Abolitionists

"But the Bible, we are told, reveals this great mystery. Where Nature is dumb, and Man ignorant, Revelation speaks in the authoritative voice of prophecy."

"Astronomy tells us of the wonders of the Solar System—the eternally revolving planets, the ra­pidity and certainty of their motions, the distance from planet to planet, from star to star. It pre­dicts with astonishing and marvellous precision the phenomena of eclipses, the visibility upon our Earth of comets, and proves the immutable law of gravitation, but is entirely silent on the exist­ence of a God."

"The Universe is one vast chemical laboratory, in constant operation, by her internal forces. The laws or principles of attraction, cohesion, and re­pulsion, produce in never-ending succession the phenomena of composition, decomposition, and recomposition. The how, we are too ignorant to understand, too modest to presume, and too honest to profess. Had man been a patient and im­partial inquirer, and not with childish presump­tion attributed everything he could not under­stand, to supernatural causes, given names to hide his ignorance, but observed the operations of Na­ture, he would undoubtedly have known more, been wiser, and happier."

"Human freedom and true democracy are identical."

"I go for emancipation of all kinds — white and black, man and woman. Humanity’s children are, in my estimation, all one and the same family, inheriting the same earth; therefore there should be no slaves of any kind among them. There are ties that bind man to man far stronger than the ties of nation — than the political and commercial ties — an even stronger than the ties of relationship; and these are the ties of humanity. Humanity, the great mother of all, has thrown around us ties, sympathies and feelings which are more endearing, more effectual, and more noble, than any other than have ever bound man to man."

"the great act of emancipation of 800,000 human beings has shown to the world that the African race are not only capable of taking care of themselves, but are capable of enjoying peacefully as much liberty and as much freedom as the white men. Thus it has done far more towards the cause of freedom — towards emancipation from all kinds of slavery — than the Declaration of Independence did. For in spite of that Declaration — in sadness and sorrow do I say it — the United States of America are guilty of outrage and recreancy to their own principles in retaining slavery; while Great Britain, without that Declaration, having yet a great deal of oppression and tyranny in her midst, has shown a noble example to the world in emancipating all her chattel slaves."

"A gentleman once asked me in the South, what I thought, on the whole, of South Carolina. I told him: ”I am sorry to say that you are a century, at least, behind in the means of civilization.” He wanted to know why I thought so. I said: “The only civilization you have exists among your slaves: for if industry and the mechanical arts are the great criterion of civilization (and I believe they are), then certainly the slaves are the only civilized ones among you, because they do all the work.”"

"the suffrage is not only a badge of citizenship but a mental and moral elevator that prepares the possessor of it to self-respect and dignity and prepares him for greater usefulness and higher and nobler aims in the progress of Humanity."

"thirty or forty years ago, the press was not sufficiently educated in the rights of women, even to notice, much less to report speeches as it does now"

"We have been told, to-day, that it was a woman that agitated Great Britain to its very centre, before emancipation could be effected in her colonies. Woman must go hand in hand with man in every great and noble cause, if success would be insured."

"Our friend William Lloyd Garrison has repeated to us the many blessings resulting from upright actions. Yes, every act brings its own reward or its own punishment. Every good act produces its own corresponding reward, and every bad act its corresponding punishment. How, then, must not only the South but the North be punished in consequence of that great, immeasurable wrong of Slavery? Oh, the shame and outrage that, for one single moment, that great blot should be suffered to remain on the otherwise beautiful escutcheon of this republic! But permit me to say that the slaves of the South are not the only people that are in bondage. All women are excluded from the enjoyment of that liberty which your Declaration of Independence asserts to be the inalienable right of all. The same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, that pertains to man, pertains to woman also. For what is life without liberty? Which of you here before me would not willingly risk his or her life, if in danger of being made a slave? Emancipation from every kind of bondage is my principle. I go for the recognition of human rights, without distinction of sect, party, sex, or color."

"justice, like charity, must begin at home."

"Rose has been called the translator of the women's rights movement because of her knowledge of French, German, and Polish"

"I ask for a law of Divorce…to prevent the crimes and immoralities now practiced…too often under the name of marriage…I believe in true marriages, and therefore I ask for a law to free men and women from false ones."

"“For here lies the corner stone of all the injustices done woman, the wrong idea from which all other wrongs proceed. She is not acknowledged as mistress of herself. For her cradle to her grave she is another's. We do indeed need and demand the other rights of which I have spoken, but let us first obtain ourselves.”"

"Not long after we arrived here, nearly 28 years ago, we saw an advertisement for a meeting at Tammany Hall to discuss Robert Owen's Community principles. Being interested in the subject we attended the meeting, but to our surprise, and I must say regret, the various speakers, instead of debating Owen's Community, debated Owen. I told them that, according to the notice, principles and not persons were to be discussed. In every controversy it is well to keep the two distinct."

"What rights have women? …(they are) punished for breaking laws which they have no voice in making. All avenues to enterprise and honors are closed against them. If poor, they must drudge for a mere pittance— if of the wealthy classes, they must be dressed dolls of fashion — parlor puppets…"

"We have heard a great deal of our Pilgrim Fathers…but who has heard of the Pilgrim Mothers? Did they not endure as many perils, encounter as many hardships, and do as much to form and fashion the institutions of New England as the Pilgrim Fathers? And were not their trials, and is not their glory equally great? Yet they are hardly remembered."

""…The nature of the Jew is governed by the same laws as human nature in general…In England, France, Germany and in the rest of Europe (except Spain), in spite of the barbarous treatment and deadly persecution they suffered, they have lived and spread and outlived much of the poisonous rancor and prejudice against them, and Europe has been none the worse on their account. Of course, where they are still under the Christian lash, as in Rome, where for the glory of God, their children even are stolen from them, self-preservation forces them to be narrow and exclusive. In other countries more civilized and just, they are so too; they progress just as fast as the world they live in will permit them."

"Who that has human blood flowing in his veins, who that ever felt the warm gush of affection thrill his being, can hesitate whether to throw his weight into the balance of life and freedom, or that of chains, oppression or death?....to him who fears only your opposition...silence is consent. And silence where life and liberty is at stake, where by a timely protest we could stay the destroyer's hand, and do not do so, is as criminal as giving actual aid to the oppressor, for it answers his purpose..."

"human nature (Jewish included) cannot remain tied down to all eternity."

"suffragists in most of the first wave, certainly its 19th century years, were overwhelmingly Protestant, as was the country. The one really important Jewish-born woman of note in the early years, about whom I have written, was Ernestine Rose, born Esther Potowski in Russian Poland in 1810. After a rebellion from her rabbi father, she moved to London, where she married William Rose and became a socialist feminist. The couple moved to New York in 1836, where now Ernestine Rose became the leading woman in the campaign to grant married women basic economic rights in the State of New York. From this position, she became a major influence on Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Rose considered herself a “freethinker” but she was definitely not a Protestant and her attitudes remained influenced by her Jewish background: Talmudic approach to texts, not approaching marriage as a divine sacrament…"

"Then let us, as Infidels, while promoting liberty and spreading useful knowledge, to prevent any sect from getting power, not add to the prejudice already existing towards the Jews, or any other sect."

"…There is 10 times more in the world than would maintain all in yet unknown luxury. Yet how much misery there is in our midst; not because there is not enough, but owing to the misdirection of it."

"Feminist writers, not trained historians, were the first to undertake a systematic attempt to approach the problem of women's role in American life and history. This took the form of feminist tracts, theoretical approaches, and compilations of woman's "contributions." The early compilers attacked the subject with a missionary zeal designed, above all, to right wrong. Their tendency was to praise anything women had done as a "contribution" and to include any women who had gained the slightest public attention in their numerous lists. Still, much positive work was done in simply recounting the history of the woman's rights movement and some of its forerunners and in discussing some of the women whose pioneering struggles opened opportunities to others. Feminist writers were hampered by a two-fold bias. First, they shared the middle-class, nativist, moralistic approach of the Progressives and tended to censure out of existence anyone who did not fit into this pattern. Thus we find that women like Frances Wright and Ernestine Rose received little attention because they were considered too radical. "Premature feminists" such as the Grimké sisters, Maria Weston Chapman, and Lydia Maria Child are barely mentioned."

"I suppose you all grant that woman is a human being. If she has a right to life she has a right to earn a support for that life. If a human being, she has a right to have her powers and faculties as a human being developed. If developed, she has a right to exercise them."

"Human rights include the rights of all, not only man, but woman, not only white but black; wherever there is a being called human, his rights are as full and expressive as his existence, and ought to be without limits or distinction of sex, country, or color…and only ignorance, superstition, and tyranny — both the basis and the influence of the Bible - deprive him of it."

"I am perfectly willing, nay, desirous, that the sentiments and principles I advocate should be known and criticized by the public; but I am not willing to have imputed to me sentiments which do not belong to me, and, believing that you do not willfully misrepresent me, take the liberty to correct some errors in regard to myself, in the account of the Rutland Convention, in your paper of this morning."

"We need no other; but we must, reassert in 1876 what 1776 so gloriously proclaimed and call upon the law-makers and the law-breakers to carry that declaration to its logical consistency by giving woman the right of representation in the government which she helps to maintain; a voice in the laws by which she is governed, and all the rights and privileges society can bestow, the same as to man, or disprove its validity. We need no other declaration. All we ask is to have the laws based on the same foundation upon which that declaration rests, viz.: upon equal justice, and not upon sex. Whenever the rights of man are claimed, moral consistency points to the equal rights of woman."

"I did not intend to publish anything about myself, for I had no other ambition except to work for the cause of humanity, irrespective of sex, sect, country, or color"

"All that I can tell you is, that I used my humble powers to the uttermost, and raised my voice in behalf of Human Rights in general, and the elevation and Rights of Woman in particular, nearly all my life."

"Say to the friends. Go on, go on, halt not and rest not. Remember that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" and of right. Much has been achieved; but the main, the vital thing, has yet to come. The suffrage is the magic key to the statute-the insignia of citizenship in a republic."

"were only that great, noble truth of the Declaration of Independence carried out, as it ought to be, there would be no need of our meeting here to-day. Then indeed might we all rejoice when the Fourth of July arrives."

"in comparison to the liberation of 800,000 slaves, the Declaration of Independence falls into utter insignificance."

"It is utterly impossible for us, as finite beings, with the utmost stretch of the imagination, to conceive the depth and immensity of the horrors of slavery."

"Not to be your own, bodily, mentally, or morally — that is to be a slave... Slavery is, not to belong to yourself — to be robbed of yourself. There is nothing that I so much abhor as that single thing — to be robbed of one’s self. We are our own legitimate masters. Nature has not created masters and slaves; nature has created man free as the air of heaven. The black man and the white man are equally the children of nature. The same mother earth has created us all; the same life pervades all; the same spirit ought to animate all. Slavery deprives us of ourselves."

"Natural history gives us a knowledge of the animal kingdom in general; the different organ­isms, structures, and powers of the various species. Physiology teaches the nature of man, the laws that govern his being, the functions of the vital organs, and the conditions upon which alone health and life depend. Phrenology treats of the laws of mind, the different portions of the brain, the temperaments, the organs, how to develop some and repress others to produce a well balanced and healthy condition. But in the whole animal econ­omy—though the brain is considered to be a "mi­crocosm," in which may be traced a resemblance or relationship with everything in Nature—not a spot can be found to indicate the existence of a God."

"Mathematics lays the foundation of all the ex­act sciences. It teaches the art of combining num­bers, of calculating and measuring distances, how to solve problems, to weigh mountains, to fathom the depths of the ocean; but gives no directions how to ascertain the existence of a God."

"The Universe of Matter gives us no record of his existence. Where next shall we search? En­ter the Universe of Mind, read the millions of volumes written on the subject, and in all the speculations, the assertions, the assumptions, the theories, and the creeds, you can only find Man stamped in an indelible impress his own mind on every page. In describing his God, he delineated his own character: the picture he drew represents in living and ineffaceable colors the epoch of his existence—the period he lived in."

"It was a great mistake to say that God made man in his image. Man, in all ages, made his God in his own image; and we find that just in accordance with his civilization, his knowledge, his experience, his taste, his refinement, his sense of right, of justice, of freedom, and humanity,—so has he made his God. But whether coarse or refined; cruel and vindictive, or kind and generous; an implacable tyrant, or a gentle and loving fa­ther;—it still was the emanation of his own mind—the picture of himself."

"Slavery being the cause of the war, we must look to its utter extinction for the remedy"

"Abraham Lincoln has issued a Proclamation. He has emancipated all the slaves of the rebel States with his pen, but that is all. To set them really and thoroughly free, we will have to use some other instrument than the pen. The slave is not emancipated; he is not free."

"I say to Abraham Lincoln, if these generals are good for anything, if they are fit to take the lead, put them at the head of armies, and let them go South and free the slaves you have announced free. If they are good for nothing, dispose of them as of anything else that is useless."

"I ask the President why McClellan was kept in the army so long after it was known — for there never was a time when anything else was known—that he was both incapable and unwilling to do anything?"

"What has brought on this war? Slavery, undoubtedly. Slavery was the primary cause of it. But the great secondary cause was the fact that the North, for the sake of the Union, has constantly compromised. Every demand that the South made of the North was acceded to, until the South came really to believe that they were the natural and legitimate masters, not only of the slaves, but of the North too."

"A true Union is based upon principles of mutual interest, of mutual respect and reciprocity, none of which ever existed between the North and South. They based their institutions on slavery; the North on freedom."

"A small republic, a small nation, based upon the eternal principle of freedom, is great and powerful. A large empire based upon slavery, is weak and without foundation. The moment the light of freedom shines upon it, it discloses its defects, and unmasks its hideous deformities. As I said before, I would rather have a small republic without the taint and without the stain of slavery in it, than to have the South brought back by compromise. To avert such calamity, we must work. And our work must mainly be to watch and criticise and urge the Administration to do its whole duty to freedom and humanity."

"After all, we come down to the root of all evil—to money...Give us one million of dollars, and we will have the elective franchise at the very next session of our Legislature. (Laughter and applause.) But as we have not got a million of dollars, we want a million of voices. There are always two ways of obtaining an object. If we had had the money, we could have bought the Legislature and the elective franchise long before now. But as we have not, we must create a public opinion, and for that we must have voices."

"Men can pray in secret, but must vote in public. (Applause.) Hence the ballot, of the two, ought to be the most respected; and it would be if women were once there; but it never will be until they are there."

"Rose remembered Tom Paine, who was in danger of being forgotten for his radical hopes for the American Revolution. In a similar spirit, we remember Rose, in honor of those aspects of her vision of a free womanhood that have not yet been realized and that continue to inspire. To remember our ancestors is an act on our own behalf as well as theirs."