Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
The interests of the sexes are inseparably connected, and in the
elevation of one lies the salvation of the other. Therefore I
claim a part in the last and grandest movement of the ages; for
whatever concerns woman concerns the race. In every human
enterprise the sexes should go hand in hand. Experience sanctions
the statement. I know of but few movements in history, which have
gone on successfully without the aid of woman. One of these is
war--the work of human slaughter. Another has been the digging of
gold in California. I have yet to learn what advantages the world
has derived from either. Whenever the sexes have been severed in
politics, in business, in religion, the result has been
demoralization.
Mr. Blackwell spoke with great eloquence for nearly an hour,
advocating the political, civil, and moral equality of woman. He
showed the power of the ballot in combating unjust laws, opening
college doors, securing equal pay for equal work, dignifying the
marriage relation, by making woman an equal partner, not a subject. He
paid a glowing eulogy to Mary Wollstonecroft. He said:
We need higher ideas of marriage. There is scarcely a young man
here who does not hope to be a husband and a father; nor a young
woman who does not expect to be a wife and a mother. But who
does not revolt at the idea of perpetuating a race inferior to
ourselves? For myself I could not desire a degenerate family. I
would not wish for a race which would not be head and shoulders
above what I had been. Let me say to men, select women worthy to
be wives. The world is overstocked with these mis-begotten
children of undeveloped mothers. No man who has ever seen the
symmetrical character of a true woman, can be happy in a union
with such. Ladies! the day is coming when men who have seen more
well-developed women, will scorn the present standard of female
character. Will you not teach them to do so? You may have to
sacrifice much, but you will be repaid. This history of the world
is rich with glorious examples. Mary Wollstonecroft, the writer
of that brave book, "The Rights of Woman," published two
generations ago, dared to be true to her convictions of duty in
spite of the prejudices of the world. What was the result? She
attained a noble character. She found in Godwin a nature worthy
of her own, and left a child who became the wife and worthy
biographer of the great poet Shelley. Let us imitate that child
of glorious parents--parents who dared to make all their
relations compatible with absolute right, to give all their
powers the highest development.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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