Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/814

778 volcano, they then say, "All women do not want to vote; all the women in the country should ask for it, and beg for it, and petition for it."

Let me relate an incident that occurred in Boston at the office of Chief Justice Chapman, four or five weeks ago. A man, a guardian, came there with a writ of habeas corpus, which placed in his charge two children in no wise related to him, and he asked that he might have the control of the children, in opposition to the claim of their mother, who desired to keep them. The facts were briefly these: the woman had been happily married; her husband died and left her a widow with two young children. By the laws of the State of Massachusetts at that time, she was not allowed to be their guardian, nor the guardian of any body else's children. So the Judge of Probate appointed a guardian for the children, who magnanimously allowed them to remain in their mother's care. After two or three years she committed the unpardonable crime of marrying again, a thing that no man was ever guilty of. The marriage was perfectly acceptable to her former husband's relatives, but the guardian was so displeased with it, that he got out a writ of habeas corpus, and demanded of Chief Justice Chapman that the children be remanded to his custody. We are apt to boast of Massachusetts and its laws, but here was a case in which the Chief Justice, after hearing the case, actually remanded these children to the possession of that man. The court-room was crowded; the excitement was intense; the poor mother sank down in a deadly faint. I say such laws are an outrage upon womanhood, and they arise simply and solely from a deep contempt for womanhood. This contempt is palpable throughout all the entire code of laws.

Another argument that is frequently made against the extension of the suffrage to woman is this: "If women go to the polls it is going to take them away from their homes and families." These arguments are urged with as much pertinacity as if the polls were open three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and twenty-four hours each day, and that all that people did was to lie around the polls and vote, and vote, and vote, and vote.

Another statement is, that it is because women have been kept out of politics that they are pure and good. Well, now, it is a poor rule that won't work both ways, and if disfranchisement has made such angels of women, suppose you try it a little on men. I have a firm belief that the men need, infinitely more than the women do, the influence that woman will bring with her to the ballot; not because woman is better, but because she is the other half of humanity. It reminds me of the account of the battle of Gettysburg, given by a colonel of a Western regiment. His regiment was placed among the reserves, on an eminence, where they could see the battle as it went on. "There we stood," said the colonel; "our brave men trying to serve their country; able to do it, and anxious to do it. Yet we were kept the whole of the first day watching the fight go on. On the second day another regiment, which had been much associated with ours, was called into action. We saw them marching, their guns aslant, as if there was no battle being carried on, or deeds of death and destruction—and all the while, as they marched, the grape, and the canister, and the shot, and the shell, tore their ranks terribly; and men fell dead in all directions; and still those who yet remained carried their guns in the same position, and kept time, and closed up, and closed up, until my agitation became so unendurable that I forgot all