Ernestine L. Rose

From Philosopedia

Rose, Ernestine Louise Susmond (Polowsky) (13 January 1810 - 4 August 1892)

Rose, the Polish-born daughter of a Jewish rabbi, wrote A Defense of Atheism (1851) and lectured widely on behalf of freethought. She founded Agnostic Journal, which replaced the Secular Review. She spoke out in favor of the abolition of slavery, of civil rights, and of equal opportunities for education. Rose, one of the inaugurators of the Woman’s Rights Movement, was a constant champion of freethought.

In 1838 she had given the first petition to permit married women the right to hold real estate. In 1869, Rose joined Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, and Susan B. Anthony to form the National Woman Suffrage Association. An Owenite, she was called by Owen his “daughter.”

In 1853 Rose was elected president of the National Women’s Rights Convention. Moncure Conway tells this of her, that “she went down South, and after being there a little time, her soul was stirred at what she saw going on in the fair city of Charleston. So she advertised that she would publicly lecture the Charlestonians. The novelty of a woman appearing in public attracted a large audience, who were amazed and overwhelmed to hear her rate them about slavery in a way that could hardly have been surpassed by that Mr. [William Lloyd] Garrison [[1]] on whose head they had set a price. It was due partly to her sex, and partly to the paralysis caused by her audacity, that she was not torn to pieces; as it was, it required considerable influence to get her safely out of the city.”

Rose had the distinction of being barred as an atheist from the nation's capitol by its chaplain in 1854. Known as the "Queen of the Platform," the ringletted woman's rights activist was frequently harassed by minister-led mobs.

When heckled by religionist at the Seventh National Woman's Rights Convention in 1856, she retorted,

• Do you tell me that the Bible is against our rights? Then I say that our claims do not rest upon a book written no one knows when, or by whom. Do you tell me what Paul or Peter says on the subject? Then again I reply that our claims do not rest on the opinions of any one, not even on those of Paul and Peter, . . . Books and opinions, no matter from whom they came, if they are in opposition to human rights, are nothing but dead letters.

In her last hours, she asked her friend Hypatia Bonner to insure that no one would try to get her to recant her past atheism, and Bonner reported that Rose died “quite untroubled by any thoughts of religion.” At her funeral, Jacob Holyoake said,

• More than comely in features, which had dignity of contour, Mrs. Rose had a voice which at once arrested attention by its strength and melody. She spoke with easy accuracy, and with eloquence and reason. . . . Like her great co-worker in the anti-slavery movement, Lucretia Mott, Mrs. Rose took truth for authority, not authority for truth. . . . The slave she helped to free from the bondage of ownership, and the minds she had set free from the bondage of authority were the glad and proud remembrance of her last days.

{BDF; EU, Victor E. Neuburg; FFRF; FUK; FUS; JM; PUT; RAT; RE; RSR; SAU; TRI; WWS}