The Greatest Revolution the World Has Yet Seen: An Address Delivered in Providence, Rhode Island, on December 3, 1884
THE GREATEST REVOLUTION THE WORLD HAS YET SEEN:
AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND,
ON 3 DECEMBER 1884
Boston , 13 December 1884. Other texts in Speech File, reel 16, frames
32-43, reel 16, frames 44-50. FD Papers. DLC. Philip S. Foner. ed., (Westport, Conn., 1976), 124-25.
The annual convention of the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association met
at the chambers of the House of Representatives in the State House in Provi-
dence on the evening of 3 December 1884. Douglass had been invited to this
gathering by Elizabeth Buffum Chace and her daughter Lillie Buffum Chace
Wyman, friends since the days of the abolition movement. The Reverend
Frederic A. Hinckley called the packed house to order and introduced Doug-
lass as the first speaker of the convention. Following Douglass’s remarks,
Wyman and Lucy Stone also addressed the assembly. On the following day,
Douglass made additional brief remarks to the convention. Boston , 29 November, 6 December 1884; Cleveland , 13 December
1884; Harrisburg (Pa.) , 13 December 1884; Douglass to Lillie
Buffum Chace Wyman, 14 November 1884, in Lillie Buffum Chace Wyman
and Arthur Crawford Wyman, , 2 vols. (Boston, 1914), 2: 189.
Mr. Frederick Douglass said he was in full sympathy with this cause, and
did all he could to promote it. In such a convention man was the sinner, and
should take a back seat; woman was the preacher, and held the post of
honor. No man could speak for woman as woman, could speak for herself.
The man struck was the man to cry out. “Who would be free themselves
must strike the blow.”1Douglass quotes a line from Lord Byron's , Canto II, Stanza 1.XXVI. Nevertheless this was the cause of human brotherhood
as well as of human sisterhood. “I am here from a sense of gratitude
as well as sympathy. When I remember what woman has done to break the
fetters of the enslaved, I should be ashamed of myself to fail to speak in her
cause. Nothing new can be expected from my lips this evening. When such
woman as Julia Ward Howe, Mary Livermore, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia
Mott, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Elizabeth B. Chace,2Born in Providence, Rhode Island, Elizabeth Buffum Chace (1806-99) was the daughter of Arnold Buffum, the first president of the New England Anti-Slavery Society. She married Samuel B. Chace, son of a Fall River cotton manufacturer, in 1828. In 1840 the couple settled in Valley Falls, Rhode Island, where Samuel operated a cotton mill and Elizabeth became active in Garrisonian abolitionist activities and the Underground Railroad. In 1843 she quit the Quaker church, believing that it lacked a wholehearted antislavery stance. From the 1850s until her death, Chace was instrumental in the women's movement, serving as president of the Rhode Island Woman Suffrage Association (1870-99) and in various offices of the American Woman Suffrage Association. Douglass visited her occasionally and was invited to her eighty-fifth birthday celebration in December 1891. Elizabeth B. Chace to Douglass, 29 November 1891, General Correspondence File, reel 6, frames 33637. FD Papers, DLC; Wyman and Wyman, , 2: 110, 179, 251; , 2: 584. and others have dealt
with this subject, it must readily be admitted that the field has not only been
reaped, but gleaned. Yet the truths long and often spoken cannot be too
often repeated. It will be time enough for reformers to go in search of new
truths when the old truths long ago discovered shall have entered into the
life of the nation. With the men and women of the anti-slavery agitation it
was line upon line, precept upon precept. There has been no new word said
in morals, religion, or politics within the past ten years. The loftiest utter-
ance of to-day on the question of morals cannot transcend the Golden
Rule.3Matt. 7: 12 and Luke 6: 31. There is no such thing as new truth or old truth. Error may be new or
it may be old, but truth is eternal and indestructible.”
The thought which first thrilled the heart and nerved the soul of woman
to high endeavor was a desire for personal liberty. Her first utterance was a
fiery protest against the fetters in which she had been bound for ages. It
heralded the greatest revolution the world has yet seen, since it involved the
social and legal elevation of one half the human race. The brave women
who began the work were Sarah and Angelina Grimké44Angelina Grimké (1805-79) was born in Charleston, South Carolina, into a prominent slaveholding family. Deeply attached to her older sister, Sarah Moore Grimké (1792-1873). Angelina joined her in becoming a Quaker and moving to Philadelphia. The Grimkés entered abolitionist ranks in 1835 and the following year, Angelina wrote the widely discussed pamphlet, Appeal to the Christian Women of the South. Both sisters became the subject of considerable controversy when they began delivering antislavery addresses before mixed female and male audiences. In May 1838, Angelina Grimké married Theodore L. Weld, another abolitionist lecturer, and within a few years the Welds together with Sarah Grimké settled on a New Jersey farm. From 1848 to 1862, the three operated a boarding school and only rarely participated in antislavery activity. In 1864 they moved to the Boston area and continued teaching although Angelina's ill health soon caused her almost complete retirement from public life. Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, (Chapel Hill, 1974); Gerda Lerner, (Boston, 1967); Edward T. James et al., eds., , 3 vols. (Cambridge, Mass, 1971), 2: 97-99; , 7: 634-35. and Abby Kelly.
In judging the progress of this cause, we should measure, not from the
heights to be gained, but from the depths from which it had come. It is well
to consider the past, as a source of encouragement for the future, and
looking back, we are impressed with the fact that no cause had made such
wonderful progress as this woman’s movement. The time can be remem-
bered when woman was not allowed to lift up her voice for the dumb
millions or herself. Such conduct was looked upon as disorder, and she was
promptly met with the words of St. Paul: “I suffer not a woman to teach.”51 Tim. 2: 12.
Young men blushed for their sisters, old men for their daughters, because
they dared to speak on a platform.
To-day the elite of the land listen with delight to the wisdom of Mary
Livermore, of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, of Miss Willard,6Born in Churchville, New York, Frances Elizabeth Caroline Willard (1839-98) migrated as a child with her family to Oberlin, Ohio, and then on to Janesville, Wisconsin. Her sporadic formal education ended with graduation from the Northwestern Female College in 1859. Willard held a number of teaching and supervisory positions at schools in the Midwest culminating with her presidency of Evanston College for Ladies (1870-73) and, when that school merged with Northwestem University, with the Dean of Women's post at the latter institution (1873-74). She was a founder and first corresponding secretary of the Women's Christian Temperance Union in 1877 but resigned three years later when the organization balked at endorsing woman's suffrage. In 1878 Willard became president of the Illinois Woman's Christian Temperance Union and led it in a pioneering local option campaign to ban liquor sales. The following year she was elected president of the national organization and held that post for the remainder of her life. Under her leadership, the Woman's Christian Temperance Union took a far more active role in politics and she vainly attempted to engineer a merger of the Populist and Prohibition parties in 1892. In addition to temperance and woman's suffrage, Willard publicly advocated such other reform causes as peace, labor unions, and Christian socialism. Mary Earhart, (Chicago, 1944); Ray Strachey, (New York, 1913); , 4: 613-19; , 6: 513-14; , 1: 376-77; , 20: 233-34. of Mrs. Stone.7Lucy Stone.
This achievement of the right to be heard, by women, is an accession to the
moral force of mankind such as has not been known for centuries. Woman
has achieved this right at last, and if she had achieved nothing else, it would
be a memorable achievement indeed. She took the right to speak. Lucy
Stone took it. Abby Kelly took it. People have to take nearly every liberty
they get in this world. I took—to my legs. (Laughter) The pulpit and the
press preached contentment. The slave was to be contented in slavery.
Woman was told to be content as an ornament. But there were women who
would not. Woman said: “Give me a chainless soul; give me the right to
utter my convictions.” Happily for us this great right of speech for woman
is no longer in dispute. We have conquered the right to be heard in the
legislative hall of the State of Rhode Island. It is a great step.
Woman next sought for greater educational advantages, and this na-
tional demand of woman has already been measurably conceded. The next
demand of woman was the result of terrible necessity. It was a demand for
the staff of life—for bread for widows and orphans, made so by crime as
well as by death, who piteously begged their fellow worms to give them
leave to toil. Victor Hugo has said: “He who has seen the misery of man
alone has seen nothing; he must see the misery of woman; and he who has
seen the misery of woman has seen nothing; he must see the misery of
childhood.” Woman cried out for extended opportunities to earn an honest
livelihood, and if this movement had done no more, it would have done
enough to earn the gratitude of mankind, by helping to obtain those oppor-
tunities. Thirty years ago but thirty occupations were open for women; now
three hundred occupations are open to her. It might be said that the advo-
cates of woman’s higher freedom had not brought about all this, but to them
much of the credit must be awarded.
The fourth and last demand was for suffrage. There is not a single
consideration which authorizes man to exert the right of suffrage which
does not equally apply to woman. What right have you or I, or any man, to
affirm that woman has no right to hold office or to vote? The selfhood of
woman is as complete as that of man, and no power on or under the earth
can destroy that selfhood, and no one on earth can represent her selfhood
but herself. In the old days, of slavery I began all my speeches with saying,
“Every man is himself.” He lives and dies and is responsible for himself.
What is true of man is true of woman. I affirm the individuality and self-
ownership of women.
Men talk of representing woman. Men can’t even represent woman at
the side of the cradle. She represents herself. In property matters the law
recognizes the personality of woman. However united in interest they may
be, the husband and wife are two persons. The whole of humanity is greater
than a part of it. and the wisdom of the many is greater than the wisdom of a
few.
Woman would do for the government what she had done for literature,
for art, for learning,—she would purify the government, as she has pu-
rified these. She would exalt the standard of public morals. She needed the
ballot for her protection; men needed it for their restraint.