THE PROPERTY RIGHTS OF WOMEN: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN ROCHESTER, NEW YORK, ON 1 DECEMBER 1853

New York Daily Tribune, 5 December 1853. Another text in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 16 December 1853.

In pursuance to a public call signed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Antoinette L. Brown, Douglass, and others, a women’s rights convention assembled in Rochester, New York, on 30 November and 1 December 1853. At the morning session on the second day, with Ernestine L. Rose of New York City in the chair, Douglass briefly argued against a resolution calling upon the state legislature to provide “that husbands and wives shall be JOINT-OWNERS of their joint-earnings.” FDP, 25 November 1853; New York Daily Tribune, 3 December 1853.

Frederick Douglass wished to say a word. Woman has a right to the elective franchise; has a right to the same intellectual culture as man; her sphere should be bounded only by her power. But one point troubles me: that is the disposition of property. It seems to me not altogether fair to give the wife an equal right to the disposition of the property. The husband labors hard, perhaps, while the wife lives in luxury. He, and some others tolerably sane, entertained the opinion that women should not in all cases, have an equal right to the disposition of the property, though he was as anxious to procure for Woman an exemption from certain wrongs, and advised that women call together the women themselves and seek to free them from their prejudices, for women have more and stronger prejudices against this movement than man, and they must first conquer their own prejudices; must engage in lucrative employments; must take the place they desired. That rule he followed.