Sumner, Horace Greeley, William Lloyd Garrison, Gerrit Smith, Wendell
Phillips and Frederick Douglass, and would urge the rising generation
of young men to emulate their virtues, we would warn the young women
of the coming generation against man's advice as to their best
interests, their highest development. We would point for them the
moral of our experiences: that woman must lead the way to her own
enfranchisement, and work out her own salvation with a hopeful courage
and determination that knows no fear nor trembling. She must not put
her trust in man in this transition period, since, while regarded as
his subject, his inferior, his slave, their interests must be
antagonistic.
But when at last woman stands on an even platform with man, his
acknowledged equal everywhere, with the same freedom to express
herself in the religion and government of the country, then, and not
till then, can she safely take counsel with him in regard to her most
sacred rights, privileges, and immunities; for not till then will he
be able to legislate as wisely and generously for her as for himself.
FOOTNOTES:
[76] DISAGREEMENTS IN THE REPUBLICAN STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE--THE
SUFFRAGE QUESTION.--The Kansas _State Journal_ publishes a letter from
Judge SAMUEL N. WOOD, in which he declares himself unqualifiedly in
favor of impartial suffrage. He says:
"I have not opposed, and shall not oppose negro suffrage. It should be
adopted because they are a part of the governed, and must have a voice
in the Government, just as much as women should. What I have had to do
with is the inconsistency and hypocrisy of those who advocate negro
suffrage and oppose Woman suffrage; the inconsistency and hypocrisy of
those negroes who claim rights for themselves that they are not
willing other human beings with equal intelligence should also enjoy."
The same paper says that at the meeting of the Republican State
Central Committee in Leavenworth, last week, the following resolution
was offered and laid on the table, by a vote of two yeas to one nay:
_Resolved_, That the Republican State Central Committee do not
indorse, but distinctly repudiate, as speakers, in behalf and under
the auspices of the Republican party, such persons as have defamed, or
do hereafter defame, in their public addresses, the women of Kansas,
or those ladies who have been urging upon the people of Kansas the
propriety of enfranchising the women of the State.
Mr. TAYLOR, who offered the resolution, has accordingly published the
following protest:
The undersigned, a member of the Republican State Central Committee of
Kansas, protests against the action of the Committee this day had, so
far as relates to the placing of the names of I. S. KALLOCH, C. V.
ESKRIDGE, and P. B. PLUMB, on the list of speakers to canvass the
State in behalf of Republican principles, for the reason that they
have within the last few weeks, in public addresses published
articles, used ungentlemanly, indecent, and infamously defamatory
language, when alluding to a large and respectable portion of the
women of Kansas, and to women now engaged in canvassing the State in
favor of impartial suffrage.
R. B. TAYLOR.
[77] DEMOCRATIC RESOLUTION.--_Resolved_, That we are opposed to all
the proposed amendments to our State Constitution, and to all unjust,
intolerant, and proscriptive legislation, whereby a portion of our
fellow citizens are deprived of their social rights and religious
privileges.
[78] ACTION OF THE GERMANS.--ST. LOUIS, _Sept. 26._--A special
dispatch to the _Republican_ from Wyandotte, Kansas, says: "The German
Convention, which was held at Topeka on Monday last, adopted
resolutions against Sunday and temperance laws, and declared that they
would not support any man for State, Legislative, or municipal office
who would not give his written pledge to oppose such laws. An
unsuccessful effort was made to commit the Germans to negro suffrage.
The female suffrage question was not touched."
[79] STATE TEMPERANCE CONVENTION.--LAWRENCE, KANSAS, _Sept. 26._--A
mass State Temperance Convention was held here last night, and was
addressed by Senator Pomeroy, ex-Gov. Robinson, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Resolutions were passed committing the
Temperance people to female suffrage, and to prevent the repeal of the
Temperance law of last winter, to the abrogation of which the Germans
pledged themselves in their Convention on the 23d.
[80] The New York _Tribune_, May 29, 1867: "Womanhood suffrage is now
a progressive cause beyond fear of cavil. It has won a fair field
where once it was looked upon as an airy nothing, and it has gained
champions and converts without number. The young State of Kansas is
fitly the vanguard of this cause, and the signs of the agitation
therein hardly allow a doubt that the citizenship of women will be ere
long recognized in the law of the State. Fourteen out of twenty
newspapers of Kansas are in favor of making woman a voter. Governor
Crawford, ex-Governors Robinson and Root, Judge Schuyler, Col.
Ritchie, and Lieut.-Gov. Green, are the leaders of the wide-spread
Impartial League, which has among its orators Mistresses Stanton,
Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. The vitality of the Kansas movement is
indisputable, and whether defeated or successful in the present
contest, it will still hold strongly fortified ground." ...
[81] Mrs. Sarah B. Shaw, after having contributed $150 for Kansas,
wrote the following:
NORTH SHORE, September 22, 1867.
DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--If I were a rich woman I would inclose a
check of $1,000 instanter. Mr. Gay read your letter and said he
wished he had $500 to give. So you see if the right people only
had the money how the work would be done. Mr. Shaw says: "Tell
Miss Anthony if the women in Kansas vote on the schools and the
dram shops, I think the work is done there." I have not in my
mind one person who could give money who would, so I can not help
you.... I am very sorry to send you only this dry morsel, a stone
when you want bread, but I can only give you my earnest wishes,
though I will not fail to do my best. I have already sent your
letter to a rich friend, who has _reformed_ all her life, but I
do not know at all how she stands on the woman question. Believe
me, dear Miss Anthony,
Sincerely yours, SARAH B. SHAW.
OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION, }
No. 37 Park Row (Room 17). NEW YORK, _Aug. 23, 1867_. }
DEAR LYDIA:-- ... I am just in from Staten Island, where Mrs. Gay
had $10 from Frank Shaw waiting for me. I went on purpose to go
to Mrs. Shaw, and persevered; the glorious result is $150 more.
Such a splendid woman; worthy the noble boy she gave in the war,
and worthy her noble son-in-law, George William Curtis. Lydia, we
shall go on to triumph in Kansas! The St. Louis _Democrat_
publishes Mr. Curtis' speech in full, with a splendid editorial.
The St. Louis _Journal_ gives the speech and the _Democrat's_
editorial "as a matter of news." I have 60,000 tracts now going
to press; all the old editions were gone, and we have to begin
new with an empty treasury; but I tell them all, "go ahead;" we
must, and will, succeed.
Affectionately yours, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
TEMPLETON, MASS., _Sept. 21, 1867_, }
On way to Green Mountains. }
DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Mrs. Severance desires me to inclose to you
this check, $50, and say that it is a contribution by friends at
and about Boston, to aid you in the good work of reconstruction
on the subject of woman's right to the ballot in Kansas.
Yours truly, T. C. SEVERANCE.
AUBURN, _Sept. 17, 1867_.
DEAR MR. PILLSBURY:--You may be very sure I would have answered
Susan's letter sooner if I had been able to inclose any such sum
as she hoped to obtain. All that I can do is to inclose a draft
for $30--ten from our daughter Eliza, ten from William and Ellen,
and ten from myself.... We can only feel grateful for the
self-sacrificing labors of those who have gone to Kansas, and
hopeful that better success may attend the efforts there, than
here or in Michigan.... I was very glad that Mrs. Stanton could
go.... We shall miss Mrs. Frances D. Gage. I always considered
her word as effective as any on our Woman's Rights platform. Her
rest has come.... Our children were in Syracuse on Sunday; they
heard a beautiful valedictory from Samuel J. May, recounting the
varied incidents of his life, lamenting his short-comings, and
advising them to choose a younger man for the duties he was no
longer able to perform alone. He is so well beloved by his
congregation that the probability is they will get an associate
for him.
Your friend, MARTHA C. WRIGHT.
[82] E. D. Draper, Hopedale, Massachusetts.
[83] James W. Nye, Nevada; Charles Robinson, S. N. Wood, Samuel C.
Pomeroy, E. G. Ross, Sidney Clark, S. G. Crawford, Kansas; Wm.
Loughridge, Iowa; Robert Collyer, Illinois; Geo. W. Julian, H. D.
Washburn, Indiana; R. E. Trowbridge, John F. Driggs, Michigan;
Benjamin F. Wade, Ohio; J. W. Broomall, William D. Kelley,
Pennsylvania; Henry Ward Beecher, Gerrit Smith, George William Curtis,
New York; Dudley S. Gregory, George Polk, John G. Foster, James L.
Hayes, Z. H. Pangborn, New Jersey; William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell
Phillips, Samuel E. Sewell, Oakes Ames, Massachusetts; William
Sprague, Thomas W. Higginson, Rhode Island; Calvin E. Stowe,
Connecticut.
[84] Mrs. Starrett's father.
[85] All were prepared beforehand to do Mrs. Stanton homage for her
talents and fame, but many persons who had formed their ideas of Miss
Anthony from the unfriendly remarks of opposition papers in other
States had conceived a prejudice against her. Perhaps I can not better
illustrate how she everywhere overcame and dispelled this prejudice
than by relating my own experience. A convention was called at
Lawrence, and the friends of woman suffrage were called upon to
entertain the strangers who might come from abroad. Ex-Gov. Robinson,
who from the first had given his influence to the movement, was now
giving his whole time to the canvass. He called upon me to know if I
would entertain Mrs. Stanton. In those days houses were small, help
was scarce and inefficient, and in our family were two babies and an
invalid sister. But the pleasure and honor of entertaining Mrs.
Stanton was too great to allow these circumstances to prevent. We
prepared our own room for the guest chamber and had all things in
readiness when I received a note from Ex-Gov. Robinson stating that
Mrs. Stanton had found relatives in town with whom she would stop, but
that Miss Anthony would come instead. I hastily put on bonnet and
shawl saying, "I don't want Miss Anthony, and I won't have her, and I
am going to tell Gov. Robinson so." At the gate I met a dignified,
quaker looking lady with a small satchel and a black and white shawl
on her arm. Offering her hand she said, "I am Miss Anthony, and I have
been sent to you for entertainment during the Convention." I have
often wondered if Miss Anthony remembers my confusion, and the
apologies I stammered out about no help, sickness in the family, no
spare room and how I was just on my way to tell Gov. Robinson that I
could not entertain any one. Half disarmed by her genial manner and
frank, kindly face, I led the way into the house and said I would have
her stay to tea and then we would see what farther arrangements could
be made. While I was looking after tea Miss Anthony won the hearts of
the babies; and seeing the door of my sister's sick room open, she
went in and in a short time had so won the heart and soothed instead
of exciting the nervous sufferer, entertaining her with accounts of
the outside world from which she had been so long shut off, that by
the time tea was over, I was ready to do anything if Miss Anthony
would only stay with us. And stay she did for over six weeks, and we
parted from her as from a beloved and helpful friend. I found
afterwards that in the same way she disarmed prejudice and made the
most ardent friends wherever she became personally known.
H. E. S.
[86] Of course it is nothing new to say that Mrs. Stanton was the
object of admiration and honor everywhere. Miss Anthony looked after
her interests and comfort in the most cheerful and kindly manner,
occasionally complaining good naturedly of Mrs. Stanton's carelessness
in leaving various articles of her wearing apparel scattered over the
State, and of the trouble she had in recovering a gold watch which
Mrs. Stanton had left hanging on the bed post in a little hotel in
Southern Kansas. I remember one evening of the Convention in Lawrence
when the hall was crowded with an eager and expectant audience. Miss
Anthony was there early, looking after everything, seats, lights,
ushers, doorkeepers, etc. Presently Gov. Robinson came to her and
said, "Where's Mrs. Stanton? It's time to commence." "She's at Mrs.
---- waiting for some of you men to go for her with a carriage," was
the reply. The hint was quickly acted upon and Mrs. Stanton, fresh,
smiling and unfatigued, was presented to the audience. H. E. S.
[87] See Appendix.
[88] Mrs. Gov. Charles Robinson, Mrs. Lieut-Gov. J. P. Root, Mrs. R.
B. Taylor, Mrs. Mary T. Gray--whose husbands were also active
workers--Mrs. Lucy B. Armstrong, Mrs. Judge Humphrey, Mrs. Starrett,
Mrs. Archibald, Mrs. Elsie Stewart, "Mother Bickerdike," and many
others.
[89] Nov. 6, 1867.--The associated press item in _The Evening Journal_
said: "Leavenworth, Kansas, Nov. 5th. Out of about 3,500 registered
voters, only 2,600 voted here to-day. Negro suffrage received only
about 700. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, who have been canvassing the
State, visited the polls in each ward and addressed the voters,
probably the first occurrence of the kind in this country. They were
accompanied by the Hutchinson family, and were received with hearty
cheers for woman suffrage."
[90] This trip cost Mr. Train $2,500, as he paid all the expenses,
advertising largely.
[91] The first number was published January 6, 1868, and ten thousand
copies, under the frank of the Hon. James Brooks, were scattered
throughout the country.
CHAPTER XX.
NEW YORK CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.
Constitution Amended once in Twenty Years--Mrs. Stanton Before
the Legislature Claiming Woman's Right to Vote for Members to the
Convention--An Immense Audience in the Capitol--The Convention
Assembled June 4th, 1867. Twenty Thousand Petitions Presented for
Striking the Word "Male" from the Constitution--"Committee on the
Right of Suffrage, and the Qualifications for Holding Office."
Horace Greeley, Chairman--Mr. Graves, of Herkimer, Leads the
Debate in favor of Woman Suffrage--Horace Greeley's Adverse
Report--Leading Advocates Heard before the Convention--Speech of
George William Curtis on Striking the Word "Man" from Section 1,
Article 11--Final Vote, 19 For, 125 Against--Equal Rights
Anniversary of 1868.
This was the first time in the history of the woman suffrage movement
that the Constitution of New York was to be amended, and the general
interest felt by women in the coming convention was intensified by the
fact that such an opportunity for their enfranchisement would not come
again in twenty years. The proposition of the republican party to
strike the word "white" from the Constitution and thus extend the
right of suffrage to all classes of male citizens, placing the men of
the State, black and white, foreign and native, ignorant and educated,
vicious and virtuous, all alike, above woman's head, gave her a keener
sense of her abasement than she had ever felt before. But having
neither press nor pulpit to advocate her cause, and fully believing
this amendment would pass as a party measure, she used every means
within her power to arouse and strengthen the agitation, in the face
of the most determined opposition of friends and foes. Meetings were
held in all the chief towns and cities in the State, and appeals and
petitions scattered in every school district; these were so many
reminders to the women everywhere that they too had some interest in
the Constitution under which they lived, some duties to perform in
deciding the future policy of the Government.
This campaign cost us the friendship of Horace Greeley and the support
of the _New York Tribune_, heretofore our most powerful and faithful
allies. In an earnest conversation with Mrs. Stanton and Miss
Anthony, Mr. Greeley said: "This is a critical period for the
Republican party and the life of the Nation. The word "white" in our
Constitution at this hour has a significance which "male" has not. It
would be wise and magnanimous in you to hold your claims, though just
and imperative, I grant, in abeyance until the negro is safe beyond
peradventure, and your turn will come next. I conjure you to remember
that this is "the negro's hour," and your first duty now is to go
through the State and plead his claims." "Suppose," we replied,
"Horace Greeley, Henry J. Raymond and James Gordon Bennett were
disfranchised; what would be thought of them, if before audiences and
in leading editorials they pressed the claims of Sambo, Patrick, Hans
and Yung Fung to the ballot, to be lifted above their own heads? With
their intelligence, education, knowledge of the science of government,
and keen appreciation of the dangers of the hour, would it not be
treasonable, rather than magnanimous, for them, leaders of the
metropolitan press, to give the ignorant and unskilled a power in
government they did not possess themselves? To do this would be to
place on board the ship of State officers and crew who knew nothing of
chart or compass, of the safe pathway across the sea, and bid those
who understand the laws of navigation to stand aside. No, no, this is
the hour to press woman's claims; we have stood with the black man in
the Constitution over half a century, and it is fitting now that the
constitutional door is open that we should enter with him into the
political kingdom of equality. Through all these years he has been the
only decent compeer we have had. Enfranchise him, and we are left
outside with lunatics, idiots and criminals for another twenty years."
"Well," said Mr. Greeley, "if you persevere in your present plan, you
need depend on no further help from me or the _Tribune_." And he kept
his word. We have seen the negro enfranchised, and twenty long years
pass away since the war, and still woman's turn has not yet come; her
rights as a citizen of the United States are still unrecognized, the
oft-repeated pledges of leading Republicans and Abolitionists have not
been redeemed.
As soon as the Constitutional Convention was called by the Legislature
of New York, Mrs. Stanton appeared before that body asking not only
that the word "male" be stricken from Sec. 1, Art. 2, but that women
be permitted to vote for members to that Convention, giving many
precedents and learned opinions in favor of her demand. In the
Assembly Chamber on the afternoon of Jan. 23, 1867, an immense
audience of judges, lawyers, members of the Legislature, and ladies of
fashion greeted her. On being introduced by the Hon. Chas. J.
Folger,[92] Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, MRS. STANTON
said:
_Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee and Members of the
Legislature_:
I appear before you at this time, to urge on you the justice of
securing to all the people of the State the right to vote for
delegates to the coming Constitutional Convention. The discussion
of this right involves the consideration of the whole question of
suffrage; and especially those sections of your Constitution
which interpose insurmountable qualifications to its exercise. As
representatives of the people, your right to regulate all that
pertains to the coming Constitutional Convention is absolute. It
is for you to say when and where this convention shall be held;
how many delegates shall be chosen, and what classes shall be
represented. This is your right. It is the opinion of many of the
ablest men of the country that, in a revision of a constitution,
the State is, for the time being, resolved into its original
elements, and that all disfranchised classes should have a voice
in such revision and be represented in such convention. To secure
this to the people of the State, is clearly your duty.
Says Judge Beach Lawrence, in a letter to Hon. Charles Sumner: "A
State Constitution must originate with and be assented to by a
majority of the people, including as well those whom it
disfranchises as those whom it invests with the suffrage." And as
there is nothing in the present Constitution of the State of New
York to prevent women, or black men from voting for, or being
elected as delegates to a Constitutional Convention, there is no
reason why the Legislature should not enact that the people elect
their delegates to said Convention irrespective of sex or color.
The Legislatures of 1801 and 1821 furnish you a precedent for
extending to disfranchised classes the right to vote for
delegates to a Constitutional Convention. Though the Constitution
of the State restricted the right of suffrage to every male
inhabitant who possessed a freehold to the value of £20, or
rented a tenement at the yearly value of forty shillings, and had
been rated and actually paid taxes to the State, the Legislatures
of those years passed laws setting aside all property
limitations, and providing that all men--black and white, rich
and poor--should vote for delegates to said Conventions. The act
recommending a convention for the purpose of considering the
parts of the Constitution of this State, respecting the number of
Senators and Members of Assembly--and also for the consideration
of the 23d article of said Constitution, relative to the right of
nomination to office--"but with no other power or authority
whatsoever," passed April 6, 1801. Session Laws 1801, chap. 69,
page 190, sec. 2, says:
And be it further enacted, that the number of delegates
chosen shall be the same as the number of Members of
Assembly from the respective cities and counties of the
State, and that all free male citizens of this State, of the
age of twenty-one years and upward, shall be admitted to
vote for such delegates, and that any person of that
description shall be eligible.
The above law was passed by the Legislature of 1801, which
derived its authority from the first Constitution of the State.
The act recommending a convention of the people of this State,
passed March 13, 1821. Session Laws of 1821, act 90, page 83,
sec. 1. "Persons entitled to vote":
All free male citizens, of the age of twenty-one years or
upward, who shall possess a freehold in this State, or who
shall have been actually rated and paid taxes to this State,
or who shall have been actually enrolled in the militia of
this State, or in a legal, volunteer, or uniform corps, and
shall have served therein either as an officer or private,
or who shall have been or now are, by law, exempt from
taxation or militia duty, or who shall have been assessed to
work on the public roads and highways, and shall have worked
thereon, or shall have paid a commutation therefor according
to law, shall be allowed during the three days of such
election to vote by ballot as aforesaid in the town or ward
in which they shall actually reside.
Extract from Sec. 6th, Act 90:
And be it further enacted, that the number of delegates to
be chosen shall be the same as the number of Members of
Assembly from the respective cities and counties of this
State, and that the same qualification for voters shall be
required on the election for delegates, as is prescribed in
the first section of this act, and none other.... And that
all persons entitled to vote by this law for delegates,
shall be eligible to be elected.
Extracts from the first Constitution of the State of New York,
under and by virtue of which the Legislatures sat, which passed
the acts of 1801 and 1821, from which the extracts above are
taken. Sec. 7. Qualification of electors:
That every male inhabitant of full age, who shall have
personally resided for six months within one of the counties
of this State, immediately preceding the day of election,
shall at such election be entitled to vote for
representatives of the said county in Assembly, if during
the time aforesaid, he shall have been a freeholder
possessing a freehold of the value of £20, within the said
county, or have rented a tenement therein of a yearly value
of forty shillings, and been rated and actually paid taxes
to this State.
SEC. 10. And this Convention doth further, in the name and
by the authority of the good people of this State, ordain,
determine, and declare that the Senate of the State of New
York shall consist of twenty-four freeholders, to be chosen
out of the body of the freeholders, and they be chosen by
the freeholders of this State, possessed of freeholds of the
value of £100 over and above all debts charged thereon.
By section 17, the qualifications for voters for Governor
are made the same as those for Senators.
The laws above quoted show this striking fact: Those men, black
and white, prohibited from voting for members of the Assembly,
were permitted to vote for delegates to said Conventions; and
more than this, on each occasion they were eligible to seats in
the body called to frame the fundamental law--the fundamental law
from which Governors, Senators, and Members derive their
existence.
The Constitutional Convention of Rhode Island, in 1842, affords
another precedent of the power of the Legislature to extend the
suffrage to disfranchised classes.
The disfranchisement of any class of citizens is in express
violation of the spirit of our own Constitution. Art. 1, sec. 1:
No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived
of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen
thereof, unless by the law of the land and the judgment of
his peers.
Now, women, and negroes not worth two hundred and fifty dollars,
however weak and insignificant, are surely "members of the
State." The law of the land is equality. The question of
disfranchisement has never been submitted to the judgment of
their peers. A peer is an equal. The "white male citizen" who so
pompously parades himself in all our Codes and Constitutions,
does not recognize women and negroes as his equals; therefore,
his judgment in their case amounts to nothing. And women and
negroes constituting a majority of the people of the State, do
not recognize a "white male" minority as their rightful rulers.
On our republican theory that the majority governs, women and
negroes should have a voice in the government of the State; and
being taxed, should be represented.
In the recent debate in the Senate of the United States, on the
question of suffrage, Senator Anthony, of Rhode Island, said:
Nor is it a fair statement of the case to say, that the man
represents the woman, because it is an assumption on the
part of the man--it is an involuntary representation on the
part of the woman. Representation implies a certain
delegated power, and a certain responsibility on the part of
the representative toward the party represented. A
representation to which the represented party does not
assent, is no representation at all; but is adding insult to
injury. When the American Colonies complained that they
ought not to be taxed unless they were represented in the
British Parliament, it would have been rather a singular
answer to tell them that they were represented by Lord
North, or even by the Earl of Chatham. The gentlemen on the
other side of the Chamber, who say that the States lately in
rebellion are entitled to immediate representation in this
Chamber, would hardly be satisfied if we should tell them
that my friend from Massachusetts represented South
Carolina, and my friend from Michigan represented Alabama.
They would hardly be satisfied with that kind of
representation. Nor have we any more right to assume that
the women are satisfied with the representation of the men.
Where has been the assembly at which this right of
representation was conferred? Where was the compact made? It
is wholly an assumption.
"White males" are the nobility of this country; they are the
privileged order, who have legislated as unjustly for women and
negroes as have the nobles of England for their disfranchised
classes. The existence of the English House of Commons is a
strong fact to prove that one class can not legislate for
another. Perhaps it may be necessary, in this transition period
of our civilization, to create a Lower House for women and
negroes, lest the dreadful example of Massachusetts, nay, worse,
should be repeated here, and women, as well as black men, take
their places beside our Dutch nobility in the councils of the
State. If the history of England has proved that white men of
different grades can not legislate with justice for one another,
how can you, Honorable Gentlemen, legislate for women and
negroes, who, by your customs, creeds and codes, are placed under
the ban of inferiority? If you dislike this view of the case, and
claim that woman is your superior, and, therefore, you place her
above all troublesome legislation, to shield her by your
protecting care from the rough winds of life, I have simply to
say, your statute books are a sad commentary on that position.
Your laws degrade, rather than exalt woman; your customs cripple,
rather than free; your system of taxation is alike ungenerous and
unjust.
In demanding suffrage for the black man of the South, the
dominant party recognizes the fact that as a freedman he is no
longer a part of the family therefore his master is no longer his
representative, and 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, unmarried women have always had the right to property
and wages; to make contracts and do business in their own name.
And even married women, by recent legislation in this State, have
been secured in some civil rights, at least as well secured as
those classes can be who do not hold the ballot in their own
hands. Woman now holds a vast amount of property in the country,
and pays her full proportion of taxes, revenue included; on what
principle, then, do you deny her representation? If you say women
are "virtually represented" by the men of their household, I give
you Senator Sumner's denial, in his great speech on Equal Rights
in the First Session of the 39th Congress. Quoting from James
Otis, he says: "No such phrase as virtual representation was
known in law or constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and
illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd. We must not be cheated by
any such phantom or any other fiction of law or politics, or any
monkish trick of deceit or hypocrisy."
In regard to taxation without representation, Lord Coke says:
"The supreme power can not take from any man any part of his
property without his consent in person or by representation.
Taxes are not to be laid on the people" (are not women and
negroes people?) "without their consent in person or by
representation. The very act of taxing 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 without his consent?" In view of
such opinions, is it too much to ask the men of New York, either
to enfranchise women of wealth and education, or else release
them from taxation? If we can not be represented as individuals,
we should not be taxed as individuals. If the "white male" will
do all the voting, let him pay all the taxes. There is no logic
so powerful in opening the eyes of men to their real interests as
a direct appeal to their pockets. Such a release from taxation
can be supported, too, by your own Constitution. In Art. 2, Sec.
1, you say, "And no person of color shall be subject to direct
taxation, unless he shall be seized and possessed of such real
estate as aforesaid," referring to the $250 qualification. Now, a
poor widow who owns a lot worth a hundred dollars or less, is
taxed. Why this partiality to the black man? He may live in the
quiet possession of $249 worth of property, and not be taxed a
cent. Is it on the ground of color or sex, that the black man
finds greater favor in the eyes of the law than the daughters of
the State? In order fully to understand this partiality, I have
inquired into your practice with regard to women of color. I find
that in Seneca Falls there lives a highly estimable colored
woman, by the name of Abby Gomore, who owns property to the
amount of a thousand dollars, in village lots. She now pays, and
always has paid, from the time she invested her first hundred
dollars, the same taxes as any other citizen--just in proportion
to the value of her property, or as it is assessed. After
excluding women and "men of color" not worth $250, from
representation, your Constitution tells us what other persons are
excluded from the right of suffrage. Art. 2, Sec. 2.
Laws may be passed excluding from the right of suffrage all
persons who have been or may be convicted of bribery, or
larceny, or of any infamous crime, and for depriving every
person who shall make, or become directly or indirectly
interested in any bet or wager depending upon the result of
any election, from the right to vote at such election.
How humiliating! For respectable and law-abiding women and "men
of color," to be thrust outside the pale of political
consideration with those convicted of bribery, larceny, and
infamous crime; and worse than all, with those who bet on
elections--for how lost to all sense of honor must that "white
male citizen" be who publicly violates a wise law to which he has
himself given an intelligent consent. We are ashamed, Honored
Sirs, of our company. The Mohammedan forbids a "fool, a madman,
or a woman" to call the hours for prayers. If it were not for the
invidious classification, we might hope it was tenderness rather
than contempt that moved the Mohammedan to excuse woman from so
severe a duty. But for the ballot, which falls like a flake of
snow upon the sod, we can find no such excuse for New York
legislators. Art. 2, Sec. 3, should be read and considered by the
women of the State, as it gives them a glimpse of the modes of
life and surroundings of some of the privileged classes of "white
male citizens" who may go to the polls:
For the purpose of voting, no person shall be deemed to have
gained or lost a residence by reason of his presence or
absence while employed in the service of the United States;
nor while engaged in navigating the waters of the State, or
of the United States, or of the high seas; nor while a
student of any seminary of learning; nor while kept at any
alms-house or other asylum, at public expense; nor while
confined in any public prison.
What an unspeakable privilege to have that precious jewel--the
human soul--in a setting of _white manhood_, that thus it can
pass through the prison, the asylum, the alms-house, the muddy
waters of the Erie canal, and come forth undimmed to appear at
the ballot-box at the earliest opportunity, there to bury its
crimes, its poverty, its moral and physical deformities, all
beneath the rights, privileges, and immunities of a citizen of
the State. Just imagine the motley crew from the ten thousand
dens of poverty and vice in our large cities, limping, raving,
cringing, staggering up to the polls, while the loyal mothers of
a million soldiers whose bones lay bleaching on every Southern
plain, stand outside sad and silent witnesses of this wholesale
desecration of republican institutions. When you say it would
degrade woman to go to the polls, do you not make a sad
confession of your irreligious mode of observing that most sacred
right of citizenship? The ballot-box, in a republican government,
should be guarded with as much love and care as was the Ark of
the Lord among the Children of Israel. Here, where we have no
heaven-anointed kings or priests, law must be to us a holy thing;
and the ballot-box the holy of holies; for on it depends the
safety and stability of our institutions. I, for one, gentlemen,
am not willing to be thus represented. I claim to understand the
interests of the nation better than yonder pauper in your
alms-house, than the unbalanced graduate from your asylum and
prison, or the popinjay of twenty-one from your seminary of
learning, or the traveler on the tow-path of the Erie canal. No
wonder that with such voters as Art. 2, Sec. 3 welcomes to the
polls, we have these contradictory laws and constitutions. No
wonder that with such voters, sex and color should be exalted
above loyalty, virtue, wealth and education. I warn you,
legislators of the State of New York, that you need the moral
power of wise and thoughtful women in your political councils, to
outweigh the incoming tide of poverty, ignorance, and vice that
threatens our very existence as a nation. Have not the women of
the republic an equal interest with yourselves in the government,
in free institutions, in progressive ideas, and in the success of
the most liberal political measures? Remember, in your last
election, the republican majority in this State was only fourteen
thousand, all told. If you would not see the liberal party
swamped in the next Presidential campaign, treble your majority
by enfranchising those classes who would support it in all just
and merciful legislation....
The extension of suffrage is the political idea of our day,
agitating alike the leading minds of both continents. The
question of debate in the long past has been the rights of races.
This, in our country, was settled by the war, when the black man
was declared free and worthy to bear arms in defense of the
republic, and the last remnants of aristocracy were scattered
before our northern hosts like chaff in the whirlwind. We have
now come to the broader idea of _individual_ rights. An idea
already debated ably in Congress and out, by Republicans,
Democrats and Abolitionists, who, in common with the best writers
and thinkers of the day the world over, base all rights of
society and government on those of the individual. Each one of
you has a right to everything in earth and air, on land and sea,
to the whole world of thought, to all that is needful for soul
and body, and there is no limit to the exercise of your rights,
but in the infringement of the rights of another; and the moment
you pass that limit you are on forbidden ground, you violate the
law of individual life, and breed disorder and confusion in the
whole social system. Where, gentlemen, did you get the right to
deny the ballot to all women and black men not worth $250? If
this right of suffrage is not an individual right, from what
place and body did you get it? Is this right of franchise a
conventional arrangement, a privilege that society or government
may grant or withhold at pleasure? In the Senate of the United
States, in the recent discussion on the "bill to regulate the
elective franchise in the District of Columbia," GRATZ BROWN
said:
Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American
Senate, I stand for universal suffrage; and, as a matter of
fundamental principle, do not recognize the right of society
to limit it on any ground of race or sex. I will go farther
and say, that I recognize the right of franchise as being
intrinsically a natural right. I do not believe that society
is authorized to impose any limitations upon it that do not
spring out of the necessities of the social state itself.
Sir, I have been shocked, in the course of this debate, to
hear Senators declare this right only a conventional and
political arrangement, a privilege yielded to you and me,
and others; not a right in any sense, only a concession! Mr.
President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On
the contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that
doctrine; whenever you crystallize that idea in the public
mind of this country, you ring the death-knell of American
liberties!!
The demand we to-day make, is not the idiosyncrasy of a few
discontented minds, but a universal movement. Woman is everywhere
throwing off the lethargy of ages, and is already close upon you
in the whole realm of thought--in art, science, literature and
government. Everything heralds the dawn of the new era when moral
power is to govern nations. In asking you, Honorable Gentlemen,
to extend suffrage to woman, we do not press on you the risk and
responsibility of a new step, but simply to try a measure that
has already proved wise and safe the world over. So long as
political power was absolute and hereditary, woman shared it with
man by birth. In Hungary and some provinces of France and
Germany, women holding this inherited right confer their right of
franchise on their husbands. In 1858, in the old town of Upsal,
the authorities granted the right of suffrage to fifty women
holding real estate, and to thirty-one doing business in their
own name. The representative their votes elected was to sit in
the House of Burgesses. In Ireland, the Court of Queen's Bench,
Dublin, restored to women, in 1864, the old right of voting for
town commissioners. In 1864, too, the government of Moravia
decided that all women who are tax-payers had the right to vote.
In Canada, in 1850, an electoral privilege was conferred on
women, in the hope that the Protestant might balance the Roman
Catholic power in the school system. "I lived," says a friend of
mine, "where I saw this right exercised for four years by female
property holders, and never heard the most cultivated man, even
Lord Elgin, object to its results." Women vote in Austria,
Australia, Holland and Sweden, on property qualifications. There
is a bill now before the British Parliament, presented by John
Stuart Mill, asking for household suffrage, accompanied by a
petition from eleven thousand of the best educated women in
England.
Would you be willing to admit, gentlemen, that women know less,
have less virtue, less pride and dignity of character under
Republican institutions than in the despotisms and monarchies of
the old world? Your Codes and Constitutions savor of such an
opinion. Fortunately, history furnishes a few saving facts, even
under our Republican institutions. From a recent examination of
the archives of the State of New Jersey we learn that, owing to a
liberal Quaker influence, women and negroes exercised the right
of suffrage in that State thirty-one years--from 1776 to
1807--when "white males" ignored the constitution, and
arbitrarily assumed the reins of government. This act of
injustice is sufficient to account for the moral darkness that
seems to have settled down upon that unhappy State. During the
dynasty of women and negroes, does history record any social
revolution peculiar to that period? Because women voted there,
was the institution of marriage annulled, the sanctity of home
invaded, cradles annihilated, and the stockings, like Governor
Marcy's pantaloons, mended by the State? Did the men of that
period become mere satellites of the dinner-pot, the wash-tub, or
the spinning-wheel? Were they dwarfed and crippled in body and
soul, while their enfranchised wives and mothers became giants in
stature and intellect? Did the children, fully armed and equipped
for the battle of life, spring, Minerva-like, from the brains of
their fathers? Were the laws of nature suspended? Did the sexes
change places? Was everything turned upside down? No, life went
on as smoothly in New Jersey as in any other State in the Union.
And the fact that women did vote there, created so slight a
ripple on the popular wave, and made so ordinary a page in
history, that probably nine-tenths of the people of this country
never heard of its existence, until recent discussions in the
United States Senate brought out the facts of the case. In
Kansas, women vote for school officers and are themselves
eligible to the office of trustee. There is a resolution now
before the Legislature of Ohio to strike the words "white male"
from the Constitution of that State. The Hon. Mr. Noel, of
Missouri, has presented a bill in the House of Representatives to
extend suffrage to the women of the District of Columbia.
I think, Honorable Gentlemen, I have given you facts enough to
show that you need not hesitate to give the ballot to the women
of New York, on the ground that it is a new thing; for, as you
see, the right has long ago been exercised by certain classes of
women in many countries. And if it were a new thing, and had
never been heard of before, that would be no argument against the
experiment. Had the world never done a new thing, Columbus would
not have discovered this country, nor the ocean telegraph brought
our old enemy--Great Britain--within friendly speaking distance.
When it was proposed to end slavery in this country, croakers and
conservatives protested because it was a new thing, and must of
necessity produce a social convulsion. When it was proposed to
give woman her rights of property in this State, the same classes
opposed that on the same ground; but the spirit of the age
carried both measures over their heads and "nobody was hurt."
You Republicans can not oppose our demand on that ground, for
your present party-cry "negro suffrage" is a new thing, and
startling too, in the ears of the Southern States, and a very
inconsistent thing, so long as the $250 qualification remains in
your Constitution. "If you would know your faults," says Cicero,
"ask your enemies." Hear his Excellency Andrew Johnson, in his
veto on the District of Columbia Bill; he says: "It hardly seems
consistent with the principles of right and justice, that
representatives of States where suffrage is either denied the
colored man or granted to him on qualifications requiring
intelligence or property, should compel the people of the
District of Columbia to try an experiment which their
constituents have thus far shown an unwillingness to try for
themselves." Senator Sumner, a leading radical, expresses the
same opinion. In the debate on the admission of Nebraska, he
says: "When we demand equal rights of the Southern States, we
must not be so inconsistent as to admit any new State with a
constitution disfranchising citizens on account of color.
Congress must be itself just, if it would recommend it to others.
Reconstruction must begin at home." Consistency is a jewel. Every
thoughtful person must see that Northern representatives are in
no condition to reconstruct the South until their own State
Constitutions are purged of all invidious distinctions among
their citizens. As the fountain rises no higher than its source,
how can New York press on South Carolina a civilization she has
never tried herself. But say you, we can coerce the South to do
what we have no right to force on a loyal State. Has not each
State a right to amend her own Constitution and establish a
genuine republic within her own boundaries? "Let each man mend
one," says the old proverb, "and the world is mended." Let each
State bring its own Constitution into harmony with the Federal
Constitution, and the Union will be a republic.
We are soon to hold a convention to revise the Constitution of
the State of New York; and it is the duty of the people to insist
that it be so amended as to make all its citizens equal before
the law. Could the Empire State now take the lead in making
herself a genuine republic, all the States would, in time,
follow her example, and the problem of reconstruction be thus
settled to the satisfaction of all. Example is more powerful than
precept in all cases. Were our constitutions free from all class
distinctions, with what power our representatives could now press
their example on the Southern States. Is there anything more
rasping to a proud spirit than to be rebuked for shortcomings by
those who are themselves guilty of the grossest violations of law
and justice? Does the North think it absurd for its women to vote
and hold office, the South thinks the same of its negroes. Does
the North consider its women a part of the family to be
represented by the "white male citizen," so views the South her
negroes. And thus viewing them, the South has never taxed her
slaves; but our chivalry never fails to send its tax-gatherers to
the poorest widow that owns a homestead. Would you press
impartial suffrage on the South, recognize it first at home.
Would you have Congress do its duty in the coming session, let
the action of every State Legislature teach it what that duty is.
The work of this hour is a broader one than the reconstruction of
the Rebel States. It is the lifting of the entire nation into
higher ideas of justice and equality. It is the realization of
what the world has never yet seen, a GENUINE REPUBLIC.
As the ballot is the key to reconstruction, a right knowledge of
its use and power is the first step in the work before us. Hence,
the consideration of the question of suffrage is the duty of
every American citizen.
The legal disabilities to the exercise of suffrage (for persons
of sound mind and body) in the several States, are five--age,
color, sex, property and education. As age depends on a fixed
law, beyond the control of fallible man, viz., the revolution of
the earth around the sun, it must be impartial, for, _nolens
volens_, all men must revolve with their native planet; and as no
Republican or Democratic majority can make the earth stand still,
even for a Presidential campaign, they must in time perform that
journey often enough to become legal voters. As the right to the
ballot is not based on intelligence, it matters not that some
boys of eighteen do know more than some men of thirty. Inasmuch
as boys are not bound by any contract--except marriage--can not
sell a horse, or piece of land, or be sued for debt until they
are twenty-one, this qualification of age seems to be in harmony
with the laws of the land, and based on common sense.
As to color and sex, neither time, money or education can make
black white, or woman man; therefore such insurmountable
qualifications, not to be tolerated in a republican government,
are unworthy our serious consideration. "Qualifications," says
Senator Sumner, "can not be in their nature permanent or
insurmountable. Color can not be a qualification any more than
size, or quality of the hair. A permanent or insurmountable
qualification is equivalent to a deprivation of the suffrage. In
other words, it is the tyranny of taxation without
representation; and this tyranny, I insist, is not intrusted to
any State in the Union."
As to property and education, there are some plausible arguments
in favor of such qualifications, but they are all alike
unsatisfactory, illogical and unjust. A limited suffrage creates
a privileged class, and is based on the false idea that
government is the natural arbiter of its citizens, while in fact
it is the creature of their will. In the old days of the colonies
when the property qualification was five pounds--that being just
the price of a jackass--Benjamin Franklin facetiously asked, "If
a man must own a jackass in order to vote, who does the voting,
the man or the jackass?" If reading and money-making were a sure
gauge of character, if intelligence and virtue were twin sisters,
these qualifications might do; but such is not the case. In our
late war black men were loyal, generous and heroic without the
alphabet or multiplication table, while men of wealth, educated
by the nation, graduates of West Point, were false to their
country and traitors to their flag. There was a time in England's
history, when the House of Lords even, could neither read nor
write. Before the art of printing, were all men fools? Were the
Apostles and martyrs worth $250? The early Christians, the
children of art, science and literature, have in all ages
struggled with poverty, while they blessed the world with their
inspirations. The Hero of Judea had not where to lay His head!!
As capital has ever ground labor to the dust, is it just and
generous to disfranchise the poor and ignorant because they are
so? If a man can not read, give him the ballot, it is
schoolmaster. If he does not own a dollar give him the ballot, it
is the key to wealth and power. Says Lamartine, "universal
suffrage is the first truth and only basis of every national
republic." "The ballot," says Senator Sumner, "is the columbiad
of our political life, and every citizen who has it is a
full-armed monitor."
But while such grand truths are uttered in the ears of the world,
by an infamous amendment of the Federal Constitution, the people
have sanctioned the disfranchisement of a majority of the loyal
citizens of the nation. With sorrow we learn that the Legislature
of New York has ratified this change of the Constitution.
Happily for the cause of freedom, the organization we represent
here to-day, "THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION," has
registered its protest in the archives of the State against this
desecration of the last will and testament of the Fathers. It was
a mistake for you to confirm to-day what Congress proposed a year
ago. Recent debates in the Senate show a hearty repentance for
their past action, and an entire revolution in their opinions on
this whole question. It was gratifying to find in the discussion
of the District Franchise Bill, how unanimously the Senate
favored the extension of suffrage. The thanks of the women of the
Nation are especially due to Senator Cowan for his motion to
strike out the word "male," and to the nine distinguished
Senators who voted for his amendment. It was pleasant to see into
what fraternal relations this question at once brought all
opposing elements. The very able and exhaustive manner in which
both Republicans and Democrats pressed their claims to the
ballot, through two entire sessions of the Senate, is most
encouraging to the advocates of the political rights of women.
In view of this liberal discussion in the Senate, and the recent
action of Congress on the Territories, it is rather singular that
our Republican Governor, in referring to the Constitutional
Convention in his late message, while recommending consideration
of many minor matters, should have failed to call attention to
Art. 2d, Sec. 1, of the Constitution, which denies the
fundamental rights of citizenship. As the executive head of the
party in this State whose political capital is "negro suffrage,"
it would have been highly proper for our worthy Governor to have
given his opinion on that odious $250 clause in the Constitution.
No doubt our judiciary, our criminal legislation, our city
governments need reforming; our railroads, prisons and schools
need attention; but all these are of minor consideration to the
personal and property rights of the man himself. Said Lalor
Shiels, in the House of Commons, "strike the Constitution to the
center and the lawyer sleeps in his closet. But touch the cobwebs
in Westminster Hall and the spiders start from their hiding
places."
I have called your attention, gentlemen, to some of the flaws in
your Constitution that you may see that there is more important
work to be done in the coming Convention than any to which
Governor Fenton has referred in his message. I would also call
your attention to the fact, that while His Excellency suggests
the number of delegates at large to be chosen by the two
political parties, he makes no provision for the representatives
of women and "men of color" not worth $250. I would, therefore,
suggest to your honorable body that you provide for the election
of an equal number of delegates at large from the disfranchised
classes. But a response to our present demand does not
legitimately thrust on you the final consideration of the whole
broad question of suffrage, on which many of you may be
unprepared to give an opinion. The simple point we now press is
this: that in a revision of our Constitution, when the State is,
as it were, resolved into its original elements, ALL THE PEOPLE
should be represented in the Convention which is to enact the
laws by which they are to be governed the next twenty years.
Women and negroes, being seven-twelfths of the people, are a
majority; and according to our republican theory, are the
rightful rulers of the nation. In this view of the case,
honorable gentlemen, is it not a very unpretending demand we
make, that we shall vote once in twenty years in revising and
amending our State Constitution?
But, say you, the majority of women do not make the demand. Grant
it. What then? When you proclaimed emancipation, did you go to
slaveholders and ask if a majority of them were in favor of
freeing their slaves? When you ring the changes on "negro
suffrage" from Maine to California, have you proof positive that
a majority of the freedmen demand the ballot? On the contrary,
knowing that the very existence of republican institutions
depends on the virtue, education and equality of the people, did
you not, as wise statesmen, legislate in all these cases for the
highest good of the individual and the nation? We ask that the
same far-seeing wisdom may guide your decision on the question
now before you. Remember, the gay and fashionable throng who
whisper in the ears of statesmen, judges, lawyers, merchants,
"_We have all the rights we want_," are but the mummies of
civilization, to be brought back to life only by earthquakes and
revolutions. Would you know what is in the soul of woman, ask not
the wives and daughters of merchant princes; but the creators of
wealth--those who earn their bread by honest toil--those who, by
a turn in the wheel of fortune, stand face to face with the stern
realities of life.
"If you would enslave a people," says Cicero, "first, through
ease and luxury, make them effeminate." When you subsidize labor
to your selfish interests, there is ever a healthy resistance.
But, when you exalt weakness and imbecility above your heads,
give it an imaginary realm of power, illimitable, unmeasured,
unrecognized, you have founded a throne for woman on pride,
selfishness and complacency, before which you may well stand
appalled. In banishing Madame De Stael from Paris, the Emperor
Napoleon, even, bowed to the power of that scepter which rules
the world of fashion. The most insidious enemy to our republican
institutions, at this hour, is found in the aristocracy of our
women. The ballot-box, that great leveler among men, is beneath
their dignity. "_They have all the rights they want._" So, in his
spiritual supremacy, has the Pope of Rome! But what of the
multitude outside the Vatican!!!
This speech was published in full by the Metropolitan press and many
of the leading journals[93] of the State, with fair editorial
comments.
On June 4th, 1867, the Constitutional Convention assembled in Albany,
and on the 10th Mr. Graves of Herkimer, moved "that a committee of
five be appointed by the chair to report at an early day whether the
Convention should provide that when a majority of women voted that
they wanted the right of suffrage, they should have it," and on the
19th the President, William A. Wheeler, appointed the committee[94] on
the "right of suffrage, and the qualifications for holding office."
The first petition brought before the committee in favor of suffrage
for women was presented by George William Curtis, of Richmond Co.,
sent by the friends of Human Progress from their Annual meeting at
Waterloo.
Martin I. Townsend next presented a petition from William Johnson,
Chairman of the "Colored Men's State Committee," praying for "equal
manhood suffrage." Similar petitions, without any concert of action
between the parties, were presented simultaneously whenever any
discussion arose on the suffrage question. But in this Convention the
demands made by the women were more pressing and multitudinous.
Mr. GRAVES, June 21st, 1867, moved to take up his resolution,
"That a committee of five be appointed by the chair to report to
the convention at as early a day as possible, whether, in their
opinion, a provision should be incorporated in the Constitution
authorizing the women in this State to exercise the elective
franchise, when they shall ask that right by a majority of all
the votes given by female citizens over twenty-one years of age,
at an election called for that purpose, at which women alone
shall have the right to vote."
Mr. GRAVES said:--Mr. President. I do not desire at this time to
discuss the merits of the resolution; but allow me to suggest
that there are four classes of persons interested in the
questions involved in it. The first class is what is
opprobriously known as "strong-minded women," who claim the right
to vote upon the ground that they are interested and identified
with ourselves in the stability and permanency of our
institutions, and that their property is made liable for the
maintenance of our Government, while they have no right to choose
the law-makers or select the persons who are to assess the value
of their property liable to taxation. They claim that they are
not untaught in the science of government to which the right of
administration is denied to them.
The second class includes both males and females who sympathize
with the first class, and who claim that there is no disparity in
the intellect of men and women, when an equal opportunity is
afforded by education for progress and advancement. They also
claim that our country is diminishing all the time in moral
integrity and virtue, and ask that a new element be introduced
into our governmental affairs by which crime shall be lessened
and the estimate of moral virtue be made higher.
The third class urges that there should be no distinction between
males and females in the exercise of the elective franchise, and
they claim that it is anti-democratic that there should be a
minority in this country to rule its destinies.
There is a fourth class who believe that the right to exercise
the elective franchise is not inherent, but permissive, and that
the people are the Government, and that this power of the
elective franchise is under their immediate control, and they
claim the right to become part and parcel of the Government which
they help to support and maintain.
Now these four classes, differing in opinion upon this great
question, constitute a very large body of worthy, high-minded,
and intelligent men and women of this State who have long sought
to enlarge the elective franchise, and they claim the deliberate
consideration of this body upon the ground of equality, as their
innumerable petitions[95] to this Convention fully show. This
resolution gives to women themselves the power of discussing and
comparing of minds to settle the question whether they will avail
themselves of the desired right to exercise the power of voting.
And as it differs from all other questions which have originated
here with reference to this right of women to vote, I submit it
is a proper resolution to be referred to a select committee to be
appointed for that purpose.
Mr. Graves' resolution was referred to the Committee on Suffrage.
June 27th Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were granted a hearing[96]
before the Convention, and at the close of their addresses were asked
by different members to reply to various objections that readily
suggested themselves. Among others, Mr. Greeley said: "Ladies, you
will please remember that the bullet and ballot go together. If you
vote, are you ready to fight?" "Certainly," was the prompt reply. "We
are ready to fight, sir, just as you fought in the late war, by
sending our substitutes." The colloquy between the members and the
ladies, prolonged until a late hour, was both spicy and
instructive.[97] On the 10th of July a hearing was granted to Lucy
Stone,[98] which called out deep interest and consideration from the
members of that body. Later still, George Francis Train[99] was most
cordially received by the Convention.
C. C. DWIGHT, June 26th, offered a resolution that "The Standing
Committee on the Right of Suffrage be instructed to provide for
women to vote as to whether they wanted the right to vote after
the adoption of the New Constitution.
Mr. MERRITT, July 11th, moved that "The question of Woman
Suffrage be submitted at the election of 1868 or 1869. Referred
to the Committee of the Whole.
Horace Greeley, Chairman of the Committee, in his report, after
recommending universal "manhood suffrage," said:
Having thus briefly set forth the considerations which seem to us
decisive in favor of the few and moderate changes proposed, we
proceed to indicate our controlling reasons for declining to
recommend other and in some respects more important innovations.
Your committee does not recommend an extension of the elective
franchise to women. However defensible in theory, we are
satisfied that public sentiment does not demand and would not
sustain an innovation so revolutionary and sweeping, so openly at
war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes
as venerable and pervading as government itself, and involving
transformations so radical in social and domestic life. Should we
prove to be in error on this head, the Convention may overrule us
by changing a few words in the first section of our proposed
article.
Nor have we seen fit to propose the enfranchisement of boys above
the age of eighteen years. The current ideas and usages in our
day, but especially in this country, seem already to set too
strongly in favor of the relaxation, if not total overthrow of
parental authority, especially over half-grown boys. With the
sincerest good-will for the class in question, we submit that
they may spend the hours which they can spare from their labors
and their lessons more usefully and profitably in mastering the
wisdom of the sages and philosophers who have elucidated the
science of government, than in attendance on midnight caucuses,
or in wrangling around the polls.
ALBANY, June 28, 1867.
HORACE GREELEY, _Chairman_, WM. H. MERRILL,
LESLIE W. RUSSELL, GEO. WILLIAMS.
Mr. Cassidy presented a minority report urging a separate submission
of the question of negro suffrage, in which he said:
If the regeneration of political society is to be sought in the
incorporation of this element into the constituency, it must be
done by the direct and explicit vote of the electors. We are
foreclosed from any other course by the repeated action[100] of
the State.... It would be unfair to the people to declare that
whereas they have again and again refused to accept this change,
therefore we will incorporate it into the Constitution, and
compel them either to repeal that instrument, or to accept this
measure.... As to the extension of suffrage to women, the
undersigned reserve, for the present, any expression of opinion.
WILLIAM CASSIDY,
JOHN G. SCHUMAKER.
The petitions[101] for woman suffrage were presented in the Convention
until they reached in round numbers 20,000. The morning Mr. Greeley
gave his report the galleries were crowded with ladies, and every
member present, Democrat as well as Republican, was supplied with a
petition. As it had been rumored about that Mr. Greeley's report would
be against suffrage for women, the Democrats entered with great zest
into the presentation. George William Curtis, at the special
request[102] of the ladies, reserved his for the last, and when he
arose and said: "Mr. President, I hold in my hand a petition from Mrs.
Horace Greeley and three hundred other women citizens of Westchester,
asking that the word 'male' be stricken from the Constitution," the
sensation throughout the house was as profound as unexpected. Mr.
Greeley's chagrin was only equaled by the amusement of the other
members, and of the ladies in the gallery. As he arose to read his
report, it being the next thing in order, he was evidently embarrassed
in view of such a flood of petitions from all parts of the State; from
his own wife, and most of the ladies in his immediate social circle,
by seeming to antagonize the measure.
After Mr. Greeley's report, Mr. Graves made several efforts to get his
resolution adopted in time for the women to vote upon it in the spring
of 1868. Mr. Weed, of Clinton, also desired that the vote for the
measure should consist of the majority of the women of the State. The
great event of the Convention was the speech of George William Curtis
on the report of the "Committee on the right of suffrage and the
qualifications to hold office."
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS offered the following amendment:[103]
"In the first section, strike out the word 'man'; and wherever in
that section the word 'he' occurs, add 'or she'; and wherever the
word 'his' occurs, add 'or her.'"
Mr. CURTIS said: In proposing a change so new to our political
practice, but so harmonious with the spirit and principles of our
Government, it is only just that I should attempt to show that it
is neither repugnant to reason nor hurtful to the State. Yet I
confess some embarrassment; for, while the essential reason of
the proposition seems to me to be clearly defined, the objection
to it is vague and shadowy. From the formal opening of the
general discussion of the question in this country, by the
Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, down to the present moment,
the opposition to the suggestion, so far as I am acquainted with
it, has been only the repetition of a traditional prejudice, or
the protest of mere sentimentality; and to cope with these is
like wrestling with a malaria, or arguing with the east wind. I
do not know, indeed, why the Committee have changed the phrase
"male inhabitant or citizen," which is uniformly used in a
constitutional clause limiting the elective franchise. Under the
circumstances, the word "man" is obscure, and undoubtedly
includes women as much as the word "mankind." But the intention
of the clause is evident, and the report of the Committee makes
it indisputable. Had they been willing to say directly what they
say indirectly, the eighth line and what follows would read,
"Provided that idiots, lunatics, persons under guardianship,
felons, women, and persons convicted of bribery, etc., shall not
be entitled to vote." In their report, the Committee omit to tell
us why they politically class the women of New York with idiots
and criminals. They assert merely that the general
enfranchisement of women would be a novelty, which is true of
every step of political progress, and is therefore a presumption
in its favor; and they speak of it in a phrase which is intended
to stigmatize it as unwomanly, which is simply an assumption and
a prejudice. I wish to know, sir, and I ask in the name of the
political justice and consistency of this State, why it is that
half of the adult population, as vitally interested in good
government as the other half, who own property, manage estates,
and pay taxes, who discharge all the duties of good citizens, and
are perfectly intelligent and capable, are absolutely deprived of
political power, and classed with lunatics and felons. The boy
will become a man and a voter; the lunatic may emerge from the
cloud and resume his rights; the idiot, plastic under the tender
hand of modern science, may be moulded into the full citizen; the
criminal, whose hand still drips with the blood of his country
and of liberty, may be pardoned and restored; but no age, no
wisdom, no peculiar fitness, no public service, no effort, no
desire, can remove from woman this enormous and extraordinary
disability. Upon what reasonable grounds does it rest? Upon none
whatever. It is contrary to natural justice, to the acknowledged
and traditional principles of the American Government, and to the
most enlightened political philosophy. The absolute exclusion of
women from political power in this State is simply usurpation.
"In every age and country," says the historian Gibbon, nearly a
hundred years ago, "the wiser or at least the stronger of the two
sexes has usurped the powers of the State, and confined the other
to the cares and pleasures of domestic life."
The historical fact is that the usurping class, as Gibbon calls
them, have always regulated the position of women by their own
theories and convenience. The barbaric Persian, for instance,
punished an insult to the woman with death, not because of her
but of himself. She was part of him. And the civilized English
Blackstone only repeats the barbaric Persian when he says that
the wife and husband form but one person--that is the husband.
Sir, it would be extremely amusing, if it were not tragical, to
trace the consequences of this theory on human society and the
unhappy effect upon the progress of civilization of this morbid
estimate of the importance of men. Gibbon gives a curious
instance of it, and an instance which recalls the spirit of the
modern English laws of divorce. There was a temple in Rome to the
goddess who presided over the peace of marriages. "But," says the
historian, "her very name, Viriplaca--the appeaser of
husbands--shows that repentance and submission were always
expected from the wife," as if the offense usually came from her.
In the "Lawe's resolution of Women's Rights," published in the
year 1632, a book which I have not seen, but of which there are
copies in the country, the anonymous and quaint author says, and
with a sly satire: "It is true that man and woman are one person,
but understand in what manner. When a small brooke or little
river incorporateth with Rhodanus, Humber, or the Thames, the
poor rivulet looseth her name; it is carried and recarried with
the new associate--it beareth no sway--it possesseth nothing
during coverture. A woman as soon as she is married is called
_covert_--in Latine, _nupta_--that is, veiled; as it were
overclouded and shadowed; she hath lost her streame. I may more
truly, farre away, say to a married woman, her new self is her
superior; her companion her master.... See here the reason of
that which I touched before--that women have no voice in
Parliament; they make no laws; they consent to none; they
abrogate none. All of them are understood either married or to be
married, and their desires are to their husbands."
From this theory of ancient society, that woman is absorbed in
man; that she is a social inferior and a subordinate part of man;
springs the system of laws in regard to women which in every
civilized country is now in course of such rapid modification,
and it is this theory which so tenaciously lingers as a
traditional prejudice in our political customs. But a State
which, like New York, recognizes the equal individual rights of
all its members, declaring that none of them shall be
disfranchised unless by the law of the land or the judgment of
his peers, and which acknowledges women as property-holders and
taxable, responsible citizens, has wholly renounced the old
Feudal and Pagan theory, and has no right to continue the evil
condition which springs from it. The honorable and eloquent
gentleman from Onondaga said that he favored every enlargement of
the franchise consistent with the safety of the State. Sir, I
heartily agree with him, and it was the duty of the Committee in
proposing to continue the exclusion of women, to show that it is
necessary to the welfare and safety of the State that the whole
sex shall be disfranchised. It is in vain for the Committee to
say that I ask for an enlargement of the franchise and must,
therefore, show the reason. Sir, I show the reason upon which
this franchise itself rests, and which, in its very nature,
forbids arbitrary exclusion; and I urge the enfranchisement of
women on the ground that whatever political rights men have women
have equally.
I have no wish to refine curiously upon the origin of government.
If any one insists, with the honorable gentleman from Broome,
that there are no such things as natural political rights, and
that no man is born a voter, I will not now stop to argue with
him; but as I believe the honorable gentleman from Broome is by
profession a physician and surgeon, I will suggest to him that if
no man is born a voter, so no man is born a man, for every man is
born a baby. But he is born with the right of becoming a man
without hindrance; and I ask the honorable gentleman, as an
American citizen and political philosopher, whether, if every man
is not born a voter, he is not born with the right of becoming a
voter upon equal terms with other men? What else is the meaning
of the phrase which I find in the New York _Tribune_ of Monday,
and have so often found there, "The radical basis of government
is equal rights for all citizens." There are, as I think we shall
all admit, some kinds of natural rights. This summer air that
breathes benignant around our national anniversary, is vocal with
the traditional eloquence with which those rights were asserted
by our fathers. From all the burning words of the time, I quote
those of Alexander Hamilton, of New York, in reply, as my
honorable friend the Chairman of the Committee will remember, to
the Tory farmer of Westchester: "The sacred rights of mankind are
not to be rummaged for among old parchments or dusty records.
They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human
nature by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be
erased or obscured by mortal power." In the next year, Thomas
Jefferson, of Virginia, summed up the political faith of our
fathers in the Great Declaration. Its words vibrate through the
history of those days. As the lyre of Amphion raised the walls of
the city, so they are the music which sing course after course of
the ascending structure of American civilization into its place.
Our fathers stood indeed upon technical and legal grounds when
the contest with Great Britain began, but as tyranny encroached
they rose naturally into the sphere of fundamental truths as into
a purer air. Driven by storms beyond sight of land, the sailor
steers by the stars; and our fathers, compelled to explore the
whole subject of social rights and duties, derived their
government from what they called self-evident truths. Despite the
brilliant and vehement eloquence of Mr. Choate, they did not deal
in glittering generalities, and the Declaration of Independence
was not the passionate manifesto of a revolutionary war, but the
calm and simple statement of a new political philosophy and
practice.
The rights which they declared to be inalienable are indeed what
are usually called natural, as distinguished from political
rights, but they are not limited by sex. A woman has the same
right to her life, liberty and property that a man has, and she
has consequently the same right to an equality of protection that
he has; and this, as I understand it, is what is meant by the
phrase, the right of suffrage. If I have a natural right to that
hand, I have an equal natural right to everything that secures to
me its use, provided it does not harm the equal right of another;
and if I have a natural right to my life and liberty, I have the
same right to everything that protects that life and liberty
which any other man enjoys. I should like my honorable friend,
the Chairman of this Committee, to show me any right which God
gave him, which he also gave to me, for which God gave him a
claim to any defense which He has not given to me. And I ask the
same question for every woman in this State. Have they less
natural right to life, liberty, and property than my honorable
friend the Chairman of the Committee; and is it not, to quote the
words of his report, an extremely "defensible theory" that he can
not justly deprive the least of those women of any protection of
those rights which he claims for himself? No, sir, the natural,
or what we call civil right, and its political defense, go
together. This was the impregnable logic of the Revolution. Lord
Gower sneered in Parliament at the American Colonists a century
ago, as Mr. Robert Lowe sneers at the English Reformers to-day:
"Let the Americans talk about their natural and divine rights....
I am for enforcing these measures." Dr. Johnson bellowed across
the Atlantic, "Taxation, no Tyranny." James Otis spoke for
America, for common sense, and for eternal justice, in saying,
"No good reason, however, can be given in any country, why every
man of a sound mind should not have his vote in the election of a
representative. If a man has but little property to protect and
defend, yet his life and liberty are things of some importance."
And long before James Otis, Lord Somers said to a committee of
the House of Commons, that the possession of the vote is the only
true security which an Englishman has for the possession of his
life and property.
Every person, then, is born with an equal claim to every kind of
protection of his natural rights which any other person enjoys.
The practical question, therefore, is how shall this protection
be best attained? and this is the question of government which,
according to the Declaration, is established for the security of
these rights. The British theory was that they could be better
secured by an intelligent few than by the ignorant and passionate
multitude. Goldsmith expressed it in singing:
"For just experience shows in ever soil,
That those who think must govern those who toil."
But nobody denies that the government of the best is the best
government; the only question is how to find the best, and common
sense replies:
"The good, 'tis true, are heaven's peculiar care;
But who but heaven shall show us who they are?"
Our fathers answered the question of the best and surest
protection of natural right by their famous phrase, "the consent
of the governed." That is to say, since every man is born with
equal natural rights, he is entitled to an equal protection of
them with all other men; and since government is that protection,
right reason and experience alike demand that every person shall
have a voice in the government upon perfectly equal and
practicable terms; that is, upon terms which are not necessarily
and absolutely insurmountable by any part of the people.
Now these terms can not rightfully be arbitrary. But the argument
of the honorable gentleman from Schenectady, whose lucid and
dignified discourse needs no praise of mine, and the arguments of
others who have derived government from society, seemed to assume
that the political people may exclude and include at their
pleasure; that they may establish purely arbitrary tests, such as
height, or weight, or color, or sex. This was substantially the
squatter sovereignty of Mr. Douglas, who held that the male white
majority of the settlers in a territory might deprive a colored
minority of all their rights whatever; and he declared that they
had the right to do it. The same right that this Convention has
to hang me at this moment to that chandelier, but no other right.
Brute force, sir, may do anything; but we are speaking of rights,
and of rights under this Government, and I deny that the people
of the State of New York can rightfully, that is, according to
right reason and the principles of this Government derived from
it, permanently exclude any class of persons or any person
whatever from a voice in the Government, unless it can be clearly
established that their participation in political power would be
dangerous to the State; and, therefore, the honorable gentleman
from Kings was logically correct in opposing the enfranchisement
of the colored population, upon the ground that they were an
inferior race, of limited intelligence, a kind of Chimpanzee at
best. I think, however, sir, the honorable and scholarly
gentleman--even he--will admit, that at Pillow, at Milliken's
Bend, at Fort Wagner, the Chimpanzees did uncommonly well; yes,
sir, as gloriously and immortally as our own fathers at Bunker
Hill and Saratoga. "There ought to be no pariahs," says John
Stuart Mill, "in a full grown and civilized nation; no persons
disqualified except through their own default.... Every one is
degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without
consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate
his destiny." "No arrangement of the suffrage, therefore, can be
permanently satisfactory in which any person or class is
peremptorily excluded; in which the electoral privilege is not
open to all persons of full age who desire it." (Rep. G., p.
167.) And Thomas Hare, one of the acutest of living political
thinkers, says that in all cases where a woman fulfills the
qualification which is imposed upon a man, "there is no sound
reason for excluding her from the parliamentary franchise. The
exclusion is probably a remnant of the feudal law, and is not in
harmony with the other civil institutions of the country. There
would be great propriety in celebrating a reign which has been
productive of so much moral benefit by the abolition of an
anomaly which is so entirely without any justifiable foundation."
(Hare, p. 280.)
The Chairman of the Committee asked Miss Anthony, the other
evening, whether, if suffrage was a natural right, it could be
denied to children. Her answer seemed to me perfectly
satisfactory. She said simply, "All that we ask is an equal and
not an arbitrary regulation. If _you_ have the right, _we_ have
it." The honorable Chairman would hardly deny that to regulate
the exercise of a right according to obvious reason and
experience is one thing, to deny it absolutely and forever is
another. And this is the safe practical rule of our government,
as James Madison expressed it, that "it be derived from the great
body of the people, not from an inconsiderable portion or favored
class of it." When Mr. Gladstone, in his famous speech that
startled England, said in effect, that no one could be justly
excluded from the franchise, except upon grounds of personal
unfitness or public danger, he merely echoed the sentiment of
Joseph Warren, which is gradually seen to be the wisest and most
practical political philosophy: "I would have such a government
as should give every man the greatest liberty to do what he
chooses, consistent with restraining him from doing any injury to
another." Is not that the kind of government, sir, which we wish
to propose for this State? And if every person in New York has a
natural right to life, liberty, and property, and a co-existent
claim to a share in the government which defends them, regulated
only by perfectly equitable conditions, what are the practical
grounds upon which it is proposed to continue the absolute and
hopeless disfranchisement of half the adult population?
It is alleged that women are already represented by men? Where
are they so represented? and when was the choice made? If I am
told that they are virtually represented, I reply, with James
Otis, that "no such phrase as virtual representation is known in
law or Constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and illusion,
wholly unfounded and absurd." I repeat, if they are represented,
when was the choice made? Nobody pretends that they have ever
been consulted. It is a mere assumption to the effect that the
interest and affection of men will lead them to just and wise
legislation for women as well as for themselves. But this is
merely the old appeal for the political power of a class. It is
just what the British parliament said to the colonies a hundred
years ago. "We are all under the same government," they said:
"Our interests are identical; we are all Britons; Britannia rules
the wave; God save the King! and down with sedition and the Sons
of Liberty!" The colonies chafed and indignantly protested,
because the assumption that therefore fair laws were made was not
true; because they were discovering for themselves what every
nation has discovered--the truth that shakes England to-day, and
brings Disraeli and the Tory party to their knees, and has
already brought this country to blood--that there is no class of
citizens, and no single citizen, who can safely be intrusted with
the permanent and exclusive possession of political power. "There
is no instance on record," says Buckle, in his history of
civilization in England, "of any class possessing power without
abusing it." It is as true of men as a class as it is of an
hereditary nobility, or of a class of property-holders. Men are
not wise enough, nor generous enough, nor pure enough, to
legislate fairly for women. The laws of the most civilized
nations depress and degrade women. The legislation is in favor of
the legislating class. In the celebrated debate upon the Marriage
Amendment Act in England, Mr. Gladstone said that "when the
gospel came into the world woman was elevated to an equality with
her stronger companion." Yet, at the very time he was speaking,
the English law of divorce, made by men to regulate their
domestic relations with women, was denounced by the law lords
themselves as "disgusting and demoralizing" in its operation,
"barbarous," "indecent," "a disgrace to the country," and
"shocking to the sense of right." Now, if the equality of which
Mr. Gladstone spoke had been political as well as sentimental,
does he or any statesman suppose that the law of divorce would
have been what it then was, or that the law of England to-day
would give all the earnings of a married woman to her husband, or
that of France forbid a woman to receive any gift without her
husband's permission?
We ask women to confide in us, as having the same interests with
them. Did any despot ever say anything else? And, if it be safe
or proper for any intelligent part of the people to relinquish
exclusive political power to any class, I ask the Committee, who
proposed that women should be compelled to do this? To what
class, however rich, or intelligent, or honest, they would
themselves surrender _their_ power? and what they would do if any
class attempted to usurp that power? They know, as we all know,
as our own experience has taught us, that the only security of
natural right is the ballot. They know, and the instinct of the
whole loyal land knows, that, when we had abolished slavery, the
emancipation could be completed and secured only by the ballot in
the hands of the emancipated class. Civil rights were a mere
mocking name until political power gave them substance. A year
ago, Gov. Orr of South Carolina told us that the rights of the
freedmen were safest in the hands of their old masters. "Will you
walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?" New Orleans,
Memphis, and countless and constant crimes, showed what that
safety was. Then, hesitating no longer, the nation handed the
ballot to the freedmen, and said, "Protect yourselves!" And now
Gov. Orr says that the part of wisdom for South Carolina is to
cut loose from all parties, and make a cordial alliance with the
colored citizens. Gov. Orr knows that a man with civil rights
merely is a blank cartridge. Give him the ballot, and you add a
bullet, and make him effective. In that section of the country,
seething with old hatreds and wounded pride, and a social system
upheaved from the foundation, no other measure could have done
for real pacification in a century what the mere promise of the
ballot has done in a year. The one formidable peril in the whole
subject of reconstruction has been the chance that Congress would
continue in the Southern States the political power in the hands
of a class, as the report of the Committee proposes that we shall
do in New York.
If I am asked what do women want the ballot for, I answer the
question with another, what do men want it for? Why do the
British workmen at this moment so urgently demand it? Look into
the British laws regulating labor, and you will see why. They
want the ballot because the laws affecting labor and capital are
made by the capitalist class alone and are therefore unjust. I do
not forget the progressive legislation of New York in regard to
the rights of women. The Property Bill of 1860, and its
supplement, according to the _New York Tribune_, redeemed five
thousand women from pauperism. In the next year, Illinois put
women in the same position with men, as far as property rights
and remedies are concerned. I mention these facts with pleasure,
as I read that Louis Napoleon will, under certain conditions,
permit the French people to say what they think. But, if such
reforms are desirable, they would certainly have been sooner and
more wisely effected could women have been a positive political
power. Upon this point one honorable gentleman asked Mrs.
Stanton whether the laws both for men and women were not
constantly improving, and whether, therefore, it was not unfair
to attribute the character of the laws about women to the fact
that men made them. The reply is very evident. If women alone
made the laws, legislation for both men and women would
undoubtedly be progressive. Does the honorable gentleman think,
therefore, that women only should make the laws?
It is true, Mr. Chairman, that, in the ordinary and honorable
sense of the words, women are represented. Laws are made for them
by another class, and upon the theories which that class, without
the fear of political opposition, may choose to entertain, and in
direct violation of the principles upon which, in their own case,
they tenaciously insist. I live, sir, in the county of Richmond.
It has a population of some 27,000 persons. They own property,
and manage it. They are taxed, and pay their taxes; and they
fulfill the duties of citizens with average fidelity. But if the
Committee had introduced a clause into the section they propose
to this effect, "Provided that idiots, lunatics, persons under
guardianship, felons, inhabitants of the county of Richmond, and
persons convicted of bribery, shall not be entitled to vote,"
they would not have proposed a more monstrous injustice, nor a
grosser inconsistency with every fundamental right and American
principle, than in the clause they recommend; and in that case,
sir, what do you suppose would have been my reception had I
returned to my friends and neighbors, and had said to them, "The
Convention thinks that you are virtually represented by the
voters of Westchester and Chautauqua"?
Mr. Chairman, I have no superstition about the ballot. I do not
suppose it would immediately right all the wrongs of women, any
more than it has righted all those of men. But what political
agency has righted so many? Here are thousands of miserable men
all around us; but they have every path opened to them. They have
their advocates; they have their votes; they make the laws, and,
at last and at worst, they have their strong right hands for
defense. And here are thousands of miserable women pricking back
death and dishonor with a little needle; and now the sly hand of
science is stealing that little needle away. The ballot does not
make those men happy nor respectable nor rich nor noble; but they
guard it for themselves with sleepless jealousy, because they
know it is the golden gate to every opportunity; and precisely
the _kind_ of advantage it gives to one sex, it would give to the
other. It would arm it with the most powerful weapon known to
political society; it would maintain the natural balance of the
sexes in human affairs, and secure to each fair play within its
sphere.
But, sir, the Committee tell us that the suffrage of women would
be a revolutionary innovation; it would disturb the venerable
traditions. Well, sir, about the year 1790, women were first
recognized as school-teachers in Massachusetts. At that time, the
New England "school-marm" (and I use the word with affectionate
respect) was a revolutionary innovation. She has been abroad ever
since, and has been by no means the least efficient, but always
the most modest and unnoticed, of the great civilizing influences
in this country. Innovation!--why, sir, when Sir Samuel Romilly
proposed to abolish the death-penalty for stealing a
handkerchief, the law officers of the crown said it would
endanger the whole criminal law of England. When the bill
abolishing the slave-trade passed the House of Lords, Lord St.
Vincent rose and stalked out, declaring that he washed his hands
of the ruin of the British empire. When the Greenwich pensioners
saw the first steamer upon the Thames, they protested that they
did not like the steamer, for it was contrary to nature. When, at
the close of the reign of Charles II., London had half a million
of people, there was a fierce opposition to street-lamps,--such
is the hostility of venerable traditions to an increase of light.
When Mr. Jefferson learned that New York had explored the route
of a canal, he benignly regarded it, in the spirit of our
Committee, as, doubtless, "defensible in theory"; for he said
that it was "a very fine project, and might be executed a century
hence." And, fifty-six years ago, Chancellor Livingston wrote
from this city, that the proposition of a railroad, shod with
iron, to move heavy weights four miles an hour, was ingenious,
perhaps "theoretically defensible"; but, upon the whole, the road
would not be so cheap or convenient as a canal. In this country,
sir, the venerable traditions are used to being disturbed.
America was clearly designed to be a disturber of traditions, and
to leave nobler precedents than she found. So, a few months ago,
what the committee call a revolutionary innovation was proposed
by giving the ballot to the freedmen in the District of Columbia.
The awful results of such a revolution were duly set forth in one
of the myriad veto messages of the President of the United
States. But they have voted. If anybody proposed to disturb the
election, it was certainly not the new voters. The election was
perfectly peaceful, and not one of the presidential pangs has
been justified. So with this reform. It _is_ new in the extent
proposed. It is as new as the harvest after the sowing, and it is
as natural. The resumption of rights long denied or withheld
never made a social convulsion: that is produced by refusing
them. The West-Indian slaves received their liberty, praying upon
their knees; and the influence of the enfranchisement of women
will glide into society as noiselessly as the dawn increases into
day.
Or shall I be told that women, if not numerically counted at the
polls, do yet exert an immense influence upon politics, and do
not really need the ballot. If this argument was seriously urged,
I should suffer my eyes to rove through this chamber and they
would show me many honorable gentlemen of reputed political
influence. May they, therefore, be properly and justly
disfranchised? I ask the honorable Chairman of the Committee,
whether he thinks that a citizen should have no vote because he
has influence? What gives influence? Ability, intelligence,
honesty. Are these to be excluded from the polls? Is it only
stupidity, ignorance and rascality which ought to possess
political power?
Or, will it be said that women do not want the ballot and ought
to be asked? And upon what principle ought they to be asked? When
natural rights or their means of defense have been immemorially
denied to a large class, does humanity, or justice, or good sense
require that they should be registered and called to vote upon
their own restoration? Why, Mr. Chairman, it might as well be
said that Jack the Giant Killer ought to have gravely asked the
captives in the ogre's dungeon whether they wished to be
released. It must be assumed that men and women wish to enjoy
their natural rights, as that the eyes wish light or the lungs an
atmosphere. Did we wait for emancipation until the slaves
petitioned to be free? No, sir, all our lives had been passed in
ingenious and ignominious efforts to sophisticate and stultify
ourselves for keeping them chained; and when war gave us a legal
right to snap their bonds, we did not ask them whether they
preferred to remain slaves. We knew that they were men, and that
men by nature walk upright, and if we find them bent and
crawling, we know that the posture is unnatural whether they may
think so or not. In the case of women we acknowledge that they
have the same natural rights as ourselves--we see that they hold
property and pay taxes, and we must of necessity suppose that
they wish to enjoy every security of those rights that we
possess. So when in this State, every year, thousands of boys
come of age, we do not solemnly require them to tell us whether
they wish to vote. We assume, of course, that they do, and we say
to them, "Go, and upon the same terms with the rest of us, vote
as you choose." But gentlemen say that they know a great many
women who do not wish to vote, who think it is not ladylike, or
whatever the proper term may be. Well, sir, I have known many men
who have habitually abstained from politics because they were so
"ungentlemanly," and who thought that no man could touch pitch
without defilement. Now what would the honorable gentlemen who
know women who do not wish to vote, have thought of a proposition
that I should not vote, because my neighbors did not wish to?
There may have been slaves who preferred to remain slaves--was
that an argument against freedom? Suppose that there are a
majority of the women of this State who do not wish to vote--is
that a reason for depriving _one_ woman who is taxed of her equal
representation, or one innocent person of the equal protection of
his life and liberty?
Shall nothing ever be done by statesmen until wrongs are so
intolerable that they take society by the throat? Did it show the
wisdom of British Conservatism that it waited to grant the Reform
bill of 1832 until England hung upon the edge of civil war? When
women and children were worked sixteen hours a day in English
factories, did it show practical good sense to delay a "short
time" bill until hundreds of thousands of starving workmen agreed
to starve yet more, if need be, to relieve the overwork of their
families, and until the most pitiful procession the sun ever
shone upon, that of the factory children, just as they left their
work, marched through the streets of Manchester, that burst into
sobs and tears at the sight? Yet if, in such instances, where
there was so plausible an adverse appeal founded upon vested
interests and upon the very theory of the government, it was
unwise to wait until a general public outcry imperatively
demanded the reform, how wholly needless to delay in this State a
measure which is the natural result of our most cherished
principles, and which threatens to disturb or injure nothing
whatever. The amendment proposes no compulsion like the old New
England law, which fined every voter who did not vote. If there
are citizens of the State who think it unladylike or
ungentlemanlike to take their part in the government, let them
stay at home. But do not, I pray you, give them authority to
detain wiser and better citizens from their duty.
But I shall be told, in the language of the Report of the
Committee, that the proposition is openly at war with the
distribution of functions and duties between the sexes.
Translated into English, Mr. Chairman, this means that it is
unwomanly to vote. Well, sir, I know that at the very mention of
the political rights of women, there arises in many minds a
dreadful vision of a mighty exodus of the whole female world, in
bloomers and spectacles, from the nursery and kitchen to the
polls. It seems to be thought that if women practically took part
in politics, the home would be left a howling wilderness of
cradles, and a chaos of undarned stockings and buttonless shirts.
But how is it with men? Do they desert their workshops, their
plows, and offices, to pass their time at the polls? Is it a
credit to a _man_ to be called a professional politician? The
pursuits of men in the world, to which they are directed by the
natural aptitude of sex, and to which they must devote their
lives, are as foreign from political functions as those of women.
To take an extreme case: there is nothing more incompatible with
political duties in cooking and taking care of children than
there is in digging ditches or making shoes, or in any other
necessary employment, while in every superior interest of society
growing out of the family, the stake of women is not less than
men, and their knowledge is greater. In England, a woman who owns
shares in the East-India Company may vote. In this country she
may vote as a stockholder upon a railroad from one end of the
country to another. But if she sells her stock, and buys a house
with the money, she has no voice in the laying out of the road
before her door, which her house is taxed to keep and pay for.
And why, in the name of good sense, if a responsible human being
may vote upon specific industrial projects, may she not vote upon
the industrial regulation of the State? There is no more reason
that men should assume to decide participation in politics to be
unwomanly than that woman should decide for men that it is
unmanly. It is not our prerogative to keep women feminine. I
think, sir, they may be trusted to defend the delicacy of their
own sex. Our success in managing ours has not been so conspicuous
that we should urgently desire more labor of the same kind.
Nature is quite as wise as we. Whatever their sex incapacitates
women from doing they will not do. Whatever duty is consistent
with their sex and their relation to society, they will properly
demand to do until they are permitted.
The reply to the assertion that participation in political power
is unwomanly, and tends to subvert the family relation, is simple
and unanswerable. It is that we can not know what is womanly
until we see the folly of insisting that the theories of men
settle the question. We know now what the convenience and
feelings of men decide to be womanly. We shall know what _is_
womanly in the same sense that we know what is manly, only when
women have the same equality of development and the same liberty
of choice as men. The amendment I offer is merely a prayer that
you will remove from women a disability, and secure to them the
same freedom of choice that we enjoy. If the instincts of sex, of
maternity, of domesticity, are not persuasive enough to keep them
in the truest sense women, it is the most serious defect yet
discovered in the divine order of nature. When, therefore, the
Committee declare that voting is at war with the distribution of
functions between the sexes, what do they mean? Are not women as
much interested in good government as men? There is fraud in the
Legislature; there is corruption in the courts; there are
hospitals, and tenement-houses, and prisons; there are
gambling-houses, and billiard-rooms, and brothels; there are
grog-shops at every corner, and I know not what enormous
proportion of crime in the State proceeds from them; there are
40,000 drunkards in the State, and their hundreds of thousands
of children--all these things are subjects of legislation, and
under the exclusive legislation of men the crime associated with
all these things becomes vast and complicated. Have the wives,
and mothers, and sisters of New York less vital interest in them,
less practical knowledge of them and their proper treatment, than
the husbands and fathers? No man is so insane as to pretend it.
Is there then any natural incapacity in women to understand
politics? It is not asserted. Are they lacking in the necessary
intelligence? But the moment that you erect a standard of
intelligence which is sufficient to exclude women as a sex, that
moment most of the male sex would be disfranchised. Is it that
they ought not to go to public political meetings? But we
earnestly invite them. Or that they should not go to the polls?
Some polls, I allow, in the larger cities, are dirty and
dangerous places; and those it is the duty of the police to
reform. But no decent man wishes to vote in a grog-shop, nor to
have his head broken while he is doing it, while the mere act of
dropping a ballot in a box is about the simplest, shortest, and
cleanest that can be done. Last winter Senator Frelinghuysen,
repeating, I am sure thoughtlessly, the common rhetoric of the
question, spoke of the high and holy mission of women. But if
people, with a high and holy mission, may innocently sit
bare-necked in hot theatres to be studied through
pocket-telescopes until midnight by any one who chooses, how can
their high and holy mission be harmed by their quietly dropping a
ballot in a box? What is the high and holy mission of any woman
but to be the best and most efficient human being possible? To
enlarge the sphere of duty and the range of responsibility, where
there are adequate power and intelligence, is to heighten, not to
lessen, the holiness of life.
But if women vote, they must sit on juries. Why not? Nothing is
plainer than that thousands of women who are tried every year as
criminals are not tried by their peers. And if a woman is bad
enough to commit a heinous crime, must we absurdly assume that
women are too good to know that there is such a crime? If they
may not sit on juries, certainly they ought not to be witnesses.
A note in Howell's State Trials, to which my attention was drawn
by one of my distinguished colleagues in the convention, quotes
an ancient work, "Probation by Witnesses," by Sir George
Mackenzie, in which he says: "The reason why women are excluded
from witnessing must be either that they are subject to too much
compassion, and so ought not to be more received in criminal
cases than in civil cases; or else the law was unwilling to
trouble them, and thought it might learn them too much
confidence, and make them subject to too much familiarity with
men and strangers, if they were necessitated to vague up and down
at all courts upon all occasions." Hume says this rule was held
as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. But if too
much familiarity with men be so pernicious, are men so pure that
they alone should make laws for women, and so honorable that they
alone should try women for breaking them? It is within a very few
years at the Liverpool Assizes in a case involving peculiar
evidence, that Mr. Russell said: "The evidence of women is, in
some respects, superior to that of men. Their power of judging of
minute details is better, and when there are more than two facts
and something be wanting, their intuitions supply the
deficiency." "And precisely the qualities which fit them to give
evidence," says Mrs. Dall, to whom we owe this fact, "fit them to
sift and test it."
But, the objectors continue, would you have women hold office? If
they are capable and desirous, why not? They hold office now most
acceptably. In my immediate neighborhood, a postmistress has been
so faithful an officer for seven years, that when there was a
rumor of her removal, it was a matter of public concern. This is
a familiar instance in this country. Scott's "Antiquary" shows
that a similar service was not unknown in Scotland. In "Notes and
Queries," ten years ago (Vol. II., Sec. 2, 1856, pp. 83, 204),
Alexander Andrews says: "It was by no means unusual for females
to serve the office of overseer in small rural parishes," and a
communication in the same publication (First Series, Vol. II., p.
383) speaks of a curious entry in the Harleian Miscellany (MS.
980, fol. 153): "The Countess of Richmond, mother to Henry VII.,
was a Justice of the Peace. Mr. Atturney said if it was so, it
ought to have been by commission, for which he had made many an
hower's search for the record, but could never find it, but he
had seen many arbitriments that were made by her. Justice Joanes
affirmed that he had often heard from his mother of the Lady
Bartlett, mother to the Lord Bartlett, that she was a Justice of
the Peace, and did set usually upon the bench with the other
Justices in Gloucestershire; that she was made so by Queen Mary,
upon her complaint to her of the injuries she sustained by some
of that county, and desiring for redress thereof; that as she
herself, was Chief-Justice of all England, so this lady might be
in her own county, which accordingly the Queen granted. Another
example was alleged of one ---- Rowse, in Suffolk, who usually at
the assizes and sessions there held, set upon the bench among the
Justices _gladio cincta_." The Countess of Pembroke was
hereditary sheriff of Westmoreland, and exercised her office.
Henry the VIIIth granted a commission of inquiry, under the great
seal, to Lady Ann Berkeley, who opened it at Gloucester, and
passed sentence under it. Henry VIII's daughter, Elizabeth Tudor,
was Queen of England, in name and in fact, during the most
illustrious epoch of English history. Was Elizabeth incompetent?
Did Elizabeth unsex herself? Or do you say that she was an
exceptional woman? So she was, but no more an exceptional woman
than Alfred, Marcus Aurelius, or Napoleon were exceptional men.
It was held by some of the old English writers that a woman might
serve in almost any of the great offices of the kingdom. And,
indeed, if Victoria may deliberate in council with her ministers,
why may not any intelligent English woman deliberate in
Parliament, or any such American woman in Congress? I mention
Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, Catherine, and all the famous Empresses
and Queens, not to prove the capacity of women for the most
arduous and responsible office, for that is undeniable, but to
show the hollowness of the assertion that there is an instinctive
objection to the fulfillment of such offices by women. Men who
say so do not really think so. The whole history of the voting
and office-holding of women shows that whenever men's theories of
the relation of property to the political franchise, or of the
lineal succession of the government, require that women shall
vote or hold office, the objection of impropriety and incapacity
wholly disappears. If it be unwomanly for a woman to vote, or to
hold office, it is unwomanly for Victoria to be Queen of England.
Surely if our neighbors had thought they would be better
represented in this convention by certain women, there is no good
reason why they should have been compelled to send us. Why should
I or any person be forbidden to select the agent whom we think
the most competent and truly representative of our will? There is
no talent or training required in the making of laws which is
peculiar to the male sex. What is needed is intelligence and
experience. The rest is routine.
The capacity for making laws is necessarily assumed when women
are permitted to hold and manage property and to submit to
taxation. How often the woman, widowed, or married, or single, is
the guiding genius of the family--educating the children,
directing the estate, originating, counseling, deciding. Is there
anything essentially different in such duties and the powers
necessary to perform them from the functions of legislation? In
New Jersey the Constitution of 1776 admitted to vote all
inhabitants of a certain age, residence, and property. In 1797,
in an act to regulate elections, the ninth section provides:
"Every voter shall openly and in full view deliver his or her
ballot, which shall be a single written ticket, containing the
names of the persons for whom he or she votes." An old citizen of
New Jersey says that "the right was recognized, and very little
said or thought about it in any way." But in 1807 the suffrage
was restricted to white male adult citizens of a certain age,
residence, and property, and in 1844 the property qualification
was abolished. At the hearing before the committee, the other
evening, a gentleman asked whether the change of the
qualification excluding women did not show that their voting was
found to be inconvenient or undesirable. Not at all. It merely
showed that the male property-holders out-voted the female. It
certainly showed nothing as to the right or expediency of the
voting of women. Mr. Douglas, as I said, had a theory that the
white male adult squatters in a territory might decide whether
the colored people in the territory should be enslaved. They
might, indeed, so decide, and with adequate power they might
enforce their decision. But it proved very little as to the
right, the expediency, or the constitutionality of slavery in a
territory. The truth is that men deal with the practical question
of female suffrage to suit their own purposes. About twenty-five
years ago the Canadian government by statute rigorously and in
terms forbade women to vote. But in 1850, to subserve a sectarian
purpose, they were permitted to vote for school trustees. I am
ashamed to argue a point so plain. What public affairs need in
this State is "conscience," and woman is the conscience of the
race. If we in this convention shall make a wise Constitution, if
the Legislatures that follow us in this chamber shall purify the
laws and see that they are honorably executed, it will be just in
the degree that we shall have accustomed ourselves to the
refined, moral, and mental atmosphere in which women habitually
converse.
But would you, seriously, I am asked, would you drag women down
into the mire of politics? No, sir, I would have them lift us out
of it. The duty of this Convention is to devise means for the
improvement of the government of this State. Now, the science of
government is not an ignoble science, and the practice of
politics is not necessarily mean and degrading. If the making and
administering of law has become so corrupt as to justify calling
politics filthy, and a thing in which no clean hands can meddle
without danger, may we not wisely remember, as we begin our work
of purification, that politics have been wholly managed by men?
How can we purify them? Is there no radical method, no force yet
untried, a power not only of skillful checks, which I do not
undervalue, but of controlling character? Mr. Chairman, if we sat
in this chamber with closed windows until the air became thick
and fetid, should we not be fools if we brought in
deodorizers--if we sprinkled chloride of lime and burned
assafoetida, while we disdained the great purifier? If we would
cleanse the foul chamber, let us throw the windows wide open, and
the sweet summer air would sweep all impurity away and fill our
lungs with fresher life. If we would purge politics let us turn
upon them the great stream of the purest human influence we know.
But I hear some one say, if they vote they must do military duty.
Undoubtedly when a nation goes to war it may rightfully claim the
service of all its citizens, men and women. But the question of
fighting is not the blow merely, but its quality and persistence.
The important point is, to make the blow effective. Did any brave
Englishman who rode into the jaws of death at Balaklava serve
England on the field more truly than Florence Nightingale? That
which sustains and serves and repairs the physical force is just
as essential as the force itself. Thus the law, in view of the
moral service they are supposed to render, excuses clergymen from
the field, and in the field it details ten per cent of the army
to serve the rest, and they do not carry muskets nor fight.
Women, as citizens, have always done, and always will do that
work in the public defense for which their sex peculiarly fits
them, and men do no more. The care of the young warriors, the
nameless and innumerable duties of the hospital and home, are
just as essential to the national safety as fighting in the
field. A nation of men alone could not carry on a contest any
longer than a nation of women. Each would be obliged to divide
its forces and delegate half to the duties of the other sex.
But while the physical services of war are equally divided
between the sexes, the moral forces are stronger with women. It
was the women of the South, we are constantly and doubtless very
truly told, who sustained the rebellion, and certainly without
the women of the North the Government had not been saved. From
the first moment to the last, in all the roaring cities, in the
remote valleys, in the deep woods, on the country hill-sides, on
the open prairie, wherever there were wives, mothers, sisters,
lovers, there were the busy fingers which, by day and by night,
for four long years, like the great forces of spring-time and
harvest, never failed. The mother paused only to bless her sons,
eager for the battle; the wife to kiss her children's father, as
he went; the sister smiled upon her brother, and prayed for the
lover who marched away. Out of how many hundreds of thousands of
homes and hearts they went who never returned. But those homes
were both the inspiration and the consolation of the field. They
nerved the arm that struck for them. When the son and husband
fell in the wild storm of battle, the brave woman-heart broke in
silence, but the busy fingers did not falter. When the comely
brother and lover were tortured into idiocy and despair, that
woman-heart of love kept the man's faith steady, and her
unceasing toil repaired his wasted frame. It was not love of the
soldier only, great as that was; it was knowledge of the cause.
It was that supreme moral force operating through innumerable
channels like the sunshine in nature, without which successful
war would have been impossible. There are thousands and thousands
of these women who ask for a voice in the government they have so
defended. Shall we refuse them?
I appeal again to my honorable friend, the Chairman of the
Committee. He has made the land ring with his cry of universal
suffrage and universal amnesty. Suffrage and amnesty to whom? To
those who sought to smother the government in the blood of its
noblest citizens, to those who ruined the happy homes and broke
the faithful hearts of which I spoke. Sir, I am not condemning
his cry. I am not opposing his policy. I have no more thirst for
vengeance than he, and quite as anxiously as my honorable friend
do I wish to see the harvests of peace waving over the
battle-fields. But, sir, here is a New York mother, who trained
her son in fidelity to God and to his country. When that country
called, they answered. Mother and son gave, each after his kind,
their whole service to defend her. By the sad fate of war the boy
is thrown into the ghastly den at Andersonville. Mad with thirst,
he crawls in the pitiless sun toward a muddy pool. He reaches the
dead-line, and is shot by the guard--murdered for fidelity to his
country. "I demand amnesty for that guard, I demand that he shall
vote," cries the honorable Chairman of the Committee. I do not
say that it is an unwise demand. But I ask him, I ask you, sir, I
ask every honorable and patriotic man in this State, upon what
conceivable ground of justice, expediency, or common sense shall
we give the ballot to the New York boy's murderer and refuse it
to his mother?
Mr. Chairman, I have thus stated what I conceive to be the
essential reasonableness of the amendment which I have offered.
It is not good for man to be alone. United with woman in the
creation of human society, their rights and interests in its
government are identical, nor can the highest and truest
development of society be reasonably conceived, so long as one
sex assumes to prescribe limits to the scope and functions of the
other. The test of civilization is the position of women. Where
they are wholly slaves, man is wholly barbarous; and the measure
of progress from barbarism to civilization is the recognition of
their equal right with man to an unconstrained development.
Therefore, when Mr. Mill unrolls his petition in Parliament to
secure the political equality of women, it bears the names of
those English men and women whose thoughts foretell the course of
civilization. The measure which the report of the Committee
declares to be radically revolutionary and perilous to the very
functions of sex, is described by the most sagacious of living
political philosophers as reasonable, conservative, necessary,
and inevitable; and he obtains for it seventy-three votes in the
same House in which out of about the same whole number of voters
Charles James Fox, the idol of the British Whigs, used to be able
to rally only forty votes against the policy of Pitt. The dawn in
England will soon be day here. Before the American principle of
equal rights, barrier after barrier in the path of human progress
falls. If we are still far from its full comprehension and
further from perfect conformity to its law, it is in that only
like the spirit of Christianity, to whose full glory even
Christendom but slowly approaches. From the heat and tumult of
our politics we can still lift our eyes to the eternal light of
that principle; can see that the usurpation of sex is the last
form of caste that lingers in our society; that in America the
most humane thinker is the most practical man, and the organizer
of justice the most sagacious statesman.
Mr. Gould, of Columbia, followed with a long speech in opposition,
and the discussion[104] continued through several days; but Mr.
Curtis's amendment, in the Committee of the Whole, received 24 ayes
against 63 nays; and on the final vote in the Convention, 19 ayes[105]
against 125 nays.
Mr. Greeley, seemingly to atone for the disappointment of the women of
the State in his adverse report, published the following editorial in
_The Tribune_ of July 26th, 1867:
WOMEN IN POLITICS.