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Matilda Joslyn Gage: Writing and “Righting” the History of Woman

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Matilda Joslyn Gage: Writing and “Righting” the History of Woman 20 MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE FOUNDATION FOUNDATION GAGE JOSLYN MATILDA Writing and Matilda the NWSA’s most active years and those spent writing the History.Volume IV minimized Gage’s activism and her contri- Joslyn bution to the History.For this reason, modern historians who have relied on Volume IV’s description of her work have Gage also tended to minimize Gage’s Gage’s role in that work alone contribution. BY MARY E. COREY should have guaranteed her a The rift between Gage and place of honor in our collective Anthony had its roots in the memory of the suffrage past. circumstances surrounding the Through a grand historic irony, one of Instead, it has obscured her formation of the NWSA in 1869. part in this and other move- Immediately following the the women most instrumental in the ment histories. Civil War, the reform alliance Volumes I, II, and III preserved between abolitionists and preservation of woman suffrage history the work of the National women’s rights advocates has herself been largely overlooked in Woman Suffrage Association crumbled in the fierce in-fight- from the beginnings of the ing over suffrage priorities. the histories of this movement. movement to about 1883. Unable to prevail on the issue Gage’s contributions to these of suffrage, Stanton, Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage was three volumes cannot be and Gage left the final American one of three National Woman overestimated. Her essays, Equal Rights Association Suffrage Association (NWSA) “Preceding Causes,”“Woman, Convention in May 1869 and founders who were known to Church and State,” and held an impromptu evening their contemporaries as the “Woman’s Patriotism in the War” session. There they agreed to “Triumvirate,” leaders who begin and end each volume; concentrate fully on woman organized the work, set the fully the first third of Volume III suffrage by forming the National agenda and, most importantly, comes from Gage’s newspaper, Woman Suffrage Association. preserved the records of the the National Citizen and Ballot The three were soon reviled nineteenth-century woman Box.These materials are just the by the Boston contingent, suffrage movement. With beginning of what can easily headed by Lucy Stone and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and be traced directly to Gage. Henry Brown Blackwell, for Susan B. Anthony, in 1876 Gage Unfortunately,Volume IV was what was perceived to be a began to prepare for publica- prepared after the bitter dis- purposeful attempt to exclude tion the History of Woman agreement between Anthony them from the new suffrage Suffrage.The first three volumes and Gage over merging the organization. As a result, Stone of this work, compiled over the NWSA and the American and Blackwell formed their ten subsequent years, are the Woman Suffrage Association own association, the American seminal resource for historians (AWSA). It was also prepared Woman’s Suffrage Association, researching this movement. after Gage’s death, and covers the following November. The NEW YORK archives • FALL 2001 21 “Righting” the History of Woman Suffrage two associations remained bitter rivals for the next twenty years. Over the course of those years, however, it would become clear that Anthony had a vision both larger and smaller than Stanton’s and Gage’s. Larger, in that she knew implicitly that the NWSA would need broad-based support in order to accomplish its goals. And smaller, in that, for her, NWSA had only one goal: woman suffrage. By the late 1880s, Anthony had begun to pursue women’s ALBERT R. STONE NEGATIVE COLLECTION, ROCHESTER MUSEUM & SCIENCE CENTER COLLECTION, NEGATIVE STONE ALBERT R. groups that had formerly Suffragists march down a been anathema to the NWSA: to bring the merger proposal struggle meant arguing with street in Rochester, New the AWSA and the Women’s before the executive committee, Ezra Cornell to admit women York wearing “Votes for Christian Temperance Union. and argued strenuously against to his college, organizing the Women” banners, c. 1914 Overtures to merge the NWSA allowing the members to vote women of Fayetteville to elect and the AWSA began circulat- on it. women to the school board, ing during the years just prior It was an outrage! or hanging funeral crepe from to the 1889 NWSA Convention, Anthony had argued on her front porch to protest but none were taken seriously behalf of woman suffrage for rather than picnic on the Fourth as long as Gage remained the forty years, and now denied its of July, Gage lived her ideals. chair of its executive committee. necessity within the suffrage Further, her own magnum opus, In 1889 Anthony pleaded association itself. Gage raised “Woman, Church and State,” is reduced resources and denied a storm of protest, but the the only historic monograph to Gage’s travel expenses to the majority of the members emerge from the nineteenth- Washington meeting. Anthony accepted the move as a fait century woman suffrage did not reveal that she had accompli.At that, Gage quit the movement. Indeed, it is the received a new proposal from NWSA and formed her own first volume in what would the AWSA that she was deter- organization. later be known as women’s mined to accept on behalf One of the more important studies. Through her activism, of NWSA. long-term effects of the merger her newspaper, her work on Anthony waited to address was the loss of Gage to the the History of Woman Suffrage, the merger proposal until the historic record, a truly monu- and her “Woman, Church and last evening of the convention, mental loss. Her consuming State,” she bequeathed a living after most delegates had passion was to make the world legacy to the future. That already left. She then boldly a better place for her daughters legacy should not be lost. assumed Gage’s office, in order and her son. Whether that www.nysarchives.org 22 place by Mrs. Mott…” Lucretia held to be unfit for the masses knowledge of the mother; One Mott later recalled that she [and] kept them in a continual and when he dies, she is not Suffragist’s was “trembling in every limb.” state of dependency.” considered a competent Gage began,“This conven- These same kinds of forces guardian…in his will, or deed, Beginnings tion has assembled to discuss conspired to keep women of [he can] exclude the mother the subject of woman’s rights, her day dependent. Implicitly from participation in guardian- he story of Matilda Joslyn and form some settled plan she empowered women to ship.” Gage stressed that TGage begins on a crisp of action for the future. Let use the precedents of the women could and must use, September afternoon in 1852. Syracuse sustain her name for past to inform their present manipulate, and interpret the The women at the Syracuse radicalism!” and shape their future. Her past in their own self-interest. Woman’s Rights Convention With these words, Gage analysis of the marriage laws Lucretia Mott was so watched as the young new- launched her life’s work in showed that even in woman’s impressed with Gage’s speech comer from Fayetteville inched women’s rights as a speaker, designated “sphere” she was that she arranged to have it her way toward the podium to activist, and historian. In her powerless. In laws determin- published with the other deliver her first speech. judgment, history offered ing inheritance rights, real and convention tracts. From her Although not scheduled to important insights into the personal property, as well as first speech, Gage brought a speak and unknown to the status of women analogous to wages, married women were historian’s perspective to bear assemblage, she approached other previously dependent classed with “idiots, persons of on the tasks before her. She the podium “when her courage groups. She argued that in an unsound mind, and infants.” became and remained the had reached a sufficiently high earlier day “science and learn- “Every father,” she stormed, acknowledged historian of the point. With palpitating heart ing were in the hands of the “has a right to bind, or give movement for the next half- she ascended the platform, priests, and property held by away, any of his children with- century. ■ where she was cordially given vassalage…education was out the consent, or even the The information in this article is drawn from the writings, correspondence, newspapers, speeches, etc. of the woman suffrage movement housed and on microfilm in the following archival collections: The Matilda Joslyn Gage Papers, Women’s Studies Manuscript Collections, Schlesinger Library; The Records of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress; The Papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, edited by Patricia G. Holland and Ann D. Gordon; and the SENECA FALLS HISTORICAL SOCIETY HISTORICAL SENECA FALLS Susan B. Anthony (second from left, seated) and Matilda Joslyn Gage (second from right, seated) at the Papers of the New York State International Council of Women in Washington D.C., 1888 Woman Suffrage Association, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division, Columbia University. NEW YORK archives • FALL 2001 .
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