; but if you would have an opinion, go to the working woman. She who has toiled knows her opinion. Why do girls not go into the kitchen? Because no man will marry a woman from the kitchen; but if she goes behind the counter a man will give her his arm. She said the Republican party had accomplished its mission, and was now dead. A new party was coming up from the people. The trades unions will be heard from. These unions were formed around camp-fires to protect each other, and they now girdle the land. She did not look to the politicians for aid; it must come from the working people. What helped the workingman? It was the ballot. Then why would it not help the working women as well? If the Southerner had whipped the slave woman, the New England stockholder would not stop the loom long enough to do the whipping. She painted the hideous lives of the 48,000 factory girls of Massachusetts. Her presence breathed the print of the nails. She made you hear the whir of the machinery, and you could feel the flakes of cotton falling like snow. Miss Collins abused General Grant, abused the Republican party, but the audience was under her spell and did not raise a dissenting voice. A young girl in the audience spoke loud enough to be heard by those around her, “Isn’t she a frightful woman?” It was the savage looking out of the New England factory prison, and the picture is the strongest that has been presented in the convention.

Miss Anthony then announced that the Senate District Committee had agreed to meet the leading women of the movement on Saturday at 10 o’clock a. m.

The meeting now adjourned, and the distinguished women proceeded to the Arlington Hotel, where they had previously announced their intention of holding a reception between the hours of 10 and 12 p. m. This midnight reception was held to accommodate members and Senators who were supposed to be disengaged during these hours. But, alas! Senators one appeared, Pomeroy, of Kansas, whilst the gallant General Logan was the sole representative of the House.

Mrs. Stanton was queenly, as usual, in black velvet; Mrs. Hooker in gray moire antique; whilst Mrs. Wilbour eclipsed all the lesser lights in black silk, embroidered with golden grain. Diamonds glittered, wit and satire flashed, illuminating all the beholders; but the grand dames, the philosophers, the politicians of the capital were not there. If the strong-minded can talk better than the fashionables, they must yet learn to “receive.” Mrs. Hooker held up her moire train as if she were keeping it from the mire. But this must have been owing to the neat training in the “land of steady habits.” Mrs. Stanton “is at home” in the masculine way of doing business. To be sure she had talked sense, but she made one long for a little nonsense; for something upon which the mind could rest after the severe tension of the day.

General Logan was dressed in black pants, not very much the worse for wear, while a claret overcoat, bound in black silk braid, was thrown open before. What his boots lacked in polish was made up by a mental lustre which such insignificant things as bootblacks can neither add to nor take away. He moved about hither and thither with as much apparent ease as he intends to move the capital. Senator Pomeroy wore his ordinary apparel with the exception of his hair. Nellie Hutchinson of the _Tribune_ said the reception was a failure, and the readers of _The Press_ can take her word for it.

Meeting called to order with very few on the stage. The usual prayer was omitted. Mrs. Stanton opened the battle. Daughters should be prepared for every emergency. Cultivate will power, and everything else yields. She said she had visited fashionable women in their luxurious homes and when she talked to them of these great questions, they said they had been so happy they had never thought of these things. She would say to these women, Do you live in Chinese walls? Have you never read Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables”? What sort of a soul must people have if they can only feel what sacrifices their own flesh? She then told the drunkard’s story, but she always finishes a convention with the same tale. When Mrs. Stanton tells this personal experience she rises to the dignity of a great actress. The pauses, the gestures, one learns by heart. Do the great and good men of the world repeat themselves in the same way?

Miss Anthony having somewhat recovered, read a letter from Hon. Jacob H. Ela, of New Hampshire, and he assured the convention that he was with it hand and glove. During the evening a few members and Senator Sherman were espied in the audience. Miss Anthony was interrupted in her speaking, and Senator Sherman was called on by name to come forward and answer how he stood on the sixteenth amendment. As he did not seem inclined to give an opinion, Miss Anthony bade him, unless he was for it, to say nothing at all.

Judge Woodward (Democrat) was also seen, and his name was called out, but he arose from his seat and went quietly out. With the encroachment upon good taste (for certainly Congressmen have some rights which the public should respect) the convention has lived its brief life, and left its mark upon the age.

OLIVIA.

GATHERING OF THE STRONG-MINDED.

THE WOMAN SUFFRAGISTS TELL OF THEIR TRIALS.

WASHINGTON, _January 21, 1870_.

The last evening’s session of the woman’s suffrage convention opened under the most dazzling auspices. No movement of the kind at the national capital has ever been so honored before. Quite a strong solution of intellect, power, and fashion shaded its eyes before the meteoric display. For the first time in convention, respectable audiences have seen spiritualism, long-haired masculine, and pantaloon feminine banished from the stage. Just as a flame flashes up more brilliantly before it expires, the convention assumed a vermillion hue before its final dissolution.

Mrs. Stanton appeared clad in solemn black velvet, but the bright ribbons nestling in her snowy curls, the girlish ornaments in exactly the right place, strangled all thoughts of a funereal aspect.

Mrs. Wilbour glimmered in the black silk of golden wheat memory, and Mrs. Beecher was clad in royal purple; Phœbe Couzins smothered her manifold attractions under a great white opera cloak, and Susan B. Anthony was just as twisted and knotty as ever.

But whilst the beautiful feminine element which Mrs. Wilbour has so faithfully portrayed formed the background of the picture, the great central form of attraction was Professor Wilcox, otherwise known in the capital as “the Knight of the Sorrowful Figure.” A description of his person, as he corruscated upon the stage, is copied from the Washington _Chronicle_: “Professor Wilcox appeared upon the scene in wrappings of swallow-tail and patent leather. His polished foundation was only eclipsed by the manifold attractions of the other extremity. His whiskers were trimmed to an angle of forty-five degrees, whilst his superb eyes rested in serene beneficence upon the feminine elements that surged and rolled in grandeur on the stage.”

As the women were detained at home for the arrangement of their toilettes beyond the hour appointed, Professor Wilcox moved that Mrs. Griffing address the meeting. This most estimable woman proposed a substitute in the person of Madame Anneke, who came forward and said she could not talk, only “wid her heart.” She could not speak English. “All my friends I embrace.” This last sentence must have been a metaphor, for although Professor Wilcox was in grappling distance, nothing occurred which could shock the most delicate mind. Madame Anneke said that it had been told that Germany was not in favor of this movement. This was a mistake. Germany was with us; all Europe too. Twenty years ago she had started a paper to advocate the cause, but it stopped in two years because of her sickness. One hundred years ago a German philosopher said that women should have equal rights with men. A hundred years ago a good man had said the same things which these women were telling the people to-day. But she could say no more, she was going to act.

Mrs. Stanton then came forward and said Madame Anneke was going to travel all through the West for the “cause,” and this was what she meant by the word act. If Madame Anneke can not talk English to Western barbarians, she can make up by acting on the stage. Her immense rotundity, quivering like a huge caldron of jelly, will stir the human heart to its profoundest depths, and it can safely be said by a Western woman who knows the taste of the home community that Madame Anneke will be able to attract audiences.

Rev. Mr. May now came forward. He said that our late civil war was brought on by the deprivation of the rights of four millions of the people, and consequently certain things will follow like a natural law, the taking away of the rights of fifteen millions more. Woman cannot be denied her rights. She cannot be degraded without degrading the other half of creation. God made man dual. How absurd for man to assume the right to all power; to take all power into his hands. Why do not women take all the power to themselves? It would be just as reasonable. Barbarians subject the weak to the strong.

Miss Anthony now came forward and wanted to have a resolution introduced into Congress to equalize wages. The motion was put and carried with the exception of one male voice. Here was a chance for Susan to score the Adam, and the opportunity was not lost. No eagle from his eyrie ever pounced upon a chicken with more force than did Susan upon this masculine biped. Nobody knew whether the unfortunate had a wife, but Susan assumed that he had, and that it was his intent and purpose to sneak away her wages. Susan finished him on the spot, and the audience applauded the heroic act.

Mrs. Stanton then rose and said a woman had just visited her who was connected with the Washington public schools. For a long time she had tried to get her wages; that she was in debt, with all its attendant evils; that she had applied time after time for her dues, but they were withheld, but that a school trustee had put his hand in his pocket and offered the teacher forty dollars instead of forty-five, the amount due. She instanced this as an atrocious advantage taken of a helpless woman. As she took her seat a man in a distant part of the hall arose for an explanation. He painted the awful picture of a depleted city treasury, of the inability of the school committee to get blood out of a stone, and thought the man did a most generous act to give the woman forty dollars and wait indefinitely for the forty-five. He said the man was touched by her necessities, and no doubt cramped himself to do a good act, for the school committee are poor men.

A silence followed. Mr. May again came forward to bring forth some mental gem that in his former speech had been forgotten. He wanted to say something about woman as an inventor. A woman had invented the cotton-gin, but in this case she had been maliciously deprived of her rights. The audience listened patiently and his last talk came to an end. Then Mrs. Charlotte Wilbour took the stand and read one of her sleepy essays. But she made rather a handsome figure with the gaslight dancing on the golden sheaves that bespangled her royal drapery. Her costly fan was suspended from her waist by a heavy gold chain, and this, with the length of her long train, made her look anything else but “strong-minded.”

When her essay came to an end, Mr. May arose for an explanation, but the decorous, good humored audience had swallowed enough of Mr. May, and its stomach actually refused any more of the decoction. Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! Motherly Mrs. Stanton came forward and said, “Be a good child. Take it down; take it for the sake of free speech.” Mr. May began. Hissing, stamping. Again Mrs. Stanton’s sweet face beams on the audience and says, “Why will ye?”

Mr. May began and said: “I shall stand here until you hear me, if stay till to-morrow morning.” Determination was written on that face, with the broad lower jaw and mouth, which sprung together like the shutting of a steel trap. His arms were folded, and his whole person breathed the spirit of the Egyptian sphinx. The audience felt the presence of its master, and yielded as good naturedly as it began the battle. Mr. May told us something about a State’s prison, where there were nothing but female convicts and female officers, but whether this model prison is in his own State of New York or elsewhere escaped the ear of the writer, but it is safe to say if it is not in New York it certainly ought to be there.