He That Breaketh a Hedge Shall be Bitten by a Serpent

Dear Boo and Bubble,

For the last few weeks, Captain has been upstairs scanning the scrapbooks and diary of your great, great, great, great grandfather Joseph Benson Cottrell that we found this winter in Pensacola.  He wants to make sure they are preserved for the future.  The volumes themselves are very fragile and won’t last much longer unless we can find a safe place for them.

I’ve perused a few of them and one caught my eye – particularly since tomorrow is Mother’s Day.  I wanted to share with you one of the articles JBC wrote sometime between 1882 and 1890.  Every piece in this book was about women.  Mind you, he was a man way ahead of his time.  His unabashed advocacy for women’s rights ruffled many a feather, both in the church which he served and in the general society. Captain believes that this fervor emanated from his total devotion and respect for his mother.  He later transferred those feelings to his first wife Louisa Jennings, who died giving birth to your great, great, great grandfather Zadock Jennings Cottrell, and to his second wife Caroline Simms Duncan. 

As for me, and certainly your mother, there is a tremendous sense of gratitude for whatever hand Joseph might have had in fostering the circumstance under which women received the right to vote and consequently an equitable place in influencing the direction of our country.

THE ENFRANCHISEMENT OF WOMAN.

In the evolution of society there have been revolutions, but all upon the heaven ordained

axis and within the divinely appointed sphere. 'l'hat marks the individuality of humanity as co-ordinate with the ranks of intelligences, beneath and above. "He that breaketh a hedge shall be bitten by a serpent," but the field of human privilege and enterprise must be enlarged in spite of the snakes. Let us candidly inquire whether it is wisest and most just to hinder or to help the movement now being made on behalf of co-ordinating women with men all along the lines of industrial, social, educational, governmental and religious engagements.

1. There is no sex in mind.  Examples are so numerous of the capabilities of woman in every range of intellectual life that it is unnecessary to discuss this question.  It is established that men are all the greater whose touch and turning of personality approximate the womanly standard.  Women are more potent and effective as they possess those characteristics of strength and courage usually denoted as masculine.

The differentiating finger-touch of God has given an ineffaceable distinction of femininity from masculinity, so long as humanity continues in this sublunary environment; but we are assured that “in the resurrection” these will be eliminated.  There is a deeper significance in the words that in Christ Jesus “there is neither male nor female” than the world of mind has yet apprehended.

2. The history, thus far, of our race discovers to the observant student that questions of precedence have uniformly been settled according to the rule that “might makes right.”  That woman is ruled out and off from the ways in which she might develop her powers more fully, and be at once more independent of, and helpful to, mankind than she now is, results simply from this fact – might dominates.

3. Gradually, in the unfolding of the stock of humanity, the organic life principle of equal right and privilege to all asserts itself; and just as the growth of the corn there are first the blades of fodder, then the tasselling, then the silking, so that from out the shuck there is to come “the full corn at length,” even so has it been and does it promise to be in regard to human affranchisement. 
   The declaration that “all men are created equal” was as the tasselling of the stalk; now this movement for woman’s affranchisement is as the silking; and the full and complete fruitage prophsesied in the Scripture, when the nations shall beat their weapons of warfare into the implements of peaceful industry, will be reached.  Woman in our counsels will wonderfully quality and recondition the measures whereby “the kingdoms of this world are to become the kingdoms of God and His Christ.”