Mistress of Herself: Speeches and Letters of Ernestine Rose, Early Women's Rights Leader

The Divorce Debate

66 the divorce debate By Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, and Ernestine L. Rose May 11, 1860 New York, New York The debate on divorce reform came at a time when this issue was in the news, especially in New York State where the convention was being held. Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune had debated Robert Dale Owen, U.S. Senator from Indiana and divorce reform advocate, in the pages of Greeley’s paper for over two months. Against the wishes of many of the women’s rights reformers who preferred not to have the divisive issue of divorce raised at the convention, Elizabeth Cady Stanton introduced a series of resolutions arguing for liberalized divorce laws and followed with a speech demanding that women be free to leave marriages that were abusive or harmful. Furthermore, she argued, all individuals, women and men, had an inalienable right to be happy. Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell countered with a series of resolutions arguing that marriage is a sacrament and cannot be dissolved any more than a parent can sever a relationship with a child. She urged that women become strong within themselves so that they can withstand marriage to men who would otherwise degrade them. Ernestine L. Rose disagreed with Brown on the sacramental nature of marriage, arguing that marriage was a human institution contracted voluntarily and therefore not binding for life unless the parties continued to love and care for one another. For Rose voluntary choice was at the heart of her ideal of “true marriage .” The right to divorce would free men and women to escape unhappy but legally binding marriages and prevent attendant crimes, ranging from adultery to murder. Rose noted that prison sentences for certain crimes, were already grounds for divorce and demanded that abusing or assaulting one’s spouse be added to the list. Curiously, Stanton ended her radical appeal for liberalization of divorce with retrograde Christian images of maternal sacrifice. Rose’s argument, terse and to the point, was unique in making a modern, feminist argument for the right to divorce. n Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton then presented the following resolutions, in support of which she purposed to address the Convention: 1. Resolved, That, in the language (slightly varied) of John Milton, “Those who marry intend as little to conspire their own ruin, as those who swear allegiance, and as a whole people is to an ill government, so is one man or woman to an ill marriage. If a whole people, against any authority, covenant or statute, may, by the sovereign edict of charity, save 67 not only their lives, but honest liberties, from unworthy bondage, as well may a married party, against any private covenant, which he or she never entered, to his or her mischief, be redeemed from unsupportable disturbances , to honest peace, and just contentment.” 2. Resolved, That all men are created equal, and all women, in their natural rights, are the equals of men; and endowed by their Creator with the same inalienable right to the pursuit of happiness. 3. Resolved, That any constitution, compact or covenant between human beings, that failed to produce or promote human happiness, could not, in the nature of things, be of any force or authority;—and it would be not only a right, but a duty, to abolish it. 4. Resolved, That though marriage be in itself divinely founded, and is fortified as an institution by innumerable analogies in the whole kingdom of universal nature, still, a true marriage is only known by its results; and, like the fountain, if pure, will reveal only pure manifestations. Nor need it ever be said, “What God hath joined together, let not man put asunder,” for man could not put it asunder; nor can he any more unite what God and nature have not joined together. 5. Resolved, That of all insulting mockeries of heavenly truth and holy law, none can be greater than that physical impotency is cause sufficient for divorce, while no amount of mental or moral or spiritual imbecility is ever to be pleaded in support of such a demand. 6. Resolved, That such a law was worthy those dark periods when marriage was held by the greatest doctors and priests of the Church to be a work of the flesh only, and almost, if not altogether, a defilement; denied wholly to the clergy, and a second time, forbidden to all. 7. Resolved, That an unfortunate or ill-assorted marriage is ever...