Elect the President direct
<span>"Elect the President direct by the people, and for a single term, if you will; take from him his immense official patronage; base senator-ship upon population, not upon State sovereignty through legislative gift; limit the power of the judiciary..." - Matilda Joslyn Gage, 1873</span>
Daily Suffragist
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January 13, 2021
History of Woman Suffrage
I got some questions about what the heck these books are, which I’ll take as an invitation. <br /><br />The History of Woman Suffrage was originally intended as one volume, to be edited in the centennial summer of ‘76. <br /><br />It ended up 3,000 pages published throughout the 1880s (& more later). <br /><br />It’s the story of the movement from the POV of ElizCadyStanton, Susan B Anthony & Matilda Joslyn Gage - in other words, the National Woman Suffrage Association and its tactics and strategies. <br /><br />It omits most of what Lucy Stone and the American Assoc. were doing, and the History scarcely mentions African-American suffragists - about whose work they didn’t know or didn’t bother to include. Probably some of both. <br /><br />What it does include is awesomely detailed: Proceedings of conventions - with a strong emphasis on Seneca Falls as The Beginning. <br /><br />Important correspondence, details of state campaigns. An essay about women of the Revolutionary period, like Phillis Wheatly & Anne Hutchinson. Stanton’s 25-page eulogy for Lucretia Mott, and her reminiscence of the day she first met Susan B. <br /><br />Each volume has its own epigraph: <br /><br />Volume I: "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." <br /><br />Volume II: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States. <br /><br />Volume III: “Women are citizens of the United States, entitled to all the rights, privileges and immunities guaranteed to citizens by the national Constitution." <br /><br />Lisa Tetrault describes the History as a “valentine to the movement” - a record of the past & a prod for the future. <br /><br />Stanton & Anthony were in their 60s when it was published. The 3d volume begins: “our earthly endeavors must end in the near future...Into younger hands we must soon resign our work.” <br /><br />I imagine they woke each day believing they would live to see victory-- knowing they might not.
Daily Suffragist
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30/12/2020
Matilda Joslyn Gage was right about everything
On her birthday, celebrate Matilda Joslyn Gage. For video, @<a href="https://twitter.com/Swagner711" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">SWagner711</a> points us to <a href="https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nys/central-ny/womens-history/2020/03/23/who-is-matilda-joslyn-gage" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">this short piece:</a> <br /><br />+ sophisticated 10 min. documentary by 8th graders Clara Schneider and Emily Neoh <br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/g83r_dV5L3U" frameborder="0"></iframe><br /><br />Meanwhile, a few notes about a radical...<br /><br />Gage opposed the merger of the National & the American Woman Suffrage Associations. She predicted, correctly, that NAWSA would be a more conservative, religious organization than NWSA had been.<br /><br />She was an only child who adored her father, a progressive who taught her to think for herself. She married and raised 4 children in Fayetteville, NY a bustling town on the Erie Canal. In the 1840s & 50s the Erie Canal was an interstate highway: people, $ & ideas ran along it. Gage’s other major influence was the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. She saw up close that the women of the Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca Nations had power and status. She was an honorary member of the Wolf Clan of the Mohawk Nation; given the name Ka-ron-ien-ha-wi. <br /><br />She was a great writer and editor, not a public speaker. Her most enduring accomplishment is History of Woman Suffrage I, II, III - Susan B Anthony hated to write, so Gage took the laboring oar. She edited the National’s monthly newspaper The National Citizen & Ballot Box. Her 1893 book “Woman, Church and State” critiqued patriarchal forms of Christianity and demanded separation of church and state. It was incendiary and widely read, and as she predicted, the suffrage movement had become very conservative. Gage was blackballed thereafter. <br /><br />By that time she had formed an independent organization, the Woman’s National Liberal Union. But her radical views meant she was written out of the history of the movement - a history she literally helped write. <br /><br />Her headstone is a fitting tribute. Sue Boland told me how unusual it is for its time. It rebukes religious & domestic convention in both size & inscription. Instead of wife, mother, etc. it reads: <br /><br />“There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home, or Heaven - that word is Liberty.”
Daily Suffragist
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24/03/2020
The third musketeer
Matilda Joslyn Gage is the 3rd musketeer, the one you've never heard of. As radical as Stanton & Anthony, w/whom she founded organizations & edited History of Woman Suffrage. She critiqued religion, demanded separation of church & state, and studied w/ Native tribes. [1/2] <br /><br />In 1878 Matilda bought & edited a newspaper called The National Citizen & Ballot Box. Check out the masthead 👇 Her son-in-law wrote the Wizard of Oz. Her motto: "There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home or Heaven. That word is Liberty.†<a href="https://twitter.com/Swagner711" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">@Swagner711</a> - why is she so unsung?
Daily Suffragist
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12/09/2019