Download the full version of the ebook now at ebookgrade.

com

Python GUI Develop Cross Platform Desktop

Applications using Python Qt and PyQt5 Ananda
Olaf Art

https://ebookgrade.com/product/python-gui-develop-
cross-platform-desktop-applications-using-python-
qt-and-pyqt5-ananda-olaf-art/

Explore and download more ebook at https://ebookgrade.com

 Recommended digital products (PDF, EPUB, MOBI) that
you can download immediately if you are interested.

Python GUI Develop Cross Platform Desktop Applications

using Python Qt and PyQt5

https://ebookgrade.com/product/python-gui-develop-cross-platform-
desktop-applications-using-python-qt-and-pyqt5/

ebookgrade.com

Building Cross Platform Desktop Applications with Electron

B01NB9QRT9

https://ebookgrade.com/product/building-cross-platform-desktop-
applications-with-electron-b01nb9qrt9/

ebookgrade.com

Python Programming and Developing GUI Applications with

PyQT

https://ebookgrade.com/product/python-programming-and-developing-gui-
applications-with-pyqt/

ebookgrade.com

Create Simple GUI Applications with Python & Qt5

Martin Fitzpatrick

https://ebookgrade.com/product/create-simple-gui-applications-with-
python-qt5-martin-fitzpatrick/

ebookgrade.com
Qt5 Python GUI Programming Cookbook 1788831004

https://ebookgrade.com/product/qt5-python-gui-programming-
cookbook-1788831004/

ebookgrade.com

Qt5 Python GUI Programming Cookbook sbhukya

https://ebookgrade.com/product/qt5-python-gui-programming-cookbook-
sbhukya/

ebookgrade.com

Create GUI Applications with Python & Qt5 The hands on

guide to making apps with Python Martin Fitzpatrick

https://ebookgrade.com/product/create-gui-applications-with-python-
qt5-the-hands-on-guide-to-making-apps-with-python-martin-fitzpatrick/

ebookgrade.com

Machine Learning using Python

https://ebookgrade.com/product/machine-learning-using-python/

ebookgrade.com
Other documents randomly have
different content
study in the Law School of Michigan University and admission to the
bar of Michigan in June, 1885, entered the Law School at Yale in the
fall of the same year, and graduated at the close of the course with
the degree as already stated. Dean Wayland, of Yale Law School,
sends me a catalogue of the University, and writes that the marked
paragraph on page 25 is intended to prevent a repetition of the
Jordan incident. The paragraph referred to appears on the page
devoted to departments of instruction, and reads: ‘It is to be
understood that the courses of instruction above described are open
to persons of the male sex only, except where both sexes are
specifically included.’”—(Lelia J. Robinson, LL.B., in an article on
“Women Lawyers in the United States,” in The Green Bag, January,
1890.) As to the relative standing of the sexes as students in law
schools, Hon. Henry Wade Rogers, dean of the department of law of
Michigan University, says: “The women who have attended the Law
School have compared favorably in the matter of scholarship with
the men. They are just as capable of acquiring legal knowledge as
men are.” This law school has graduated more women than any other
in the country. Hon. Henry Booth, dean of Union College of Law,
gives the standing of women in scholarship as that of a fair average,
and says: “We discover no difference in the capacity of the sexes to
apprehend and apply legal principles. We welcome ladies to the
school and regard their presence an advantage in promoting
decorum and good order.”
A law school for women has recently been opened in New York
City. Its founder is Madame Emile Kempin-Spyri, a graduate of the
School of Jurisprudence, of the University of Zurich, in 1887. Her
application for admission to the order of advocates of her native
country, Switzerland, being denied, she emigrated to the United
States. She is the counsel of the Swiss Legation in Washington.[161]
Women lawyers of this country are entitled to practice before all
courts, State and national, the same as male lawyers. When not
admitted under existing statutes, the respective legislatures, so far,
with two exceptions, have promptly passed enabling acts. Women
anxious for admission were the first to advocate these. One exception
to the usual legislative promptness is found in the case of Annie
Smith, of Danville, Virginia. The Judge of the Corporation Court, to
whom she applied in 1889 for a certificate to enable her to be
examined, refused it on the ground that for a woman to obtain
license the present statute would have to be amended. Mrs. Smith,
aided by her husband, an attorney, vainly endeavored to secure the
necessary enactment during the last session of the State Legislature.
The bill, a general one, was voted down; but a private bill, to enable
Mrs. Smith only to obtain license, was favorably reported. The
Legislature, however, adjourned before final action on it. Mr. and
Mrs. Smith will continue their efforts until successful.
The other exception was a prior one, but admission came without
legislation. This is found in the case of Carrie Burnham Kilgore, of
Philadelphia. Speaking of her twelve years’ struggle for admission,
Miss Martin, in her article on “Admission of Women to the Bar,”
already cited, says: “In December, 1874, Carrie Burnham (now
Kilgore), of Philadelphia, began the long and tedious warfare that she
has been obliged to wage for admission in Pennsylvania. The Board
of Examiners refused to examine her, because there was ‘no
precedent for the admission of a woman to the bar of this county,’
and the Court refused to grant a rule on the board requiring them to
examine her. Mrs. Kilgore then tried to have a law passed forbidding
exclusion on account of sex, but the Judiciary Committee of the
Senate took the position that the law as it stood was broad enough,
and so it would seem to be. The Act of 1834 declares, ‘The Judges of
the several Courts of Record in the Commonwealth shall respectively
have power to admit a competent number of persons of an honest
disposition, and learned in the law, to practice as attorneys in their
respective courts.’ The Senate finally passed the clause desired, at
two or three sessions, but it was never reached in the House. Finally
Mrs. Kilgore gained admission to the Law School of the University of
Pennsylvania in 1881, where she had previously been denied, and by
virtue of her diploma from there, in 1883, was admitted to the
Orphans’ Court of Philadelphia. She was then admitted to one of the
Common Pleas Courts, but denied admission to the other three,
though it is the custom when a person has been admitted to one, to
admit to the rest as a matter of course. As soon after admission to the
Common Pleas Court as the law allows, two years, and in May of this
year, 1886, Mrs. Kilgore applied and was admitted to the Supreme
Court of the State, and by virtue of this admission, all the lower
Courts are now compelled to admit her. Thus, Pennsylvania has
accomplished after twelve years, what Iowa did seventeen years ago
without any ado, and with a statute that might have afforded a
reasonable ground for refusal, which the Pennsylvania statute did
not.” Since her admission, Mrs. Kilgore has been in active general
practice. Her husband, an able lawyer, in whose office she studied
and worked, died two years ago, in 1888. He had a large clientage.
After his death, Mrs. Kilgore was requested to take charge of his
cases in all but one instance. She is the attorney for Harmon Lodge,
I.O.O.F., and the Relief Mining and Milling Company. Several times
she has been appointed master and examiner by the courts. A special
correspondent of the Chicago Daily Tribune, in its issue of April 5,
1890, speaking of Mrs. Kilgore’s efforts and successes concludes
with: “She has several interesting children and a delightful home,
neither her struggle for woman’s rights nor her devotion to her
professional concerns having interfered with her domestic duties nor
estranged her from the hearth.”
This reminds us of many interesting cases of motherly care and
devotion on the part of women practitioners, two of which we cannot
refrain from mentioning. One is in regard to Ohio’s first woman
lawyer, Annie Cronise Lutes, of Tiffin, who was admitted to practice
before the courts of that State in April, 1873. Her sister, Florence
Cronise, was admitted in September of the same year. These two
sisters, since their admission, have pursued the steady, straight
practice of law without deviation. For several years they were law
partners. In 1880, Mrs. Lutes and her husband, who had been fellow
students in the same office, and were admitted to the bar at the same
time, formed a partnership. (This left Miss Florence to practice
alone, which she has since done with signal success.) Mr. and Mrs.
Lutes were married in 1874. They have three daughters. The two
eldest (aged fourteen and twelve respectively) are attending the
Heidelberg University, at Tiffin, taking the full classical course, for
which they were prepared under the instruction of their mother,
never having attended public school. The full force of this fact will
become apparent further on. In 1881 Mr. Lutes became totally deaf.
In a letter showing the extent of their law practice, which was
published in the article on “Women Lawyers in the United States,”
already cited, Mr. Lutes says:
“Our practice is general in character, and extends to the courts of
this State and the United States courts for the Northern District of
Ohio. The following facts will enable you to form an estimate as to
the nature and extent of Mrs. Lutes’s practice and experience at the
bar. The bar of this county has forty-five members. The total number
of civil cases on the trial docket of the term just closed was 226; of
that number, our firm was retained in fifty cases, which is probably a
fair average of our share of the business for this county, and our
practice also extends to a considerable extent to the adjoining
counties of this district.”
Mr. Lutes’s infirmity necessarily imposes extra duties on his
faithful partner, which the following extract from the Chicago Daily
Tribune, of April 5, 1890, graphically pictures: “Mr. Lutes is totally
deaf, but his wife sits by him in court and repeats word for word
what is said, and although her lips make no audible sound, every
word said by judge, jury, or opposing counsel is understood. Without
her assistance he would be perfectly helpless, so far as his law
practice is concerned. The two work together on every case that is
brought to them, and it is seldom a person sees one without the
other. Their practice is lucrative and extensive.”
The other case is that of Clara S. Foltz. Her married life was
unfortunate. She had the family to support. This she did by
undertaking dressmaking and millinery, and then conducting classes
in voice culture and keeping boarders. An attorney who “admired her
keen reasoning powers and her incisive logic,” one day said: “Mrs.
Foltz, you are such a good mother that I believe you would make an
able lawyer. Here is a copy of Kent’s Commentaries. I wish you would
take it home and read it.” She did so as she nursed her babies—five of
them now. Shortly afterward she began the study of law in an office.
Subsequently she secured a divorce and the custody of her children.
In September, 1878, she was admitted to practice and removed to
San Francisco for a course in the Hastings Law College. She made
application for admission as a student in the college and the dean
permitted her to attend the lecture for three days, while the directors
were deciding what to do about it. They refused her application on
the ground that it was “not wise or expedient, or for the best interest
of the college, to admit any female as a student therein.” Mrs. Foltz
informed the dean that she meant to attend the lectures—peaceably
if she could, but forcibly if she must. She promptly commenced
action for a mandate to compel the directors to admit her. She won.
The directors appealed the case to the State Supreme Court. Mrs.
Foltz appeared and argued her side of the case, making the point that
the Law College was a branch of the University, and that woman’s
right to enter the latter was unquestioned. The Court agreed with
her, and held that “An applicant for admission as a student to the
Hastings Law College cannot lawfully be rejected on the sole ground
that she is a female.” (Foltz v. Hoge, et al., Cal. Supreme Court Rep.,
vol. liv. p. 28.) She entered the college and remained there eighteen
months, attending three classes daily to overtake her class. Finally
overstudy, lack of means, and the care of her children, prostrated
her. It was a severe disappointment not to be able to complete the
prescribed three years’ course and win her degree. She will yet gain
it. Mrs. Foltz thus tells the story of her first case:
“I firmly believe in the Infinite. The day the Supreme Court
admitted me—it was on Thursday—I traveled from San Jose to San
Francisco. An old gentleman who knew of my struggles and
ambitions was on the train. He explained in an apologetic way that
he thought perhaps I would be willing to assist him in finding a land
claim that he had pre-empted, and which another settler contested.
My would-be client had all the necessary proofs and witnesses ready,
and the case was to come up at ten o’clock the following day. I had
never been in a land office. I was ignorant of the methods of
procedure, but I could soon learn. I accepted the case.
“That day was a crisis in my life. To pay the ten dollar fee of the
Supreme Court I pawned this breastpin—dear old pin! Next
morning, before I was up, a knock came to my door as the clock
struck seven. My client was there. I dressed myself and carried on a
conversation through the door. What would I charge for my services,
he asked. I did not know, but ventured a guess at the correct figure. I
would undertake the case for $25. He hesitated a little, and said that
after witnesses fees and other expenses were paid he would have but
$15 left, and that if I had a mind to take that sum it would be all
right. I accepted eagerly, for I needed the money. Next I invited the
witnesses in and questioned them. We parted to meet at the land
office, but I went down in advance to see the Surveyor-General. I
hold that the truth is always the best, so I told him that I had a case
at ten o’clock, but knew nothing about land-office matters, and that I
wanted to learn the law. He was very kind and furnished me with a
pamphlet of instructions. Then I ventured to request that the case
might go over to 1 P. M. He found that it could. I was immensely
relieved and hastened off with my precious pamphlet. Client and
witnesses were on the stairs. I informed them of the change in time
and turned back. Didn’t I get that pamphlet by heart though! And I
won my first case, redeemed my cherished pin, and paid my board
bill.”
Laura De Force Gordon, who was also denied admission to the
Hastings Law College, and aided Mrs. Foltz in her mandamus case,
successfully defended a Spaniard charged with murder, within two
months after her admission to the bar in 1879. “Among her most
noted criminal cases was that of The People v. Sproule, which was
indeed in some respects the most remarkable trial in the whole range
of criminal jurisprudence in California. The defendant had shot and
killed a young man named Andrews, by mistake for one Espey, the
seducer of Sproule’s wife. It was a fearful tragedy, and the excitement
was so great that the jail had to be guarded for a week to prevent the
lynching of the prisoner. Mrs. Gordon undertook his defense, against
the advice of the most distinguished lawyers in the State, and
obtained a verdict of “Not guilty” amid the most deafening cheers of
men and hysterical cries of women, half-weeping jurymen joining in
the general clamor of rejoicing.” (“Women Lawyers in the United
States,” in The Green Bag, January, 1890.)
In speaking of her practice, Mrs. Lockwood says: “My first was a
divorce case and I won it, but the man refused to pay the alimony.
The judge told me there was no law to make him pay it. I told him
there was, and I showed him I could issue a ne exeat. I issued the
writ, and the man was clapped into prison until he agreed to pay the
alimony. Years afterward a similar case came up and the men who
were the lawyers asked if there was no way to compel a man to stay
in the District until he paid the alimony. The clerk said: ‘Belva
Lockwood is the only one who has ever issued a ne exeat in the
District; you had better consult her.’ Many a time I have been saved
by a little wit. Once my client, a woman, got upon the witness stand,
in spite of all I could do, and acknowledged she had committed the
crime of which she was accused. It was for shooting a constable, and
that woman described the whole thing, talking until I was glued to
my seat with fright. When she stopped and I had to get up I didn’t
know what I was going to say, but I began, ‘Gentlemen of the jury,
the laws must be enforced. My client has committed the double
offense of resisting an officer of the law and shooting a man. The
District is under the common law. That law says a woman must obey
her husband. Her husband told her to load a gun and shoot the first
officer that tried to force his way into the house. She obeyed him.
Gentlemen, I claim that that husband loaded the gun and shot the
officer, and as the judge will not postpone this case until I can have
the husband brought from the West, where he is, I claim you are not
trying the right prisoner. You would not have a woman resist her
husband?’ The jury brought in the verdict of ‘Not guilty,’ and the
judge, a crusty gentleman, said, when the next case was brought up:
‘I will call a new jury for this case, as the old one has just done a hard
day’s work.’”
Col. C. K. Pier, his wife, and three daughters, of Madison,
Wisconsin, are widely known as “the Pier family of lawyers.” The
Colonel is a lawyer of long standing. Mrs. Pier and their eldest
daughter graduated from the Law Department of the University of
Wisconsin in 1887. All three practice together. The two younger
sisters, Carrie and Harriet, have nearly finished the course in the law
school from which their mother and sister graduated. Miss Kate, in
her twenty-first year, appeared before the Supreme Court and won
her case, the first to be argued by a woman in the supreme tribunal
of the State. A newspaper, commenting on the fact, says: “Her
opponent was J. J. Sutton, a veteran practitioner. The gray-haired
patriarchs of the profession smoothed the wrinkles out of their
waistcoats and straightened their neckties, and then wiped the
specks off their spectacles. The audience was one before which any
young man might readily have been excused for getting rattled.
There were present Gen. E. E. Bryant, dean of the law faculty, ex-
Secretary of the Interior William F. Vilas, and a host of visiting legal
lights. Even the dignified judges were compelled to affect an extra
degree of austerity to conceal their interest in the young attorney.
But Miss Pier showed no sign of embarrassment. Her argument was
direct and to the point, and, moreover, relieved of the superfluities
that frequently characterize the verbose utterances of more
experienced attorneys of the male sex. She stated her case
unhesitatingly, and frequently turned to and cited authorities,
showing an acquaintance with the law and a degree of self-
possession which indicated that she was truly in love with her
profession. She showed she possessed the true mettle for success,
and two weeks later, when the judges rendered their decision, she
had the pleasure of winning her first case. Since then both she and
her mother have frequently argued cases before the Court.”
Almeda E. Hitchcock, of Hilo, Hawaii Islands, graduated from the
Law Department of the Michigan University in 1888, and was
admitted to the Michigan bar. Her father is one of the circuit judges
of that far away island. On her return home she was admitted to the
Hawaiian bar on presentation of her license from the Michigan
Court, the first instance of a woman’s receiving license to practice
law in that kingdom. The same day she was appointed notary public
and became her father’s law partner.
Marilla M. Ricker, while a resident of the District of Columbia, was
appointed Commissioner and Examiner in Chancery by the Supreme
Court of the District, and several cases were heard before her. Other
women lawyers, in various parts of the country, have been appointed
examiners in chancery and examiners of applicants for admission to
the bar. Mary E. Haddock, LL.B., in June, 1878, was appointed by
the Supreme Court of Iowa to examine students of the State
University for graduation and admission to the bar. She was
reappointed for two successive years. Ada Lee, of Port Huron,
Michigan, the year following her admission in 1883, was elected to
the office of Circuit Court Commissioner, having been nominated,
without solicitation on her part, by the Republican, Democratic, and
Greenback parties of St. Clair county. “She performed the duties of
this office, and held it until the expiration of her term, despite the
fact that thirteen suits were begun to oust her, during which time two
hundred and seventeen cases were tried before her.” Mrs. J. M.
Kellogg acted as Assistant Attorney-General during the time her
husband was Attorney-General of Kansas. They are law partners.
Phoebe W. Couzins, LL.B., was chief deputy United States Marshal
for the Eastern District of Missouri during the time her father was
the Marshal. At the death of her father she was named his successor,
which position she held until removed by the incoming Democratic
administration. Catherine G. Waugh, A.M., LL.B., was for a year or
two Professor of Commercial Law in the Rockford (Ill.) Commercial
College. Mrs. Foltz delivered a legal address before the students of
Union College of Law in 1886. Mary A. Greene, LL.B. recently
delivered a course of lectures before the students of Lasell Seminary
on “Business Law for Women.”
Several able articles have been written for law journals by women
lawyers of this country. Of books, M. B. R. Shay, is author of
“Students’ Guide to Common Law Pleading” (published in 1881.) Of
this work, Hon. R. M. Benjamin, dean of Law Faculty, and Hon. A. G.
Kerr, professor of Pleading of Law Department of the Illinois
Wesleyan University, say, as published in Callaghan & Company’s
annual catalogue of law books:
“We have examined with considerable care Shay’s Questions on
Common Law Pleading, and can cheerfully recommend them to
students as admirably adapted to guide them to a thorough
knowledge of the principles of pleading as laid down by those
masters of the system, Stephen, Gould, and Chitty.”
Lelia Robinson Sawtelle is author of “Law Made Easy” (published
in 1886). Of this work, Hon. Charles T. Russell, professor in Boston
University Law School, says: “For the end proposed, the information
and instruction of the popular mind in the elements of law, civil and
criminal, I know of no work which surpasses it. It is comprehensive
and judicious in scope, accurate in statement, terse, vigorous, simple,
and clear in style. My gratification in this work is none the less that
its author is the first lady Bachelor of Laws graduated from our
Boston University Law School, and that she has thus early and fully
vindicated her right to the highest honors of the school accorded her
at her graduation.” Mrs. Sawtelle has since written a manual entitled
“The Law of Husband and Wife,” which likewise has been well
received. She is now at work upon another to be called “Wills and
Inheritances.”
We have already spoken of Myra Bradwell as the editor of the
Chicago Legal News. Catharine V. Waite, LL.B., edits the Chicago
Law Times, which she founded in 1886. Bessie Bradwell Helmer,
LL.B., compiled, unassisted, ten volumes of Bradwell’s Appellate
Court Reports. Cora A. Benneson, LL.B., was law editor for the West
Publishing Company of St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1886.
The first association of women lawyers is called “The Equity Club.”
This was organized in October, 1886, by women students and
graduates of the Law Department of Michigan University, having for
its object “the interchange of encouragement and friendly counsel
between women law students and practitioners.” It is international in
scope. Each member is required to contribute a yearly letter, “giving
an account of individual experiences, thoughts on topics of general
interest, and helpful suggestions,” for publication and distribution
among members of the association.
Another association of women lawyers, organized in 1888, is the
“Woman’s International Bar Association,” having for its object:
1. To open law schools to women.
2. To remove all disabilities to admission of women to the bar, and
to secure their eligibility to the bench.
3. To disseminate knowledge concerning women’s legal status.
4. To secure better legal conditions for women.
Women lawyers are welcomed as members of bar associations
established by their brothers in the profession. Many have availed
themselves of this privilege.
For various reasons quite a number of women admitted have not,
so far, identified themselves with law practice. Others have allowed
themselves to be drawn into temperance and other reform
movements; but the greater portion at once settled down to follow
their chosen pursuit with no deviation, and are ripening into able,
experienced lawyers, and winning their fair share of clientage. Some
confine themselves mainly to an office practice, seldom or never
appearing in public; others prefer court practice. Those who enter
the forum are cordially countenanced by brother lawyers and
acceptably received before court and jury. As a rule they are treated
with the utmost courtesy by the bench, the bar, and other court
officers.
Woman’s influence in the court room as counsel is promotive of
good in more than one respect. Invectives against opposing counsel,
so freely made use of in some courts, are seldom indulged in when
woman stands as the opponent. And in social impurity cases,
language, in her presence, becomes more chaste, and the moral tone
thereby elevated perceptibly. But there should be one more
innovation brought into general vogue, that of the mixed jury system.
When we shall have women both as lawyers and jurors to assist in
the trial of cases, then, and not until then, will woman’s influence for
good in the administration of justice be fully felt. In Wyoming and
Washington the mixed jury system has been tried and found
perfectly practicable.
There has not been time enough yet for a woman to develop into
an Erskine or Burke, an O’Connor or Curran, a Webster or Choate.
But few men have done so, if history correctly records. Woman has
made a fair beginning, and is determined to push on and upward,
keeping pace with her brother along the way until, with him, she
shall have finally reached the highest pinnacle of legal fame.
 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