Woman, Church & State

Hard it is, no doubt, to read in Stanley’s pages of the slave-traders coldly arranging for the surprise of a village, the capture of the inhabitants, the massacre of those who resist, and the violation of all the women; but the stony streets of London, if they could but speak, would tell of tragedies as awful, of ruin as complete, of ravishments as horrible, as if we were in Central Africa; only the ghostly devastation is covered, corpse-like, with the artificialities of modern civilization.

The lot of a negress in the Equatorial Forest is not, perhaps, a very happy one but is it so much worse than that of many a pretty orphan girl’s in our christian capital? We talk about the brutalities of the dark ages and we profess to shudder as we read in the books of the shameful exactions of the rights of feudal superiors. And yet here, beneath our very eyes, in our theaters, in our restaurants, and in many other places unspeakable, it be enough but to name it, the same hideous abuse flourishes unchecked. A young penniless girl, if she be pretty, is often hunted from pillar to post by her employers, confronted always by the alternative – starve or sin. Darkest England, like Darkest Africa, reeks with malaria.

It should be impressed upon the mind that difference between “Darkest Africa,” and “Darkest England,” lies in the two facts, that one is the darkness of ignorance and savage races who are in the very night of barbarism; while the other is the moral darkness of christian civilization, in the very center of Christendom, after 2,000 years of church teaching and priestly influence. A few years since, in Massachusetts, an action for cruelty on part of a husband came before a court, the charge being that he came home one night in February, when the thermometer was ten degrees below zero, and turned his wife and little child, with his wife’s mother of eighty, out of the house.522 While the wife was giving testimony, the judge interrupted, saying:

The husband had a right to do so, there was a quarrel between the husband and wife, and he had a legal right to turn her out and take possession of the house, that was not cruelty.

From the newspapers of April, 1886, we learn that:

At Salem, W. Va., Thomas True drove his wife out of doors and swore he would kill any one who would give her shelter. Robert Miller took her into his house, and was killed by True.

The system of marriage recognized by the church has ever been that of ownership and power by the husband and father, over the wife and children, and during the Middle Ages the ban of the church fell with equal force upon the woman, who for any cause left her husband, as upon the witch. The two were under the same ban as the excommunicated, denounced as one whom all others must shun, whom no one must succor or harbor, and with whom it was unlawful to hold any species of intercourse.

The “boycott” is not an invention of the present century, but was in use many hundred years since against a recalcitrant wife, under sanction of both church and state. The advertisements of absconding wives seen at the present day, whom the husband sets forth as having left his bed and board and whom all persons are thereafter forbidden to trust upon his account, are but a reminiscence of the wife-boycott of former years, when all persons, were forbidden to “harbor her” under penalty unless it could be proven that her life was in danger without such aid. The husband was held to possess vested rights in the wife, not only as against herself, but as against the world, and it is not half a decade since the notice below, appeared in a Kansas paper,523 accompanied by the cut of a fleeing woman.

A $5 °CAPTURE

A woman who ran away from her husband at Lawrence some time ago, was found at Fort Leavenworth yesterday by a Lawrence detective and taken back to her home. The officer received a reward of $50 for her capture. —Leavenworth Standard, Kas., Dec. 21, 1886.

This advertisement and others of a similar character to be seen in the daily and weekly press of the country, are undeniable proofs of the low condition under the law, of woman in the marriage relation, and read very much like the notices in regard to absconding slaves a few years since. Kansas was one of the very first states which recognized the right of a married mother to her own child, that provision having been incorporated in its constitution at early date as an enticement for bringing women emigrants into that state, at a period when the anti-slavery and pro-slavery contests within its borders had made it bloody ground. Although the married woman’s property law and the spirit of free thought has rendered such action less frequent than formerly, it is less than forty years, as before noted, since the New York Court of Common Pleas rendered a judgment of a0,000 in favor of a husband against the relatives of his wife, who at her own request “harbored and sheltered” her. The Christian principle of man’s ownership of woman, for many hundred years under English law, rendered the party giving shelter to a fleeing wife liable to the husband in money damages, upon the ground of having aided a runaway servant to the master’s injury. Under but one circumstance was such shelter admissible. In case the wife was in danger of perishing, she could be harbored until morning, when she must be returned to her master by the person who had thus temporarily taken care of his perishable property. In England as late as 1876, the case of a Mrs. Cochrane, who had lived apart from her husband for years, and showing another phase of property law in the wife, came up before Judge Coleridge. Her character was not at all impeached, but she indulged in amusements which her husband considered reprehensible, and through stratagem she was brought to his lodgings and there kept a prisoner. A writ of habeas corpus being sued out, the husband was compelled to bring her before the court of the Queen’s Bench. The decision of the judge rendered in favor of the husband’s right of forcible detention, was declared by him to be upon ground that English law virtually considered the wife as being under the guardianship of the husband, not a person in her own right, and this distinctly upon the ground of her perpetual infancy;524 she must be restored to her husband. As late as 1886, the Personal Rights Journal of England called attention to the suit of a clergyman for the “restitution of conjugal rights” and custody of child. The wife not being able to live in agreement with the husband, had taken her child and left him. A decree for such restitution having been pronounced by court, the husband Rev. Joseph Wallis, advertised for his absconding wife, Caroline Wallis, offering one hundred pounds reward for such information as should lead to her discovery.

£100 REWARD

Whereas, A Decree was pronounced in the Probate, Divorce, and Admiralty Division of the High Court of Justice, on the 5th day of June, 1886, in the suit of Samuel Joseph Wallis versus Caroline Wallis, for restitution of conjugal rights, and for custody of the child, May Wallis, to the petitioner, the said Samuel Joseph Wallis. And Whereas it has been ascertained that the said Caroline Wallis has lately been seen at Whitstable and the Neighborhood,

NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN,

That the above Reward will be paid to any Person or Persons who shall give such information as will lead to the discovery of the whereabouts of the said Caroline Wallis, and the recovery by the said S. J. Wallis of the custody of the said Child.

Information to be sent to me, Richard Howe Brightman, of Sheerness, Kent, Solicitor to the said Samuel Joseph Wallis.

This brutal advertisement in the dying hours of the nineteenth century had the effect of rousing public attention to woman’s enslaved condition in the marital relation, and a rapid growth of public sentiment in recognition of a wife’s individual and distinct personality, took place between 1886 and 1890, a period of four years. During the latter year another English husband, one Jackson, forcibly abducted his wife who lived apart from him, holding her prisoner with gun and bayonet, threatening her friends with death – as was his legal right in case of her attempted rescue. When this was known, hundreds of letters poured into the press, upholding the right of a wife to the control of her own person, and writ of habeas corpus compelled her production in court. Under the pressure of a public sentiment he found it wise to conciliate, the judge decided in favor of her right to live away from her husband, who was also restrained from farther molesting her. The Supreme Court of Georgia recently rendered a decision in regard to the rights of husbands as related to the wife’s rights of property, in which the church theory of her subordination was maintained.

The wife has been much advanced by the general tenor of legislation of late years in respect to her property. She has acquired a pretty independent position as to title, control and disposition, but this relates to her own property, not to his. The law has not yet raised her to the station of superintendent of her husband’s contracts and probably never will. In taking a wife a man does not put himself under an overseer. He is not a subordinate in his own family but the head of it. A subjugated husband is a less energetic member of society than one who keeps his true place, yet knows how to temper authority with affection.

During the famous Beecher trial, Hon. Wm. M. Evarts defined woman’s legal position as one of subordination to man, declaring “that notwithstanding changing customs and the amenities of modern life, women were not free, but were held in the hollow of man’s hand, to be crushed at his will.” In exemplification of this statement he referred to a recent decision of the New York Court of Appeals, and to the highest tribunals of England. He gave his own sanction to these principles of law, all of which owe their foundation to church teaching regarding woman, enforced by the peculiar forms of marriage ceremony it has instituted.

The church everywhere strenuously opposes civil marriage. The Plenary Council of 1884, and the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the Catholic hierarchy in the United States, each making church marriage a prominent part of their discussions. Different parts of Europe and of South America have recently been shaken by church action in regard to it. Prussia, Belgium, Italy, France, have fallen under the odium of the church in consequence of the civil laws declaring marriage valid without the aid of the church. The celebrated M. Godin, founder of the cooperative Familistere, at Guise, was married in 1886 under civil form, to a lady member of the French League for the Rights of Women, and thus announced the marriage to their friends:

M. Godin, manufacturer, founder of Familistere, and Madame Marie Godin, nee Moret, his secretary and co-laborer in the work of the Familistere, and in the propagation of social reform, have the honor of announcing to you the purely civil marriage which they contracted at Guise, the 14th day of July, 1886, that they might manifest to all their union, and the common purpose of all the efforts of their lives.

Civil marriage, where the church is supreme, is followed by excommunication and odious insults. In 1885 a remarkable instance of this kind occurred in the city of Concepcion, Chili. A young couple were married with consent of their parents, according to the civil law. Their social and political prominence made the occasion conspicuous, as it was the first wedding among the aristocracy in that country, dispensing with the aid of a priest. The church paper edited by a Jesuit priest thus commented:

The “Libertad” calls this “a happy union,” but it should remember that “happy unions” of this sort have hitherto existed only in the animal kingdom.

The bride, groom, and all their families suffered excommunication from the church. But it is not alone the Catholic church which desires to retain its hold upon marriage. Less than two years since certain clergymen of the Anglican church agreed to officiate at marriage without a fee, for the purpose of retaining control of this relation; and so strong has been the influence of the church during the ages, that few people look upon a ceremony under the civil law with the same respect as one performed by a priest, even of a Protestant denomination. The control of marriage by the church while throwing wealth into its own coffers, has ever had a prejudicial effect upon morals, as impediments to marriage of whatever character increase immorality. In the city of Concepcion referred to, of 200,000 inhabitants, there are two thousand children of unknown parentage. In 1884, statistics showed sixty-two per cent of the children to be illegitimate. The parents of those little ones were mostly known, being persons too poor to pay the cost of a church marriage, twenty-five dollars, its price, being quite beyond the means of the humbler classes. The Liberal party, in establishing civil marriage as legitimate, authorized any magistrate to perform the ceremony, and furnish a certificate for twenty-five cents. This assault upon the ancient prerogative of the church depriving priests of the largest source of their revenue, at once made a religious-political issue of the question, the church taking strenuous action against all connected with framing the law, and its repeal became the prominent political issue, to aid which all the faithful were called. Using its old weapons, the church through the Archbishop issued an edict excommunicating the president of the republic, the members of his cabinet and the members of congress who voted for the statute; directing that a similar penalty should fall upon every communicant who obeyed it and neglected to recognize the church as the only authority competent to solemnize the marriage rite.

A correspondent of the New York Sun, in Chili, wrote:

This brought matters to a crisis. On the one hand, the State declared all marriages not under the civil law illegal, and their issue illegitimate, refusing to recognize rites performed by the priests. On the other, those who obey the law are excommunicated from the church, and their cohabitation forbidden by the highest ecclesiastical authority. Thus matrimony is practically forbidden, and those who choose to enter it have their choice between arrest and excommunication. A young member of Congress, a man of gifts and influence, who stands as one of the leaders of the Liberal party, and who voted and argued for civil marriage, is engaged to the daughter of a wealthy merchant with proud lineage and aristocratic connections. He is willing to accept the civil authority, which he helped to create, and she and her father are also willing, but her mother is a devout church woman and cannot regard marriage as sacred without the blessing of a priest. She favors the alliance, but insists that the Church shall be recognized. The bishop declines to permit the ceremony unless the young man shall go to the confessional and retract his political record, with a vow to hereafter remain steadfast to the church. This he refuses to do. The couple will go to Europe or the States and there have the ceremony performed.

This action of the Chilian republic in substituting a civil for a religious ceremony in marriage and declaring the latter to be illegal, is a most important step in civilization, of which freedom for woman is such an essential factor; and its results in that country must be left in woman’s every relation of life, promoting self-respect, self-reliance and security in place of the degradation, self-distrust and fear to which its church has so long condemned her.

Chapter Seven

Polygamy

It is of indisputed historic record that both the Christian Church and the Christian State in different centuries and under a number of differing circumstances gave their influence in favor of polygamy. The Roman emperor, Valentinian I, in the fourth century, authorized christians to take two wives; in the eighth century the great Charlemagne holding power over both church and state, in his own person practiced polygamy, having six, or according to some authorities, nine wives. With the Reformation this system entered Protestantism. As the first synod in North America was called for the purpose of trying a woman for heresy, so the first synod of the reformation was assembled for the purpose of sustaining polygamy, thus farther debasing woman in the marital relation. The great German reformer, Luther, although perhaps himself free from the lasciviousness of the old priesthood was not strictly monogamic in principle. When applied to by Philip, Landgrave of Hesse Cassel, for permission to marry a second wife while his first wife, Margaret of Savoy, was still living, he called together a synod of six of the principal reformers – Melancthon and Bucer among them – who in joint consultation decided “that as the Bible nowhere condemns polygamy, and as it has been invariably practiced by the highest dignitaries of the church,” such marriage was legitimate, and the required permission was given. Luther himself with both the Old and the New Testaments in hand, saying, “I confess for my part that if a man wishes to marry two or more wives, I cannot forbid him, nor is his conduct repugnant to the Holy Scriptures.” Thus we have the degrading proof that the doctrine of polygamy was brought into reformation by its earliest promoters under assertion that it was not inconsistent with the Bible or the principles of the Gospel. The whole course of Luther during the reformation proved his disbelief in the equality of woman with man; when he left the Catholic church he took with him the old theory of her created subordination. It was his maxim that “No gown or garment worse becomes a woman than that she will be wise,” thus giving the weight of his influence against woman’s intellectual freedom and independent thought. Although he opposed monastic life, the home for woman under the reformation was governed by many of its rules.

First: She was to be under obedience to man as head of the house.

Second: She was to be constantly employed for his benefit.

Third: Her society was strictly chosen for her by this master and head.

Fourth: This “head” was a general-father confessor, to whom she was held accountable in word and deed.

Fifth: Neither genius nor talent could free her from his control without his consent.

Luther’s views regarding polygamy have been endorsed and sanctioned since that period by men eminent in church and state. Lord Seldon known as “The Light of England” in the seventeenth century, published a work under title of “Uxor Haebraica” for the purpose of proving that polygamy was permitted to the Hebrews. His arguments were accepted by the church as indisputable. Bishop Burnet, who while holding the great Protestant Episcopal See of Salisbury, so successfully opposed the plan inaugurated by Queen Anne for the establishment of a woman’s college in England, added to his infamy by writing a tract entitled “Is a Plurality of Wives in any case Lawful under the Gospel?” This question he answered in the affirmative sustaining the rightfulness of polygamy under the Christian dispensation. Quoting the words of Christ upon divorce, he said:

We must not by a consequence condemn a plurality of wives since it seems not to have fallen within the scope of what our Lord does there disapprove. Therefore I see nothing so strong against a plurality of wives as to balance the great and visible imminent hazards that hang over so many thousands if it be not allowed.

The famous Puritan Poet of England, John Milton, known in the University as “The Lady of Christ College,” writing upon “The Special Government of Man,” says:

I have not said the marriage of one man with one woman lest I should by implication charge the holy patriarchs and pillars of our faith, Abraham and others who had more than one wife, at the same time, with habitual sin; and lest I should be forced to exclude from the sanctuary of God as spurious, the whole offspring which sprang from them, yea, the whole of the sons of Israel, for whom the sanctuary itself was made. For it is said in Deuteronomy (xxii. 2,) “A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of Jehovah even to the tenth generation.” Either, therefore polygamy is a true marriage, or all children born in that state are spurious, which would include the whole race of Jacob, the twelve tribes chosen by God. But as such an assertion would be absurd in the extreme, not to say impious, and as it is the height of injustice as well as an example of the most dangerous tendency in religion, to account as sins what is not such in reality it appears to me that so far from the question respecting the lawfulness of polygamy being trivial, it is of the highest importance that it should be decided. Not a trace appears of the interdiction of polygamy throughout the whole law, not even in any of the prophets.

The Paradise Lost of Milton is responsible among English speaking people for many existing views that are inimical to woman, and while his essays upon liberty have been of general beneficial influence upon the world, his particular teachings in regard to woman have seriously injured civilization. This man of polygamous beliefs, this tyrant over his own household who could not gain the love of either wives – of whom he had three – or of daughters, did much to popularize the idea of woman’s subordination to man. “He for God; she for God in him” as expressed by the lips of Eve and so often quoted as proclaiming the true relationship between husband and wife in the line, “God thy law; thou mine.”

While the record of Milton’s life shows him to have been an intolerable domestic tyrant, yet for the wife who could not live with him, the daughters whom social conditions and lack of education deprived of the necessary means for their support, thus compelling them to remain his victims looking forward to his death as their only means of release, the world has as yet exhibited but little sympathy. His genius, undisputed as its record must be in many directions, has made his views of overpowering influence upon the world since his day. But above all, more than all that created and sustained this influence were his views as to the polygamous rights of man, his depictment of Eve as looking upward to Adam as her God, and his general maintenance of the teaching of the church in regard to woman. Although it has been affirmed that after his blindness he dictated his great epic to his daughter and a Scotch artist has painted a scene (a picture owned by the Lenox Library), yet this is one of the myths men call history and amuse themselves in believing. Voltaire declared history to be only a parcel of tricks we play with the dead; and this tale of blind Milton dictating Paradise Lost to his daughters is a trick designed to play upon our sympathies. Old Dr. Johnson is authority for the statement that Milton would not allow his daughters to learn to write and it is quite certain that he did not permit them a knowledge of any language except the English, saying “one tongue is enough for a woman.” Between Milton and his family it is known there was tyranny upon one side, hatred upon the other.525

The number of eminent Protestants both lay and clerical who have sanctioned polygamy has not been small. In the sixteenth century a former Capuchin monk, a general of that order who had been converted to the Protestant faith, published a work entitled “Dialogues in favor of Polygamy.” In the latter part of the seventeenth century, John Lyser, another divine of the reformed church strongly defended it in a work entitled “Polygamia Triumphatrix” or the triumphant defense of polygamy. Rev. Dr. Madden, still another Protestant divine, in a treatise called “Thalypthora,” maintained that Paul’s injunction that bishops should be the husbands of one wife, signified that laymen were permitted to marry more than one. The scholarly William Ellery Channing could find no prohibition of polygamy in the New Testament. In his “Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton” he says, “We believe it to be an indisputable fact that although Christianity was first preached in Asia which had been from the earliest days the seat of polygamy, the apostles never denounced it as a crime and never required their converts to put away all wives but one. No express prohibition of polygamy is found in the New Testament.” That eminent American divine, Henry Ward Beecher, the influence of whose opinions over all classes was for many years so great as to constitute him a veritable Protestant pope in the United States, a few years before his death was selected to reply at a New England dinner to a toast upon the Mormon question, the subject of polygamy then being under discussion by Congress. He not only deprecated the use of force in its suppression, but quoted Milton in seeming approval. We can therefore consistently rank Mr. Beecher as among the number of Protestant divines who believed there was scriptural warrant for this degradation of woman.