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
"She would invade the pulpit." Invasion seems a strange word to use in
regard to woman's entrance upon one of the highest of human duties. A
pulpitless teacher she is and always has been. Missionary women have
taught multitudes of beings. The Salvation lassie has no thought of
invasion, or of self-exaltation, when she leads the service of a thousand
souls; and I am not willing to believe that a single woman who has entered
the regular ministry has any more. It is the spirit of Suffrage that looks
upon woman's advance as an attack.
But times have changed, say Suffrage leaders. Mrs. Cornelia K. Hood, in
her report of the King's County Suffrage work for 1895, says: "A circular
letter was addressed to all the clergymen known to be friends, asking them
that a sermon might be preached by them in favor of woman suffrage. This
request met with a liberal response, and many able addresses were made on
the Sunday morning set for that purpose." In her report of the Suffrage
campaign in New York city in the winter of 1895-96, Dr. Jacobi says,
speaking of the parlor meetings: "Several prominent clergymen joined us--
Mr. Rainsford, the Rev. Arthur Brooks, Mr. Percy Grant, Mr. Eaton, Mr.
Leighton Williams." In referring to the last regular meeting of the County
Suffrage Association held that winter in Cooper Union, she says: "The
meeting was addressed by Samuel Gompers, President of the Federation of
Labor, by Dr. Peters, an Episcopal clergyman, by Father Ducey, the
Catholic priest, Dr. Saunders, a Baptist minister, and Henry George, the
advocate of single tax." In her address before the Constitutional
Convention, she said: "The Church, which fifty years ago was a unit in
denouncing the public work of woman--even for the slave--is now divided in
its councils." The church never was a unit in denouncing the public work
of woman, and much of her noblest public work has been done under its
auspices. The behavior of Suffrage women in slavery times caused scandal
to church and state. The right of private judgment, claimed always by
Protestant Christianity, has divided the clergy on all questions; and "a
clergyman, a priest, and a minister" were as free to believe, and to speak
what they believed, on suffrage, as were Samuel Gompers, who lately
offended the Labor organization by inviting two anarchists to address it,
and Henry George, whose single-tax theories have lately turned law and
order upside down in Delaware.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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