Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/170

 

 The first National Woman Suffrage Convention after the war—Speeches by Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Henry Ward Beecher, Frances D. Gage, Theodore Tilton, Wendell Phillips—Petitions to Congress and the Constitutional Convention—Mrs. Stanton a candidate to Congress—Anniversary of the Equal Rights Association.

The first Woman's Rights Convention.—The Convention will be held in the City of New York, at the Church of the Puritans, Union Square, on Thursday, the 10th of May, 1866, at 10 o'clock. Addresses will be delivered by, and (probably) and.

Those who tell us the republican idea is a failure, do not see the deep gulf between our broad theory and partial legislation; do not see that our Government for the last century has been but the repetition of the old experiments of class and caste. Hence, the failure is not in the principle, but in the lack of virtue on our part to apply it. The question now is, have we the wisdom and conscience, from the present upheavings of our political system, to reconstruct a government on the one enduring basis that has never yet been tried "."

From the proposed class legislation in Congress, it is evident we have not yet learned wisdom from the experience of the past; for, while our representatives at Washington are discussing the right of suffrage for the black man, as the only protection to life, liberty and happiness, they deny that "necessity of citizenship" to woman, by proposing to introduce the word "male" into the Federal Constitution. In securing suffrage but to another shade of manhood, while we disfranchise fifteen million tax-payers, we come not one line nearer the republican idea. Can a ballot in the hand of woman, and dignity on her brow, more unsex her than do a scepter and a crown? Shall an American-Congress pay less honor to the daughter of a President than a British Parliament to the daughter of a King? Should not our petitions command as respectful a hearing in a republican Senate as a speech of Victoria in the House of Lords? Do we not claim that here all men and women are nobles all heirs apparent to the throne? The fact that this backward legislation has roused so little thought or protest from the women of the country, but proves what some of our ablest thinkers have already declared, that the greatest barrier to a government of equality was the aristocracy of its women. For, while woman holds an ideal position above man and the work of life, poorly imitating the pomp, heraldry, and distinction of an effete European civilization, we as a nation can never realize the divine idea of equality.

To build a true republic, the church and the home must undergo the same upheavings after the war was held in the Church of the Puritans, New York, May 10th, 1866.

As the same persons were identified with the Anti-slavery and