Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887Various
History
Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887
Various
Women -- Suffrage -- United States
If they do not turn out in the end to be men who respect woman, who
will protect and defend her in the exercise of every one of her
God-given rights, it is because she has failed in her duty toward
them; has not been taught to comprehend her own power and to use it
to its best ends. For women to seek to control men by the power of
suffrage is like David essaying the armor of Saul. What woman needs is
her own sheepskin sling and her few smooth pebbles from the bed of the
brook, and then let her go forth in the name of the Lord God of Hosts,
and a victory as sure and decisive as that of the shepherd of Israel
awaits her.
Again, in chapter 4, entitled "The Power of the Home," the author
says, in substance: It is, perhaps, of minor consequence that women
should have felt themselves emancipated from buttons and bread
making; but that they should have learned to look in the least degree
slightingly upon the great duties of women as lovers of husbands, as
lovers of children, as the fountain and source of what is highest and
purest and holiest, and not less of what is homely and comfortable and
satisfying in the home, is a serious misfortune. Women can hardly
be said to have lost, perhaps what they have so rarely in any age
generally attained, that dignity which knows how to command, united
with a sweetness which seems all the while to be complying, the power,
supple and strong, which rescues the character of the ideal woman from
the charge of weakness, and at the same time exhibits its utmost of
grace and fascination.
But that of late years the gift has not been cultivated, has not, in
fact, thrown out such natural off-shoots as gave grace and glory to
some earlier social epochs, must be evident, it would seem, to any
thoughtful observer.
If, instead of trying to grasp more material power, women would pursue
those studies and investigations which tend to make them familiar with
what science teaches concerning the influence of the mother and the
home upon the child; of how completely the Creator in giving the
genesis of the human race into the hands of woman has made her not
only capable of, but responsible for, the regeneration of the world;
if they would reflect that nature by making man the bond slave of his
passions has put the lever into the hands of woman by which she can
control him, and if they would learn to use these powers, not as bad
women do for vile and selfish ends, but as the mothers of the race
ought, for pure, holy, and redemptive purposes, then would the sphere
of women be enlarged to some purpose; the atmosphere of the home would
be purified and vitalized, and the work of redeeming man from his
vices would be hopefully begun.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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