Frances D. Gage to Frederick Douglass, December 24, 1855

From Frederick Douglass's Paper.

REPLY TO GERRIT SMITH'S LETTER TO MRS. STANTON.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: DEAR SIR:—In your issue of December 1st, I find a letter from the Hon. Gerrit Smith to Elizabeth C. Stanton, in reference to the Woman's Rights Movement, showing cause, through labored columns, why it has proved a failure.

This article, though addressed to Mrs. Stanton, is an attack upon every one engaged in the cause; for he boldly asserts that the movement 'is not in proper hands, and that the proper hands are not yet to be found.' I will not deny the assertion, but must still claim the privilege of working in a movement that involves not only my own interest,

but the interests of my sex, and through us the interests of a whole humanity. And though I may be but a John the Baptist, unworthy to unloose the latchet of the shoes of those who are to come in short skirts to redeem the world, I still prefer that humble position to being a Peter to deny my Master, or a Gerrit Smith to assert that truth can fail.

I do not purpose to enter into a full criticism of Mr. Smith's long letter. He has made the whole battle-ground of the Woman's Rights Movement her dress. Nothing brighter, nothing nobler, than a few inches of calico or brocade added to or taken from her skirts, is to decide this great and glorious question—to give her freedom, or continue her a slave! This argument, had it come from one of less influence than Gerrit Smith, would have been simply ridiculous. But, coming from him, the almost oracle of a large portion of our reformers, it becomes worthy of an answer from every earnest woman in our cause. I will not say one word in defence of our present mode of dress. Not I; but, bad as it is, and cumbersome, and annoying, I still feel that we can wear it, and yet be lovers of liberty, speaking out our deep feeling, portraying our accumulated wrongs; saving ourselves for a time yet, from that antagonism which we must inevitably meet when we don the semi-male attire. We must own ourselves, under the law, first—own our bodies, our earnings, our genius, and our consciences; then we shall turn to the lesser matter of what shall be the garniture of the body. Was the old Roman less a man in his cumbrous toga, than Washington in his tights? Was Christ less a Christ in his vesture, woven without a seam, then he would have been in the suit of a Broadway dandy?

'Moreover, to concede to her rights of property, would be to benefit her comparatively little, unless she shall resolve to break out of her clothes prison, and undertake right earnestly, as earnestly as a man, to get property.' So says Gerrit Smith.— And he imputes the want of earnestness to her clothes! It is a new doctrine, that high and holy purposes go from without inward—that the garments of men or women govern and control their aspirations. But do not women now work right earnestly? Do not the German women and our market women labor right earnestly? Do not the wives of our farmers and mechanics toil? Is not the work of the mothers in our land as important as that of the fathers? 'Labor is the foundation of wealth.' The reason that our women are 'paupers' is not that they do not 'labor right earnestly,' but that the law gives their earnings into the hands of manhood. Mr. Smith says, 'That women are helpless is no wonder, so long as they are paupers.' He might add, no wonder that the slaves of the cotton plantation are helpless, so long as they are paupers. What reduces both the woman and the slave to this condition? The law which gives the husband and the master entire control of the person and earnings of each; the law that robs each of the rights and liberties that every 'free white male citizen' takes to himself as God-given. Truth falling from the lips of a Lucretia Mott in long skirts, is none the less truth, than if uttered by a Lucy Stone in short dress, or a Helen Maria Weber in pants and swallow-tail coat. And I cannot yet think so meanly of manly justice as to believe it will yield simply to a change of garments. Let us assert our right to be free. Let us get out of the prison-house of law. Let us own ourselves, our earnings, our genius; let us have power to control, as well as to earn and to own; then will each woman adjust her dress to her relations in life. Mr. Smith speaks of the Reforms as failures; what can he mean? 'The Temperance Reform still drags.' I have been in New York thirty-seven days, have given thirty-three lectures, have been at taverns, hotels, private houses, and depots, rode in stages, country wagons, omnibusses, carriages, and railroad cars, met the masses of people daily, and yet have not seen one drunken man, scarce as evidence that there was such a thing as intemperance in the Empire State. If the whole body has been diseased from childhood, and a cure be attempted, shall we cry out against the physician, that his effort is a failure, because the malady does not wholly disappear? Oh, no! let us rather cheer than discourage, while we see symptoms of amendment, hoping and trusting that each day will give renewed strength for the morrow, till the cure shall be made perfect. The accumulated ills of centuries cannot be removed in a day or a year. Shall we talk of the Anti-Slavery Cause as a 'failure,' while our whole great nation is shaking as if an Etna was boiling below? When did the North ever stand, as now, defiant of slavery? Anti-Slavery may be said to be written upon the 'chariots and the bells of the horses.' Our National Congress is nothing more nor less than a great AntiSlavery Convention. Not a Bill, no matter how small or how great its importance, but hinges upon the question of slavery. The Anti-Slavery Cause is no failure: RIGHT CANNOT FAIL.

'The next Woman's Rights Convention will be, as has every other Woman's Rights Convention, a failure, notwithstanding it will abound in righteous demands and noble sentiments.' So thinks Mr. Smith. Has any Woman's Rights Convention been a failure? No movement so radical, striking so boldly at the foundation of all social and political order, has ever come before the people, or ever so rapidly, widely diffused its doctrine. The reports of our conventions have travelled wherever newspapers are read, causing discussions for and against, and these discussions have elicited truth, and aroused public thought to the evils growing out of woman's position. New trades and callings are opening to us; in every town and village may be found advocates for the equality of privilege under the law, for every thinking, reasoning, human soul. Shall we talk of failure, because forty, twenty or seven years have not perfected all things? When intemperance shall have passed away, and the four millions chattel slaves shall sing songs of freedom; when woman shall be recognized as man's equal, socially, legally, and politically; there will yet be reforms and reformers, and men who will despair and look upon one branch of the reform as the great battle-ground, and talk of the failure of the eternal law of progress. Still, there will be stout hearts and willing hands to work on, honestly believing that truth and right are sustained by no single point, and their watchword will be onward. WE CANNOT FAIL, FOR OUR CAUSE IS JUST.

FRANCES D. GAGE.

ROCHESTER, Dec. 24, 1855.