Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
The Rev. J. G. Holland, the Tupper of our American literature,
thanks his Creator that woman has no specialty. She was called
into being for man's happiness and interest--his helpmeet--to
wait and watch his movements, to second his endeavors, to fight
the hard battle of life behind him whose brain may be dizzy with
excess, whose limbs may be paralyzed, or if sound in body, may be
without aim or ambition, without plans or projects, destitute of
executive ability or good judgment in the business affairs of
life. And such sentimentalists, after demoralizing women with
their twaddle, discourage our demand for the right of suffrage by
pointing us to the fact that the majority of women are
indifferent to this movement in their behalf. Suppose they are;
have not the masses of all oppressed classes been apathetic and
indifferent until partial success crowned the enthusiasm of the
few? Carl Schurz would not have been exiled from his native land
could he have roused the majority of his countrymen to the same
love of liberty which burned in his own soul. Were his dreams of
freedom less real because the stolid masses were not awake to
their significance? Shall a soul that accepts martyrdom for a
principle be told he is sacrificing himself to a shadow because
the multitude can neither see nor appreciate the idea?
I do not feel like rejoicing over any privileges already granted
to my sex, until all our rights are conceded and secured and the
principle of equality recognized and proclaimed, for every step
that brings us to a more equal plane with man but makes us more
keenly feel the loss of those rights we are still denied--more
susceptible to the insults of his assumptions and usurpations of
power. As I sum up the indignities toward women, as illustrated
by recent judicial decisions--denied the right to vote, denied
the right to practice in the Supreme Court, denied jury trial--I
feel the degradation of sex more bitterly than I did on that July
19, 1848, and never more than in listening to your speech in
Philadelphia on the Fourth of July, our nation's centennial
birthday, remembering that neither years nor wisdom, brave words
nor noble deeds, could secure political honor or call forth
national homage for women. Let it be remembered by our daughters
in future generations that Lucretia Mott, in the eighty-fourth
year of her age, asked permission, as the representative woman of
this great movement for the enfranchisement of her sex, to
present at the centennial celebration of our national liberties,
Woman's Declaration of Rights, and was refused! This was the
"respectful consideration" vouchsafed American women at the close
of the first century of our national life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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