Chapter III · (continued 2)

The Suffrage indictment we have been considering is summed up as follows: "Now, in view of this entire disfranchisement of one half of the people of this country, their social and religious degradation—in view of the unjust laws above mentioned, and because women do feel themselves aggrieved, oppressed, and fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong to them as citizens of the United States."

Dr. Jacobi in "Common Sense" says: "To this very day the survivors of that group of pioneer women have an abstract way of stating their claim which, to modern ears, sounds somewhat archaic."

She is not archaic when she says: "During the long ages of class rule, which are just beginning to cease, only one form of sovereignty has been assigned to all men—that, namely, over all women. Upon these feeble and inferior companions all men were permitted to avenge the indignities they suffered from so many men to whom they were forced to submit."

Mary A. Livermore is not archaic when in the "North American Review" for February, 1896, she says: "Her physical weakness, and not alone her mental inferiority, has made her the subject of man. Toiling patiently for him, cheerfully sharing with him all his perils and hardships, the unappreciated mother of his children, she has been bought and sold, petted and tortured, according to the whims of her brutal owner, the victim everywhere of pillage, lust, war, and servitude. And this statement includes all races and peoples of the earth from the date of their historic existence."

I deny the truthfulness of the archaic accusation, and denounce as an absurdity the bombastic demand. I resent, as an unwarranted insult to woman and to man, the still more bitter modern representations of woman's condition and woman's rights in this world, and especially in this Republic. They are simply false.

Archaic or modern, the dictums of the Suffrage pioneers have been repeated at their every convention. Overlaid with sentiment as much of the Suffrage idea has become, contradictory as it is in argument and in statement of fact, blended as are its sophisms with the real progress of the time, sincere and well-meaning as are many of its advocates, sex antagonism is the corner-stone of its foundation. The Woman's Rebellion is a more complex affair than the American Revolution. The latter was the natural result of the earnest and united protest, by a large majority of men and women of the American Colonies, against the tyranny of a monarchical government. The former was a protest by a small band of women and men against what they claimed to be universal tyranny. They attacked law and custom all along the line, and the weapon forever kept in order for the service was the demand for woman's possession of the ballot. Where she does not possess it, and has not asked it, her influence is mightiest. The relation of woman to the Republic is a study worthy the most exalted patriotism. In it is involved the broader question of her relation to man and to the destiny of the race. When told of her son's heroism in crossing the Delaware, Mary Washington said, "George will not forget the lessons I have taught him." Through the mother's devoted faith and the son's obedient power, the foundations were laid of a government whose sole reliance must still be on woman's inspiration and man's willing strength. These are evidently God's instruments for our Nation's upbuilding.