Woman and Her Wishes - 1853

6. In the disorder now sometimes exhibited at our caucuses and town-meetings, there is plainly an argument, not for the exclusion, but for the admission of women. They have been excluded quite too long. Observe the different character of public dinners since their admission there, which yet would have seemed as unpardonable to our grandfathers. Such is my faith in the moral power of woman, that I fear we cannot spare her from these scenes of temptation. There was wisdom in that hearty recognition given by a party of rough California miners to some brave New England women who were crossing the Isthmus, in the rainy season, to join their husbands. "Three cheers (said they) for the ladies who have come to make us better!"

We need the feminine element in our public affairs to make us better. I cannot agree with those who deny that there are certain differences of temperament between the sexes; God has a great purpose in these; let us not deny them, nor let us waste them. It is precisely these feminine attributes which we need in all the spheres of life. Wherever the experiment has been tried (as among the Quakers) it has proved successful: it will yet be tried farther. The noble influence of Manuelita Rosas, in Paraguay, over the policy of the stern dictator, her father, is but a hint of what is yet to come, when such influences shall be openly legitimated. Woman, as a class, may be deceived, but not wholly depraved; society may impair her sense, but not her self-devotion. Her foot has been cramped in China, and her head every where; but her heart is uncramped. We need in our politics and in our society a little more heart. The temperance movement would lie dormant in many of our towns, but for the sympathies and energies of women. The anti-slavery movement had hardly made its way to the masses till a woman undertook to explain it. And the Western editor's objection to the "Woman's Rights movement" seems to me to be one of its strong points; that "if it should prevail, we may yet see some Mrs. Stowe in the Presidential chair."

It sounds strange to American ears to hear of a woman as head of a nation. But our English ancestors, three centuries ago, living under the government of a woman, would have been equally astonished to hear of a commoner as being at the head of a nation. Any innovation seems daring until it is made, and when once made, it is called "an institution," and then any farther change is daring.

The fatal inconsistency of those who protest against any innovation in the position of woman, lies in the fact that they have tolerated so many innovations already. Once admit that she has been wronged, and the question then recurs, whether she has yet been fully righted. We have conceded too much to refuse farther concessions. She must be a slave or an equal; there is no middle ground. If it is plainly reasonable that the two sexes shall study together in the same high school, then it cannot be hopelessly ridiculous that they should study together in college also. If it is common sense to make a woman deputy postmaster, then it cannot be the climax of absurdity to make her postmaster general, or even the higher officer who is the postmaster's master. Methinks I hear again the old shout of the nobles at Prague, "Moriemur pro rege nostro -- Harriet Beecher!"