Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/223

 clared that in going to England as president of the National-American Association she felt more honored than if sent as minister plenipotentiary of the United States, she spoke to a set of resolutions which she presented to the convention. The resolutions declared the constitutional right of women to vote, and continued:

Resolved, That as the fathers violated the principles of justice in consenting to a three-fifths representation, and in recognizing slavery in the Constitution, thereby making a civil war inevitable; so our statesmen and Supreme Court Judges by their misinterpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment, declaring that the United States has no voters and that citizenship does not carry with it the right of suffrage, not only have prolonged woman's disfranchisement but have undermined the status of the freedman and opened the way for another war of races.

, It is proposed to have a national! law, restricting the right of divorce to a narrower basis, and

, Congress has already made an appropriation for a report on the question, which shows that there are 10,000 divorces annually in the United States and the majority demanded by women; and

, Liberal divorce laws for wives are what Canada was for the slaves—a door of escape from bondage; therefore,

Resolved, That there should be no farther legislation on this question until woman has a voice in the State and National Governments.;

Resolved, That the time has come for woman to demand of the Church the same equal recognition she demands of the State; to assume her right and duty to take part in the revision of Bibles, prayer-books and creeds; to vote on all questions of business; to fill the offices of elder, deacon, Sunday-school superintendent, pastor and bishop; to sit in ecclesiastical synods, assemblies and conventions as delegates; that thus our religion may no longer reflect only the masculine element of humanity, and that woman, the mother of the race, may be honored as she must be before we can have a happy home, a rational religion and an enduring government.

They concluded with a demand that the platform of the suffrage association should recognize the equal rights of all parties, sects and races. After reviewing the history of the movement for the rights of woman and naming some of its brilliant leaders she said:

For fifty years we have been plaintiffs in the courts of justice, but as the bench, the bar and the jury are all men, we are non-suited every time. Some men tell us we must be patient and persuasive; that we must be womanly. My friends, what is man's idea of womanliness? It is to have a manner which pleases him— quiet, deferential, submissive, approaching him as a subject does a master. He wants no self-assertion on our part, no defiance, no vehement arraignment of him as a robber and a criminal. While the grand motto, "Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God," has echoed and re-echoed around the globe, electrifying the lovers of liberty in every latitude and making crowned heads tremble on their thrones; while every right achieved by the oppressed has been wrung from tyrants by force; while the darkest page on human history is the outrages on women—shall men still tell us to be patient, persuasive, womanly?

What do we know as yet of the womanly? The women we have seen thus far have been, with rare exceptions, the mere echoes of men. Man has spoken in the State, the Church and the Home, and made the codes, creeds and customs which govern every relation in