Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/130

100 January, 30, 1871.

To Mrs. Beecher Hooker:

—Hoping you will receive kindly what I am about to write, I will proceed without apologies. I have confidence in your nobleness of soul, and that you know enough of me to believe in my devotion to the best interests of woman. I can scarcely realize that you are giving your name and influence to a cause, which, with some good but, as I think, misguided women, numbers among its advocates others with loose morals. * ** We are, my dear madam, as I suppose, related through our common ancester Thomas Hooker. *** Your husband, I believe, stands in the same relation to that good and noble man. Perhaps he may think with you on this woman suffrage question, but it does seem to me that a wife honoring her husband would not wish to join in such a crusade as is now going on to put woman on an equality with the rabble at the "hustings." If we could with propriety petition the Almighty to change the condition of the sexes and let men take a turn in bearing children and in suffering the physical ailments peculiar to women, which render them unfit for certain positions and business, why, in this case, if we really wish to be men, and thought God would change the established order, we might make our petition; but why ask congress to make us men? Circumstances drew me from the quiet of domestic life while I was yet young; but success in labors which involved publicity, and which may have been of advantage to society, was never considered as an equivalent to my own heart for the loss of such retirement. In the name of my sainted sister, Emma Willard, and of my friend Lydia Sigourney, and I think I might say in the name of the women of the past generation, who have been prominent as writers and educators (the exception may be made of Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, and a few licentious French writers) in our own country and in Europe, let me urge the high-souled and honorable of our sex to turn their energies into that channel which will enable them to act for the true interests of their sex.

Yours respectfully,

To which Mrs. Hooker, through The Post, replied:

, January 15, 1878.

Mrs. —Dear Madam: Permit me to thank you for the opportunity to exonerate myself and the women of the suffrage movement all over the United States from the charge of favoring immorality in any form. I did not know before that Mrs. Phelps, whom I have always held in highest esteem as an educator and as one of the most advanced thinkers of her day, had so misconceived the drift of our movement; and you will pardon me, dear madam, for saying that it is hardly possible that Mrs. Sherman and yourself, in your opposition to it, can have been influenced by any apprehension that the women suffragists of the United States would, if entrusted with legislative power, proceed to use it for the desecration of their own sex, and the pollution of the souls of their husbands, brothers and sons. But having been publicly accused through your instrumentality of sympathy with the licentious practices of men, I shall take the liberty to send you a dozen copies of a little book entitled, "Womanhood; its Sanctities and Fidelities," which I published in 1874 for the specific purpose of bringing to the notice of American women the wonderful work being done across the water in the suppression of "State Patronage of Vice." ** * It is with a deep sense of gratitude to God that I am able to say that, according to my knowledge and belief, every woman in our movement, whether officer or private, is in sympathy with the spirit of this little book. I know of no inharmony