Women’s Rights Are Not Inconsistent With Negro Rights: An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 19, 1868
WOMEN’S RIGHTS ARE NOT INCONSISTENT WITH NEGRO
RIGHTS: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN BOSTON,
MASSACHUSETTS, ON 19 NOVEMBER 1868
New York , 21 November 1868. Other texts in Boston , 19
November 1868; New York , 20 November 1868; Boston , 20
November 1868; Boston , 24 November 1868.
On 19 November 1868, various men and women from all the New England
states and beyond convened in Horticultural Hall, despite the drizzling rain
outside, for the second and final day of a women’s rights convention. The
participants displayed a growing confidence that they could realize their
principal objective of woman suffrage and easily defeated the effort of
William Lloyd Garrison and Douglass to make black suffrage the paramount
goal of the convention. During the afternoon session, Lucy Stone had lashed
out at the Republican party’s endorsement of universal manhood suffrage.
Although Douglass, Garrison, and others rallied behind the party, they re-
quested that it broaden the scope of suffrage to include women. Despite the
controversy, the audience warmly received Douglass, whom the chairman,
the Reverend James Freeman Clarke, had introduced as a speaker sure to
inspire the convention with eloquence. Quarles, , 246-47; Boston , 21 November 1868; New York , 26 November 1868;
New York , 26 November 1868.
MR. PRESIDENT,1A Harvard graduate at age nineteen, James Freeman Clarke (1810-88) entered the Unitarian ministry and held pastorates in Louisville (1833-40) and in Boston (1841-86). Although not a member of an abolition society, Clarke had taken an active role in persuading his fellow Unitarian clergymen to condemn slavery as immoral. He wrote extensively on religious and historical topics and taught at Harvard University (1867-71, 1876-77). Besides presiding over this meeting, Clarke served as a vice president of the New England Woman Suffrage Association. Arthur S. Bolster, Jr., (Boston, 1954); New York World, 21 November 1868; , 1: 663-64; , 2: 186. AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I can say very much as
Miss Brown2Olympia Brown. has said. I am not here to-day as one of the speakers for this
occasion.
HE IS A PERMANENT CARPET-BAGGER.
I am here simply as a carpet-bagger. (Laughter) I belong permanently
to that very much abused class of fellow-citizens. I am very glad, however,
Mr. President, that I am not here contrary to the Constitution of the United
States. (Laughter.) My presence here is altogether in accordance with that
sacred instrument, for it declares that the citizens of each State shall enjoy
all the rights and immunities of the several States.3A paraphrase of the U.S. Constitution, Article IV, Section 2.
THE NOBLE STATE OF NEW YORK.
And though I live in New York—a State that did not go for General
Grant but which went for Seymour4In his unsuccessful campaign for the presidency in 1868, Democratic candidate Horatio Seymour carried the state of New York over Republican nominee Ulysses S. Grant by a popular vote of 429,857 to 419,893. Stewart Mitchell, (Cambridge, Mass., 1938), 474-75.—(applause)—I feel quite at home in
old Massachusetts, and especially in this part of it. Did not you promise too
much, sir, when you assured the audience that they were to be inspired by
eloquence and a fine display of rhetorical pyrotechnics. I think you did.
(Laughter.) You made a mistake. I am no orator; never was; never came
before an audience that I did not feel a sort of trembling in my knees, as I do
this moment, and the idea of my playing orator here, a man who never went
to school a day in his life, and, as my friend Buffon5Probably James N. Butfum, a lecturing companion of Douglass during the abolitionist campaigns of the early 1840s. used to say, never
studied logic, attempting to address an audience composed of refined,
intelligent people like those I see before me, is presumption. The only
apology I can offer for ascending this platform or of making myself visible
at all on this occasion is that I feel profoundly indebted—a debt which I
never can pay—to the women of this country, and of other countries, for
the freedom which I am now permitted to breathe among you. (Applause.)
HE BELONGS TO THE WOMEN.
I belong to the women. (Laughter.) They bought me when I was in
England—paid the money for me and enabled me to return to the United
States in safety.6Two Quaker Englishwomen, Anna and Ellen Richardson, had taken the lead in raising money in 1846 to purchase Douglass’s freedom from Thomas Auld. Then I belong to the women of the old Massachusetts
Anti-Slavery Society. When I went about this country, feeling that there
was no place of safety for me—no valley so deep, as I used to say, no
mountain so high, no glen so secluded in all this broad land to assure me
of safety, I was surrounded and protected by the women of old Mas-
sachusetts. And when they undertake to enlarge the boundaries of their
liberty to the extent of grasping the ballot, I feel that it is as little as I can
do to show myself and say amen to the movement. It is the next great step
in the pathway of American civilization; the next great step towards the
final redemption of the world; the next great step that shall bring us into
the fullness of millennial glory. But I find it easier to speak for woman’s
rights than to refer to woman’s wrongs. It is the hand of little use that has
the daintiest touch, and the little wrongs experienced by woman may not
produce so much impression on me as they should. We live in an ad-
vanced age.
HUMAN RIGHTS AN IDEA OF THIS PERIOD.
We used to talk of chartered rights and mitred rights. but this idea of
human rights is one belonging to this age. I do not find it in the old record of
the race. It is a part of our civilization. I am for woman’s rights because I
am in favor of a republican form of government. There was a time when
men talked of the right of government and vested government in one man.
It was thought that society could be better governed by one man than by a
number of men. But gradually the field widened. It is found that despotic
government is better than no government at all; better than anarchy. That a
limited monarchy is decidedly better than absolute despotism; that a Re-
publican government in which a large portion of the people vote, is better
still; and, I hold that the government in which all vote is still better.
(Applause) Let us make this government consistent with itself. Let no man
be excluded from the ballot-box because of his color, and no woman
because of her sex.
A GOVERNMENT OF ALL THE PEOPLE.
Let government rest squarely and universally down upon the whole
people. Let there be no shoulder in the land that does not bear its due share
of the weight of the government. Let there be no conscience in the land that
has not its appropriate opportunity for infusing itself into the government. I
hope my taking my stand on this platform this morning, will not be con—
strued into an admission that I believe the rights of my race are entirely
secured. I stand here, however, to identify myself with a movement that is
entirely consonant with the extension of his rights to the negro. There is no
need of making this movement inconsonant with that of the negro. Our
gifted and eloquent friend Mrs. Howe7Daughter of a New York City banker, Julia Ward Howe (1819-1910) had been educated at home by private tutors. In 1841, she married Samuel Gridley Howe, Boston physician, philanthropist, and reformer, but the alliance was acrimonious and the couple lived apart for several extended periods. She obtained only modest success in the antebellum years as a poet, playwright, and essayist. The publication of her poem “Battle Hymn of the Republic" in February 1862, soon set to the tune of “John Brown's Body," however, made Howe a national celebrity. After the Civil War, she campaigned actively in the international peace cause and in the women’s rights movement. For many years, Howe was president of the Massachusetts and New England woman suffrage associations and editor of the weekly . Her principal contribution to the feminist movement was her labor on behalf of the national federation of women's clubs. Deborah Pickman Clifford, (Boston, 1978); James et al., , 2: 225-29. said yesterday, “I am willing that
the negro shall go in before me.”8Julia Ward Howe expressed this opinion in a speech to the convention of the New England Woman Suffrage Association on 18 November 1868. Boston , 18 November 1868; New York , 20 November 1868. I can say to that. I should be heartily
willing to see every woman enfranchised in this land, even while I am
disenfranchised, as I am in the State of New York. With the negroes now it
is a matter of life or death. It is “To be or not to be.”9, act 3, sc. 1. line 56. If the elective
franchise is not extended to the negro, he dies—he is exterminated. Wom-
an has a thousand ways by which she can attach herself to the ruling powers
of the land that we have not. If she wants to go to the Parker House10The famed restaurant opposite Boston's City Hall on School Street, founded in 1854. Lucius Beebe, (New York, 1935), 273-78. she
can go. She will never be mobbed for asserting her rights. I can’t plead her
cause from the side of her wrongs; I plead it because her vote is necessary to
the welfare and purity of society. She comes to us not so much to assist
herself as to assist the whole family. (Applause) There are reasons why
women should be enfranchised analogous to those which I urge in favor of
the negro. One is education. Men are very much that which society re—
quires them to be. Society doesn’t expect education from the negro. This
country has hitherto only asked of the negro that he be a hewer of wood and
drawer of water.11Douglass adapts Josh. 9: 21, 23, 27. He is getting out of that. So society has only asked
women to be familiar with household affairs. It has not asked her opinion
on moral and political questions. I know of no reason for which men vote
which does not apply as well to women. I want to vote because I am a
rational being. I might vote in New York if I had $250 worth of dirt added to
myself. (Laughter.) I believe the judgment of women in many things is
incomparably superior to that of men. When the women of the country go
to the ballot-box mobocracy, rowdyism, and drunkenness will take their
leave.
PURITY COMES FROM THE MASS.
When you want pure water in Chicago you don’t get it on the border of
the lake, but you plunge out into the great lake. They dug out two or three
miles in order to get the purest water of the lake. When you want good
government go to the mass. Individuals may be ignorant and vile, but the
mass is comparatively pure, and always will be. The masses are well-
intentioned. They may be ignorant, but they are always honest and true. To
get pure government, we must draw the stream from the great mass. I am
willing to trust all the ignorance of the land with all the intelligence. I am
willing to trust all the vice and all the virtue. We want the vice of the land
confronted at the ballot-box by the virtue. I must close. I recognize in this
movement the millennial glories of a new era. I have said to myself that I
wanted to see an earnest movement—not a wind-bag movement—but an
earnest, well-sustained movement of this kind, and here it is.