American Protest Literature

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LYDIA MARIA CHILD

From Women and Suffrage

1867

L dia Maria Child (1802-1880) preferred, as she explained in 1841, "to take my freedom

;thout disputing about my claim to it." Impatient with the debates on women's rights,

she characterized both sides as "shallow philosophy." Instead of talking, women should

"simply go forward and do," she told the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison in 1839. Child was fearful of losing all connection to the past, telling a friend in 1843: "Let not

the din of the noisy present drown the music of the past." Her work was not the "noisy

present" of politics, but an "eternal anthem," and she argued that her art was activism

enough: "My own appropriate mission is obviously that of a writer; and I am convinced

that I can do more good . .. by infusing . .. principles . .. into all I write." But as the nation

lurched toward war, Child saw that her genteel, sentimental style might effect change:

"Slavery was abolished in England by rousing the moral feelings of the people." By 1856,

she was exclaiming: "What a shame that women can't vote!" She joined abolitionists in

the struggle for black suffrage, and in "Women and Suffrage," the endpoint of her long

journey toward public activism, she calls for female suffrage too.

Child had spent years looking out from "the 'loopholes of retreat,"' as she once put it

(an image also used in Harriet Jacobs's Incidents [1861 ], edited by Child). But in 1861

Child looked back on her years in retreat from public life, writing to Lucretia Mott: "There

was a time when I grew tired of incessant strife ... I make the best atonement that can be

made, by working now with redoubled diligence." Amused at her own transformation,

she wrote to others: "If I ... go on at this rate, I shall be the rabidest radical that ever pelted a throne."

Further reading: Deborah Clifford, Crusader for Freedom (1992); Jean Fagan Yellin, Women and Sisters (1989).

Professor Lewis says, very truly, that the questions of black men's voting and of white women's voting are not analogous. And I confess to a reluctance to urge the question of female suffrage upon Congress at this time, when they have so many other difficult problems to solve. That the loyal blacks of the South should vote is a present and very imperious necessity-not only for their own protection, but also for the safety of the small minority of whites who are true to the Government. This is another of those remarkable leadings of Divine

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140 women's Rights and Suffragism / THE LITERATURE ~ Lydia Maria Child I Women and Suffrage

h . h have been so conspicuous throughout the p · dence w 1c '\Var iv roVJ mpelled to do justly for the sake of their ' heleb le have been co own i Y11

peop . ·ng that there is a fallacy in the phrase "in. ntere 11

' 1 I will say, m pass1 , ··•Partial .

friends of the colored people. They propose th surha as used by many at th ~,' . h Id not be taken away from any who have hereto< e eJe,;,. franchise s ou ,ore el( _-'lilt

h fter only those should vote who can read and •··r·t er~ 1 ,. but that erea . . "' 1 e. 'l'h 1 ff •gners who cannot wnte theu own names or Usth,. sands o ore1 , . , react lhe1 ·•

Id be allowed to influence the elections of the count,-,, r oi,~ votes, wou -•,, IYhiJ ti·ve citizens who are ignorant because our own laws h en~ merous na

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• ave hit t d them from obtaining the rudiments of learning would be herto preven e . . . ' 'JccJu

from the polls. This is not impartial suffrage. Either all voters should bed~ . ed to have some degree of education, or none should be subi·ect re. qmr to

5 1!cli limitations.

1 have always thought that suffrage ought _to rest on an educational bas!, There is no hardship in such an arrangement, m a country where them

eans~ obtaining the requisite qualification are offered to every one at the pubU c ex. pense. As a stimulus to education, it would be valuable beyond measure. Prob,

ably no motive would operate so strongly on the "poor Whites" of the South;

and their enlightenment is greatly needed as a check to that arrogant class who led them blindfold into a worse than needless war-a class whose patriarch~ tendencies make them the natural enemies of a republic, and whose boas111 has been that society among them was becoming "more and more oriental.' This patriarchal element would, of course, ultimately destroy our free institu- tions, if unimpeded in its operations. It is important for the salvation of the

nation that it should be kept in check until it disappears before the advances of a higher degree of civilization; and that can only be done by the moral and in- tellectual improvement of the people, black and white.

The suffrage of woman can better afford to wait than that of the colored peo- ple; and they speak truly who say that a majority of women would negative th

e claim, if left to their decision. In a recent debate in Congress several sena•

'd tors declared themselves ready to grant suffrage to women whenever a const · erable number of them asked for it. I smiled at this adroit way of handing o~er a perplexing question to their sons or grandsons. But this state of mind

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wo b"t !fa men proves nothing, except that human beings are creatures of ha 1 · Chin tu!~ ese woman should let the feet of her infant daughter grow to the na size, a

nd furnish her With suitable shoes to walk in the street, would she not bed regarded by he shoul

r own sex as a shameless innovator? That Chinese men . regard such a pr d • . hal soCJ· ty ocee mg as threatening the disintegration of patnarc the e ~~~ tin Cond·t· a matter of course. Yet it would be a great improvemen e 1 ion of China "f h d wer

at liberty t 1 1

t e women were allowed to let their feet grow, an rts 0 wa k With th d the se '

em. When Frederick the Great emancipate

. ned to be exempted from the operation of his decree He petit!O . anY of thern . thern for their own good; and at this day Prussia is all the

[Tl • freemg ' ersisted 10 . one of the teachers of freedmen at the South informs us that

~tronger for it. d children complain because there is no whipping in schools. botb paren~s a~ should behave better if you would whip me," said one of the "I reallY think brought up under "the patriarchal system," and could not

He had been . boY5• . f the habits thus acquired.

·1 get nd o . east Y Jetter I showed how women were gradually becommg accus- forrner ,

In rnY n pursuits that once seemed to them strange and inappropriate. rned to rna Y · · f th · ht f · · h' to h same with their exercise o e ng s o c1t1zens 1p. Very few

id bet e It wou fi st· but year by year the number of those interested in public af-

id vote at r , wou d . crease. They would doubtless make mistakes, as all beginners do.

. woul IIl fairs h would be easily duped, and some would be over-conceited with S rne oft em 0 ficial information. The present enlargement of woman's sphere of

mtle super . a . t without such results; and the same 1s true of the colored people. action 1s no . .

h . k candid observers would admit that the general gam to character is

But It IO much greater than the Joss.

It is the theory of our government that the people govern. Women consti- tute balf of the people. It has been legally decided that they are citizens; and, as citizens, constituting so large a portion of the people, I think they plainly have a right to vote. I believe it would be good for them to exercise the right, be- cause all human souls grow stronger in proportion to the increase of their re- sponsibilities, and the high employment of their faculties. For ten or twelve years I lived in the midst of Quakers; and I could not but observe that their women were superior to women in general in habits of reflection and indepen- dent modes of thinking. I remember a Quaker cobbler who was much addicted to talking, not very wisely, about public affairs. His wife would look up from her knitting, now and then, and quietly remark, "I do not agree with thee, Reuben. Thee has not got on the right principle there, Reuben." If she had voted, it certainly would have been in a manner very different from him; but I don't think there would ever have been any nearer approach to a quarrel than that frequently expressed in her calm dissent from his opinions. This staid and self-relying character in Quaker women I attribute to the fact that they share equally with men in the management of all the business of the society. Frivo- lous pursuits make frivolous characters. Society has done grievous wrong to the souls of . women by fencing them within such narrow enclosures. And then it adds insult t i . . 0 n1ury by mocking at the meanness it has made. The literature of al) natio b .

. ns a ounds with 1"ibes and 1·eers and degrading comparisons con-cemm , , g women. This is so common that men in general probably pass it by

unnoticed· b sa d ' ut to sensible women it is a perpetual offense. "More than a thou-

n Women · · · "S 'ff is one man worthy to see the light of life," says Eunp1des. ti

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