Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
It seems to me, therefore, that we are to deal with the
consciences of men. It is idle to say that the guilt is common,
that the women are as deeply involved in this matter as the men.
Never can it be said that the victims are as much to be blamed as
the victimizer; that the slaves are to be as much blamed as the
slaveholders and slave-drivers; that the women who have no
rights, are to be as much blamed as the men who have played the
part of robbers and tyrants. We must deal with conscience. The
men of this nation, and the men of all nations, have no just
respect for woman. They have tyrannized over her deliberately,
they have not sinned through ignorance, but theirs is not the
knowledge that saves. Who can say truly, that in all things he
acts up to the light he enjoys, that he does not do something
which he knows is not the very thing, or the best thing he ought
to do? How few there are among mankind who are able to say this
with regard to themselves. Is not the light all around us? Does
not this nation know how great its guilt is in enslaving
one-sixth of its people? Do not the men of this nation know ever
since the landing of the pilgrims, that they are wrong in making
subject one-half of the people? Rely upon it, it has not been a
mistake on their part. It has been sin. It has been guilt; and
they manifest their guilt to a demonstration, in the manner in
which they receive this movement. Those who do wrong ignorantly,
do not willingly continue in it, when they find they are in the
wrong. Ignorance is not an evidence of guilt certainly. It is
only an evidence of a want of light. They who are only ignorant,
will never rage, and rave, and threaten, and foam, when the light
comes; but being interested and walking in the light, will always
present a manly front, and be willing to be taught, and be
willing to be told they are in the wrong.
Take the case of slavery: How has the anti-slavery cause been
received? Not argumentatively, not by reason, not by entering the
free arena of fair discussion and comparing notes; the arguments
have been rotten eggs, and brickbats and calumny, and in the
southern portion of the country, a spirit of murder, and threats
to cut out the tongues of those who spoke against them. What has
this indicated on the part of the nation? What but conscious
guilt? Not ignorance, not that they had not the light. They had
the light and rejected it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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