To be the builder of a fair and comely character; to chisel out a work that shall please the eye of God Himself, in whose estimation Beauty, being His own attribute, is a most holy thing; to see that work of beauty take its place in the well-filled gallery of eternity, and to know that it is your own immortal monument—is this not scope enough, honor enough, praise and glory enough? If women would but rise to the height of their real mission, and faithfully and earnestly assume the rights and fulfil the duties which God has specially devolved upon them, they would so lead man and society up to a higher point that the claims they put forth need not be discussed for an hour; because, then, having proved their adaptability to make good use of every lawful right, society, which in the end always adjusts its forces properly and instinctively, will have tacitly fallen into the necessity or the feasibility of granting them.
Let man erect his scientific formulas, his schools of philosophy, his structures of reason and thought; let him bid the giant forces of nature go in harness for his schemes of improvement or aggrandizement; and by all means let the intellect of woman be cultivated to comprehend intelligently the marvels of man's work; let her, if she will, measure the stellar distances, study the mechanical principles or the learned professions, make a picture or write a book; and there have been women, true and noble women, who have done all these, women who have proved themselves capable of as high attainments, as keen and subtile thought as man; but let her never for such as these abdicate her own nobler work, neglecting the greater for the less. If a woman has a special gift, let her exercise it; if she has a particular mission, let her work it out. Few women, though, are of this elect class. I do not despise, but rather encourage, natural gifts. But I would have women never forget that it is not for what they may possibly add to the sum of human knowledge that the world values them, primarily. That some man is as likely to do as not; but what women fail to do in their own peculiar sphere, no man can possibly do.
When I aver that woman was intended to be a predominant influence in the world through her moral and spiritual being, principally, I must not be understood as depreciating the value to her of mere subjective knowledge. So far from this, I believe that her means of acquiring knowledge of all kinds should be limited only by her capacity. The more her intellect is enlightened and disciplined, the better will she be qualified to exert that refining, elevating influence which is expected of her. There can be no beauty without the element of strength; there can be no love worth the name without knowledge. Were her sense of justice, her logical powers, her reflective faculties carefully trained and exercised, her peculiar womanly graces of soul would shine with tenfold lustre. I mean, simply, that knowledge is specially valuable to her objectively—as a means, and the best means, to the highest end of her being, which is concrete rather than abstract.
Briefly, I say, then, it is in the great departments of ethics, of æsthetics, of religious and spiritual things, that woman is a vital power in human life.
I have thrown out these general preliminary thoughts concerning the nature of woman, and her relations to man and to society, chiefly with reference to a phase of the subject which has not seemed to engage the attention either of women themselves or of those who assume to advocate their cause. It is the important consideration whether, in a free and republican land, woman holds any certain and special relation toward the Government. In other words, have American women any vital share or interest in this grand, free Government of ours? With all the emphasis of a profound conviction, I, answer, Yes. Such a touching and intimate interest as no women ever had before in any Government under the sun. And why?
Because the principles embodied in and represented by it have made her what she is, and they alone can make her what she hopes to be.
If it be true that the position of woman in society is a sure test of its civilization, then is our American society already in the van of progress. Nowhere else in the world is woman so free, so respected, so obeyed, so beloved; nowhere else is the ideal of womanhood so chivalrously worshipped and protected. In the spirit of our political theory, that no class of society is to be regarded as permanently and necessarily disabled from progress and elevation—to which, in our practice, we have hitherto made but one wicked and shameful exception—and under the influence of the powerful tendency of our system to individualism, woman has been allowed a freedom heretofore unparalleled, and onward and upward is still the word.
I do not claim perfection for our system. But I say we have the germs of the healthiest national development. All that remains is to carry forward those germs to maturity, and let them show their legitimate results unhampered. That is what we want, what we claim. Society here is unformed, in the rough. We lack the outward grace and polish belonging only to old societies. We shall yet attain these, as well as some other desirable things; but I believe that in no other country in the world is there so much genuine, delicate, universal devotion manifested for woman as among the Americans. Have you seen a boy of fourteen, shy, awkward, uncouth in manner, rough in speech, but with a great, tender heart thumping in his bosom? And did you know of the idolatrous worship he could not wholly conceal for some fair, sweet, good girl older than himself, a woman, even—a worship, which was not love, if love be other than a high and tender sentiment, but which was capable of filling his being to overflow with its glory and richness? I liken our American chivalry to this. And it is this instinctive natural politeness of our men toward women that, as much as anything else, keeps us from being rude and unrefined while yet in our first adolescence.
I am aware that, hitherto, the South has laid claim to the lion's share of this gallant spirit, as it has of many other polite and social qualities. But we do not so readily now, as a few years ago, yield to these Southern assumptions. We know now for just how much they stand. And we know, too, in the better light of this hour, that it is not possible for a very high and pure ideal of womanhood to be conceived in the atmosphere of a system which, as slavery does, persistently, on principle, and on a large scale, degrades a portion of the sex, no matter how weak, poor, defenceless. Rather, the more defenceless the greater is the wrong, the shame. I am not lauding that gallantry which stands in polite posture in the presence of a lady, hat in hand, and with its selectest bow and smile, and in the same breath turns to commit the direst offences against the peace and purity of womanhood; but that true and hearty, though simple and unostentatious, reverence for the sex, that teaches men to regard all women as worthy of freedom, respect, and protection, simply by virtue of their womanhood. I say not that this chivalry is a Southern, but that it is an American trait. As such I am proud of it.
But does this high and honored place they hold in the hearts of their countrymen devolve no corresponding responsibility upon American women? Is it not a momentous inquiry how far they fall short of the high and commanding standard of thought and action demanded of them in order to meet this heavy obligation? It seems to me that the time is fully ripe for the clearer perception of the fact, that because women are not men, it does not follow that they are not in an important sense citizens. And this, without any reference to the question whether they should be permitted to vote and to legislate; though, as to the former, I do not know of a single valid objection to the exercise of the privilege, while there are several weighing in its favor; and as to the latter, it seems to me that one single consideration would forever, under the present constitution of things, debar her from a share in direct and positive legislation. It is as follows: The central idea of all properly constituted society, without which society would be an incoherent chaos, and governments themselves but the impotent lords of anarchy and misrule, is the home. Of the home, woman, from the very nature of the case, is the inspiriting genius, the ever-present and ever-watchful guardian. And the home, with its purities, its sanctities, its retiracies, its reticences, is far removed from the noise and wranglings of popular assemblies, the loud ambitions and selfish chicaneries of political arenas. The very foundation, pivotal ideas of human nature would be undermined by such publicity. The value of the home, as the nursery of whatever is pure, lovely, holy in the human soul, rests absolutely on the preservation of the modest purity and grace of woman.
How, then, is woman's influence as a citizen in a republican land to be exercised, if she be excluded from positive legislation? I answer, by the moral effect of her personal influence in the formation of mind and character; by her work as the great educator in the home and in society. If hers be not a moral and spiritual influence, it is none at all for good. And of all the powers for good in a republic, this is the strongest, most beneficent, did woman rightly comprehend the issue.
The purity, safety, and perpetuity of a free government rest, ultimately, not so much on forms of law, on precedents, on the ascendency of this or that party or administration, but on the intelligence, morality, and devotion to freedom of the people. What should woman care to legislate, when she may wield such an engine of power as education puts into her hands; when she may mould the minds and inspire the souls of those who are to be the future legislators; when she may, even now, put forth a direct and immediate influence upon those who are the legislators of the present time? For her influence on society is twofold, direct and reflex, present and prospective; it is the most powerful known, the most subtile and secret and determining, viz., personal influence.
To this end, therefore, that she may influence in the right direction, women need to inform themselves, to acquire a knowledge of the principles on which our system rests, and to become thoroughly imbued with their spirit. This will necessitate an acquaintance with the nature and details of our political creed, of which our women, especially, are lamentably ignorant. How many out of every hundred, do you suppose, have even read the Constitution, for instance? You may say that the majority of men have never studied it either, even of the voters. I admit the fact. There is a terrible lack of information among even men on public subjects. But I think this: if women were to educate themselves and their children, all whom they influence, indeed, to make these subjects a matter of personal interest, instead of regarding them as foreign matters, well enough for lawyers and politicians, perhaps, to understand, or for those who expect to fill office, but of no manner of importance to a person in strictly private life, this ignorance would come to an end. This shifting of personal responsibility by the great majority is the bane of our system. The truth is, no one, in a republican government, can lead an absolutely private career. As one who exercises the elective franchise, or one who influences the same, be it man or woman, there is no dodging the responsibility of citizenship. A better State of information on public affairs, also, will induce a correct conception of a certain class of ideas which, more than any others, perhaps, tend to strengthen, deepen, broaden, solidify the mental powers—ideas of absolute law and justice. As I have before said, the female mind is deficient in this particular.
To understand their government and institutions, then, is the first step in the attainment of the standard demanded of American women; or, in other words, an increase of political knowledge—a more thorough political education.
Another step is, the enlargement and strengthening of their patriotism. The former step, too, will conduce to this, and be its natural consequence. I do not mean alone that loose and vagrant sentiment which commonly passes for patriotism, which is aroused at some particular occasion and slumbers the rest of the time; which is spasmodic, temporary, impulsive, and devoid of principle; but that love of country founded on knowledge and conviction; a living faith of the heart based upon duty and principle; and which is, therefore, all-pervading, abiding, intelligent, governing thought and action, and conforming the life to the inner spirit. That sort of patriotism that lives as well in peace time as in war time; that makes the heart throb as sympathetically in behalf of country every day in the year as on the Fourth of July; that leads us to conform our habits of life and thought to the spirit of our institution and policy; that makes us as jealous of the honor, the consistent greatness of our country when all men speak well of her, as when her foes are bent upon her destruction. This habit of mind is what I mean, rather than any transient emotion of heart; an enlightened and habitual spirit of patriotism.
I give American women all credit due them for the patriotic temper they have evinced since this war began. I say that never have women showed more loyalty and zeal for country than the women of the North. Let sanitary fairs and commissions, let soldiers' aid societies from one end of the land to the other, and in every nook and corner of it, let our hospitals everywhere attest this heartfelt love and devotion on the part of our women. It is a noble spectacle, and my heart thrills at the thought of it. We have many noble ones who will stand in history along with England's Florence Nightingale and the 'Mother of the Gracchi,' those eternally fair and tender women, fit for the love and worship of the race. The want is not in the feeling of patriotism, but in the habitual principle and duty of the same. Since the war began, the fire has not slackened. But how was it before the war, and how will it be after it?
To prove what I say, let me dwell a moment on two or three of the most prominent faults of our women, pronounced such by all the world. Of these, the most mischievous and glaring, the most ruinous in thousands of cases, is extravagance. Wastefulness is almost become a trait of our society. American women, especially, are profuse and lavish of money in dress, in equipage, in furniture, in houses, in entertainments, in every particular of life. Everywhere this foolish and wasteful use of money challenges the surprise and sarcasm of the observant foreign tourist through our country. Perhaps the largeness and immensity of our land, its resources and material, as well as the wonderful national advance we have already made, tends to cultivate in our people a feeling of profusion and a habit of extravagant display; but it is not in sympathy either with our creed or our profession.
Were the money thus heedlessly expended made for them by slaves whom they had from infancy been taught to regard as created solely to make money for them to use and enjoy, this extravagant waste of money, while none the less selfish and inexcusable, would appear to grow spontaneously out of the arbitrary rule of slavery; or, if it had descended to them by legal or ancestral inheritance, there might be some show of reason for using it carelessly, though very small sense in so doing. But in a land where labor is the universal law; where, if a man makes money, he must work and sweat for its possession; when fortunes do not arise by magic, but must be built up slowly, painfully, at the expense of the nerve and sinew, the brain and heart of the builders, and these builders, not slaves, but our fathers, husbands, brothers; when a close attention to money-making is rapidly becoming a national badge, and is in danger of eating out entirely what is of infinitely more value than wealth—a high national integrity and conscience—and of sinking the immaterial and intellectual in the material and sensual; in such circumstances as these, I say, and under such temptations and dangers, it is a sin, an unnatural crime, to squander what costs so dear.
Volumes might be written upon the frightful consequences of this extravagance in money matters, this living too fast and beyond their means, of which American women, especially, are guilty. Great financial crises, in which colossal schemes burst like bubbles, and vast estates are swallowed up like pebbles in the sea; commercial bankruptcies, in which honorable names are bandied on the lips of common rumor, and white reputations blackened by public suspicion; minds, that started in life with pure and honest principles, determined to win fortune by the straight path of rectitude, gradually growing distorted, gradually letting go of truth, honor, uprightness, and ending by enthroning gold in the place made vacant by the departed virtues; hearts, that were once responsive to the fair and beautiful in life and in the universe, that throbbed in unison with love, pity, kindness, and were wont to thrill through and through at a noble deed or a fine thought, now pulseless and hard as the nether millstone; souls, that once believed in God, heaven, good, and had faith and hope in immortality, now worshipping commercial success and its exponent, money, and living and dying with their eager but fading eyes fixed earthward, dustward!
Oh, it is a fearful thought that woman's extravagant desires and demands may thus kill all that is best and highest in those who should be her nearest and dearest. Yet, if this wide-spread evil of wastefulness is to be checked, it must be begun in the home, and by its guardian, woman. There is a movement lately inaugurated, looking to retrenchment in the matter of unnecessary expenditure, which, if it is to be regarded other than as a temporary expedient, is worthy of the patriotic enthusiasm which called it forth. I allude to the dress-reform movement made by the loyal women of the great Northern cities. The spirit of this movement I could wish to see illustrated both during the continuance of and after the war. It is this economical habit of mind for the sake of patriotic principle, that I regard as a great step in the attainment of the desired standard for American women.
Another plain fault of our women, and one which in a measure is the cause of the fault above noticed, is the wild chase after and copying of European fashions. We are accused of being a nation of copyists. This is more than half true. And why we should be, I cannot understand. Are we never to have anything original, American? Are we always to be content to be servile imitators of Europe in our art, literature, social life, everything, except mere mechanical invention? I am thankful that we are beginning to have an art, a literature, of our very own. Let us also have a fashion, that shall be, distinctively, if not entirely, American. There is surely enough of us, of our splendid country, our institutions, our theories, our brave, free people, to build for ourselves, from our own foundation, and with our own material. But American Women have yet to inspire society with this patriotic ambition.
Not what is becoming or suitable to her, but what is the fashion, does the American woman buy; not what she can afford to purchase, but what her neighbors have, is too commonly the criterion. This constant pursuit of Fashion, with her incessant changes, this emulation of their neighbors in the manifold ways in which money and time can be alike wasted, and not the necessary and sacred duties of home, the personal attention and effort which the majority of American women have to give to their household affairs, produce that lack of time that is offered as an excuse for the neglect of the duty of self-culture. This it is which fritters away thought and the taste for higher things, leaving the mind blank and nerveless except when thus superficially excited.
This duty of self-culture I would notice as one of the demands of the times upon American women in the attainment of the proposed standard. A wide, liberal, generous self-culture, of intellect, of taste, of conscience, for the sake of the better fulfilment of the mission to which, as an American citizen, every woman in the land is called. We do not begin to realize this. It is a great defect in our social system, that, when a woman has left school and settled down in life, she considers it the signal for her to quit all mental acquisition except what she may gather from her desultory reading, and, henceforth, her family and her immediate neighborhood absorb her whole soul under ordinary circumstances. The great majority of our countrywomen thus grow careworn, narrow-minded, self-absorbed. Now this is not right—it is not necessary. A woman's first, most important duty is in her home; but this need not clip the wings of her spirit, so that thought and affection cannot go out into the great world, and feel themselves a part of its restless, throbbing, many-sided life; brain and heart need not stagnate, even if busy, work-a-day life does claim her first endeavors. Indeed, the great danger to our women is not so much that they will become trifling and frivolous, as that they will become narrow-minded and selfish.
But these vices of extravagance and excessive devotion to fashion, of which I have spoken, are due, largely, to a still more radical defect in our social education. I mean its anti-republican spirit. This is our crowning absurdity. We are good democrats—in theory. It is a pity that our practice does not bear out our theory, for the sake of the homely virtue of consistency. To a great many otherwise sensible people our simple republican ways are distasteful, and they are apt to look with, admiring, envious eyes on the conventional life of foreign lords, not considering how burdened with forms it is, and full of the selfishness, the pride and arrogance of the privileged and titled few, at the bitter expense of the suffering, untitled many. The aping of aristocratic pretensions has been a much-ridiculed foible of American women. It is certain that American society needs republicanizing in all its grades. We have widely departed from the simplicity of the early days and of the founders of the republic, in social life, just as in our political course we had suffered the vital essence of our organic law to become a dead thing, and the whole machinery of the Government to work reversely to its intention. And the cause has been the same in each case. The spirit of a government and the theories embodying it are the reflection of the social condition of a given age and people, so that the one will never be of a higher order than the other; while it is, also, equally true, that the best and most advanced political theories may be suffered to languish in operation, or become wholly dormant, from the influence of social causes. Thus it was that the demoralising effect of human slavery did, up to the time of the great shock which the nation received in the spring of 1861—a shock which galvanized it into life, and sent the before vitiated blood coursing hotly, and, at last, healthfully through all the veins and arteries of the national body—persistently encroach alike upon Government and society. The slime of that serpent was over everything in the North as well as the South, and if it did not kill out the popular virtue and patriotism as completely here as there, where it is intimately interwoven with the life of the people, the difference is due to that very cause, as well as to the inextinguishable vitality that God has conferred on the genius of human liberty, so that when betrayed, hunted, starved, outlawed, she yet seeks some impregnable fastness, and subsists on manna from the Divine Hand. This, then, is the fourth step in the attainment of the true ideal of character for American women—the effort to renew society in the actual simplicity of our republican institutions. Women, American women, should hold dear as anything in life the preservation and purity of those blessed institutions, guaranteeing to them as they do all their eminent privileges, and founded as they are on that emancipating genius of Christianity, which, through every age, has pointed a finger of hope, love, encouragement to woman as a chief instrument in the world's promised elevation and enfranchisement.
While dwelling upon the faults of American women, I would at the same time do full credit to their virtues. I believe that they occupy as high a place as any women in the world, even a higher. But I trust that they will rise to the height of the demands which the changed times and the exigencies of the situation are pressing upon them, and will continue to press. This war has clearly and forcibly eliminated truths and principles which the long rule of the slave power had wellnigh eclipsed; it has been a very spear of Ithuriel, at whose keen touch men and principles start up in their real, not their simulated character. During its three years of progress, the national education has been advanced beyond computation. When it is over, things, ideas, will not go back to the old standpoint. Then will arise the new conditions, demands, possibilities. If there is one truth that has been unmistakably developed by the war, it is the controlling moral power and sanction which a free government derives from woman. And this has been shown not only in the influence for good which the loyal women of the North have contributed for the aid of the Government, but with equal power in the influence for evil which the Southern women have exerted for its destruction. I suppose it is true that this war for slavery has received its strongest, fiercest continuing impulses from the women of the South. Nothing could exceed the enthusiasm, the persistency, the heroic endurance, the self-sacrifice they have manifested. Only had it been in a good cause!
Just here let me say a word in behalf of these Southern women. There is a disposition on the part of the Northern public, forming their opinion from the instances of fierce spite and vindictiveness, of furious scorn and hatred, which have been chronicled in the reports of army correspondents and in the sensation items of the newspapers, to regard them as little short of demons in female shape. All this is naturally working a corresponding dislike and ill-feeling among the masses North. To such I would say: These Southern sisters are not demons, but made of the same flesh and blood, and passions and affections as yourselves. The difference between you is purely one of circumstances and training, of locality—above all, of education and institutions. It is as true that institutions are second nature as that habit is.
The peculiar faults of Southern women they share with their Northern sisters, only in a vastly enhanced degree; and besides these, they have others, born of and nurtured by that terrible slavery system under whose black shadow they live and die. Their idleness, their lack of neatness and order, their dependence, their quick and sometimes cruel passions, their unreason, their contempt of inferiors, their vanity and arrogance, their ignorance, their lightness and superficiality, are all the outgrowth of its diabolical influences. They are, in fact, no more idle, thriftless, passionate, or supercilious, than Northern women would be in similar circumstances. It is too much the habit among the unreflecting, in judging of the Southern masses in their hostile attitude toward their lawful Government, to give less weight than it deserves to the necessary and inevitable tendency upon the mind and character of such an institution as African slavery; and to let the blame be of a personal and revengeful nature, which should fall most heavily on the sin itself, the dire crime against God and society, against himself and his fellow man, which the individual is all his life taught is no crime but a positive good. This slavery is woman's peculiar curse, bearing almost equally with its deadly, hideous weight on the white woman of the dominant class as upon the black slave woman. And yet how deluded they are! If that curse does come to an utter end in the South, as it surely will, I shall hail, as one of the grandest results of its extinction, next to the justice due the oppressed people of color, the emancipation of the white women of that fair land, all of them, slaveholders and non-slaveholders, from an influence too withering and deadly for language to depict. Oh, when shall that scapegoat, slavery, with its failures and losses and shortcomings, its frauds and sins and woes, be sent off into the wilderness of non-existence, to be heard from nevermore? God speed the hour!
But with all their faults, they have many and shining virtues. Though the ideal of a Southern woman commonly received at the North and abroad, is not true to the life, being neither so perfect nor so imperfect as their eulogists, on the one hand, and their detractors, on the other, would fain make it to be, there is yet much, very much, to elicit both love and admiration in her character.
The Southern female mind is precocious, brilliant, impressible, ardent, impulsive, fanciful. The quickness of parts of many girls of fifteen is astonishing. I used often to think, what splendid women they would make, with the training and facilities of our Northern home and school education. But, as it was, they went under a cloud at seventeen, marrying early, and either sinking into the inanition of plantation life, or having their minds dissipated in a vain and frivolous round of idle and selfish gayeties. I compare their intellects to a rich tropical plant, which blossoms gorgeously and early, but rarely fruitens. The Southern women are, for the most part, a capable but undeveloped race of beings. With their precocity, like the exuberance of their vegetation, and with their quick, impassioned feelings, like their storm-freighted air, always bearing latent lightning in its bosom, they might become a something rich, rare, and admirable; but, never bringing thought up to the point of reflection; never learning self-control, nor the necessity of holding passion in abeyance; never getting beyond the degrading influence of intercourse with a race whose stolidity and servility, the inevitable result of their condition, on the one hand, are both the cause and effect of the habit of irresponsible power and selfish disregard of right fostered in the ruling class, on the other—what could be expected of them but to become splendid abortions?