Word in behalf of our Sex who are rather hardly dealt with by the Laws of England, which give such unlimited power to the husband to use his wife ill. I requested that our Legislators would consider our case, and as all men of Delicacy and Sentiment are averse to exercising the power they possess, just as there is a natural propensity in Human Nature to domination, I thot [sic] the most generous plan was to put it out of the power of the arbitrary and tyrannick to injure us with impunity by establishing some laws in our favour upon just and liberal Principles. I believe I even threatened fomenting a Rebellion in case we were not considered, and assured him we would not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we had neither voice nor representation.10 Mrs. Adams was greatly discouraged with the reception of her pleas for recognition. Its only effect was, she says, to elicit a little stanza which was meant for a rebuke, "something about charming by accepting and swaying by submitting." The letter did, however, bear fruit. Just one month later, Adams wrote, in reply to a letter asking for extension of the franchise to men who have no property: "Why exclude Women? ..Whence arises the right of the men to govern women without their consent? Because they are unacquainted with public affairs?...... Is it not equally true that men in general who are wholly destitute of property are also too little acquainted with public affairs....... Women have as good judgments, as independent minds, as those men who are destitute of property.' 11 There is no further evidence in literature of any interest on the part of Adams in the subject of feminism. Perhaps his conservatism, which became more pronounced as he grew older, was responsible for his silence. The Declaration of Independence, with its reiteration of the natural rights theory and emphasis on the essential equality of all men, led the liberals on both sides of the Atlantic to expect much from the "Great Experiment." As indicated above, with the formation of the constitution there came a decided reaction. Adams and other statesmen openly sponsored the aristocratic system. Franchise was to be granted on a selective basis, a condition that promised little improvement over the English practice. Thomas Jefferson favored universal male suffrage. On only one occasion did he voice any sentiments regarding woman's 10 19 Adams and Warren Letters, page 236. "Life and Works of John Adams, Vol. IX, page 375, et seq. participation in the government. A constituent requested him to have a woman appointed postmaster of a small town. Jefferson replied: The appointment of a woman to office is an innovation for which the public is not prepared; nor am I." If this conservatism is surprising in the liberal Jefferson, that of Benjamin Franklin is still more so. Although a professed admirer of intellect and strong-mindedness in the female sex, he maintained a stolid silence on the question of "femality." Indeed, almost the only public discussion of the subject of women's economic rights at the end of the eighteenth century was the newspaper war which arose out of the Crane-Condit controversy in New Jersey. An overlooked clause in the state constitution granting the franchise to all "inhabitants" worth fifty pounds who had met the residence qualifications was utilized in the state election of 1796 by William Crane, Federalist, of Elizabethtown, to enlist women's votes against his DemocraticRepublican opponent for the legislature, John Condit, of Newark. In spite of a large number of such votes, Crane was defeated. No one questioned the legality of the election, but the affair provoked a great deal of magazine and newspaper controversy. Perhaps the most interesting contribution was an anonymous poem written in the jingling meter of "Yankee Doodle," which attracted much attention:13 New Jersey, hail! thrice blessed state! thy genius still befriends thee; The Arts obedient round thee wait, In freedom's cause you gained applause, Let Democrat, with senseless prate Should ne'er with policies of state their gentle minds perplex, sir; Such vulgar prejudice we scorn their sex is no objection; New trophies shall our brows adorn, by Freedom of Election! 12In a letter to Gallatin, January 13, 1807, preserved in the Jefferson Pars, Mass. Historical Society. Smith College Studies in History, Vol. I, page 180 et seq. What tho' we read, in days of yore the woman's occupation, Was to direct the wheel and loom not to direct the nation; This narrow-minded policy by us both met detection; While woman's bound, men can't be free Oh, what parade those widows made! Their hands they laid on every maid and scarce spared wives or daughters! This precious clause of section laws And woman's rights, with all our mights To Congress, lo! widows shall go, Then freedom, hail! thy powers prevail No longer shall men tyrranize, and rule the world in terror; Now one and all proclaim the fall of tyrants! open wide your throats, In 1807, after some political scandals which roused the entire state, the clause in the state constitution was summarily repealed by an act of legislature. This was obviously unconstitutional, for new qualifications can be placed on the franchise only by an amendment to the original constitution. Strangely enough, the women of the state did not oppose this arbitrary proceeding. Clearly, their interests in equal rights for the sexes had yet to be awakened. In fact, there is in American literature no evidence of interest in extension of the franchise for many years to come. CHAPTER IV CHARLES BROCKDEN BROWN: THE DIALOGUES OF ALCUIN, 1798 The first American book devoted to the cause of women's rights was Alcuin: A Dialogue on the Rights of Women, written in 1796-7. The author, Charles Brockden Brown (1770-1750), was the first important American novelist and shared with the essayist Joseph Dennie (1768-1812) the distinction of being the first American definitely to adopt literature as a profession. Brown's notable work, including his six novels, Wieland, Ormond, Arthur Mervyn, Edgar Huntly, Clara Howard, and Jane Talbot, was all produced during the years from 1797 to 1801, spent largely in New York in the society of his intimate friends, the dramatist William Dunlap, and Elihu H. Smith, compiler of the earliest American anthology. These novels, particularly the earlier ones, were written under the combined influence of the contemporary Gothic school of fiction and of William Godwin's Caleb Williams and Political Justice. The influence of Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, together with that of Condorcet and the French economic theorists, is even more noticeable in Brown's first published work, the volume Alcuin, mentioned above. This work consists of two separate dialogues, of which only the first was published during the author's lifetime. This, written probably in the fall of 1796, was issued in a small volume of seventy-seven pages by T. & J. Swords, New York, in March, 1798, with a preface, or "advertisement" by E. H. Smith. It had apparently been submitted previously to Dennie's Farmer's Weekly Museum, at Walpole, New Hampshire; but doubtless on account of its radical views and its strictures on the Constitution, was not acceptable to the ultra-federalist editor of the Museum. An abbreviated and considerably modified version was simultaneously published in the 'See H. M. Ellis: Joseph Dennie and His Circle, 1915. For biographies of these two friends, see Oral S. Coad's excellent study of Dunlap, published by the Dunlap Society, 1917, and Marcia E. Bailey's forthcoming life of E. H. Smith. Weekly Magazine, at Philadelphia, in the numbers for March 17 and April 7, 1798. The Utopian second dialogue, written probably in 1797, was not published until 1815, when Dunlap included it in his Life of Brown, issued in that year.3 An analysis of the two dialogues, which were Brown's contribution to the conflict of Jeffersonian and Federalist ideas at the end of Washington's second administration, follows: DIALOGUE I Alcuin is a poor schoolmaster in Philadelphia. He has no friends; he is too self-conscious and bashful to approach any who could help to pass the tedium of his leisure time. He is conscious of his large feet, encased in homely, ill-made boots; he is ashamed of his rough fustian suit and his awkward, gawky body. He is, however, endowed with a sensitive soul. He is one who delights in "speculative science," who, perforce, is given to self-communion. Logic has long obsessed his waking and sleeping hours. He has applied the principles of Plato and Aristotle to modern problems, with the result of a thinking through to some startling conclusions. By some fortunate occurrence, Alcuin meets a certain Mrs. Elizabeth Carter, a woman reputed "wealthy, witty, and wise," whose salon is a resort for savant and beau monde alike. Being a woman of naturally kind impulses, she invites him to her house. With some misgivings he accepts, and spends many anxious minutes furbishing his slender stock of clothing. Eventually, he presents himself at the lady's home, where a company of the city's intellectuals have assembled. He feels ill at ease and seeks a remote corner, where he can listen without obtruding himself upon the notice of the assembly. The kindhearted hostess soon perceives his state; she leaves her other guests and offers Alcuin opportunity of conversing with her. For some minutes he can find nothing to say; matters For a discussion of the dates and circumstances of production of the Dialogues, see D. L. Clark: Brockden Brown and the Rights of Women, University of Texas Bulletin 2212, March, 1922. 'Called Edwin in the Weekly Magazine version of the "Diagolues." |