We have met
To uplift woman's fallen divinity
Elizabeth Cady Stanton
First Womens Right's Convention
by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, on July 19, 1848
We have met here today to discuss our rights and wrongs,
civil and political, and not, as some have supposed, to go
into the detail of social life alone. We do not propose to
petition the legislature to make our husbands just,
generous, and courteous, to seat every man at the head of a
cradle, and to clothe every woman in male attire. None of
these points, however important they may be considered by
leading men, will be touched in this convention. As to
their costume, the gentlemen need feel no fear of our
imitating that, for we think it in violation of every
principle of taste, beauty, and dignity; notwithstanding all
the contempt cast upon our loose, flowing garments, we still
admire the graceful folds, and consider our costume far more
artistic than theirs. Many of the nobler sex seem to agree
with us in this opinion, for the bishops, priests, judges,
barristers, and lord mayors of the first nation on the
globe, and the Pope of Rome, with his cardinals, too, all
wear the loose flowing robes, thus tacity acknowledging that
the male attire is neither dignified nor imposing. No, we
shall not molest you in your philosophical experiments with
stocks, pants, high-heeled boots, and Russian belts. Yours
be the glory to discover, by personal experience, how long
the kneepan can resist the terrible strapping down which you
impose, in how short time the well-developed muscles of the
throat can be reduced to mere threads by the constant
pressure of the stock, how high the heel of a boot must be
to make a short man tall, and how tight the Russian belt may
be drawn and yet have wind enough left to sustain life.
But we are assembled to protest against a form of government
existing without the consent of the governed -- to declare
our right to be free as man is free, to be represented in
the government which we are taxed to support, to have such
disgraceful laws as give man the power to chastise and
imprison his wife, to take the wages which she earns, the
property which she inherits, and, in case of separation, the
children of her love; laws which make her the mere dependent
on his bounty. It is to protest against such unjust laws as
these that we are assembled today, and to have them, if
possible, forever erased from our statute books, deeming
them a shame and a disgrace to a Christian republic in the
nineteenth century.
We have met
To uplift woman's fallen divinity
Upon an even pedestal with man's.
And, strange as it may seem to many, we now demand our right
to vote according to the declaration of the government under
which we live. This right no one pretends to deny. We need
not prove ourselves equal to Daniel Webster to enjoy this
privilege, for the ignorant Irishman in the ditch has all
the civil rights he has. We need not prove our muscular
power equal to this same Irishman to enjoy this privilege,
for the most tiny, weak, ill-shaped stripling of twenty-one
has all the civil rights of the Irishman. We have no
objection to discuss the question of equality, for we feel
that the weight of argument lies wholly with us, but we wish
the question of equality kept distinct from the question of
rights, for the proof of the one does not determine the
truth of the other. All white men in this country have the
same rights, however they may differ in mind, body, or
estate.
The right is ours. The question now is: how shall we get
possession of what rightfully belongs to us? We should not
feel so sorely grieved if no man who had not attained the
full stature of a Webster, Clay, Van Buren, or Gerrit Smith
could claim the right of the elective franchise. But to
have drunkards, idiots, horse-racing, rum-selling rowdies,
ignorant foreigners, and silly boys fully recognized, while
we ourselves are thrust out from all the rights that belong
to citizens, it is too grossly insulting to the dignity of
woman to be longer quietly submitted to. The right is ours.
Have it, we must. Use it, we will. The pens, the tongues,
the fortunes, the indomitable wills of many women are
already pledged to secure this right. The great truth that
no just government can be formed without the consent of the
governed we shall echo and re-echo in the ears of the unjust
judge, until by continual coming we shall weary him
There seems now to be a kind of moral stagnation in our
midst. Philanthropists have done their utmost to rouse the
nation to a sense of its sins. War, slavery, drunkenness,
licentiousness, gluttony, have been dragged naked before the
people, and all their abominations and deformities fully
brought to light, yet with idiotic laugh we hug those
monsters to our breasts and rush on to destruction. Our
churches are multiplying on all sides, our missionary
societies, Sunday schools, and prayer meetings and
innumerable charitable and reform organizations are all in
operation, but still the tide of vice is swelling, and
threatens the destruction of everything, and the battlements
of righteousness are weak against the raging elements of sin
and death. Verily, the world waits the coming of some new
element, some purifying power, some spirit of mercy and
love. The voice of woman has been silenced in the state,
the church, and the home, but man cannot fulfill his destiny
alone, he cannot redeem his race unaided. There are deep
and tender chords of sympathy and love in the hearts of the
downfallen and oppressed that woman can touch more
skillfully than man.
The world has never yet seen a truly great and virtuous
nation, because in the degradation of woman the very
fountains of life are poisoned at their source. It is vain
to look for silver and gold from mines of copper and lead.
It is the wise mother that has the wise son. So long as
your women are slaves you may throw your colleges and
churches to the winds. You can't have scholars and saints
so long as your mothers are ground to powder between the
upper and nether millstone of tyranny and lust. How seldom,
now, is a father's pride gratified, his fond hopes realized,
in the budding genius of his son! The wife is degraded,
made the mere creature of caprice, and the foolish son is
heaviness to his heart. Truly are the sins of the fathers
visited upon the children to the third and fourth
generation. God, in His wisdom, has so linked the whole
human family together that any violence done at one end of
the chain is felt throughout its length, and here, too, is
the law of restoration, as in woman all have fallen, so in
her elevation shall the race be recreated.
"Voices" were the visitors and advisers of Joan of Arc. Do
not "voices" come to us daily from the haunts of poverty,
sorrow, degradation, and despair, already too long unheeded.
Now is the time for the women of this country, if they would
save our free institutions, to defend the right, to buckle
on the armor that can best resist the keenest weapons of the
enemy -- contempt and ridicule. The same religious
enthusiasm that nerved Joan of Arc to her work nerves us to
ours. In every generation God calls some men and women for
the utterance of truth, a heroic action, and our work today
is the fulfilling of what has long since been foretold by
the Prophet -- Joel 2:28: "And it shall come to pass
afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh;
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy." We do not
expect our path will be strewn with the flowers of popular
applause, but over the thorns of bigotry and prejudice will
be our way, and on our banners will beat the dark storm
clouds of opposition from those who have entrenched
themselves behind the stormy bulwarks of custom and
authority, and who have fortified their position by every
means, holy and unholy. But we will steadfastly abide the
result. Unmoved we will bear it aloft. Undauntedly we will
unfurl it to the gale, for we know that the storm cannot
rend from it a shred, that the electric flash will but more
clearly show to us the glorious words inscribed upon it,
"Equality of Rights"
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