X.

WOMAN IN THE STATE.

BY

MARY A. LIVERMORE.

No one who has studied the history of the world, even superficially, will dispute the statement that over the female half of the human family there has steadily brooded a cloud of hindrance and repression, of disability and servitude. The long past has denied to women the possession of souls, and they have been relegated to the ignorance and injustice to which men have always doomed those regarded as their inferiors. Until within a few years, comparatively speaking, the world has been under the dominion of brute force, and might has made right. Every one has been welcome to whatever he has had the brawn and muscle to win and to hold, and all have yielded to the rule of physical force, as to-day we respect the decisions of the courts. All through these ages the history of woman has been disastrous. Her physical weakness, and not alone her mental inferiority, has made her the subject of man. Toiling patiently for him, asking little for herself and every thing for him, cheerfully sharing with him all perils and hardships, the unappreciated mother of his children, she has been bought and sold, petted or tortured, according to the whim of her brutal owner, the victim everywhere of pillage, lust, and war. And this statement includes all races and peoples of the earth from the date of their historic existence.

Among the Hindoos, woman was the slave of man; bought, sold, lent, gambled away, and taken for debt, with the very power of life or death held over her by some irresponsible husband, father, or other man. She was forbidden to speak the language of man, and was condemned to use the patois of slaves. Under the old Roman law, the husband was the sole tribunal of the wife. He controlled her property, earnings, and religion: she was allowed no rights in her own children; and she could invoke no law against him. The Greek law regarded woman as a child, and held her in everlasting tutelage from the cradle to her gray-haired old age. Aristotle, and they of his school, called her a “monster,” an “accidental production.” The Hebrews pronounced her an afterthought of the Deity, and the mother of all evil. Throughout the entire Orient, her condition has been one of such compulsory servitude, that the phrase “Oriental degradation of woman,” remains to-day the synonym of the deepest debasement woman has ever known.

When the councils of the medieval church came together to decide on the instruction needful to the young, they hastened to count women out, and to declare them “unfit for instruction.” And they, who in defiance of this decision—kind-hearted nuns of the Catholic Church—established schools for girls, were publicly stoned when they were met on the streets. The early Christian fathers denounced women as “noxious animals,” “painted temptresses,” “necessary evils,” “desirable calamities,” and “domestic perils.” From the English Heptarchy to the Reformation, the law proclaimed the wife to be “in all cases, and under all circumstances, her husband’s creature, servant, and slave.” Herbert Spencer, writing of English laws, in his “Descriptive Sociology of England,” says: “Our laws are based on the all-sufficiency of man’s rights, so that society exists to-day for woman only as she is in the keeping of some man.” To Diderot, the French philosopher, even in the eighteenth century, so persistently do the traditions of the past make themselves felt, woman was only a “courtesan.” To Montesquieu, she was “an attractive child,”—to Rousseau “an object of pleasure to man.” To Michelet, nearly a century later, she was “a natural invalid.”

This subjection of woman to man, which has hindered her development in normal ways, has created a contemptuous opinion of her, which runs through the literature and legislation of all nations. It is apparent to-day in unjust laws and customs, which disgrace the statute books, and cause society to progress with halting step. There still exist different codes of morals for men and women, different penalties for crime, and the relations of the sexes to the government are dissimilar. In marriage, the husband has control of the wife’s person, and, in most instances, ownership of her earnings, and of her minor children. She is rarely paid the same wages as man, even when she does the same work, and is his equal only when punishment and the payment of taxes are in question. All these unjust inequalities are survivals of the long ages of servitude through which woman has passed, and which have not yet ceased to exist. During their existence, says Mme. de Staël, “woman was able to exercise fully but one of the faculties with which nature has gifted her—the faculty of suffering.”

Born and bred under such conditions of injustice, and with arbitrary standards of womanly inferiority persistently set before them, it has not been possible for women to rise much above them. Here and there through the centuries, exceptional women, endowed with phenomenal force of character, have towered above the mediocrity of their sex, hinting at the qualities imprisoned in the feminine nature. It is not strange that these instances have been rare. It is strange, indeed, that women have held their own during these ages of degradation. And as by a general law of heredity “the inheritance of traits of character is persistent in proportion to the length of time they have been inherited,” it is easy to account for the conservatism of women to-day, and for the indifference and hostility with which many regard the movements for their advancement.

For a new day has dawned, and humanity is moving forward to an era when oppression and slavery are to be entirely displaced, and reason and justice recognized as the rule of life. Science is extending immeasurably the bounds of knowledge and power. Art is refining life, and giving to it beauty and grace. Literature bears in her hands whole ages of comfort and sympathy. Industry, aided by the hundred-handed elements of nature, is increasing the world’s wealth, and invention is economizing its labor. The age looks steadily to the redressing of wrong, to the righting of every form of error and oppression, and demands that law and justice be made interchangeable terms. So humane a spirit dominates the age in which we live, that even the brute creation share in it, and we have hundreds of societies organized to prevent cruelty to animals. It could not be possible but that women should share in the justice and kindliness with which the times are fraught, and the last quarter of a century has lifted them to higher levels. How has this been accomplished?

While progress is the method of man, his early progress was inconceivably slow. He had lived on the earth long ages before he knew enough, or cared enough, to make a record of what he did, thought, felt, hoped, or suffered for the benefit of posterity. The moment he began to make a record of his daily life, history began. And history takes us back, according to the popular conception, only five or six thousand years—authentic history to a period much less remote. From the early civilizations that flourished in the valleys of the Nile and Euphrates, this age has inherited very little. What we possess that may seem a transmission from that earlier time has been for the most part rediscovered, or reinvented by the civilizations of the present.

To the Greek civilization we are indebted for a marvelous development of the beautiful in art. And when our art students have exhausted all modern instruction, they are compelled to go back thousands of years, and sit down at the feet of the dead Greeks, and learn of them, through the mutilated remains of their masterpieces. To the Roman civilization we owe a wonderful development of law. The Roman code of laws is to-day the basis of the jurisprudence of the civilized world. Very little more than these survivals of the Greek and Roman civilizations have come down to us. For the barbarian hordes of the North and the East crushed out the life of the “Eternal City,” pillaged what they did not destroy of its treasures, despoiled the cities in its vicinage, and ground to powder its boasted greatness and its strong arm of power. The phenomenal dark ages set in, and for a thousand years the world groped in ignorance and darkness, and very little progress was made in any direction.

But civilization is not artificial, but real and natural. It is to the race what the flower is to the bud, and the oak tree to the acorn,—growth, development. Again the divine in man asserted itself, and again there came into the world a quickening spirit. Four great events occurred, of world-wide importance, each following quickly its predecessor, and an impetus was given to humanity which has never spent itself, but has steadily gained in power and momentum. The revival of classical learning had a powerful influence upon woman as well as man. The invention of the art of printing enabled the race to retain whatever knowledge it acquired, whereas, before, it lost as fast as it gained. The discovery of this continent opened a new world and limitless possibilities to the pent-up, struggling spirits of the East, longing for a larger and better life than was possible under the depressing conditions of that day. While the great Reformation, begun by Luther, released both men and women from the almost omnipotent control of the Church. Demanding the right of private judgment in matters of religion, it wrought out a great development of religious liberty, which has been succeeded by a greater outcome of civil freedom.

These four events, occurring almost simultaneously, were the precursors of our present civilization. They kindled the souls of men into a flame which has burned steadily to this hour. The development of the present day dates from them, and the civilization begotten by them is endowed with earthly immortality. It abounds in the elements of perpetuity, which the earlier human growths by the Nile and Euphrates never possessed. Slavery has almost entirely disappeared from the world under its influence. Liberty has infected all races with its divine contagion, and has driven from the western hemisphere every crowned head. Laws and law-makers, trade and commerce, public and private life, church and state are examined by the highest ethical standards. And through the last three centuries, there has rung out a growing demand for human rights, and human opportunity, which has now culminated into a mighty and imperious demand that cannot be much longer denied. It is the people’s hour. In this trumpet call for right and justice are heard the multitudinous voices of women, who have caught the ear of the world, and to whose banner are daily flocking new recruits, and at last the woman’s hour has also come.

During the centuries that preceded the Christian era, and for centuries after, there were, here and there, in many countries, eminent women who came into possession of power and privilege; sometimes they were used wisely, and sometimes wickedly. But there were others, on whose histories women will always dwell with fresh delight, and refuse to believe the innuendos of contemporary writers concerning them. We read of Aspasia, the preceptress of Socrates, the wife of the great Pericles of Athens, and the friend of the Greek philosophers. Summoned for trial before the Greek Areopagus, she was charged with “walking the streets unveiled, sitting at table with men, disbelieving in the Greek gods, believing only in one sole Creator, and with entertaining original ideas concerning the motions of the sun and moon.” She was in advance of her time, and the age could not understand her.

We linger over the sad story of Hypatia, whose father, Theon the younger, was at the head of the Platonic school at Alexandria at the close of the fourth century. He was also the commentator on Ptolemy, and the editor of “Euclid,” adding here and there a demonstration of his own. All that he knew he imparted to his daughter, and Hypatia occupied a position unparalleled in ancient or modern times. Before she had reached her twenty-seventh year she had written a book on “The Astronomical Canon of Diophantes,” and another on “The Conics of Apollonius.” One of her enemies, the historian Socrates, tells us that when she succeeded her father in the Platonic school derived from Plotinus, and “expounded the precepts of philosophy,” studious persons from all parts of the country flocked to hear her, and that “she addressed both them and the magistrates with singular modesty.” But alas! she paid the penalty of her great superiority. And because she was suspected of having “an influence in public affairs,” and was deemed “worthy to sit in the councils of church and state,” she was brutally murdered by a savage mob, that regarded superiority in a woman as an arraignment of inferiority in men.

We are familiar with the story of Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, who reigned A.D. 267, of whom reluctant history tells us that she was a woman of great courage, high spirit, remarkable beauty, and purity of moral character. Her literary acquirements were unusual, and she spoke Latin, Greek, and the Oriental languages with fluency; while in the administration of her government she combined prudence, justice, and liberality, so that nearly the whole of the eastern provinces submitted to her sway.

It is a matter of history that 320 B.C., Martia, Queen of London, first formulated the principles of the English common law in her judgments and enactments. Her “Martian Statutes” outlived the Roman, Anglo-Saxon, and Norse invasions. Holinshed, who is regarded as good authority, says that Alfred the Great, after twelve hundred years, revived her Briton laws, and enforced them among Anglo-Saxons and Danes. Two centuries later, they were again re-enacted under Edward the Confessor, and a century after they were again re-enacted by Stephen. The earliest laws of Great Britain, therefore, the substance of which has been in force twenty-two hundred years, were made by a woman.

Tacitus says of the Britons that sex was ignored in their government. Cæsar says that women had voice in their councils, and power in their courts, and often commanded in war. Plutarch says that women, among the Britons, took part in deciding on war and peace, as members of the councils, and that differences with their allies were decided by the women.

Until the time of the Reformation, Catholicism was the state religion of Britain, and nunneries were established and regulated by law. The Superiors were elected by the nuns and represented their constituents in the Wita, or legislative council; and in this way the right of women to representation in governments was recognized. The Domesday Book, compiled under William the Conqueror, in 1070, enumerated the inhabitants of each village who were entitled by existing Saxon law to vote for local officers, and included many women. Women were chosen members of many Saxon local assemblies by their own sex, and shared authority as members.

It has never been questioned that women have the right to vote in secular corporations where they are stockholders. It has been taken as settled that women have a right to vote in the enactment of corporation statutes, in deciding who shall be intrusted with the powers conferred on the corporation by law, and in electing persons to administer those powers. Women have always shared control of the immense Bank of England, with its enormous power over the currency and fortunes of the world. In still more important corporations this has been the case. “Women were at liberty to take part as stockholders with full powers to vote on all questions in the ‘Virginia Company,’ which peopled Virginia, and in the company which populated part of New England, and for a time governed it. The same was true of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which for centuries ruled half North America. It was also true of the East India Company, which for about the same time ruled absolutely one of the greatest empires of earth.”

When the barons wrested Magna Charta from King John, one of the rights for which they contended, and forced him to grant, was the right of women to a vote in the House of Lords. He was compelled to summon to that House all earls, barons, and others who held lands directly from the king, and he summoned to the very first Parliament the countesses of Pembroke and Essex. In the reign of Edward I., ten ladies were summoned as entitled to seats. There is conclusive evidence that during the first three reigns of the existence of Magna Charta, women had a right to a voice in the English government, and exercised it.

John Stuart Mill declares that “the list of women who have been eminent rulers of mankind swells to a great length, when to queens and empresses there are added women regents, and women viceroys of provinces.” “It is a curious consideration,” he continues, “that the only things which the existing laws exclude women from doing, are the things which they have proved they are able to do. There is no law to prevent a woman from having written all the plays of Shakspere, or composed all the operas of Mozart.” But it is almost everywhere declared that women are not fit for power and cannot be made so, and that they cannot take any part in civil government. The laws have been cunningly framed to prevent their taking the first step in this direction, and a public sentiment has been created as the bulwark of the law. “And yet,” says Mill, “it is not inference, but fact, that a woman can be a Queen Elizabeth, a Deborah, a Joan of Arc,”—an Isabella, a Maria Theresa, a Catherine of Russia, a Margaret of Austria.

“If a Hindoo principality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically governed,” continues this earnest friend and student of woman, “if order is preserved without oppression; if cultivation is extending, and the people prosperous, in three cases out of four that principality is under a woman’s government.” And he tells us “he has collected this fact from a long official knowledge of Hindoo governments.” “There are many such instances,” he continues. “For though, by Hindoo institutions, a woman cannot reign, she is the legal regent of a kingdom during the minority of the heir. And minorities are frequent, the lives of the male rulers being so often prematurely terminated through the effect of inactivity and sensual excesses. When we consider that these princesses have never been seen in public, have never conversed with any man not of their own family except from behind a curtain, that they do not read, and if they did there is no book in their language which can give them the smallest instruction in political affairs, the example they afford of the natural capacity of women for government is very striking.”

It was not, however, until the fifteenth century that there was a marked tendency to recognize the general equality of women with men. During the days of feudalism, it was debated, very earnestly, whether women should be educated or not, and it was generally believed that a knowledge of letters would put into their hands an additional power to work evil. Nevertheless, at all periods, whenever and wherever we can trace a literature, we find women shining in it. Feudalism may be considered to have perished at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and a new period of transition had arrived, to which historical writers have given the name of “The Renaissance.”

In 1506, Cornelius Agrippa, eminent in the literary society of his time, wrote a book not only to prove that men and women are equals intellectually, but that woman is superior to man. In 1552, another work of similar scope appeared, based on the Platonic philosophy, the purpose of which was a defense of woman’s superiority. In 1599, Anthony Gibson sent into the world a third volume, again reiterating “the superiority of women to men, in all virtuous actions, no matter how fine the quality of men may be proved to be.” At the same time books were also being published by other vigorous writers of the day, who stoutly denied to women the possession of reason, and maintained their eminence in iniquity only.

In 1696, Daniel Defoe contended for the better education of women, declaring his belief that if men were trained in the same deplorable ignorance as women, they would be vastly more incompetent and degraded. In 1697, Mary Astell “distinguished for literary and theological labors,” wrote a letter in “Defense of the Female Sex,” which passed through three editions. An appeal to women written by the same author, entitled, “A Proposal to Ladies for the Advancement of their True Interests,” advocated their general education, and besought their co-operation in some worthy educational scheme. It so wrought on Lady Elizabeth Hastings, a wealthy noble lady, that she immediately offered ten thousand pounds for the establishment of a college for women. It was a grand proposition, and would have been carried out but for the opposition of the bigoted Bishop Burnet.

At that time Italy led all other nations in literary activity, and then, as now, was remarkable for her pride in her learned women. Lucrezia Morinella of Venice wrote a work entitled, “The Nobleness and Excellence of Women, together with the Faults and Imperfections of Men.” The University of Bologna, which admitted women as students, and conferred degrees upon them as early as the middle of the thirteenth century, at last elevated them to professorships, where they taught law and philosophy, physiology and anatomy, Latin and Greek. The annals of Italian literature, scholarship, and art, are radiant with the names of women who distinguished themselves in various departments, and were honored by the men of that day, who proudly testified to their abilities and achievements. Women of France and Italy interested themselves in medical science, and we read of a woman who lectured in the sixteenth century on obstetrics “to large classes of both sexes.”

In England, there was the same mental quickening among women, as on the continent. Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, and found herself immediately confronted with perplexities, embarrassments, and anxieties. She was obliged to face religious bigots at home, and unscrupulous kings abroad; her people were rent with differences of religious belief, were rude, ignorant, and inert; her noblemen were factious, her exchequer empty, her parliaments jealous of her; there was neither army nor navy, and the nation was poor and embarrassed with debt. But her stout heart, strong will, and wise head were soon felt in every part of her kingdom. The Reformation begun by Luther had stimulated England to great activity, had loosened the hold of the church upon both men and women, and the way was being prepared for that grand development of religious and civil liberty which has since followed.

During the Elizabethan era, the great ideas were born which immediately underlie our present civilization. Government, religion, literature, and social life were then discussed as never before, earnestly, and by great thinkers, and reforms were inaugurated that lifted the world to a higher level. Not only was the age enriched by great men of marvelous political wisdom, financial skill, comprehensive intellect, and original genius, but there were noble women in England, who, holding high social position, devoted their leisure and their wealth to studious pursuits, and emulated the superior men of the day. How grandly they illuminated the circles that gathered about them, while the majority of their sex wasted their time in frivolous pursuits!

It was in the midst of this intense intellectual ferment, and as the result of it, that the settlement of our country began. While the Church of England had emancipated itself from the Papal power at immense cost of life and treasure, and after generations of conflict, it had not learned the great law of religious freedom. Our forefathers made war on the divine right of bishops, and the authority of the church to control their consciences, and were driven by persecution to America. Here they prospered, were subject to Great Britain, and for a time were contented. But when in America they were denied the rights granted to Englishmen living in England, their discontent became general, and the Declaration of Independence and the War of the Revolution followed. They were not hot-headed philosophers, crazed by the theories of the French revolution, as many to-day would have us believe. The “glittering generalities” of the Declaration of Independence, as Rufus Choate sneeringly called the immortal principles of our great charter of liberty, were not deductions from Rousseau, Voltaire, or any other French philosopher. They were simply the reiteration of the rights of English citizenship, expanded and adapted to the exigencies of the new world in which the colonists had planted themselves. For the American civilization is only a continuation of the English civilization, under new conditions—some of them more favorable, and others less so. Before there was a revolution in France, or a democracy in France, Jefferson’s most democratic words had been spoken in America. And all the facts go to show that if there was any learning from each other in political science, between him and the French philosophers, they were the pupils, and not Jefferson. They were men of untarnished moral character; religion and patriotism were to them synonymous terms, and their love of liberty developed into a passion. The world has never seen grander, more versatile, nor more self-poised men, than the founders of our nation.

What of the women associated with these heroes? “The ammunition of the Continental soldiery in the war for freedom came from the pulpit, and the farmer’s fireside,” said one of the orators on a recent centennial occasion. The men of the Revolution had no cowardly, faint-hearted mothers and wives to hang about their neck like millstones. Their women were as heroic in fiber as themselves. Patriotic mothers nursed the infancy of freedom. They talked with their children of the wrongs of the people, and of their invaded rights, and uttered their aspirations for a better state of things in language of intensest force. Sons and daughters grew sensitive to the tyranny that oppressed their parents, and as they came to maturity burned with a desire to defend their rights to the utmost.

During the French and Indian wars of the country that preceded the war of the Revolution, women learned to rely on themselves, became experts in the use of fire-arms, and in many instances defended themselves and their children. They were fired with the same love of liberty as the men—they were equally stung with the aggressions of the British government, and as resolute in their determination to resist them. They encouraged them to enter the army, cheered them when despondent, toned them to heroic firmness when wavering, and cheerfully assumed every burden which the men dropped to repel the invaders of their country and their homes.

Not only did women mingle their prayers with those of men at the family altar, beseeching Divine guidance, but their own counsel was sought by men, and given, in the deliberations which resulted in the nation’s independence. Less than half a century ago, Mrs. E. F. Ellett took on herself the task of collecting the facts, and sketching the biographies, of the women who were known to have contributed to the success of the country in its struggle for independence. She was successful beyond her expectations, and published three volumes of about three hundred pages each, containing biographical sketches of nearly one hundred and seventy women. Despite the light esteem in which the service of women has been held, and the ease with which it has been forgotten, their record had been preserved, and their memories tenderly perpetuated for three-quarters of a century.

Foremost among them stands Mrs. Mercy Warren, wife of Joseph Warren, and sister of James Otis, author of the never-to-be-forgotten axiom, that “Taxation without representation is tyranny!” She possessed the fiery ardor and patriotic zeal of her distinguished brother, with more political wisdom and sagacity. She was the first one to suggest the doctrine of the “right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness as inherent, and belonging equally to all mankind”; and the patriots of that day accepted her teaching. She first of all counseled separation from the mother country as the only solution of the political problem. She so impressed her convictions upon Samuel and John Adams that they were foremost in their advocacy of “independence,” and received, at first, marked discourtesy from their contemporaries for their imprudence.

She corresponded with the Adamses, Jefferson, Generals Gerry and Knox, Lee and Gates, and others who sought her advice. She entertained General and Mrs. Washington, supplied political parties with their arguments, and was the first woman to teach political leaders their duties in matters of state. She kept a faithful record of events during the Revolutionary War, drew her own conclusions as a philosopher and politician, and at the close of the struggle published a history of the war, which can be found in some of the New England libraries, and which contains faithful portraits of the most eminent men of the day. Rochefoucauld, in his “Tour of the United States,” says of her, “Seldom has a woman in any age acquired such ascendancy by the mere force of a powerful intellect, and her influence continued through life.”

So grand a leader had plenty of followers, and while there appears to have been no other woman of the time whose influence was as powerful, there were not a few who almost reached the altitude of her rare development. The _morale_ of these women penetrated the men of the time with a sinewy courage that neither weakened nor flagged. They enforced their words of cheer by relinquishing prospects of advantage for themselves, renouncing tea and all other imported luxuries, and pledged themselves to card, spin, and weave the clothing of their households, and as far as possible of the army. They gave their own property for the purchase of arms and ammunition for the soldiers, and melted their wealth of pewter ware, in which many of the colonial households were rich, and ran it into bullets for the army. They raised grain, gathered it, and caused it to be ground for bread, that the poor and feeble might be fed.

They visited the hospitals with proper diet for the sick and wounded, sought out the dungeons of the provost and the crowded holds of the prison-ships, with food and medicine in their hands and heroic words on their lips. They unsparingly condemned coldness or backwardness in the nation’s cause, and young girls refused the suits of lovers till they had obeyed the call of their country for military service. They received their beloved dead, slain in battle, and forbore to weep, although their hearts were breaking. They even hushed the bitter resentment of their souls, which had been aroused by British invasion, and gave Christian burial to their enemies, who, but for them, at times would not have received it. They trained their little children to the same uncomplaining patience, the same steely endurance, and the same heroic love of liberty which fired their own hearts, until boys and girls gloried in danger and privation. What wonder that the heroes of the Revolutionary War proved invincible!

John Adams, the second President of the Republic, knew the women of the Revolution well, and was able to measure a superior woman wherever he found her, and to estimate her influence. His own wife, Mrs. Abigail Adams, was the personal friend of Mrs. Mercy Warren, and every whit her peer. Her husband was proud to acknowledge her as his equal in all save early education, which was accorded him in large measure and wholly denied her, as she never attended school a day in her life. In one of his letters to his wife Mr. Adams comments on the futile efforts of the British General Howe to obtain possession of Philadelphia, which the colonists foiled for a long time. He writes her, “I do not believe General Howe has a very great woman for a wife. A smart wife would have put Howe in possession of Philadelphia a long time ago.”

In the winter of 1780, the resources of the country touched their lowest point, and allowed but the scantiest supply of food and clothing for any one. British cruisers on the coast destroyed every hope of aid from the merchant vessels, and the cup of misfortune pressed to the lips of the struggling colonists overflowed with bitterness. Even the ability of the wealthiest and most generous was exhausted by the repeated drafts made on them. So great was the need of the army, that General Steuben, who had been aid-de-camp to the king of Prussia, and had learned the art of war from the renowned Frederic the Great, declared that “there was not a commander in all Europe who could keep his troops together a week in such suffering and destitution.”

But when all despaired the women rallied. All else was temporarily forgotten. The women of Philadelphia went forth from house to house, soliciting money, or whatever could be converted into money. They asked for cloth, garments, and food. Rich women stripped themselves of jewels that were heirlooms in their families, pillaged their parlors of antique bric-a-brac, with the hope that it might find purchasers, and emptied their purses of the last penny they possessed. More than seventy-five hundred dollars in specie were collected, when hard money was at its highest value. One woman cut five hundred pairs of pantaloons with her own hand, and superintended their manufacture. Mrs. Bache, a daughter of Dr. Franklin, was a leading spirit in these patriotic efforts. When a company of French noblemen called on her, she conducted them to her parlor, and showed them a pile of twenty-two hundred shirts for the army, collected by herself, each one marked with the name of the woman who had cut and made it.

Nor was this a mere spasm of helpfulness, that soon died out in forgetfulness and inaction. All through that dreary winter women continued their visits to Washington’s camp, fortifying the men with their own inflexible spirit, and tiding them over this darkest passage in their experience, with steady streams of beneficence. They always went laden with comforts for the needy and the sick, and were prepared to serve as cook or seamstress, amanuensis or nurse, equally prompt with hymn or story, Bible-reading or prayer, as occasion demanded.

While the colonial women were a mighty bulwark of strength to the struggling men of the embryo nation, some of them were unforgetful of their own rights, and in advance of the formation of the new government asked for recognition. Abigail Smith Adams, the wife of John Adams of Massachusetts, was a woman of strong convictions, and of large intellectual abilities. She wrote her husband, in March, 1776, then at the Colonial Congress in Philadelphia, and urged the claims of her sex upon his attention, demanding for them representation when the government was organized. She wrote as follows:

“I long to hear that you have declared an independency; and in the new code of laws, which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, _I desire that you will remember the women, and be more generous and honorable to them than your ancestors_. Do not put such unlimited power in the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.

“If particular care and attention are not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and _will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice nor representation_. That your sex is tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute; but such of you as wish to be happy, willingly give up the harsh title of master for the more tender and endearing one of friend. Why then not put it out of the power of the vicious and lawless to use us with cruelty and indignity? Superior men of all ages abhor those customs which treat us as the vassals of your sex.”

When the Constitution of the United States was framed without any recognition of the rights of women, the disappointment of Mrs. Adams almost culminated in indignation. She felt most keenly the discrimination of the law against her sex, and wrote her husband again, as follows:

“I cannot say that I think you are very generous to the ladies, for while you are proclaiming peace and good-will to all men, emancipating all nations, you insist on retaining absolute power over wives. But you must remember that absolute power, like most other things which are very bad, is most likely to be broken.”

She was especially solicitous that there should be equal advantages of education for boys and girls. “If we mean to have heroes,” she writes, “statesmen, and philosophers, we should have learned women.” And again, “If you complain of lack of education for sons, what shall I say in regard to daughters who every day experience the want of it!”

Nor were the women of the South forgetful of their rights, and at an early day they also put in a demand for political equality. The counties of Mecklenburg and Rowan in North Carolina blazed with the fiery patriotism of their women. And in their defiant conversations with British officers, who were quartered in the houses of the wealthiest and most intelligent of these Southern matrons, as also in their debates with the men of their own community, officers, judges, and clergymen, they unhesitatingly declared their right to legal equality with men, in the new government, whenever laws should be formulated for the infant republic.

Two years after the Declaration of Independence was adopted, the sister of General Richard Henry Lee, Mrs. Hannah Lee Corbin of Virginia, wrote to her brother, declaring that women should be allowed the franchise, if they paid taxes. He replied that in Virginia women already had the right to vote, and “it is on record that women in Virginia did exercise the right of voting at an early day.” On the second day of July, 1776, the right to vote was secured to the women of New Jersey, and they exercised it for over thirty years. Our country began its very existence burdened with the protests of our great fore-mothers against violation of the immortal principles which were its corner-stone. “All just governments derive their powers from the consent of the governed,” was the startling announcement the Fathers thundered into the ears of the monarchs of the old world. And many of their wives and daughters contended, with invincible logic, that this axiom included women as well as men.

The long struggle of American women for education, opportunity, and political equality which has since followed, dates, therefore, from the hour of the nation’s birth. It is the legitimate outcome of American ideas, for which the nation contended for nearly a century. Absorbed in severe pioneer work, inevitable to life in the wilderness, and denied education themselves, the first care of our revolutionary mothers was for the literary and religious instruction of their children. As far back as the year 1700, a woman, one Bridget Graffort, had given the first lot of ground for a public school-house, although at that time, and for long years after, no provision whatever was made for the education of girls. There was a bitter prejudice against educated and literary women in the early days of our history. And even after five colleges had been founded for young men,—Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, and William and Mary, Virginia,[162]—a young woman was regarded as well educated who could “read, write, and cipher.”

If, however, school privileges were denied them, the education of the early American women proceeded, through the very logic of events. In laying the foundations of the new government all questions were discussed that touched human interests, not only publicly but privately—from the pulpit, and around the fireside. Women listened to them, and took part in them. The famous book of Mary Wollstonecraft, “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,” was published in London in 1790, and found its way into American circles. It received the unsparing condemnation meted out to all efforts put forth in advance of the age, for the world has always stoned its prophets. It demanded for women every opportunity accorded to man, and the same rights in representation, before the law, in the courts, and in the world of work. Torrents of the vilest abuse were heaped on the author, and formed the answer vouchsafed by the public. It educated not a few women, however, who in turn preached the same gospel, and made for women the same demands.

In 1831 the first real grapple began with American slavery, through the establishment of the _Liberator_ by William Lloyd Garrison. He flung out his banner, which he never lowered, demanding immediate and unconditional emancipation of the slaves of the South, and after a struggle of forty years, his demand was granted. Slavery was fastened on our coast long before the birth of the republic. In the century before 1776, three and a quarter millions of negroes had been taken by Great Britain from African shores for her various colonies in the new world. And at the close of the Revolutionary War, when the population was but three millions, six hundred thousand of these were black slaves, even then a menace to the peace of the nation. Against the protests of some of the noblest and wisest of the revolutionary patriots slavery, was introduced into the National Constitution in 1787, and was fastened on the national life.

The aggressions of the slaveocracy during the first half century of our national existence alarmed the non-slaveholding portion of the country. And almost at the same time, in the progress of civilization, the era was reached when the enlightened conscience of the civilized world demanded the abolition of slavery. Slowly routed from the dominions of other nations by the manumission of the bondmen, or the purchase of their freedom, slavery seemed at last to have intrenched itself on American soil, and to dominate American civilization. A struggle with it was inevitable. Some of the grandest men and women of the nation entered the lists against it, for the early Abolitionists were remarkable people. It is only necessary to mention the names of some of the leaders in that holy war, to summon up visions of manly beauty and womanly grace, men and women endowed with ability, culture, character, refinement, courage, and social charm. Their public speech blazed with remorseless moral logic, and thrilled with matchless eloquence, so that crowds flocked to hear them, wherever they spoke. Garrison and Phillips, Sumner and Parker, Birney and Pierpont, Gerrit Smith and Theodore Weld—what men of their day surpassed them in manliness, moral force, and persuasive and convincing speech? They were supplemented and complemented by noble women, unlike them, and yet every whit their peers—Maria Weston Chapman and Lydia Maria Child, Sarah and Angelina Grimké, Lucretia Mott and Abby Kelly, Helen Garrison and Ann Greene Phillips.[163]

Mrs. Chapman and Mrs. Child put to the service of the great reform pens tipped with flame, and wielded with consummate energy and skill. And the Grimké sisters, who had manumitted their slaves in Charleston, S. C., and come North to advocate Antislavery doctrines, with Lucretia Mott and Abby Kelly, entranced large audiences with their eloquent discourse, and roused the dormant moral sense of their hearers into protest against the colossal sin of the nation. Conservatives in church and state were alarmed. War was declared against the eloquent women, and it was decided that they should be silenced, and not allowed to act or vote in the business meetings of the Antislavery Society. This brought about a division in the organization before it had reached its first decade.

A double battle was now forced on the Garrisonian Abolitionists—a battle for the rights of woman as well as for the freedom of the slave. The doctrine of human rights was discussed anew, broadly and exhaustively, and it was demonstrated that the rights of man and woman were identical. Antislavery platforms resounded with the demand that liberty, justice, and equality be accorded to women, and the anti-slavery press teemed with arguments for women’s rights, which are repeated in the woman suffrage meetings of the present time.

In 1840 a “World’s Antislavery Convention” was held in London, and all Antislavery organizations throughout the world were invited to join in it, through their delegates. Several American societies accepted the invitation, and elected delegates, six or eight of whom were women, Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Wendell Phillips among them. The excitement caused by their presence in London was intense, for the English Abolitionists were very conservative, and never dreamed of inviting women to sit in their Convention. And these women who had come among them had rent the American Antislavery Societies in twain, had been denounced from the pulpit, anathematized by the press, and mobbed by the riffraff of the streets. “They who have turned the world upside down have come hither also,” was the affrighted cry, nor was the alarm of the English Abolitionists lessened when they saw that those of the women delegates who were not Quakers, clad in the traditional garb of that sect, were young, cultivated, and refined.

A long and acrimonious debate followed on the admission of the women, during which many of the men delegates from America showed the white feather and sided with the English opposition. Again the tyranny of sex was combated, and the doctrine of woman’s equality with man enunciated, and again the battle for woman’s rights was fought with moral force and logical correctness, as it had been in America the year before. Some of the noblest women of England were in attendance as listeners and spectators,—Elizabeth Fry and Lady Byron, Mrs. Anna Jameson and Mary Howitt,—and, judging by later events, the lesson was not lost upon them. When the vote was taken, the women delegates were excluded by a large majority. William Lloyd Garrison did not arrive in London until after the rejection of the women. When he was informed of the decision of the Convention he refused to take his seat with the delegates. And throughout the ten days’ sessions he maintained absolute silence, remaining in the gallery as a spectator. Only one other of the delegates joined him, Nathaniel P. Rogers of Concord, New Hampshire, an editor of an Antislavery paper.

The London Convention marked the beginning of a new era in the woman’s cause. Hitherto, the agitation of the question of woman’s equal rights had been incidental to the prosecution of other work. Now the time had come when a movement was needed to present the claims of woman in a direct and forcible manner, and to take issue with the legal and social order which denied her the rights of human beings, and held her in everlasting subjection. At the close of the exasperating and insulting debates of the “World’s Antislavery Convention,” Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton agreed to hold a Woman’s Rights Convention on their return to America, and to begin in earnest the education of the people on the question of woman’s enfranchisement. Mrs. Stanton had attended the Convention as a bride, her husband having been chosen a delegate.

Accordingly the first Woman’s Rights Convention of the world was called at Seneca Falls, New York, on the 19th and 20th of July, 1848. It was attended by crowds of men and women, and the deepest interest was manifested in the proceedings. “Demand the uttermost,” said Daniel O’Connell, “and you will get something.” The leaders in the new movement, Lucretia Mott and Mrs. Stanton, with their husbands, and Frederick Douglass, acted on this advice. They demanded in unambiguous terms all that the most radical friends of woman have ever claimed: “equal rights in colleges and universities, trades and professions; the right to vote; to share in all political offices, honors, and emoluments; to complete equality in marriage; equal rights in property, in wages for equal work, and in minor children; to make contracts; to sue and be sued; to personal freedom; and to serve on juries, especially when women were tried.”

The Convention adjourned to meet in Rochester, New York, August 2, 1848. There were the same crowds in attendance, the same deep interest, and the same earnest debates and discussions as had characterized the meeting at Seneca Falls. Women soon adapted themselves to the situation, increased in efficiency and courage, participated in the debates, and elected a woman president, in spite of the ridicule occasioned by the suggestion. She discharged the duties of the office admirably, and the ridicule was soon merged in applause. A third Convention was held at Salem, Ohio, in 1850; a fourth in Akron, Ohio, in 1851; a fifth in Massillon, Ohio, in 1852; another at Ravenna, Ohio, in 1853, and others rapidly followed. The advocates of woman suffrage increased in number and ability. Superior women, whose names have become historic, espoused the cause—Frances D. Gage, Hannah Tracy Cutler, Jane G. Swisshelm, Caroline M. Severance, Celia C. Burr, who later became Mrs. C. C. Burleigh, Josephine S. Griffing, Antoinette L. Brown, Lucy Stone, Susan B. Anthony, Paulina W. Davis, Caroline H. Dall, Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Ernestine L. Rose, Mrs. C. H. Nichols, Dr. Harriot K. Hunt; the roll-call was a brilliant one, representing an unusual versatility of culture and ability.

The First National Woman Suffrage Convention was held in Worcester, Massachusetts, October 23 and 24, 1850. It was more carefully planned than any that had yet been held. Nine States were represented. The arrangements were perfect—the addresses and papers were of the highest character—the audiences were at a white heat of enthusiasm. The number of cultivated people who espoused the new gospel for women was increased by the names of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore Parker, Bronson and Abby May Alcott, Thomas W. Higginson, William I. Bowditch, Samuel E. and Harriet W. Sewall, Henry Ward Beecher, Henry B. Blackwell, Ednah D. Cheney, Hon. John Neal, Rev. William H. Channing, and Wendell Phillips. Space fails for a detailed statement of the grand personages who gave of their talents, their wealth, and themselves, that the cause of woman’s elevation might be advanced.

Meetings were now of frequent occurrence in various parts of the country. The ridicule of the press, the horror of conservatives, the anathemas of the pulpit, and the ostracism of society began to abate. Petitions to legislatures, that were at first received with derisive laughter, and then laid on the table, now received attention. Unjust laws, that bore down upon women with cruel severity, were modified. And papers established in the interest of women found their way to the people, increased in circulation, and their influence was felt for good. A dozen years were spent in severe pioneer work and then came the four years Civil War. All reformatory work was temporarily suspended, for the nation then passed through a crucial experience, and the issue of the fratricidal conflict was national life or national death.

The transition of the country from peace to the tumult and waste of war was appalling and swift, but the regeneration of its women kept pace with it. They lopped off superfluities, retrenched in expenditures, became deaf to the calls of pleasure, and heeded not the mandates of fashion. Their work was that of relief and philanthropy, and, for the first time in the history of the world, the women of America developed a heavenly side to war. They cared for the needy families of soldiers, nursed the sick in camp and the wounded in hospitals, ministered to the dying in the rear of battle-fields, and kept the channels of beneficence full to overflowing, which extended from Northern homes to the army at the front. For their multiform work they needed immense sums of money, and now the latent business abilities of women began to show themselves.

They went to Washington, and competed with men for government contracts for the manufacture of army clothing, and obtained them. When their accounts and their work were rigorously inspected by the War Department they received commendation, and were awarded larger contracts. They planned great money-making enterprises, whose largeness of conception and good business management yielded millions of dollars, to be expended in the interest of sick and wounded soldiers. The last two of the colossal Sanitary Fairs, held in New York and Philadelphia, yielded respectively $1,000,000 and $1,200,000. Women were the creators, the inspiration, and the great energizing force of these immense fairs, and also, from first to last, of the Sanitary Commission. Said Dr. Bellows, “There was nothing wanting in the plans of the women of the Commission, that business men commonly think peculiar to their own methods.” Men awoke to the consciousness that there were in women possibilities and potencies of which they had never dreamed.

Clara Barton, doing clerical work in a department of the government, and declining to receive compensation therefor, attracted no attention. But Clara Barton in hospitals, and on hospital transports, bringing order out of chaos, hope out of despair, and holding death in abeyance—Clara Barton at Andersonville, where twelve thousand soldiers had succumbed to the horrors of life in the military prison of the enemy and had been ignominiously buried in long trenches, unpitied and unknown, aroused the attention and awakened the gratitude of the nation. For she ordered the trenches opened, the unknown dead exhumed and decently buried, each man in a separate grave, with a headstone recording his rank, his name, and the date of his death, when it could be ascertained.[164]

Anna Dickinson, working for a pittance in the Philadelphia mint, and making speeches, on occasion, in behalf of the enslaved black man, was regarded as a nuisance. But Anna Dickinson on the platform, with impassioned speech and fervid moral earnestness pleading the cause of the slave before large audiences, and receiving one and two hundred dollars a night for the service—Anna Dickinson in the Connecticut and New Hampshire Republican campaigns, thrilling both States with her eloquence, and capturing both for Abraham Lincoln and Republicanism, became the heroine of the hour, and was hailed as the Joan of Arc of the century.

The development of those years, and the impetus they gave to women, which has not yet spent itself, has been wonderfully manifested since that time. At the close of the war there was but one college open to women, and that was grand old Oberlin in Ohio. Vassar received its first class of students in September, 1865, and now the colleges and universities which admit women are more in number than those which reject them. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell graduated from a medical college in Geneva, N. Y., in 1849, and afterward had access to the highest instruction and the best _cliniques_ in Paris. She became the pioneer of the great host of women physicians and surgeons, who, since the war, have entered the ranks as medical practitioners, and have been thoroughly trained and duly qualified for their profession. Reverend Antoinette L. Brown was graduated from the theological school at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1850, and ordained in 1853. But not until after the war were theological schools opened to women in the Methodist, Unitarian, Universalist, Christian, and Free Baptist denominations. The United States Census of 1880 gave the number of women ministers as one hundred and sixty-five, resident in thirty-four States. During the last twenty-five years law schools have admitted women, and the National Census of 1880 states the number of women lawyers as seventy-five. The next Census will reveal a great increase in the numbers of women physicians, lawyers, and ministers.[165]

It has been since the war, and as the result of the great quickening of women which it occasioned, that women have organized missionary, philanthropic, temperance, educational, and political organizations, on a scale of great magnitude. Without much blowing of trumpets, or unseemly boasting, they have overcome almost insuperable obstacles, have brought business abilities to their management of affairs, and have achieved phenomenal success. Their capacity for public affairs receives large recognition at the present time. They are elected, or appointed to such offices as those of county clerk, register of deeds, pension agent, prison commissioner, state librarian, overseer of the poor, school superintendent, and school supervisor. They serve as executors and administrators of estates, trustees and guardians of property, trusts, and children, engrossing clerks of State legislatures, superintendents of women’s State prisons, college presidents and professors, members of boards of State charities, lunacy and correction, police matrons, and postmistresses.

They are accountants, pharmacists, cashiers, telegraphers, stenographers, typewriters, dentists, bookkeepers, authors, lecturers, journalists, painters, architects, and sculptors. In many of these positions women serve with men, who graciously acknowledge the practical wisdom and virtue that they bring to their duties. “And although many women have been appointed to positions in departments of government, and to important employments and trusts,” said Senator Blair of New Hampshire, from his seat in Congress, “as far as your committee are aware no charge of incompetence or malfeasance in office has ever been sustained against a woman.”

Only a little more than a quarter of a century ago women were allowed to enter very few remunerative occupations. In 1836, when Harriet Martineau visited this country, to study its new institutions, that she might be able to forecast the type of civilization to be evolved from them, she especially investigated the position of women in the young republic. She was surprised to find them occupying a very subordinate position in a country calling itself free, and to find that they had entered only seven paying occupations. They were allowed to teach, to be seamstresses, tailoresses, milliners, dressmakers, household servants, and factory operatives. Hon. Carroll D. Wright, Chief of the National Bureau of the Statistics of Labor, in a recent report, has announced the number of remunerative professions and occupations in which women are working as three hundred and forty-two. In the cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Minneapolis, and San Francisco, women have established hospitals, and have managed them with admirable wisdom.[166] Two of the ablest legal journals of the West have been established by women, who are their editors and proprietors.

Side by side with this phenomenal development of women, and always subsidiary to it, when not its direct cause, the movement for woman’s enfranchisement has proceeded with deepening earnestness, urged onward by the spur of continual victories. A great host of women have come to regard this as the largest question before the world to-day, and as underlying and involving the just settlement of the great social and moral problems of the time. It is not possible for one sex to settle aright the matters that equally concern both sexes, like questions of marriage and divorce laws, the regulation of the liquor traffic, the management of public schools, the care and cure of insane and criminal people, and many others that may be mentioned. There is not a question casting its shadow athwart the political horizon that is not underlaid by a moral basis, and women have a vital interest in all moral matters. This has greatly extended the area of the woman suffrage debate, and added to its ranks large numbers of able workers, who stood aloof while the reform was treated as an abstraction.

It is not possible to rehearse, in detail, the progress of the movement since the close of the war. The brief space allotted in these pages is insufficient for its complete history—volumes would be necessary. There can be recorded here only the briefest mention of its unflagging struggle, and its steady gains, year by year. In 1869, two great National organizations were formed. One styled itself “The National Woman Suffrage Association,” and the other was christened “The American Woman Suffrage Association.” The first established its headquarters in New York, and published a weekly paper, _The Revolution_, which was ably edited by Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony. _The American_ made its home in Boston, and founded _The Woman’s Journal_, which was edited by Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, Mrs. Lucy Stone, William Lloyd Garrison and Thomas W. Higginson.[167] The State Woman Suffrage Associations became auxiliary to one or the other of these parent societies, and very frequently to both. “The National” invariably held its annual meetings at Washington, while Congress was in session. “The American” itinerated from State to State, and held its annual meetings where it was thought they would do the greatest amount of missionary work.

After twenty years of separate activities, a union of the two national organizations was effected in 1890, under the composite title of “The National-American Woman Suffrage Association.”

These bare statements of fact do not give a hint of the vast labor, sacrifice, and expenditure of time, brain, and money which have been put into the woman’s cause during the last quarter of a century. Hundreds of noble men and thousands of earnest women have toiled, unsparing of themselves and their substance, to bring in the day when, for women, law and justice shall be interchangeable terms. Many have died in the harness, reconciled to their discharge from the battle, because they saw from afar the victory which is to infold unborn millions in its benefactions. Others have dropped away from the work from failing health, the pressure of other duties, and some from cessation of interest. But the vacant places have been filled by new recruits, unweary and zealous, who have brought versatile abilities to the service, and have kept the ranks more than full. Other organizations, formed for various purposes, have adopted our cause as their own, and have again and again rendered all women their debtors by their generous aid.

Chief among these is the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, with a membership of nearly two hundred thousand, whose greatly beloved president, Frances E. Willard, is as earnest an advocate of the ballot for woman as a temperance measure, as she is for prohibition.[168] Before she was elected the president of the National Woman’s Temperance Union, she had presented a petition with one hundred and eighty thousand signatures to the Legislature of Illinois, asking for the women of the State the right to vote on the question of license or no license in their respective districts. Under her grand leadership that great organization has become a mighty factor in the work for women’s enfranchisement. Its large membership, its perfect organization, its loyalty to its president, its relations to the church, its successful publishing house, its ably conducted official paper, _The Union Signal_, with a subscription list of eighty thousand,—all these combined advantages enable it to wield an influence in woman’s behalf more effective than all other agencies united.

It has pushed through the legislatures of thirty-seven States and Territories the laws that now compel, in all public schools, instruction in the nature and effect of alcoholic drinks and narcotics on the human system. It has successfully engineered other legislation in many States, concerning other matters in which it is interested—notably the passage of laws forbidding the sale of tobacco to minors under sixteen years of age. It lent a hand toward the enactment of the petition-vote in Texas, for school officers, and in Arkansas and Mississippi, for and against liquor license. What may not be expected of this grand body of women, when it becomes more firmly welded, has grown even more skilled in its work, and more fully conscious of its great power!

_The Woman’s Journal_ has recently employed an efficient woman in Washington to make a complete summary of the laws of every State and Territory in the Union, as they affect women’s right to vote, or take part in the management of the public schools, either as State or county superintendents, or as members of school boards. She was detailed to this work, and furnished with the sources of information, by Hon. William T. Harris, National Superintendent of Education. Her statements may be relied on, therefore, as accurate, and complete to date. We append this valuable summary, which shows rapid gains in a very short time, and demonstrates an evolution in self-government that cannot stop at any half measure, but must go on yet farther.[169]

The States and Territories which confer certain rights and privileges upon women are twenty-eight, as follows:

CALIFORNIA—No person shall on account of sex be disqualified from entering or pursuing any lawful business, vocation, or profession. Women over the age of twenty-one years, who are citizens of the United States and of this State, shall be eligible to all educational offices in the State, except those from which they are excluded by the constitution. And more than this, no person shall be debarred admission to any of the collegiate departments of the university on account of sex. [Sch. Law, 1888.]

COLORADO—No person shall be denied the right to vote at any school district election, or to hold any school district office on account of sex. [Sch. Law, 1887.]

CONNECTICUT—No person shall be deemed ineligible to serve as a member of any board of education, board of school visitors, school committee, or district committee, or disqualified from holding such office by reason of sex. [Sch. Law, 1888.]

ILLINOIS—Women are eligible to any office under the general or special school laws. [Sch. Law, 1887.]

INDIANA—Women not married nor minors, who pay taxes, and are listed as parents, guardians, or heads of families, may vote at school meetings. [Decision of attorney-general.] The attorney-general questions the constitutionality of an act to authorize the election of women to school offices, approved April 14, 1881. The State constitution reads, “No person shall be elected or appointed as a county officer who shall not be an elector of the county.”

IOWA—No person shall be deemed ineligible, by reason of sex, to any school office in the state. No person who may have been or shall be elected or appointed to the office of county superintendent of common schools, or school director, shall be deprived of office by reason of sex. [Sch. Law, 1888.]

KANSAS—Women over twenty-one years of age, residents of the district, are allowed to vote at district meetings. [Sch. Law, 1885.]

KENTUCKY—Widows qualified to pay taxes, and having children of school age, may vote at elections for district school trustees. [Sch. Law, 1886.]

LOUISIANA—Women over twenty-one are eligible to any office of control or management under school laws of the State. [Constitution, Art. 232.]

MAINE—Women are eligible to the office of supervisor of schools and superintending school committee. [Sch. Law, 1889.]

MASSACHUSETTS—Women are eligible to serve on school committees, and to vote at school meetings for members of school committees. [Sch. Law, 1883.]

MICHIGAN—Women are eligible to election to district offices, to the office of school inspector, and are qualified to vote at district meetings. [Sch. Law, 1885.]

MINNESOTA—Women of twenty-one and over who have resided in the United States one year, and in this State for four months preceding the election, may vote for school officers, or for any measure relating to schools which may come up in school district meetings. Any woman so entitled to vote may hold any office pertaining to the management of schools. [Sch. Law, 1887.]

NEBRASKA—Women twenty-one years of age, resident of the district and owners of property, or having children to educate, may vote in district meetings. [Sch. Law, 1885.]

NEW HAMPSHIRE—Women may vote at school district meetings if they have resided and had a home in the district for three months next preceding such meeting. They may hold town and district school offices. [Sch. Law, 1886.]

NEW JERSEY—Women over twenty-one years of age, resident of the State for one year, and of the county for five months preceding such meeting, may vote at school meetings. They are eligible to the office of school trustee. [Sch. Law, 1887.]

NEW YORK—No person shall be deemed to be ineligible to serve as any school officer, or to vote at any school meeting, by reason of sex, who has the other qualifications now required by law. This permits women to act as school trustees, and to vote at district meetings, if residents of the district, holding taxable property, and over twenty-one years of age. [Sch. Law, 1887.]

OREGON—Women who are widows and have children to educate, and taxable property in the district, shall be entitled to vote at district meetings. [Sch. Law, 1887.]

PENNSYLVANIA—Women twenty-one years of age and upwards are eligible not only to the office of county superintendent, but to any office of control or management under the school laws of the State. [Sch. Law, 1888.]

RHODE ISLAND—Women can be elected to the office of school committee, and a woman is as eligible as a man for school superintendent. [Sch. Law, 1882.]

VERMONT—Women have the same right to vote as men have in all school district meetings, and in the election of school commissioners in towns and cities, and the same right to hold offices relating to school affairs. [Sch. Law, 1881.]

WISCONSIN—Every woman who is a citizen of this State of the age of twenty-one years or upward (except those excluded by Sec. 2, Art. 3, of the Wisconsin constitution) who has resided within the State one year, and in the election district where she offers to vote, ten days next preceding any election pertaining to school matters, shall have a right to vote at such elections. Every woman of twenty-one years of age and upwards may be elected or appointed as director, treasurer, or clerk of a school district, director or secretary of a town board, under the township system, member of a board of education in cities, or county superintendent. [Sch. Law, 1885.]

ARIZONA TY.—The territorial law provides that no person shall be denied the right to vote at any school district election or to hold any school district office on account of sex. [Biennial Report, 1883–84.]

* DAKOTA TY.—In all elections held under the provisions of this act, all persons who are qualified electors under the general laws of the Territory, and all women of twenty-one years and over, having the necessary qualifications as to citizenship and residence required by the general laws, and who have children of school age under their care or control, are qualified voters. Women having the requisite qualifications are eligible to the office of school director, judge or clerk of election, township clerk, or county superintendent of public schools. [Sch. Law, 1887.]

IDAHO—The right of citizens of any school district to vote at any school election, or upon any school matter, or for county superintendent, or to hold office as school trustee or county superintendent, shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex. [Sch. Law, 1885.]

* MONTANA—Every person, without regard to sex, over twenty-one years of age, resident of a school district, and a taxable inhabitant, is entitled to vote at the annual school meeting for the election of trustees. All persons otherwise qualified are eligible to the office of county superintendent of common schools without regard to sex. [Sch. Law, 1887.]

WASHINGTON—Women over the age of twenty-one years, resident of the school district for three months immediately preceding any district meeting, and liable to taxation, are legal voters at any school meeting. They are also eligible to hold or be elected to any school office. [Sch. Laws, 1885–86.]

WYOMING—Every woman of the age of twenty-one years, residing in the Territory, may, at every election to be holden under the laws thereof, cast her vote, and her rights to the elective franchise and to hold office shall be the same under the election laws of the Territory as those of electors. [Revised Statutes, 1887.]

All States marked with a star, thus (*), were Territories at date of laws. In Montana, those women who pay taxes will vote on all questions submitted to the vote of tax-payers. In Washington and South Dakota, the question of giving women full suffrage is hereafter to be put to vote, and on this question women already qualified as voters for any purpose can also vote. In Kansas, women have now the right to vote at municipal elections, and in Wyoming women have had full suffrage on the same terms as men for twenty years. The constitution of Wyoming, besides the equal suffrage provision, establishes the reading test, as in Massachusetts, and the Australian ballot for voters. At this present time of writing, Wyoming’s admission to the Union as a State is pending in Congress. The House of Representatives has voted the Territory qualified for statehood, and to give her admission. It is believed the Senate will confirm this action and that the bill will be signed by the President, when Wyoming will enter the sisterhood of States with equal suffrage for men and women incorporated in her constitution.[170]

The States and Territories which, according to the latest issue of their school laws, do not give women any voice in school affairs are nineteen, viz.: Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio,[171] Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, Alaska, Indian Territory, and New Mexico.

In Texas, the school officers are chosen by petitions to the county judge for their appointment, and he appoints those whose petitions are most largely signed. These petitions women can sign on the same terms as men, and thus practically vote without leaving home. The question of liquor license is decided in Arkansas and Mississippi in the same manner. In the territory of Utah women had full right to the elective franchise, and to hold office for many years. But in the winter of 1886–87, women suffrage was abolished, and the Territory redistricted for voting purposes. This was done by the Edmunds bill as a means to destroy polygamy. In Washington, women had exercised the right of suffrage conferred on them by the territorial legislature for two or three years. They were deprived of it by the decision of a territorial judge, some two years since, who gave an adverse decision on the question, when it came before him. His unjust act was performed in the interest of the liquor saloons, whose hostility to woman suffrage is immitigable everywhere.

It will be seen, therefore, that there are thirty-one States and Territories which have conferred the franchise on women in some form, from the petition-vote of Texas, Mississippi, and Arkansas, to the full suffrage exercised by the women of Wyoming for twenty years. This has been accomplished not by the fanaticism of a few abnormal and unbalanced women, as many superficial objectors declare. It is the legitimate outgrowth of the principles of Republican government, and has come naturally from the evolution of woman as a human being, which has proceeded through the ages. No one who has studied the question can lack faith in its ultimate success, and the beneficent results it is sure to accomplish. For the ballot in the hands of woman is the synonym of her legal equality with man, and legal justice has always preceded social equity. Woman has wrought more of good than evil in the world during her ages of ignorance, bondage, and degradation. What then may not be expected from her in righteousness and helpfulness, when she is accorded freedom, equity, and opportunity!