Gage, Matilda Joslyn

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Gage, Matilda Joslyn (1826–1898)

Influential 19th-century radical suffragist whose work on behalf of the rights of women has been largely ignored. Born Matilda Joslyn in Cicero, New York, on March 25, 1826; died of an embolism in Chicago, Illinois, on March 18, 1898; daughter of Dr. Hezekiah Joslyn (a physician) and Helen (Leslie) Joslyn; married Henry H. Gage, in 1845; children: Helen Leslie Gage ; Thomas Clarkson Gage; Julie L. Gage; Maud Gage .

Delivered her first public address advocating women's rights in Syracuse, New York (1852); formed the National Woman Suffrage Association with Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony and helped found the New York State Woman Suffrage Association (1869); named president of both state and national suffrage organizations (1875); co-wrote the "Declaration of the Rights of Women" (1876); was a founding member of the Equal Rights Party (1880); co-edited with Stanton and Anthony the first three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage (1881–86); formed the Woman's National Liberal Union (1890); published Woman, Church and State (1893).

Along with Susan B. Anthony and Eliza-beth Cady Stanton , Matilda Joslyn Gage was the third member of the great 19th-century triumvi-rate of women suffragists. Yet unlike Anthony and Stanton, whose names remain synonymous with the struggle for women's rights, Gage, a talented organizer, theoretician, and "one of the most logical, scientific and fearless writers of her day," is barely remembered. Recent scholarly work by feminist writers, including Sally Roesch Wagner and the radical theologian Mary Daly , have sought to correct this historical oversight. More radical than either Anthony or Stanton, Gage was also the most intellectually daring. While her contemporaries focused on political issues, particularly the vote, Gage concerned herself with the broader sociological and historical aspects of women's issues. While others worked within the system to improve the legal status of women, Gage's vision moved her out-side the system and beyond the company of her fellow crusaders.

Matilda Joslyn Gage's interest in reform and her passionate dedication to women's rights was formed early. Born on March 25, 1826, in Cicero, New York, the only child of Dr. Hezekiah Joslyn and Helen Leslie Joslyn , Gage's upbringing from the first was decidedly unconventional. Unlike in most privileged bourgeois households of the 19th century, the dinner conversation in the Joslyn house was likely to turn to enlightened and lively discussions about abolition, temperance, women's rights and free thought—ideas her progressive-minded parents fervently advocated. Their home in Cicero was a meeting place for reformers and, reputedly, for members of the Underground Railroad.

Her father took it upon himself to supervise his daughter's education. Rather than attend school, Gage was tutored at home in Greek, mathematics and physiology. At age 15, she was sent to the Clinton (NY) Liberal Institute where she completed her formal education. Around 1843–44, Hezekiah Joslyn contacted an old instructor of his to find out if his daughter could receive a medical education. Nothing came of his inquiry.

Yet despite her unconventional upbringing, Gage, at least initially, set out on the very conventional course of marriage, children and housekeeping. In 1845, at age 18, she married Henry H. Gage, a merchant, and the young couple set up house in Fayetteville, New York. Over the next few years, her husband's business prospered, and she gave birth to five children (one died in infancy). Most of her energies during this time were directed towards raising the children and managing household affairs. Like her father, she was deeply interested and involved in her children's education, and by all accounts she was the dominant intellectual force in the household. One daughter later described her mother as "a character of independence of thought and action, decided convictions, courage of opinions, strong personality, great love of liberty and sympathy for the down-trodden."

Despite caring for her family and recuperating from her own recurrent bouts of illness, Gage became deeply interested in the burgeoning women's rights movement. In September 1852, at age 26, she made her first public address for the rights of women at the National Woman's Rights Convention in Syracuse, New York. Her appearance was a testament to her courage and determination. Gage was the youngest speaker at the convention and completely unknown. She suffered greatly from stage fright (a condition she never fully conquered), yet she ascended the platform and spoke passionately to the assembled suffragists, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton. In her speech, Gage urged that "self reliance [be] one of the first lessons taught to our daughters" and advocated legal and educational equality. Much of her speech was illustrated with notable examples of women's achievements throughout history. Extolling women's accomplishments, despite all the legal and societal obstacles placed in their way, was a theme that recurred in her speeches and writings for the rest of her life.

Two years later, while vacationing in the fashionable resort town of Saratoga Springs, New York, she encountered Susan B. Anthony. The distressed Anthony was attempting to organize a town meeting on women's rights but with little success; though she had hired a hall, she had no speakers; though she was distributing flyers, she would be hard put to pay for them; and, on top of that, her purse had been stolen. Gage agreed to help; she also agreed to over-come her fear of public speaking. The meeting was a triumph, due in no small part to Gage's speech and her involvement. Her stylish attire and youthful appearance helped to belie the conventional notion in the press and in the minds of the public that suffragists were not particularly feminine. One reporter described Gage as a "medium sized, and lady-like looking woman, dressed in tasty plaid silk with two flounces." She would pass muster.

Following her appearance in Saratoga Springs, Matilda Joslyn Gage became a key player in virtually every women's rights' effort over the next 40 years. In 1869, women's rights advocates split into two organizations. Conservative reformers and later members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union formed the American Woman Suffrage Association. The more radical-minded Matilda Joslyn Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony formed the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA). That same year, Gage helped found and became secretary and vice president of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association.

Though Gage continued to rally support by speaking publicly on behalf of women's rights, her real talents lay in organizing and writing. She was a voracious reader, a thorough researcher, and a creative thinker who used her pen deftly and brilliantly to record the past accomplishments of women, thus creating a historical framework for the women's suffrage movement. Susan B. Anthony credited her with "bringing more startling facts to light than any woman I know." Her series of pamphlets, including "Woman as Inventor" (1870) which contained evidence that a woman (Catharine Littlefield Greene ) invented the cotton gin; "Woman's Rights Catechism" (1871); and "Who Planned the Tennessee Campaign of 1862? Or Anna Ella Carroll vs. Ulysses S. Grant" (1880) which argued that a woman planned the military strategy that changed the course of the Civil War, were widely read and enormously influential. Gage was also a regular contributor to the NWSA's newspaper, Revolution, and from 1878 to 1881 edited the monthly National Citizen and Ballot Box published by the NWSA. With Anthony and Stanton, she also edited the first three volumes of the monumental History of Woman Suffrage (1881–86).

Gage tried unsuccessfully to cast a ballot in the 1872 presidential election. When Susan B. Anthony successfully voted and was arrested, Gage was the only woman to join the speaking campaign that Anthony organized following her arrest. She and Anthony crisscrossed the country over the next year, making a series of public addresses. Her speech, "The United States on Trial—Not Susan B. Anthony," argued that the central issue was not whether the government should grant women rights; rather that the government had denied women rights to which they, as citizens and human beings, were naturally entitled.

In 1873, the NWSA called for a more organized national suffrage campaign under the revived motto of "no taxation without representation." The effort was launched on December 16, 1873, the centennial anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. At the New York Woman Suffrage Association, Matilda Joslyn Gage appealed to "the tax paying women of New York… to protest against the tyranny of taxation without representation." Gage once again laid the foundation for the protest by recalling that the original protestors in 1773 were women who had organized themselves and refused to buy tea from England. Though the campaign did not win them the vote, it legitimized their efforts, gained them new support, and moved the issue of women's suffrage more firmly to the center of public debate.

In 1875, Gage testified before Congress on behalf of women's rights. That same year, she was elected president of both the state and national associations but turned over the post in the national association to the more visible Stanton in 1876, the centennial anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In January of that year, the NWSA held a meeting in Washington, D.C. At Gage's urging, the members agreed to draft a "Declaration of the Rights of Women." Written by Gage and Stanton, the declaration asked for "no special favors, no special privileges, no special legislation" but rather called for "all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and to our daughters forever." At the close of the reading of the original Declaration of Independence at the July 4 centennial celebration in Philadelphia, Gage, Anthony and two other NWSA members marched to the stage and, before they could be stopped, presented the "Declaration of the Rights of Women" to the vice president of the United States. The bold move drew attention and newspaper coverage but accomplished little else.

Gage's efforts on behalf of women's rights remained undiminished. In 1877, she drafted a "Petition for Relief from Political Disabilities," and her congressional representative introduced a bill to declare Matilda Joslyn Gage "a citizen of the United States, clothed with all the political rights and powers of citizenship, namely the right to vote and hold office to the same extent and in the same degree that male citizens enjoy this right." Scores of women across the country followed her example, and Congress was flooded with similar petitions.

In 1880, Gage lobbied the national conventions of the Republican, Democrat, and Green-back-Labor parties in an unsuccessful bid to add women's suffrage to their platforms. Undaunted, Gage and other activists formed the Equal Rights Party with Gage acting as elector-at-large. The party nominated Belva Lockwood for president and Marietta Stow for vice president under the slogan "Rally round the flag, girls/Rally round the flag, Shouting the battle cry of freedom." The Equal Rights Party platform included equal justice for all, regardless of race, sex or nationality, as well as an international peace pact, self-determination for Native Americans, and civil-service reform. In the 1884 election, the Lockwood-Stow ticket received 4,149 popular votes.

[Gage] is a major radical feminist theoretician and historian whose written work is indispensable for an understanding of the women's movement today.
—Mary Daly

As time went on, Matilda Joslyn Gage was becoming far more radicalized than her NWSA sisters. Increasingly, she found herself at ideological odds with Anthony and Stanton. The decisive break came in 1890 when Anthony engineered a merger between the NWSA and the conservative American Woman Suffrage Association (which included members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union). Gage was completely opposed to this merger on ideological grounds. Her work in the women's suffrage movement was leading her to a belief that the established churches, namely Christianity, bore a preponderance of responsibility for the prevailing notion of male superiority. She left the NWSA and formed the Woman's National Liberal Union. The new organization was more extreme in its views and focused on a wider range of issues relating to women, including the oppression of women by the church. It also called for an end to prayer in public school and supported labor reform. That year, Gage also published a pamphlet, The Dangers of the Hour, which outlined the development of her ideas through four decades of work in the women's movement. This manifesto constituted a clear warning to her friends in the movement that she was moving in a very different—and far more radical—direction than they were.

Gage expanded her views in her magnum opus Woman, Church and State (1893). The book's dedication said it all: "Dedicated to all Christian women and men, of whatever creed or name who, bound by church or state, have not dared to think for themselves." In Woman, Church and State, Gage set out to prove that the most egregious wrong ever inflicted upon woman was in the Christian teaching that God did not create her as man's equal. Gage traced this idea back to its origins in Genesis and claimed that this basic tenet of Christian faith had effectively stripped women of power and importance and sentenced them to lifetimes of subjugation.

Gage's assertion in Woman, Church and State was that in primitive, pre-Christian civilizations women exercised a great deal of authority and power. She referred to this period as the "Matriarchate" or Mother-rule. During the Matriarchate, women controlled social, political, and religious rituals and institutions. Gage then illustrated how Judaism and the rise of Christianity signaled the beginning of the "Patriarchate" or Father-rule in which men seized control of all aspects of society and systematically robbed women of authority and position. Gage went so far as to attribute the practices of infanticide, prostitution, and polygamy to the rise of the Patriarchate.

Woman, Church and State was widely read but offended many in the women's movement, particularly members of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Gage was seen to have gone beyond the pale, with the result that she was written off by the mainstream leadership of the women's movement and written out of its history.

Matilda Joslyn Gage spent her later years in Chicago at the home of her youngest daughter. Declining health effectively ended her public appearances. Though she remained committed to women's suffrage, a budding interest in spiritual matters, including a flirtation with Theosophy, occupied much of her time. Gage, exceedingly ill, drafted but never delivered a speech for the 50th-anniversary convention of the women's rights movement in 1898. After two years of invalidism brought on by heart disease, she died of an embolism in the brain on March 18, 1898, at the age of 71. Upon her gravestone was carved her lifelong motto—"There is a word sweeter than Mother, Home, or Heaven: that word is liberty."

sources and suggested reading:

Buhle, Mari Jo, and Paul Buhle. The Concise History of Women Suffrage. Urbana, IL: University Of Illinois Press, 1978.

Daly, Mary. Gyn/Ecology: The Metaethics of Radical Feminism. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1978.

Gage, Matilda Joslyn. Woman, Church and State. NY: Arno Press, 1972 (reprint).

——, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. History of Woman Suffrage. Vol. 1 (1881), Vol. 2 (1882), Vol. 3 (1886); Ida Husted Harper and Susan B. Anthony, eds. Vol. 4 (1902); Ida Husted Harper, ed. Vols. 5 and 6 (1922). Salem: Ayer Company reprint, 1985.

James, Edward T., ed. Notable American Women, 1607–1950: A Biographical Dictionary. Vol. II. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971.

McHenry, Robert, ed. Famous American Women; A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present. NY: Dover, 1983.

Spender, Dale. Women of Ideas and What Men Have Done to Them. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982.

Wagner, Sally Roesch. A Time of Protest: Suffragists Challenge the Republic: 1870–1887. Sacramento, CA: Spectrum Publications, 1987.

Zophy, Angela Howard, ed. Handbook of American Women's History. NY: Garland, 1990.