Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
But to have made the woman's pavilion grandly historic, upon its
walls should have been hung the yearly protest of Harriet K. Hunt
against taxation without representation; the legal papers served
upon the Smith sisters when their Alderny cows were seized and sold
for their refusal to pay taxes while unrepresented; the papers held
by the city of Worcester for the forced sale of the house and lands
of Abby Kelly Foster, the veteran abolitionist, because she refused
to pay taxes, giving the same reason our ancestors gave when they
resisted taxation; a model of Bunker Hill monument, its foundation
laid by Lafayette in 1825, but which remained unfinished nearly
twenty years until the famous French _danseuse_ Fanny Ellsler, gave
the proceeds of an exhibition for that purpose. With these should
have been exhibited framed copies of all the laws bearing unjustly
upon woman--those which rob her of her name, her earnings, her
property, her children, her person; also, the legal papers in the
case of Susan B. Anthony, who was tried and fined for seeking to
give consent to the laws which governed her; and the decision of
Mr. Justice Miller (Chief-Justice Chase dissenting) in the case of
Myra Bradwell, denying national protection for woman's civil
rights; and the later decision of Chief-Justice Waite of the
Supreme Court against Virginia L. Minor, denying to women national
protection for their political rights, decisions in favor of
state-rights which imperil the liberties not only of all women, but
of every white man in the nation.
Woman's most fitting contributions to the centennial exposition
would have been these protests, laws and decisions which show her
political slavery. But all this was left for rooms outside of the
centennial grounds, upon Chestnut street, where the National Woman
Suffrage Association hoisted its flag, made its protests, and wrote
the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States.
To many thoughtful people it seemed captious and unreasonable for
women to complain of injustice in this free land, amidst such
universal rejoicings. When the majority of women are seemingly
happy, it is natural to suppose that the discontent of the minority
is the result of their unfortunate individual idiosyncrasies, and
not of adverse influences in their established conditions.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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