Document 14A: "Untitled [World's Temperance Convention]," New York Daily Tribune, Sept. 8, 1853, p. 4.


Introduction

   While Bennett's Herald reveled in the chaotic proceedings of the Convention's first several days and Raymond's Times reviled the "female pests" he held responsible for its disruption, Greeley's Tribune excoriated the leaders of the Convention for denying Rev. Antoinette Brown the opportunity to speak and for depriving Wendell Phillips of his credentials. (Document 14A) On the other hand, the paper's accounts (Documents 14B-14D) of what happened at successive sessions of the convention did not differ significantly from those of its rivals.


[p. 4]

   In The World's Temperance Convention yesterday morning, after repeated affirmations by a large majority of the decision of the President that Antoinette L. Brown, a regularly chosen delegate to that body, had the same right to speak as any other delegate, the minority (we grieve to say, in good part clerical) refused to be governed by the decision of the President and the majority, and persisted in suppressing the right of speech by hisses, yells and other unseemly noise, befitting less respectable rowdies than those who usually find their way into a Temperance Convention. As they would not come to order, the hall was finally cleared in order that none but delegates should be readmitted on its floor, and while a part of the Delegates were shut out, a resolve was passed by the minority who first gained readmittance which is intended to silence the voice of women in the Convention henceforth. Whether it will have the desired effect remains to be seen. At all events, the morning session was wasted in persevering efforts to suppress a woman's remarks, which would probably have been finished in ten minutes if the minority had been civil enough to respect her rights.

   The outrage thus initiated in the morning at the Metropolitan was fittingly carried onward in the Tabernacle at evening. There the women who had hired and paid for the house, and the great body of the large audience who had paid for admission on purpose to hear them, were continually interrupted and annoyed by the yellings, thumpings, and hootings of a gang of low bullies, fresh from the grogshops and gambling-dens of our city, and from their acquaintance with the most wretched outcasts and scandals of the gentler sex presuming to decide on the sphere and capacities of all women, and to silence in their own house such heroic and lofty champions of their sex as LUCRETIA MOTT, LUCY STONE and ANTOINETTE L. BROWN, while pleading for the emancipation of Woman from the bondage of unjust and crushing laws which she had no voice in enacting. The Right to Vote being denied her, she has no access to the public ear but through the Right to Speak: and this was wrested from her last evening by things in human shape (and in regular "male costume," too, Mr. Chambers!) who can have had no mothers but such as it were a mutual shame to acknowledge. The meeting however, amid incessant interruptions and annoyances, dragged on till about the designated hour of adjournment, when the Convention dissolved; but a National Women's Rights Convention was announced from the platform, to be held in Cleveland, Ohio, on the 5th and 6th of next month.

World's Temperance Convention

   On the 12th of May last, a preliminary meeting was held at the Brick Church Chapel in this City to consider and decide upon the propriety of calling a World's Temperance Convention. At that meeting, several women appeared and claimed a right to take part in its deliberations, which was resisted and defeated-–the women and their friends seceding from the meeting. Those who remained decided to hold a World's Convention, to assemble at Metropolitan Hall on the 6th of September, and appointed a Committee who issued the following call:

WORLD'S TEMPERANCE CONVENTION

   Whereas, At a meeting convenes in the City of New York on the 13th of May, 1853, preparatory to a World's Temperance Convention in the City of New York during the World's Fair, it was Resolved, That such a Convention be held in said City on the 6th of September next and Whereas, The undersigned were appointed a Committee of one from each State, Territory and Province, to call such Convention,

   Therefore, in fulfillment of our appointment, and with the full conviction of the wisdom and utility of such a Convention, we do hereby heartily hand an invitation to all Temperance associations and organizations based on the principle of entire abstinence from the use and sale of intoxicating liquors as a beverage, to appear by their representatives, in the City of New-York, on the 6th day of September next at 10 o'clock A.M. with a view of continuing in session four days, holding public meetings and transacting such business as may come before them; more especially in reference to the enactment of a prohibitory law, like the Maine Law, by the Governments of all States and Nations. And we do furthermore extend our invitation to the friends of Temperance in every part of the world a cordial welcome to the meeting, and an opportunity to exhibit fully the advance of the cause in their own respective districts.

P. H. Walworth, N.Y.
Christian Keener, Md.
Isaac Litton, Ten.
P. D. Peck, Me.
J. H. Cooke, Va.
Ch. Eginton, Ky.
Thos. E. Powers, Vt.
C. F. Deems, N.C.
John Gridley, Wisc.
Thos. B. Jones, N.H.
J. B. O'Neil, S.C.
A. Bullard, Me.
C. L. McCurdy, Mass.
L. H. Lumpkin, Ga.
M. D. Dimitry, La.
A. C. Barstow, R.I.
Daniel Chandler, Ala.
C. S. Ames, Min.
Nath'l Hewitt, Conn.
W. H. King, Miss.
C. Loomis, Texas
T. F. Seger, N.J.
Hugh Archer, Fla.
Charles Mason, Iowa
L. W. Jackson, Pa.
T. S. Cary, Ohio
C. M. Briggs, Cal.
John W. Evans, Del.
W. Hannamen, Ind.
G. Abernethy, Oregon
Geo. Savage, D.C.
B. S. Edwards, Ill.
John Dougal, Canada
Samuel L. Tisley, New-Brunswick

   All papers friendly to this object will do us a favor by inserting this call in their columns. Will our friends in Canada, New-Brunswick, England, &c. aid us in its wide circulation.

   The above Call, be it noted, was issued in full view of the notice given at the preliminary meeting that there were men as well as women engaged in the Temperance Movement who held that Man had no right to determine for Woman in what manner and by what instrumentalities she should labor for Total Abstinence, but that each woman must be left free to judge for herself. The preliminary meeting had given ample notice that this right was not only claimed for Woman, but would be insisted on by her in all important Temperance efforts thereafter. And yet, in full view of these facts, the Committee issued the above call, inviting "all Temperance organizations and associations,"-—many of these being well known to be composed wholly, others partly of Women, to send Delegates to the Convention, and further inviting "the friends of Temperance" (delegated or not) to participate in the Convention, "assuring them of a cordial welcome to the meeting, and an opportunity to exhibit fully the advance of the cause in their own respective districts." How could this promise be fulfilled without allowing them opportunity to speak?

   No broader or more unexceptionable call could have been desired; and advocates of Woman's Rights were personally urged to forego their own contemplated call and come under the broad folds of this. But they, remembering how they had been treated at the Brick Chapel, and fearing that the "white heap" was not altogether catless, concluded to issue their own call and held their Convention notwithstanding. And now we see what the liberality of the Brick call amounts to in practice.

   --in printing the foregoing call on the 4th of June last, we prefaced it as follows:

   "The following Call originates from that portion of the Brick Church Meeting which denied the right of Women to be its members and officers, and practically expelled them from its platform. We see nothing of exclusiveness in this Call, and believe any Temperance organization may send Delegates under it. How they are to be treated when they attend, is left a question, as we think it should not have been. If Women are to be ineligible to a place on its Committees or Platform, the Call should say so."

   Is not this last suggestion a manifest truth? Here are Women's Temperance Societies, and Temperance Societies composed partly of Women; and if these were not to be allowed to choose their own Delegates and be heard by them in the deliberations of the Convention, ought not the Call to have said so? Anybody may call a Convention, and on any sort of basis; but to invite Delegates and then kick them out or gag them, even by so bland a resolution as Gen. Cary's, is not the fair thing. What think you?



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