ADDRESS
TO THE
FIRST GRADUATING CLASS
OF
Rutgers Female College;
DELIVERED IN
THE FOURTH AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
(REV. DR. CROSBY'S),
ON
SABBATH EVENING, JUNE 2D, 1867.
BY
HENRY M. PIERCE, LL.D.,
PRESIDENT OF THE COLLEGE.
PUBLISHED BY REQUEST OF THE TRUSTEES.
New York:
AGATHYNIAN PRESS.
1867
President's Address.
In the year 1839, with great labor, care, expense, and afterlong consultation, was the Rutgers Female Institute founded.It grew out of an increasing sense of the importance of theduties of women, and of the need that her work should bewell done. Hence the establishment of the school, with itscourse of studies, its libraries, its apparatus, its teachers. Aquarter of a century has witnessed a great change in the educationof woman; and the position of Rutgers Instituteto-day, as a College, marks the character and degree of thatchange.
It has been my custom, to make a personal address to themembers of each graduating class, as they have gone forthfrom the quiet of the school to the busy walks of life. Myheart now impels me to follow this usage, but the changethat has taken place in this institution, during the past year,seems to make appropriate to the present occasion, a fewpreliminary statements of my views as to what is the trueposition of woman, and what should be her education.
These are questions that deeply agitate the public mind.They are, in fact, the leading questions of the day; but inregard to them, I shall not shrink from the utterance of myopinions. Underlying the question of the education ofwoman, is the question of her equality with man; for ifwoman be inferior to man, so should be her education.
Some might be disposed to reverse this proposition, and[Pg 4]to say that just in proportion to her inferiority, should hertraining be more careful and complete. There might seemto be some truth in this idea; but a little deeper thinkingwill convince us that to try to make up in this way for hersupposed deficiency, would be to attempt an impossibility.The end could not be reached; the bounds that nature hadappointed could not be passed.
It is also clear that if woman be the equal of man, sheshould receive as good an education as man, a propositiontoo plain for argument. So is also our third proposition—whichexhausts this branch of the subject—that if woman besuperior to man, she should receive a better education thanman: for it is a first principle in morals, that every powerwhich God gave, He meant should be unfolded to its fullestextent.
I am fully persuaded that the time is not far distant, whenit will be thought almost incredible that the question of theinferiority of woman should ever have been seriously debated.For it is not without higher warrant than that ofhuman reason, that I would claim for woman an equal placeby the side of man. When in the beginning God createdthe heavens, the earth, the sea, and all that in them is, evenas He then made laws for the stars and the seas, so did Hethen fix and determine forever the sphere and the destiny ofman and of woman. Driven out of Paradise into the worldon account of sin, neither man nor woman took their placeat once; and in the nature of the case, wom