Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe
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Julia Ward Howe, 1819-1910
Richards, Laura Elizabeth Howe
Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Feminists -- United States -- Biography; Howe, Julia Ward, 1819-1910
"If manhood suffrage is unsatisfactory, it does not at all show that
woman suffrage would be. On the contrary, we might make it much better
by bringing to it the feminine mind, which, in a way, complements the
masculine, and so, I think, completes the mind of humanity. We are half
of humanity, and I do frankly believe that we have half the intelligence
and good sense of humanity, and that it is quite time that we should
express not only our sentiments but our determined will, to set our
faces as a flint toward justice and right, and to follow these through
the difficult path, through the thorny wilderness. Not to the bitter
end, but a very sweet end, and I hope it may be before my end comes."
* * * * *
Her last service to the cause of woman suffrage was to send a circular
letter to all the editors and to all the ministers of four leading
denominations in the four oldest suffrage States, Wyoming, Colorado,
Utah, and Idaho, asking whether equal suffrage worked well or ill. She
received 624 answers, 62 not favorable, 46 in doubt, and 516 in favor. A
letter from her to the London "Times," stating these results, appeared
on the same day that the news of her death was cabled to Europe.
Thinking of the long years of effort which followed her adoption of the
cause of woman suffrage, a word of the Doctor's, spoken in 1875, comes
vividly to mind.
"Your cause," said he, "lacks one element of success, and that is
opposition. It is so distinctly just that it will slide into
popularity." He little thought that the cause was to wait forty years
for that slide!
Side by side with the suffrage movement, growing along with it and with
the women's clubs, and in time to be absorbed by them, was another
movement which was for many years very dear to her, the Association for
the Advancement of Women.
This Association had its beginning in 1873, when Sorosis, then a sturdy
infant, growing fast and reaching out in every direction, issued a call
for a Congress of Women in New York in the autumn of that year. She says
of this call:---
"Many names, some known, others unknown to me, were appended to the
document first sent forth. My own was asked for. Should I give or
withhold it? Among the signatures already obtained, I saw that of Maria
Mitchell,[76] and this determined me to give my own."
[76] She had a great regard and admiration for Miss Mitchell. Scientific
achievement seemed to her well-nigh miraculous, and roused in her an
almost childlike reverence.
She went to the Congress, and "viewed its proceedings a little
critically at first," its plan appearing to her "rather vast and vague."
Yet she felt the idea of the Association to be a good one; and when it
was formed, with the above title, and with Mrs. Livermore as president,
she was glad to serve on a sub-committee, charged with selecting topics
and speakers for the first annual Congress.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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