# History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 15

Contents
CHAPTER XV.
THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1895.
The Twenty-seventh annual convention — Jan. 31-Feb. 5, 1895 — possessed an unusual interest because of its being held outside of Washington. The American society had been accustomed to migratory conventions, but the National had gone to the capital for twenty-six winters. The Woman's Journal, whose editors were strongly in favor of the former plan, said of the Atlanta meeting:
Over the platform hung two large flags, that of the association, with the two stars of Wyoming and Colorado, and another flag, the work of Georgia ladies, on which was ingeniously depicted the relative standing of the different States on this question. The States where women have no form of suffrage were represented by black stars. Those where they can vote for school committee or on certain local questions had a golden rim. Kansas and Iowa had a wider golden rim, to indicate municipal and bond suffrage. Wyoming and Colorado shone with full and undimmed luster. Portraits of Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, draped in yellow, adorned opposite sides of the platform.
Many of the delegates were from the Southern States, and some of them strikingly illustrated Miss Anthony's assertion, “These Southern women are born orators." In sweetness of voice, grace of manner and personal charm they have all the qualities to make most effective speakers, while in the fervor of their equal rights sentiments they go even beyond their sisters from the North and West. One handsome young lady, who sat on the platform a good ​deal of the time, was supposed to be from New England, because she wore her hair short. It turned out, however, that she was from New Orleans and was a cousin of Jefferson Davis. The announcement of this fact caused her to be received by the audience with roars of enthusiasm.
The Atlanta papers devoted columns every day to friendly reports and innumerable portraits. Ministers of different denominations opened the convention with prayer and their pulpits afterwards for addresses by the ladies. Some of the best people of the city took visitors into their homes, entertaining them hospitably and delightfully, and showing them what a Southern home is like. The national officers and speakers were entertained by the Georgia W. S. A. at the Aragon, and the State officers generously insisted upon taking almost the entire expenses of the great convention upon their own young shoulders. These "Georgia girls' devoted unlimited time, thought and work to getting up the convention, and then effaced themselves as far as possible. ....
Perhaps no one person did more, unintentionally, to promote the enthusiasm of the convention than the Rev. Dr. Hawthorne, a Baptist preacher. He had felt called upon to denounce all woman suffragists from his pulpit, not only with severity but with discourtesy, and had been so misguided as to declare that the husbands of suffragists were all feeble-minded men. As the average equal rights woman is firmly convinced that her husband is the very best
At the beginning of the convention four announcements were made which added much to the general good cheer—that South Australia had followed the example of New Zealand in extending Full Suffrage to women; that the Supreme Court of Ohio had pronounced the School Suffrage Law constitutional; that the Governor of Illinois had filled a vacancy on the Board of Trustees of the State University by appointing a woman; that the Idaho Legislature had submitted a woman suffrage amendment.
The most perfect arrangements had been made for the meetings, and the novelty of the occasion attracted large crowds, but ​there was also much genuine interest. The success was partly due to the excellent work of the press of Atlanta. There was, however, no editorial endorsement except by The Sunny South, Col. Henry Clay Fairman, editor.
The national president, Miss Susan B. Anthony, said in opening the convention: "With this gavel was called to order in 1869 that Legislature of Wyoming which established the first true republic under the Stars and Stripes and gave the franchise to what men call the better-half of the people. We women do not say that, but we do claim to be half."
Miss Anthony seldom made a stated address either in opening or closing, but throughout the entire convention kept up a running fire of quaint, piquant, original and characteristic observations which delighted the audience and gave a distinctive attraction to the meetings. It was impossible to keep a record of these and they would lose their zest and appropriateness if separated from the circumstances which called them forth. They can not be transmitted to future generations, but the thousands who heard them during the fifty years of her itineracy will preserve them among their delightful memories. Perfectly at home on the platform, she would indulge in the same informality of remarks which others use in private conversation, but always with a quick wit, a fine satire and a keen discrimination. Words of praise or criticism were given with equal impartiality, and accepted with a grace which would have been impossible had the giver been any other than the recognized Mentor of them all. Her wonderful power of reminiscence never failed, and she had always some personal recollection of every speaker or of her parents or other relatives. She kept the audience in continuous good-humor and furnished a variety to the program of which the newspaper reporters joyfully availed themselves. At the morning business meetings which were always informal there would often be a running dialogue something like the following, when Mrs. Alberta C. Taylor was called to the platform:
Mrs. Taylor: A Southern paper lately said no Southern woman ​could read the report of the late election in Colorado without blushing. I went through the election itself without blushing, except with gratification.
Miss Anthony: Instead of degrading a woman it makes her feel nobler not to be counted with idiots, lunatics and criminals. It even changes the expression of her face.
Voice In The Audience: How many women are there in the Colorado Legislature?
Mrs. Taylor: Three.
Miss Anthony: It has always been thought perfectly womanly to be a scrub-woman in the Legislature and to take care of the spittoons; that is entirely within the charmed circle of woman's sphere; but for women to occupy any of those official seats would be degrading.
Miss Lucy E. Anthony: What salaries do the women legislators receive?:
Mrs..Taylor: The same as the men, $4 a day. The pay of our legislators is small. A prosperous business man has to make a great sacrifice to go to the Legislature, and we can not always get the best men to serve. This is an additional reason for making women eligible. There are more first-class women than first-class men who have the leisure.
Miss Shaw: We are accused of wishing to belittle men, but in Colorado they think a man's time is worth only as much as a woman's.
Mrs. Clara B. Colby: The Hon. Mrs. Holley has just introduced in the Colorado House, and carried through it against strong opposition, a bill raising the age of protection for girls to eighteen years.
Mrs. Duniway: I was in the Colorado House and saw it done. The women members are highly respected. I have never seen women so honored since those of Washington were disfranchised. The leading men are as proud of the enfranchisement of their women as Georgia men will be when the time comes. The Colorado women have organized a Good Government League to promote education, sanitation and general prosperity.
Mrs. Taylor: A bookseller in Denver told me that since women were Mrs. Taylorgiven the suffrage he had sold more books on political economy than he had sold since Colorado was admitted into the Union.
Miss Anthony: The bill raising the age of protection for girls shows that suffrage does not make a woman forget her children, and the bookseller's remark shows that she will study the science of government.
Mrs. Mary Bentley Thomas: One of our most conservative Maryland women, who married in Colorado ten years ago, writes to me: "I enjoyed every moment of the campaign, especially the primary meetings." A Virginia woman who also married a Colorado man writes back: "Come West, where women are appreciated, and where they are proud and happy citizens." She adds: ​“If you will come I will show you the sweetest girl baby you ever saw.’
Mrs. Henry: Let it be recorded that the first bill introduced by a woman member in any State Legislature was a bill for the protection of girls.
On motion of Mrs. Colby, it was voted to send a telegram of congratulation to the Hon. Mrs. Holley.
Again:
Before introducing the president of the Florida W. S. A. Miss Anthony said: “For several years a big box of oranges has come to me from Florida. Not long ago, I got home on one of the coldest nights of the year, and found a box standing in my woodshed, full of magnificent oranges. Next morning the papers reported that all the oranges in Florida were frozen; but the president of the suffrage association saved that boxful for me.’
Mrs. Ella C. Chamberlain: Those were all we saved. ....
A man in Florida who hires himself and his wife out to hoe corn, charges $1.25 for his own services and 75 cents for hers, although she does just as much work as he, so the men who employ them tell me. It costs his wife 50 cents a day to be a woman.
Voice In The Audience: And the 75 cents paid for her work belongs to her husband.
Miss Anthony: I suppose those are colored men.
Mrs. Chamberlain: No, they are white.
The delegate from the District of Columbia answered in a very faint tone of voice, and Miss Anthony remarked that “this was through mortification because even the men there had no more rights than women.” When another delegate could not be heard she said: “Women have always been taught that it is immodest to speak in a loud voice, and it is hard for them to get out of the old rut.” At another time:
Mrs. Mariana W. Chapman: In about two-thirds of the State of New York, and not including New York City, women are assessed on $348,177,107.
Mrs. Louisa Southworth: This year, with the new income tax, I shall pay in taxes, national, State and municipal, $5,300.
Miss Anthony: Yet why should she have a right to vote? Inconsistency is the jewel of the American people.
Mrs. Meriwether: Tennessee caps the climax in taxation with​out representation. In Shelby County there are two young women, sisters, who own farms. Both are married, and both were sensible enough to have their farms secured to themselves and. their children. In one case, at least, it proved a wise precaution. One of these young women asked the other, when she went to town, to pay a few bills for her and settle her taxes. Accordingly she went to the tax office, and as she handed in the papers she noticed written at the foot of her sister's tax bill, "Poll tax, $1.00."" She exclaimed, "Oh, when did Mrs. A. become a voter? I am so glad Tennessee has granted suffrage to women!' "Oh, she hasn't; it doesn't," said the young clerk with a smile. "That is her husband's poll tax." "And why is she required to pay her husband's poll tax?" "It is the custom," he said. She replied, ""Then Tennessee will change its custom this time. I will see the tax collector dead and very cold before I will pay Mr. A.'s poll tax out of my sister's property in order that he may vote, while she is not allowed to do so!"
Miss Anthony: It seems to me that these Southern women are in a state of chronic rebellion.
In closing this meeting Miss Anthony said: "Now, don't all of you come to me to tell me how glad you are that I have worked for fifty years, but say rather that you are going to begin work yourselves."
The delegates were eloquently welcomed in behalf of the South by Bennett J. Conyers of Atlanta, who declared that "suffrage for women is demanded by the divine law of human development." He said in part:
​The address of welcome for the State was made by Mrs. Mary L. McLendon, who spoke earnestly in favor of equal suffrage, saying:
Major Charles W. Hubner extended the welcome of the city, saying in conclusion: "Reason and right are with you, and these, in the name of God, will at last prevail." Afterwards he contributed the poem, "Thank God that Thought is Free." Miss Anthony was presented by Miss H. Augusta Howard and, after a speech complimentary to Southern women, introduced Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.), who eulogized Southern Chivalry, and Mrs. Lida A. Meriwether (Tenn.), who spoke in behalf of Motherhood. Miss Elizabeth Upham Yates (Me.) made the closing address, in which she said: "As surely as I want to vote —and nothing is more certain—the man for whom I have most wished to vote was your own beloved Henry W. Grady. There is something else for women to do than to sit at home and fan themselves, 'cherishing their femininity.' Womanliness will never be sacrificed in following the path of duty and service."
One of the principal addresses of the convention was that of Gen. Robert R. Hemphill of South Carolina, who began by saying that in 1892 he introduced a woman suffrage resolution in his State Senate, which received fourteen out of thirty-five votes. He closed as follows: "The cause is making headway, though slowly it is true, for it has the prejudices of hundreds of years to contend against. The peaceful revolution is upon us. It will not turn backward but will go on conquering until its final triumph. Woman will be exalted, she will enjoy equal rights; pure ​politics and good government will be insured, the cause of morality advanced, and the happiness of the people established."
Miss Alice Stone Blackwell (Mass.) discussed The Strongholds of Opposition, showing what they are and how they must be attacked. Woman as a Subject was presented by Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick (La.), who said in part:
As a self-respecting, reasonable being, she has grave responsibilities, and from her is required an accountability strict and severe. If she owns stock in one of your banks, she has an influence in the management of the institution which takes care of her money. The possession of children makes her a large stockholder in public morality, but her self-constituted agents act as her proxy without her authorization, as though she were of unsound mind, or not in existence.
The great truths of liberty and equality are dear to her heart. She would die before she would imperil the well-being of her home. She has no design to subvert church government, nor is she organized to tear up the social fabric of polite society. But she has now come squarely up to a crisis, a new epoch in her history here in the South, and asks for a womanly right to participate by vote in this representative government.
Gentlemen, you value the power and privilege which the right of suffrage has conferred upon you, and in your honest, manly souls you can not but disdain the meanness and injustice which might prompt you to deny it to women. Language utterly fails me when I try to describe the painful humiliation and mortification which attend this abject condition of total disfranchisement, and how anxiously and earnestly women desire to be taken out of the list of idiots, criminals and imbeciles, where they do not belong, and placed in the respectable company of men who choose their lawmakers, and give an intelligent consent to the legal power which controls them.
Mrs. Elizabeth Lyle Saxon (La.) described in an interesting manner Club Life among the Women of the South. Mrs. Blake gave a powerful address on Wife, Mother and Citizen. Miss Shaw closed the meeting with an impromptu speech in which, according to the reporter, she said: "It is declared that women ​are too emotional to vote; but the morning paper described a pugilistic encounter between two members of Congress which looked as if excitability were not limited to women. It is said that 'the legal male mind' is the only mind fit for suffrage." Miss Shaw then made her wit play around the legal male mind like chain lightning. "It is said that women are illogical, and jump to their conclusions, flea-like. I shall not try to prove that women are logical, for I know they are not, but it is beyond me how men ever got it into their heads that they are. When we read the arguments against woman suffrage, we see that flea-like jumping is by no means confined to women."
On one evening the Hon. Henry C. Hammond of Georgia made the opening address, which was thus reported:
J. Colton Lynes of Georgia, taking for his subject Women to the Front, gave a valuable historical review of their progress during the last half century. Mrs. Josephine K. Henry was introduced as "the daughter of Kentucky," and the Constitution said the next day: "If the spirit of old Patrick Henry could have heard the eloquent plea of his namesake, he would have had no reason to blush for a decadence of the oratory which gave the name to the world." In considering Woman Suffrage in the South, Mrs. Henry said:
Where the laws rob her in marriage of her property, she does want possession and control of her inheritance and earnings. Where she is a mother, she wants co-guardianship of her own children. Where she is a breadwinner she wants equal pay for equal work. She wants to wipe out the law that in its savagery protects brutality when it preys upon innocent, defenseless girlhood. She wants the streets and highways of the land made safe for the child whose life cost her a hand to hand conflict with death. She wants a single standard of morals established, where a woman may have an equal chance with a man in this hard, old world, and it may not be possible to crowd a fallen woman out of society and close against her every avenue whereby she can make an honest living, while the fallen man runs for Congress and is heaped with honors. More than all, she needs and wants the ballot, the only weapon for the protection of individual rights recognized in this government.
In short, this New Woman of the New South wants to be a citizen queen as well as a queen of hearts and a queen of home, whose throne under the present regime rests on the sandy foundation of human generosity and human caprice. It should be remembered that the women of the South are the daughters of their fathers, and have as invincible a spirit in their convictions in the cause of liberty and justice as had those fathers.
We come asking the men of our section for the right of suffrage, not that it be bestowed on us as a gift on a suppliant, but that our birthright, bequeathed to us by the immortal Jefferson, be restored to us.
The Next Phase of the Woman Question was considered by Miss Mary C. Francis (O.) from the standpoint of a practical newspaper woman. Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman of the na​tional organization committee, made the last address, taking for a subject Eternal Justice. The Constitution said: "As a rapid, logical and fluent speaker it is doubtful if America ever has produced one more gifted, and the suffrage movement is fortunate in having so brilliant a woman for its champion."
Henry B. Blackwell urged the South to adopt woman suffrage as one solution of the negro problem:
The time has come when this question should be considered. An educational qualification for suffrage may or may not be wise, but it is not necessarily unjust. If each voter governed only himself, his intelligence would concern himself alone, but his vote helps to govern everybody else. Society in conceding his right has itself a right to require from him a suitable preparation. Ability to read and write is absolutely necessary as a means of obtaining accurate political information. Without it the voter is almost sure to become the tool of political demagogues. With free schools provided by the States, every citizen can qualify himself without money and without price. Under such circumstances there is no infringement of rights in requiring an educational qualification as a pre-requisite of voting. Indeed, without this, suffrage is often little more than a name. "Suffrage is the authoritative exercise of rational choice in regard to principles, measures and men." The comparison of an unintelligent voter to a "trained monkey," who goes through the motion of dropping a paper ballot into a box, has in it an element of truth. Society, therefore, has a right to prescribe, in the admission of any new class of voters, such a qualification as every one can attain and as will enable the voter to cast an intelligent and responsible vote.
The convention proper closed on Saturday night, but the exercises Sunday afternoon may be said to have been a continuation of it. The official report said:
Miss Shaw gave her great sermon The Heavenly Vision. She told of the visions of the man which it depended upon himself to make reality; of the visions of the woman which were forever placed beyond her reach by the church, by society and by the laws, and closed with these words: "We ask for nothing which God can not give us. God created nature, and if our demands are contrary to nature, trust nature to take care of itself without the aid of man. It is better to be true to what you believe, though that be wrong, than to be false to what you believe, even if that belief is correct.";
Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (D. C.) preached to more than a thousand people at the Bethel (colored) Church; Mrs. Meriwether at the Unitarian Church; Miss Yates and Miss Emily Howland (N. Y.) also occupied pulpits.
The evening programs with their formal addresses naturally attracted the largest audiences and occupied the most space in the newspapers, but the morning and afternoon sessions, devoted to State and committee reports and the business of the association, were really the life and soul of this as of all the conventions. Among the most interesting of the excellent State reports presented to the Atlanta meeting were those of New York and Kansas, because during the previous year suffrage campaigns had been carried on in those States. The former, presented by Mrs. Jean Brooks Greenleaf, State president, said in part:
The report of the Press Committee Chairman, Mrs. Ellen Battelle Dietrick (Mass.), called especial attention to the flood of matter relating to the woman question which was now appearing in the newspapers and magazines of the country, to the activity of the enemy and to the necessity for suffragists to "publish an antidote wherever the poison appears." The Legislative Committee, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Henry and Mrs. Diggs, closed their report as follows:
The report of the Plan of Work Committee, Mrs. Chapman Catt, chairman, began by saying:
The audience was greatly amused when Miss Anthony commented on this: "There never yet was a young woman who did not feel that if she had had the management of the work from the beginning the cause would have been carried long ago. I felt just so when I was young." There was much laughter also over one of Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway's short speeches in which she said:
When Miss Anthony said, "One reason why politicians hesitate to grant suffrage to woman is because she is an unknown quantity," Mrs. Henry responded quickly, "There are two great unknown forces to-day, electricity and woman, but men can reckon much better on electricity than they can on woman." A resolution was adopted for a public celebration in New York City ​of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s eightieth birthday, November 12, by the association.
The treasurer, Mrs. Harriet Taylor Upton, reported the receipts of the past year to be $5,820, of which $2,571 went to the Kansas campaign. The contributions and pledges of this convention for the coming year were about $2,000. In addition, Mrs. Louisa Southworth of Cleveland gave $1.000 to Miss Anthony to use as she thought best, and she announced that it would be applied to opening national headquarters. A National Organization Committee was for the first time formally organized and Mrs. Chapman Catt was made its chairman by unanimous vote.
Mrs. Colby presented the memorial resolutions, saying in part:
Mrs. Bradwell was the first to-make a test case with regard to the civil rights of women, and to prove that the disfranchised citizen is unprotected. [Her struggle to secure from the U. S. Supreme Court a decision enabling women to practice law was related.] The special importance of Mrs. Minor’s connection with the suffrage work lies in the fact that she first formulated and enunciated the idea that women have the right to vote under the United States Constitution. [The story was then told of Mrs. Minor’s case in the U. S. Supreme Court to test the right of women to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment.] Mrs. Amelia Bloomer was the first woman to own and edit a paper devoted to woman suffrage and temperance, the Lily, published in Seneca Falls, N. Y. She was also an eloquent lecturer for both these reforms and one of the first women to hold an office under the Government, as deputy postmaster. The costume which bears her name she did not originate, but wore and advocated for a number of years.
Two large receptions were given to the delegates and visitors, one at the Hotel Aragon, and one by Mrs. W. A. Hemphill, chairman of the Committee on the Professional Work of Women at the approaching Cotton States Exposition soon to be held in Atlanta. She was assisted by Mrs. W. Y. Atkinson, wife of the newly-elected Governor of Georgia.
During several weeks before the convention Miss Anthony and Mrs. Chapman Catt had made a tour of the Southern States, speaking in the principal cities to arouse suffrage sentiment, as this section was practically an unvisited field. Immediately after the convention closed a mass meeting was held in the court-house of Atlanta. Afterwards Mrs. Blake was requested to address the Legislature of North Carolina, Miss Anthony lectured in a number of cities on the way northward, and others were invited to hold meetings in the neighboring States. Most of the speakers and delegates met in Washington on February 15 to celebrate Miss Anthony's seventy-fifth birthday and participate in the triennial convention of the National Council of Women.
* ↑ The three sisters, Claudia Howard Maxwell, Miriam Howard Du Bose and H. Augusta Howard, who as delegates at Washington the previous winter had invited the association to Atlanta, bore the principal part of these expenses and were largely responsible for the success of the convention.
* ↑ The facts and figures presented in the report from Kansas by the president, Mrs. Laura M. Johns, will be found in the chapter on that State.
* ↑ For an account of this beautiful celebration in the Metropolitan Opera House with an audience of 3,000, see Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, p. 848; also Reminiscences of Elizabeth Cady Stanton.
* ↑ For account of Mrs. Bradwell’s case see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 601; of Mrs. Minor’s, same, p. 715.