established, as declared by the people themselves, this denial to
the women citizens of the country of the right and privilege of
voting is directly in contravention of these objects, and must,
therefore, be contrary to the spirit and letter of the entire
instrument. And according to the rule of construction referred
to, no "contemporaneous construction, however universal it may
be, can be allowed to set aside the expressed objects of the
makers, as declared in the instrument." The construction which we
claim for the 1st section of the XIV. Amendment, is in perfect
accord with those expressed objects; and even if there were
anything in the original text of the Constitution at variance
with the true construction of that section, the amendment must
control. Yet we believe that there is nothing in the original
text at variance with what we claim to be the true construction
of the amendment.
It is claimed by the majority of the committee that the adoption
of the XV. Amendment was by necessary implication a declaration
that the States had the power to deny the right of suffrage to
citizens for any other reasons than those of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude. We deny that the fundamental
rights of the American citizen can be taken away by
"implication." There is no such law for the construction of the
Constitution of our country. The law is the reverse--that the
fundamental rights of citizens are not to be taken away by
implication, and a constitutional provision for the protection of
one class can certainly not be used to destroy or impair the same
rights in another class. It is too violent a construction of an
amendment, which prohibits States from, or the United States
from, abridging the right of a citizen to vote by reason of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude, to say that by
implication it conceded to the States the power to deny that
right for any other reason. On that theory the States could
confine the right of suffrage to a small minority, and make the
State governments aristocratic, overthrowing their republican
form. The XV. Article of Amendment to the Constitution clearly
recognizes the right to vote, as one of the rights of a citizen
of the United States. This is the language:
The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State,
on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.
Here is stated, first, the existence of a right. Second, its
nature. Whose right is it? The right of citizens of the United
States. What is the right? The right to vote. And this right of
citizens of the United States, States are forbidden to abridge.
Can there be a more direct recognition of a right? Can that be
abridged which does not exist? The denial of the power to abridge
the right, recognizes the existence of the right. Is it said that
this right exists by virtue of State citizenship, and State laws
and Constitutions? Mark the language: "The right of citizens of
the United States to vote;" not citizens of States. The right is
recognized as existing independent of State citizenship.
But it may be said, if the States had no power to abridge the
right of suffrage, why the necessity of prohibiting them? There
may not have been a necessity; it may have been done through
caution, and because the peculiar condition of the colored
citizens at that time rendered it necessary to place their rights
beyond doubt or cavil.
It is laid down as a rule of construction by Judge Story that the
natural import of a single clause is not to be narrowed so as to
exclude implied powers resulting from its character simply
because there is another clause which enumerates certain powers
which might otherwise be deemed implied powers within its scope,
for in such cases we are not to assume that the affirmative
specification excludes all other implications. (2 Story on
Constitution, sec. 449.)
There are numerous instances in the Constitution where a general
power is given to Congress, and afterward a particular power
given, which was included in the former; yet the general power is
not to be narrowed, because the particular power is given. On
this same principle the fact that by the XV. Amendment the States
are specifically forbidden to deny the right of suffrage on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, does
not narrow the general provision in the XIV. Amendment which
guarantees the privileges of all the citizens against abridgment
by the States on any account.
The rule of interpretation relied upon by the committee in their
construction of the XV. Amendment is, "that the expression of one
thing is the exclusion of another," or the specification of
particulars is the exclusion of generals. Of these maxims, Judge
Story says:
They are susceptible of being applied, and often are
ingeniously applied, to the subversion of the text and the
objects of the instrument. The truth is, in order to
ascertain how far an affirmative or negative provision
excludes or implies others, we must look to the nature of
the provision, the subject-matter, the objects, and the
scope of the instrument; these and these only can properly
determine the rule of construction (2 Story, 448).
It is claimed by the committee that the second section of the
XIV. Amendment implies that the several States may restrict the
right of suffrage as to other than male citizens. We may say of
this as we have said of the theory of the committee upon the
effect of the XV. Amendment. It is a proposal to take away from
the citizens guarantees of fundamental rights, by implication,
which have been previously given in absolute terms. The first
section includes "all citizens" in its guarantees, and includes
all the "privileges and immunities" of citizenship and guards
them against abridgment, and under no recognized or reasonable
rule of construction can it be claimed that by implication from
the provisions of the second section the States may not only
abridge but entirely destroy one of the highest privileges of the
citizen to one-half the citizens of the country. What we have
said in relation to the committee's construction of the effect of
the XV. Amendment applies equally to this. The object of the
first section of this amendment was to secure all the rights,
privileges, and immunities of all the citizens against invasion
by the States. The object of the second section was to fix a rule
or system of apportionment for Representatives and taxation; and
the provision referred to, in relation to the exclusion of males
from the right of suffrage, might be regarded as in the nature of
a penalty in case of denial of that right to that class. While
it, to a certain extent, protected that class of citizens, it
left the others where the previous provisions of the Constitution
placed them. To protect the colored man more fully than was done
by that penalty was the object of the XV. Amendment. In no event
can it be said to be more than the recognition of an existing
fact, that only the male citizens were, by the State laws,
allowed to vote, and that existing order of things was recognized
in the rule of representation, just as the institution of slavery
was recognized in the original Constitution, in the article
fixing the basis of representation, by the provision that only
three-fifths of all the slaves ("other persons") should be
counted. There slavery was recognized as an existing fact, and
yet the Constitution never sanctioned slavery, but, on the
contrary, had it been carried out according to its true
construction, slavery could not have existed under it; so that
the recognition of facts in the Constitution must not be held to
be a sanction of what is so recognized.
The majority of the committee say that this section implies that
the States may deny suffrage to others than male citizens. If it
implies anything it implies that the States may deny the
franchise to all the citizens. It does not provide that they
shall not deny the right to male citizens, but only provides that
if they do so deny they shall not have representation for them.
So, according to that argument, by the second section of the XIV.
Amendment the power of the States is conceded to entirely take
away the right of suffrage, even from that privileged class, the
male citizens. And thus this rule of "implication" goes too far,
and fritters away all the guarantees of the Constitution of the
right of suffrage, the highest of the privileges of the citizen;
and herein is demonstrated the reason and safety of the rule that
fundamental rights are not to be taken away by implication, but
only by express provision. When the advocates of a privileged
class of citizens under the Constitution are driven to
implication to sustain the theory of taxation without
representation, and American citizenship without political
liberty, the cause must be weak indeed.
It is claimed by the majority that by section 2, article 1, the
Constitution recognizes the power in States to declare who shall
and who shall not exercise the elective franchise. That section
reads as follows:
The House of Representatives shall be composed of members
chosen every second year by the people of the several
States, and the electors in each State shall have the
qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous
branch of the State Legislature.
The first clause of this section declares who shall choose the
Representatives--mark the language--"Representatives shall be
chosen by the people of the States," not by the male people; not
by certain classes of the people, but by the people; so that the
construction sought to be given this section, by which it would
recognize the power of the State to disfranchise one half the
citizens, is in direct contravention of the first clause of the
section, and of its whole spirit, as well as of the objects of
the instrument. The States clearly have no power to nullify the
express provisions that the election shall be by the people, by
any laws limiting the election to a moiety of the people. It is
true the section recognizes the power in the State to regulate
the qualifications of the electors; but as we have already said,
the power to regulate is a very different thing from the power to
destroy. The two clauses must be taken together, and both
considered in connection with the declared purpose and objects of
the Constitution.
The constitution is necessarily confined to the statement of
general principles. There are regulations necessary to be made as
to the qualifications of voters, as to their proper age, their
domicil, the length of residence necessary to entitle the citizen
to vote in a given State or place. These particulars could not be
provided in the Constitution but are necessarily left to the
States, and this section is thus construed as to be in harmony
with itself, and with the expressed objects of the framers of
the Constitution and the principles of free government. When the
majority of the committee can demonstrate that "the people of the
States," and one-half the people of the States, are equivalent
terms, or that when the Constitution provides that the
Representatives shall be elected by the people, its requirements
are met by an election in which less than one-half the adult
people are allowed to vote, then it will be admitted that this
section to some extent sustains them.
The committee say, that if it had been intended that Congress
should prescribe the qualifications of electors, the grant would
have given Congress that power specifically. We do not claim that
Congress has that power; on the contrary, admit that the States
have it; but the section of the Constitution does prescribe who
the electors shall be. That is what we claim--nothing more. They
shall be "the people;" their qualifications may be regulated by
the States; but to the claim of the majority of the committee
that they may be "qualified" out of existence, we can not assent.
We are told that the acquiescence by the people, since the
adoption of the Constitution, in the denial of political rights
to women citizens, and the general understanding that such denial
was in conformity with the Constitution, should be taken to
settle the construction of that instrument. Any force this
argument may have it can only apply to the original text, and not
to the XIV. Amendment, which is of but recent date. But, as a
general principle, this theory is fallacious. It would stop all
political progress; it would put an end to all original thought,
and put the people under that tyranny with which the friends of
liberty have always had to contend--the tyranny of precedent.
From the beginning, our Government has been right in theory, but
wrong in practice. The Constitution, had it been carried out in
its true spirit, and its principles enforced, would have stricken
the chains from every slave in the republic long since. Yet, for
all this, it was but a few years since declared, by the highest
judicial tribunal of the republic, that, according to the
"general understanding," the black man in this country had no
rights the white man was bound to respect. General understanding
and acquiescence is a very unsafe rule by which to try questions
of constitutional law, and precedents are not infallible guides
toward liberty and the rights of man.
Without any law to authorize it, slavery existed in England, and
was sustained and perpetuated by popular opinion, universal
custom, and the acquiescence of all departments of the government
as well as by the subjects of its oppression. A few fearless
champions of liberty struggled against the universal sentiment,
and contended that, by the laws of England, slavery could not
exist in the kingdom; and though for years unable to obtain a
hearing in any British court, the Somerset case was finally tried
in the Court of King's Bench in 1771, Lord Mansfield presiding,
wherein that great and good man, after a long and patient
hearing, declared that no law of England allowed or approved of
slavery, and discharged the negro. And it was then judicially
declared that no slave could breathe upon the soil of England,
although slavery had up to that time existed for centuries, under
the then existing laws. The laws were right, but the practice and
public opinion were wrong.
It is said by the majority of the committee that "if the right of
female citizens to suffrage is vested by the Constitution, that
right can be established in the courts." We respectfully submit
that, with regard to the competency and qualification of electors
for members of this House, the courts have no jurisdiction. This
House is the sole judge of the election return and qualification
of its own members (article 1, section 5, of Constitution); and
it is for the House alone to decide upon a contest, who are, and
who are not, competent and qualified to vote. The judicial
department can not thus invade the prerogatives of the political
department. And it is therefore perfectly proper, in our opinion,
for the House to pass a declaratory resolution, which would be an
index to the action of the House, should the question be brought
before it by a contest for a seat. We, therefore, recommend to
the House the adoption of the following resolution:
_Resolved, by the House of Representatives_, That the right
of suffrage is one of the inalienable rights of citizens of
the United States, subject to regulation by the States,
through equal and just laws.
That this right is included in the "privileges of citizens of the
United States," which are guaranteed by section 1 of article XIV.
of Amendments to the Constitution of the United States; and that
women citizens, who are otherwise qualified by the laws of the
State where they reside, are competent voters for Representatives
in Congress.
WM. LOUGHRIDGE.
BENJ. F. BUTLER.
H. Rep. 22, pt. 2----2.
On January 20, 1871, in the House of Representatives, a bill for the
better government of the District of Columbia came up. The Hon. George
W. Julian, of Indiana, moved to strike out the word "male" in the
section providing who shall vote, and supported his amendment as
follows:
The establishment of universal male suffrage throughout the
United States was preceded by its establishment in the District
of Columbia and in the Territories. Following the same order, I
desire that the District of Columbia shall first enjoy the
further and full extension of the Democratic principle, by giving
the ballot to all the people here, irrespective of sex. I know of
no reason why this should not be done. I believe the question of
woman's rights necessarily involves the question of human rights.
The famous maxim of our fathers that "taxation without
representation is tyranny" applies not to one-half only, but to
the whole people. I am a Democrat in full of all demands, and I
can not, therefore, accept as a real democracy, or even a
republic, a government "half slave and half free."
Mr. Cook, of Illinois, who had charge of the bill, objected to
"cumbering it with such an amendment," and called the previous
question, which being sustained, cut off all debate. Mr. Julian then
called for the ayes and noes, thus making every man put himself square
on the record. The vote stood 55 ayes[141], 117 noes, 65 not voting.
The next day the House met for general debate, and Hon. Aaron A.
Sargent, of California, had an opportunity to express his views of the
Amendment, which he had not been able to do the previous day.
Mr. SARGENT: Mr. Speaker, if no other gentleman desires to
address the House, I will briefly remark that I was glad on
yesterday to have an opportunity to cast my vote in favor of the
proposition admitting the women of this District to the right of
suffrage. I believe the time is rapidly coming when all men will
conclude that it is no longer wise or judicious to exclude
one-half of the intelligence, and more than one-half of the
virtue of the people from the ballot-box. It is a matter of
congratulation that one-third of the members who were present
yesterday and voting, recorded their votes for that proposition.
It was a glorious commencement. I will not take up the time of
the House with any elaborate discussion of that proposition, but
content myself with the remark that I was very glad of the
opportunity to cast my vote for it. I trust the work thus
commenced will go on until fully successful. But I would like to
say further that I do not agree with those gentlemen who allege
that the women who advocate this movement are universally, or to
any considerable extent, desirous to unsettle family relations,
or that they would change the present honored form of union of
the sexes. I believe they embrace among their number, and largely
embrace, the best and purest women of the land, who will have an
influence growing year by year in favor of the recognition of the
rights of their sex. So may it be.
During Mr. Sargent's candidacy for the Senate the following autumn, a
California newspaper objected that he was in favor of woman's
suffrage, and called for a denial of the truth of the damning charge.
Mr. Sargent took no notice of it until a week or two later, when a
suffrage convention met in San Francisco; he then went before that
body and delivered a radical speech in favor of woman's rights, taking
the most advanced grounds. When he was through he remarked to a
friend, "They have my views now, and can make the most of them. I
would not conceal them to be Senator." This bold stand ended the
objection to him on the ground of his favor to woman's rights. He
opened the political campaign in 1874 before an immense audience in
Platt's Hall, San Francisco, by saying, as reported in the papers of
the day:
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FELLOW-CITIZENS: I trust the time is near
at hand when the phrase "fellow-citizens" will not need the
explanatory remark, "Ladies and gentlemen." I trust we are
nearing the day when our wives and daughters will share with us
in the duties and privileges of citizenship, and give expression
to their principles and views, not only indirectly by personal
influence, but at the ballot-box. I am in favor of this great
reform, and hail the day when it shall purify politics by the
influence of women exerted directly and legitimately at
elections.
The National Woman's Suffrage Association met in Apollo Hall, New
York, Anniversary Week, May 11, 1871. The audiences were large and the
speakers earnest.[142] Mrs. Griffing, the Corresponding Secretary of
the Association, thus summed up the closing events of the past year:
It now appears that under the Federal Constitution and its
Amendments, woman is entitled to equal rights of citizenship with
man; and as voting is a fundamental right of the citizen in a
free government, woman not only may, but should vote. The last
Woman Suffrage Convention, held in Washington, January, 1871,
called by Paulina W. Davis, J. S. Griffing, and I. B. Hooker, in
behalf of the women of the country, contemplated no new issue,
proposed only to discuss the XVI. Amendment, and a more thorough
system of education for the women of the country, through the
issue of a monthly series of tracts. With slight exception, this
programme would have been the order of the Convention, as it was
the indication of the call, had not the time arrived for the
bugle-note, calling all "to the front." Events of the hour at
once changed the direction of thought, and inaugurated a line of
movement for the practical enfranchisement of, and restoration to
woman, of her equal rights as an American citizen. A few days
previous to the time of holding this Convention, Mrs. Victoria C.
Woodhull, of the City of New York, memorialized Congress for the
exercise of the elective franchise, which memorial was read in
the House of Representatives by Hon. George W. Julian, early
friend of the cause, referred to the Judiciary Committee and
ordered to be printed.
This action on the part of Mrs. Woodhull was taken without
consultation with, or even knowledge of the movers of the
Convention, and by unprecedented energy and great intelligence,
pressed upon the attention of both branches of Congress, upon the
plea that she was "born upon the soil and was subject to the
jurisdiction of the United States," and that as a citizen, she
desired a voice in legislation, through the only means in a free
government, that of a vote; and on this pivot she based her
demand. With some difficulty she obtained permission for a
hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Learning this important
step taken by Mrs. Woodhull, a stranger to the Convention, a
conference was held between the parties, resulting in a friendly
agreement, that with consent of the chairman of the Committee,
Mrs. I. B. Hooker, on the part of the Convention, should at the
same time, through a constitutional lawyer, Hon. A. G. Riddle,
ex-member of Congress, defend the memorialists (30,000 women)
whose names were already before Congress, asking to exercise the
right of the ballot.
Mrs. Woodhull spoke with power and marvelous effect, as though
conscious of a right unjustly withheld, and feeling a duty, she
was forbidden to do. Under the supreme law of the land, the
Constitution, and the XIV. and XV. Amendments thereto, she asked
equal protection to person, property, and full citizenship; in
response to this, the key-note, Mr. Riddle followed with an
unanswerable legal argument, sweeping away all laws of the United
States, and of any State, restricting woman in the right to vote,
as directly opposed to the supreme law of the land, as pointed
out in the XIV. and XV. Amendments to the Federal Constitution,
which he showed to be consonant with both the letter and spirit
of that instrument. He also suggested that the immediate action
of woman, as a citizen, might be found the most speedy method of
triumph. The result of this hearing, in the printed reports of
Judge Bingham and the majority, and of Judge Loughridge and Hon.
B. F. Butler, the minority of the Judiciary Committee, is already
before the country, and marks well the beginning of the end.
It was now clearly seen by the leaders of the movement that the
agitation of woman's wrongs and oppressions was no longer a
necessary part of the discussion. That in the statute books, and
above all, in the heart of God, a record of this was made, and
that henceforth woman's citizenship and full enfranchisement must
be declared. That under the supreme law of the land her right to
person, property, children, and full and equal citizenship must
be pronounced and admitted; and, finally, her duty to vote, and
through her highest capabilities, to assume a share of the
responsibility of the State, as she has already of the home, are
hereafter to be the legitimate theme of discussion till woman is
emancipated. These events and this decision indicated an
immediate want of a National Woman Suffrage and Educational
Committee, to carry forward measures for the speedy execution of
the work, and upon consultation with the experienced and wise men
and women of the Convention, and with the approval of all
well-wishers who were present, a committee, consisting of Mrs. I.
B. Hooker (Chairwoman), J. S. Griffing (Secretary), Mrs. M. B.
Bowen (Treasurer), Susan B. Anthony, Paulina Wright Davis, and
Ruth Carr Dennison, was organized in the City of Washington, D.
C., and the machinery set in operation to accomplish what is now
known as the work of that committee. For the temporary use of
this committee a part of the House of Education and Labor
Committee-room, through the marked kindness of Hon. Mr. Arnell,
Chairman of the Committee, was granted; afterward, the beautiful,
artistic House Agriculture Committee-room, also used for the
Committee on Manufactures, was generously proffered by the
chairmen of both, Hon. Mr. Morrell and Gen. Smith, and is still
retained.
Books are now opened for signatures to the new Declaration and
Pledge,[143] and the autographs of all women ready to exercise
the elective franchise. Thousands of tracts, constitutional
arguments of Mr. Riddle and Mrs. Woodhull, report of the minority
Judiciary Committee, and an address to the women of the United
States, are being sent to the whole country, carrying conviction
to the weak, force to the active, and hastening the consummation
of a triumph worthy of the struggle and undying faith of all who
have nobly borne their part in this history. The names of the
earnest women who took part in this Convention, and who
participated in the inauguration of the new issue, are recorded
in the books of the Committee; and now, only the funds--generous
and prompt contributions--are needed to respond to the call from
all the States and Territories for knowledge--either by voice or
pen--to complete a reconstruction of the government "of the
people, for the people and by the people," without arms,
court-martial, or bloodshed.
In this connection Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood's very able memorial to
Congress asking suffrage for the women of the District should be
mentioned. It was a well-sustained argument, showing the writer
to be mistress of her subject. Mrs. Lockwood is an efficient,
earnest, honest worker. She presented to Congress a large
petition, fully equal in numbers to the one presented by Mrs.
Dahlgren and Sherman, whose anti-suffrage petition and memorial
against it formed one of the peculiar features of the work of
last winter. Mrs. H. C. Spencer, of Washington, answered Mrs.
Dahlgren's pamphlet with a most admirable one entitled
"Problems," which has already had an extensive circulation, and
is more earnestly called for than any other, with the exception
of Mrs. Woodhull's constitutional argument, and Mr. Riddle's on
the same question. The meetings were held daily in the
committee-room during the entire session, and the interchange of
thought was often very interesting and encouraging.
[Illustration: Isabella Beecher Hooker.]
On the day of the adjournment of Congress Mrs. Hooker presented
thanks, in the name of the Committee, to such members of the
House as had been most active in serving our cause. She said:
GENTLEMEN: The National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee
desire me to express to you their heartfelt thanks for the good
service you have rendered the whole woman movement by your
willingness to entertain, examine, and, in some instances,
advocate our new claim that we are already enfranchised under the
original Constitution and the XIV. and XV. Amendments.
To you, Mr. Julian, we are especially indebted, in that while you
were the first member of the House who introduced our claim to
the suffrage under the form of a XVI. Amendment, you were in the
front once more when a new issue was presented in the shape of
the "Woodhull Memorial." Your resolution asking the House "to
participate in the proceedings," by which two women citizens of
the United States "might present the moral and constitutional
argument in favor of the enfranchisement of the women citizens of
the United States, and in support of a memorial lately reported
upon by a majority and minority of the Judiciary Committee," was
in keeping with every other act of your public life, a protest
against injustice, a proposition looking toward perfect equality;
and we thank you for it in the name of the disfranchised millions
who will one day realize, as they now do not, the significance of
that act.
To you, Mr. Arnell, we owe not only the passage of "A bill to do
justice to the female employes of the Government," but the first
admission of women to this Capitol as citizens having common
rights with the ruling class in the use of buildings devoted to
the public service. In your committee-room we found not only a
home, but such courtesy, such opportunity for friendly
consultation with members of Congress upon subjects of deepest
political importance, as must forever silence the absurd charge
that men and women will cease to regard the decorums of life, to
interchange its happy civilities when they become equally
responsible for the welfare of the State.
To other gentlemen of the House we owe thanks also for their
co-operation with you in this manly service, especially to
General Wilson, of Ohio, to Mr. Morrill, of Pennsylvania, and
General Butler, of Massachusetts, who have, as chairmen of their
respective committees, offered us the use of their several rooms,
in case the threats of a certain gentleman in the House should so
terrify you, sir, that you should feel compelled to withdraw your
most friendly offer. We have accepted the use of the
Committee-room on Agriculture, leaving you, sir, with reluctance,
simply because it is larger and more accessible than your room,
and one so beautifully adorned by art, that our womanly tastes
are daily gratified in its use.
To you, Mr. Loughridge, as the author of the minority report of
the Judiciary Committee on the Woodhull Memorial, and to General
Butler, your faithful colleague, we owe that most luminous
statement of the historic position of woman, her natural, civil,
and constitutional rights, and the best method of enforcing these
in the interest of the women citizens of the United States. For
that report, sir, we thank you from the depth of our hearts. We
claim it as our bill of rights. On that line we also fight, not
with weapons of steel, but with pen and voice and silent prayer;
and when at last the solemn responsibilities of citizenship shall
have been laid upon us by the men of this great nation, and
together we shall strive to bring justice and equality into
legislation and administration, we shall not forget to whom we
owe this first judicial protest in these halls against
traditional misrepresentations of the constitutional rights of
women citizens of the Republic.
And, gentlemen, permit us to congratulate you all, that having
secured equal rights to all men in these United States by your
vote, and having welcomed the proscribed black man to a seat by
your side in halls of legislation, you are now turning your
attention to the women of the United States, with a firm
resolution that they shall no longer be denied the rights nor
excused from the responsibilities of a full citizenship.
Permit us to express the hope that in coming years you may be
returned to this Capitol by the votes of grateful women citizens,
enfranchised through your instrumentality; and should you be
called to take upper seats here in remembrance of faithful
service during this session, we shall congratulate not only
ourselves but our common and well-beloved country; and if,
gentlemen, you should find here as colleagues some of the matrons
of this Republic whose names are now being daily signed to this
new declaration of fealty to human rights, we have confident
assurance that you will cheerfully work hand in hand with them,
according to the tenor of their pledge to work with you for the
maintenance of those equal rights on which our Republic was
originally founded, to the end that it may have what is declared
to be the first condition of just government--the consent of the
governed.
Mr. JULIAN responded:--I thank you, Mrs. Hooker, and the
committee you represent, for your words of cordial approbation.
Such a testimony will go far to redeem the ordinary drudgery and
dreariness of public life, and I shall ever cherish it with real
satisfaction and pride. I ought to say, however, that in
performing the acts so handsomely commended by you I did nothing
but my simple duty. Indeed, constituted as I am, and believing as
I do, it was morally impossible for me to do otherwise. Having
espoused the cause of woman's enfranchisement more than twenty
years ago, when it was first launched in the United States, and
having labored so long and so earnestly for the enfranchisement
of the male citizens of our country, irrespective of color or
race, it would have been grossly inconsistent in me, not to say
recreant and mean, to shrink from the duties for which you
compliment me when invited to their performance.
You are pleased to express the hope that some of the retiring
members of the XLI. Congress may hereafter be returned to the
places they have filled. For myself, I am weary of the service
in which I have toiled for so many years, and I welcome a season
of rest, or at least a change of labor. But when your hope goes
farther, and points to our return here by the votes of
enfranchised women, and our welcome from a sisterhood of
co-representatives in the halls of Congress, I confess the
prophecy is so pleasing and the picture seems so tempting that
its realization would completely reconcile me to my restored
place in the House of Representatives, or even to a seat in that
smaller body at the other end of the Capitol. And I am not
lacking in the spirit of good courage and hope which animates
you. These are revolutionary times. Whole years of progress are
now crowded into days. Who will venture to judge the future by
any political almanac of by-gone times? I can say with old Thomas
Carlyle, "One strong thing I find here below, the just thing, the
true thing." And no man or party is strong enough, no earthly
power is strong enough to stay the grand march of events through
which the hand of God is visibly guiding the Republic to
universal liberty, and through that to enduring prosperity and
peace.
Mr. ARNELL, of Tennessee, said--_Mrs. Hooker and Ladies_: You
have been kind enough to refer to me by name. I think you have
been over-generous in your estimation of my poor services. If I
have accomplished anything, no matter how inconsiderable, for
your cause, I greatly rejoice. Yet, in reality, it is my cause as
much as yours--a man's cause as much as a woman's; for the
inquiry you have raised is a great fundamental question, broad as
humanity itself. I thank you for your wide interpretation of the
invitation I gave you to occupy the Committee-room of Education
and Labor. You have rightly touched its true meaning. The doors
were opened hopefully, invitingly to you as the advance-guard of
American women, who are soon, I trust, to take equal part with
their brothers, husbands and fathers in the government of this
great and free Republic.
There is a bit of history connected with this room of Education
and Labor. A hard-working woman was once driven from it by vote
of the House of Representatives. She carried her work across the
ocean, rested it under the Italian skies, until it blossomed into
everlasting stone. Then she brought it back. A great admiring
city and the self-same men who had voted her out, marveled and
said, "Well done, woman." Her success is a triumph for woman.
Meantime you, representing, arguing a higher cause than Art, had
found a footing in this very apartment from which she had been
turned out. This was a higher triumph. The amiable New York
_Tribune_, chuckling over a false rumor that you were denied its
further use, has misstated the facts. The _Tribune_ only
advertised its own narrow, pretentious wishes.
In bringing the proposition before Congress to pay women the same
price as men for the same work performed, I desired not only to
help those spirited, deserving women in the Departments, but also
to aid two and a half millions of my working sisters in this
country. It seemed to me that just here was room for practical
legislation. Here was an angle to be carried in this great
contest for justice and freedom, and I drew my best inspiration
from a bright, sunny-faced wife, who to-day is far away among the
hills of Tennessee. I greatly admire and respect either a working
man or woman, for I devoutly believe in this latest evangel,
that "to work is to pray." Allow me to say, as a parting word,
"Courage." The world may sneer at you, for it does not believe
that a man is moved save by some selfish ambition. Trojan's noble
fraction of a line, "_indocillis privata loqui_," is not
generally considered as adapted to, or to be applied to, the
domain of every-day life. Yet, ladies, far above all ridicule,
misjudgment, slander, and abuse even, is the holy consciousness
you have of the nobility of your work, which is, as I have said,
the emancipation and elevation of both man and woman. The great
Republic, of which you are citizens, by express provision of its
fundamental law, can exist only as it is free, as it is just; two
ideas that lie, as I understand it, at the bottom of your
movement. The country must continue one-sided, ill-balanced,
imperfect in its civilization, until woman, with her peculiar
nature, is admitted to that individuality which of right belongs
to every human being. Therefore I bid you God-speed in your work.
Judge LOUGHRIDGE, of Iowa, spoke as follows--_Ladies_: I take
pleasure in appearing here in response to your kind invitation. I
understand fully your desire to express in this way your
appreciation of the aid given by a portion of the Representatives
to the XLI. Congress to the cause you have so much at heart--the
cause of universal suffrage and political liberty.
In reference to the report of the minority of the Judiciary
Committee, to which Mrs. Hooker has referred in such
complimentary terms and in which I had the honor to join with the
distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Butler, I am glad
to know that you are satisfied with it, and that you think it
does justice to your cause. What is written there is the honest
conviction of my judgment, and in my opinion the principles
contended for therein will, before many years, be accepted as the
law of the land.
I desire to say one word, suggested by the remark which I have
heard made frequently of late, that the only resort now for the
advocates of woman suffrage is to the courts of the country. I
think it is a mistake. In this country, on questions involving
political rights, the courts are generally in the rear rank; the
people are mostly in advance of the courts. In my opinion the
most speedy and certain victory will be acquired through the
political departments of the government, which are moulded and
controlled by the people, and which will always in the end
reflect the will of the people. You applied to Congress; although
not successful, yet the support you did receive was greater than
the most sanguine expected. Continue your efforts, persevere in
your determination, and in the end you will win, for you are
right, and the right always triumphs.
The ladies then shook hands with each of these gentlemen, and added a
few words of personal thanks, after which the committee adjourned.
That the position in regard to the rights of women under the XIV. and
XV. Amendments was still maintained is shown in the call[144] and
resolutions[145] as well as the speeches in the three days' convention
held in Lincoln Hall, Washington, in January, 1872.
One of the interesting episodes of this convention was the invitation
extended by the Association to certain non-believers to appear in open
session, and meet the champions of the cause in argument. Mrs. Gage
wrote an invitation[146] to Mrs. Dahlgren, which she most courteously
declined.[147] The idea was suggested to Mrs. Gage by the memorial
which Mrs. General Sherman and Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren had presented to
the Senate of the United States. Their petition was as follows:
TO THE U. S. SENATE AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
We, the undersigned, do hereby appeal to your honorable body, and
desire respectfully to enter our protest against an extension of
suffrage to women; and in the firm belief that our petition
represents the sober convictions of the majority of the women of
the country. Although we shrink from the notoriety of the public
eye, yet we are too deeply and painfully impressed by the grave
perils which threaten our peace and happiness in these proposed
changes in our civil and political rights, longer to remain
silent.
_Because_, Holy Scripture inculcates a different, and for us
higher, sphere apart from public life.
_Because_, as women, we find a full measure of duties, cares, and
responsibilities devolving upon us, and we are therefore
unwilling to bear other and heavier burdens, and those unsuited
to our physical organization.
_Because_, we hold that an extension of suffrage would be adverse
to the interests of the workingwomen of the country, with whom we
heartily sympathize.
_Because_, these changes must introduce a fruitful element of
discord in the existing marriage relation, which would tend to
the infinite detriment of children, and increase the already
alarming prevalence of divorce throughout the land.
_Because_, no general law, affecting the condition of all women,
should be framed to meet exceptional discontent.
For these, and many more reasons, do we beg of your wisdom that
no law extending suffrage to women may be passed, as the passage
of such a law would be fraught with danger so grave to the
general order of the country.
[Signed by Mrs. General Sherman, Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren, and other
ladies to the number of 1,000.]
Mrs. Dahlgren presented a form of XVI. Amendment as follows:
SHERMAN-DAHLGREN XVI. AMENDMENT.
Congress shall have power to, and shall pass laws which shall be
uniform throughout the United States.
To regulate the transfer and descent of all kinds of property.
To regulate marriages and the registration of the same, and the
registration of births.
To regulate the right of dower and all rights and obligations of
married persons.
To regulate divorces and to grant alimony, but no divorces _a
vinculo matrimonii_ shall be granted, except for the cause of
adultery, and in such case the offending party shall not have the
privilege of marrying during the lifetime of the offended party.
In her opening remarks Mrs Stanton said:
This is the fourth convention we have held in Washington, and the
effect can hardly be estimated in the education of the American
people toward woman suffrage. I feel more anxious about how women
will vote than in their speedy enfranchisement. So many important
political questions are seen in the horizon that woman's
influence is needed to guide safely through all storms the ship
of state. We propose to change our tactics. Instead of
petitioning Congress for our rights we propose to settle the
question before the courts, unless Congress gives us the
declaratory act this winter, which I think they will. We have
reasoned for twenty-five years, and we now propose to take our
rights under the Constitution as it is. The people are beginning
already to discuss the fitting celebration for our centennial
anniversary. No grander step could mark that great national event
than to extend the right of suffrage to one half the citizens of
our republic.
The following letter was read at the morning session:
BROOKLYN, January 1, 1872.
MY DEAR MADAM: Your letter of December 30th, in which you invite
me to take part in the Washington convention in behalf of woman's
suffrage, is duly received.
I am engaged during the whole week with lectures in Massachusetts
and Maine. I can not say that I am so sanguine of the immediate
or new admission of women to the right of suffrage. But of its
ultimate accomplishment I have not a doubt, since justice and
expediency combine in requiring it. That manhood is, on the
whole, made better and stronger by a direct participation in the
duties, and responsibilities of active citizenship,
notwithstanding incidental evils, is becoming the sentiment of
the civilized world; nor is there any reason to doubt that, in
spite of temporary and incidental evils, the same advantages
would accrue to womanhood. In every wise and Christian movement
for the education and enfranchisement of woman I hope always to
be in sympathy. I am, respectfully, yours,
HENRY WARD BEECHER.
MR. BURLINGAME, of R. I., remarked:--I sympathize with this
movement. It commands my respect and admiration. I have come here
unexpected and unsolicited, because I think my wife and other
women should have the same rights as the colored man and
Irishman. I believe in this movement, because I believe it to be
right; it is the most important question of the times. The
speaker then reviewed the objections against female suffrage, and
pronounced them all weak, and closed with allusions to the many
heroic deeds of illustrious women now a part of history.
MRS. ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER then presented the following report, in
relation to the work of the Association for the past year:
REPORT.
The work to be done in the future is precisely what has been
recommended during the past year by every member of the committee
in public and in private.
1. Women should attempt to qualify and attempt to vote in every
State election or otherwise, according to opportunity. This
action not only serves the purpose of agitation of the whole
question of suffrage, but it puts upon men, our brothers, the
onus of refusing the votes of their fellow citizens, and compels
them to show just cause for such proceeding. If it could be well
understood that every woman who believes that she has a right to
vote, would actually test her right by an appearance at the polls
before and at the next Presidential election, the question as to
nominees for that office would contain a new element, and the
views and preferences of this large constituency would receive
serious consideration at the hands of president-makers in both
the great parties of the country.
2. Women should study the question of their present rights and
duties, and make their views known in public and in private to
the utmost extent of their ability. In a time like this, when the
interests of our whole beloved country are at stake; when
political corruption is appalling, and men are paralyzed with
fear because of the threatened failure of republican
institutions, ignorance and indifference on the part of women,
who are the natural protectors of purity and honor, whether in
the family or the State, are sins against God, their country, and
their own souls.
3. Men and women should pour out money like water for the
propagation of these views. A copy of the Declaration of
Independence and of the Constitution of the United States,
together with an argument on the fair interpretation of these
documents, should be put into every family in the United States
which has a reading member in it. Your committee are able and
willing to send these documents directly into these homes--one at
a time, carefully directed and franked by members of Congress,
who believe they are making a patriotic and legitimate use of the
franking privilege by thus educating their constituents in the
first principles of a constitutional government--a government
founded upon personal liberty and personal responsibility. Half a
million dollars appropriated by Congress itself for this simple
purpose would inaugurate a reign of patriotism and purity
scarcely dreamed of as yet by the most powerful lovers of their
country. But Congress has not yet even printed the able reports
from the Judiciary Committee of the House, and the few copies we
have been able to send out have been the gift of a private
individual. Women must educate themselves--men must help them.
The latter hold the purse-strings; and so surely as they desire
peace, plenty, and the perpetuity of republican institutions,
they must see to it that women are supplied with the sinews of
war. Moral warfare costs not only heart's blood, but treasure.
Women are offering their very souls in behalf of mankind. Can men
do less than empty their pockets for the good of the race?
And there is one thing more that men can and must do before the
reign of justice and equality can be inaugurated. They, being
voters, must pledge themselves in their own breasts, and to one
another, that they will vote for such candidates in either party
as are in favor of woman suffrage, and for no others. Such
proceedings would settle the question in less than a year, and
the peaceful working of a new _regime_ would prove the wisdom and
patriotism of these faithful souls before the whole world. We
confidently believe that there are at least 300,000 voters to-day
who desire to share the burdens and responsibilities of
government with their mothers, wives, and sisters. Let them
combine and speak the sovereign words, "Principle before party,"
and the day is won.
Mrs. Hooker and other ladies united in a memorial, which was presented
in the Senate and referred to the Judiciary Committee, asking for a
recognition of the rights of women under the XIV. Amendment, and
asking further that the advocates of the cause be heard at the bar of
the Senate. Mr. Trumbull, the chairman of the committee, was not
willing for this; but, at Mrs. Hooker's solicitation, he agreed to
lay the subject before the committee, and it was finally agreed that a
hearing should be given on Friday morning, January 10th, at 11
o'clock.
_To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States in Congress assembled:_
The undersigned, citizens of the United States, believing that
under the present Federal Constitution all women who are citizens
of the United States have the right to vote, pray your honorable
body to enact a law during the present session that shall assist
and protect them in the exercise of that right.
And they pray further that they may be permitted, in person, and
in behalf of the thousands of other women who are petitioning
Congress to the same effect, to be heard upon this memorial
before the Senate and House at an early day in the present
session. We ask your honorable body to bear in mind that while
men are represented on the floor of Congress, and so may be said
to be heard there, women who are allowed no vote, and therefore
no representation, can not truly be heard except as Congress
shall open its doors to us in person.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.
ELIZABETH L. BLADEN.
OLYMPIA BROWN.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.
Hartford, Conn., December 12, 1871.
* * * * *
SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,}
WASHINGTON, January 10, 1872 }
MADAM: The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the
memorial of yourself and others, asking to be heard before the
Senate in behalf of the constitutional right of women to vote,
and modified by your letter of this morning, so as to ask that
the committee hold a public meeting in the Senate Chamber for
that purpose, have concluded that it would not be consistent with
the usage and rules of the Senate to admit memorialists to appear
and advocate their claims before the Senate, nor for the
committee to ask the use of the Senate Chamber for public
discussion before them.
The committee would, however, be happy to receive any
communication you and the other memorialists may think proper to
make, or, if the memorialists prefer to present their views in
person, the committee will hear them in its committee-room at 11
o'clock A.M., next Friday morning.
Very respectfully, LYMAN TRUMBULL,
_Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary._
MRS. ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.
Accordingly the hearing being granted, at the appointed hour the whole
convention adjourned to the Capitol, crowding not only the committee
room but the corridors, thousands of eager, expectant women struggling
to gain admission. The committee,[148] seated round a large table,
manifested a respectful attention to each speaker in turn,
complimenting them warmly at the close.
MRS. HOOKER said: _Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee_--In
accordance with your courteous invitation of the 10th, I have the
honor to present to you an argument upon the question: Are women
entitled to vote under the United States Constitution, as
amended? It is not important to inquire what was the status of
woman before the adoption of the XIV. Amendment. By that
amendment they are clearly made citizens. No one denies this. The
first section of the amendment is as follows:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.
The whole question is, what is the meaning of the term "citizen"
as here used. The term is familiar to law and politics, and the
authorities are very numerous and uncontradicted which make
citizenship include the right to vote. These authorities consist
of lexicographers, English and American, and legal and political
writers. It is said, however, that to give the term a meaning by
which women become voters under it is contrary to the actual
intent of Congress and the State Legislatures in passing the
amendment, as, unquestionably, the legislators who voted for it
had personally (with, perhaps, a few exceptions) no thought of
enfranchising women.
To this it is replied: 1. That the question is not whether they
thought of enfranchising women, but whether they used the term as
a term of enfranchisement at all; for if it would have
enfranchised black men, it would have equally enfranchised women,
and unquestionably the predominant idea in these legislators was
a political benefit, not very precisely measured, to black men.
2. An inquiry as to actual intent in such a case is never
admissible. A rule that allowed it would make every law
uncertain. An enactment can be construed only by the language in
fact used, and where that language is doubtful, by other parts of
the same enactment, and by a consideration of the public evil
which the law was intended to remedy. The evil to be remedied in
this case was the political disadvantage under which black men,
made free by the XIII. Amendment, still labored. The object was
to give them a positive political benefit. The terms used are
such that, necessarily and confessedly, whatever benefit accrues
to black men under it accrues equally to women.
It is said, in the next place, that the term "citizen" has
acquired a meaning in American usage, legal and political, that
does not carry with it the idea of suffrage; and the report of
the majority of the Judiciary Committee on the Woodhull memorial
places its adverse construction of this amendment entirely on the
ground of an American use of the term in its restricted sense.
Such a use of the term undoubtedly exists. Webster recognizes it,
and so do some of our political writers. But this meaning is a
secondary and lower one, and has not attained such dignity of use
as to encroach at all upon the well-established general meaning,
and would not be presumed in a law, much less in a constitution.
The American authorities are strongly in favor of the larger
meaning.
The term is used in the second section of the original
Constitution, article four, which provides that "the citizens of
each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States." In Corfield _vs._ Coryell, 4
Wash. C. C. R., 380, the court say: "The inquiry is what are the
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States? They
may be all comprehended under the following general heads: (Here
follows a statement of numerous rights, civil and political,
closing as follows:) "To which may be added the elective
franchise as regulated and established by the laws or
constitution of the State in which it is to be exercised." And in
the Dred Scott case, 19 Howard, 476, Mr. Justice Daniel says:
There is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of
writers on government, or in any actual experiment
heretofore tried, an exposition of the term 'citizen' which
has not been understood as conferring the actual possession
and enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and
enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and
political.
And the supreme court of Kentucky, 1 Little R., 333, says:
No one can, in the correct sense of the term, be a citizen
of a State who is not entitled, upon the terms prescribed by
the institutions of the State, to all the rights and
privileges conferred by those institutions upon the highest
class of society.
These are American authorities, and would seem to settle the
question that the term has not acquired a distinctive American
meaning variant from the well-established general meaning.
It is said, in the next place, and finally, that the second
section of the XIV. Amendment shows clearly that the term
"citizen" could not have been used in the sense of full
citizenship. This objection is the most serious one that the
argument encounters. That section, so far as relates to this
subject, is as follows:
When the right to vote is denied to any of the male
inhabitants of such State being twenty-one years of age and
citizens of the United States, the basis of representation
therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number
of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male
citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
The consideration of this section is perfectly legitimate in the
inquiry as to the meaning of the first section. It is said, with
great force, that here is an implied admission that the States
retained the power to exclude black men from the right to vote,
and it will be asked why, if that right is absolutely conferred
by the first section, and is one of the privileges and immunities
of citizens which no State may abridge, the amendment does not
boldly forbid any such State legislation, instead of merely
imposing certain limitations upon the State that should assume to
exercise such right of exclusion.
Two answers have been made by public writers on the subject which
are merely specious. One is, that if the second section be
construed as admitting the right of a State to exclude certain
classes of men from the franchise, yet it could not operate as an
admission of the right to exclude women. The fallacy here is,
that if the citizenship conferred by the first section does not
secure against all legislation the right of suffrage to men, it
does not secure it to women; the question being merely as to the
meaning of the term "citizen" as used, and not as to its
application to either sex, as such. The other answer that has
been made is, that this second section is repealed by the XV.
Amendment, which forbids the denial of suffrage in the cases
where this section seems to allow it; and it is asked, with
apparent confidence, whether a law that is repealed can have any
further operation whatever. The fallacy here is, that the
operation of this second section, so far as it relates to the
present question, is wholly in throwing light upon the meaning of
the term "citizen," as used in the first section, and this
operation is just as perfect after its repeal as before;
precisely as a part of a will that has been revoked by a codicil,
may yet be read with the rest of the will if it will throw light
upon the meaning of the whole.
It is believed, however, that a valid answer can be made to the
objection which is founded upon the second section, and that the
view here presented will be ultimately sustained by the legal
opinion of the country.
1. It is not a necessary inference that the right to exclude from
suffrage is admitted by the second section, for this section will
bear a construction that is consistent with the enlarged
construction which we give to the first section; and it is a
well-settled principle that a construction that favors the
extension of liberty is itself to be favored, and one which
restricts liberty is not to be adopted, except under a necessity.
This second section provides for a penalty, in the reduction of
its basis of representation, in every case where a State should
deny to any class of citizens the right of suffrage. Now, this is
not necessarily a concession of the right, but may be regarded as
a punishment of the attempt to exercise the so-called right. The
matter was practically so much within the power of the States
(and the States in view were the disorganized Southern States),
that it would be far easier for Congress to enforce the penalty
for denying the right of suffrage than for the President to
protect that right. It may be regarded as a case, well known to
the law, of cumulative remedies. It is precisely as if, in
addition to the express prohibition by the Constitution of the
making of war by any State, there had been a provision that if
any State should make war upon a foreign State, such State should
pay the entire expense in which the General Government should
become involved by the war. This clearly would be only a penalty
and not a concession of the right, the object being to increase
and not to diminish the security of the General Government
against any attempt of a State to do the act prohibited.
2. The first section of the XIV. Amendment is entirely senseless
and idle, except upon the construction which we claim. The term
"citizen" means either "voter" or merely "member of the nation,"
as distinguished from an alien. Judge Cartter, in his late
opinion in the case of Spencer _vs._ The Board of Registration,
in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, sees this
necessity, and that there is no intermediate status, and holds
that the term means merely a person clothed with the civil rights
of an inhabitant, as distinguished from an alien. Let it be borne
in mind, then, that those who deny the construction which we
claim, must make the word citizen mean merely "not an alien." Let
it also be borne in mind that by the XIII. Amendment, which
abolished slavery, every inhabitant of the land became a free
inhabitant, so that nothing is now added to the force of the term
"inhabitant" by prefixing to it the term "free." It follows,
therefore, that the XIV. Amendment, under the adverse
construction claimed, means only that the persons referred to in
it are _inhabitants of the land_. Let us see, then, how it will
read: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States are
inhabitants of the United States and the State wherein they
reside." This is sheer nonsense. In the construction of an
ordinary law, passed by a Legislature in the crowded moments of
its last hour, every Court would say that it must, if possible,
give the law a construction that will make it have a sensible
meaning and effect, and that of two constructions, one of which
gives it sense and purpose and the other none, the former is
without a question to be preferred. How much more should such a
rule be applied to an amendment of a national constitution,
deliberately adopted first by Congress and then by three-quarters
of the Legislatures of the States?
3. It is a universal rule in the construction of statutes that
the construction of an enabling or enlarging statute must be
liberal and in the direction of enlargement. This rule is
applicable with much greater force to the construction of this
amendment, because, in the first place, it is dealing with the
most fundamental of all political rights--that of _free
citizenship in a democracy_--and is besides an amendment of a
constitution, which _is itself the charter of freedom_, and the
amendment is made for the very purpose of giving _larger freedom_
than that free constitution originally gave. This rule alone is
enough to settle the question of the construction of this
amendment, especially as the question is between a construction
that shall make it an enlargement of liberty and a construction
that shall make it confer nothing that was not before possessed.
The whole question thus far has been considered with reference to
the XIV. Amendment alone. The XV. Amendment, though, as we think,
conferring no new rights, yet should be briefly noticed. That
amendment is as follows: "The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude." Here it will be seen that the language,
in its natural meaning, implies a pre-existing _right to vote_.
It is not pertinent to the creation of a new right, but only to
the protection of a right already existing. It is like the case
occurring in some of the State constitutions, where it is
provided that the right of trial by jury shall not be denied or
impaired, in which case it has been held not to confer a new
right, but merely to protect, in its then existing form, a right
that was enjoyed when the constitution was adopted. This
construction of the XV. Amendment, however, though the natural
and obvious one, is not a necessary one, since, if there had been
no XIV. Amendment, the XV. would undoubtedly be held to create a
new right of suffrage. The argument, from the language used,
though not without very positive weight, can not be regarded as
decisive of the question, and the claim that women are entitled
to vote must rest essentially upon the construction of the XIV.
Amendment.
There is, however, an adverse claim that is made under the XV.
Amendment, which ought to be briefly considered. That claim is
that even if the XIV. Amendment gives the right to vote, yet the
XV., in prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude, impliedly
confers the right to prohibit it on all other grounds. Now, if it
has this effect, it does so merely by impliedly repealing that
clause of the XIV. Amendment which provides that the rights of
citizens shall not be abridged. But it is a well-established rule
of law that a repeal by implication is never favored, and will
not be sustained unless the implication is a clear and necessary
one. Much more would not such a repeal be sustained where the
clause claimed to be repealed was a part of a constitution, and
was intended as a security for human rights and liberty. The rule
that would favor a construction toward liberty of the XIV.
Amendment, would equally forbid a construction toward curtailment
of liberty of the XV.
But it will be said that the XV. Amendment becomes without
purpose and effect, and really as senseless as we claim the XIV.
Amendment to be under the construction which we oppose, if it is
to be regarded as operating only in the way claimed, and not as
conferring rights not previously existing. This is a point of
some force, and which can be replied to only by the fact that
there was an impression upon the minds of the legislators and of
the people, that the XIV. Amendment did not confer the right of
suffrage. That impression weighs nothing in now determining the
meaning of the XIV. Amendment; but it furnishes the explanation
that seems to be needed of the passage of the XV. Amendment. It
was in our view wholly unnecessary, but was generally thought to
be necessary. The difference in the two cases is that the XV.
Amendment was passed under a supposed necessity, and with,
therefore, a complete object; while the XIV. Amendment, under the
construction which our opponents give to it, not only conferred
nothing, but was believed at the time to confer nothing, and had
therefore no purpose whatever. Our view that the XV. Amendment
was unnecessary was held by some leading statesmen at the time.
Mr. Sumner in the Senate declared it to be so before its passage,
and proposed instead of it a mere law of Congress recognizing the
right of suffrage and regulating its exercise.
It is at any rate very clear that the construction of the XV.
Amendment, which makes it impliedly allow the denial of suffrage
on all other grounds than the three stated, can not be sustained.
Such rights as those with which it deals will never be allowed in
a free constitution like ours to be curtailed or restricted by
mere implication. If that construction is adopted--and a State
may deny the right to vote on all other grounds but race and
color and previous servitude--then, of course, a State may deny
the right to all naturalized foreigners, although they have
already acquired and enjoyed the right, and may also deny the
right to vote to persons of a particular height or color of hair
or profession. Indeed, to reduce the case to an absurdity,
suppose the women are allowed to vote in Massachusetts, and,
being a great majority over the men, turn around and exclude the
men. This would be precisely the ground on which women are now
excluded--that of sex; and yet can any one doubt that the
constitutional right to vote of men would be sustained?
It is worth noticing that the Act of Congress of May 31, 1870, to
carry into effect the provisions of the XIV. and XV. Amendments,
is entitled, "An Act to enforce the right of citizens of the
United States to vote in the several States of this Union."
Our conclusion, stated in a few words, is this: All women are
citizens. Every citizen, in the language of Judge Daniel in the
Dred Scott case, has "the actual possession and enjoyment or the
perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment of an entire equality
of privileges, civil and political." The right to prescribe
qualifications rests with the States, in the absence of any law
of Congress prescribing them. These qualifications involve time
of residence, age, and other matters that are entirely within the
reach of the citizen by acquisition or lapse of time. Mr. Sumner
has demonstrated in a manner that can not be answered that the
qualifications thus left for the States to prescribe must be
those under which the citizen can become a voter, and can not be
such as would permanently exclude him from the right of suffrage.
It has been said that it is not fair for women to take advantage
of a right to vote, no matter how clearly given them, which there
was no actual intention to give. This objection does not touch
the argument we have been making, but it may be well to say a
word upon it. The law has so far dealt so unfairly with women
that it would seem as if they should not be severely criticised
for taking advantage of the law, when, though by mere accident,
it happens to favor them. But it is especially to be considered
that their claim is in accordance with the whole spirit of the
Constitution and in harmony with all the fundamental principles
of our Government, while the denial of suffrage to them is in
opposition to those principles. If anything is settled in this
country as an abstract general principle, it is the right of
tax-payers to have a voice in the legislation that is to
determine their taxes and in the appointment of the officers who
are to levy and expend them, and that the members of the nation
should elect its rulers. Our error (and the day is not far
distant when we shall all see its absurdity) is in making these
fundamental rights the rights of men alone and in denying them to
women. The latter have equal intelligence, patriotism, and
virtue, and their fidelity to their country has been as well
proved as that of men, and it is difficult to see any good reason
why they should have no voice in deciding who shall be the rulers
of the nation, what its laws, what its taxes and how
appropriated, what the policy that is to affect, for good or
evil, the business interests that they are becoming more and more
largely engaged in. With all this equity in their favor, may they
not be allowed, without censure, to avail themselves of a legal
right? If the freedom of the slave could have been declared by
our judicial tribunals under some guarantee of freedom in the
National Constitution, originally intended only for white men,
all lovers of freedom would have rejoiced. When Alvan Stewart,
thirty years ago, attempted to get such a decision from the
supreme court of New Jersey, there was not a cavil heard among
the opponents of slavery. So when, in the face of the whole
legal opinion of England, Granville Sharpe got a decision in
favor of the slave Somerset, forever overthrowing slavery in
England, by an application of latent principles of the English
constitution, the whole world applauded, and does to this day. It
was thus, as we understand it, that slavery was overthrown in
Massachusetts, a lawyer claiming before its courts the
application to a slave of a clause in its bill of rights supposed
to have been intended only for white men. We would add that it
would not accord at all with the good sense and directness of
method that specially characterize the American people, for the
friends of woman suffrage to labor years for the passage of a
further constitutional amendment when they already have all that
such an amendment could give.
Having attempted a strictly legal view of this question, permit
me, gentlemen, to say that in my heart my claim to vote is based
upon the original Constitution, interpreted by the Declaration of
Independence. I believe that Constitution comprehensive enough to
include all men and all women. I believe that black men needed no
other charter than white men. I recognize the stress laid upon
Congress, by reason of the infancy of that race, their past
bondage, and the duty of protection toward them. But the great
principles of liberty and responsibility contained in the
Declaration and the Constitution should have afforded protection
to every human being living under the flag, and properly applied
they would have been found sufficient. For my own part, I will
never willingly consent to vote under any special enactment
conferring rights of citizenship upon me as upon an alien. Like
Paul, I was free-born. "With a great sum obtained I this
freedom," said the Roman centurion to this old patriot apostle,
but he replied, "I am free-born." There is music in those words
to my ear. They are the deep vibrations of a soul that loves its
country as itself.
You sit here, gentlemen, in judgment on my rights as an American
citizen, as though they were something different from your own!
By whatsoever title you sit in these seats and make laws, wise or
unwise, just or unjust, for this great people, by that same title
do I claim my share in this great responsibility, owing
allegiance to God and my own conscience alone. I may have been
born with less capacity than the least among you, with small
chance of growing to your mental stature, or reaching your
standard of moral elevation; but I have a perfect right to sit in
your midst, pigmy that I may be, since I am one of "the people"
who did ordain this glorious old Constitution, and one of "the
governed," whose consent is made the basis of a government that
can be called just.
It is for this reason that I and my fellow memorialists have
asked to be protected in the use of our present rights, rather
than endowed with any new ones; and we do pray you, gentlemen of
the committee, to give immediate attention to our claim, and to
report to the Senate within a short time, favorably if you can,
adversely if you must, because we not only wish, in common with
thousands of other women-citizens, to vote for the next
President, but to have a potent voice in his nomination, and we
wish to know, therefore, how far Congress will aid us, and how
far we must work out our own salvation. For we can wait no
longer. We feel that we have neglected our duty already, else
what means this appalling official corruption that is bringing
dismay to the stoutest hearts among men, and leading them to
doubt the wisdom of republican institutions, the strength of the
great doctrines of liberty and responsibility on which our
Government is founded? We do not doubt these great doctrines, we
know what they mean and whereto they tend. Our Ship of State
carries two engines, gentlemen, and was built for them, but
heretofore you have used only one, and now you have reached the
place where not only two seas meet, but all ocean currents are
struggling together for the mastery. The man power alone will not
save you, but put on the woman power, and our gallant ship will
steady itself for a moment, and then ride the waves triumphantly
forevermore.
Gentlemen, we come to you with petitions no longer. Here is our
declaration and pledge, issued a year ago this day, signed
already by thousands of women, and eager names are coming every
day. (Mrs. H. read the pledge and exhibited the great autograph
book.)
We did hope to present this to Congress itself in the Senate
Chamber to-day. We believe that women, being unrepresented in
that body, are entitled to appear there by their memorialists in
person, and we have so asked. But Congress has referred us to
you, and you have declined even to submit our proposition
officially to that body. You find no precedent for this, you
say--forgetting, gentlemen, that history makes its own
precedents. The men of America made theirs in 1776; the women of
America are making theirs to-day, and may God prosper the right.
Mrs. STANTON said: _Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee_: We
appear before you at this time to call your attention to our
memorial asking for a "declaratory act" that shall protect women
in the exercise of the right of suffrage. Benjamin F. Butler,
early in the session, presented a bill in the House to this
effect that may soon, in the order of legislation, come before
you for consideration in the Senate of the United States. As you
well know, women are demanding their rights as citizens to-day
under the original Constitution, believing that its letter and
spirit, fairly interpreted, guarantee the blessings of liberty to
every citizen under our flag. But more especially do we claim
that our title deed to the elective franchise is clearly given in
the XIV. and XV. Amendments. Therein for the first time, the
Constitution defines the term citizen, and, in harmony with our
best lexicographers, declares a citizen to be a person possessed
of the right to vote. In the last year the question of woman's
political status has been raised from one of vague generalities
to one of constitutional law.
The Woodhull memorial, and the able arguments sustaining it made
by Mr. Riddle and Mrs. Woodhull herself, and the exhaustive
minority report of Messrs. Butler and Loughridge, have been
before the nation for one year, and yet remain unanswered; in
fact, the opinions of many of our most learned judges and lawyers
multiplying on all sides, sustain the positions taken in the
"Woodhull Memorial." As our demands are based on the same
principles of constitutional interpretation, I will not detain
you with the re-statement of arguments already furnished, but
will present a few facts and general principals showing the need
of some speedy action on this whole question.
Gentlemen hold seats in Congress to-day by the votes of women.
The legality of the election of Mr. Garfield, of Washington
Territory, and Mr. Jones, of Wyoming, involves the question
whether or not their constituents are legal voters. Ultimately,
this question, involving the fundamental rights of citizens, must
be considered in the Senate as well as the House. Women have
voted in the general elections in several of the States, and if
legislators chosen by women choose Senators, their right to their
seats can not be decided until it is first decided whether women
are legal voters. Some speedy action on this question is
inevitable, to preserve law and order.
In some States women have already voted; in others they are
contesting their rights in the courts, and the decisions of
judges differ as widely as the capacities of men to see first
principles.
Judge Howe, Judge Cartter, and Judge Underwood have given their
written opinions in favor of woman's citizenship under the XIV.
and XV. Amendments. Even the majority report of the Judiciary
Committee, presented by John A. Bingham, though adverse to the
prayer of Victoria Woodhull, admits the citizenship of woman. In
the late cases of Sarah Spencer against the Board of
Registration, and Sarah E. Webster against the superintendent of
election, the judge decided that under the XIV. Amendment women
are citizens.
We do not ask to vote outside of law, or in open violation of it,
nor to avail ourselves of any strained interpretations of
constitutional provisions, but in harmony with the Federal
Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and our American
theory of just government. The women of this country and a
handful of foreign citizens in Rhode Island, the only
disfranchised classes, ask you to-day to secure to them a
republican form of government to protect them against the
oppression of State authorities, who, in violation of your
amendments, assume the right not merely to regulate the suffrage,
but to abridge and deny it to these two classes of citizens. The
Federal Constitution, in its Amendment, clearly defines, for the
first time, who are citizens: "All persons born or naturalized in
the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States, and of the States wherein they
reside."
No one denies that "all persons," in the XIV. Amendment, is used
without limitation of sex, or in other words, that not men only,
but women also are citizens. Whether in theory the citizenship of
women is generally admitted or not, it certainly is in practice.
Women pre-empt land; women register ships; women obtain
passports; women pay the penalty of their own crimes; women pay
taxes, sometimes work out the road tax. In some States, even
married women can make contracts, sue and be sued, and do
business in their own names; in fact, the old Blackstone idea
that husband and wife are one, and that one the husband, received
its death blow twenty years ago, when the States of New York and
Massachusetts passed their first laws securing to married women
the property they inherited in their own right.
You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a
citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a
voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred
and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family
Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.
"Individual rights," "Individual conscience and judgment," are
great American ideas, underlying our whole political and
religious life. We are here to-day to ask a Congress of
Republicans for that crowning act that shall secure to 15,000,000
women the right to protect their persons, property, and opinions
by law. The XIV. Amendment, having told us who are citizens of
the republic, further declares that "no State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the 'privileges or
immunities' of 'citizens' of the United States." Some say that
"privileges and immunities" do not include the right of suffrage.
We answer that any person under Government who has no voice in
the laws or the rulers has his privileges and immunities abridged
at every turn, and when a State denies the right of suffrage, it
robs the citizen of his citizenship and of all power to protect
his person or property by law.
Disfranchised classes are ever helpless and degraded classes. One
can readily judge of the political status of a citizen by the
tone of the press. Go back a few years, and you find the Irishman
the target for all the gibes and jeers of the nation. You could
scarce take up a paper without finding some joke about "Pat" and
his last bull. But in process of time "Pat" became a political
power in the land, and editors and politicians could not afford
to make fun of him. Then "Sambo" took his turn. They ridiculed
his thick skull, woolly head, shin-bone, long heel, etc., but he,
too, has become a political power; he sits in the Congress of the
United States and in the Legislature of Massachusetts, and now
politicians and editors can not afford to make fun of him.
Now, who is their target? Woman. They ridicule all alike--the
strong-minded for their principles, the weak minded for their
panniers. How long think you the New York _Tribune_ would
maintain its present scurrilous tone if the votes of women could
make Horace Greeley Governor of New York? The editor of the
_Tribune_ knows the value of votes, and if, honorable gentlemen,
you will give us a "Declaratory law," forbidding the States to
deny or abridge our rights, there will be no need of arguments to
change the tone of his journal; its columns will speedily glow
with demands for the protection of woman as well as broadcloth
and pig-iron. Then we might find out what he knows and cares for
our real and relative value in the Government.
Without some act of Congress regulating suffrage for women as
well as black men, women citizens of the United States who, in
Washington, Utah, and Wyoming Territories, are voters and jurors,
and who, in the State of Kansas, vote on school and license
questions, would be denied the exercise of their right to vote in
all the States of the Union, and no naturalization papers,
education, property, residence, or age could help them. What an
anomaly is this in a republic! A woman who in Wyoming enjoys all
the rights, privileges, and immunities of a sovereign, by
crossing the line into Nebraska, sinks at once to the political
degradation of a slave. Humiliated with such injustice, one set
of statesmen answer her appeals by sending her for redress to
the courts; another advises her to submit her qualifications to
the States; but we, with a clearer intuition of the rightful
power, come to you who thoughtfully, conscientiously, and
understandingly passed that Amendment defining the word
"citizen," declaring suffrage a foundation right. How are women
"citizens" from Utah, Wyoming, Kansas, moving in other States, to
be protected in the rights they have heretofore enjoyed, unless
Congress shall pass the bill presented by Mr. Butler, and thus
give us a homogeneous law on suffrage from Maine to Louisiana?
Remember, these are citizens of the United States as well as of
the Territories and States wherein they may reside, and their
rights as such are of primal consideration. One of your own
amendments to the Federal Constitution, honorable gentlemen, says
"that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by any State on account of race, color,
or previous condition of servitude." We have women of different
races and colors, as well as men. It takes more than men to
compose peoples and races, and no one denies that all women
suffer the disabilities of a present or previous condition of
servitude. Clearly the State may regulate, but can not deny the
exercise of this right to any citizen.
You did not leave the negroes to the tender mercies of the courts
and States. Why send your mothers, wives, and daughters
suppliants at the feet of the unwashed, unlettered, unthinking
masses that carry our elections in the States? Would you compel
the women of New York to sue the Tweeds, the Sweeneys, the
Connollys, for their inalienable rights, or to have the scales of
justice balanced for them in the unsteady hand of a Cardozo, a
Barnard, or a McCunn? Nay, nay; the proper tribunal to decide
nice questions of human rights and constitutional
interpretations, the political status of every citizen under our
national flag, is the Congress of the United States. This is your
right and duty, clearly set forth in article 1, section 5, of the
Constitution, for how can you decide the competency and
qualifications of electors for members of either House without
settling the fundamental question on what the right of suffrage
is based? All power centers in the people. Our Federal
Constitution, as well as that of every State, opens with the
words, "We, the people." However this phrase may have been
understood and acted on in the past, women to-day are awake to
the fact that they constitute one half the American people; that
they have the right to demand that the constitution shall secure
to them "justice," "domestic tranquillity," and the "blessings of
liberty." So long as women are not represented in the government
they are in a condition of tutelage, perpetual minority, slavery.
You smile at the idea of women being slaves in this country.
Benjamin Franklin said long ago, "that they who have no voice in
making the laws, or in the election of those who administer them,
do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who
have votes and to their representatives." I might occupy hours in
quoting grand liberal sentiments from the fathers--Madison,
Jefferson, Otis, and Adams--in favor of individual
representation. I might quote equally noble words from the
statesmen of our day--Seward, Sumner, Wade, Trumbull, Schurz,
Thurman, Groesbeck, and Julian--to prove "that no just government
can be formed without the consent of the governed"; that "the
ballot is the columbiad of our political life, and every man who
holds it is a full-armed Monitor." But what do lofty utterances
and logical arguments avail so long as men, blinded by old
prejudices and customs, fail to see their application to the
women by their side? Alas! gentlemen, women are your subjects.
Your own selfish interests are too closely interwoven for you to
feel their degradation, and they are too dependent to reveal
themselves to you in their nobler aspirations, their native
dignity. Did Southern slaveholders ever understand the
humiliations of slavery to a proud man like Frederick Douglass?
Did the coarse, low-bred master ever doubt his capacity to govern
the negro better than he could govern himself? Do cow-boys,
hostlers, pot-house politicians ever doubt their capacity to
prescribe woman's sphere better than she could herself? We have
yet to learn that, with the wonderful progress in art, science,
education, morals, religion, and government we have witnessed in
the last century, woman has not been standing still, but has been
gradually advancing to an equal place with the man by her side,
and stands to-day his peer in the world of thought.
American womanhood has never worn iron shoes, burned on the
funeral pile, or skulked behind a mask in a harem, yet, though
cradled in liberty, with the same keen sense of justice and
equality that man has, she is still bound by law in the swaddling
bands of an old barbarism. Though the world has been steadily
advancing in political science, and step by step recognizing the
rights of new classes, yet we stand to-day talking of precedents,
authorities, laws, and constitutions, as if each generation were
not better able to judge of its wants than the one that preceded
it. If we are to be governed in all things by the men of the
eighteenth century, and the twentieth by the nineteenth, and so
on, the world will be always governed by dead men. The exercise
of political power by woman is by no means a new idea. It has
already been exercised in many countries, and under governments
far less liberal in theory than our own. As to this being an
innovation on the laws of nature, we may safely trust nature at
all times to vindicate herself. In England, where the right to
vote is based on property and not person, the _feme sole_
freeholder has exercised her right all along. In her earliest
history we find records of decisions in courts of her right to do
so, and discussions on that point by able lawyers and judges. The
_feme sole_ voted in person; when married, her husband
represented her property, and voted in her stead; and the moment
the breath went out of his body, she assumed again the burden of
disposing of her own income and the onerous duty of representing
herself in the Government. Thus England is always consistent;
property being the basis of suffrage, is always represented. Here
suffrage is based on "persons," and yet one-half our people are
wholly unrepresented.
We have declared in favor of a government of the people, for the
people, by the people, the whole people. Why not begin the
experiment? If suffrage is a natural right, we claim it in common
with all citizens; if it is a political right, that the few in
power may give or take away, then it is clearly the duty of the
ruling powers to extend it in all cases as the best interests of
the State require. No thinking man would admit that educated,
refined womanhood would not constitute a most desirable element
and better represent the whole humanitarian idea than a
government of men alone.
The objections to Mr. Butler's bill, extending the provisions of
the enforcement act to women, all summed up, are these:
1st. This is too short a cut to liberty. It is taking the nation
by storm. The people are not ready for it. The slower process of
a XVI. Amendment would be safer, surer, and do more toward
educating the people for the final result. To all of which I
answer, the women at least are ready and as well prepared for
enfranchisement as were the slaves of the Southern plantation.
There could have been no plan devised to educate the people so
rapidly as the startling announcement in the Woodhull Memorial
that women already had the right to vote. It has roused wise men
to thought on the question, stirred the bar and bench of the
nation, with the prospect of a new and fruitful source of
litigation; it has inspired woman with fresh hope that the day of
her enfranchisement is at hand, given the press of the country
solid arguments for their consideration, and changed the tone of
the speeches in our conventions from whinings about brutal
husbands, stolen babies, and special laws, to fundamental
principles of human rights.
This question has been up for discussion in this country over
thirty years; it split the first anti-slavery society in two, was
a firebrand in the world's convention, and has been a disturbing
element in temperance, educational and constitutional conventions
ever since, and it is high time it took a short cut to its final
consummation. There have been many shorter cuts to liberty than
this is likely to be, even with a declaratory act at this
session. Why multiply amendments when we have liberty and justice
enough in the spirit and letter of the Constitution as it now is
to protect every citizen under this Government?
The simple opinion of a Chief Justice, a century ago, without any
change in legislation, settled in one hour as great a question of
human rights as we now submit to your consideration. Lord
Mansfield, presiding in the Court of Queen's Bench, listening to
the arguments in the fatuous Somerset case, with higher light and
knowledge, suddenly awoke to the truth that by the laws of
England, a slave could not breathe on that soil, and he so
decided, and the negro was discharged. Slavery was abolished in
Massachusetts in the same way, without any amendment of her
constitution or new legislation, simply by the decision of her
Chief Justice. So you perceive, honorable gentlemen, we have two
precedents for the "short cut" we propose to liberty.
2d. Some object that it was not the "intention" of the framers of
the original Constitution, nor of the amendments, to enfranchise
woman. When ordinary men, in their ordinary condition, talk of
the "intentions" of great men specially inspired to utter great
political truths, they talk of what they can not know or
understand. When by some moral revolution men are cut loose from
all their old moorings and get beyond the public sentiment that
once bound them, with no immediate selfish interest to
subserve--as, for instance, our fathers in leaving England, or
the French Communes in the late war--in hardship and suffering
they dig down to the hard-pan of universal principles, and in
their highest inspirational moments proclaim justice, liberty,
equality for all.
Visiting Chicago not long since, I saw great pieces of rock of
the most wonderful mineral combination--gold, silver, glass,
iron, layer after layer, all welded beautifully together, and
that done in the conflagration of a single night which would have
taken ages of growth to accomplish in the ordinary rocky
formations. Just so revolutions in the moral world suddenly mould
ideas, clear, strong, grand, that centuries might have slumbered
over in silence; ideas that strike minds ready for them with the
quickness and vividness of the lightning's flash. It is in such
ways and under such conditions that constitutions and great
principles of jurisprudence are written; the letter and spirit
are ever on the side of liberty; and highly organized minds,
governed by principle, invariably give true interpretations;
while others, whose law is expediency, coarse and material in all
their conceptions, will interpret law, Bible, constitution,
everything, in harmony with the public sentiment of their class
and condition. And here is the reason why men differ in their
interpretations of law. They differ in their organizations; they
see everything from a different standpoint. Could ideas of
justice, and liberty, and equality be more grandly and
beautifully expressed than in the preamble to our Federal
Constitution?
It is an insult to those Revolutionary heroes to say that, after
seven years' struggle with the despotic ideas of the old world,
in the first hour of victory, with their souls all on fire with
new-found freedom, they sat down like so many pettifogging
lawyers, and drew up a little instrument for the express purpose
of robbing women and negroes of their inalienable rights. Does
the preamble look like it? Women did vote in America, at the time
the Constitution was adopted. If the framers of the Constitution
meant they should not, why did they not distinctly say so? The
women of the country, having at last roused up to their rights
and duties as citizens, have a word to say as to the "intentions"
of the fathers. It is not safe to leave the "intentions" of the
Pilgrim fathers, or the Heavenly Father, wholly to masculine
interpretation, for by Bible and Constitution alike, women have
thus far been declared the subjects, the slaves of men.
But able jurists tell us that the "intention" of the framers of a
document must be judged by the letter of the law. Following this
rule the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia has decided
that the XIV. Amendment does affect the status of women; that it
advances them to full citizenship, and clothes them with the
capacity to become voters. The exact language of Judge Cartter,
who spoke for the court, is as follows:
All that has been accomplished by this amendment to the
Constitution, or its previous provisions, is to distinguish
them (women) from aliens, and make them capable of becoming
voters. In giving expression to my judgment, this clause
does advance them to full citizenship, and clothes them with
the capacity to become voters.
If so much has been done, we have already gone beyond the
"intention" of the framers of the amendments, if, as some say,
they did not intend to touch the status of woman at all. But with
or without intent, a law stands as it is written--"_Lex ita
scripta est_." The true rule of interpretation, says Charles
Sumner, under the National Constitution, especially since its
additional amendments, is that anything for human rights is
constitutional. "No learning in the books, no skill in the
courts, no sharpness of forensic dialectics, no cunning in
splitting hairs, can impair the vigor of the constitutional
principle which I announce. Whatever you enact for human rights
is constitutional, and this is the supreme law of the land,
anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding."
SUSAN B. ANTHONY said--_Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee_: It
is not argument nor Constitution that you need; you have already
had those. I shall therefore refer to existing facts. Prior to
the war the plan of extending suffrage was by State action, and
it was our boast that the National Constitution did not contain a
word that could be construed into a barrier against woman's right
to vote. But at the close of the war Congress lifted the question
of suffrage for men above State power, and by the amendments
prohibited the deprivation of suffrage to any citizen by any
State. When the XIV. Amendment was first proposed in Congress, we
rushed to you with petitions, praying you not to insert the word
"male" in the second clause. Our best woman-suffrage men, on the
floor of Congress, said to us the insertion of the word there
puts up no new barrier against woman; therefore do not embarrass
us, but wait until the negro question is settled. So the XIV.
Amendment, with the word "male," was adopted. Then, when the XV.
Amendment was presented without the word "sex," we again
petitioned and protested, and again our friends declared to us
that the absence of that word was no hindrance to us, and again
they begged us to wait until they had finished the work of the
war. "After we have freed the negro, and given him a vote, we
will take up your case." But have they done as they promised?
When we come before you, asking protection under the new
guarantees of the Constitution, the same men say to us our only
plan is to wait the action of Congress and State Legislatures in
the adoption of a XVI. Amendment that shall make null and void
the insertion of the word "male" in the XIV., and supply the want
of the word "sex" in the XV. Such tantalization endured by
yourselves, or by any class of men, would have wrought rebellion,
and in the end a bloody revolution. It is only the friendly
relations that exist between the sexes that has prevented any
such result from this injustice to women.
Gentlemen, I should be sure of your decision could you but
realize the fact that we, who have been battling for our rights,
now more than twenty years, have felt, and now feel, precisely as
you would under such circumstances. Men never do realize this.
One of the most ardent lovers of freedom (Senator Sumner), said
to me, two winters ago, after our hearing before the Committee of
the District, "Miss Anthony, I never realized before that you, or
any woman, could feel the disgrace, the degradation, of
disfranchisement precisely as I should if my fellow-citizens had
conspired to take from me my right to vote." We have petitioned
for our rights year after year. Although I am a Quaker and take
no oath, yet I have made a most solemn "affirmation" that I would
never again beg my rights, but that I would come up to Congress
each year, and demand the recognition of them under the
guarantees of the National Constitution.
What we ask of the Republican party, is simply to take down its
own bars. The facts in Wyoming show how a Republican party can
exist in that Territory. Before women voted, there was never a
Republican elected to office; after their enfranchisement, the
first election sent a Republican to Congress, and seven
Republicans to their Territorial Legislature. Thus the nucleus of
a Republican party there was formed by the enfranchisement of
women. The Democrats seeing this, are now determined to again
disfranchise the women. Can you Republicans so utterly stultify
yourselves, can you so entirely work against yourselves, as to
refuse us a Declaratory Law? Can you longer deny us the
protection we ask? We pray you to report immediately, as Mrs.
Hooker has said, "favorably, if you can, adversely, if you must."
We can wait no longer.
In the House, on January 24, 1872, the following discussion took
place:
Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts.--I ask unanimous consent, out of
the usual course of the rules, to present a petition.
The SPEAKER.--Is there objection? The Chair hears none.
Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts.--I am honored with the duty of
presenting a petition for a declaratory law to assure the right
of suffrage to the women citizens of the United States. They
believe their absolute constitutional right is to vote. They here
and now desire to bring to the attention of Congress the
necessity of passing a new law declaring and executing that
right. They claim such a law in two views: first, as of right,
and secondly, as of expediency to the nation. They insist that
this their right ought to be secured to them by law, and they
insist also that it is expedient for the Republic that this right
should be accorded to them.
The mothers of the land, who shall form the characters of all its
citizens through their teaching in childhood, giving direction to
the thoughts which shall hereafter govern the land, may well
claim that it is expedient that they shall have a voice in making
the laws which govern them, which will give them greater freedom
of action than they now have, which will afford them higher
opportunities for noble culture than they now have, and raise
their thoughts to a plane worthy of the generation that shall
come after us, which must in all its social and moral qualities
take its impress from their teachings, so that the men of the
land shall then be as the women of the land now are; and as you
elevate and ennoble woman, in so much, in a greater ratio, will
our sons be better fitted for the great duties and
responsibilities of the future. No stream shall rise higher than
its fountain.
Sir, I recognize the fact that I have no right at this time to
trespass on the business and indulgence of the House to argue
the momentous question involved in this memorial, but I present
this petition of 35,000 women of America, from almost every State
in the Union. From every class and condition of life, from the
highest and most refined, and from the humblest and most lowly,
all are represented here, all asking that their claim to what
they conceive to be their greatest right, and which we claim to
be the inalienable right of every male citizen shall be granted
to them.
The unanimity with which they come here; the fact that without
organization, almost as a matter of spontaneity, 35,000 names
should have been gathered and sent to this Capitol to a
committee, whose voluntary duty it was made to receive them; the
fact that other names are now coming in at the rate of some 500 a
day; that from California 10,000 more are on the way, all speak
to the Representatives of the people in accents that can not be
misunderstood, that here is a great and necessary reform which
calls for the fullest consideration and the promptest action of
the Congress of the United States.
They are not to be told that this is an innovation, that this is
a new thing. Division of property between the husband and the
wife was a greater innovation upon the feudal law, which is the
foundation of our law as regards women, and a very much greater
innovation than this will be. That in the parent State from which
we come women have had the right to act in public affairs; from
the fact that in that parent State a woman is at the head of
public affairs, seems to point to us that women may safely be
trusted with the right to vote.
I have desired to say this much, in presenting this petition, in
order that it may be brought to the notice of the House and the
country; that it may take the same place in the consideration of
the people that in a not very far day in the past anti-slavery
petitions took, which founded the great party which now has
control of the Government of this country. There was a great
reform, beginning in the little, urged on by petitions, not so
numerous in its early days, and hardly so numerous in its later
days, as this, scarcely arriving to the dignity of numbers of
applicants which characterizes the petition which I now present;
and although, when a great moneyed interest was at stake, it took
years to bring that freedom which those petitions asked for, yet
let me assure the House of Representatives that in my judgment,
much sooner, and as certainly as the sun rolls around in its
course a few more times, just so sure will the right asked for in
this petition be accorded to the women citizens of the United
States.
I ask that this petition, which I propose simply to show to the
House in its large volume (unrolling the petition), may be
referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, to whom this subject
has already been referred.
Mr. ELDRIDGE.--I ask that the petition be read.
The SPEAKER.--With the names?
Mr. ELDRIDGE.--Certainly.
The SPEAKER.--That would require unanimous consent.
Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts.--I pray that may not be done,
because I promised the Committee on Appropriations not to take
much time. I ask that the petition simply be read.
The Clerk read as follows:
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States in Congress assembled:_
The undersigned, citizens of the United States, pray your
honorable bodies that in any proposed amendment to the
Constitution which may come before you in regard to suffrage
in the District of Columbia or any Territory, the right of
voting may be given to women on the same terms as to men.
The petition was then referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
IN THE HOUSE, JANUARY 29, 1872.--MR. PARKER, of Missouri,
introduced a bill (H. R. No. 1277) to allow women to vote and
hold office in the Territories of the United States; which was
read a first and second time, referred to the Committee on the
Judiciary, and ordered to be printed.
IN UNITED STATES SENATE ON JANUARY 29, 1872.--THE VICE-PRESIDENT
said:--The Chair has been requested to present the protest of
ladies of the county of Munroe, Indiana, signed by Mrs. Morton C.
Hunter, Mrs. A. Y. Moore, and several hundred other ladies,
remonstrating against an extension of the right of suffrage to
women, "because the Holy Scripture inculcates a different and for
us a higher sphere, apart from public life; because as women we
find a full measure of duties, cares, and responsibilities
devolving upon us, and we are therefore unwilling to bear other
and heavier burdens, and those unsuited to our physical
organization; because we hold that an extension of suffrage would
be adverse to the interests of the working women of the country,
with whom we heartily sympathize: because these changes must
introduce a fruitful element of discord in the existing marriage
relation, which would tend to the infinite detriment of children,
and increase the already alarming prevalence of divorce through
the land; because no general law affecting the condition of all
women should be framed to meet exceptional discontent." This
memorial will be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
The National Woman Suffrage Association held its May Anniversary of
1872 in New York, at Steinway Hall. As can be seen by the call,[149]
the intention was to form a political party, but the delegates, after
some discussion, decided that nominees without electors were
incongruous. As usual a large number of States were represented by
delegates, California sending Laura de Force Gordon, and Oregon,
Abigail Scott Duniway. This convention was chiefly remarkable as being
the first at which the presidency changed hands--Miss Anthony, instead
of Mrs. Stanton, being elected to fill the position of chief officer.
A delegation, consisting of Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. De Force Gordon, and
Miss Anthony, was sent by the National Woman Suffrage Association to
the Presidential Conventions held by the Liberal Republicans at
Cincinnati, the Democrats at Baltimore, and the Republicans at
Philadelphia. The fruit of all the earnest labor of this delegation
was a splinter in the Republican platform. This, however, was
something to be grateful for, as it was the first mention of woman in
the platform of either of the great political parties during our
National existence. On the strength of this plank the following
address was issued:
GRANT AND WILSON--APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA FROM THE
NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.
Women of the United States, the hour for political action has
come. For the first time in the history of our country woman has
been recognized in the platform of a large and dominant party.
Philadelphia has spoken and woman is no longer ignored. She is
now officially recognized as a part of the body politic. The
fourteenth plank of its platform declares:
The Republican party mindful of its obligations to the loyal
women of America expresses gratification that wider avenues
of employment have been open to women, and it farther
declares that her demands for additional rights should be
treated with respectful consideration.
We are told that this plank does not say much, that in fact it is
only a "splinter;" and our "liberal" friends warn us not to rely
upon it as a promise of the ballot to woman. What it is, we know
full better than others. We recognize its meagerness; we see in
it the timidity of politicians; but beyond and through it all, we
farther see its promise of the future. We see in it the thin
edge of the entering wedge which shall break woman's slavery in
pieces and make us at last a nation truly free--a nation in which
the caste of sex shall fall down by the caste of color, and
humanity alone shall be the criterion of all human rights. The
Republican party has been the party of ideas, of progress. Under
its leadership, the nation came safely through the fiery ordeal
of the rebellion; under it slavery was destroyed; under it
manhood suffrage was established. The women of the country have
long looked to it in hope, and not in vain; for to-day we are
launched by it into the political arena, and the Republican party
must hereafter fight our battles for us. This great party, this
progressive party, having taken the initiative step, will never
go back on its record. It needed this new and vital issue to keep
it in life, for Cincinnati indorsed its work up to this hour; the
constitutional amendments, the payment of the bonds in gold, the
civil service reform, the restoration of the States. It thanked
the soldiers and sailors of the Republic, it proposed lands to
actual settlers. The Republican party went up higher; it
remembered all citizens. The widows and orphans of the soldiers
and sailors were not forgotten; it acknowledged its obligation to
the loyal women of the Republic, and to the demands for
additional rights, of all women, whatever their class, color, or
birth, it promised "respectful consideration." Its second plank
declared that "complete liberty and exact equality in the
enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights should be
established and maintained throughout the Union by efficient and
appropriate State and Federal legislation." These two planks are
the complement of each other, and are the promise of exact and
equal justice to woman. They were the work of radical woman
suffrage Republicans--of Wilson, Sargent, Loring, Claflin, Hoar,
Fairchild, and others. They were accepted by the candidates.
General Grant, in his letter, expresses his desire to see "the
time when the title of 'citizen' shall carry with it all the
protection and privilege to the humblest, that it does to the
most exalted." His course since his elevation to the Presidency
has always been favorable to increased rights for women. He has
officially recognized their competency, and has given them many
government positions. Senator Wilson is an old and staunch
advocate of woman suffrage, and his letter in pointed terms
refers to the recognition given woman by his party, and says, "to
her new demands it extends the hand of grateful recognition, and
it commends her demands for additional rights to the calm and
careful consideration of the nation." And, too, thus early in the
campaign, the strongest men of the party, among whom are Forney,
of the Philadelphia _Press_, Gerrit Smith, Bowen, of the New York
_Independent_, and President White, of Cornell University, speak
of this recognition as introducing a new era into politics.
While the old and tried Republican party in its platform and
candidates thus gives woman assurance that her claim to equal
political rights is to be respected, the other party in the field
gives her no promise either in its platform or the letters of its
nominees. The Liberal Republican party is a new party; it has no
record; it has done no work; it is wholly untried; it ignores
women; and by its silence in regard to the equal rights of
one-half of the people--the most important question now in the
political horizon--it proves itself unworthy of its name,
unworthy of woman's confidence, and unworthy of the votes of
truly liberal men. In regard to its candidates, Gratz Brown, once
our friend, has practically denied his record. Horace Greeley,
its chief nominee, has for years been our most bitter opponent.
Both by tongue and pen he has heaped abuse, ridicule, and
misrepresentation upon our leading women, while the whole power
of the _Tribune_ has been used to crush out our great reform. And
now that he is a candidate for election to the highest office in
the country, he still continues his bitter and hostile course
toward one half of its citizens. He presses the iron-heel of his
despotism upon their liberties; and, in answer to our appeals, he
says he "neither desires our help nor believes us capable of
giving any."
What can liberty expect from such a man? What can woman hope from
such a party? Women of the Republic, you can not in self-respect
give your aid to such nominees; you can not in self-respect work
for such a party. It has repulsed you, pushed you back, said to
you "go hence."
The Republican party, with Grant and Wilson as its
standard-bearers, opens its doors to you. By its fourteenth plank
it invites your aid and co-operation.
Shall it not have it? Women of the South, will you not work for
your own freedom? Women of the North, will you not strive for
your own enfranchisement?
There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.
But we must take the current when it serves our turn,
Or lose our ventures.
For us to-day this tide has risen; for us to-day the current
serves our turn. Let us lay aside our party preferences. Let us
one and all forget our many grievances of the past; let us forget
the many times we have been ignored, buffeted, and spurned by
politicians. Let us throw our whole influence of voice and pen
into this campaign, and in making it a success for the Republican
party, make it a success for ourselves.
And now an especial word to the Women Suffrage organizations of
the country. Prepare to hold mass meetings in all the large
cities of your States; be ready to co-operate with Republican
committees; send into the election districts your best women
speakers, circulate addresses and documents throughout every
school district; persuade fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons
to work and vote for Grant and Wilson; offer your own votes, as
in many election districts women's votes have already been
received and counted; in every possible way throw the whole
weight of your influence on the side of the Republican party. By
persistent, united action for one party during this Presidential
canvass, the women suffragists of the nation will make themselves
felt as a power by both.