Marianne Parker Dascomb
(courtesy Oberlin College Archives)

The Oberlin Women's Suffrage Debate - 1870


Oberlin's tradition of progressive women's education encountered several roadblocks. In 1870 one-hundred a forty married women of Lorain County petitioned to the legislature, reqesting that women be denied suffrage. They contended that The apparent leader of this effort was Mrs. Marianne Parker Dascomb, head Principal of the Female Department at the College.

We acknowledge no inferiority to men. We claim to have no less ability to preform the duties which God has ...than the men to perform those imposed on them.
We beleive has wisely and well dadapted each sex to the performance of their suties as such.
We believe our trusts to be ... and sacred as any that exist on earth.
We feel our present duties fill the whole measure of our time and responsibilites; and that they are such that none but ourselves can perform.
Their importance requires us to protest against all efforts to compell us to assume those obligations which are not be separated from suffrage: duties which cannot be performed by us without the sacrifice of the highest interests of our family and of society.
It is our fathers...husbads and sons who represent us at the ballot box. Our husbands are our voice and one with us. Our sons are what we make them.
We are content hat they represent us in the corn field, the battlefield, and at the ballot box, and we then in the school room, at the fireside, and at the cradle; believing our representation even at the ballot box, to be thus more final and imporatant than than it could possibly be were a women allowed to vote.
We do therefore respectfully protest against any legislation to establish women's suffrage in our land or any part of it.
(Lorain County News March 17, 1870)

A town resident writing as "An Enquirer" in the Lorain County News questioned the integrity and purpose of the anti-suffragests.

"What of the night?" In other days we were wont to look to Oberlin for the "breaking" of thje morning. Has her light become darkness or do we "having eyes see not?" We have waited long and patiently for her advance in the cause of women suffrage and be sure that we were coming up to the help of the Lord in the work of truth and rightousness...that "protest "signed by the principal of the female department and the wives of the professors of Oberlin Collehe carried blight to the hearts of many of its toiling daughters from four to eight years in its classic halls to fit themselves for display in the parlor or labor in the kitchen, according to the arguments there stated.

Yet these "one-hundred and forty married ladies" say, "We acknolwedge no inferiority to man." In this assertion we infer they have reference to intellectual abilities. Ladies of their prudence surely would not claim equality with man in phsyical strength. Looking at this subject from this standpoint we see men whose mental faculties, by dint of application, carry them to the very summit of of scientific, political,and religious acquirements attainable by mortals, while that protest assigns to women "not inferior to man," three varieties of employment, "The school-room, the fireside, and the cradel.

Some say it is "a reform against nature." So is missionary work a reform against nature. If nature is to govern in the duties of life, why tear her from home and friends and every comfort essential to her health and life even ,and send her right into the jaws of inevitable want, woe and death, on the uncertainty of doing any good even at the cost of her life.

Beloved, let your zeal be tempered with knowledge and consistancy. (Lorain County News, April 14, 1870)

Richard Butler, editor and publisher of the Lorain County News, refused to endorse women's suffrage. Instead, her placed the burden upon women themselves and leveled an ultimatum: prove your committment to suffrage and only then will we act.

Our principal object is saying all this is to find out whether the women of our land are really anxious to have the rights and priviliges which some of them claim. It seems to us that this mighty clamour about "man's oppression of women" comes not from the mass of American females. The most of them seem to be contented with the lot they hold. And if they are not, we trust that every editor in the country will take the grounds we occupy in urging them, from the least to the greatest, to step forward and speak for themselves, if it be but only one word; and when they have spoken we trust that every editor will use his influence to help their cause. Is that fair. (Lorain County News. April 14, 1870)

One hundred and fifty Oberlin citizens. Mary Ashton Rice Livermore delivereda well received speech at First Church.

 

Sources

Lorain C