Who and What is Woman? An Address Delivered in Boston, Massachusetts, on May 24, 1886
WHO AND WHAT IS WOMAN? AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN
BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS, ON 24 MAY 1886
Boston , 5 June 1886. Other texts in , 25 May 1886; Boston
, 25 May 1886; Boston . 25 May 1886; Boston , 29 May 1886; Speech File, reel 16, frames 2-28, FD Papers, DLC.
The eighteenth annual meeting of the New England Woman Suffrage Associa-
tion began with an evening session at Boston’s Tremont Temple on 24 May
1886. After an organ prelude, Lucy Stone, president of the association,
delivered a long address and introduced Douglass. According to the Boston
, “an immense audience” filled the hall: “The platform was
full. The body of the house was so packed that standing was found in the
aisles.” The warmly sympathetic audience frequently applauded Douglass’s
remarks and at the end of his speech gave him a standing ovation. In a lengthy
critique, the Woman’s Journal reported that Douglass’s “eloquent plea for
equal rights for women carried with it the fire of feeling and of speech of a
man who had been robbed of his just rights. . . . Round after round of
applause greeted his forcible and witty words.” The meeting ended with
Douglass joining in singing the Reverend M. J. Savage’s memorial song to
Wendell Phillips, “Humanity’s Hero.” Douglass often spoke on behalf of the
women’s rights movement in the 1880s and 1890s. This speech and others,
such as his address to the Bethel Literary and Historical Association on 24
February 1885, appear to be part of the same family of speeches. See Appen-
dix A, text 2, for a précis of an alternate text. Boston , 15
May 1886; Boston , 22, 23 May 1886; Springfield , 23 May
1886; Boston , 24 May 1886.
Ladies and Gentlemen: It is a long time since it was my privilege to address
a convention of reformers in Boston.1The last reform convention in Boston, Massachusetts, that Douglass attended was the annual meeting of the New England Woman Suffrage Association, held at Faneuil Hall on 15 December 1873. In my more youthful days, when
slavery was the great evil of the land, and demanded the voice and vote of
the humblest for its removal, it was often my lot to be a speaker upon such
occasions. But since the abolition of slavery and the enfranchisement of the
Freedman, both my occupation and my facility as a speaker have been
considerably diminished.
Yet I can truly say that it gives me very great pleasure to be again in
Boston, and to stand upon this platform, and to say my word, however
humbly and unskillfully it may be, for the cause of woman.
When invited to be here, I was impelled to comply by three reasons:
First, because I believe in the justice of the cause of woman; second,
because I believe in agitation; and third, because I gratefully appreciate the
services rendered by woman to the cause of emancipation.
When I consider what was done for the slave by such women as
Lucretia Mott, Lydia Maria Child,2Born in Medford, Massachusetts, Lydia Maria Francis Child (1802-80) published her first of many novels, , at age twenty-two. From 1826 to 1834, she edited the bimonthly , the first periodical for children to be published in the United States. She married David Lee Child (17941874) in 1828 and both were drawn into the abolitionist movement in 1831 by William Lloyd Garrison. Her (1833) was the first of a dozen antislavery books and pamphlets, which caused the popularity of her literary writings to decline drastically. A longtime officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society, Child edited its official newspaper, the New York , from 1841 to 1843. In addition to abolition, she supported most of the other humanitarian causes of the time with her never idle pen. William S. Osborne, (Boston, 1980); Milton Meltzer, (New York, 1965); James, , 1: 330-33; , 1: 603-04. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Maria W.
Chapman,3Maria Weston Chapman (1806-85) was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, and educated in local schools. After living several years in London with maternal relatives, she returned to Boston in 1828 and served as principal of the Young Ladies High School until marrying Boston merchant Henry Chapman in 1830. Along with her husband and her sisters Caroline, Deborah, and Anne Weston, Chapman became an active follower of William Lloyd Garrison in the abolitionist movement. She was principal organizer of a series of annual fairs in Boston that raised considerable funds for the abolitionists. Chapman also served as a co-editor of the National Anti-Slavery Standard in the mid-1840s where she displayed talent in polemical writing. She resided in Europe from 1848 to 1855 to oversee her children's education and thereafter played a less public role in reform efforts. In 1877, Chapman edited and published her friend Harriet Martineau's two-volume autobiography. James, , 1: 324-25; , 1: 581; , 2: 315. Thankful Southwick,4Originally from Portland, Maine, Thankful Hussey Southwick (1792-1867) was an active member of the abolitionist movement in the Boston area beginning in the mid-1830s. She and her husband, Joseph Southwick (1791-1866), hosted most of the abolitionist leaders in their home. Under the influence of William Lloyd Garrison, the Southwicks joined the New England Non-Resistance Society. Both were eulogized by Garrison, who praised Thankful Southwick’s superior knowledge of history. , 18 May 1867; [Wendell Phillips Garrison and Francis Jackson Garrison], , 4 vols. (1885; New York, 1969), 2: 12, 229, 327, 420; 4: 254 (hereafter cited as ). Lucy Stone, Abby Kelley Foster. An-
gelina Grimké, Elizabeth B. Chace, and other noble women, I not only feel
it a grateful duty, but a high privilege, to give my voice and vote in favor of
a larger sphere, and a broader liberty for the activities of woman.
I, however, come before you with little confidence in my ability to
assist your cause. I can add nothing to the force and very little to the volume
of argument in favor of the claims you make. The most I can hope to do is to
give back to you, in some humble measure, the thought and feeling com-
mon to all the friends of this movement.
As in the days of the anti-slavery conflict, so in respect of this cause,
our mission is the reiteration of truths familiar to all, for here, as else-
where, there is nothing new under the sun.5Douglass slightly misquotes Eccles. 1: 9. The terms new and old do not
properly apply to any great truth or principle. Error may be new or it may be
old. It has a beginning and must have an end; but truth is neither new nor
old. It is the fundamental law of the universe. It is from everlasting to
everlasting, and can never pass away.6Douglass paraphrases the ideas expressed in PS. 90: 2.
It is upon this broad, unchangeable and eternal foundation that I base
every right of man or woman, and I know of no cause which rests more
squarely upon this foundation than the cause which this Convention has
assembled to promote.
I congratulate you, my friends, upon the progress already made in
fixing this fundamental idea in the public mind and heart. I think a glance at
the history of your movement is full of encouragement. Though small and
apparently insignificant in its origin, though limited in its resources,
though met at the beginning by a storm of derision, and threatened with
extinction, though the powers that be, in Church and State, opposed it,
though the heathen raged and the people imagined a vain thing,7A paraphrase of Acts 4: 25. its growth
has been strong, steady, and irrepressible. Those who doubt the ultimate
success of this cause will do well to remember, not merely what remains to
be done, but what has already been accomplished.
Fifty years ago, woman was but feebly recognized as a factor in the
political civilization of our country. She was almost unknown to the world
as a platform and public teacher. Her silence in this field was akin to the
silence of the grave. When she attempted to speak she started at the sound
of her own voice; her mission was to be seen, but not heard.8Generally attributed to Sophocles's play . Richard C. Jebb, ed., , 7 vols. (1907; Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1962-67), 7: 55. We have no
better evidence of her progress to-day than is found in her complete tri-
umph over this childlike timidity. I live in Washington, and often listen to
speeches in Congress, but the most eloquent and able speakers in Congress
do not speak with more self-possession or assurance of fitness than such
women as Mrs. Livermore,9Mary Ashton Rice Livermore. Mrs. Stone, Mrs. Stanton, Miss Eastman10A popular public lecturer, Mary F. Eastman of Tewksbury, Massachusetts, was active in the women’s rights campaign from the early 1870s until after the turn of the century. She and Douglass frequently appeared on the same platform at meetings of the American Woman Suffrage Association and the New England Woman Suffrage Association. Following the reunion of the two wings of the suffrage movement in 1891, Eastman served as recording secretary for the National Council of Women. A writer as well as lecturer, she produced a biography of Dioclesian Lewis, the pioneer in physical culture, and a study of women’s education. Elizabeth Cady Stanton et al., , 6 vols. (New York and Rochester, 1881-1922), 2: 829-30, 840, 854, 4: 72, 79-80, 118, 175, 704, 720, 807; Phebe A. Hanaford, (Augusta, Me. , 1882). 322; Annie Nathan Meyer, (1891; New York, 1972), 3-53.
and others. I am wrong, however, in asserting that woman was entirely
silent in public forty years ago. She in fact made a good deal of noise more
than twice forty years ago, and that fact illustrates the inconsistency of the
opposition still felt to her speaking in public. Her voice was then louder in
song than it is now in speech. Even the disciples of Paul would permit her
to sing in church, and would applaud her in the concert-room, and on the
boards of the theatre.11An allusion to the strictures by St. Paul regarding the role of women in church rituals. 1 Cor. 14: 34-35. Her voice was never dreadful or shocking until it
was made to express her own convictions of truth and duty. A vast and
wonderful change has taken place in the public mind as to what is proper
for woman in this respect. In her right of speech her victory is complete.
There is literally no language nor speech in which her voice is not heard. In
Europe as well as in America, thousands listen to her eloquence and
applaud her wisdom. She is hailed to-day not only as an angel of beauty,
but as an angel of peace, temperance, and social order.
Of course this victory has not come all at once, without effort. without
labor and suffering. No victory that is worth anything to the world ever
comes in that way. It is a part of the settled order of Providence that the
cross must ever precede the crown, and that battle must precede victory. ln
bearing this cross and maintaining this conflict, woman has risen in gran-
deur and glory, like the rainbow above the storm.
In securing the right to think and to speak, the right to use her voice and
her pen, she has secured the means of victory in all other right directions.
For speech is the lever that moves the world. In her ability to speak, write,
and publish, organize and agitate, she has a weapon superior to swords,
guns, and dynamite; a weapon before which powers and principalities and
all forms of oppression may well fear and tremble.
A word of the wisdom of the movement.
Whether intentional or accidental, this movement for the rights of
woman has been conducted with remarkable wisdom. It has observed the
expediency of doing one thing at a time, and everything in its order.
“Without haste, without rest,”12The motto of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was “without haste, yet without rest." Lilian Dalbiac, (German) (New York, n.d.), 276. woman has shown that patience and
persistence which has never yet failed of success in a good cause. Her first
demand was not for suffrage, but for the right to think and speak for herself.
Her next was a demand for a higher education and an enlargement of her
opportunities for making an honest living.
She has measurably compelled compliance with all these demands.
She has unbarred the gates to nearly all the schools, colleges, and univer-
sities; she has made her way into all the learned professions; she has
become both a discoverer and an inventor, and has greatly enlarged the
boundaries of her industrial avocations.
Forty years ago there were not thirty occupations open to woman. Now
there are more than three hundred open to her.
Wisely and well in the earlier years, woman demanded bread for her
hungry sisters, and urged it with wonderful skill and effect. This was an
appeal which went straight home to the heart of humanity. The advocates of
woman suffrage listened to the reports from all the miserable abodes of their
sex; from dark cellars; from dilapidated garrets; and told the story of glassy-
eyed hunger, of shrivelled forms, of famished hands, with heart-melting
eloquence, for none could tell the story of woman like woman herself.
Victor Hugo has said many true and touching things of the miseries of
man, but he has said nothing more true or touching than this: “He who has
seen the misery of man only, has seen nothing. He must see the misery of
woman! He who has seen the misery of woman only has seen nothing. He
must see the misery of childhood!”13Douglass slightly misquotes a passage from Victor Hugo's novel (1862), Book VIII, Chapter V. The , 20 vols. (New York, 1907), 5: 187-88.
To man there are a thousand ways of escape, but only a few to women.
If this movement in behalf of woman had accomplished nothing more than
the enlargement of woman’s industrial pursuits, it would have fully vindi-
cated its right to be gratefully recognized as one of the most beneficent
movements of the age. It has increased the number and variety of woman’s
works in the world, and these results will continue and will increase.
The progress of society is in the direction of refinement and spir-
ituality. Some form of grossness is eliminated with every step upward of
the race. It is in accordance with the divine order. Not that which is spiritual
is first, but that which is natural; after that, that which is spiritual.14A paraphrase of 1 Cor. 15: 46. The
heavier kinds of labor, which require toughness of fibre and great strength
of muscle, will be done by machinery; and mind, rather than muscle, will
be increasingly demanded, as the wheels of progress roll on. In this labor of
the mind, woman’s quickness of perception, delicacy of touch, and agility
of movement, will give her superior facility in doing most of the needed
work of the world. But whether this shall be so or not, it is evident that
blindness and prejudice will yet have to admit that woman has a right to do
anything and everything which tends to the perfection of the human soul
and of human well-being.
But now I come to the point,—the one insisted upon by this conven-
tion, and which constitutes the all-commanding claim set up by woman,
namely: The equal right to participate with man in the government under
which she lives. In this demand, she, more than all others, shocks the
nerves and develops the greatest opposition of her fellow-citizens. It is the
great right which includes all others,—and puts woman on an equal plane
with man in all that concerns the safety and welfare of the State and the
nation. In that single right is contained the right not only to vote, but to be
voted for; not only to appoint others to office, but to hold office equally
with others. In a word, it implies all that is contained in the idea of
complete and perfect citizenship. It means the ballot-box, the jury-box, the
cartridge-box, and all the boxes connected with the safety, progress, and
welfare of society.
Considering the long and universal subjection of woman to the legal
and political power of man, it is not strange that men for the moment stand
aghast at the magnitude of this demand. It falls upon their ears like a
trumpet-call from the barricade of domestic rebellion, to surrender. Natu-
rally enough, the first feeling among men is one of surprise, the next
resentment, and the last a stubborn determination to hold the fort at all
hazards.
In order that woman should not give up the contest too soon, she should
fully comprehend the difficulty of sudden compliance with her demand for
suffrage. Large bodies move slowly, but they move. “The sun do move.”15Douglass quotes the title of black minister John Jasper's well-known sermon, which employed fundamentalist biblical arguments to contend that the sun circled the earth.
The world has been going so long and with such force and steadiness in the
wrong direction that it cannot turn all at once in a new and untried way. It is
not altogether owing to man’s disposition to trample upon the weak and
play the tyrant that he refuses to accede to woman’s demand for suffrage.
He is not, as the wise Mrs. Howe has well said, “Satan behind the scene.”
He must be reasoned with a little as well as scolded a good deal—and in
what I have to say I shall try to do both. It is not enough to assert that the
right of woman to suffrage is self-evident, for against prejudice, custom,
and superstition, nothing is self-evident. The longest wars and the fiercest
battles that the world has ever seen have been waged where self-evident
rights were involved. The late tremendous war between the North and the
South was over the question whether a man is the rightful owner of his own
body. The war for American independence was a war for the self-evident
rights of the American people, as against the pretensions of a British king.
The great political fight now progressing in England is over the self-evident
rights of Ireland. The eighty years’ war in the Netherlands was over the
self-evident right of the people to worship God according to the dictates of
their own conscience.
Indeed, it would seem in many cases that the plainer and simpler the
proposition, the more widely and bitterly will men differ about it. Suffrage
for woman—self-evident to us,—upon first blush, to the average man,
seems absurd, monstrous, and shocking. But when he stops to consider and
to ask his reason a few pertinent questions, the case will appear in a
different light.
In advocating the claim of the slave to freedom, the fundamental and
unanswerable argument was, that the slave is a man. In that one assertion
was a whole encyclopedia of argument, and so 1 reason in regard to suf-
frage for woman. The question which should be put to every man and
which every man should put to himself is, Who and what is woman? Is
there really anything in her nature and constitution which necessarily unfits
her for the exercise of suffrage? Is she a rational being? Has she a knowl-
edge of right and wrong? Can she discern between good and evil? Is she a
legitimate subject of government? Is she capable of forming an intelligent
opinion of public men and public measures? Has she a will as well as a
mind? Is she able to express her thoughts and opinions by words and acts?
As a member of society and a citizen of the State, has she interests like
those of men, which may be promoted or hindered, created or destroyed,
by the legislative and judicial action of the Government?
When these questions are answered according to truth, the right of
woman to participate in the government under which she lives, and which
she is taxed to support, does not seem absurd.
I hold that there is not one reason, not one consideration of justice and
expediency, upon which man can claim the right to vote which does not
apply equally to woman.
If he knows right from wrong, so does she; if he is a subject of
government, so is she; if he has a natural right to vote, so has she; if she
has no right to exclude him, he has no right to exclude her.
If we turn to the constructive elements of the American Government,
we are conducted to the same conclusion. The American doctrine of liberty
is that governments derive their right to govern from the just consent of the
governed, that taxation without representation is tyranny,16A rough paraphrase of a portion of the Declaration of Independence. and the found-
ers of the Republic went so far as to say that resistance to tyrants is
obedience to God.17Thomas Jefferson used the motto “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" on his personal seal, believing it originated with Benjamin Franklin. On these principles, woman not less than man has a
right to vote. She has all the attributes that fit her for citizenship. Equally
with man she is a subject of the law. Equally with man she is bound to honor
the law. Equally with man she is bound to obey the law. There is no more
escape from its penalties for her than for him. When she violates the law in
any way, or commits crime, she is arrested, arraigned, tried, condemned,
and punished, like any other criminal. She then finds in her womanhood
neither excuse nor protection. If the law takes no thought of sex when it
accuses her of crime, why should it take thought of sex when it bestows its
privileges?
Plainly enough, woman has a heavy grievance in being denied the
exercise of the elective franchise. She is taxed without representation, tried
without a jury of her peers, governed without her consent, and punished for
violating laws she has had no hand in making.
If it be contended that government has a right to high intelligence for its
direction, and I think it has, woman possesses the required qualification.
There is no branch of knowledge which man has mastered that she may not
master. She is seen in all the learned professions. She is teacher, preacher,
doctor, lawyer; why, then, may she not be a voter and a statesman? When
the colored man was denied the right to vote because he did not know
enough, I used to say, “If he knows enough to know the law, he knows
enough to vote. If he knows enough to pay taxes, he knows enough to vote.
If he knows enough to be punished for crime, he knows enough to vote. If
he knows as much when sober as an Irishman knows when drunk, he
knows enough to vote.”18Versions of these lines appear in Douglass's speeches in the mid-1860s such as that of 4 December 1863. And so I can now say of woman. Now, after all,
what argument can be brought against the conclusion thus reached? Is there
anything in nature, reason, justice, or expediency, against the right or
propriety of extending suffrage to woman?
The first and most plausible objection to what I have now been saying
is in the assertion that woman is already represented in the government,
that she is so represented by her husband, her sons, and her brothers.
On first sight this objection seems valid; but, in point of fact, it is
sophistical and delusive. No man can be said to represent another, who has
not been chosen by that other to represent him. In the old times it was said
that the rich represented the poor, that the whites represented the blacks,
that the masters represented the slaves, that the educated represented the
ignorant. But the vice of all these pretended representations was the fact
that they represented themselves, and, in the nature of things, could only
represent themselves. The Germans have a proverb that “those who have
the cross, will bless themselves.” And this is as true of the ballot as of the
cross. If man could represent woman, it follows that woman could repre-
sent man, but no opponent of woman suffrage would admit that woman
could represent him in the government, and in taking that position he
would be right; since neither can, in the nature of things, represent the
other, for the very obvious reason that neither can be the other.
The great fact underlying the claim for universal suffrage is that every
man is himself and belongs to himself, and represents his own indi-
viduality, not only in form and features, but in thought and feeling. And the
same is true of woman. She is herself, and can be nobody else than herself.
Her selfhood is as perfect and as absolute as is the selfhood of man. She can
no more part with her personality than she can part with her shadow.
This fundamental, unchangeable, and everlasting condition or law of
nature is, to some extent, recognized both by the government of the State
and of the nation. Even in the relation of husband and wife, the indi-
viduality of woman is preserved. However united in feeling and in interests
they may be, the law wisely recognizes and treats them as two separate
individuals, and as possessing two minds, two wills, and each mind and
will equally entitled to be consulted independently of the other. Where the
sale or transfer of property is concerned, the wife is consulted, in the
language of the law, “separate and apart from her husband.”19In the 1840s and 1850s, northern state governments began passing legislation giving legal protection to the property rights of married women. Douglass probably refers to the language of an act passed by the New York legislature on 7 April 1848. (Albany, NY, 1848), 307-08. With this
fundamental principle supported by reason and by law, there stands another
quite as familiar and quite as self-evident, namely, “The whole of a thing is
more than a part;” a proposition as true of humanity and of human qualities
as of anything else. All the men and women together are more than the
women by themselves, or all the men by themselves. And if governments
are strong or weak in proportion to the amount of wisdom and virtue by
which they are guided, it follows that that government is wisest and strong-
est which is guided and controlled by the combined wisdom of all the men
and all the women.
A government by man alone is only half supplied with the sum of
human excellence within its reach. It is a boat with one oar, a bird with one
wing, a fish with one fin, and is crippled by its halfness. It is divested of
woman’s intuitive nature, her quick sense of right and wrong, her tender
solicitude for childhood, her abhorrence of war, her love of peace and
temperance. It deprives itself of her delicacy and refinement, and her
conservative tendencies, and makes possible coarse, drunken, dissolute,
and turbulent rulers.
Believing, as I firmly do believe, that human nature, as a whole,
contains more good than evil, I am willing to trust the whole, rather than a
part, in the conduct of human affairs.
But I come to another and far more popular objection to the enfran-
chisement of woman. It is this: Suffrage will degrade her. It will drag her
down from her present elevated position. It will plunge her into the muddy
waters of politics. In this statement we have two objections chained to-
gether, and the one is about as unsound as the other, and yet both are echoed
over and over again with the utmost confidence in their soundness. What
could be more absurd on the face of it than to pretend that to put woman on a
plane of political equality with man is to degrade her, when the whole
argument for making man the exclusive possessor of the ballot is based
upon his superiority to woman? Does the possession of suffrage degrade
man? If not, it will not degrade woman. By means of suffrage he shares the
honor, power, and dignity of the government under which he lives. And
what suffrage does in this respect for man, that it will do for woman. To be
made the political equal of her husband will invest her with a new conse-
quence, a new responsibility, and a new honor. She will be consulted as to
the kind and the quality of the men who shall make and administer the laws,
who shall frame the policy, and control the destiny, of the nation. If this is
to degrade woman, I should like to know by what means she can be
elevated and honored.
But this is only one-half of the objection. We are told she will be
plunged—she is not to step into, not to fall into, but to be plunged into the
muddy waters of politics. Plainly enough, the force of this objection lies in
the plunging part of it. There is something dreadful about being plunged. It
makes one think of those dreadful lines, “plunged in a gulf of dark de-
spair!” But woman is not only to be plunged, but she is to be plunged into
the muddy waters of politics! But how came politics muddy? Politics is the
science of government, and to the eye of science as well as religion, “to the
pure all things are pure,”20Titus 1: 15. and there is no more reason for mud in politics
than in any other branch of science.
If there is mud there, it is there as an importation, not as an original
element. You might as well describe your boots as mud, because you have
stepped into the mud, or a man a horse, because you have seen him in a
stable. A man’s politics ought to be as pure as his religion, and there is no
defilement in politics apart from the personal defilement and character of
the men who exercise the right of suffrage.
Besides, it is something more than an opinion, for it accords with all
experience that woman’s presence, at the polls and everywhere else, is a
conservator of manner, morals, and decency.
But admitting this fact, says the objector, it cannot be denied that
politics will bring woman into uncomfortable contact with low, vulgar, and
coarse men. Well, granting that it will, what then? Shall we violate a great
principle of justice and fair play because of such a liability? Shall a neces-
sary principle be disregarded because of an unnecessary incident con-
nected with its application? Will you banish woman from the polls because
of the vulgarity? Will you not rather banish the vulgarity and admit the
woman? But women have a complete answer to this objection in a separate
ballot-box, where their votes can be deposited entirely apart from the
dreaded contact with vulgar men.
But men are over nice in this matter; more nice than wise. The danger
does not justify the alarm. Woman is not entirely a stranger to the vulgar
crowd. She meets it on the sidewalk, at the depot, in the market-place, in
the street-car, in the theatre. She meets it on highways, byways, and
railways, and everywhere knows how to preserve her dignity and to com-
mand respect. If this be true,—and no one can well deny it,—why may she
not do the same thing at the polls, where all she has to do is to drop a piece
of paper precisely as she drops a letter into a box at the post office?
No matter who, what, or how many may be represented at the ballot-
box, she represents herself and only herself, and order, decency, and
politeness, and is as far apart from the vulgar characters who may be there
as are the poles of the moral universe.
Again, if seclusion and absence from contact with the outside world
were the best protection to womanly dignity, the harem would surpass the
home. The caged, veiled, and cushioned women of the East, never allowed
to be seen by the vulgar crowd, watched over by eyes as vigilant as the
suspicions of despotism, would furnish the highest example of refinement
and virtue. But such is not the case. Enforced morality is artificial morality.
It is the safety that never drowns because it never goes into the water, the
virtue that never falls because never tempted.
But there is another objection which a full and faithful discussion of
this subject compels me to notice. It is this: it is alleged that woman herself
is opposed to the woman suffrage movement; that she is contented and
happy, and is entirely satisfied with her condition, and would not have the
ballot if it were given her by a change in the constitution. There is doubtless
some truth in this statement, but it is manifestly not “the whole truth and
nothing but the truth.” If the opponents of woman suffrage really believed
what they say on this point, they would not be at pains and expense of
writing long arguments, making long speeches, and preaching long ser-
mons against the woman suffrage movement. They would allow it to fall by
its own weight and weakness. But is it true that woman is contented with
her present condition, and would not have the ballot if it were given to her?
It is a statement which may be fairly questioned.
Years ago, I heard the same arguments employed against the abolition
movement. The slaves were then contented and happy people, who would
not have their liberty if it were given them; just as we are now told that
women are contented and happy, and would not have the ballot if it were
given them. It was not true of the slaves then, and it is not true of woman
now. The same men who told us of the contentment and happiness of the
slaves were, at the same time, busy framing laws to prevent their escape
from slavery. The same is being done now in Congress and in State Legisla-
tures against woman suffrage. It must be admitted that my argument at this
point does not dispose of this objection conclusively. It does not follow that
because the slave was not contented and happy in slavery, that women are
not contented in their condition. Nor does it follow that because the slave
wanted his freedom, women want to vote. What I have said simply proves
the probability of what is true.
But what, after all, if it could be shown that women generally do not
want to vote? That fact would not affect the right of others. It would not
affect the rights of those who do want to vote. That one man does not want
freedom is no reason why another man should be made a slave.
It is for men to recognize the right of woman to vote, and leave to her,
as they leave to man, the option whether or not she shall vote. It will be time
enough when they do that for them to announce that women will or will not
vote. Should the right be once acknowledged, I venture to say that no
President could ever be elected to that high office without the votes of
women. The most persuasive eloquence of both parties would be employed
in gaining their support. Men who oppose granting suffrage would not be
much behind those who favor it in soliciting such support. But here is
another objection, and one very much relied upon in opposing the exten-
sion of suffrage to woman, “She cannot perform military service. She is
physically incapable of bearing arms, and cannot therefore fight the battles
of the country.” This objection, which seems so strong to those who bring
it, has been answered a thousand times; it contains a vice and a weakness
even more fatal to its validity than the objection just disposed of. It founds
one of the grandest intellectual and moral rights of human nature upon a
purely physical basis.
According to it, the basis of civil government is not mind, but muscle;
not reason, but force; not right, but might; it is not human, but bestial. It
belongs to man rather as a savage, than to man as a civilized being. Were
this theory of government sound, Sullivan, the slugger,21The son of a Boston laborer, John Lawrence Sullivan (1858-1918) was the claimant to the title of American boxing champion at the time of Douglass’s speech. He had worked as an apprentice plumber and a tinsmith and played professional baseball before making prizefighting his career. He defeated the then generally accepted champion Paddy Ryan in 1882 and for the next decade fought in scores of matches in the United States and Europe. After losing his title to James “Gentleman Jim" Corbett in 1892, Sullivan quickly dissipated the fortune he had acquired from boxing and turned to acting, lecturing, saloon-keeping, and finally farming for a livelihood. John L. Sullivan, (Boston, 1892); Nat Fleischer, (New York, 1941); , 18: 193-94. should have
more political power than Sherman, the senator.22John Sherman. The burly prize-fighter
should stand higher than the intelligent president of a college.
Besides, this doctrine rules out nearly all the great men of the world,
for the profoundest thinkers and students are generally more distinguished
for mind than for muscle. If those only who are strong enough to defend the
country on the battlefield should be allowed to vote, one-third of all the
men of this country would be disfranchised.
All men over forty-five years of age and all who have bodily ailments
are exempted from military service, 23Abraham Lincoln signed the Conscription Act on 3 March 1863, which provided for a national army to be composed of able-bodied male citizens, or foreigners applying for citizenship, between ages twenty and forty-five. E. B. Long, (Garden City, N.Y., 1971), 325. yet all such men have the right to
vote. The denial of woman’s right to vote on the ground of physical dis-
ability appears not only wrong but mean, since it is a discrimination against
her which is not applied to others, and by the strong against the weak. But it
is not true that women cannot perform military duty. History affirms the
contrary. There is no more thrilling chapter in the history of the war in the
Netherlands than that which describes the defence of Leyden, where wives
fought beside their husbands, and sisters beside their brothers, and where
the women were as brave and enduring as the men.24During the Spanish campaign to reassert control over the rebellious Dutch provinces, an army of 8-10,000 imperial troops besieged the city of Leyden from 31 October 1573 to 21 March 1574 and again from 26 May to 3 October 1574. Fearing bloody reprisals as had occurred after the Spanish capture of Haarlem in 1573, the inhabitants of Leyden refused to surrender their well-fortified city despite its lack of trained garrison troops. Although they endured severe privations, the citizenry of Leyden successfully defended their own city until Dutch leader William of Nassau opened the dikes and flooded the surrounding countryside so that a naval expedition could break the siege. John Lothrop Motley, , 5 vols. (1860-67; New York, 1900), 4: 16, 52-90; Geoffrey Parker, (Ithaca, NY, 1977), 156, 160, 164, 250. In our late war she did
exceptional military service in their care for the Sick and wounded, in their
administrative capacity, in the gathering and distributing of supplies, in the
establishment and support of hospitals, and even in the planning of cam-
paigns.
But granting all that is claimed as to woman’s unfitness to perform
military duty,—is not war exceptional, and peace the normal condition of
society? Shall we base a right upon an exception, and disregard a right
based upon principle? Is that logical and reasonable? What right have we to
measure the rights of a human being under civil government by a condition
of things that excludes civil government? War sets aside civil government,
and brings us under martial law. Under it, vice becomes virtue; stealing,
lying, and robbing excusable; and murder meritorious. Surely, ability to do
those things should not be made the basis of political rights.
But perhaps a more serious objection to woman’s participation in civil
government than either of the preceding ones, relates to its supposed effect
upon the home. It is alleged that woman suffrage will introduce strife and
division into the family. It is said that woman will be ranged upon one side
and man upon the other, and that home will no longer be “sweet home.”
and that peace and tranquillity will no longer dwell under the family roof.
Now, such consequences would be alarming if they were necessary and
inevitable, but they do not appear to the eye of sober reason in any such
light, and may, therefore, be rejected. It is assumed that difference of
opinion in the State may be more safely tolerated than difference of opinion
in the family, bound together by respect, tenderness, and love, and there-
fore more able to sustain such difference. It holds that in order to have
peace and tranquillity in the family, the woman, the wife, the daughter, and
the sister, must have no opinions of their own, or must not be allowed to
express such opinions if they have them; that they must deny their intellect
and conscience, and become moral, social, and intellectual monstrosities,
bodies without souls; in fact, like the gods of the heathen, have ears, and
hear not; have eyes, and see not; and have tongues, and speak not.25Douglass paraphrases Ezek. 12: 2 and Mark 8: 18.
Certainly, a principle which requires such self-abnegation, such stultifica-
tion and self-abasement, cannot be sound, or other than absurd and vicious.
But, happily for the enfranchisement of woman, we have no right to
predicate any such dire consequences. Husbands and wives differ in opin-
ion every day, about a variety of subjects, and yet dwell together in love and
harmony. How insufferably flat, stale, and unprofitable is that family in
which no difference of opinion enters. Who on earth can want to spend his
or her days as a simple echo? A body without a soul, a mind without an
opinion, a mere bundle of thoughtless concessions, a light under a bush-
el,26Matt. 5: 15, Mark 4: 21, and Luke 11: 33. a talent buried in silence, a piece of intellectual emptiness and social
nothingness?
A difference of opinion, like a discord in music, sometimes gives the
highest effects of harmony. A thousand times better is it to have a brave,
outspoken woman by one’s side, than a piece of mincing nothingness that
is ashamed to have an opinion. For myself, from what I know of the nature
of the human understanding, I at once suspect the sincerity of the man or
the woman who never has an opinion in opposition to mine. Differing, as
all human minds do, in all their processes and operations, such uniform
agreement is unnatural, and must be false, assumed, and dishonest. The
fact is, no family or State can rest upon any foundation less solid than truth
and honesty.
But here comes another objection, which is in point-blank contradic-
tion to the one just answered. It is a positive denial that anything will be
either gained or lost in the final result of any election, by the enfranchise-
ment of woman, because, as it is affirmed, woman’s vote will only express
the views and wishes of her husband and brothers. In the former objection,
the home was to be broken up by disagreement. In the latter objection,
there is to be no disagreement, and woman is to vote according to the
political preferences of her husband, and, hence, there will be no dif-
ference except in the additional number of the votes cast and counted.
We have only to array one of these objections against the other, to
neutralize and destroy the effect of both. Both may be wrong, but both
cannot be right. But suppose, however, that the latter objection is true: That
is, that the vote of the wife shall simply duplicate that of her husband.
Certainly no harm could come of such a result. It would simply be two
votes on the same side of whatever question might be involved in the
election, and from this the State could receive no detriment, unless, in-
deed, both votes should be on the wrong side, a circumstance not nearly so
likely to occur where two heads are consulted as when one alone shall do
the voting. So this objection, like all the rest, is, in the light of reason,
entirely groundless.
But while no evil could come to the State from woman’s suffrage, and
admitting that no special good would come to the State, which I do not
admit except for the sake of the argument, a vast advantage would come to
woman herself. Her dignity and importance, as a member of society, would
be greatly augmented. She would be brought into responsible and honor-
able relations to the government, her citizenship would be full and com-
plete, instead of being merely a subject, she would be a sovereign.
And now I ask, What right have I, what right have you, what right has
anybody who believes in a government of the people, by the people, and
for the people,27Douglass quotes Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address. Basler, , 7: 23. to deny to woman this full and complete citizenship?
What right have I, what right have you, what right has anybody, thus to
humiliate one-half of the human family? There is no such right outside of
the right of the robber and the usurper!
Nothing is clearer in my mind than this, that no person, man or woman,
living in this country, can be excluded from participation in its governing
power, without positive injury. If woman shall be enfranchised, her views
and wishes will be consulted, both as to the men and measures of govern-
ment. She will be recognized as a power which all men are bound to
respect.
No matter upon what pretext, upon what ground of assurance, woman
is deprived of the right of suffrage, she is in the condition of a proscribed
person. The mark of Cain28Gen. 4: 15. is set upon her. The thoughtless may not see it.
The giddy may not feel it. The masses of women may deny it; but the
thoughtful, sober, and intelligent women of the country do see and feel this
deprivation to be a useless and bitter proscription. What business has man
to inflict this hardship upon sensitive woman? In one breath he praises her
as the moulder of manners, the model of refinement, the mainstay of
virtue, the joy of life, and, in the next breath, he degrades her, and classes
her with paupers, idiots, and criminals.
This hardship, for it truly is a hardship, is more painful and crushing in
a free government like ours, than under governments where the few are
born to rule, and the many to serve. Where a disability is imposed upon all
and is borne by all, the burden is divided and the weight for each is light.
But here the case is different. Universal suffrage is the rule. Everybody,
gentle and simple, good and bad, may vote, except paupers, criminals,
idiots, and women. Heaven grant that the day be not distant, when, like the
system of chattel slavery, this handwriting of baseness and barbarism shall
be blotted out, and when woman before the law, and at the ballot-box, shall
stand by the side of man, equal in all that pertains to American citizenship.