Mary Upton Ferrin: Earliest Massachusetts Pioneer in Woman Suffrage by S. M. Smoller
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Address to the Judiciary Committee

Mary was disheartened that her petition was again withdrawn.  Charles Upham remained a steadfast supporter and he encouraged her to present an Address to the Judiciary Committee.  Mary organized her thoughts while traveling to collect signatures  She walked mostly, but sometimes traveled by omnibus and stayed with friends and supporters in strange towns.  The most difficult part of her work was the isolation; she worked unaided and was often alone.

Mrs. Ferrin's Address to the Judiciary Committee of the
 Massachusetts Legislature in 1850.

Long have our liberties and our lives been lauded to the skies, to our amusement and edification, and until our sex has been as much regaled, as has the Southern slave, with "liberty and law".  But, says one, "Women are free."  So likewise are slaves free to submit to the laws and to their masters.

"A married woman is as much the property of her husband, likewise her goods and chattel, as is his horse," says an eminent judge, and he might have added, many of them are treated much worse.  No more apt illustration could have been given.  Though man cannot beat his wife like his horse, he can kill her by abuse - the most pernicious of slow poisons; and, alas, too often does he do it.  It is for such unfortunate ones that protection is needed.  Existing laws neither do, nor can, protect them, nor can society, on account of the laws. If they were men, society would protect and defend them.  Long, silently, and patiently have they waited until forbearance came to be a virtue.

Should a woman make her will without her husband's consent in writing, it is of no use.  It as just and proper that a woman should dispose of her own property to her own satisfaction as that a man should dispose of his.  In many cases she is as competent, and sadly to be pitied if not in many cases more so.  And even with her husband's consent, she cannot bequeath to him her real estate.  She can sell it with his consent, but the deeds must pass and be recorded, and if the husband pleases, he can take the money and but the property back again.  Does justice require that a man and his wife should use so much deception, and be at so much unnecessary satisfaction - affairs which do not in the least affect any other individual?  Reason, humanity, and common sense answer - No!

"All men are created free and equal," and all women are born subject to laws which they have neither the power to make or to repeal, but which they are taxed, directly and indirectly, to support, and many of which area a disgrace to humanity and ought to be forthwith abolished.  A woman is compelled by circumstances to work for less than half an ordinary man can earn, and yet she is as essential to the existence, happiness and refinement of society as is man.

We are told, "the Bible does not provide for divorce except for one offense."  Neither does the Bible prohibit divorce for any other justifiable cause.  Inasmuch as men take the liberty to legislate upon other subjects of which the Bible does, and does not, take particular notice, so likewise are they equally at liberty to legislate and improve upon this, when the state of society demands it....A woman who has a good husband glides easily along under his protection, while those who have bad husbands, of which, alas! there are too many, are not aware of the depths of their degradation until they suddenly and unexpectedly find themselves, through the influence of the law, totally destitute, condemned to hopeless poverty and servitude, with an ungrateful tyrant for a master.  No respectable man with a decent woman for a wife, will ever demean himself so much as to insult or abuse his wife.  Wherever such a state of things exist, it is a disgrace to the age and to society, by whomsoever practiced, encouraged, or protected, where public or private - whether social, political or religious.

A very estimable and influential lady, whose property was valued at over $150,000, married a man in whom she had unbounded, but misplaced confidence, as is too often the case;  consequently, the most of her property was squandered through intemperance and dissipation, before she was aware of the least wrong-doing. So deeply was she shocked by the character of her husband, that she soon found a premature grave, leaving several small children to be reared and educated upon the remnant of her scattered wealth.

Nearly twelve years since, a woman of a neighboring town, whose husband had forsaken her, hired a man to carry her furniture in a wagon to her native place, with her family, which consisted of her husband's mother, herself, and six children, the eldest of which was but twelve years old.  On her arrival there, she had only food enough for one meal, and nine-pence left.  During the summer, in consequence of hardships and deprivations, she was taken violently sick, being deprived of her reason for several weeks.  Her husband has not, as yet, appeared to offer her the least assistance, although apprised of her situation.  But, being an uncommonly mean man, he had sold her furniture, piece by piece, and reduced her to penury, so that nothing by the aid of her friends and her own exertions, saved her and her family for the almshouse.

Says the law to this heroic woman, "What, though your property is squandered, your health and spirits broken and you have six small children, besides yourself and your husband's mother to support!  After five years of incessant toil in humility and degradation, why should not your lord and master intrude his loathsome person, like a blood-sucker upon your vitals, never offering you any assistance; and should your precarious life be protracted to that extent of tie, for twenty dollars you can buy a divorce from bed and board, and have your property secured to you.  Such, Madam, is your high privilege.  Complain then not to use, lest instead of alleviating your sufferings, we strengthen the cords that already bind you."

The moral courage of the "hero of the Battle-field" would shrink in horror from scenes like these: but such is the fate of woman, to whom God grant no future "hell".

In case a man received a trifle from a departed friend or any other source, the wife's signature is not required.  Recently a poor man left his daughter twenty dollars, of which her husband allowed he ten, retaining the remainder for acknowledging its receipt. It was probably the only ten dollars the woman ever received, except for her own exertions, which were constantly required to supply the necessities of her family, her husband being very intemperate and abusive, often pulling her by the ears so as to cause the blood to flow freely.

No bodily pain, however intense, can compare with the mental suffering which we witness and experience, and which would long since have filled our Insane Asylums to overflowing, were it not for the unceasing drudgery to which we are subjected, in order to save ourselves and families from starvation. 

Often does the drunkard bestow upon his wife from one to a dozen children to rear and support until old enough to render her a little assistance, when they are compelled to seek service in order to clothe themselves decently, and often are their earnings, with those of their mothers, appropriated to pay for rum, tobacco, gambling and other vices.

Note:  Ferrin slips into the first person and describe her personal situation.
"Say not that we exaggerate these evils, neither tongue nor pen can do it!,." says the unfortunate wife of a man whose moral character, as far as she knew, was unimpeachable, but who proved to be an insufferable tyrant, depriving her of the necessaries of life, and often ordering her out of the house which her friends provided for them to live it, using the most abusive epithets which ingenuity, or the want of it, could suggest. Intemperance degraded the character of the man with whom she lived as long as apprehensions for the safety of her life would warrant; from the fact that her health was rapidly failing under the severity and deprivation to which she was subjected, and the repeated threats of violence to her own life and that of her friends.

But one step further and you drive us to desperation!  Sooner I would pour out my heart's blood, drop by drop, than suffer again what I have hither experienced, or that my female friends should suffer as I have done, and I know that many of them do.  Yet, neither sacrifice, sympathy, argument, or influence can avail us anything under existing circumstances. 

Such an appeal from helpless, down-trodden humanity, thought it were made to a council of the most benighted North American savages, would not pass unheeded.  Shall it be made in vain to you?

To many of us, death would be a luxury compared to what we suffer in consequence of the abusive treatment we receive from unprincipled men, which existing laws sanction and encourage by their indiscriminate severity, and with which we are told, "it would be difficult to meddle on account of their sacredness and sublimity".  The idea is sufficiently lubricious to excite the visibility of the most grave.  Though the sublime and the ridiculous may be too nearly allied for females to distinguish the difference, unjust inequality is to them far more contemptible then sacred, having thus far been ungraciously subjected to it.  Well may we be called "the weaker sex" if the error in judgment is ours, although we have intellect and energy enough not to respect circumstances under which we are placed, nor the powers which would designedly inflict such injustice upon us.

Debased indeed would a man consider himself to employ a woman to plead his cause, with a woman for judge and twelve women for jurors.  How much less degraded are women when exposed to a similar assembly of men, who have for them neither interest, sympathy, nor respect, subjected as they are to insolent questions and the uncharitable remarks of an indifferent multitude.

It is that women are ignorant of the laws.  They are sufficiently enlightened to comprehend the meaning of justice - a far more important thing - which admits of neither improvement nor modification, but is applicable to every emergency.  With the perceptibility that some can boast, it would require but a short time for them to enact laws sufficient to govern themselves, which is all that the most aspiring can covet, convinced as they are that, as in families, so likewise in government, the mild, indulgent parent who would consult the greatest good or the greatest number, is rewarded with agreeable and honorable children; while the one who is unjust, partial, and severe, is proportionally recompensed for his indiscretion.

In regard to unjust imprisonment, we are told, "It is of too rare an occurrence to require legal enactments."  How many a devoted wife, mother and child can tell a far different story?  Who of us or our children is secure from false accusation and imprisonment, or, perhaps, an ignominious death upon the gallows, to screen some miserable villain from justice?  Witnesses, lawyers, judges, jurors, and executioners are paid for depriving innocent persons of their time, liberty, health and reputation, which, too many, is dearer than life, while the guilty one escapes, and society, when too late, laments the sad catastrophe.  The life-blood of many a victim demands not only justice for the guilty, but protection for the innocent."