 Individualism, a reader, edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore, narrated by James Foster. 10. Marriage of Lillian Harmon and Edwin C. Walker Moses Harmon The Pacific Reporter, Volume 13, March 10 to June 16, 1887. Moses Harmon, 1830 to 1910, transformed the small town of Valley Falls, Kansas, into a flashpoint of radical individualism. As the editor for thirty years of the Free Thought and Anarchist paper, Lucifer the Light Bearer, Harmon implemented an open-word policy that caused him to be harassed for many years by legal authorities. Moreover, though a man of fairly conventional personal ethics, Harmon and his circle advocated free love, by which they meant that sexual relationships should be a matter of personal choice and conscience, absolutely free from the coercive intervention of government. Harmon was imprisoned four times for violating obscenity laws. In his final conviction at age seventy-four, he was sentenced to hard labor, breaking rocks at Juliette Prison. Lillian Harmon, the daughter of Moses, worked with him on Lucifer, during which time she met and fell in love with another free-thinking anarchist, Edwin C. Walker. In September 1886, apparently as a test of the Kansas marriage statutes, Lillian and Edwin joined in a common law marriage without the involvement of either church or state. After the couple had been arrested and convicted, they appealed the verdict and lost. Imprisonment followed for both Lillian and Edwin. The following document is part of the court transcript from the appeal. It includes a verbatim account of the illegal marriage, as it was originally published in Lucifer. Appeal from Jefferson County E. C. Walker and Lillian Harmon were prosecuted in the District Court of Jefferson County for a violation of Section 12 of the Marriage Act, which reads as follows, that any persons living together as man and wife within this state without being married shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and, on conviction thereof, shall be fined in a sum of not less than five hundred dollars, nor more than one thousand dollars, or be imprisoned in the county jail not less than thirty days, nor more than three months. Compiled Laws, 1879, page 539 At the trial, which was had with a jury, Moses Harmon, the father of Lillian Harmon, testified that on September 19, 1886, his daughter Lillian and E. C. Walker entered into what he called an autonomistic marriage at his home in the presence of himself and two other persons. On that occasion a statement concerning the Compact or Union about to be entered into was read by the witnesses, then followed a statement made by E. C. Walker which was responded to by Lillian Harmon and the ceremony was terminated by another short statement from the witness. These statements were published in the Lucifer, a newspaper edited by the witness, and the account there given was read in evidence and is as follows. Autonomistic Marriage Practicalized While distinctly denying the right of any citizen or citizens, whether minority or majority, to inquire into our private affairs or to dictate to us as to the manner in which we shall discharge our private duties and obligations to each other, we wish it understood that we are not afraid nor ashamed to let the world know the nature of the civil compact entered into between Lillian Harmon and Edwin C. Walker at the home of the senior editor of Lucifer on Sunday, the 19th of September, 1886, of the Common Calendar. As our answer then to the many questions in regard thereto, we have reproduced as near as possible the aforesaid proceedings. 1. Moses Harmon, father of Lillian Harmon, one of the parties to this agreement or compact, read the following as a general statement of principles in regard to marriage. Marriage, by which term we mean the various attractions, sentiments, arrangements and interests, psychical, social, material involved in the sex relations of men and women is, or should be, distinctively a personal matter, a strictly private affair. There are, or should be, but two parties to this arrangement or compact. A man and a woman, or perhaps we should say a woman and a man, since the interests, the fate of woman is involved for wheel or woe in marriage to a far greater extent than is the fate or interests of man. Someone has said, marriage is for man only an episode while for woman it is the epic of her life. Hence it would seem right and proper that in all arrangements pertaining to marriage woman should have the first voice or control. Marriage looks to maternity, motherhood as its most important result or outcome, and as dame nature has placed the burden of maternity upon woman, it would seem that marriage should be emphatically and distinctively woman's work, woman's institution. It need not be said that this is not the common, the popular and especially the legal view of marriage. The very etymology itself of the word tells a very different story. Marriage is derived from the French word marie meaning the husband and never did the etymology of a word more truly indicate its popular and legal meaning than does the etymology of this one. Marriage, as enforced in so-called Christian lands as well as in most heathen countries, is preeminently man's affair, man's institution. Its origin, mythologic origin, declares that woman was made for man, not man for woman, not each for the other. History shows that man has ruled over woman as mythology declares he should do and the marriage laws themselves show that they were made by man for man's benefit, not for woman's. Marriage means or results in the family as an institution and the laws and customs pertaining thereto make man the head and autocrat of the family. When a woman marries she merges her individuality as a legal person into that of her husband even to the surrender of her name just as chattel slaves were required to take the name of their master. Against all such invasive laws and unjust discriminations we as autonomists hereby most solemnly protest. We most distinctly and positively reject, repudiate and abjure all such laws and regulations. And if we ever have acknowledged allegiance to these statute laws regulating marriage we hereby renounce and disclaim all such allegiance. To particularize and recapitulate, marriage being a strictly personal matter we deny the right of society in the form of church and state to regulate it or interfere with the individual man and woman in this relation. All such interference from our standpoint is regarded as an impertinence and worse than an impertinence. To acknowledge the right of the state to dictate to us in these matters is to acknowledge ourselves the children or minor wards of the state not capable of transacting our own business. We therefore most solemnly and earnestly repudiate, abjure and reject the authority, the rights and ceremonies of church and state in marriage as we reject the mummies of the church in the ceremony called baptism and at the bedside of the dying. The priest or other state official can no more prepare the contracting parties for the duties of marriage than he can prepare the dying for life in another world. In either case the preparation must be the work of the parties immediately concerned. We regard all such attempts at regulation on the part of the church and state as not only an impertinence, not only wrong in principle but disastrous to the last degree in practice. Here as everywhere else in the realm of personal rights and reciprocal duties we regard intelligent choice, untrampled voluntarism coupled with responsibility to natural law for our acts as the true and only basis of morality. As a matter of principle we are opposed to the making of promises on occasions like this. The promise to love and honour may become quite impossible of fulfilment and that from no fault of the party making such promise. The promise to love, honour and obey so long as both shall live commonly exacted of woman we regard as a highly immoral promise. It makes woman the inferior, the vassal of her husband and when from any cause love ceases to exist between the parties the promise binds her to do an immoral act that is it binds her to prostitute her sexhood at the command of an unloving and unlovable husband. For these and other reasons that will readily suggest themselves we as autonomists prefer not to make any promises of the kind usually made as part of marriage ceremonies. 2. E. C. Walker as one of the contracting parties made the following statement This is a time for clear frank statement. While regarding all public marital ceremonies as essentially and ineradically indelicate a pandering to the morbid, vicious and meddlesome element in human nature I consider this form the least objectionable. I abdicate in advance all the so-called marital rights with which this public acknowledgment of our relationship may invest in me. Lillian is and will continue to be as free to repulse any and all advances of mine as she has been here to for. In joining with me in this love and labor union she has not alienated a single natural right. She remains sovereign of herself as I of myself and we severally and together repudiate all powers legally conferred upon husbands and wives. In legal marriage woman surrenders herself to the law and to her husband and becomes a vassal. Here it is different, Lillian is now made free. In brief and in addition I cheerfully and distinctly recognize this woman's right to the control of her own person her right and duty to retain her own name her right to the possession of all property inherited earned or otherwise justly gained by her her equality with me in this co-partnership my responsibility to her as regards the care of offspring if any and her paramount right to the custody thereof should any unfortunate fate dissolve this union. And now friends a few words especially to you this holy private compact is here announced not because I recognize that you or society at large or the state have any right to inquire into or determine our relations to each other but simply as a guarantee to Lillian of my good faith towards her and to this I pledge my honor. 3. Lillian Harmon then responded as follows I do not care to say much actions speak more clearly than words often I enter into this union with Mr. Walker of my own free will and choice and I agree with the views of my father and of Mr. Walker as just expressed I make no promises that it may become impossible or immoral for me to fulfill but retain the right to act always as my conscience and best judgment shall dictate I retain also my full maiden name as I am sure it is my duty to do with this understanding I give to him my hand in token of my trust in him and of the fidelity to truth and honor of my intentions towards him then Mr. Harmon said as the father and natural guardian of Lillian Harmon I hereby give my consent to this union I do not give away the bride as I wish her to be always the owner of her person and to be free always to act according to her truest and purest impulses and as her highest judgment may dictate it was expressly admitted that no license for the marriage of the defendants had been obtained and that no marriage ceremony was performed by any judge justice of the peace or licensed preacher of the gospel and that neither of the defendants belonged to the society of friends or Quakers the proceedings mentioned were followed by the matrimonial cohabitation of the defendants upon this testimony the jury returned a verdict of guilty motions in arrest of judgment and for a new trial were filed and overruled and the judgment of the court was that the defendant E. C. Walker be confined in the county jail for a period of 75 days and the defendant Lillian Harmon for a period of 45 days and that the defendants pay the costs of the action and stand committed to the jail of the county until payment is made the defendants appealed this has been individualism a reader edited by George H. Smith and Marilyn Moore narrated by James Foster copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute production copyright 2015 by the Cato Institute