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
This was typical action. Thus it was in Anti-slavery, thus in Temperance,
thus in the Civil War, and thus it has been with general reforms. What
Suffragists have deemed to be an abstract "right" has prevented them from
taking active part in any efforts put forth to end a concrete wrong. As
time goes on, this spirit becomes more injurious, because progress is
carrying philanthropy into higher fields of moral action, and in so doing
is carrying it away from and above the plane where rests the ballot-box.
While Suffrage effort is directed toward keeping all issues in the
political arena, the trend of legislation is to take them out of politics.
By the public votes of men and the private votes and public appeals of
women, philanthropic and educational matters are being removed from the
uncertainties and fluctuations of party action. As they are thus brought
out of the sphere where woman is powerless and into that in which it is
natural for her to act, the whole force of sympathy, and her ability to
picture and to pursue an ideal, are finding exercise and are hastening the
day when there will be no slavery, no drunkenness, no war, and no
violation of woman's chastity. Dr. Jacobi, in her volume, says: "Why
should we wonder at the low tone which habitually prevails in relation to
public affairs, when the women who stand as guardians at the fountain
sources and household shrines of thought are trained to believe that there
are no Rights, but only Privileges, Expediencies, Immunities? Can those
who cower before the public ridicule which greets the enunciation of the
Rights of Women; who are habituated to stifle generous impulses for their
own larger freedom at the authoritative dictation of the men they see in
power,--can such women be relied upon to nerve the Nation's heart for
generous deeds?" Who were trained by women at the fountain sources and
household shrines? The very men whom they now see in "authoritative
dictation." And so well did they train them that when both are called upon
to nerve the nation's heart for generous deeds, they act together--the
trainer and the trained--moved by the same magnetic impulse of a noble
devotion. It is purely gratuitous to assume, because women generally have
discredited the dogma of Woman Suffrage, that they have therefore no just
conception of rights. Women are as ambitious, as self-assertive, as are
men. They deal more naturally with abstractions, and are more tenacious of
purpose. They are impatient of hindrance, and it is inconsistent with
facts to infer that they have been "stifling generous impulses for their
own larger freedom," at the dictation of their own sons. The executive
power and wisdom of these sons they feel to be the very thing they most
desire for them, a reward for their own abounding faith and love.
Privileges, Expediencies, and Immunities are their Rights. How well fitted
such rights are to enable them to nerve the Nation's heart was seen in the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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