permanently and
necessarily disabled from progress and elevation--to which, in our
practice, we have hitherto made but _one_ wicked and shameful
exception--and under the influence of the powerful tendency of our
system to _individualism_, woman has been allowed a freedom heretofore
unparalleled, and _onward and upward_ is still the word.

I do not claim perfection for our system. But I say we have the germs of
the healthiest national development. All that remains is to carry
forward those germs to maturity, and let them show their legitimate
results unhampered. That is what we want, what we claim. Society here is
unformed, in the rough. We lack the outward grace and polish belonging
only to old societies. We shall yet attain these, as well as some other
desirable things; but I believe that in no other country in the world is
there so much genuine, delicate, universal devotion manifested for woman
as among the Americans. Have you seen a boy of fourteen, shy, awkward,
uncouth in manner, rough in speech, but with a great, tender heart
thumping in his bosom? And did you know of the idolatrous worship he
could not wholly conceal for some fair, sweet, good girl older than
himself, a woman, even--a worship, which was not love, if love be other
than a high and tender sentiment, but which was capable of filling his
being to overflow with its glory and richness? I liken our American
chivalry to this. And it is this instinctive natural politeness of our
men toward women that, as much as anything else, keeps us from being
rude and unrefined while yet in our first adolescence.

I am aware that, hitherto, the South has laid claim to the lion's share
of this gallant spirit, as it has of many other polite and social
qualities. But we do not so readily now, as a few years ago, yield to
these Southern assumptions. We know now for just how much they stand.
And we know, too, in the better light of this hour, that it is not
possible for a very high and pure ideal of womanhood to be conceived in
the atmosphere of a system which, as slavery does, persistently, on
principle, and on a large scale, degrades a portion of the sex, no
matter how weak, poor, defenceless. Rather, the more defenceless the
greater is the wrong, the shame. I am not lauding that gallantry which
stands in polite posture in the presence of a lady, hat in hand, and
with its selectest bow and smile, and in the same breath turns to commit
the direst offences against the peac