6. _Resolved_, That the Joint Resolutions and report of the

"Committee of Fifteen," now before Congress, to introduce

the word "_male_" into the Federal Constitution, are a

desecration of the last will and testament of the Fathers, a

violation of the spirit of republicanism, and cruel

injustice to the women of the nation.

7. _Resolved_, That while we return our thanks to those

members of Congress who, recognizing the sacred right of

petition, gave our prayer for the ballot a respectful

consideration, we also remind those who, with scornful

silence laid them on the table, or with flippant

sentimentality pretended to exalt us to the clouds, above

man, the ballot and the work of life, that we consider no

position more dignified and womanly than on an even platform

with man worthy to lay the corner-stone of a republic in

equality and justice.

8. _Resolved_, That we recommend to the women of the several

States to petition their Legislatures to take the necessary

steps to so amend their constitutions as to secure the right

of suffrage to every citizen, without distinction of race,

color or sex; and especially in those States that are soon

to hold their constitutional conventions.

THEODORE TILTON said: According to the programme, it is now my

friend Mr. Beecher's turn to speak, but I observe that this

gentleman, like some of the rest of the President's friends,

occupies a back seat. [Laughter]. While, therefore, he is sitting

under the gallery, I will occupy your attention just long enough

to give that modest man a chance to muster nerve enough to make

his appearance in public. [Laughter]. First of all, I have an

account to settle with Mrs. Stanton. In her speech on taking the

chair, she said that editors are not good housekeepers--a remark

which no editor would think of retorting upon herself.

[Laughter]. But, however dingy my editorial office may sometimes

be, it is always a cheerful place when Mrs. Stanton visits it.

[Applause]. Moreover, I think the place she invited me _out of_

is no darker than this place which she invited me _into_!

[Laughter]. In fact, I think the press has generally as much

illumination as the church. [Applause].

Mrs. President, this convention is called to consider the most

beautiful and humane idea which has ever entered into American

politics--the right of woman to that ballot which belongs equally

to all citizens. What is the chief glory of our democratic

institutions? It is, that they appeal equally to the common

interest of all classes--to high and low, to rich and poor, to

white and black, to male and female. And never, until the

political equality of all these classes is fully recognized by

our laws, shall we have a government truly democratic. The

practical instrument of this equality is the ballot. Now what is

the ballot? Mr. Frothingham gave us one definition; Mr. Phillips

gave us another. But the ballot is so large a thing that it

admits of many definitions. The ballot is what the citizen thinks

of the government. The government looks to the ballot to know the

popular will. I do not mean to say that the little piece of white

paper which we hold in our hand on election day is the only means

whereby we can utter an opinion that shall be heard in

Washington. We can speak by the pen; we can speak by the voice. A

wise government will give heed to the public press, and to the

popular voice. But there is no spoken voice, there is no written

word, which the government is legally bound to heed except the

ballot. When they see the ballot, they know they are served with

official notice. When you _talk_ to a government, you talk as to

a tree; but when you _vote_ at it, you scratch your name on the

bark. Now, I want to see Rosalind's name cut into the bark of the

government. [Applause]. Who ought to possess the ballot? Our

President is right--I mean _this_ President. [Applause]. She does

not claim the ballot for women as women, but for women as

citizens. That is the true ground. The ballot belongs not to the

white man, not to the black man, not to the woman, but to the

citizen. Shall the minister vote? No. Shall the lawyer? No. Shall

the merchant? No. Shall the rich man? No. Shall the poor man? No.

None of these shall vote. There is only one person who shall

vote, and that is the citizen. [Applause]. Now I trust the day is

not far distant when our institutions shall practically recognize

this idea--when civil prerogative shall be limited not only by no

distinction of color, but by no distinction of sex.

Are women politically oppressed that they need the ballot for

their protection? I leave that question to be answered by women

themselves. I demand the ballot for woman, not for woman's sake,

but for man's. _She_ may demand it for her own sake; but to-day,

_I_ demand it for _my_ sake. We shall never have a government

thoroughly permeated with humanity, thoroughly humane, thoroughly

noble, thoroughly trustworthy, until both men and women shall

unite in forming the public sentiment, and in administering that

sentiment through the government. [Applause]. The church needs

woman, society needs woman, literature needs woman, science needs

woman, the arts need woman, politics need woman. [Applause]. A

Frenchman once wrote an essay to prove woman's right to the

alphabet. She took the alphabet, entered literature, and drove

out Dean Swift. When she takes the ballot, and enters politics,

she will drive out Fernando Wood. [Applause]. But, shall we have

a woman for President? I would thank God if to-day we had a _man_

for President. [Laughter]. Shall women govern the country? Queens

have ruled nations from the beginning of time, and woman has

governed man from the foundation of the world! [Laughter]. I know

that Plato didn't have a good opinion of women; but probably they

were not as amiable in his day as in ours. They undoubtedly have

wrought their full share of mischief in the world. The chief bone

of contention among mankind, from the earliest ages down, has

been that rib of Adam out of which God made Eve. [Laughter]. And

I believe in holding women to as great a moral accountability as

men. [Laughter]. I believe, also, in holding them to the same

intellectual accountability. Twenty years ago, when Macaulay sat

down to review Lucy Rushton's--no, I mean Lucy Aiken's (laughter)

"Life of Addison," he was forced to allude to what was a patent

fact, that a woman's book was then to be treated with more

critical leniency than a man's. But criticism nowadays never

thinks of asking whether a book be a woman's or a man's, as a

preliminary to administering praise or blame. In the Academy of

Design, the critic deals as severely with a picture painted by a

woman as with one painted by a man. This is right. Would you have

it otherwise? Not at all! We are to stand upon a common level.

The signs of the times indicate the progress of woman's cause.

Every year helps it forward visibly. The political status of

woman was never so seriously pondered as it is now pondered by

thoughtful minds in this country. By and by, the principles of

Christian democracy will cover the continent--nay, will cover the

world, as the equator belts it with summer heat! [Applause].

Until which time, we are called to diligent and earnest work.

"Learn to labor and to wait," saith the poet. There will be need

of much laboring and of long waiting. Sir William Jones tells us

that the Hindoo laws declared that women should have no political

independence--and there is many a backward Yankee who don't know

any better than to agree with the Hindoos. Salatri, the Italian,

drew a design of Patience--a woman chained to a rock by her

ankles, while a fountain threw a thin stream of water, drop by

drop, upon the iron chain, until the link should be worn away,

and the wistful prisoner be set free. In like manner the

Christian women of this country are chained to the rock of

Burmese prejudice; but God is giving the morning and the evening

dew, the early and the latter rain, until the ancient fetters

shall be worn away, and a disfranchised sex shall leap at last

into political liberty. [Applause]. And now for Mr. Beecher.

MR. BEECHER, on rising, was received with hearty applause,[62] and

spoke for an hour, in a strain of great animation, as follows:

It may be asked why, at such a time as this, when the attention

of the whole nation is concentrated upon the reconstruction of

our States, we should intrude a new and advanced question. I have

been asked "Why not wait for the settlement of the one that now

fills the minds of men? Why divert and distract their thoughts?"

I answer, because the questions are one and the same. We are not

now discussing merely the right of suffrage for the African, or

his status as a new-born citizen. Claiming his rights compels us

to discuss the whole underlying question of government. This is

the case in court. But when the judge shall have given his

decision, that decision will cover the whole question of civil

society, and the relations of every individual in it as a factor,

an agent, an actor....

All over the world, the question to-day is, Who has a right to

construct and administer law? Russia--gelid, frigid Russia--can

not escape the question. Yea, he that sits on the Russian throne

has proved himself a better democrat than any of us all, and is

giving to-day more evidence of a genuine love of God, and of its

partner emotion, love to man, in emancipating thirty million

serfs, than many a proud democrat of America has ever given.

(Applause.) And the question of emancipation in Russia is only

the preface to the next question, which doubtless he as clearly

as any of us foresees--namely, the question of citizenship, and

of the rights and functions of citizenship. In Italy, the

question of who may partake of government has arisen, and there

has been an immense widening of popular liberty there. Germany,

that freezes at night and thaws out by day only enough to freeze

up again at night, has also experienced as much agitation on this

subject as the nature of the case will allow. And when all

France, all Italy, all Russia, and all Great Britain shall have

rounded out into perfect democratic liberty, it is to be hoped

that, on the North side of the fence where it freezes first and

the ice thaws out last, Germany will herself be thawed out in her

turn, and come into the great circle of democratic nations.

Strange, that the mother of modern democracy should herself be

stricken with such a palsy and with such lethargy! Strange, that

in a nation in which was born and in which has inhered all the

indomitableness of individualism should be so long unable to

understand the secret of personal liberty! But all Europe to-day

is being filled and agitated with this great question of the

right of every man to citizenship; of the right of every man to

make the laws that are to control him; and of the right of every

man to administer the laws that are applicable to him. This is

the question to-day in Great Britain. The question that is being

agitated from the throne down to the Birmingham shop, from the

Atlantic to the North Sea, to-day, is this: Shall more than one

man in six in Great Britain be allowed to vote? There is only one

in six of the full-grown men in that nation that can vote to-day.

And everywhere we are moving toward that sound, solid, final

ground--namely, that it inheres in the radical notion of manhood

that every man has a right which is not given to him by potentate

nor by legislator, nor by the consent of the community, but which

belongs to his structural idea, and is a divine right, to make

the laws that control him, and to elect the magistrates that are

to administer those laws. It is universal.

And now, this being the world-tide and tendency, what is there in

history, what is there in physiology, what is there in

experience, that shall say to this tendency, marking the line of

sex, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?" I roll the

argument off from my shoulders, and I challenge the man that

stands with me, beholding that the world-thought to-day is the

emancipation of the citizen's power and the preparation by

education of the citizen for that power, and objects to

extending the right of citizenship to every human being, to give

me the reasons why. (Applause). To-day this nation is exercising

its conscience on the subject of suffrage for the African. I have

all the time favored that: not because he was an African, but

because he was a man; because this right of voting, which is the

symbol of everything else in civil power, inheres in every human

being. But I ask you, to-day, "Is it safe to bring in a million

black men to vote, and not safe to bring in your mother, your

wife, and your sister to vote?" (Applause). This ought ye to have

done, and to have done quickly, and not to have left the other

undone. (Renewed applause).

To-day politicians of every party, especially on the eve of an

election, are in favor of the briefest and most expeditious

citizenizing of the Irishmen. I have great respect for

Irishmen--when they do not attempt to carry on war! (Laughter).

The Irish Fenian movement is a ludicrous phenomenon past all

laughing at. Bombarding England from the shore of America! (Great

laughter). Paper pugnation! Oratorical destroying! But when

wind-work is the order of the day, commend me to Irishmen!

(Renewed laughter). And yet I am in favor of Irishmen voting.

Just so soon as they give pledge that they come to America, in

good faith, to abide here as citizens, and forswear the old

allegiance, and take on the new, I am in favor of their voting.

Why? Because they have learned our Constitution? No; but because

voting teaches. The vote is a schoolmaster. They will learn our

laws, and learn our Constitution, and learn our customs ten times

quicker when the responsibility of knowing these things is laid

upon them, than when they are permitted to live in carelessness

respecting them. And this nation is so strong that it can stand

the incidental mischiefs of thus teaching the wild rabble that

emigration throws on our shores for our good and upbuilding. We

are wise enough, and we have educational force enough, to carry

these ignorant foreigners along with us. We have attractions that

will draw them a thousand times more toward us than they can draw

us toward them. And yet, while I take this broad ground, that no

man, even of the Democratic party (I make the distinction because

a man may be a democrat and be ashamed of the party, and a man

may be of the party and not know a single principle of

democracy), should be debarred from voting, I ask, is an Irishman

just landed, unwashed and uncombed, more fit to vote than a woman

educated in our common schools? Think of the mothers and

daughters of this land, among whom are teachers, writers,

artists, and speakers! What a throng could we gather if we

should, from all the West, call our women that as educators are

carrying civilization there! Thousands upon thousands there are

of women that have gone forth from the educational institutions

of New England to carry light and knowledge to other parts of our

land. Now, place this great army of refined and cultivated women

on the one side, and on the other side the rising cloud of

emancipated Africans, and in front of them the great emigrant

band of the Emerald Isle, and is there force enough in our

government to make it safe to give to the African and the

Irishman the franchise? There is. We shall give it to them.

(Applause). And will our force all fail, having done that? And

shall we take the fairest and best part of our society; those to

whom we owe it that we ourselves are civilized: our teachers; our

companions; those to whom we go for counsel in trouble more than

to any others; those to whom we trust everything that is dear to

ourselves--our children's welfare, our household, our property,

our name and reputation, and that which is deeper, our inward

life itself, that no man may mention to more than one--shall we

take them and say, "They are not, after all, fit to vote where

the Irishman votes, and where the African votes?" I am

scandalized when I hear men talk in the way that men do talk--men

that do not think.

If therefore, you refer to the initial sentence, and ask me why I

introduce this subject to-day, when we are already engaged on the

subject of suffrage, I say, This is the greatest development of

the suffrage question. _It is more important that woman should

vote than that the black man should vote._ It is important that

he should vote, that the principle may be vindicated, and that

humanity may be defended; but it is important that woman should

vote, not for her sake. She will derive benefit from voting; but

it is not on a selfish ground that I claim the right of suffrage

for her. It is God's growing and least disclosed idea of a true

human society that man and woman should not be divorced in

political affairs any more than they are in religious and social

affairs. I claim that women should vote because society will

never know its last estate and true glory until you accept God's

edict and God's command--long raked over and covered in the

dust--until you bring it out, and lift it up, and read this one

of God's Ten Commandments, written, if not on stone, yet in the

very heart and structure of mankind, _Let those that God joined

together not be put asunder_. (Applause.)

When men converse with me on the subject of suffrage, or the

vote, it seems to me that the terminology withdraws their minds

from the depth and breadth of the case to the mere instruments.

Many of the objections that are urged against woman's voting are

objections against the mechanical and physical act of suffrage.

It is true that all the forces of society, in their final

political deliverance, must needs be born through the vote, in

our structure of government. In England it is not so. It was one

of the things to be learned there that the unvoting population on

any question in which they are interested and united are more

powerful than all the voting population or legislation. The

English Parliament, if they believed to-day that every working

man in Great Britain staked his life on the issues of universal

suffrage, would not dare a month to deny it. For when a nation's

foundations are on a class of men that do not vote, and its

throne stands on forces that are coiled up and liable at any time

to break forth to its overthrow, it is a question whether it is

safe to provoke the exertion of those forces or not. With us,

where all men vote, government is safe; because, if a thing is

once settled by a fair vote, we will go to war rather than give

it up. As when Lincoln was elected, if an election is valid, it

must stand. In such a nation as this, an election is equivalent

to a divine decree, and irreversible. But in Great Britain an

election means, not the will of the people, but the will of

rulers and a favored class, and there is always under them a

great wronged class, that, if they get stirred up by the thought

that they are wronged, will burst out with an explosion that not

the throne, nor parliament, nor the army, nor the exchequer can

withstand the shock. And they wisely give way to the popular will

when they can no longer resist it without running too great a

risk. They oppose it as far as it is safe to do so, and then jump

on and ride it. And you will see them astride of the vote, if the

common people want it. But in America it is not so. The vote with

us is so general that there is no danger of insurrection, and

there is no danger that the government will be ruined by a

wronged class that lies coiled up beneath it. When we speak of

the vote here, it is not the representative of a class, as it is

in England, worn like a star, or garter, saying, "I have the

king's favor or the government's promise of honor." Voting with

us is like breathing. It belongs to us as a common blessing. He

that does not vote is not a citizen, with us.

It is not the vote that I am arguing, except that that is the

outlet. What I am arguing, when I urge that woman should vote, is

that she should do all things back of that which the vote means

and enforces. She should be a nursing mother to human society. It

is a plea that I make, that woman should feel herself called to

be interested not alone in the household, not alone in the

church, not alone in just that neighborhood in which she resides,

but in the sum total of that society to which she belongs; and

that she should feel that her duties are not discharged until

they are commensurate with the definition which our Saviour gave

in the parable of the good Samaritan. I argue, not a woman's

right to vote: I argue woman's _duty to discharge citizenship_.

(Applause.) I say that more and more the great interests of human

society in America are such as need the peculiar genius that God

has given to woman. The questions that are to fill up our days

are not forever to be mere money questions. Those will always

constitute a large part of politics; but not so large a portion

as hitherto. We are coming to a period when it is not merely to

be a scramble of fierce and belluine passions in the strife for

power and ambition. Human society is yet to discuss questions of

work and the workman. Down below privilege lie the masses of men.

More men, a thousand times, feel every night the ground, which is

their mother, than feel the stars and the moon far up in the

atmosphere of favor. As when Christ came the great mass carpeted

the earth, instead of lifting themselves up like trees of

Lebanon, so now and here the great mass of men are men that have

nothing but their hands, their heads, and their good stalwart

hearts, as their capital. The millions that come from abroad come

that they may have light and power, and lift their children up

out of ignorance, to where they themselves could not reach with

the tips of their fingers. And the great question of to-day is,

How shall work find leisure, and in leisure knowledge and

refinement? And this question is knocking at the door of

legislation. And is there a man who does not know, that when

questions of justice and humanity are blended, woman's instinct

is better than man's judgment? From the moment a woman takes the

child into her arms, God makes her the love-magistrate of the

family; and her instincts and moral nature fit her to adjudicate

questions of weakness and want. And when society is on the eve of

adjudicating such questions as these, it is a monstrous fatuity

to exclude from them the very ones that, by nature, and training,

and instinct, are best fitted to legislate and to judge.

For the sake, then, of such questions as these, that have come to

their birth, I feel it to be woman's _duty_ to act in public

affairs. I do not stand here to plead for your _rights_. Rights

compared with duties, are insignificant--are mere baubles--are as

the bow on your bonnet. It seems to me that the voice of God's

providence to you to-day is, "Oh messenger of mine, where are the

words that I sent you to speak? Whose dull, dead ear has been

raised to life by that vocalization of heaven, that was given to

you more than to any other one?" Man is sub-base. A thirty-two

feet six-inch pipe is he. But what is an organ played with the

feet, if all the upper part is left unused? The flute, the

hautboy, the finer trumpet stops, all those stops that minister

to the intellect, the imagination, and the higher feelings--these

must be drawn, and the whole organ played from top to bottom!

(Applause.)

More than that, there are now coming up for adjudication public

questions of education. And who, by common consent, is the

educator of the world? Who has been? Schools are to be of more

importance than railroads--not to undervalue railroads. Books and

newspapers are to be more vital and powerful than exchequers and

banks--not to undervalue exchequers and banks. In other words, as

society ripens, it has to ripen in its three departments, in the

following order: First, in the animal; second, in the social; and

third, in the spiritual and moral. We are entering the last

period, in which the questions of politics are to be more and

more moral questions. And I invoke those whom God made to be

peculiarly conservators of things moral and spiritual to come

forward and help us in that work, in which we shall falter and

fail without woman. We shall never perfect human society without

her offices and her ministration. We shall never round out the

government, or public administration, or public policies, or

politics itself, until you have mixed the elements that God gave

to us in society--namely, the powers of both men and women.

(Applause.) I, therefore, charge my countrywomen with this _duty_

of taking part in public affairs in the era in which justice, and

humanity, and education, and taste, and virtue are to be more and

more a part and parcel of public procedure. * * * *

In such a state of society, then, as the present, I stand, as I

have said, on far higher ground in arguing this question than the

right of woman. That I believe in; but that is down in the

justice's court. I go to the supreme bench and argue it, and

argue it on the ground that the nation needs woman, and that

woman needs the nation, and that woman can never become what she

should be, and the nation can never become what it should be,

until there is no distinction made between the sexes as regards

the rights and duties of citizenship--until we come to the 28th

verse of the third chapter of Galatians. What is it? [turning to

Mr. Tilton, who said, "I don't know!"] Don't know? If it was Lucy

Rushton, you would! (Great laughter).

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor

free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one

in Christ Jesus.

And when that day comes; when the heavenly kingdom is ushered in

with its myriad blessed influences; when the sun of righteousness

shall fill the world with its beams, as the natural sun coming

from the far South fills the earth with glorious colors and

beauty, then it will come to pass that there shall be no

nationality, no difference of classes, and no difference of

sexes. Then all shall be one in Christ Jesus. Hold that a minute,

please [handing Mr. Tilton a pocket Testament from which he had

read the foregoing passage of Scripture]. Theodore was a most

excellent young man when he used to go to my church; but he has

escaped from my care lately, and now I don't know what he does.

(Laughter).

I urge, then, that woman should perform the duty of a citizen in

voting. You may, perhaps, ask me, before I go any further, "What

is the use of preaching to us that we _ought_ to do it, when we

are not permitted to do it?" That day in which the intelligent,

cultivated women of America say, "We have a right to the ballot"

will be the day in which they will have it. (Voices--"Yes." "That

is so"). There is no power on earth that can keep it from them.

[Applause]. The reason you have not voted is because you have not

wanted to. [Applause]. It is because you have not felt that it

was your duty to vote. You have felt yourselves to be secure and

happy enough in your privileges and prerogatives, and have left

the great mass of your sisters, that shed tears and bore burdens,

to shirk for themselves. You have felt that you had rights more

than you wanted now. O yes, it is as if a beauty in Fifth Avenue,

hearing one plead that bread might be sent to the hungry and

famishing, should say, "What is this talk about bread for? I have

as much bread as I want, and plenty of sweetmeats, and I do not

want your loaves." Shall one that is glutted with abundance

despise the wants of the starving, who are so far below them that

they do not hear their cries, not one of which escapes the ear of

Almighty God? Because you have wealth and knowledge and loving

parents, or a faithful husband, or kind brothers, and you feel no

pressure of need, do you feel no inward pressure of humanity for

others? Is there no part of God's great work in providence that

should lead you to be discontented with your ease and privileges

until you are enfranchised? You ought to vote; and when your

understanding and intellect are convinced that you ought to do

it, you will have the power to do it; and you never will till

then.

I. Woman has more interest than man in the promotion of virtue

and purity and humanity. Half, shall I say?--Half does not half

measure the proportion of those sorrows that come upon woman by

reason of her want of influence and power. All the young men

that, breaking down, break fathers' and mothers' hearts; all

those that struggle near to the grave, weeping piteous tears of

blood, it might almost be said, and that at last, under paroxysms

of despair, sin against nature, and are swept out of misery into

damnation; the spectacles that fill our cities, and afflict and

torment villages--what are these but reasons that summon woman to

have a part in that regenerating of thought and that regenerating

of legislation which shall make vice a crime, and vice-makers

criminals? Do you suppose that, if it were to turn on the votes

of women to-day whether rum should be sold in every shop in this

city, there would be one moment's delay in settling the

question? What to the oak lightning is that marks it and descends

swiftly upon it, that woman's vote would be to miscreant vices in

these great cities. [Applause]. Ah, I speak that which I do know.

As a physician speaks from that which he sees in the hospital

where he ministers, so I speak from that which I behold in my

professional position and place, where I see the undercurrent of

life. I hear groans that come from smiling faces. I witness tears

that when others look upon the face are all swept away, as the

rain is when one comes after a storm. Not most vocal are our

deepest sorrows. Oh, the sufferings of wives for husbands untrue!

Oh, the sufferings of mothers for sons led astray! Oh, the

sufferings of sisters for sisters gone! Oh, the sufferings of

companions for companion-women desecrated! And I hold it to be a

shame that they, who have the instinct of purity and of divine

remedial mercy more than any other, should withhold their hand

from that public legislation by which society may be scoured, and

its pests cleared away. And I declare that woman has more

interest in legislation than man, because she is the sufferer and

the home-staying, ruined victim.

II. The household, about which we hear so much said as being

woman's sphere, is safe only as the community around about it is

safe. Now and then there may be a Lot that can live in Sodom; but

when Lot was called to emigrate, he could not get all his

children to go with him. They had been intermarried and

corrupted. A Christian woman is said to have all that she needs

for her understanding and to task her powers if she will stay at

home and mend her husband's clothes, if she has a husband, and

take care of her children, if she has children. The welfare of

the family, it is said, ought to occupy her time and thoughts.

And some ministers, in descanting upon the sphere of woman, are

wont to magnify the glory and beauty of a mother teaching some

future chief-justice, or some president of the United States. Not

one whit of glory would I withdraw from such a canvas as that;

but I aver that the power to teach these children largely depends

upon the influences that surround the household. So that she that

would take the best care of the house must take care of that

atmosphere which is around the house as well. And every true and

wise Christian woman is bound to have a thought for the village,

for the county, for the State, and for the nation. [Applause].

That was not the kind of woman that brought me up--a woman that

never thought of anything outside of her own door-yard. My

mother's house was as wide as Christ's house; and she taught me

to understand the words of Him that said, "The field is the

world; and whoever needs is your brother." A woman that is

content to wash stockings, and make Johnny-cake, and to look

after and bring up her boys faultless to a button, and that never

thinks beyond the meal-tub, and whose morality is so small as to

be confined to a single house, is an under-grown woman, and will

spend the first thousand years after death in coming to that

state in which she ought to have been before she died.

[Laughter]. Tell me that a woman is fit to give an ideal life to

an American citizen, to enlarge his sympathies, to make him wise

in judgment, and to establish him in patriotic regard, who has no

thought above what to eat and drink, and wherewithal to be

clothed. The best housekeepers are they that are the most widely

beneficent. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,

and all these things shall be added unto you." God will take care

of the stockings, if you take care of the heads! [Laughter and

applause]. Universal beneficence never hinders anybody's

usefulness in any particular field of duty. Therefore, woman's

sphere should not be limited to the household. The public welfare

requires that she should have a thought of affairs outside of the

household, and in the whole community.

III. Woman brings to public affairs peculiar qualities,

aspirations, and affections which society needs. I have had

persons say to me, "Would you, now, take your daughter and your

wife, and walk down to the polls with them?" If I were to take my

daughter and my wife, and walk down to the polls with them, and

there was a squirming crowd of bloated, loud-mouthed, blattering

men, wrangling like so many maggots on cheese, what would take

place, but that, at the moment I appeared with my wife and

daughter walking by my side with conscious dignity and veiled

modesty, the lane would open, and I should pass through the red

sea unharmed? [Great applause]. Where is there a mob such that

the announcement that a woman is present does not bring down the

loudest of them? Nothing but the sorcery of rum prevents a man

from paying unconscious, instant respect to the presence of a

woman....

IV. The history of woman's co-operative labors thus far justifies

the most sanguine anticipations, such as I have alluded to.

Allusion has been made to the purification of literature. The

influence of women has been a part of the cause of this,

unquestionably; but I would not ascribe such a result to any one

cause. God is a great workman, and has a chest full of tools, and

never uses one tool, but always many; and in the purification of

literature, the elevation of thought, the advancement of the

public sentiment of the world in humanity, God has employed more

than that which has been wrought in their departments. And that

which the family has long ago achieved--that, in more eminence

and more wondrous and surprising beauty, the world will achieve

for itself in public affairs, when man and woman co-operate

there, as now they are co-operating in all other spheres of

taste, intellection, and morality....

It is said, a "woman's place is at home." Well, now, since

compromises are coming into vogue again, will you compromise with

me, and agree that until a woman has a home she may vote?

[Laughter]. That is only fair. It is said, "She ought to stay at

home, and attend to home duty, and minister to the wants of

father, or husband, or brothers." Well, may all orphan women, and

unmarried women, and women that have no abiding place of

residence vote? If not, where is the argument? But, to look at it

seriously, what is the defect of this statement? It is the

impression that staying at home is incompatible with going

abroad. Never was there a more monstrous fallacy. I light my

candle, and it gives me all the light I want, and it gives all

the light you want to you, and to you, and to you, and to every

other one in the room; and there is not one single ray that you

get there which cheats me here; and a woman that is doing her

duty right in the family sheds a beneficent influence out upon

the village in which she dwells, without taking a moment's more

time. My cherry-trees are joyful in all their blossoms, and

thousands go by them and see them in their beauty day by day; but

I never mourn the happiness that they bestow on passers-by as

having been taken from me. I am not cheated by the perfume that

goes from my flowers into my neighbor's yard. And the character

of a true woman is such that it may shine everywhere without

making her any poorer. She is richer in proportion as she gives

away.... And it is just because woman is woman that she is

fitted, while she takes care of the household, to take care of

the village and the community around about her.

But it is said, "She ought to act through her father, or husband,

or brother, or son." Why ought she? Did you ever frame an

argument to show why the girl should use her father to vote for

her, and the boy who is younger, and not half so witty, should

vote for himself? It does not admit of an argument. If the

grandmother, the mother, the wife, and the eldest daughter, are

to be voted for by the father, the husband, and the eldest

brother, then why are not the children to be voted for in

complete family relation by the patriarchal head? Why not go back

to the tribal custom of the desert, and let the patriarch do all

the voting? To be sure, it would change the whole form of our

government; but, if it is good for the family, it is just as good

for classes.

In a frontier settlement is a log-cabin, and it is in a region

which is infested by wolves. There are in the family a

broken-down patient of a man, a mother, and three daughters. The

house is surrounded by a pack of these voracious animals, and the

inmates feel that their safety requires that the intruders should

be driven away. There are three or four rifles in the house. The

man creeps to one of the windows, and to the mother and daughters

it is said, "You load the rifles, and hand them to me, and let me

fire them." But they can load all the four rifles, and he can not

fire half as fast as they can load; and I say to the mother, "Can

you shoot?" She says, "Let me try;" and she takes a gun, and

points it at the wolves, and pulls the trigger, and I see one of

them throw his feet up in the air. "Ah!" I say, "I see you can

shoot! You keep the rifle, and fire it yourself." And I say to

the oldest daughter, "Can you shoot?" "I guess I can," she says.

"Well, dare you?" "I dare do anything to save father and the

family." And she takes one of the rifles, and pops over another

of the pack. And I tell you, if the wolves knew that all the

women were firing, they would flee from that cabin instanter.

(Laughter). I do not object to a woman loading a man's rifle and

letting him shoot; but I say that, if there are two rifles, she

ought to load one of them, and shoot herself. And I do not see

any use of a woman's influencing a man and loading him with a

vote, and letting him go and fire it off at the ballot-box.

(Laughter and applause).

It is said, again, "Woman is a creature of such an excitable

nature that, if she were to mingle with men in public affairs, it

would introduce a kind of vindictive acrimony, and politics would

become intolerable." Oh, if I really thought so; if I thought

that the purity of politics would be sullied, I would not say

another word! (Laughter). I do not want to take anything from the

celestial graces of politics! (Renewed laughter). I will admit

that woman is an excitable creature, and I will admit that

politics needs no more excitement; but sometimes, you know,

things are homoeopathic. A woman's excitement is apt to put out a

man's; and if she should bring her excitability into politics, it

is likely that it would neutralize the excitement that is already

there, and that there would be a grand peace! (Laughter). But,

not to trifle with it, woman is excitable. Woman is yet to be

educated. Woman is yet to experience the reactionary influence of

being a public legislator and thinker. And let her sphere be

extended beyond the family and the school, so that she should be

interested in, and actively engaged in, promoting the welfare of

the whole community, and in the course of three generations the

reaction on her would be such that the excitement that she would

bring into public affairs would be almost purely moral

inspiration. It would be the excitement of purity and

disinterested benevolence.

It is said, furthermore, "Woman might vote for herself, and take

office." Why not? A woman makes as good a postmistress as a man

does a postmaster. Woman has been tried in every office from the

throne to the position of the humblest servant; and where has she

been found remiss? I believe that multitudes of the offices that

are held by men are mere excuses for leading an effeminate life;

and that with their superior physical strength it behooves them

better to be actors out of doors, where the severity of climate

and the elements is to be encountered, and leave indoor offices

to women, to whom they more properly belong. But, women, you are

not educated for these offices. I hear bad reports of you. It is

told me that the trouble in giving places to women is that they

will not do their work well; that they do not feel the sense of

conscience. They have been flattered so long, they have been

called "women" so long, they have had compliments instead of

rights so long, that they are spoiled; but when a generation of

young women shall have been educated to a stern sense of right

and duty, and shall take no compliments at the expense of right,

we shall have no such complaints as these. And when a generation

of women, working with the love of God and true patriotism in

their souls, shall have begun to hold office, meriting it, and

being elected to it by those that would rather have a woman than

a man in office, then you may depend upon it that education has

qualified them for the trusts which are committed to them. We

have tried "old women" in office, and I am convinced that it

would be better to have _real_ women than virile old women in

public stations. (Laughter and applause). For my own sake, give

me a just, considerate, true, straight-forward, honest-minded,

noble-hearted woman, who has been able, in the fear of God, to

bring up six boys in the way they should go, and settle them in

life. If there is anything harder in this nation than that, tell

me what it is. A woman that can bring up a family of

strong-brained children, and make good citizens of them, can be

President without any difficulty. (Applause).

Let me now close with one single thought in connection with this

objection. I protest in the name of my countrywomen against the

aspersion which is cast upon them by those who say that woman is

not fit to hold office or discharge public trusts. The name of

what potentate to-day, if you go round the world, would

probably, in every nation on the earth, bring down most

enthusiasm and public approbation? If I now, here in your midst,

shall mention the name of Queen Victoria, your cheers will be a

testimony to your admiration of this noble woman. (Great

applause). Though it be in a political meeting, or any other

public gathering, no man can mention her name without eliciting

enthusiasm and tokens of respect. It is a controversy to-day

between woman aristocratic and woman democratic (applause); and I

claim that what it is right for an aristocratic woman to do--what

it is right for a duchess, or a queen, or an empress to do--it is

right for the simplest and plainest of my countrywomen to do,

that has no title, and no credentials, except the fact that God

made her a woman. All that I claim for the proudest aristocrat I

claim for all other women. (Applause). I do not object to a

woman's being a queen, or a president, if she has the

qualifications which fit her to be one. And I claim that, where

there is a woman that has the requisite qualifications for

holding any office in the family, in the church, or in the state,

there is no reason why she should not be allowed to hold it. And

we shall have a perfect crystal idea of the state, with all its

contents, only when man understands the injunction, "What God

hath joined together let no man put asunder."[63] (Great

applause).

SUSAN B. ANTHONY read the following appeal to the Congress of the

United States for the enfranchisement of woman:

ADDRESS TO CONGRESS.

Adopted by the Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention,

held in New York City, Thursday, May 10, 1866.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

We have already appeared many times during the present session

before your honorable body, in petitions, asking the

enfranchisement of woman; and now, from this National Convention

we again make our appeal, and urge you to lay no hand on that

"pyramid of rights," the Constitution of the Fathers," unless to

add glory to its height and strength to its foundation.

We will not rehearse the oft-repeated arguments on the natural

rights of every citizen, pressed as they have been on the

nation's conscience for the last thirty years in securing freedom

for the black man, and so grandly echoed on the floor of Congress

during the past winter. We can not add one line or precept to the

inexhaustible speech recently made by Charles Sumner in the

Senate, to prove that "no just government can be formed without

the consent of the governed;" to prove the dignity, the

education, the power, the necessity, the salvation of the ballot

in the hand of every man and woman; to prove that a just

government and a true church rest alike on the sacred rights of

the individual.

As you are familiar with that speech of the session on "EQUAL

RIGHTS TO ALL," so convincing in facts, so clear in philosophy,

and so elaborate in quotations from the great minds of the past,

without reproducing the chain of argument, permit us to call your

attention to a few of its unanswerable assertions on the ballot:

I plead now for the ballot, as the great guarantee; and _the

only sufficient guarantee_--being in itself peacemaker,

reconciler, schoolmaster and protector--to which we are

bound by every necessity and every reason; and I speak also

for the good of the States lately in rebellion, as well as

for the glory and safety of the Republic, that it may be an

example to mankind.

Ay, sir, the ballot is the Columbiad of our political life,

and every citizen who has it is a full-armed Monitor.

The ballot is _schoolmaster_. Reading and writing are of

inestimable value, but the ballot teaches what these can not

teach.

Plutarch records that the wise men of Athens charmed the

people by saying that _Equality causes no war_, and "both

the rich and the poor repeated it."

The ballot is like charity, which never faileth, and without

which man is only as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.

The ballot is the one thing needful, without which rights of

testimony and all other rights will be no better than

cobwebs, which the master will break through with impunity.

To him who has the ballot all other things shall be

given--protection, opportunity, education, a homestead. The

ballot is like the Horn of Abundance, out of which overflow

rights of every kind, with corn, cotton, rice, and all the

fruits of the earth. Or, better still, it is like the hand

of the body, without which man, who is now only a little

lower than the angels, must have continued only a little

above the brutes. They are fearfully and wonderfully made;

but as is the hand in the work of civilization, so is the

ballot in the work of government. "Give me the ballot, and I

can move the world."

Do you wish to see harmony truly prevail, so that industry,

society, government, civilization, may all prosper, and the

Republic may wear a crown of true greatness? Then do not

neglect the ballot.

Lamartine said, "Universal Suffrage is the first truth and

only basis of every national republic."

In regard to "Taxation without representation," Mr. Sumner quotes

from Lord Coke:

The Supreme Power cannot take from any man any part of his

property _without consent in person, or by representation_.

Taxes are not to be laid on the people, but by their consent

in person, or by representation.

I can see no reason to doubt but that the imposition of

taxes, whether on trade, or on land, or houses, or ships, or

real or personal, fixed or floating, property in the

colonies, is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of

the colonies, as British subjects, _and as men_. I say men,

for in a state of nature no man can take any property from

me without my consent. _If he does, he deprives me of my

liberty and makes me a slave._ The very act of taxing,

exercised over those who are not represented, appears to me

to deprive them of one of their most essential rights as

freemen, and if continued seems to be in effect an entire

disfranchisement of every civil right. For what one civil

right is worth a rush, after a man's property is subject to

be taken from him at pleasure without his consent?

In demanding suffrage for the black man you recognize the fact

that as a freedman he is no longer a "part of the family," and

that, therefore, his master is no longer his representative;

hence, as he will now be liable to taxation, he must also have

representation. Woman, on the contrary, has never been such a

"part of the family" as to escape taxation. Although there has

been no formal proclamation giving her an individual existence,

she has always had the right to property and wages, the right to

make contracts and do business in her own name. And even married

women, by recent legislation, have been secured in these civil

rights. Woman now holds a vast amount of the property in the

country, and pays her full proportion of taxes, revenue included.

On what principle, then, do you deny her representation? By what

process of reasoning Charles Sumner was able to stand up in the

Senate, a few days after these sublime utterances, and rebuke

15,000,000 disfranchised tax-payers for the exercise of their

right of petition merely, is past understanding. If he felt that

this was not the time for woman to even mention her right to

representation, why did he not take breath in some of his

splendid periods, and propose to release the poor shirtmakers,

milliners and dressmakers, and all women of property, from the

tyranny of taxation?

We propose no new theories. We simply ask that you secure to ALL

the practical application of the immutable principles of our

government, without distinction of race, color or sex. And we

urge our demand _now_, because you have the opportunity and the

power to take this onward step in legislation. The nations of the

earth stand watching and waiting to see if our Revolutionary

idea, "all men are created equal," can be realized in government.

Crush not, we pray you, the million hopes that hang on our

success. Peril not another bloody war. Men and parties must pass

away, but justice is eternal. And they only who work in harmony

with its laws are immortal. All who have carefully noted the

proceedings of this Congress, and contrasted your speeches with

those made under the old _régime_ of slavery, must have seen the

added power and eloquence that greater freedom gives. But still

you propose no action on your grand ideas. Your Joint

Resolutions, your Reconstruction Reports, do not reflect your

highest thought. The constitution, in basing representation on

"respective numbers," covers a broader ground than any you have

yet proposed. Is not the only amendment needed to Article 1st,

Section 3d, to strike out the exceptions which follow "respective

numbers?" And is it not your duty, by securing a republican form

of government to every State, to see that these "respective

numbers" are made up of enfranchised citizens? Thus bringing your

legislation up to the Constitution--not the Constitution down to

your party possibilities!! The only tenable ground of

representation is UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, as it is only through

Universal Suffrage that the principle of "Equal Rights to All"

can be realized. All prohibitions based on race, color, sex,

property, or education, are violations of the republican idea;

and the various qualifications now proposed are but so many

plausible pretexts to debar new classes from the ballot-box. The

limitations of property and intelligence, though unfair, can be

met; as with freedom must come the repeal of statute-laws that

deny schools and wages to the negro. So time makes him a voter.

But color and sex! Neither time nor statutes can make black

white, or woman man! You assume to be the representatives of

15,000,000 women--American citizens--who already possess every

_attainable_ qualification for the ballot. Women read and write,

hold many offices under government, pay taxes, and the penalties

of crime, and yet are allowed to exercise but the one right of

petition.

For twenty years we have labored to bring the statute laws of the

several States into harmony with the broad principles of the

Constitution, and have been so far successful that in many,

little remains to be done but to secure the right of suffrage.

Hence, our prompt protest against the propositions before

Congress to introduce the word "male" into the Federal

Constitution, which, if successful, would block all State action

in giving the ballot to woman. As the only way disfranchised

citizens can appear before you, we availed ourselves of the

sacred right of petition. And, as our representatives, it was

your duty to give those petitions a respectful reading and a

serious consideration. How well a Republican Senate performed

that duty, is already inscribed on the page of history. Some tell

us it is not judicious to press the claims of women _now_; that

this is not the time. Time? When you propose legislation so fatal

to the best interests of woman and the nation, shall we be silent

till the deed is done? No! As we love republican ideas, we must

resist tyranny. As we honor the position of American Senator, we

must appeal from the politician to the man.

With man, woman shared the dangers of the Mayflower on a stormy

sea, the dreary landing on Plymouth Rock, the rigors of a New

England winter, and the privations of a seven years' war. With

him she bravely threw off the British yoke, felt every pulsation

of his heart for freedom, and inspired the glowing eloquence that

maintained it through the century. With you, we have just passed

through the agony and death, the resurrection and triumph, of

another revolution, doing all in our power to mitigate its

horrors and gild its glories. And now, think you we have no souls

to fire, no brains to weigh your arguments; that, after

education such as this, we can stand silent witnesses while you

sell our birthright of liberty, to save from a timely death an

effete political organization? No, as we respect womanhood, we

must protest against this desecration of the magna charta of

American liberties; and with an importunity not to be repelled,

our demand must ever be: "No compromise of human rights"--"No

admission in the Constitution of inequality of rights, or

disfranchisement on account of color or sex."

In the oft-repeated experiments of class and caste, who can

number the nations that have risen but to fall? Do not imagine

you come one line nearer the demand of justice by enfranchising

but another shade of _man_hood; for, in denying representation to

woman you still cling to the same principle on which all the

governments of the past have been wrecked. The right way, the

safe way, is so clear, the path of duty is so straight and

simple, that we who are equally interested with yourselves in the

result, conjure you to act not for the passing hour, not with

reference to transient benefits, but to do now the one grand deed

that shall mark the progress of the century--proclaim EQUAL

RIGHTS TO ALL. We press our demand for the ballot at this time in

no narrow, captious or selfish spirit; from no contempt of the

black man's claims, nor antagonism with you, who in the progress

of civilization are now the privileged order; but from the purest

patriotism, for the highest good of every citizen, for the safety

of the Republic, and as a spotless example to the nations of the

earth.

Mr. Beecher was followed by Wendell Phillips, Frances Dana Gage,

Frances Watkins Harper; the Financial Committee[64] meantime passed

through the audience for the material aid to carry forward the work.

Miss Anthony presented the following resolution, and moved its

adoption, which was seconded by Martha C. Wright:

_Whereas_, By the act of Emancipation and the Civil Rights

bill, the negro and woman now hold the same civil and

political _status_, alike needing only the ballot; and

whereas the same arguments apply equally to both classes,

proving all partial legislation fatal to republican

institutions, therefore,

_Resolved_, That the time has come for an organization that

shall demand UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, and that hereafter we shall

be known as the "AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION."

Miss ANTHONY said: Our friend Mrs. Mott desires me to explain the

object of this change, which she would gladly do but for a severe

cold, which prevents her from making herself heard. For twenty

years we have pressed the claims of woman to the right of

representation in the government. The first National Woman's

Rights Convention was held in Worcester, Mass., in 1850, and each

successive year conventions were held in different cities of the

Free States--Worcester, Syracuse, Cleveland, Philadelphia,

Cincinnati, and New York--until the rebellion. Since then, till

now, we have held no conventions. Up to this hour, we have looked

to State action only for the recognition of our rights; but now,

by the results of the war, the whole question of suffrage

reverts back to Congress and the U. S. Constitution. The duty of

Congress at this moment is to declare what shall be the basis of

representation in a republican form of government. There is,

there can be, but one true basis; and that is that taxation must

give representation; hence our demand must now go beyond

woman--it must extend to the farthest bound of the principle of

the "consent of the governed," as the only authorized or just

government. We, therefore, wish to broaden our Woman's Rights

platform, and make it in _name_--what it ever has been in

_spirit_--a Human Rights platform. It has already been stated

that we have petitioned Congress the past winter to so amend the

Constitution as to prohibit disfranchisement on account of sex.

We were roused to this work by the several propositions to

prohibit negro disfranchisement in the rebel States, which at the

same time put up a new bar against the enfranchisement of women.

As women we can no longer _seem_ to claim for ourselves what we

do not for others--nor can we work in two separate movements to

get the ballot for the two disfranchised classes--the negro and

woman--since to do so must be at double cost of time, energy, and

money.

New York is to hold a Constitutional Convention the coming year.

We want to make a thorough canvass of the entire State, with

lectures, tracts, and petitions, and, if possible, create a

public sentiment that shall send genuine Democrats and

Republicans to that Convention who shall strike out from our

Constitution the two adjectives "_white male_," giving to every

citizen, over twenty-one, the right to vote, and thus make the

Empire State the first example of a true republican form of

government. And what we propose to do in New York, the coming

eighteen months, we hope to do in every other State so soon as we

can get the men, and the women, and the money, to go forward with

the work. Therefore, that we may henceforth concentrate all our

forces for the practical application of our one grand,

distinctive, national idea--UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE--I hope we will

unanimously adopt the resolution before us, thus resolving this

Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention into the "AMERICAN

EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION."

The Resolution was unanimously adopted.

STEPHEN S. FOSTER said: I wish to suggest that it will be

necessary, first, to adopt a form of Constitution, and that it is

a very important question. Upon it will depend much of the

success of our movement. We have been deeply thrilled by the

eloquence of our friend, Mr. Beecher. We have all felt that his

utterances were the essential truth of God; and the bright

picture he drew before us is a possibility, if we do our duty.

But this state of things will never be realized by us, unless it

is from a united, persevering effort, giving a new impetus to the

Woman's Rights movement. I think it necessary that we should have

a more perfect organization than we can prepare this morning, at

this late hour, and I therefore move that we adjourn to meet in

the vestry this afternoon at four o'clock, to perfect an

organization, and take such further measures for the prosecution

of our cause as may then and there be deemed expedient. (The

motion was carried.)

A large audience assembled in the Lecture-room, at four o'clock. Susan

B. Anthony took the Chair and said, the first thing, in order to

complete the new organization, would be to fix upon a form of

Constitution. Parker Pillsbury, from the Business Committee, reported

one which was considered article by article, and adopted. There was an

interesting discussion relative to the necessity of a preamble, in

which the majority sympathized with LUCRETIA MOTT, who expressed

herself specially desirous that there should be one, and that it

should state the fact that this new organization was the outgrowth of

the Woman's Rights movement. Mrs. Stanton gave her idea of what the

preamble should be; and Mrs. Mott moved that Mrs. Stanton write out

her thought, and that it be accepted as the preamble of the

Constitution.[65] The motion was adopted. Miss Anthony proposed a

list of names as officers[66] of the Association. Mrs. Stanton thanked

the Convention for the honor proposed, to make her President, but said

she should prefer to see Lucretia Mott in that office; that thus that

office might ever be held sacred in the memory that it had first been

filled by one so loved and honored by all. "I shall be happy as

Vice-President to relieve my dear friend of the arduous duties of her

office, if she will but give us the blessing of her name as

President." Mrs. Stanton then moved that Mrs. Mott be the President,

which was seconded by many voices, and carried by a unanimous vote.

Mrs. Mott, escorted to the Chair by Stephen S. Foster, remarked that

her age and feebleness unfitted her for any public duties, but she

rejoiced in the inauguration of a movement broad enough to cover

class, color, and sex, and would be happy to give her name and

influence, if thus she might encourage the young and strong to carry

on the good work. On motion of Theodore Tilton, Mrs. Stanton was made

first Vice-President. The rest of the names were approved.

Mrs. STANTON said, It had been the desire of her heart to see the

Anti-Slavery and Woman's Rights organizations merged into an

Equal Rights Association, as the two questions were now one. With

emancipation, all that the black man asks is the right of

suffrage. With the special legislation of the last twenty years,

all that woman asks is the right of suffrage. Hence it seems an

unnecessary expenditure of force and substance for the same men

and women to meet in convention on Tuesday to discuss the right

of one class to the ballot, and on Thursday to discuss the right

of another class to the same. Has not the time come, Mrs.

President, to bury the black man and the woman in the citizen,

and our two organizations in the broader work of reconstruction?

They who have been trained in the school of anti-slavery; they

who, for the last thirty years, have discussed the whole question

of human rights, which involves every other question of trade,

commerce, finance, political economy, jurisprudence, morals and

religion, are the true statesmen for the new republic--the best

enunciators of our future policy of justice and equality. Any

work short of this is narrow and partial and fails to meet the

requirements of the hour. What is so plain to me, may, I trust,

be so to all before the lapse of many months, that all who have

worked together thus far, may still stand side by side in this

crisis of our nation's history.

JAMES MOTT said, he rejoiced that the women had seen fit to

re-organize their movement into one for equal rights to all,

that he felt the time had come to broaden our work. He felt the

highest good of the nation demanded the recognition of woman as a

citizen. We could have no true government until all the people

gave their consent to the laws that govern them.

STEPHEN S. FOSTER said, Many seemed to think that the one

question for this hour was negro suffrage. The question for every

man and woman, he thought, was the true basis of the

reconstruction of our government, not the rights of woman, or the

negro, but the rights of all men and women. Suffrage for woman

was even a more vital question than for the negro; for in giving

the ballot to the black man, we bring no new element into the

national life--simply another class of men. And for one, he could

not ask woman to go up and down the length and breadth of the

land demanding the political recognition of any class of

disfranchised citizens, while her own rights are ignored. Thank

God, the human family are so linked together, that no one man can

ever enjoy life, liberty, or happiness, so long as the humblest

being is crippled in a single right. I have demanded the freedom

of the slave the last thirty years, because he was a human being,

and I now demand suffrage for the negro because he is a human

being, and for the same reason I demand the ballot for woman.

Therefore, our demand for this hour is equal suffrage to all

disfranchised classes, for the one and the same reason--they are

all human beings.

MARTHA C. WRIGHT said: Some one had remarked that we wished to

merge ourselves into an Equal Rights Association to get rid of

the odious name of Woman's Rights. This she repudiated as

unworthy and untrue. Every good cause had been odious some time,

even the name Christian has had its odium in all nations. We

desire the change, because we feel that at this hour our highest

claims are as citizens, and not as women. I for one have always

gloried in the name of Woman's Rights, and pitied those of my sex

who ignobly declared they had all the rights they wanted. We take

the new name for the broader work because we see it is no longer

woman's province to be merely a humble petitioner for redress of

grievances, but that she must now enter into the fullness of her

mission, that of helping to make the laws, and administer

justice.

Aaron M. Powell presented the following resolution:

_Resolved_, That in view of the Constitutional Convention to be

held in the State of New York the coming year, it is the duty of

this Association to demand such an amendment of the Constitution

as shall secure equal rights to all citizens, without distinction

of color, sex, or race.

Miss Anthony seconded the resolution, and urged the importance of

making a thorough canvass of the State with lectures, tracts, and

petitions.[67] Mr. Powell, Mrs. Gage, and others, advocated the

concentration of all the energies of the Association for the coming

year on the State of New York; after which the resolution was adopted.

PARKER PILLSBURY: Perhaps we ourselves do not appreciate the

magnitude of the enterprise we are here to inaugurate. If

successful, we close to-day one epoch in human history, and enter

on another of results more millennial than have been seen before.

We give now a new definition to the word Liberty. We clothe our

divinity with new honors. The ancients worshiped in her temple,

but to them all, even the devoutest, she was ever an "Unknown

God." In all ages, men sing her praises, but know not her law.

Our revolutionary fathers were blind as others--blinder than many

others. They declared all men free and equal. They fought long

and valiantly for their evangel, baptizing it in the blood of

many battles, came home triumphant, and then constructed a

despotism which their own immortal Jefferson declared was fraught

with more woes in one hour, to myriads of its citizens, than

would be endured in whole ages of the worst they themselves had

ever known! That government they named a Republic. Under it we

held millions of slaves, and were providing to hold many millions

more, when God sent a thunderbolt and dashed it in pieces before

our eyes and gave our slaves their freedom. Now our wise men and

counselors, our statesmen and sages, are seeking how the

government and Union may be reconstructed. But they are laying

again false foundations. Of three immense classes, they proscribe

two and provide for one; and that one perhaps a minority of the

whole. Half our people are degraded for their sex; one-sixth for

the color of their skin. And this is the republican and

democratic definition of freedom. The ruling class boasts two

qualities, in virtue of which it claims the right to rule all

others. It is male, not female--white, not colored. For neither

of these surely is it responsible. For being women and colored,

the proscribed classes are no more responsible. A more cruel,

unrighteous, unjust distinction was never made under heaven. By

it we are driven into this new revolution; a revolution which is

to eclipse all that have gone before, as far as the glories of

Calvary outshone the shadows and terrors of Sinai. Even the

Anti-Slavery Society can only demand equality for the _male_ half

of mankind. And the Woman's Rights movement contemplated only

_woman_ in its demand. But with us liberty means freedom,

equality, and fraternity, irrespective of sex or complexion. It

is a gospel that was unknown to the ancients; hidden even from

the wise and prudent among our revolutionary fathers.

Revolutionary _mothers_ we seem never to have had. As in Eden,

"Adam was first found, then Eve," so in our revolution; but Eve

has come to-day, demanding her portion of the equal inheritance,

a mystery, a wonder, a "_new thing under the sun_," the

declaration of King Solomon to the contrary notwithstanding. And

here and to-day we lay new foundations. For the first time, law

and liberty are to be founded in nature and the government of the

moral universe. For the first time is it demanded that JUSTICE be

made our chief corner-stone. The ancient republics, not thus

underpinned, fell. Our old foundations, too, are fallen. In God's

wisdom, not in man's foolishness, let us henceforth build. And

the work of our hands, feeble as we seem to-day, shall survive

all the present kingdoms and dominions of the world.

Miss ANTHONY remarked that Theodore Tilton was in the house, and

had not yet spoken. She would like to hear his opinion.

Mr. TILTON replied that of course Miss Anthony was speaking in

pleasantry when she thus ingeniously pretended not to know his

opinion. This pretense was only a piece of strategy to compel him

to make a speech. Both she and he had lately been co-workers in a

local association for just such a purpose as to-day's enterprise

meditated--"The New York Equal Rights Association," of which he

had had the honor to be president, and Miss Anthony to be

secretary--an association which both its secretary and its

president were only too glad to see superseded by a larger and

more general movement. The apple tree bears more blossoms which

fall off than come to fruit. Our local association was the

necessary first blossom which had to be blown away by the wind.

No--he would rather say it was a blossom which had ripened to-day

into golden fruit. And now, said he, in this consecrated house,

at this sunset hour, amid these falling shadows, with a president

in the chair whose well-spent life has been crowned with every

virtue, let us make a covenant with each other such as was made

by the original members of the American Anti-Slavery Society--a

mutual pledge of diligent and earnest labor, not for the

abolition of chattel slavery, but for the political rights of all

classes, without regard to color or sex. Are we only a handful?

We are more than formed the Anti-Slavery Society--which grew into

a force that shook the nation. Who knows but that to-night we are

laying the corner-stone of an equally grand movement? Let us,

therefore, catch at this moment the cheering pretoken of the

prophecy that declares, "At evening time there shall be light!"

A motion was made to adjourn, when the President, Lucretia Mott, made

a few closing remarks, showing that all great achievements in the

progress of the race must be slow, and were ever wrought out by the

few, in isolation and ridicule--but, said she, let us remember in our

trials and discouragements, that if our lives are true, we walk with

angels--the great and good who have gone before us, and God is our

Father. As she uttered her few parting words of benediction, the

fading sunlight through the stained windows, fell upon her pure face,

a celestial glory seemed about her, and a sweet and peaceful influence

pervaded every heart. And all responded to Theodore Tilton when he

said, "this closing meeting of the Convention was one of the most

beautiful, delightful, and memorable which any of its participants

ever enjoyed."

The Convention adjourned to meet in Boston May 31, 1866, where a

large, enthusiastic meeting was held, of which we find the following

report by Charles K. Whipple.

_From the National Anti-Slavery Standard of June 9, 1866._

The meeting next in interest as in time, among the crowded

assemblies of Anniversary week, was that of the Equal Rights

Association, called and managed by those intelligent and

excellent women who have for years labored in behalf of Woman's

Rights. A large portion of the community have been accustomed to

sneer at these ladies as self-seeking and fanatical. The new

position they have taken shows, on the contrary, the largeness of

their views, the breadth of their sympathy, and the practical

good sense which govern their operations. Their proceedings show

their full appreciation of the fact that the rights of men and

the rights of women must stand or fall together.

Mrs. Dall called the meeting to order, and introduced as its

president, Martha C. Wright, of Auburn, N. Y., in the absence of

Lucretia Mott, the president of the Association. Mrs. Wright made

some well-chosen introductory remarks; Miss Susan B. Anthony read

letters of friendly greeting from Frederick Douglass and William

Lloyd Garrison, and then a very admirable report was read by Mrs.

Dall, summing up the advance made in the woman's cause the past

year.... The freedom of the platform was an admirable feature of

this Convention. Early in the proceedings it was announced that

any member of the audience, male or female, was entitled to speak

on the topics under debate, and would be made welcome. Among

those who addressed the Convention were Parker Pillsbury, Henry

C. Wright, Aaron M. Powell, Dr. Sarah Young, Rev. Olympia Brown

(minister of a church at Weymouth), Susan B. Anthony, Stephen S.

Foster, Mr. Tooker, Ira Stewart, Charles C. Burleigh, Wendell

Phillips, Frances Ellen Harper, Anna E. Dickinson. The mention of

these names is enough to indicate that there was abundance of

good speaking. No time was lost, and the hours of three sessions

were pleasantly and profitably filled.

Mr. Pillsbury said the word "male," as a restriction upon the

action of women, is unknown to the Federal Constitution, as well

as the word "black," and that its introduction into that document

should be resisted in the most strenuous manner, since we can

never have a true democracy while the work of government is

monopolized by a privileged class.... Wendell Phillips, admitting

that the suffrage is the great question of the hour, thought,

nevertheless, that in view of the peculiar circumstances of the

negro's position, his claim to this right might fairly be

considered to have precedence.... This hour, then, is

preëminently the property of the negro. Nevertheless, said Mr.

Phillips, I willingly stand here to plead the woman's cause,

because the Republican party are seeking to carry their purpose

by newly introducing the word "male" into the Constitution. To

prevent such a corruption of the National Constitution, as well

as for the general welfare of the community, male and female, I

wish to excite interest everywhere in the maintenance of woman's

right to vote. This woman's meeting was well conducted, and met

with success in every way.....

FRANCES D. GAGE, in a letter to the _National Anti-Slavery

Standard_, May 26, 1866, speaking of her attendance of the

anniversary meetings in New York, said: "If the Anti-Slavery work

has fallen somewhat behind our hope, that of the Woman's Rights

movement has far outstripped our most sanguine expectations. When

the war-cry was heard in 1861, the advance-guard of the Woman's

Rights party cried 'halt!' And for five years we have stood

waiting while the grand drama of the Rebellion was passing. Not

as idle spectators, but as the busiest and most unwearied actors

on the boards. We have, as our manly men assert, fought half the

battle, and helped to win the victory.

"Wendell Phillips said, 'Women made this war!' By the same

process of reasoning women may claim that 'they made the peace,'

that 'they broke the chains of the slave, and redeemed the land

from its most direful curse.' Be this true or otherwise, one fact

is patent to every mind--woman to-day is an acknowledged power!

And when we met at the Church of the Puritans last week, we found

Woman's Rights filling its halls and galleries as never before;

with a Beecher and a Tilton to defend our cause, but not one

sneerer or opposer to open his or her lips. Who now will dare

call us 'infidels,' since Bishop Simpson, Henry Ward Beecher, and

Dr. Tyng champion our cause, and proclaim it 'woman's _duty_ to

vote for the good of humanity'? Who will now dare sneer while the

leading minds of Europe--among them Ruskin, John Stuart Mill,

Mazzini, Victor Hugo--must share the odium with those hitherto

called 'strong-minded?'

"It was with pain that I heard Wendell Phillips say on our

platform, 'Albany can not help you; your throne is the world of

fashion!'--meaning women. If we are given over to fashion,

frivolity, and vice, does it follow that rights and privileges,

duties and responsibilities will not help us? If just governments

derive their powers from the consent of the governed, and

taxation without representation is tyranny, then Albany can help

us in just so much as a good and just government will help the

people who live under its rules and laws. No one would at this

day, if a friend to the negro, say to him, 'A vote can not help

you!' Then why say it to women?

"Our Woman's Rights Convention has now taken the broad platform

of 'Equal Rights,' and upon that will work in time to come. And

our meeting in New York seemed proof--if proof was wanting--that

all we need now is to ask and receive. Our worst enemy, our

greatest hindrance, is woman herself; and her indifference is the

legitimate result of long-denied privileges and responsibilities

of which she has not learned the necessity. If, as Mr. Beecher

asserted, 'to vote is a duty,' then it is the duty of every man

and woman to work to secure that right to every human being of

adult years.

"Since our meeting, the House of Representatives at Washington

has passed, by more than three to one, the amendment of the

Reconstruction Committee. If the Senate concurs, then, to save

the four million negroes of the South, or rather to save the

Republican party (the people agreeing), seventeen millions of

women, governed without their own consent, are proclaimed a

disfranchised class by the Constitution of the United States,

hitherto unpolluted by any such legislation. Let us, then, work

for this, too, that seventeen million women shall not be left

without the power considered so necessary to the negro for his

preservation and protection; the power to help govern himself.

Let us never forget his claim, but strengthen it, by not

neglecting our own."

At the November election of this year, Mrs. Stanton offered herself as

a candidate for Congress; in order to test the constitutional right of

a woman to run for office. This aroused some discussion on this phase

of the question, and many were surprised to learn that while women

could not vote, they could hold any office in which their constituents

might see fit to place them. Theodore Tilton gives the following

graphic description of this event in "The Eminent Women":

In a cabinet of curiosities I have laid away as an interesting

relic, a little white ballot, two inches square, and inscribed:

+-------------------------------------+

| _For Representative to Congress_, |

| ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. |

+-------------------------------------+

Mrs. Stanton is the only woman in the United States who, as yet,

has been a candidate for Congress. In conformity with a practice

prevalent in some parts of this country, and very prevalent in

England, she nominated herself. The public letter in which she

proclaimed herself a candidate was as follows:

_To the Electors of the Eighth Congressional District_:

Although, by the Constitution of the State of New York woman is

denied the elective franchise, yet she is eligible to office;

therefore, I present myself to you as a candidate for

Representative to Congress. Belonging to a disfranchised class, I

have no political antecedents to recommend me to your

support,--but my creed is _free speech_, _free press_, _free

men_, and _free trade_,--the cardinal points of democracy.

Viewing all questions from the stand-point of principle rather

than expediency, there is a fixed uniform law, as yet

unrecognized by either of the leading parties, governing alike

the social and political life of men and nations. The Republican

party has occasionally a clear vision of personal rights, though

in its protective policy it seems wholly blind to the rights of

property and interests of commerce; while it recognizes the duty

of benevolence between man and man, it teaches the narrowest

selfishness in trade between nations. The Democrats, on the

contrary, while holding sound and liberal principles on trade and

commerce, have ever in their political affiliations maintained

the idea of class and caste among men--an idea wholly at variance

with the genius of our free institutions and fatal to high

civilization. One party fails at one point and one at another.

In asking your suffrages--believing alike in free men and free

trade--I could not represent either party as now constituted.

Nevertheless, as an Independent Candidate, I desire an election

at this time, as a rebuke to the dominant party for its

retrogressive legislation in so amending the National

Constitution as to make invidious distinctions on the ground of

sex. That instrument recognizes as persons all citizens who obey

the laws and support the State, and if the Constitutions of the

several States were brought into harmony with the broad

principles of the Federal Constitution, the women of the Nation

would no longer be taxed without representation, or governed

without their consent. Not one word should be added to that great

charter of rights to the insult or injury of the humblest of our

citizens. I would gladly have a voice and vote in the Fortieth

Congress to demand _universal_ suffrage, that thus a republican

form of government might be secured to every State in the Union.

If the party now in the ascendency makes its demand for "Negro

Suffrage" in good faith, on the ground of natural right, and

because the highest good of the State demands that the republican

idea be vindicated, on no principle of justice or safety can the

women of the nation be ignored. In view of the fact that the

Freedmen of the South and the millions of foreigners now crowding

our shores, most of whom represent neither property, education,

nor civilization, are all in the progress of events to be

enfranchised, the best interests of the nation demand that we

outweigh this incoming pauperism, ignorance, and degradation,

with the wealth, education, and refinement of the women of the

republic. On the high ground of safety to the Nation, and justice

to citizens, I ask your support in the coming election.

New York, _Oct. 10, 1866_. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

The New York _Herald_, though, of course, with no sincerity,

since that journal is never sincere in anything--warmly advocated

Mrs. Stanton's election. "A lady of fine presence and

accomplishments in the House of Representatives," it said (and

said truly), "would wield a wholesome influence over the rough

and disorderly elements of that body." The _Anti-Slavery

Standard_, with genuine commendation, said: "The electors of the

Eighth District would honor themselves and do well by the country

in giving her a triumphant election." The other candidates in the

same district were Mr. James Brooks, Democrat, and Mr. Le Grand

B. Cannon, Republican. The result of the election was as follows:

Mr. Brooks received 13,816 votes, Mr. Cannon 8,210, and Mrs.

Stanton 24. It will be seen that the number of sensible people in

the district was limited! The excellent lady, in looking back

upon her successful defeat, regrets only that she did not, before

it became too late, procure the photographs of her two dozen

unknown friends.[68]

The years of 1866 and '67 were marked by unusual activity among the

friends of this movement in both England and America. John Stuart

Mill, a member of Parliament, proposed an amendment to the "Household

Suffrage Bill," by striking out the word "man," sustained by many able

speeches, which finally carried the measure triumphantly there. New

York held a Constitutional Convention, Michigan a Commission, and

Kansas submitted the proposition of woman suffrage to a vote of her

people. Twenty thousand petitions were rolled up and presented in the

Constitutional Convention, asking that the word "male" be stricken

from Article II, sec. 1, and as many more were poured into Congress

and the Legislatures of several of the States. A series of

conventions, commencing in Albany, were held in all the chief cities

of New York.[69]

THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION.

The labors of this year are well rounded out with a grand National

Convention,[70] during Anniversary week, in New York, which assembled

at the Church of the Puritans, May 9th, 1867, at 10 o'clock A.M.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton called the meeting to order and said: "In the

absence of our venerable President (Lucretia Mott), Robert Purvis, one

of the Vice-Presidents, will take the chair."

Mr. PURVIS said: I regret the absence of Mrs. Mott. It is

needless to say that no one has higher claims upon the nation's

gratitude for what has been accomplished in the glorious work of

Anti-Slavery, and for what is now being accomplished in the still

greater, because more comprehensive work for freedom contemplated

by this Society, than our honored and beloved President, Lucretia

Mott. (Applause). It is with no ordinary feelings that I

congratulate the friends of this Association on the healthful,

hopeful, animating, inspiring signs of the times. Our simple yet

imperative demand, founded upon a just conception of the true

idea of our republican government, is equality of rights for all,

without regard to color, sex, or race; and, inseparable from the

citizen, the possession of that power, that protection, that

primal element of republican freedom--the ballot.

Lucretia Mott here entered the hall, and, at the request of Mr.

Purvis, took the chair, and called for the Secretary's Report.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY said: It is my duty to present to you at this

time a written Report of all that has been done during the past

year; but those of us who have been active in this movement, have

been so occupied in doing the work, that no one has found time to

chronicle the progress of events. With but half a dozen live men

and women, to canvass the State of New York, to besiege the

Legislature and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention

with tracts and petitions, to write letters and send documents to

every State Legislature that has moved on this question, to urge

Congress to its highest duty in the reconstruction, by both

public and private appeals, has been a work that has taxed every

energy and dollar at our command. Money being the vital power of

all movements--the wood and water of the engine--and, as our work

through the past winter has been limited only by the want of it,

there is no difficulty in reporting on finance. The receipts of

our Association, during the year, have amounted to $4,096.78; the

expenditures, for lectures and conventions, for printing and

circulating tracts and documents, to $4,714.11--leaving us in

debt $617.33.

The Secretary then rapidly rehearsed the signs of progress. She

spoke of the discussion in the United States Senate on the

Suffrage bill, through three entire days, resulting in a vote of

nine Senators in favor of extending suffrage to the women as

well as black men of the District of Columbia; of the action of

the Legislatures of Kansas and Wisconsin to strike the words

"white male" from their constitutions; of the discussions and

minority votes in the Legislatures of Maine, Massachusetts, New

York, Ohio, and Missouri; of the addresses of Elizabeth Cady

Stanton and Lucy Stone before the Judiciary Committees of the New

York and New Jersey Legislatures; of the demand for household

suffrage by the women of England, earnestly maintained by John

Stuart Mill in the British Parliament--all showing that the

public mind everywhere is awake on this question of equal rights

to all. Every mail brings urgent requests from the West for

articles for their papers, for lectures and tracts on the

question of suffrage. In Kansas they are planning mass

conventions, to be held throughout the State through September

and October; and they urge us to send out at least a dozen able

men and women, with 100,000 tracts, to help them educate the

people into the grand idea of universal suffrage, that they may

carry the State at the November election.

Two of our agents, Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, are already

in Kansas, speaking in all her towns and cities--in churches,

school-houses, barns, and the open air; traveling night and day,

by railroad, stage, and ox-cart; scaling the rocky divides, and

fording the swollen rivers--their hearts all aglow with

enthusiasm, greeted everywhere by crowded audiences, brave men

and women, ready to work for the same principles for which they

have suffered in the past, that Kansas, the young and beautiful

hero of the West, may be the first State in the Union to realize

a genuine Republic. The earnest, loyal people of Kansas have

resolved to teach the nation to-day the true principle of

reconstruction, as they taught the nation, twelve years ago, the

one and only way in which to escape from the chains of slavery.

They ask us to help them. So do Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan,

and New York. But for this vast work, as I have already shown

you, we have an empty treasury. We ask you to replenish it. If

you will but give your money generously--if you will but oil the

machinery--this Association will gladly do the work that shall

establish universal suffrage, equal rights to all, in every State

in the Union.

The PRESIDENT (Mrs. Mott) said: The report which we have had,

although not written, is most interesting. A great deal of it is

new to me. There are so many actively engaged in the cause, that

it is fitting that some of us older ones should give place to

them. That is the natural order, and every natural order is

divine and beautiful. Therefore, I feel glad of the

privilege--although my filling the office of President has been a

mere nominal thing--to withdraw from the chair and to yield the

place to our friend Robert Purvis, one of our Vice-Presidents.

The cause is dear to my heart, and has been from my earliest

days. Being a native of the island of Nantucket, where women were

thought something of, and had some connection with the business

arrangements of life, as well as with their homes, I grew up so

thoroughly imbued with woman's rights that it was the most

important question of my life from a very early day. I hail this

more public movement for its advocacy, and have been glad that I

had strength enough to co-operate to some extent. I have attended

most of the regular meetings, and I now feel almost ashamed, old

as I am, to be so ignorant of what has happened during the last

year. We need a paper--an organ that shall keep those who can not

mingle actively in our public labors better informed. _The

Standard_ has done much; and I find in many other papers a

disposition to do justice, to a great extent, to our cause. It is

not ridiculed as it was in the beginning. We do not have the

difficulties, the opposition, and the contumely to confront that

we had at an early day. I am very glad to find such an audience

here to-day; and far be it from me to occupy the time so as to

prevent Mr. May, Mr. Burleigh, and others, from having their

proper place.

Mr. PURVIS resumed the chair, and introduced Mrs. Stanton, who

spoke to the following resolutions:

_Resolved_, That government, of all sciences, is the most

exalted and comprehensive, including, as it does, all the

political, commercial, religious, educational, and social

interests of the race.

_Resolved_, That to speak of the ballot as an "article of

merchandise," and of the science of government as the "muddy

pool of politics," is most demoralizing to a nation based on

universal suffrage.

In considering the question of suffrage, there are two starting

points: one, that this right is a gift of society, in which

certain men, having inherited this privilege from some abstract

body and abstract place, have now the right to secure it for

themselves and their privileged order to the end of time. This

principle leads logically to governing races, classes, families;

and, in direct antagonism to our idea of self-government, takes

us back to monarchies and despotisms, to an experiment that has

been tried over and over again, 6,000 years, and uniformly

failed.

Ignoring this point of view as untenable and anti-republican, and

taking the opposite, that suffrage is a natural right--as

necessary to man under government, for the protection of person

and property, as are air and motion to life--we hold the talisman

by which to show the right of all classes to the ballot, to

remove every obstacle, to answer every objection, to point out

the tyranny of every qualification to the free exercise of this

sacred right. To discuss this question of suffrage for women and

negroes, as women and negroes, and not as citizens of a republic,

implies that there are some reasons for demanding this right for

these classes that do not apply to "white males."

The obstinate persistence with which fallacious and absurd

objections are pressed against their enfranchisement--as if they

were anomalous beings, outside all human laws and necessities--is

most humiliating and insulting to every black man and woman who

has one particle of healthy, high-toned self-respect. There are

no special claims to propose for women and negroes, no new

arguments to make in their behalf. The same already made to

extend suffrage to all white men in this country, the same John

Bright makes for the working men of England, the same made for

the emancipation of 22,000,000 Russian serfs, are all we have to

make for black men and women. As the greater includes the less,

an argument for universal suffrage covers the whole question, the

rights of all citizens. In thus relaying the foundations of

government, we settle all these side issues of race, color, and

sex, end class legislation, and remove forever the fruitful cause

of the jealousies, dissensions, and revolutions of the past.

This is the platform of the American Equal Rights Association.

"We are masters of the situation." Here black men and women are

buried in the citizen. As in the war, freedom was the key-note of

victory, so now is universal suffrage the key-note of

reconstruction.

"Negro suffrage" may answer as a party cry for an effete

political organization through another Presidential campaign; but

the people of this country have a broader work on hand to-day

than to save the Republican party, or, with some abolitionists,

to settle the rights of races. The battles of the ages have been

fought for races, classes, parties, over and over again, and

force always carried the day, and will until we settle the

higher, the holier question of individual rights. This is our

American idea, and on a wise settlement of this question rests

the problem whether our nation shall live or perish.

The principle of inequality in government has been thoroughly

tried, and every nation based on that idea that has not already

perished, clearly shows the seeds of death in its dissensions and

decline. Though it has never been tried, we know an experiment on

the basis of equality would be safe; for the laws in the world of

morals are as immutable as in the world of matter. As the

Astronomer Leverrier discovered the planet that bears his name by

a process of reason and calculation through the variations of

other planets from known laws, so can the true statesman, through

the telescope of justice, see the genuine republic of the future

amid the ruins of the mighty nations that have passed away. The

opportunity now given us to make the experiment of

self-government should be regarded by every American citizen as a

solemn and a sacred trust. When we remember that a nation's life

and growth and immortality depend on its legislation, can we

exalt too highly the dignity and responsibility of the ballot,

the science of political economy, the sphere of government?

Statesmanship is, of all sciences, the most exalted and

comprehensive, for it includes all others. Among men we find

those who study the laws of national life more liberal and

enlightened on all subjects than those who confine their

researches in special directions. When we base nations on justice

and equality, we lift government out of the mists of speculation

into the dignity of a fixed science. Everything short of this is

trick, legerdemain, sleight of hand. Magicians may make nations

seem to live, but they do not. The Newtons of our day who should

try to make apples stand in the air or men walk on the wall,

would be no more puerile in their experiments than are they who

build nations outside of law, on the basis of inequality.

What thinking man can talk of _coming down_ into the arena of

politics? If we need purity, honor, self-sacrifice and devotion

anywhere, we need them in those who have in their keeping the

life and prosperity of a nation. In the enfranchisement of woman,

in lifting her up into this broader sphere, we see for her new

honor and dignity, more liberal, exalted and enlightened views of

life, its objects, ends and aims, and an entire revolution in the

new world of interest and action where she is soon to play her

part. And in saying this, I do not claim that woman is better

than man, but that the sexes have a civilizing power on each

other. The distinguished historian, Henry Thomas Buckle, says:

"The turn of thought of women, their habits of mind, their

conversation, invariably extending over the whole surface of

society, and frequently penetrating its intimate structure, have,

more than all other things put together, tended to raise us into

an ideal world, and lift us from the dust into which we are too

prone to grovel." And this will be her influence in exalting and

purifying the world of politics. When woman understands the

momentous interests that depend on the ballot, she will make it

her first duty to educate every American boy and girl into the

idea that to vote is the most sacred act of citizenship--a

religious duty not to be discharged thoughtlessly, selfishly or

corruptly; but conscientiously, remembering that, in a republican

government, to every citizen is entrusted the interests of the

nation. Would you fully estimate the responsibility of the

ballot, think of it as the great regulating power of a continent,

of all our interests, political, commercial, religious,

educational, social and sanitary!

To many minds, this claim for the ballot suggests nothing more

than a rough polling-booth where coarse, drunken men, elbowing

each other, wade knee-deep in mud to drop a little piece of paper

two inches long into a box--simply this and nothing more. The

poet Wordsworth, showing the blank materialism of those who see

only with their outward eyes, says of his Peter Bell:

"A primrose on the river's brim

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more."

So our political Peter Bells see the rough polling-booth in this

great right of citizenship, and nothing more. In this act, so

lightly esteemed by the mere materialist, behold the realization

of that great idea struggled for in the ages and proclaimed by

the Fathers, the right of self-government. That little piece of

paper dropped into a box is the symbol of equality, of

citizenship, of wealth, of virtue, education, self-protection,

dignity, independence and power--the mightiest engine yet placed

in the hand of man for the uprooting of ignorance, tyranny,

superstition, the overturning of thrones, altars, kings, popes,

despotisms, monarchies and empires. What phantom can the sons of

the Pilgrims be chasing, when they make merchandise of a power

like this? Judas Iscariot, selling his Master for thirty pieces

of silver, is a fit type of those American citizens who sell

their votes, and thus betray the right of self-government. Talk

not of the "muddy pool of politics," as if such things must need

be. Behold, with the coming of woman into this higher sphere of

influence, the dawn of the new day, when politics, so called, are

to be lifted into the world of morals and religion; when the

polling-booth shall be a beautiful temple, surrounded by

fountains and flowers and triumphal arches, through which young

men and maidens shall go up in joyful procession to ballot for

justice and freedom; and when our election days shall be kept

like the holy feasts of the Jews at Jerusalem. Through the trials

of this second revolution shall not our nation rise up, with new

virtue and strength, to fulfill her mission in leading all the

peoples of the earth to the only solid foundation of government,

"equal rights to all." ...

Our danger lies, not in the direction of despotism, in the

one-man power, in centralization; but in the corruption of the

people....

It is in vain to look for a genuine republic in this country

until the women are baptized into the idea, until they understand

the genius of our institutions, until they study the science of

government, until they hold the ballot in their hands and have a

direct voice in our legislation. What is the reason, with the

argument in favor of the enfranchisement of women all on one

side, without an opponent worthy of consideration--while British

statesmen, even, are discussing this question--the Northern men

are so dumb and dogged, manifesting a studied indifference to

what they can neither answer nor prevent? What is the reason that

even abolitionists who have fearlessly claimed political,

religious and social equality for women for the last twenty

years, should now, with bated breath, give her but a passing word

in their public speeches and editorial comments--as if her rights

constituted but a side issue of this grave question of

reconstruction? All must see that this claim for _male_ suffrage

is but another experiment in class legislation, another violation

of the republican idea. With the black man we have no new element

in government, but with the education and elevation of women we

have a power that is to develop the Saxon race into a higher and

nobler life, and thus, by the law of attraction, to lift all

races to a more even platform than can ever be reached in the

political isolation of the sexes. Why ignore 15,000,000 women in

the reconstruction? The philosophy of this silence is plain

enough. The black man crowned with the rights of citizenship,

there are no political Ishmaelites left but the women. This is

the last stronghold of aristocracy in the country. Sydney Smith

says: "There always has been, and always will be, a class of men

in the world so small that, if women were educated, there would

be nothing left below them."

It is a consolation to the "white male," to the popinjays in all

our seminaries of learning, to the ignorant foreigner, the

boot-black and barber, the idiot--for a "white male" may vote if

he be not more than nine-tenths a fool--to look down on women of

wealth and education, who write books, make speeches, and discuss

principles with the savans of their age. It is a consolation for

these classes to be able to say, "well, if woman can do these

things, they can't vote after all." I heard some boys discoursing

thus not long since. I told them they reminded me of a story I

heard of two Irishmen the first time they saw a locomotive with a

train of cars. As the majestic fire-horse, with all its grace and

polish, moved up to a station, stopped, and snorted, as its

mighty power was curbed, then slowly gathered up its forces again

and moved swiftly on--"be jabers," says Pat, "there's muscle for

you. What are we beside that giant?" They watched it intently

till out of sight, seemingly with real envy, as if oppressed with

a feeling of weakness and poverty before this unknown power; but

rallying at last, one says to the other: "No matter, Pat; let it

snort and dash on--it can't vote, after all."

Poor human nature wants something to look down on. No privileged

order ever did see the wrongs of its own victims, and why expect

the "white male citizen" to enfranchise woman without a

struggle--by a scratch of the pen to place themselves on a dead

level with their lowest order? And what a fall would that be, my

countrymen. In none of the nations of modern Europe is there a

class of women so degraded politically as are the women of these

Northern States. In the Old World, where the government is the

aristocracy, where it is considered a mark of nobility to share

its offices and powers--there women of rank have certain

hereditary rights which raise them above a majority of the men,

certain honors and privileges not granted to serfs or peasants.

In England woman may be Queen, hold office, and vote on some

questions. In the Southern States even the women were not

degraded below their working population, they were not humiliated

in seeing their coachmen, gardeners, and waiters go to the polls

to legislate on their interests; hence there was a pride and

dignity in their bearing not found in the women of the North, and

pluck in the chivalry before which Northern doughfaceism has ever

cowered. But here, where the ruling class, the aristocracy, is

"male," no matter whether washed or unwashed, lettered or

unlettered, rich or poor, black or white, here in this boasted

northern civilization, under the shadow of Bunker Hill and

Faneuil Hall, which Mr. Phillips proposes to cram down the throat

of South Carolina--here women of wealth and education, who pay

taxes and are amenable to law, who may be hung, even though not

permitted to choose the judge, the juror, or the sheriff who does

the dismal deed, women who are your peers in art, science, and

literature--already close upon your heels in the whole world of

thought--are thrust outside the pale of political consideration

with traitors, idiots, minors, with those guilty of bribery,

larceny, and infamous crime. What a category is this in which to

place your mothers, wives, and daughters. I ask you, men of the

Empire State, where on the footstool do you find such a class of

citizens politically so degraded? Now, we ask you, in the coming

Constitutional Convention, to so amend the Second Article of our

State Constitution as to wipe out this record of our disgrace.

"But," say you, "women themselves do not make the demand." Mr.

Phillips said on this platform, a year ago, that "the singularity

of this cause is, that it has to be carried on against the wishes

and purposes of its victims," and he has been echoed by nearly

every man who has spoken, on this subject during the past year.

Suppose the assertion true, is it a peculiarity of this

reform?... Ignorant classes always resist innovations. Women

looked on the sewing-machine as a rival for a long time. Years

ago the laboring classes of England asked bread; but the Cobdens,

the Brights, the Gladstones, the Mills have taught them there is

a power behind bread, and to-day they ask the ballot. But they

were taught its power first, and so must woman be. Again, do not

those far-seeing philosophers who comprehend the wisdom, the

beneficence, the morality of free trade urge this law of nations

against the will and wishes of the victims of tariffs and

protective duties? If you can prove to us that women do not wish

to vote, that is no argument against our demand. There are many

duties in life that ignorant, selfish, unthinking women do not

desire to do, and this may be one of them.

"But," says Rev. O. B. Frothingham, in a recent sermon on this

subject, "they who first assume political responsibilities must

necessarily lose something of the feminine element." In the

education and elevation of woman we are yet to learn the true

manhood and womanhood, the true masculine and feminine elements.

Dio Lewis is rapidly changing our ideas of feminine beauty. In

the large waists and strong arms of the girls under his training,

some dilettante gentleman may mourn a loss of feminine delicacy.

So in the wise, virtuous, self-supporting, common-sense women we

propose as the mothers of the future republic, the reverend

gentleman may see a lack of what he considers the feminine

element. In the development of sufficient moral force to entrench

herself on principle, need a woman necessarily lose any grace,

dignity, or perfection of character? Are not those who have

advocated the rights of women in this country for the last twenty

years as delicate and refined, as moral, high-toned, educated,

just, and generous as any women in the land? I have seen women in

many countries and classes, in public and private; but have found

none more pure and noble than those I meet on this platform. I

have seen our venerable President in converse with the highest of

English nobility, and even the Duchess of Sutherland did not

eclipse her in grace, dignity, and conversational power. Where

are there any women, as wives and mothers, more beautiful in

their home life than Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone, or Antoinette

Brown Blackwell? Let the freedmen of the South Sea Islands

testify to the faithfulness, the devotion, the patience, and

tender mercy of Frances D. Gage, who watched over their

interests, teaching them to read and work for two long years.

Some on our platform have struggled with hardship and

poverty--been slaves even in "the land of the free and the home

of the brave," and bear the scars of life's battle. But is a

self-made woman less honorable than a self-made man? Answer our

arguments. When the Republic is in danger, no matter for our

manners. When our soldiers came back from the war, wan, weary,

and worn, maimed, halt, blind, wrinkled, and decrepit--their

banners torn, their garments stained with blood--who, with a soul

to feel, thought of anything but the glorious work they had done?

What if their mothers on this platform be angular, old, wrinkled,

and gray? They, too, have fought a good fight for freedom, and

proudly bear the scars of the battle. We alone have struck the

key-note of reconstruction. While man talks of "equal, impartial,

manhood suffrage," we give the certain sound, "universal

suffrage." While he talks of the rights of races, we exalt the

higher, the holier idea proclaimed by the Fathers, and now twice

baptized in blood, "individual rights." To woman it is given to

save the Republic.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, on behalf of the Executive Committee, reported

several resolutions.[71]

Rev. SAMUEL J. MAY said: I wish to give my testimony most

earnestly and solemnly to the conviction, which has continually

increased in my soul since my attention was first called to the

subject, that this is a fundamental question. How can we expect

that our government will be well conducted when one-half, and

that too what we have been accustomed to call the "better half,"

of its constituency is disfranchised, and unable to influence it

as it should? It is now twenty-two years since I delivered my

first public discourse on this subject; and when I have insisted,

as I have done during that time, that women should be allowed to

take part in the government, it has always been thrown in my

teeth that women were governing the nation after all through

their influence over their husbands, brothers, and sons. I was

delighted with the remarks of Mrs. Stanton on this subject. In

the first place, women can not influence their husbands, nor

educate their sons, as they should do, because they are not

properly informed, and have no inducement to become informed.

Were they to feel a responsibility, doubtless the better part of

them would prepare themselves to discharge their duty; but

knowing that they have nothing to do with the government of the

country, you can hardly persuade our young women to study the

subject. Years ago I insisted that the Constitution of the United

States should be introduced into the common schools of the city

where I live, to be studied by girls as well as boys. Yet I

hardly know half a dozen girls there who have taken the least

interest in it. Why? Because, when any allusion is made to

women's participation in the government, it has been met with a

sneer, which so many dread more than they do a bullet; and this

has doubtless deterred them from it.

I was glad, too, to hear the reply so successfully made to the

objection that women do not demand this right. That is no reason

why they should not be required to exercise it. It is their right

because it is their duty. It is their duty because it is their

right. We have the most glorious inheritance that God ever gave

to a nation, the privilege of governing ourselves. Where does

self-government begin? Where does it reside? In the individual.

No individual that can not govern himself can contribute in the

least toward the government of the country in which he lives. He

becomes a burden, if not a curse. Knowing that women have the

same moral powers as men, the same intellectual powers, the same

affections, that they are governed by the same laws, and amenable

to the same government, who can doubt that if they were made

sensible of their responsibilities in the government of the

country, and that they can not contribute in the least to the

well-being of the community unless they can contribute those

virtues and graces which constitute the true government of one's

self; this would have the most inspiring and elevating influence

upon them? Think you they would continue to be the servants of

mere fashion, as too many of them now are? By our refusal to act

in accordance with the eternal principles of righteousness set

forth in the Declaration of Independence and in the preamble of

the Constitution of the country, we have been brought into a

terrible civil war, which has resulted in a disorganized

condition requiring reconstruction. Why should we not see to it

that our country as a whole, and that each individual State of

the country, shall be reconstructed on this true basis, so that,

if possible, nothing may be left to be done hereafter to improve

the foundations on which this nation rests?

Many say, "One thing at a time. You have been struggling for the

abolition of slavery and obtained that; and now claim the

political rights of the colored men, and will undoubtedly get

them. Why can't you be satisfied?" Because that would leave a

tremendous wrong at the foundation of our country. What will be

the consequence, God only knows, should we dare to go on with

such a fatal mistake in the basis of our institutions. It is

presumption to suppose that we can do this without incurring,

sooner or later, awful consequences. We can not predict what they

will be; but that they will be great our past experiences should

teach us. It was thought a very little matter to leave our

Constitution indefinite as to the rights of colored men. Our

fathers in the meetings held to ratify the Constitution, said

they had done all that could be expected, said that the

death-blow was struck at the institution of slavery, that it

would soon die a natural death; and thus they quieted those who

were distrustful because slavery was not explicitly abolished in

the Constitution. The people, engaged in their various pursuits,

ambitious for office, eager for wealth, let this seed of wrong

become a mighty upas tree that covered our republic all over, and

scattered everywhere its poisonous fruits. Shall we dare to go on

for another period of our national existence knowing that at the

foundation of our government there is a tremendous wrong?

What should the government of a nation be? Ought it not to be as

much as possible like the government of a well-ordered family?

Can you think of any model so good as the divine model set before

us in the family? What would the family be with a father and

without a mother? To whom do you owe the most--your father or

your mother? Who controlled the family most effectually? Some

thirty years ago, being chairman of the Board of Education in my

district, I proposed to put a woman into a school where the male

teachers had been set at nought year after year. It stood the

lowest in rank when she took it; but in less than a month its

character was obviously changed, and at the end of the term it

stood number three in point of character as well as in

scholarship. Men are not governed by the fear of punishment. They

are governed by a strong, persistent manifestation of the

consciousness of a right to govern them; and that is pressed upon

them more effectually by the influence of a mother or a sister

than of a father or a brother. Just so it will be in the

government of our country, when women shall educate and prepare

themselves to take part in that government, with their almost

instinctive perception of the right, the true, and the good.

And if our fathers and mothers were what they might and should

be, the children would be so well trained that they would govern

themselves, and there would be very little need of the

instrumentality of a political organization. If women understood

that it was not only their right, but their duty, to educate

themselves to be citizens of the State, we should have, instead

of the trifling topics which now occupy their attention in our

domestic circles, the consideration of great questions; and

doubtless their finer perceptions often would help to settle

great questions aright; and they who should go forth from that

family circle into the various relations of life, would go

prepared to advocate the right, to illustrate the truth, and at

the ballot-box to give their votes for the true and the right. It

is my first conviction respecting the future well-being of our

country, that it is to be measured exactly by our treatment of

the colored man. My second conviction is that the well-being of

our country never will be effectually provided for until the

better half of humanity is educated and instructed, and required

to take part in the enactment of the laws and in their

administration.

Mrs. Mott then introduced the venerable Sojourner Truth, who was

greeted with loud cheers, after which she said:

My friends, I am rejoiced that you are glad, but I don't know how

you will feel when I get through. I come from another field--the

country of the slave. They have got their liberty--so much good

luck to have slavery partly destroyed; not entirely. I want it

root and branch destroyed. Then we will all be free indeed. I

feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just

as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much as a man.

There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but

not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their

rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men

will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it

was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are

stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a

great while to get it going again. White women are a great deal

smarter, and know more than colored women, while colored women do

not know scarcely anything. They go out washing, which is about

as high as a colored woman gets, and their men go about idle,

strutting up and down; and when the women come home, they ask for

their money and take it all, and then scold because there is no

food. I want you to consider on that, chil'n. I call you chil'n;

you are somebody's chil'n, and I am old enough to be mother of

all that is here. I want women to have their rights. In the

courts women have no right, no voice; nobody speaks for them. I

wish woman to have her voice there among the pettifoggers. If it

is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there.

I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going.

I have been forty years a slave and forty years free, and would

be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. I suppose

I am kept here because something remains for me to do; I suppose

I am yet to help to break the chain. I have done a great deal of

work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to

work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler;

but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the German

women. They work in the field and do as much work, but do not get

the pay. We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. I

suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to

speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the

thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked. What we want is a

little money. You men know that you get as much again as women

when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights we

shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have

money enough in our own pockets; and may be you will ask us for

money. But help us now until we get it. It is a good consolation

to know that when we have got this battle once fought we shall

not be coming to you any more. You have been having our rights so

long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I

know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long

to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better

when it closes up again. I have been in Washington about three

years, seeing about these colored people. Now colored men have

the right to vote. There ought to be equal rights now more than

ever, since colored people have got their freedom. I am going to

talk several times while I am here; so now I will do a little

singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.

Accordingly, suiting the action to the word, Sojourner sang, "We

are going home." "There, children," said she, "in heaven we shall

rest from all our labors; first do all we have to do here. There

I am determined to go, not to stop short of that beautiful place,

and I do not mean to stop till I get there, and meet you there,

too."

CHARLES C. BURLEIGH said: I consider it among the good omens with

which the Society enters upon its new year of labor, that its

workers have been so busy, as appears from the informal report of

the Secretary this morning, that really they have not had time to

let the left hand know what the right hand was doing. It shows an

earnestness, a determination, a vigor, an industry, which can not

co-exist with a cause of righteousness like the one before us

without hopeful results. There is no narrow question here. We are

not contending for Woman's Suffrage or Negro Suffrage, but for a

broad principle of right applicable to the whole race. Those in

opposition to us have really nothing to stand upon. While we may

fairly assume that the burden of proof lies upon those who urge

objections, that ours is the affirmative case, and all that we

are bound to do is to answer objections; yet in this reform, as

in others which have preceded it, its enemies not being willing

to take the burden of proof, we have undertaken to do their work

as well as our own. We are willing, therefore, for the sake of

meeting every cavil, for the sake of fighting every shadow of

objection, to take the laboring oar which the other side should

take, and to prove the objections unfounded which they have not

yet attempted to prove well-founded.

We are told sometimes that women ought not to share with men in

the rights we claim for humanity, because of the difference of

sex; that there is a sex of soul as well as of body. This is an

objection practically cutting its own throat; because if it is

true that there is a diversity of sex in soul which ought to be

recognized in political institutions as well as in social

arrangements, how can you rightly determine woman's proper place

in society by the standard of a man's intellect? How can man's

intellect determine what kind of legislation suits the condition

of woman? The very fact, then, of the diversity of the masculine

understanding and masculine spirit, proves the necessity of

assigning to woman a share in the work which is to be done

affecting woman. Manifestly one of these two things must be true:

Either there is no such essential difference worthy to be taken

into account, in which case woman has the same rights as man, and

there is no necessity for making a distinction; or there is an

essential difference, in which case man is not competent to do

the work of legislating for the whole of society without the aid

of woman. We might just as well let one effigy stand in the

tailor's shop, as the standard of measurement of every garment

the tailor is to make, and also of every garment the dressmaker

is to make as to found the legislation for all upon one standard.

If you recognize a difference, let your legislation proceed from

both elements of the body politic which your legislation is to

affect.