<h2><SPAN name="Page_186"></SPAN>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
<h2>MY FIRST SPEECH BEFORE A LEGISLATURE.</h2>
<br/>
<p>Women had been willing so long to hold a subordinate
position, both in private and public affairs,
that a gradually growing feeling of rebellion among
them quite exasperated the men, and their manifestations
of hostility in public meetings were often as
ridiculous as humiliating.</p>
<p>True, those gentlemen were all quite willing that
women should join their societies and churches to do
the drudgery; to work up the enthusiasm in fairs and
revivals, conventions and flag presentations; to pay a
dollar apiece into their treasury for the honor of being
members of their various organizations; to beg money
for the Church; to circulate petitions from door to door;
to visit saloons; to pray with or defy rumsellers; to
teach school at half price, and sit round the outskirts
of a hall, in teachers' State conventions, like so many
wallflowers; but they would not allow them to sit on the
platform, address the assembly, or vote for men and
measures.</p>
<p>Those who had learned the first lessons of human
rights from the lips of Henry B. Stanton, Samuel J.
May, and Gerrit Smith would not accept any such position.
When women abandoned the temperance reform,
all interest in the question gradually died out in
the State, and practically nothing was done in New
<SPAN name="Page_187"></SPAN>York for nearly twenty years. Gerrit Smith made
one
or two attempts toward an "anti-dramshop" party,
but, as women could not vote, they felt no interest in
the measure, and failure was the result.</p>
<p>I soon convinced Miss Anthony that the ballot was
the key to the situation; that when we had a voice in
the laws we should be welcome to any platform. In
turning the intense earnestness and religious enthusiasm
of this great-souled woman into this channel, I
soon felt the power of my convert in goading me forever
forward to more untiring work. Soon fastened,
heart to heart, with hooks of steel in a friendship that
years of confidence and affection have steadily strengthened,
we have labored faithfully together.</p>
<p>From the year 1850 conventions were held in various
States, and their respective legislatures were continually
besieged; New York was thoroughly canvassed by
Miss Anthony and others. Appeals, calls for meetings,
and petitions were circulated without number. In 1854
I prepared my first speech for the New York legislature.
That was a great event in my life. I felt so
nervous over it, lest it should not be worthy the occasion,
that Miss Anthony suggested that I should slip
up to Rochester and submit it to the Rev. William
Henry Channing, who was preaching there at that time.
I did so, and his opinion was so favorable as to the merits
of my speech that I felt quite reassured. My father felt
equally nervous when he saw, by the Albany <i>Evening
Journal</i>, that I was to speak at the Capitol, and asked
me to read my speech to him also. Accordingly, I
stopped at Johnstown on my way to Albany, and, late
one evening, when he was alone in his office, I entered
and took my seat on the opposite side of his table. On
<SPAN name="Page_188"></SPAN>no occasion, before or since, was I ever more
embarrassed—an
audience of one, and that the one of
all others whose approbation I most desired, whose
disapproval I most feared. I knew he condemned the
whole movement, and was deeply grieved at the active
part I had taken. Hence I was fully aware that I was
about to address a wholly unsympathetic audience.
However, I began, with a dogged determination to give
all the power I could to my manuscript, and not to be
discouraged or turned from my purpose by any tender
appeals or adverse criticisms. I described the widow
in the first hours of her grief, subject to the intrusions
of the coarse minions of the law, taking inventory of the
household goods, of the old armchair in which her loved
one had breathed his last, of the old clock in the corner
that told the hour he passed away. I threw all the
pathos I could into my voice and language at this point,
and, to my intense satisfaction, I saw tears filling my
father's eyes. I cannot express the exultation I felt,
thinking that now he would see, with my eyes, the injustice
women suffered under the laws he understood
so well.</p>
<p>Feeling that I had touched his heart I went on with
renewed confidence, and, when I had finished, I saw he
was thoroughly magnetized. With beating heart I
waited for him to break the silence. He was evidently
deeply pondering over all he had heard, and did not
speak for a long time. I believed I had opened to him
a new world of thought. He had listened long to
the complaints of women, but from the lips of his own
daughter they had come with a deeper pathos and
power. At last, turning abruptly, he said: "Surely you
have had a happy, comfortable life, with all your wants
<SPAN name="Page_189"></SPAN>and needs supplied; and yet that speech fills me
with
self-reproach; for one might naturally ask, how can a
young woman, tenderly brought up, who has had no
bitter personal experience, feel so keenly the wrongs of
her sex? Where did you learn this lesson?" "I
learned it here," I replied, "in your office, when a child,
listening to the complaints women made to you. They
who have sympathy and imagination to make the sorrows
of others their own can readily learn all the hard
lessons of life from the experience of others." "Well,
well!" he said, "you have made your points clear and
strong; but I think I can find you even more cruel laws
than those you have quoted." He suggested some improvements
in my speech, looked up other laws, and it
was one o'clock in the morning before we kissed each
other good-night. How he felt on the question after
that I do not know, as he never said anything in favor
of or against it. He gladly gave me any help I needed,
from time to time, in looking up the laws, and was very
desirous that whatever I gave to the public should be
carefully prepared.</p>
<p>Miss Anthony printed twenty thousand copies of this
address, laid it on the desk of every member of the legislature,
both in the Assembly and Senate, and, in her
travels that winter, she circulated it throughout the
State. I am happy to say I never felt so anxious about
the fate of a speech since.</p>
<p>The first woman's convention in Albany was held at
this time, and we had a kind of protracted meeting for
two weeks after. There were several hearings before
both branches of the legislature, and a succession of
meetings in Association Hall, in which Phillips, Channing,
Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette L. Brown, and
<SPAN name="Page_190"></SPAN>Susan B. Anthony took part. Being at the capital
of
the State, discussion was aroused at every fireside, while
the comments of the press were numerous and varied.
Every little country paper had something witty or silly
to say about the uprising of the "strong-minded."
Those editors whose heads were about the size of an
apple were the most opposed to the uprising of women,
illustrating what Sidney Smith said long ago: "There
always was, and there always will be a class of men so
small that, if women were educated, there would be
nobody left below them." Poor human nature loves to
have something to look down upon!</p>
<p>Here is a specimen of the way such editors talked
at that time. The <i>Albany Register</i>, in an article
on "Woman's Rights in the Legislature," dated March
7, 1854, says:</p>
<div class="blkquot">
<p>"While the feminine propagandists of women's rights
confined themselves to the exhibition of short petticoats
and long-legged boots, and to the holding of
conventions and speech-making in concert rooms, the
people were disposed to be amused by them, as they
are by the wit of the clown in the circus, or the performances
of Punch and Judy on fair days, or the minstrelsy
of gentlemen with blackened faces, on banjos,
the tambourine, and bones. But the joke is becoming
stale. People are getting cloyed with these performances,
and are looking for some healthier and more
intellectual amusement. The ludicrous is wearing
away, and disgust is taking the place of pleasurable sensations,
arising from the novelty of this new phase of
hypocrisy and infidel fanaticism.</p>
<p>"People are beginning to inquire how far public sentiment
should sanction or tolerate these unsexed women,
<SPAN name="Page_191"></SPAN>who would step out from the true sphere of the
mother,
the wife, and the daughter, and taking upon themselves
the duties and the business of men, stalk into the public
gaze, and, by engaging in the politics, the rough controversies
and trafficking of the world, upheave existing
institutions, and overrun all the social relations of life.</p>
<p>"It is a melancholy reflection that, among our
American women, who have been educated to better
things, there should be found any who are willing to
follow the lead of such foreign propagandists as the
ringleted, gloved exotic, Ernestine L. Rose. We can
understand how such a man as the Rev. Mr. May, or
the sleek-headed Dr. Channing, may be deluded by her
into becoming one of her disciples. They are not the
first instances of infatuation that may overtake weak-minded
men, if they are honest in their devotion to her
and her doctrines; nor would they be the first examples
of a low ambition that seeks notoriety as a substitute
for true fame, if they are dishonest. Such men there
are always, and, honest or dishonest, their true position
is that of being tied to the apron strings of some strong-minded
woman, and to be exhibited as rare specimens
of human wickedness or human weakness and folly.
But that one educated American should become her
disciple and follow her insane teachings is a marvel."</p>
</div>
<p>When we see the abuse and ridicule to which the best
of men were subjected for standing on our platform in
the early days, we need not wonder that so few have
been brave enough to advocate our cause in later years,
either in conventions or in the halls of legislation.</p>
<p>After twelve added years of agitation, following the
passage of the Property Bill, New York conceded other
civil rights to married women. Pending the discussion
<SPAN name="Page_192"></SPAN>of these various bills, Susan B. Anthony
circulated petitions,
both for the civil and political rights of women,
throughout the State, traveling in stage coaches, open
wagons, and sleighs in all seasons, and on foot, from
door to door through towns and cities, doing her uttermost
to rouse women to some sense of their natural
rights as human beings, and to their civil and political
rights as citizens of a republic. And while expending
her time, strength, and money to secure these blessings
for the women of the State, they would gruffly tell her
that they had all the rights they wanted, or rudely shut
the door in her face; leaving her to stand outside, petition
in hand, treating her with as much contempt as
if she was asking alms for herself. None but those who
did that work in the early days, for the slaves and the
women, can ever know the hardships and humiliations
that were endured. But it was done because it was
only through petitions—a power seemingly so inefficient—that
disfranchised classes could be heard in the
State and National councils; hence their importance.</p>
<p>The frivolous objections some women made to our
appeals were as exasperating as they were ridiculous.
To reply to them politely, at all times, required a divine
patience. On one occasion, after addressing the legislature,
some of the ladies, in congratulating me, inquired,
in a deprecating tone, "What do you do with
your children?" "Ladies," I said, "it takes me no
longer to speak, than you to listen; what have you done
with your children the two hours you have been sitting
here? But, to answer your question, I never leave
my children to go to Saratoga, Washington, Newport,
or Europe, or even to come here. They are, at this
moment, with a faithful nurse at the Delevan House,
<SPAN name="Page_193"></SPAN>and, having accomplished my mission, we shall
all return
home together."</p>
<p>When my children reached the magic number of
seven, my good angel, Susan B. Anthony, would sometimes
take one or two of them to her own quiet home,
just out of Rochester, where, on a well-cultivated little
farm, one could enjoy uninterrupted rest and the
choicest fruits of the season. That was always a safe
harbor for my friend, as her family sympathized fully
in the reforms to which she gave her life. I have many
pleasant memories of my own flying visits to that
hospitable Quaker home and the broad catholic spirit
of Daniel and Lucy Anthony. Whatever opposition
and ridicule their daughter endured elsewhere, she enjoyed
the steadfast sympathy and confidence of her own
home circle. Her faithful sister Mary, a most successful
teacher in the public schools of Rochester for a
quarter of a century, and a good financier, who with her
patrimony and salary had laid by a competence, took
on her shoulders double duty at home in cheering the
declining years of her parents, that Susan might do the
public work in the reforms in which they were
equally interested. Now, with life's earnest work
nearly accomplished, the sisters are living happily together;
illustrating another of the many charming
homes of single women, so rapidly multiplying of late.</p>
<p>Miss Anthony, who was a frequent guest at my
home, sometimes stood guard when I was absent. The
children of our household say that among their earliest
recollections is the tableau of "Mother and Susan,"
seated by a large table covered with books and papers,
always writing and talking about the Constitution, interrupted
with occasional visits from others of the faith<SPAN name="Page_194"></SPAN>ful.
Hither came Elizabeth Oakes Smith, Paulina
Wright Davis, Frances Dana Gage, Dr. Harriet Hunt,
Rev. Antoinette Brown, Lucy Stone, and Abby Kelly,
until all these names were as familiar as household
words to the children.</p>
<p>Martha C. Wright of Auburn was a frequent visitor
at the center of the rebellion, as my sequestered cottage
on Locust Hill was facetiously called. She brought
to these councils of war not only her own wisdom,
but that of the wife and sister of William H.
Seward, and sometimes encouraging suggestions from
the great statesman himself, from whose writings we
often gleaned grand and radical sentiments. Lucretia
Mott, too, being an occasional guest of her sister,
Martha C. Wright, added the dignity of her presence
at many of these important consultations. She
was uniformly in favor of toning down our fiery
pronunciamentos. For Miss Anthony and myself,
the English language had no words strong enough
to express the indignation we felt at the prolonged
injustice to women. We found, however,
that, after expressing ourselves in the most vehement
manner and thus in a measure giving our
feelings an outlet, we were reconciled to issue the
documents in milder terms. If the men of the State
could have known the stern rebukes, the denunciations,
the wit, the irony, the sarcasm that were
garnered there, and then judiciously pigeonholed and
milder and more persuasive appeals substituted, they
would have been truly thankful that they fared no
worse.</p>
<p>Senator Seward frequently left Washington to visit
in our neighborhood, at the house of Judge G.V.
<SPAN name="Page_195"></SPAN>Sackett, a man of wealth and political
influence. One
of the Senator's standing anecdotes, at dinner, to
illustrate the purifying influence of women at the polls,
which he always told with great zest for my especial
benefit, was in regard to the manner in which his wife's
sister exercised the right of suffrage.</p>
<p>He said: "Mrs. Worden having the supervision of a
farm near Auburn, was obliged to hire two or three men
for its cultivation. It was her custom, having examined
them as to their capacity to perform the required
labor, their knowledge of tools, horses, cattle, and
horticulture, to inquire as to their politics. She informed
them that, being a widow and having no
one to represent her, she must have Republicans to do
her voting and to represent her political opinions, and
it always so happened that the men who offered their
services belonged to the Republican party. I remarked
to her, one day, 'Are you sure your men vote as they
promise?' 'Yes,' she replied, 'I trust nothing to their
discretion. I take them in my carriage within sight of
the polls and put them in charge of some Republican
who can be trusted. I see that they have the right
tickets and then I feel sure that I am faithfully represented,
and I know I am right in so doing. I have
neither husband, father, nor son; I am responsible for
my own taxes; am amenable to all the laws of the State;
must pay the penalty of my own crimes if I commit
any; hence I have the right, according to the principles
of our government, to representation, and so long as I
am not permitted to vote in person, I have a right to
do so by proxy; hence I hire men to vote my
principles.'"</p>
<p>These two sisters, Mrs. Worden and Mrs. Seward,
<SPAN name="Page_196"></SPAN>daughters of Judge Miller, an influential man,
were
women of culture and remarkable natural intelligence,
and interested in all progressive ideas. They had rare
common sense and independence of character, great
simplicity of manner, and were wholly indifferent to the
little arts of the toilet.</p>
<p>I was often told by fashionable women that they objected
to the woman's rights movement because of the
publicity of a convention, the immodesty of speaking
from a platform, and the trial of seeing one's name in
the papers. Several ladies made such remarks to me
one day, as a bevy of us were sitting together in one of
the fashionable hotels in Newport. We were holding
a convention there at that time, and some of them had
been present at one of the sessions. "Really," said I,
"ladies, you surprise me; our conventions are not as
public as the ballroom where I saw you all dancing last
night. As to modesty, it may be a question, in many
minds, whether it is less modest to speak words of
soberness and truth, plainly dressed on a platform, than
gorgeously arrayed, with bare arms and shoulders, to
waltz in the arms of strange gentlemen. And as to the
press, I noticed you all reading, in this morning's papers,
with evident satisfaction, the personal compliments and
full descriptions of your dresses at the last ball.
I presume that any one of you would have felt slighted
if your name had not been mentioned in the general
description. When my name is mentioned, it is in connection
with some great reform movement. Thus we
all suffer or enjoy the same publicity—we are alike ridiculed.
Wise men pity and ridicule you, and fools pity
and ridicule me—you as the victims of folly and fashion,
me as the representative of many of the disagreeable
<SPAN name="Page_197"></SPAN>'isms' of the age, as they choose to style
liberal
opinions. It is amusing, in analyzing prejudices, to see
on what slender foundation they rest." And the ladies
around me were so completely cornered that no one
attempted an answer.</p>
<p>I remember being at a party at Secretary Seward's
home, at Auburn, one evening, when Mr. Burlingame,
special ambassador from China to the United States,
with a Chinese delegation, were among the guests. As
soon as the dancing commenced, and young ladies and
gentlemen, locked in each other's arms, began to whirl
in the giddy waltz, these Chinese gentlemen were so
shocked that they covered their faces with their fans,
occasionally peeping out each side and expressing their
surprise to each other. They thought us the most immodest
women on the face of the earth. Modesty and
taste are questions of latitude and education; the more
people know,—the more their ideas are expanded by
travel, experience, and observation,—the less easily they
are shocked. The narrowness and bigotry of women
are the result of their circumscribed sphere of thought
and action.</p>
<p>A few years after Judge Hurlbert had published his
work on "Human Rights," in which he advocated
woman's right to the suffrage, and I had addressed the
legislature, we met at a dinner party in Albany.
Senator and Mrs. Seward were there. The Senator
was very merry on that occasion and made Judge
Hurlbert and myself the target for all his ridicule
on the woman's rights question, in which the most
of the company joined, so that we stood quite
alone. Sure that we had the right on our side
and the arguments clearly defined in our minds,
<SPAN name="Page_198"></SPAN>and both being cool and self-possessed, and in
wit
and sarcasm quite equal to any of them, we fought
the Senator, inch by inch, until he had a very narrow
platform to stand on. Mrs. Seward maintained an unbroken
silence, while those ladies who did open their
lips were with the opposition, supposing, no doubt, that
Senator Seward represented his wife's opinions.</p>
<p>When we ladies withdrew from the table my embarrassment
may be easily imagined. Separated from
the Judge, I would now be an hour with a bevy of
ladies who evidently felt repugnance to all my most
cherished opinions. It was the first time I had met
Mrs. Seward, and I did not then know the broad, liberal
tendencies of her mind. What a tide of disagreeable
thoughts rushed through me in that short passage
from the dining room to the parlor. How gladly I
would have glided out the front door! But that was impossible,
so I made up my mind to stroll round as if
self-absorbed, and look at the books and paintings
until the Judge appeared; as I took it for granted that,
after all I had said at the table on the political, religious,
and social equality of women, not a lady would have
anything to say to me.</p>
<p>Imagine, then, my surprise when, the moment the
parlor door was closed upon us, Mrs. Seward, approaching
me most affectionately, said:</p>
<p>"Let me thank you for the brave words you uttered
at the dinner table, and for your speech before the
legislature, that thrilled my soul as I read it over and
over."</p>
<p>I was filled with joy and astonishment. Recovering
myself, I said, "Is it possible, Mrs. Seward, that you
agree with me? Then why, when I was so hard pressed
<SPAN name="Page_199"></SPAN>by foes on every side, did you not come to the
defense?
I supposed that all you ladies were hostile to every one
of my ideas on this question."</p>
<p>"No, no!" said she; "I am with you thoroughly,
but I am a born coward; there is nothing I dread more
than Mr. Seward's ridicule. I would rather walk up to
the cannon's mouth than encounter it." "I, too, am
with you," "And I," said two or three others, who had
been silent at the table.</p>
<p>I never had a more serious, heartfelt conversation
than with these ladies. Mrs. Seward's spontaneity and
earnestness had moved them all deeply, and when the
Senator appeared the first words he said were:</p>
<p>"Before we part I must confess that I was fairly vanquished
by you and the Judge, on my own principles"
(for we had quoted some of his most radical utterances).
"You have the argument, but custom and prejudice are
against you, and they are stronger than truth and
logic."</p>
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