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
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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
The general conclusion of the book is, that woman's relation to the
Republic is as important as man's. Woman deals with the beginnings of
life; man, with the product made from those beginnings; and this fact
marks the difference in their spheres, and reveals woman's immense
advantage in moral opportunity. It also suggests the incalculable loss in
case her work is not done or ill done. In a ruder age the evident value of
power that could deal with developed force was most appreciated; but such
is not now the case. It lies with us to prove that education, instead of
causing us to attempt work that belongs even less to the cultivated woman
than to the ignorant, is fitting us to train up statesmen who will be the
first to do us honor. The American Republic depends finally for its
existence and its greatness upon the virtue and ability of American
womanhood. If our ideals are mistaken or unworthy, then there will be
ultimately no republic for men to govern or defend. When women are
Buddhists, the men build up an empire of India. When women are
Mohammedans, the men construct an Empire of Turkey. When women are
Christians, men can conceive and bring into being a Republic like the
United States. Woman is to implant the faith, man is to cause the Nation's
faith to show itself in works. More and more these duties overlap, but
they cannot become interchangeable while sex continues to divide the race
into the two halves of what should become a perfect whole. Woman Suffrage
aims to sweep away this natural distinction, and make humanity a mass of
individuals with an indiscriminate sphere. The attack is now bold and now
subtle, now malicious and now mistaken; but it is at all times an attack.
The greatest danger with which this land is threatened comes from the
ignorant and persistent zeal of some of its women. They abuse the freedom
under which they live, and to gain an impossible power would fain destroy
the Government that alone can protect them. The majority of women have no
sympathy with this movement; and in their enlightenment, and in the
consistent wisdom of our men, lies our hope of defeating this unpatriotic,
unintelligent, and unjustifiable assault upon the integrity of the
American Republic.
NEW YORK, _March, 1897_.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Woman and the Republic, by Helen Kendrick Johnson
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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