"At any cost one good is cheap— The soldiers die lest women weep; And this reward is great and high— The women weep that soldiers die."

Women and soldiers cannot transpose their work. The duty of each to the Republic is equally "great and high;" but in order to be done it must be kept distinct as now.

But all this is subordinate to the real, vital question. In the passages just quoted, the writers make an error that is made so persistently by all Suffragists whenever the argument of force is alluded to, that it seems necessary to repeat the explanation. They assume that this argument, briefly stated, is: The men do the fighting, therefore they ought to be rewarded with the ballot. That is not the argument; it is no matter of reward. The argument, briefly stated, is this: Stability is one of the highest virtues that any government can possess, and perhaps the most necessary. It can have no stability if it issues decrees that it cannot enforce. The only way to avoid such decrees is, to make sure that behind every law and every policy adopted stands a power so great that no power in the land can overthrow it. The only such power possible consists of a majority of the men. Therefore, the only safe thing for the Government to do is, to carry out the ascertained will of a majority of the men. This does not always secure ideally good laws, but it does secure stability and avoids revolution. The majority may blunder; but they are the only power that can correct their own blunders.

But war does not call for the only form of public service. There are others provided for in the National and State constitutions, which are constant and exacting. They are jury, police and militia duty. When a boy reaches twenty-one the law says to him, "You are my servant." If a fire breaks out, the foreman can legally lay his hand on the boy's shoulder, and say, "Help to put out this conflagration." When the law is broken, the sheriff can say to him, "Help me make this arrest." When a turn of the judicial wheel brings out his name, he must serve the state on a jury; if a riot occurs, he can be called out to quell it; and if a war arises, he can be drafted to fight against the country's enemies. There is not a single act of defence to which the voter was subjected by law when the Constitution was framed, to which he is not subject now, and subject because he is a voter. The vote is not given to him as a reward for standing ready to give this service to the state; it is a recognition by the state that, as he must stand ready to defend it, he should assist in establishing the laws which it may call upon him to enforce. As he has assisted to frame them, he cannot refuse to defend them. Woman's only relation to this defence is that of beneficiary, and therefore her relation to the laws with which that defence is associated must be one of advice and not of control. Fortunately for her, advice may prove sometimes to be control of the most satisfactory kind, a kind that admits of mental power and does not exact physical.

The statement is further made by Suffragists that "though woman needs protection of one man against his whole sex, in pioneer life, in threading her way through a lonely forest, on the highway, or in the streets of a metropolis on a dark night, she sometimes needs, too, the protection of all men against this one. But even if she could be sure, as she is not, of the ever-present, all-protecting power of one strong arm, that would be weak indeed compared with the subtle, all-pervading influence of just and equal laws for all women. Hence woman's need of the ballot, that she may hold in her own right hand the weapon of self-protection and defence." The possession of the ballot has not been able to secure for men "the subtle and all-pervading influence of just and equal laws," and despite his holding the ballot in his own hand, man has had to hold also a more apparent weapon if he visit a striker's camp or meddle with an anarchist riot. Something more tangible than protective influence is needed to make the public streets of this city safe for women in broad daylight. Again, they say that "Wisdom would suggest division of labor in peace as well as in war." Wisdom would have no chance to make such a suggestion, if women attempted to do the same work as do men, in the same way. There is true division of labor now, in peace as well as in war.

Suffragists mention as a final indignity the extension of the suffrage to the negro. Their protest only serves to suggest another forcible illustration of the fact that law and the enforcement of law may be different things. The suffrage is not extended to the negro. The Congress of the United States voted that it should be so extended; and while the Government stood behind his vote with its military power, the negro voted. But no one pretends that he has done so, to any practical extent, since that time. Unarmed, the negro finds that he cannot enforce his own vote against the will of white men armed to the teeth. The "all-pervading influence of just and equal laws" cannot enforce it for him. Would the women be any better off, if the men chose that they should not exercise the vote? Who would enforce it?

This fact and argument show how little arbitration has to do with the practical decision concerning suffrage. Suffrage writers and speakers harp upon the thought that arbitration will take the place of force. That method of settling disputes cannot come too quickly, but it has not come yet. It has no real bearing on the organization of the state as resting upon the civil and military service of its citizens. England consented to arbitrate with the powerful United States, but refused to arbitrate with defenceless Nicaragua in a far less important matter. Congress has seriously considered exterminating the remnant of the beautiful herd of seals that once played in our Northern Pacific waters, because British subjects have continued, in violation of the Arbitration treaty, to kill the animals with cruelty. Behind arbitration, as behind all law and order, military power must always stand and must sometimes be used. One more proof that the vote is not the real power, but only its insignia, lies in the fact that legislation has not been able to put an end to strikes and riots. Laws that forbid them are passed with all due form; but when they come, as come they do, the reading of the riot act is suspended and the regiments are ordered to Chicago, or Buffalo, or Brooklyn, or Homestead, or Cripple Creek, or Cleveland, or the Indian country. The force of those bodies was not "brutal," it was physical power obeying mental; and unless mental power can command physical, there is no way in which mental power can enforce its decrees in government. There are now facing us tremendous moral issues, which presage tremendous struggles; and a very notable example of the dangers that would attend woman suffrage is suggested by them. If women had the power to create a numerical majority when there was a majority of the law's natural and only defenders against them, they might soon precipitate a crisis that would lead to bloodshed, which they would be powerless either to prevent or to allay. Would the majority of men submit to the minority of men associated with non-combatants? American history furnishes no reason for supposing that they would. The Dorr War in Rhode Island is a case in point, in local matters. I am neither an alarmist nor a believer in war as a panacea; but if we discuss this subject at all, we must discuss it with facts and not fancies in our minds.

Dr. Jacobi again says, in her book: "It may be said, for it has been said, that the objection to seeing a vote of seven hundred men overcome by a coalition of three hundred men with eight hundred women, lies in the fact that the defeated minority knows, if it had a free hand and was allowed to use fisticuffs, it could pound into a jelly a majority composed so largely of women. It would feel, therefore, sullen, restive, and justly indignant, that it should be prohibited from using this power and obliged to submit to a merely nominal force and supremacy."

The objection to seeing seven hundred men defeated by a coalition of three hundred men with eight hundred women, lies in the fact that the defeated minority knows that it has a free hand, and that nothing less than eight hundred men could prevent it from using its physical power, were it so inclined. Only a force and supremacy that was real, and not nominal, could make it to submit. The rhetorical trick of belittling the matter by speaking of it as "fisticuffs" will not pass in this discussion. When the South Carolina negroes on election day looked into the rifle-barrels of the Red-shirt clubs, it was no matter of fisticuffs. When every statesman in our country was eagerly seeking a peaceful solution of the Hayes-Tilden dispute, it was not fisticuffs that they feared. When the Dostie convention was broken up and its leaders murdered in New Orleans, it was not by means of fisticuffs. When the Chicago anarchists threw their bomb into the ranks of the policemen in Haymarket Square, they were not playing at fisticuffs. When the rail way strikers in Pittsburg stopped the trains, "killed" the locomotives, and burned the freight, there was no fisticuffs about it. And when a Southern minority refused to abide by the result of the election of 1860, and the Northern majority shouldered muskets and went down and compelled them to, not the most flippant writer would have thought of calling it fisticuffs. All these are simply readily recalled instances of the necessity for power in the enforcement of law.

She goes on to say: "But is it only in such a hypothetical case that a minority would know it could, if allowed to resort to physical force, shiver to fragments the majority? The burly brakemen in railroad strikes would, probably, in a fair hand-to-hand encounter, be much bested over all the stockholders of the road,—weakened, not only because they included women in their midst, but also by sedentary habits and predominately indoor occupations. Why do they not try this way of settling their difficulties? Why do not the classes in England, who still remain entirely disfranchised, and with whom rests so much physical strength, drop their fists into the balance as Brennus did his sword, and cut short the futile, womanish discussion? The answer is ready in every one's mouth. It is not that it cannot be done, but that, on the whole, people are all agreed that it is best it should not be done. It is not that physical force is respected less, but that mental force is respected more."

I reply that both these things have been attempted over and over again, and the agreement of all the wise and good people that it is best that it should not be done cannot prevent it. Behind the burly brakemen who have seized the train, and the stockholders to whom it lawfully belongs, there lies a power greater than all the brakemen and stockholders together. We call it the power of law. It is, in fact, the power of a sovereign people, who, having made that law, are able to enforce it against the breakers of it. It is necessary, in the discussion of this point, to have clearly in mind the difference between sovereign power and delegated power. When a member of a stock company attends the annual meeting and casts one vote for every share that he holds, he is exercising delegated power. The sovereign people, acting through their representatives in the legislature, have delegated to the company the power to regulate its affairs in this way, and guaranteed to each shareholder this privilege. Should a combination of some of the shareholders attempt to prevent one from exercising it, he would appeal to the court, and behind the court stands the power of the people, many times larger than any stock company that exists. On the other hand, when men go to the polls on election day, they exercise, not delegated, but sovereign, power. There is no greater power, above and beyond themselves, to regulate their actions. The enfranchised classes in England do drop their fists into the balance, and, as a result, we have seen the extensions of suffrage that marked the years 1832 and 1848, and the reason some classes are still unfranchised is, that the monarchy that wills their unfranchisement has, as yet, more power at command than those who would enfranchise them. Mental and moral force is more respected with every rolling year, because those who respect it have been able to obtain control of the physical power that can force its decrees upon those who do not respect it.

The third count in the indictment is: "Having deprived her of the first right of a citizen, the elective franchise, thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, he has oppressed her on all sides." As, in securing the exact number of grievances mentioned by the Fathers, the Mothers were compelled to string out their distresses somewhat, I will quote the next count in the indictment, and consider these two together. "After depriving her of all rights as a married woman, if single, and the owner of property, he has taxed her to support a government which recognized her only when her property could be made profitable to it."

The many-sided oppression, and the deprivation as a married woman, belong in other chapters. The remaining portions of the two counts may be summed up under the familiar cry: "No taxation without representation." What did that just accusation mean when our fathers uttered it in regard to English tyranny? Did they mean that their property was taxed, and they had no redress? The phrase originated with Patrick Henry, who read to the Virginia House of Burgesses the decision gleaned from a study of "Coke upon Lyttleton," that "Englishmen living in America had all the rights of Englishmen living in England, the chief of which was, that they could only be taxed by their own representatives," and on that was founded the resolution adopted by them that the colonies could not be lawfully taxed in a body in which they were not represented; for the colonies, as well as individuals, had no vote in Parliament. They meant that their property could not be so taxed, and they meant far more. The more that they meant was embodied by Jefferson in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence, when he said: "Can any one reason be assigned why a hundred and sixty thousand electors in the island of Great Britain should give law to four million in the States of America?" John Hancock meant that and more when he said: "Burn Boston and make John Hancock a beggar, if the public good requires it." He was offering his taxed property to defend the liberties of the four millions against the hundred and sixty thousand electors. The refusal of the majority to be ruled longer by the minority was the main motive of determination not to submit. But at that time all voting was connected with a tax on property, and so was the suffrage established by these men. And under those property-tax laws women who held property could vote. It was when taxation ceased to go with representation, that the women ceased to vote. There is now no connection between taxation of property and representation. When people were allowed votes in proportion to the amount of property they held, and could vote in different counties and States, there was a connection, and that law gave the rich man more voting power than the poor man. But all aristocratic qualification was done away with, and the government came to rely solely on the strength of individual men for its defence, instead of upon men and women with money enough to raise soldiery. There is a money tax levied on the property of men and women alike; and in return for the payment of this tax the property of both men and women is made secure against unlawful injury. In order to make it secure, the state lays, upon men alone, a service tax, and with that tax goes representation, or the vote. This service tax does not fall upon woman, and it cannot be demanded of her; so it is not true that "Man has taxed her to support a government which recognizes her only when her property can be made profitable to it." He has, in return for the money tax, so guarded her property through the service tax on men that it is of profit to her, which without that guard it could not be.

The tax on property is collected from that of minors and unnaturalized citizens, resident or non-resident, and to all these classes, as well as to non-voting women, is given the right of petition and legal redress of whatever sort. The men do not have "equal rights" in regard to public control of their taxable property, if equal rights means that each man shall be able to say what shall be done to, or with, or about, the property on which he pays taxes. The penniless voter can have as much to say as to whether a railroad shall cross the lands of a millionaire as the millionaire himself. At every town election the minority are unheeded, so far as the vote goes, and women with property interests would be no better off if they secured votes in the only way they can be secured—one voice, one vote.

Lydia Maria Child said, in a letter reprinted in the Woman's edition of "The Rochester Post-Express" in 1896: "I reduce the argument to very simple elements. I pay taxes for property of my own earning and saving, and I do not believe in taxation without representation. As for representation by proxy, that savors too much of the plantation system, however kind the master may be. I am a human being, and every human being has a right to a voice in the laws which claim authority to tax him, to imprison him, or to hang him."

Not only has every human being in the United States a right to a voice in the laws that claim authority to tax him, imprison him, or hang him, but he can exercise that right in all portions of the United States where the laws that claim this authority are able to enlist sufficient physical force to execute the authority claimed. Where they have not that power, neither the voter nor the non-voter has any redress against violence offered to property or limb or life. Gerrymanders and lynchings in many parts of our land prove the truth of this. The mastery of men who abide by and execute law is not a mastery over women for the sake of the spoils of taxation or the disposal of life, but the mastery over lawlessness everywhere in order that tax-payers of either sex, native or alien, voters or non-voters, may be enabled to have that voice in the laws which, as human beings, is their right. As to the "vote by proxy," if Mrs. Child could not trust her husband, her son, her brother, or best friend to look after her interests, she certainly could not trust the carrying out of her wish, as expressed in her vote, to the men who cast in their ballots by her side.

In return for the taxes paid, women get just what men get, namely, roads, gas, water, schools, etc. The women who have refused to pay their taxes because they did not vote, have been treated with a leniency that proves the courtesy of the law-enforcers. They would have made short work with men who were non-voters, who had tried the same tactics. When a man's vote is challenged and refused, he does not dream of saying: "I shall not pay my tax," and the assessor never inquires whether he votes or desires to vote. The men in the District of Columbia do not find their unfranchised condition assuaged by the smallness of their account with the assessor. Neither do they realize or believe that they are governed without their consent, or exempt from police or military duty. This is a striking proof that the vote is not a reward for service. They are male American citizens, over twenty-one years old, and they must contribute service simply and solely for that reason. This is the price they pay for established order.

For, after all, what is government, and what are taxation and representation? When and how did society consent to be governed? When did it agree to be taxed and to be represented? The awful story of history, from the slaying of Abel to the slaughter of half a million men in the War of Secession, is the answer. It never did agree, it has not yet agreed. The struggle of civilization is the effort to make it agree. Implanted in the bosom of man by his Maker is the belief in his individual freedom, of worship as concerns that Maker, of protection as concerns man. Side by side with that, was implanted the principle of surrender of a part of that freedom for just cause. There came a time when men said: "Let us use arguments instead of force in these decisions," and some form of vote was instituted. With this they fought and voted by turns, as they set up or knocked down emperors, kings, popes, and presidents. War has been changed by progress because man has changed; but main strength to drive home the truths gained on the moral battlefield is still the power behind the throne of the National conscience, even in this enlightened land.

Though the Mothers of the Rebellion did not ask, and apparently did not think of asking, to share the military duties incident to suffrage, we must discuss it, if we are to consider the subject thoroughly. To be a voting citizen, is to be a possible soldier citizen. There is no way of fulfilling the moral part of the duty, and leaving unfulfilled the physical, and it is cowardly to attempt it. So the question comes, could American women be soldiers? They could, for a few in disguise were in service during the War of Secession. Titled women of Europe are honorary officers; but this playing soldier is a relic of Middle-Age chivalry. Women can be seriously destructive; but no one will claim that organized military duty is really practicable for them. And the suffrage proposition does not look to anything of the kind. The Suffragists demand equal vote in sending their fathers, brothers, sons, husbands, and lovers to the military field of action, and propose to be absolutely exempt from equal share in the duty that that vote now lays upon male voters. Before the law there could be no distinction of duty on account of race, sex, or previous condition of servitude. The "emancipated" woman would be emancipated into that which the Declaration of Independence expressly called for, "the right and privilege of the people to bear arms."

The constitution of Utah says that the State militia is to consist of "able-bodied males," and I have not yet heard that the women who vote there have insisted that the word "male" be struck out of that clause of the Constitution. By no means, every woman expects to be exempt. After women had succeeded in getting the framers of the constitution of every State to strike out the word "male," from its voting qualification, they would expect them to insert the word "male" in mentioning the service qualification. O Equality, where is thine equal for granting privilege! Such chivalry, it would seem, is an insult to the power and intelligence of the women of Utah, who celebrated their "enfranchisement" by a convention to favor the free coinage of silver, 16 to 1, and whose behavior on that occasion was, to say the least, boyish. The tax upon time and strength, and the money loss of citizen service, Suffrage leaders did not once allude to. They did not, and do not, propose to pay even a double money tax on account of expected exemption. Little as this would have availed to meet the actual situation, it would have shown their good will, and some comprehension of justice, while they talked of an absurd and intangible "right."

But, it might be said, "Utah did insert such a clause into her constitution, and so could other States. It is, after all, common sense that rules, and men can legislate what they please." The law passed by Utah, which provided that "male voters must be tax-payers, while female voters need not be," was decided to be unconstitutional, and this one also may well be. At the end of Utah's Constitution, as of every other, and of every bill that is passed, occurs or is understood something like this sentence from the United States Constitution: "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation." Is it the "appropriate legislation" that gives to Congress, or to any other body, the power to enforce the article decided upon by a majority? We know that it is not. It is the men who can enforce it if it is disobeyed. Every day we see that some laws are "dead letters," not because the legislation appropriate to their enforcement was not perfect, but because they are not enforced. When Mr. Roosevelt became Chairman of the Police Commission there had been for some time a bill, duly legislated, for the enforcement of the Sunday closing of liquor saloons in New York city. But the saloons had not been closed. Mr. Roosevelt summoned the police, and proceeded to enforce the law. If they had refused, the militia stood behind them. Do you say, "Very well, if Miss Willard had been Chairman of the Commissioners she could have done the same." There would have been this great difference. Mr. Roosevelt himself was as much subject to serve at the call of the law, as were the policemen. He was not a dictator merely, he was part and parcel of the strength that he invoked. The reason for obedience rested on the same ground in each case—service in which each stood equal. It is a specious form of mistake to suppose that "men can legislate just what they wish to." They can legislate only what the majority decrees, and they can legislate effectively only what they have power to enforce. Had the saloon-keepers refused to obey Miss Willard, not she, but Mr. Roosevelt and other men would have had to enforce the law.

It is absurd in itself, and annoying to Suffrage advocates, to talk about military duty for woman. Her very nature forbids it. So it is, and so it does, and therefore it is equally absurd to talk about her attempting to assume duties whose very nature forbids their being done by her. Were voting only a matter of obtaining the opinion of women on matters that concern the country, or concern them (and all matters that concern the country concern them), all precedent gathered from the treatment of American women by American men goes to prove that no urging would have been required to secure for them as large a measure of suffrage as was consistent with their duties and their desires.

In 1879 an earnest discussion on Woman Suffrage was held in the legislature of Massachusetts. Four propositions were pending. The first was that a constitutional amendment should be submitted to the people, which, if accepted, would decree to women full suffrage. Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Lucy Stone and William Lloyd Garrison argued the case for the women. Col. Higginson said that if ability to fight were made the test of voting "a large proportion of men, especially of professional men, would be disfranchised. The report of the Surgeon-General of the United States showed that of the thousand clergymen who volunteered or were drafted during the war, 945 were declared to be unfit for service. Of the lawyers who volunteered or were drafted, 650 were rejected, and of the physicians, 745." He added, "You must go down to the mechanics and laborers before you can find a class of men a majority of whom will fulfil this requirement. Of the clergymen who preach that woman suffrage is wrong because women can do no military duty, only one twentieth would themselves be accepted for such service. There is but one class of men better fitted than mechanics for military service, and that is the prize-fighting class, and therefore the constituency which sent John Morrissey to Congress was the only constituency that ever carried out this idea to the end." Col. Higginson, who played a gallant part in the Civil War, should have remembered what poor fighting material the country found in such men as formed the constituency of John Morrissey. The regiment of Zouaves raised in New York City by Billy Wilson, the pugilist, was found to be so mischievous, as well as worthless, that it was shipped to the Dry Tortugas in order to rid the army of a pest. On the other hand, many of the most gallant as well as most orderly soldiers came from dry-goods stores and apothecary shops. The pugilists and roughs are the very ones that are good for nothing as soldiers; they belong to the class that makes soldiery necessary.

When Col. Higginson can use such logic, it is no wonder that women have repeated the argument. The question was not whether, because certain men who were naturally looked upon by the Government as its defenders, and as such were called upon to fight, proved physically unable, but whether the Government had a right, because of its very existence, to call upon those men, and in case of need, to say to them "Put yourself into physical condition for this service." If it had such a right, by what law under the constitution of the United States could Lucy Stone ask to vote and not expect to have her military fitness inquired into, and be asked to put herself into physical condition for it?

Recalling the action of her grandfather, she, better than some other women, might have realized the necessity of force for government. Her defiant spirit might well have descended from that ancestor who led four hundred men in Shays's Rebellion, when, in the State before whose tribunal she was speaking, he assisted in preventing court sessions, and swelled the ranks of the rioters who were decrying taxes and calling for fiat money, in a land that was impoverished and was struggling for a sound financial standing after a war that had been waged to guarantee the blessings of freedom to her and to her children.

As a matter of fact, many of those men whom Col. Higginson referred to as deemed unfit, did go into immediate training, and "muscular Christianity" would now present to the Surgeon-General a different showing. It was one of the surprising things, in a statistical way, to find that city-bred boys stood the marching and exposure of the Civil War campaigns better than their country brothers, and that the yard-stick turned into as effective a sword as the pruning-hook. Garrison, who maintained for so many years that men should not vote because the government was founded on force, had the grace not to speak on this phase of the question, but he said it was cruel that women should be disfranchised and classed with paupers, idiots, and criminals. Senator Hayes asked him if there was no "difference between a person who was disfranchised and one who never had been enfranchised?" and added that "he could see no argument for woman suffrage in the proposition that certain classes of men were not permitted to vote." Neither can I.

The argument for woman suffrage which bases it upon a fancied grouping of women with the vile and brainless element in the country, appears to me to be at once the weakest and the meanest of all. When the United States Government invited its woman citizens to share in making the Columbian Exposition the most wondrous pageant of any age, they responded from every town and hamlet by sending of their best. But the national Suffrage Association, as its official exhibit, gave a picture of the expressive face of Miss Willard surrounded by ideal heads of a pauper, an idiot, and a criminal, with a legend recording their belief that it was with these that American men placed American women. So false a picture must have taught the thoughtful gazers the opposite lesson from the one intended. It could have told them that the United States Government had at least guarded one trust with sacred care. The pauper was excluded from the ballot as not being worthy to share with freemen the honor of its defence. The unfortunate was excluded by an inscrutable decree of Providence. The criminal was excluded as being dangerous to society. The women were exempt from the ballot because it was for their special safety that a free ballot was to be exercised, from which the pauper and the criminal must be excluded. They were the ones who have given to social life its meaning and its moral, the ones who give to civic life its highest value.

The authors of the "History" so often referred to, in answer to the claim that "government needs force behind it, and those who make the laws must execute them, and a woman could not be a sheriff or policeman," say: "Woman might not fill these offices as men do, but might far more effectively guard the morals of society and the sanitary conditions of our cities." A "moral guard" might be an excellent thing to ward off the ghosts in a country burying-ground, but would hardly prove effective against the riot of a Tammany mob on the night of an exciting election. It is absurd to speak in such fashion of work that is needed every hour. The crust of our civilization is very thin—how thin, the nation learned during the campaign just passed. Like a tempest from a clear sky, or one of their own cyclones, burst an influence from a portion of the West and South, that would have overturned the Government. Men struck fanatically and misguidedly at the integrity of the Supreme Court, at the power of the United States to hold jurisdiction over its own public affairs where they conflicted with State right, at the currency that gave the country ability to be honest at home and abroad, at the prosperity and honor of every citizen.

Fifteen years ago Suffrage leaders wrote in view of the wonderful advance of woman: "The broader demand for political rights has not commanded the thought its merits and dignity should have secured." If this was true, it had not been for lack of having the demand pressed home upon Congress and upon every State and Territorial legislature (save in most of the South), in season and out of season, by every device known to politics, as well as by a steady and impetuous flow of literature and petitions. How have these bodies answered this long appeal? It would take too much time and space, even were it of value, to follow the course of its ups and downs through all these years, but I mention first the fact that no State in New England has ever granted constitutional, or even municipal suffrage, although in some of the old thirteen it could have been done by an act of the legislature, a constitutional amendment not being needed. These are some of the figures for the past few years:

In Vermont, in 1892, the House passed a municipal suffrage bill—yeas 149, nays 83. In 1894 the House defeated a similar bill by a vote of 108 to 106, and refused reconsideration by a vote of 124 to 96. Thus a favorable majority of 66 in 1892 was changed to an adverse majority of 28 in 1894.

In Massachusetts, in 1894, the House passed a municipal suffrage bill by a vote of 119 to 107. In 1895 it defeated a similar bill, the vote standing, yeas 97, nays 137, on the question of carrying the bill to a third reading. In the same year an act was passed permitting all persons qualified to vote for school committee to express their opinion at the state election by voting "Yes" or "No," to the question: "Is it expedient that municipal suffrage be granted to women?" Not one woman in four voted in favor of the proposition, although if suffrage has any traditionary power outside of New York State, that power should have been felt in Massachusetts.

In Maine, in 1893, the Senate passed a municipal suffrage bill, which was defeated in the House. In 1895 the House passed a municipal suffrage bill, which was defeated in the Senate.

In New Hampshire, in 1895, the House refused a third reading to a municipal suffrage bill, by a vote of 185 to 108.

In Connecticut, in 1895, the Senate rejected a House municipal suffrage bill, while a presidential suffrage bill did not reach a vote. And in Rhode Island a proposition for a suffrage Constitutional amendment was referred to the next legislature.

All these States had granted school suffrage and could grant municipal suffrage by act of the legislature. In 1893 municipal suffrage bills were defeated in Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, and South Dakota. Full suffrage bills were defeated in Arizona and New Mexico. A township suffrage bill was defeated in Illinois, a license suffrage bill in Connecticut, and a village suffrage bill in New York. In that year, also, the Supreme Courts gave decisions adverse to suffrage laws. In 1893 a bill was defeated in the United States Senate which proposed to give women the municipal vote in the Cherokee Outlet. The vote stood 40 to 9.

In Washington Territory the Legislature passed a law conferring suffrage on woman in 1883; but this was declared invalid by the courts in 1887, because its nature was not sufficiently defined in its title. It was re- enacted in 1888, and again declared invalid by the United States Territorial Court, on the ground that the Act of Congress which organized the Territorial legislature did not empower it to extend the suffrage to women. In 1889 the people, in forming their State constitution, decided against suffrage.

In 1894, in the election of November 6, Kansas defeated a constitutional amendment granting full suffrage, by a majority of 34,827.

In Iowa, in the same year, the Senate defeated a proposition to submit a suffrage constitutional amendment to the people. In 1895, bills for full suffrage and for municipal suffrage again failed to pass, and the question was submitted to the people in 1896, and resulted in defeat.

In 1895, also, a township suffrage bill was twice defeated in Illinois.

In Indiana a proposition to strike the word "male" out of the Constitution, was not even reported from the committee to which it was referred.

In the same year, in Kansas, a bill passed the Senate which proposed to confer upon nine specified women the full suffrage in response to their petition. The Senate also passed a bill conferring upon women the vote for presidential electors; but neither ever reached a vote in the House. In Michigan, the same year, a proposition to submit a constitutional amendment was defeated, and a similar resolution in Missouri was also defeated. Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin, and South Carolina also defeated propositions to submit the question to the people in 1895.

Since January, 1897, Nova Scotia, two Territories, and ten States have dealt with the suffrage proposal, and all but one of these have rendered adverse decisions. In Nova Scotia an old bill was reconsidered, and a larger majority was obtained against it. The territories are Arizona and Oklahoma. The states in which it was defeated are Iowa, Nevada, Nebraska, Kansas, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, and California. The last two had given it heavy defeats but a few months previously. Indiana's Supreme Court handed down an adverse decision. The favorable state was Washington, where the Legislature voted to submit an amendment to the people next year.

Certainly, the question cannot be said not to have received the attention that any vital subject might have claimed, and the answers show that, as comprehension of the meaning of democracy has grown, and as liberty of thought and action for men and women has increased, the proposition to cast an unequal burden, not upon a disfranchised class, but upon an unfranchised sex which in every class has its own correlative and equal duties, rights, and privileges, is losing ground.

But, it is answered, look at the suffrage triumphs in Utah State and Idaho. Let us look at them more closely. It is my opinion that a few more such triumphs would end in its utter overthrow. Utah introduced suffrage by a simple legislative act. Woman suffrage was abolished in Utah Territory by Federal statute, because it was found to be sustaining the Mormon Church and the institution of polygamy. The Suffragists profess to hold in abhorrence churchly and polygamous rule. Here was an opportunity for them to say to the Government: "This is not what we meant by suffrage, nor what we desire suffrage to be used for. We approve this real disfranchisement." Did they do anything of the kind? Far from it. In 1876 they passed the following: "Resolved, That, the right of suffrage being vested in the women of Utah by their constitutional and lawful enfranchisement, and by six years of use, we denounce the proposition about to be again presented to Congress for the disfranchisement of the women of that Territory, as an outrage on the freedom of thousands of legal voters and a gross innovation of vested rights; we demand the abolition of the system of numbering the ballots, in order that the women may be thoroughly free to vote as they choose, without supervision or dictation; and that the chair appoint a committee of three persons, with power to add to their number, to memorialize Congress, and otherwise watch over the rights of women of Utah in this regard during the next twelvemonth."

In 1878 the report of Utah's governor contained the following: "All voters must be over twenty-one years of age, and must have resided in the Territory six months, and in the precinct one month. If males, they must be native born or naturalized citizens of the United States, and tax- payers in the Territory. A female voter need not be a tax-payer, and if the wife, widow or daughter of a native or naturalized citizen, need not herself be native or naturalized!" In 1892 the Utah Commission made to the Secretary of the Interior a report which gave it as their opinion that the sanction of the Church had been withdrawn only temporarily in regard to polygamous practices, and would be restored after a political purpose had been served. That same year a party was formed calling itself the "Liberal Party," and it carried Salt Lake City in the first election in which National party lines were drawn. This was one plank of its platform: "Anxious as every Liberal is to see every difference adjusted, as anxious as they are to exercise the utmost privileges accorded to the most favored Americans, they remember what first caused clashing here was the presence and control of an unyielding Theocracy and an imperium in imperio, and they cannot fail to note that at the last conference of this theocratic organization the old assumptions were all renewed." They therefore deprecated immediate Statehood. The bill granting it passed Congress in 1894. The Republican, Democratic and Populist parties in Utah all favored Statehood, and at the election following the Constitutional Convention these parties all inserted planks favoring free coinage of silver 16 to 1, demanding the return by government of "real estate belonging to the Mormon Church," and favoring the retention of woman suffrage.

The women of Utah were greatly in evidence during the late presidential election. Several of them were candidates for office; but it is a significant fact that, even in Utah, and even on the Republico-Demo- Populist ticket, the women's vote ran far behind that for the men. "The Salt Lake Herald" for November 13, 1896, records the fact that "Woman suffrage gave Utah to Bryan," and in another place it says: "The women on both tickets polled a small number of votes." Martha Cannon, who was elected State Senator, obtained 8,167 votes. The men on the same ticket, elected to the same office, polled, respectively, 9,875, 9,355, 9,244, 9,036 votes. Mrs. Cannon was on the free silver ticket against her husband, who was nominated for the same office on the Republican ticket. Of the other candidates for the senatorships on that ticket, four were men and one a woman. The men's vote stood: 6,405, 6,197, 6,129, 5,961. The woman's was 4,692. The only woman put up for State Representative ran 2,000 votes behind her ticket. One man only, "the ex-dog-catcher" of the county, fell below her. The woman's vote was 4,879, the dog-catcher's 4,325.

I copy from the "Salt Lake Herald" a few sentences taken from an interview with Mrs. Cannon, State Senator elect. When asked if she was a strong believer in woman suffrage, she answered: "Of course I am. It will help women, and it will purify politics. Women are better than men. Slaves are always better than their masters." "Do you refer to polygamy?" was asked. "Indeed I do not," she answered. "I believe in polygamy. My father and mother were Mormons, and I am a Mormon.... A plural wife isn't half as much of a slave as a single wife. If her husband has four wives, she has three weeks of freedom every single month.... Of course it is all at an end now, but I think the women of Utah think, with me, that we were better off in polygamy.... Sixty per cent. of the voters of this State are women. We control the State.... What am I going to do with my children while I am making the laws for the State? The same thing I have done with them when I have been practicing medicine. They have been left to themselves a good deal.... Some day there will be a law compelling people to have no more than a certain amount of children, and the mothers of the land can live as they ought to live." This is the character and opinion presented by the highest State official that woman suffrage has as yet given to the United States. Comment upon it seems unnecessary, so far as it would be needed to express the disgust of the majority of American women at such sentiments and such a situation. But has any Suffrage speaker or meeting denounced them, or deprecated the result of the election? I have heard of none. The National Suffrage Convention, which was held in Iowa, in January, 1897, had the newly-elected Populist women as guests of honor, and held a jubilation over the two new Suffrage States—Utah and Idaho. Idaho has elected a Populist woman or two. The vote in that State in favor of the gold standard and that against woman suffrage tally within forty-two votes.

The instinctive alliance of the Woman Suffrage movement with the uncertain and dangerous elements in our political life is well exemplified by the campaign in California in connection with the late presidential election. Mrs. Barclay Hazard, who was almost the sole woman to express publicly the opposition which the majority of women felt, to the Suffrage idea, has given me the following clear account of the conditions and result. She says: "If the advocates of Woman Suffrage give a really frank and truthful answer to the question, 'What caused the defeat of the movement in the late campaign in California?' they must reply, 'Public sentiment was against it.' In all fairness, there is no other reason. Let us consider the conditions under which the campaign was carried on. In the first place, the Suffragists were most fortunate in choosing a time when the whole country, as well as the State of California, was torn by a question of such vital importance to continued life and well-being that all other matters were in danger of going by default.

"Second: They were extremely well organized and had command of a campaign fund of no mean magnitude, which enabled them to keep in the field such able and experienced agitators as Miss Susan B. Anthony and the Rev. Anna Shaw, to say nothing of numerous lesser lights.

"Third: There was absolutely no organized opposition to the movement. The women who disapproved were as a rule entirely unaccustomed to public speaking and were averse to coming forward in any way. They remonstrated in private but would not express their views openly.

"Fourth: Last but by no means least, our Suffrage friends may be said to have had the press of the State with them. The 'Los Angeles Times' (the most influential paper in the southern part of the State) cannot be said to have aided the movement, neither did it actively antagonize it beyond admitting to its columns occasionally letters from the 'Antis.' Yet for this small opposition I heard an ardent advocate propose that the Suffragists should boycott the paper!

"Now, was ever a cause fought for under conditions more conducive to success? 'Every thing,' to use a current slang phrase, 'seemed to be going their way.' They fully expected to win, and those of us most opposed to their ideas in private sadly conceded their probable victory. The result when it came was all the more a surprise and blow to the Suffragists and a welcome reassurance to the friends of stability and conservatism. The figures show us that while the stronghold of Populism, the South, went for the measure, Alameda County turned the scale. One must know California to realize what that means. Alameda County contains the city of Oakland, which is admittedly the most respectable and moral city in California; it also contains the town of Berkeley, which is the home of the University of California with its large faculty of clever men, most of them from the East. Yes, it was here in the stronghold of morals and intellect that the Woman Suffrage movement in California met its fate."

A question constantly and properly asked is: "How does woman suffrage work where it is exercised?" So far as I can obtain information, where it has worked at all, it has been detrimental to women and to the State.

Of Wyoming there is much testimony to the fact that during the Territorial period (1868-'89) women did little voting, and played no appreciable part in political life. Populism and Free Coinage had begun to play a prominent part in the whole section when Wyoming was admitted to Statehood in 1890. At the election that followed its admission there was a fusion that resulted in the election of a Populist Governor, and such was the riotous state of feeling that the Governor was obliged to enter the State House through a broken window. A year later this same Governor, in his annual message, proclaimed woman suffrage to be a notable success. As a proof, he pointed to the fact that there were no criminals in the State, and that the jails were empty. A little research into official documents showed that there might be other reasons, because the criminals and those guilty of small offences were at that time lodged in other States, and a year later, when the authorities took possession of Laramie Prison, given by the Government, and brought home their evil-doers, they outnumbered, in proportion to population, those of New Mexico, which certainly should be a fair place for comparison.

For a time, women served on juries, and there is testimony to the fact that in many respects they served well. But the practice of calling them was soon suspended, and never has been renewed. The only public office of consequence held by them was bestowed by the Republicans but a year or two ago, when Miss Reel was made State Superintendent of Schools. In our late crucial election, Wyoming and its woman suffrage gave their voices for Populism and Free Coinage. The scale hung in the balance. Why, if woman is a greater political power for good than man, did she not turn it for the principles which the State had held were best? The true test of the working of woman suffrage lies in a study of the legislation connected with it, and this will be presented under its appropriate heading.

The scenes of shameful defiance of law and order in the midst of which Colorado admitted woman to the ballot are of more recent occurrence and are fresh in memory. Populism never has played in Colorado the part that it has in Kansas, but "anything for free coinage" has been the motto, and in abiding by it the State brought in, and afterward turned out, Gov. Waite, of disgraceful memory. Again, last year, there was Republican- Democratic-Populist fusion to beat the gold standard, and much Populist rule was again the result. One good authority writes me that women "have introduced an element of order and respectability upon election day that was never observed before." He says he thinks that, "as a whole, the people are very much satisfied with woman suffrage and believe that it has resulted beneficially in so far as it has made politics a little better than they were." Another says that "the influence of woman in politics did not prevent the last Republican caucus of Arapahoe Co. from being the most disgraceful in the history of the State. The Convention, though presided over by a woman, was completely in the power of the 'gang,' and sent to Pueblo the most unworthy delegate ever sent." This gentleman also says he has "heard numbers of intelligent women state that they were sorry the ballot had ever been given to them." Orderliness at the ordinary elections is expected here, without calling upon women to act as "moral police" at the polls. So quiet are they that it has been found practicable to place coffee-stands in charge of women near some of the booths, when women have requested it in the hope of preventing drunkenness. A friend said to me some time ago: "You know that I have been a Suffragist. I am most thoroughly converted. I have been three months in Colorado. It is enough to cure any one."

A Denver correspondent of the "Chicago Record," says: "The women of Colorado took no active part in the recent campaign, but they did not forget to vote.... The experiment of having women in the State Assembly did not prove satisfactory, at the last session, and it was quite generally conceded that there would be no more women sent to that body; but the Populists won in this county, and on their ticket were three woman candidates, so the coming session will again have three women as members."

Of course the effect of suffrage in new States is not a criterion of its effect elsewhere. And whether the effect could be shown to be good or bad, the main argument would not be touched. The interesting thing to trace is the affiliations of the movement.

In addition to those that have been mentioned we recall the fact that in our recent political campaign, four parties that nominated candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States, had in their conventions women as delegates and members of committees. They were the Populist, the Free-Silver, the Prohibition, and the Socialist-Labor parties. The woman-suffragists of the Prohibition party left the rock- ribbed champion that had put a Suffrage plank in every platform for years, in order to go with Free Silver and Populism of the most extravagant type. These parties also had Suffrage planks. Altgeld and Debs, Coxey and Tillman were only men, but Mary Ellen Lease furnished to the campaign that strain of exalted fanaticism that at once points out woman's glory and woman's danger.

The Suffrage indictment we have been considering is summed up as follows: "Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one half of the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."

Dr. Jacobi in "Common Sense" says: "To this very day the survivors of that group of pioneer women have an abstract way of stating their claim which, to modern ears, sounds somewhat archaic."

She is not archaic when she says: "During the long ages of class rule, which are just beginning to cease, only one form of sovereignty has been assigned to all men—that, namely, over all women. Upon these feeble and inferior companions all men were permitted to avenge the indignities they suffered from so many men to whom they were forced to submit."

Mary A. Livermore is not archaic when in the "North American Review" for February, 1896, she says: "Her physical weakness, and not alone her mental inferiority, has made her the subject of man. Toiling patiently for him, cheerfully sharing with him all his perils and hardships, the unappreciated mother of his children, she has been bought and sold, petted and tortured, according to the whims of her brutal owner, the victim everywhere of pillage, lust, war, and servitude. And this statement includes all races and peoples of the earth from the date of their historic existence."

I deny the truthfulness of the archaic accusation, and denounce as an absurdity the bombastic demand. I resent, as an unwarranted insult to woman and to man, the still more bitter modern representations of woman's condition and woman's rights in this world, and especially in this Republic. They are simply false.

Archaic or modern, the dictums of the Suffrage pioneers have been repeated at their every convention. Overlaid with sentiment as much of the Suffrage idea has become, contradictory as it is in argument and in statement of fact, blended as are its sophisms with the real progress of the time, sincere and well-meaning as are many of its advocates, sex antagonism is the corner-stone of its foundation. The Woman's Rebellion is a more complex affair than the American Revolution. The latter was the natural result of the earnest and united protest, by a large majority of men and women of the American Colonies, against the tyranny of a monarchical government. The former was a protest by a small band of women and men against what they claimed to be universal tyranny. They attacked law and custom all along the line, and the weapon forever kept in order for the service was the demand for woman's possession of the ballot. Where she does not possess it, and has not asked it, her influence is mightiest. The relation of woman to the Republic is a study worthy the most exalted patriotism. In it is involved the broader question of her relation to man and to the destiny of the race. When told of her son's heroism in crossing the Delaware, Mary Washington said, "George will not forget the lessons I have taught him." Through the mother's devoted faith and the son's obedient power, the foundations were laid of a government whose sole reliance must still be on woman's inspiration and man's willing strength. These are evidently God's instruments for our Nation's upbuilding.



CHAPTER IV.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND PHILANTHROPY.

The extinction of human bondage, more perhaps than any other one event, has emphasized the progress of the century about to close. Our generation has witnessed the destruction of serfdom in Russia, and of slavery in Brazil and the United States. Freedom was gained; but of the enlightened rulers through whom it was won, two were assassinated and one was exiled to die. Sacrifice is still the price of liberty.

Much stress has been laid by Suffragists upon the supposed fact that the Woman-suffrage movement grew up as a logical conclusion from the Anti- slavery movement. It grew out of it in the sense of having been born in its midst; but I believe that the truth will be found to be that it was the most prolific source of the dissensions that marred that noble cause, and was identified with the small element that adopted wild notions or used the notoriety gained by opposition to slavery in order to propagate mischief. The conduct of those who later entered the Suffrage movement hindered the public work of women from the time of organized effort for the slave until slavery fell pierced to death amid the horrors of a fratricidal war. I will take a brief survey of the Anti-slavery struggle as it blended itself with the doctrines of those abolitionists who were the earliest and staunchest friends of the Suffrage movement, and compare it with the statements and claims of the women themselves.

I first refer to the "Life of James G. Birney," by his son, General William Birney. James G. Birney was an early friend of Henry B. Stanton, husband of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and with him helped to lay the foundations of the Free-Soil Party, and later the Republican Party. General Birney says of his father: "In his visit to New York and New England, in May and June, 1837, Mr. Birney's chief object had been to restore harmony among Anti-slavery leaders on doctrines and measures, and especially to check a tendency, already marked in Massachusetts, to burden the cause with irrelevant reforms, real or supposed. With this view he had attended the New England Anti-slavery Convention held at Boston, May 30 to June 2 inclusive, accepted the position of one of its vice-presidents, and acted as a member of its committee on business. Rev. Henry C. Wright, the leader of the No-Human-Government, Woman's-Rights, and Moral-Reform factions, was a member of the Convention, but received no appointment on any committee. On June 23, in the 'Liberator' [his newspaper], Mr. Garrison denounced human governments. July 4, he spoke at Providence, as if approvingly, of the overthrow of the Nation, the dismemberment of the Union, and the dashing in pieces of the Church. July 15, an association, of Congregational ministers issued a 'pastoral letter' against the new doctrines. August 2, five clergymen, claiming to represent nine tenths of the abolitionists of Massachusetts, published an 'appeal' which was directed more especially against the course of the 'Liberator.' August 3, the abolitionists of Andover Theological Seminary issued a similar appeal. Among the complaints were some against 'speculations that lead inevitably to disorganization, anarchy, unsettling the domestic economy, removing the landmarks of society, and unhinging the machinery of government.' A new Anti-slavery society in Bangor passed the following resolution: 'That, while we admit the right of full and free discussion of all subjects, yet, in our judgment, individuals rejecting the authority of civil and parental governments ought not to be employed as agents and lecturers in promoting the cause of emancipation.'"

In his Autobiography, speaking of this time, Frederick Douglass says: "I believe my first offence against our Anti-slavery Israel was committed during these Syracuse meetings. It was in this wise: Our general agent, John A. Collins, had recently returned from England full of communistic ideas, which ideas would do away with individual property and have all things in common. He had arranged a corps of speakers of his communistic persuasion, consisting of John O. Wattles, Nathaniel Whiting, and John Orvis, to follow our Anti-slavery conventions, and while our meeting was in progress in Syracuse Mr. Collins came in with his new friends and doctrines and proposed to adjourn our Anti-slavery discussions and take up the subject of communism. To this I ventured to object. I held that it was imposing an additional burden of unpopularity on our cause, and an act of bad faith with the people who paid the salary of Mr. Collins and were responsible for these hundred conventions. Strange to say, my course in this matter did not meet the approval of Mrs. Maria W. Chapman, an influential member of the board of managers of the Massachusetts Anti- slavery society, and called out a sharp reprimand from her, for insubordination to my superiors." John O. Wattles labored hard to introduce Woman Suffrage into the State Constitution of Kansas. Mr. Collins worked for it in California in the early days. Mrs. Chapman, who had embraced Mr. Collins's doctrines, was one of the first pillars of the Suffrage movement.

Later, when Mr. Douglass determined to establish a newspaper and become its editor, he was obliged to leave New England, "for the sake of peace," he says, as his Anti-slavery friends opposed it, saying that it was absurd to think of a wood-sawyer offering himself as an editor. In Rochester, N. Y., he established "The North Star." He says, "I was then a faithful disciple of William L. Garrison, and fully committed to his doctrine touching the pro-slavery character of the Constitution of the United States, also the non-voting principle, of which he was the known and distinguished advocate. With him, I held it to be the first duty of the non-slaveholding States to dissolve the union with the slaveholding States, and hence my cry, like his, was 'No union with slaveholders.' After a time, a careful reconsideration of the subject convinced me that there was no necessity for 'dissolving the union between the northern and southern States;' that to seek this dissolution was no part of my duty as an abolitionist; that to abstain from voting was to refuse to exercise a legitimate and powerful means for abolishing slavery; and that the Constitution of the United States not only contained no guarantees in favor of slavery, but, on the contrary, was in its letter and spirit an Anti-slavery instrument, demanding the abolition of slavery as a condition of its own existence as the supreme law of the land. This radical change in my opinions produced a corresponding change in my action. Those who could not see any honest reasons for changing their views, as I had done, could not easily see any such reasons for my change, and the common punishment of apostates was mine. ... Among friends who had been devoted to my cause were Isaac and Amy Post, William and Mary Hallowell, Asa and Hulda Anthony, and indeed all the committee of the Western New York Anti- Slavery Society. They held festivals and fairs to raise money, and assisted me in every other possible way to keep my paper in circulation while I was a non-voting abolitionist, but withdrew from me when I became a voting abolitionist."

The Posts, the Hallowells, and the Anthonys were among the first to attach themselves to the Suffrage movement.

The Grimke sisters, who were intensely interested in the abolition agitation, followed Garrison to the extreme, and adopted the socialistic ideas with which his wing became to a large extent identified. They were also early in the Suffrage cause. In August, 1837, Whittier wrote to them as follows: "I am anxious to hold a long conversation with you on the subject of war, human government, and church and family government. The more I reflect upon the subject the more difficulty I find, and the more decidedly am I of opinion that we ought to hold all these matters aloof from the cause of abolition. Our good friend, H. C. Wright, with the best intentions in the world, is doing great injury by a different course. He is making the Anti-slavery party responsible in a great degree for his, to say the least, startling opinions.... But let him keep them distinct from the cause of emancipation. To employ an agent who devotes half his time and talents to the propagation of 'no-human or no-family government' doctrines in connection, intimate connection, with the doctrines of abolition, is a fraud upon the patrons of the cause. Brother Garrison errs, I think, in this respect. He takes the 'no-church and no-government' ground."

Mr. Garrison wrote to the American Anti-slavery Society of his desire to crush the "dissenters," and Maria W. Chapman wrote: "Why will they think they can cut away from Garrison without becoming an abomination? ... If this defection should drink the cup and end all, we of Massachusetts will turn and abolish them as readily as we would the colonization society." Henry B. Stanton wrote to William Goodell: "I am glad to see that you have criticised Brother H. C. Wright. I have just returned from a few months' tour in eastern Massachusetts, and he has done immense hurt there." A. A. Phelps, agent of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery society, wrote: "I write you this in great grief, and yet I feel constrained to do it. The cause of abolition here was never in so dangerous and critical a position before. Mutual jealousies on the part of the laity and clergy are rampant; indeed, so much so that, let a clerical brother do what he will, it is resolved as a matter of course into a sinister motive! ... Of this stamp, more than ever before, is friend Garrison. And Mrs. Chapman remarked to me the other day that she sometimes doubted which needed abolition most, slavery or the black-hearted ministry. For this cause alone we are on the brink of a general split in our ranks.... And as if to make a bad matter worse, Garrison insists on yoking perfectionism, no-governmentism, and woman- preaching with abolition, as part and parcel of the same lump."

In 1840, Emerson, in his Amory Hall lecture, said: "The Church or religious party is falling from the Church nominal, and is appearing in Temperance and non-resistant societies, in movements of abolitionists and socialists, and in very significant assemblies called Sabbath and Bible conventions, composed of ultraists, of seekers, of all the soul and soldiery of dissent, and meeting to call in question the authority of the Sabbath, of the priesthood, of the Church. In these movements nothing was more remarkable than the discontent they begot in the movers.... They defied each other like a congress of kings, each of whom had a realm to rule, and a way of his own that made concert unprofitable."

These ideas blossomed, in due course of time, into Socialistic communities. There was a distinctly Anti-slavery one at Hopedale, Massachusetts. The founder, Adin Ballou, published a tract setting forth the objects of the community, from which I make the following extracts: "No precise theological dogmas, ordinances, or ceremonies are prescribed or prohibited. In such matters all the members are free, with mutual love and toleration, to follow their own highest convictions of truth and religious duty, answerable only to the great Head of the Church Universal. It enjoins total abstinence from all God-contemning words and deeds; all unchastity; all intoxicating beverages; all oath-taking; all slave-holding and pro-slavery compromises; all war and preparations for war; all capital and other vindictive punishments; all insurrectionary, seditious, mobocratic, and personal violence against any government, society, family, or individual; all voluntary participation in any anti-Christian government, under promise of unqualified support, whether by doing military service, commencing actions at law, holding office, voting, petitioning for penal laws, or asking public interference for protection which can only be given by such force. It is the seedling of the true democratic and social Republic, wherein neither caste, color, sex, nor age stands prescribed. It is a moral-suasion temperance society on the teetotal basis. It is a moral-power Anti-slavery society, radical and without compromise. It is a peace society on the only impregnable foundation, that of Christian non-resistance. It is a sound theoretical and practical Woman's Rights Association." Among other Suffragists, Abby Kelly Foster was resident at Hopedale. Another community, at Northampton, was sometimes described as "Nothingarian."

Of the state of things at this time in the Anti-slavery societies, General Birney says, "The no-government men made up in activity what they lacked in numbers. While refusing for themselves to vote at the ballot-box, they voted in conventions and formed coalitions with women who wished to vote at the ballot-box." Mr. Henry B. Stanton wrote to William Goodell: "An effort was made at the annual meeting of the Massachusetts society, which adjourned today, to make its annual report and its action subservient to the non-resistant movement, and through the votes of the women of Lynn and Boston it succeeded." A little later, January, 1839, Mr. Stanton wrote again to Mr. Goodell, as follows: "I have taken the liberty to show your letter to brothers Phelps, George Allen, George Russell, O. Scott, N. Colver, and a large number of others, and they highly approve its sentiments. They, with you, are fully of the opinion that it is high time to take a firm stand against the no-government doctrine. They are far from regarding it merely as a humbug." John A. Collins, the Anti-slavery agent referred to, founded a community at Skaneateles, N. Y., based upon the following dictums: A disbelief in any special revelation of God to Man, in any form of worship, in any special regard for the Sabbath, in any church, disbelief in all governments based on physical force, because they are "organized bands of banditti," whose authority is to be disregarded, a disbelief in voting, in petitioning, in doing military duty, paying personal or property taxes, serving on juries, testifying in "so-called" courts of justice. A disbelief in any individual property. A belief that as marriage is designed for the happiness of the parties to it, when such parties have outlived their affections, the sooner the separation takes place the better, and that such separation shall not be a barrier to their again uniting with any one. The community lived two and a half years, and broke up with a debt of ten thousand dollars. John O. Wattles, who was associated with Collins in the disturbance referred to by Frederick Douglass, founded a community in Logan County, Ohio, which was called "The Prairie Home." They had no laws, no government, no opinions, no principles, no form of society, no test of admission. They professed to take for their creed the dictum "Do as you would be done by." The association broke up in anarchy within a few months. Mr. Collins and Mr. Wattles were always promoters of the Woman-Suffrage movement.

Mr. Garrison said: "We cannot acknowledge allegiance to any human government. We can allow no appeal to patriotism to revenge any national insult or injury." Again he said: "If a nation has no right to defend itself against foreign enemies, no individual possesses that right in his own case.... As every human government is upheld by physical strength, and its laws are enforced at the point of the bayonet, we cannot hold office. We therefore exclude ourselves from every legislative and judicial body, and repudiate all human politics, worldly honors, and stations of authority."

Ralph Waldo Emerson says: "They withdraw themselves from the common labors and competitions of the market and the caucus.... They are striking work, and calling out for something worthy to do.... They are not good citizens, not good members of society; unwilling to bear their part of the public burdens. They do not even like to vote. They filled the world with long beards and long words. They began in words, and ended in words."

Charles Sumner said: "An omnibus-load of Boston abolitionists has done more harm to the Anti-slavery cause than all its enemies."

Angelina Grimke, writing at this time to Mr. Weld, said: "What wouldst thou think of the 'Liberator' abandoning abolitionism as a primary object, and becoming the vehicle of all these grand principles?"

In his published volume "Anti-slavery Days," James Freeman Clarke says of the first Garrison Anti-slavery society: "There was no such excitement to be had anywhere else as at these meetings. There was a little of everything going on in them. Sometimes crazy people would come in and insist on taking up the time; sometimes mobs would interrupt the smooth tenor of their way; but amid all disturbance each meeting gave us an interesting and impressive hour. I think that some of the Garrisonian orators had the keenest tongues ever given to man. Stephen S. Foster and Henry C. Wright, for example, said the sharpest things that were ever uttered. Their belief was, that people were asleep, and the only thing to be done was to rouse them; and to do this it was necessary to cut deep and spare not. The more angry people were made, the better." Again, in the same volume, he says, after describing the political Anti-slavery party: "While these political anti-slavery movements were going on, the old abolitionists, under the lead of Garrison, Phillips, and others, had decided to oppose all voting and all political efforts under the Constitution. They adopted as their motto, 'No union with slaveholders.' Their hope for abolishing slavery was in inducing the North to dissolve the Union. Edmund Quincy said the Union was 'a confederacy with crime,' that 'the experiment of a great nation with popular institutions had signally failed,' that 'the Republic was not a model but a warning to the nations;' that 'the whole people must be either slaveholders or slaves;' that the only escape for 'the slave from his bondage was over the ruins of the American Church and the American State:' and it was the unalterable purpose of the Garrisonians to labor for the dissolution of the Union." Freeman Clarke goes on to say: "Wendell Phillips said on one occasion, 'Thank God, I am not a citizen of the United States.' As late as 1861 he declared the Union a failure, and argued for the dissolution of the Union as 'the best possible method of abolishing slavery.' If the North had agreed to disunion and had followed the advice of Phillips, 'To build a bridge of gold to take the slave States out of the Union,' slavery would probably be still existing in all the Southern States. At all events, it was not abolished by those who wished for disunion, but by those who were determined at all hazards and by every sacrifice to maintain the Union."

On April 8, 1839, Henry B. Stanton wrote to William Goodell as follows: "At this very time, and mainly, too, in that part of the country where political action has been most successful, and whence, from its promise of soon being triumphant, great encouragement was derived by abolitionists everywhere, a sect has arisen in our midst whose members regard it as of religious obligation in no case to exercise the elective franchise. This persuasion is part and parcel of the tenet which it is believed they have embraced, that as Christians have the precepts of the gospel of Christ, and the spirit of God to guide them, all human governments, as necessarily including the idea of force to secure obedience, are not only superfluous, but unlawful encroachments on the Divine government as ascertained from the sources above mentioned. Therefore they refuse to do anything voluntarily that would be considered as acknowledging the lawful existence of human governments. Denying to civil governments the right to use force, they easily deduce that family governments have no such right. They carry out the 'non-resistant' theory. To the first ruffian who would demand our purse or oust us from our house, they are to be unconditionally surrendered unless moral suasion be found sufficient to induce him to desist from his purpose. Our wives, our daughters, our sisters, our mothers, we are to see set upon by the most brutal, without any effort on our part except argument to defend them! And even they themselves are forbidden to use in defence of their purity such powers as God has endowed them with for its protection, if resistance should be attended with injury or destruction to the assailant. In short, the 'no-government' doctrines, as they are believed now to be embraced, seem to strike at the root of the social structure, and tend, so far as I am able to judge of their tendency, to throw society into entire confusion and to renew, under the sanction of religion, scenes of anarchy and license that have generally hitherto been the offspring of the rankest infidelity and irreligion."

Again, he wrote: "The non-government doctrine, stripped of its disguise, is worse than Fanny-Wrightism, and, under a Gospel garb, it is Fanny- Wrightism with a white frock on. It goes to the utter overthrow of all order, yea, of all purity. When carried out, it goes not only for a community of goods, but a community of wives. Strange that such an infidel theory should find votaries in New England!"

The editors of the "History of Woman Suffrage" say in their opening chapter: "Among the immediate causes that led to the demand for the equal political rights of women, in this country, we may note these: First, the discussion in several of the State legislatures of the property rights of married women; Second, the great educational work that was accomplished by the able lectures of Frances Wright, on political, religious, and social questions. Ernestine L. Rose, following in her wake, equally liberal in her religious opinions, and equally well-informed on the science of government, helped to deepen and perpetuate the impression Frances Wright had made on the minds of unprejudiced hearers. Third, and above all other causes of the Woman-Suffrage movement, was the Anti-slavery struggle in this country." By referring to the columns of the secular and religious press of that period, we find that most of the respectable and representative opinion of the country was "prejudiced." Halls and assembly rooms in all the cities were closed against Fanny Wright, not only because her doctrines were absolutely infidel and materialistic, but because they were deemed subversive of law, order, and decency. The better portion of society in the United States was of one mind in its estimate of "The Pioneer Woman in the Cause of Woman's Eights," as she was called. In the columns of "The Free Inquirer," a newspaper which she and Robert Dale Owen established and edited in New York City in 1829, she attacked religion in every form, marriage, the family, and the State. She pretended to no basis of scientific investigation, but in a brilliant flood of words endeavored to sweep away faith in the Bible, the home, the Republic, in favor of negation, communism, free love. I have place for but a single quotation from one of her "Fables," published in the "Free Inquirer." It will show the drift of her work in one direction:

"'Is my errand sped, and am I a master on earth?' said the infernal king (Pluto). 'Even as I promised,' said the Fury. 'Love hath forsaken the earth. Under the form of religion I aroused the fears and commanded the submission of mortals; and our imp now reigns on earth in the place of Love, under the form of Hymen.' Pluto smiled grimly, and smote his thigh in triumph. 'Well conceited, well executed, daughter of Night. Our empire shall not lack recruits, now that innocence is exchanged for superstition, and the true affection of congenial and confiding hearts is replaced by mock ceremonies and compulsory oaths!'"

Frances Wright had founded, in 1825, at Nashoba, Tennessee, a community that had for its professed aim the elevation and education of the Southern negroes. In describing her object, Miss Wright said: "No difference will be made in the schools between the white children and the children of color, whether in education or in any other advantage. This establishment is founded on the principle of community of property and labor: these fellow-creatures, that is, the blacks, admitted here, requiting these services by services equal or greater, by filling occupations which their habits render easy, and which to their guides and assistants might be difficult or unpleasing." This form of helotism flourished but three years on American soil. It is doubly interesting as containing the germs of communism and anti-slavery that blended themselves in the beginnings of a movement for suffrage which was directly inspired by Frances Wright.

The editors of the "Suffrage History" say that "above all other causes of the suffrage movement, was the Anti-slavery struggle in this country." They add: "In the early Anti-slavery conventions, the broad principles of human rights were so exhaustively discussed, justice, liberty, and equality so clearly taught, that the women who crowded to listen, readily learned the lesson of freedom for themselves, and early began to take part in the debates and business affairs of all associations. And before the public were aroused to the dangerous innovation, women were speaking in crowded promiscuous assemblies. The clergy opposed to the Abolition movement first took alarm, and issued a pastoral letter, warning their congregations against the influence of such women. The clergy identified with Anti-slavery associations took alarm also, and the initiative steps to silence women, and to deprive them of the right to vote in the business meetings, were soon taken. This action culminated in a division in the Anti-slavery Association. The question of woman's right to speak, vote, and serve on committee, not only precipitated the division in the ranks of the American Anti-slavery society, in 1840, but it disturbed the peace of the World's Anti-slavery Convention, held that same year in London. In summoning the friends of the slave from all parts of the two hemispheres to meet in London, John Bull never dreamed that woman, too, would answer to his call. Imagine, then, the commotion in the conservative Anti-slavery circles in England when it was known that half a dozen of those terrible women who had spoken to promiscuous assemblies, voted on men and measures, prayed and petitioned against slavery, women who had been mobbed, ridiculed by the press, and denounced by the pulpit, who had been the cause of setting all the American Abolitionists by the ears, and split their ranks asunder, were on their way to England."

These quarrels, stirred up through the unseemly conduct of men and women, as we have seen, they were willing to precipitate upon a convention in a foreign land, a convention, too, which had declared its desire not to receive them as delegates. Upon the calling of the roll, the meeting was thrown into excitement and confusion on a subject foreign to that which brought them together. Wendell Phillips eloquently pleaded for the admission of the women. The English officers, while showing their personal courtesy, begged to remind them that the Queen, and many ladies in various stations, were represented by male delegates, and that to admit the American ladies would be to cast a slight upon their own active members, many of whom were present. During the heated discussion Mr. James Fuller said: "One friend has stated that this question should have been settled on the other side of the Atlantic. Why, it was so settled, and in favor of the women." Mr. James G. Birney answered: "The right of the women to sit and act in all respects as men in our Anti-slavery associations was so decided in the Society in May, 1839, but not by a large majority, which majority was swelled by the votes of the women themselves. I have just received a letter from a gentleman in New York (Lewis Tappan) communicating the fact that the persistence of the friends of promiscuous female representation in pressing that practice on the American Anti- Slavery society, at its annual meeting on the 12th of last month, had caused such disagreement that he, and others who viewed the subject as he did, were deliberating the question of seceding from the old organization."

Lewis Tappan, a founder of the American Missionary Society, was intimately connected with his brother Arthur in all anti-slavery work. Arthur was a founder of the American Tract Society, and of Oberlin College, and a benefactor of Lane Seminary. He established "The Emancipator," and was president of the American Anti-Slavery Society until compelled, with his brother Lewis, to withdraw on account of the conduct of the no-government men and women, and take nearly all the Society with him.

When the vote was taken in the London meeting the women were excluded on the ground that "it being contrary to English usage, it would subject them to ridicule and prejudice their cause."

George Thompson then said: "I hope, as this question is now decided, that Mr. Phillips will give us the assurance that we shall proceed with one heart and one mind." Mr. Phillips replied, "I have no doubt of it. There is no unpleasant feeling on our part. All we asked was an expression of opinion; we shall now act with the utmost cordiality."

But Mr. Phillips had reckoned without his host and hostesses. Mr. Garrison had not been present at the discussion, but he arrived at this juncture and took his seat with the excluded delegates. During a twelve-days' discussion of the momentous cause that had called them together, which he had professed especially to champion, he took not the slightest part. Such was his mistaken zeal that he was willing so to stultify himself, and the women were willing to applaud him in so doing. The spirit that looked upon the American Constitution as "a covenant with death and an agreement with hell" was there. The spirit that defied all authority and could confound liberty of conscience with the formal acts of courtesy between man and man, was there. The spirit that took for its motto "You cannot shut up discord" was there. And out of these combined elements, trained in the school of thought that had treated as tyranny the religious and civil liberty of the United States, grew directly the Woman-Suffrage movement. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was not a delegate. The delegates were Abby Kelly, Esther Moore, and Lucretia Mott. Mrs. Stanton was a bride, and in the immediate party on this, their wedding trip, was Mr. Birney, her husband's special friend. The writers of the "History" say: "As the ladies were not allowed to speak in the Convention, they kept up a brisk fire, morning, noon, and night, on the unfortunate gentlemen who were domiciled at the same house." Mrs. Stanton had not been identified with any of these abolition quarrels; but she records that now she took her full share of the "firing," notwithstanding her husband's "gentle nudges under the table" and Mr. Birney's ominous frowns across it. In the volume entitled "Woman's Work in America," in a contribution called "Woman in the State," written by Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, she says: "The leaders in the new [suffrage] movement, Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton, with their husbands," did thus and so in originating it. Lucretia Mott's husband was with her as a silent member of the conventions, but Elizabeth Cady Stanton's husband is conspicuous for his absence from every list of officers or attendants, from the inception of the Suffrage movement until his death. He may have been in perfect sympathy with his wife; but since the names of all the men already mentioned in connection with the mad "no-civil, no-family, no- personal government" movement, do appear, and his does not, it is impossible not to challenge Mrs. Livermore's statement. The last reference to him in the "History" was as voting on the occasion of the London meeting, in favor of the women's admission to the World's Convention. No mention is made of any speech, or of reasons given. Certain it is, that while Mr. Garrison became the conspicuous standard-bearer for the Woman's Rights movement, Mr. Stanton became one of the conspicuous bearers of the standard of the Free Soil and Republican parties, which included some of Anti-slavery's staunchest friends, who were denounced by Garrison as its foes.