Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost AdvocatesJohnson, Helen Kendrick
History
Woman and the Republic: A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates
Johnson, Helen Kendrick
Women -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
Before the committee of the New York State Constitutional Convention in
1894, Mr. Edward Lauterbach, who was arguing in favor of woman suffrage,
said: "It was only after the establishment of the Willard School at Troy,
only after its noble founder, believing that women and men were formed in
the same mould, successfully tried the experiment of educating women in
the higher branches, that steps for higher education became generally
taken." If Mr. Lauterbach imagines that Mrs. Willard was in the most
distant way an advocate of woman's doing the same work as man in the same
way, he is unfamiliar with her life and work. Mrs. Willard, in setting
forth her ideal of woman's education, said "Education should be adapted to
female character and duties. To do this would raise the character of
man.... Why may not housewifery be reduced to a system as well as the
other arts? If women were properly fitted for instruction, they would be
likely to teach children better than the other sex; they could afford to
do it cheaper; and men might be at liberty to add to the wealth of the
nation by any of the thousand occupations from which women are necessarily
debarred." Old-fashioned wisdom, but choicely good. Mr. Lauterbach further
said: "What wonder that, being so fully equipped in every mental
attribute, in every intellectual qualification, they will be able not only
to cast a vote but to take practical part in the administration of the
government?"
A female Solon would be a woman still, and in a democracy the intellectual
is not the only qualification needed. This certainly was the belief of
Mrs. Willard, and in 1868, when the Suffrage leaders were holding a
convention in Washington, and were urging that Congress should pass a
sixteenth amendment admitting women to suffrage, Almira Lincoln Phelps,
sister of Mrs. Willard, herself an educator and an author of text-books,
wrote to Isabella Beecher Hooker: "Hoping you will receive kindly what I
am about to write, I will proceed without apologies. I have confidence in
your nobleness of soul, and that you know enough of me to believe in my
devotion to the best interests of woman. I can scarcely realize that you
are giving your name and influence to a cause which, with some good, but,
as I think, misguided women, numbers among its advocates others with loose
morals.... If we could with propriety petition the Almighty to change the
condition of the sexes, and let men take a turn in bearing children and in
suffering the physical ailments peculiar to women, which render them unfit
for certain positions and business, why, in this case, if we really wish
to be men, and thought God would change the established order, we might
make our petition; but why ask Congress to make us men? Circumstances drew
me from the quiet domestic life while I was yet young, but success in
labors which involved publicity, and which may have been of advantage to
society, was never considered as an equivalent to my own heart for such a
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account