Marriage Protest.
Privately Published Radical Denunciation Of Marriage
Stone, Lucy and Henry Blackwell. Marriage Protest. [Boston]: Lucy Stone & Henry Blackwell, (1897).
12mo.; one leaf, folded to make 4 pages; printed on two sides; folded horizontally, as if for mailing.
First revised edition; preceded only by the statement originally published on the occasion of the Stone-Blackwell union in 1855; here reprinted, with an “afterword” written specially by Blackwell for this printing. A fascinating document in which newlyweds Lucy Stone and Henry Blackwell, leading suffrage and abolitionist figures, protest against the institution of marriage per se. In part:
While acknowledging our mutual affection by publicly assuming the relation of husband and wife, yet in justice to ourselves and a great principle, we deem it a duty to declare that this act on our part implies no sanction of, nor promise of obedience to such of the present laws of marriage as refuse to recognize the wife as an independent rational being, while they confer upon the husband an injurious and unnatural superiority, investing him with legal powers which no honorable man would exercise, and which no man should possess... (p. 1)
In an afterword dated 1897, the recently widowed Blackwell (Stone died in 1893) adds: “I stand by every word of my Marriage Protest. What is wanted to make the relation permanent and happy, is the recognition of equality and unity, and fidelity to the Union...” (p. 3).
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