Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 1.djvu/140

126 considered on the side of conservatism, of course that side must preponderate. Be this as it may, woman alone can, in the present state of the controversy, speak effectively for woman, since none others can speak with authority, or from the depths of a personal experience.

Hoping that your Convention may result in the opening of many eyes, and the elevation of many minds from light to graver themes,

I remain yours,

And here let us pay our tribute of gratitude to Horace Greeley. In those early days when he, as editor of the New York Tribune, was one of the most popular men in the nation, his word almost law to the people, his journal was ever true to woman. No ridicule of our cause, no sheers at its advocates, found a place in The Tribune; but more than once, he gave columns to the proceedings of our conventions.

To this letter, Henry B. Blackwell, brother of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, and the future husband of Lucy Stone, pertinently replied, saying:

It is suggested that woman's cause should be advocated by women only. The writer of that letter is a true friend of this reform, and yet I feel that I owe you no apology for standing on this platform. But if I do, this is sufficient, that I am the son of a woman, and the brother of a woman. I know that this is their cause, but I feel that it is mine also. Their happiness is my happiness, their misery my misery.

The interests of the sexes are inseparably connected, and in the elevation of one lies the salvation of the other. Therefore I claim a part in the last and grandest movement of the ages; for whatever concerns woman concerns the race. In every human enterprise the sexes should go hand in hand. Experience sanctions the statement. I know of but few movements in history, which have gone on successfully without the aid of woman. One of these is war — the work of human slaughter. Another has been the digging of gold in California. I have yet to learn what advantages the world has derived from either. Whenever the sexes have been severed in politics, in business, in religion, the result has been demoralization.

Mr. Blackwell spoke with great eloquence for nearly an hour, advocating the political, civil, and moral equality of woman. He showed the power of the ballot in combating unjust laws, opening college doors, securing equal pay for equal work, dignifying the marriage relation, by making woman an equal partner, not a subject. He paid a glowing eulogy to Mary Wollstonecroft. He said:

We need higher ideas of marriage. There is scarcely a young man here who does not hope to be a husband and a father; nor a young woman