hooker isabella b (3 risultati)

Folded sheet. Condizione: Fine. First Edition. Large octavo, 4pp. Folded sheet. About fine, perhaps a trifle toned at edges. Printed on thin paper, and with the printing block evidently at a slight angle, typical of a hastily and time-sensitive leaflet such as this one. A significant ephemeral document in the history of women's suffrage in America; a call to action which encouraged women to risk arrest and imprisonment by voting in elections, in order to spur the slow-moving American government along towards full suffrage. The second paragraph begins: "This is pre-eminently the birth day of womanhood [.] Mothers, for the first time in history, are able to assert, not only their inherent first right to the children that they have borne, but their right to be a protective and purifying power in the political society into which those children are to enter." In the few years since the end of the Civil War and the publication of this pamphlet, a handful of western states had afforded women the right to vote, and the National Woman's Suffrage Association believed they had the wind at their backs to agitate for nationwide recognition of a woman's right to vote. While they had been lobbying for a Sixteenth Amendment to officially enshrine votes for women in the Constitution, Susan B. Anthony and other leaders decided on a new strategy, called the "New Departure," which argued that no such amendment was necessary, and that their right to vote was evident in the Fourteenth Amendment (which had been written to give African-Americans the right to vote), and also in the arguments about citizenship and "taxation without representation" which serve as foundation stones for the United States' political system and self-conception. The "New Departure" was presented to the public for the first time with the production of this pamphlet, and it encouraged women to stop waiting for rights to be handed to them by a legislature, but instead to vote in elections, and be willing to be arrested in any place where voting was illegal for woman (the vast majority of the country). Anthony herself and many other leaders of the movement were arrested in 1872 when they tried to vote in the presidential election. These agitations led to a disappointing 1875 Supreme Court decision (Minor c. Happersett), which declared that women were not automatically entitled to vote under the language of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that states had the right to restrict it. Nevertheless, the activism spurred on by the New Departure helped to embolden a new generation of feminists and political agitators. The pamphlet encourages women to send in their name and, if possible one dollar for a printing fund to produce more tracts for wide distribution. In the spirit of unity, solidarity, and reasonableness that defined their movement, they write: "[As] many working women will have nothing to send but their names, we welcome these as a precious gift, and urge those who are able, to send us their fifties and hundreds, which we promise faithfully to use and account for." This pamphlet represents a hinge moment in the long history of women's suffrage, which kick-started a five-decade campaign on all fronts - legal, political, and social - which ultimately culminated in the 20th Amendment. Auction records are scant, but the most recent more than doubled its low estimate.

Rare copy of the Report of the Executive Committee for the second annual meeting of the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association (CWSA), founded just one year before, on October 28, 1869. Submitted and signed in type by the co-founder and chairman [sic] of the executive committee, Isabella Beecher Hooker, this report provides updates on the progress of the suffrage movement, both in Connecticut and nationwide. Also included are updates on movements in Great Britain and Europe, including a brief list of prominent figures in Britain supporting women's suffrage. There are excerpts from notable speeches and articles by John Stuart Mill, Francis W. Newman, and the reproduction of a letter from J.H. Howe, chief justice of Wyoming Territory, to Myra Bradwell, prominent Chicago lawyer and suffrage activist, explaining (despite his initial reservations) the success Wyoming courts have had in impaneling women as jurors (as part of the founding documents, Wyoming Territory granted suffrage to white women for all elections). The women's suffrage movement in America started gaining real strength in the 1840s with the first women's rights convention, the Seneca Falls Convention, convened in 1848. But the years leading up to the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment grew the movement substantially. Lucretia Mott, Lucy Stone, Frederick Douglass, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and others formed the American Equal Rights Association (AERA) in 1866 "to secure Equal Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage, irrespective of race, color or sex." Yet, in the final proposal, the Fifteenth Amendment prohibited the federal government and each state from denying a citizen the right to vote based only on that citizen's "race, color, or previous condition of servitude." Anthony and Stanton opposed the amendment unless it was accompanied by a Sixteenth Amendment that would guarantee suffrage for women; Stone, Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Julia Ward Howe supported it and feared that it would not win congressional approval if it included women's suffrage. And so, in 1869 they split into the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) led by Anthony and Stanton; and the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA) led by Stone, Howe, and Harper. The Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), established in 1873, also pursued women's suffrage, providing additional support for the movement overall. State, territorial, and city suffrage movements also expanded. While national bodies were important voices for suffrage, they recognized that suffrage would only be obtained through grassroots work at the regional and state levels. Accordingly, Isabella Beecher Hooker and Frances Ellen Burr founded the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Association in 1869 at a meeting attended by Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and William Lloyd Garrison. As Hooker writes: "It becomes more and more evident that as a political measure, our main reliance must be upon the action of Congress passing an amendment to the Federal Constitution. On this account we urge every member of the Society to keep on hand forms of petition that they may obtain signatures from time to time, and return them to the Secretary as soon as filled. Of the importance of flooding Congress with these petitions from all parts of the country, no one can doubt." Partnering with the NWSA, the CWSA focused on women's suffrage at the local level, and although Connecticut did not vote in favor of women's suffrage until the Nineteenth Amendment had already passed in Congress, the CWSA was able to gain small victories towards women's suffrage, such as earning women the right to formally vote on local matters like school and library expenditures. Isabella Beecher Hooker (18221907) was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, daughter of Lyman Beecher and half-sister of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her broad career as a suffrage activist included participating in the founding of the New England Women Suffrage Association, and petitioning the Connecticut General Assembly with a bill that extended property rights to married women; the bill was initially rejected, but she reintroduced it every year until it passed in 1877. She toured widely, speaking on women's suffrage and women's rights in general, such as adding female police officers across the country; she followed Victoria Woodhull in testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in 1871, the first time women addressed a House committee. This title, issued as Number 2 in the "Tracts of Connecticut Woman Suffrage" series, is rare; we could find only one instance at auction. OCLC locates copies to nine institutions: the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Vassar, Yale, University of Georgia, Massachusetts Historical Society, Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg, and the American Antiquarian Society. OCLC 30571151, 664231162. Small octavo. Original self-wrappers, stitched as issued. Slight tanning to edges of wrappers, light even tanning and a few spots of foxing throughout. Near fine.

Condizione: Fine. First Edition. 4 pp. Self-wrappers. First edition. Fine. An announcement by famous feminist Susan B. Anthony and five other suffragettes of the formation of a National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee, and their intent to pursue recognition of voting rights for women under the 14th and 15th amendments. These were recent amendments (around three and one years old, respectively) but this salvo relies on them heavily, as well as on a taxation-without-representation argument harking back to the origins of the republic. In 1875 the Supreme Court would close the door on this line of thinking and suffragettes would have to change strategies, but this leaflet proceeds all that; it's still heady with fresh ideas and a brand new organization appealing for funds and women's names for a pledge book compiled by the NWSEC Secretary. A rare document of a brief glimmer of optimism in what would be a long, hard slog-- the struggle for equal rights-- in excellent condition.