My daughter and I often talked of writing a story, she describing the characters and their environments and I attending to the philosophy and soliloquies. As I had no special duties in prospect, we decided that this was the time to make our experiment. Accordingly we hastened to the family homestead at Johnstown, New York, where we could be entirely alone. Friends on all sides wondered what had brought us there in the depth of the winter. But we kept our secret, and set ourselves to work with diligence, and after three months our story was finished to our entire satisfaction. We felt sure that everyone who read it would be deeply interested and that we should readily find a publisher. We thought of "Our Romance" the first thing in the morning and talked of it the last thing at night. But alas! friendly critics who read our story pointed out its defects, and in due time we reached their conclusions, and the unpublished manuscript now rests in a pigeonhole of my desk. We had not many days to mourn our disappointment, as Madge was summoned to her Western home, and Miss Anthony arrived armed and equipped with bushels of documents for vol. III. of "The History of Woman Suffrage." The summer and autumn of 1884 Miss Anthony and I passed at Johnstown, working diligently on the History, indulging only in an occasional drive, a stroll round the town in the evening, or a ride in the open street cars.
Mrs. Devereux Blake was holding a series of conventions, at this time, through the State of New York, and we urged her to expend some of her missionary efforts in my native town, which she did with good results. As the school election was near at hand Miss Anthony and I had several preliminary meetings to arouse the women to their duty as voters, and to the necessity of nominating some woman for trustee. When the day for the election arrived the large upper room of the Academy was filled with ladies and gentlemen. Some timid souls who should have been there stayed at home, fearing there would be a row, but everything was conducted with decency and in order. The chairman, Mr. Rosa, welcomed the ladies to their new duties in a very complimentary manner. Donald McMartin stated the law as to what persons were eligible to vote in school elections. Mrs. Horace Smith filled the office of teller on the occasion with promptness and dignity, and Mrs. Elizabeth Wallace Yost was elected trustee by a majority of seven. It is strange that intelligent women, who are supposed to feel some interest in the question of education, should be so indifferent to the power they possess to make our schools all that they should be.
This was the year of the presidential campaign. The Republicans and Democrats had each held their nominating conventions, and all classes participated in the general excitement. There being great dissatisfaction in the Republican ranks, we issued a manifesto: "Stand by the Republican Party," not that we loved Blaine more, but Cleveland less. The latter was elected, therefore it was evident that our efforts did not have much influence in turning the tide of national politics, though the Republican papers gave a broad circulation to our appeal. Dowden's description of the poet Shelley's efforts in scattering one of his suppressed pamphlets, reminded me of ours. He purchased bushels of empty bottles, in which he placed his pamphlets; having corked them up tight, he threw the bottles into the sea at various fashionable watering places, hoping they would wash ashore. Walking the streets of London in the evening he would slip his pamphlets into the hoods of old ladies' cloaks, throw them in shop doors, and leave them in cabs and omnibuses. We scattered ours in the cars, inclosed them in every letter we wrote or newspaper we sent through the country.
The night before election Mr. Stanton and Professor Horace Smith spoke in the Johnstown courthouse, and took rather pessimistic views of the future of the Republic should James G. Blaine be defeated. Cleveland was elected, and we still live as a nation, and are able to digest the thousands of foreign immigrants daily landing at our shores. The night of the election a large party of us sat up until two o'clock to hear the news. Mr. Stanton had long been one of the editorial writers on the New York Sun, and they sent him telegrams from that office until a late hour. However, the election was so close that we were kept in suspense several days, before it was definitely decided.
Miss Anthony left in December, 1884, for Washington, and I went to work on an article for the North American Review, entitled, "What has Christianity done for Women?" I took the ground that woman was not indebted to any form of religion for the liberty she now enjoys, but that, on the contrary, the religious element in her nature had always been perverted for her complete subjection. Bishop Spaulding, in the same issue of the Review, took the opposite ground, but I did not feel that he answered my points.
In January, 1885, my niece Mrs. Baldwin and I went to Washington to attend the Annual Convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association. It was held in the Unitarian church on the 20th, 21st, and 22d days of that month, and went off with great success, as did the usual reception given by Mrs. Spofford at the Riggs House. This dear friend, one of our most ardent coadjutors, always made the annual convention a time for many social enjoyments. The main feature in this convention was the attempt to pass the following resolutions:
"Whereas, The dogmas incorporated in religious creeds derived from Judaism, teaching that woman was an after-thought in the creation, her sex a misfortune, marriage a condition of subordination, and maternity a curse, are contrary to the law of God (as revealed in nature), and to the precepts of Christ, and,
"Whereas, These dogmas are an insidious poison, sapping the vitality of our civilization, blighting woman, and, through her, paralyzing humanity; therefore be it
"Resolved, That we call on the Christian ministry, as leaders of thought, to teach and enforce the fundamental idea of creation, that man was made in the image of God, male and female, and given equal rights over the earth, but none over each other. And, furthermore, we ask their recognition of the scriptural declaration that, in the Christian religion, there is neither male nor female, bond nor free, but all are one in Christ Jesus."
As chairman of the committee I presented a series of resolutions, impeaching the Christian theology—as well as all other forms of religion, for their degrading teachings in regard to woman—which the majority of the committee thought too strong and pointed, and, after much deliberation, they substituted the above, handing over to the Jews what I had laid at the door of the Christians. They thought they had so sugar-coated my ideas that the resolutions would pass without discussion. But some Jews in the convention promptly repudiated this impression of their faith and precipitated the very discussion I desired, but which our more politic friends would fain have avoided.
From the time of the decade meeting in Rochester, in 1878, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Edward M. Davis, and I had sedulously labored to rouse women to a realization of their degraded position in the Church, and presented resolutions at every annual convention for that purpose. But they were either suppressed or so amended as to be meaningless. The resolutions of the annual convention of 1885, tame as they are, got into print and roused the ire of the clergy, and upon the following Sunday, Dr. Patton of Howard University preached a sermon on "Woman and Skepticism," in which he unequivocally took the ground that freedom for woman led to skepticism and immorality. He illustrated his position by pointing to Hypatia, Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, George Eliot, Harriet Martineau, Mme. Roland, Frances Power Cobbe, and Victoria Woodhull. He made a grave mistake in the last names mentioned, as Mrs. Woodhull was a devout believer in the Christian religion, and surely anyone conversant with Miss Cobbe's writings would never accuse her of skepticism. His sermon was received with intense indignation, even by the women of his own congregation. When he found what a whirlwind he had started, he tried to shift his position and explain away much that he had said. We asked him to let us have the sermon for publication, that we might not do him injustice. But as he contradicted himself flatly in trying to restate his discourse, and refused to let us see his sermon, those who heard him were disgusted with his sophistry and tergiversation.
However, our labors in this direction are having an effect. Women are now making their attacks on the Church all along the line. They are demanding their right to be ordained as ministers, elders, deacons, and to be received as delegates in all the ecclesiastical convocations. At last they ask of the Church just what they have asked of the State for the last half century—perfect equality—and the clergy, as a body, are quite as hostile to their demands as the statesmen.
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