The word "men" in that connection does not mean males, but it

means the human family; that all human beings are created equal.

This will hardly be denied. I remember it was formerly contended

that the Declaration of Independence in this clause did not

include black people. It was argued learnedly and frequently, in

this Chamber and out of it, that the history surrounding the

adoption of that declaration showed that white men only were

intended. But that was not the general judgment of the people of

this country. It was held to embrace all colors and all races. It

embraces both sexes; not simply males, but females. All human

beings are created equal. That is the foundation principle of our

Government. It then goes on to say:

That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted

among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of

the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes

destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to

alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government,

laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its

powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to

effect their safety and happiness.

If these rights are fundamental, if they belong to all human

beings as such, if they are God-given rights, then all persons

having these God-given rights have a right to use the means for

their preservation; the means is government: "To secure these

rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just

powers from the consent of the governed." I ask you whether the

women of this country have ever given their consent to this

Government? Have they the means of giving their consent to it?

The colored men had not given their consent to it. Why? Because

they had not the right to vote. There is but one way that the

consent to government can be given, and that is by a right to a

voice in that government, and that is the right to vote. I know

it was argued in times past in regard to the South that the

master gave the consent on the part of his slaves; that he

represented them; that he had their good at heart, and that he

gave their consent. We denied that. We know it was not true. Now,

sir, to come down to the main question, I ask if the women of

this country have given their consent to this Government? You say

they are consenting. I say they are assenting to it, the majority

of them; but they have no means of giving their consent to this

Government within the theory of the Declaration of Independence;

and they can not consent to it unless they have a voice, have a

right to vote "yes" or to vote "no."

What was the old theory of the common law? It was that the father

represented the interests of his daughter, the husband of his

wife, and the son of his mother. They were deprived of all legal

rights in a state of marriage, because it was said that they were

taken care of by those who stood to them in these relations; but

they never were taken care of. The husband never took care of the

rights of his wife at common law; the father never took care of

the rights of his daughter; the son never took care of the rights

of his mother. The husband at common law was a tyrant and a

despot. Why, sir, he absorbed the legal existence of his wife at

common law; she could not make a contract except as his agent.

Her legal existence was destroyed, and the very moment the

marriage was consummated he became the absolute owner of all her

personal property. What was the theory of it? The old theory of

the common law, as given in elementary writers, was that if the

wife was allowed to own property separate from her husband it

would make a distinct interest; it would break up and destroy the

harmony of the marriage relation; the marriage relation must be a

unit; there must be but one interest; and therefore the legal

existence of the wife must be merged into that of the husband. I

believe a writer as late as Blackstone laid it down that it would

not do to permit the wife to hold any property in severalty from

her husband, because it would give to her an interest apart from

his.

We have got over that. It took us one hundred and fifty years to

get past that, and from year to year in this country, especially

in the last twenty-five years, we have added to the rights of the

wife in regard to property and in many other respects. We now

give to her a legal status in this country that she has not in

England or in any European country. She has now a legal status

that she had not twenty-five years ago, and progress is still

going on in that direction. While it was argued by old

law-writers and old law-makers that to allow women to hold

property separate from their husbands was to break up the harmony

of the marriage relation, we know practically that it has not

worked that way. We know that as we have made woman independent,

recognized her legal existence as a wife, secured her rights, it

has elevated her. We know that instead of disturbing the marriage

relation, it has improved it constantly; and I believe that the

woman has the same natural right to a voice in this Government

that the man has. If we believe in the theory of our Government

that must be so. I believe that as you make woman the equal of

man in regard to civil rights, rights of property, rights of

person, political rights, you elevate her, you make her happier;

and as you do that you elevate the male sex also.

This idea that women will be degraded by allowing them to go to

the polls comes down to us from other countries and from remote

periods of civilization. Why, sir, in countries now that claim to

be civilized it is said that to allow the wife or the mother to

go to the dinner-table with the husband and meet his guests face

to face degrades her and degrades them. In some countries a woman

must not appear on the streets unless she is so closely veiled

that she can not be recognized; for it is said to allow her to go

upon the streets barefaced or so thinly veiled that she can be

recognized, subjects her to insult and degrades her; and in some

countries to-day it destroys her character as effectually as

other things would destroy her character in our country. We know

that is a prejudice; and the idea that woman will be degraded by

giving her the right of suffrage is a remnant of that same idea.

It is born of the same parentage. It has no sounder reason for it

than these other nations have. I believe that to give women the

right of suffrage would elevate the character of suffrage in this

country. It would make the polls more decent, more respectable

than they are now. Why, sir, fifty years ago the idea of women

attending political meetings was intolerable to a great many

people. The idea of her going to lectures of a scientific

character was thought to be out of all reason. But now women go

to political meetings. In almost every canvass in my State there

are nearly as many women who attend the meetings as men. What is

the effect of it? Are they degraded? On the contrary, their

presence elevates the character of those meetings. It is an

assurance of peace, it is a security against rowdyism and

violence, because in this country men have to be very low if they

are guilty of rowdyism or blackguardism in the presence of women.

We have a habitual respect for them; and I can testify from my

own experience in politics that the attendance of women upon

political meetings, so far from degrading them or affecting men

injuriously, has elevated the character of political assemblages,

has made them more respectable, has secured to them immunity from

violence, and from degrading scenes and blackguardism, and so it

will be at the polls. When a woman is allowed to go to the polls

and vote her sentiments and convictions, it will have the same

effect there that her presence has in society. There is not a bit

of doubt about it. And there will be no more discord in the

family circle than there was when, in violation and against the

old principles of the common law, you gave a woman the right to

retain her legal existence after marriage and to own property

separate and apart from her husband. These old notions have been

giving away one after another little by little, and we shall

finally come down to the true theory of our Government in all

respects, and that is to allow every person, man or woman, who is

to be affected and controlled by the Government, whose interest

or whose happiness is to be controlled by or depends on the

administration of that Government, to have an equal voice in that

Government. Therefore I give my vote heartily and cheerfully for

this amendment.

Mr. FLANAGAN.--I confess, sir, that I was delighted when my

distinguished friend from California presented this amendment.

Unlike my distinguished friend from Indiana, however, I am a new

convert to this doctrine. He has been of this opinion long since,

I am gratified to learn. I have reflected much on this subject,

and within the last few months I have settled down in my

determination, and that is to advocate this great measure. Why

have I so recently arrived at that conclusion? In the last few

months the women's war upon the whisky trade and intemperance at

large has prompted me thus to declare unequivocally for them and

their glorious efforts. It is from them and with them that I

hope, judging from their success up to this time, to save this

great Nation from the worst curse known to the human family, that

of intemperance; and I believe it is they and only they through

Almighty God who can do it. Man has been found incompetent and

unable to perform that great and desired object. And gratified am

I to receive the idea from my distinguished friend, that if women

had the right to vote they would not be expelled from many

pursuits as they now are, or be compelled to go upon the streets

as they now are, seeking in self-defense the preservation of man.

The effect of this measure on politics has been so well described

by the distinguished Senator from Indiana that I need not comment

upon that branch of the subject. They would tend to purify the

atmosphere morally, either at the ballot-box or anywhere else, I

care not where it may be. They are more directly interested in

good morals, in the temperance of the world and everything

bearing on that line, than the husbands are. I think it is a

right they are entitled to in every sense of the word, and from

this time henceforth I am a woman's rights man.

Mr. MERRIMON.--Mr. President, I will not yield to any Senator in

the measure of my respect for and admiration of woman; I do not

propose by any act or word of mine to detract from her dignity or

to diminish the pleasures she may enjoy in this life; but I claim

the right to be the judge, in conjunction with herself, of what

is best calculated to elevate and protect her dignity and promote

her happiness. I do not believe that woman herself believes that

her dignity would be elevated or her happiness promoted by

putting her upon an exact equality, civilly or politically, in

both points of view, with man; and very strong and controlling

evidence of that fact is, that neither in this country nor in any

country has woman--I mean the great mass of them--ever demanded

such a state of things. Our Government has existed for about a

hundred years, and the number of females who have demanded to be

invested with equal political and civil rights and to be placed

upon an exact equality with the male portion of our population,

compared with those who have remained in retirement, who have

staid at their homes and lived and ruled within that sphere in

which it seems God intended that they should rule, is as a drop

in the sea. So it appears in this conclusive way that the women

of America do not demand this state of things. They do not

protect themselves by votes, nor do they need to do so. They

shape the man when he is a child, rule him with the power of

love, and thus they shape, affect, and often control the

destinies of men, nations, and empires. I do not propose,

however, to go into a discussion in detail of what the women

desire or what we ought to grant. My main purpose is to reply

very briefly to some remarks that fell from the honorable Senator

from Indiana [Mr. Morton] in reference to the Declaration of

Independence. I differ, with all respect, from the revolutionary

construction which he puts upon that instrument. It is true, as

he says, that the Declaration of Independence provides in these

words:

[Illustration: Ellen Clark Sargent.]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are

created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with

certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,

liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Now, I maintain in the first place that we must put a reasonable

construction on those words. Plainly, to my mind, all men are

created equal in point of natural rights, certainly not equal in

point of civil rights, not equal in point of political rights. By

nature man has no civil or political rights. Natural rights are

one sort of rights; civil rights are another sort of rights; and

political rights are a third sort of rights. Every human being

has a natural right to life and liberty; but every human being

has not a natural right to government. He has not a natural right

to the civil rights conferred and defined by a system of

government. When he becomes subject to civil government he

surrenders a part of his natural rights--agrees that civil

government may regulate these and then enjoys the benefit of

civil rights conferred by civil government; but then he does not

thereby necessarily become entitled to political rights. He can

not become entitled to political rights until they shall be

conferred upon him by government.

Mr. MORTON.--Will the Senator cite what follows?

Mr. MERRIMON.--When our fathers adopted the Declaration of

Independence, and declared these general truths, they had

reference to the natural rights of man, and only to those rights.

They well knew the distinctions to which I have adverted, had

them in view and acted upon them, as I shall now proceed to show.

Mr. MORTON.--It says that "to secure these rights" referred to,

the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,

"governments were instituted which derive their just powers from

the consent of the governed." Now, I ask if women are a part of

"the governed?"

Mr. MERRIMON.--Yes, sir; they are a part of "the governed," and I

say that they have not only assented, but they have consented to

this system of government.

Mr. MORTON.--How?

Mr. MERRIMON.--I say so, because they have never raised their

voice in opposition to it; they have given for nearly a century

their highest moral sanction to it; we have had a moral

expression from the American women with a degree of unanimity and

cordiality that is striking. I am warranted in saying that nine

hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand have given their

moral assent, in as full a measure as it was possible for them

to do, to our system of government. They have sustained it under

all circumstances with their love, their hands, and their hearts,

with their smiles and their tears, educated their children to

love it and to die for it. They have manifested their love for it

in every form, it has never appeared, be it said to their honor,

that they disliked or disapproved it. They have had the right

under the bill of rights of every State in the Union, they have

had the right under the Constitution of the Union at all times to

memorialize the States and to memorialize Congress, protesting

against any abridgment of their natural or civil rights, if they

deemed there was any abridgment of those rights. But I repeat

what I said a while ago, the number who have thus memorialized

Congress and the State governments, compared with those who have

not opened their mouths on this subject, is as a drop in the sea

compared to the waste of waters. They have yielded their assent

to this system of government; they have ratified it by every

means in their power outside of exercising the political right to

vote. I know that there are a few women in the country who

complain, but those who complain, compared with those who do not

complain, are as one to a million.

But to get back to the point. Those who established the

Declaration of Independence gave an exposition to their view of

it in the formation and administration of the several State

governments they adopted. For years in those State governments

they provided civil and political distinctions and

discriminations; they provided that certain classes of white men

should enjoy certain classes of rights, that certain other men

should not enjoy the same rights. They provided that the male

population should enjoy rights that the female should not enjoy.

They provided that the white race should be free and that the

black race should be slaves. They did that, and according to

their action and the organic laws which they adopted, they said

in the most solemn manner they could, that that system of

government carried out the purposes they meant to declare and

define in the Declaration of Independence. They not only did

that, but they had a right to do it, nor was it inconsistent with

the declaration, for it referred only to natural rights, and when

they instituted governments they provided civil and political

rights, and therefore there was no contradiction and no practical

absurdity as is suggested. Their theory was practical and adapted

to the comprehension and protection of human rights. They were

not visionary theorists but practical statesmen. They were not

radical but conservative in their notions of government. Not only

the State governments did at first what I have indicated, but

when the American people came to establish the Constitution of

the United States they again provided in the Constitution a

distinction and discrimination between the male and the female

portion of the American people; they provided that the males

should hold the offices, that the males should have the right to

vote; and not only that, but by way of further exposition of

their views of the nature, purposes, and meaning of the

Declaration, they provided that the black race should be slaves.

That Constitution recognizes negro slavery in three several

provisions.

Mr. MORTON.--Does the Senator speak of the Constitution of the

United States?

Mr. MERRIMON.--Yes, sir. In the matter of representation, slavery

was expressly provided for; it was recognized in another

provision relative to prohibiting the importation of certain

persons until after the year 1808; and in another provision which

provided that those held to labor, escaping to another State,

should be surrendered to their masters on demand. The

Constitution of the Union, made in pursuance of this very

Declaration of Independence and conforming to it, recognized a

distinction between the white race and the black race, and

recognized and provided distinctions between the male and the

female portions of the people of the American Union, and thereby

in the most absolute manner drew the civil and political

distinctions that have been kept up in one way or another from

that day to this, and which I contend, with a view to good

government, so far as the male and female portions of the

American people go, ought to be kept up and perpetuated. It seems

to me that any one who will take into consideration the facts to

which I have called attention must see that the broad, radical

construction which the Senator puts on the Declaration of

Independence can not be sustained by reason, authority, or

practice.

But, sir, I want now to refer to the position taken by the

Senator from California [Mr. Sargent]. He says that under the

Constitution by the XIII., XIV. and XV. articles of Amendment,

Congress has no power to deprive the females of this country of

the right of suffrage. That I deny as emphatically as I can. I

read from Paschal's Annotated Constitution, p. 65:

18. But citizenship of the United States, or of a State,

does not of itself give the right to vote; nor, _e

converso_, does the want of it prevent a State from

conferring the right of suffrage. (Scott _vs._ Sandford, 19

Howard, 422.)

The right of suffrage is the right to choose officers of the

Government, and it does not carry along the right of

citizenship. (Bates on Citizenship, 4, 5.) Our laws make no

provision for the loss or deprivation of citizenship.

(_Id._)

The word "citizen" is not mentioned in this clause, and its

idea is excluded in the qualifications for suffrage in all

the State constitutions. (_Id._, 5, 6.)

Mr. SARGENT.--What clause is he commenting on?

Mr. MERRIMON.--He is commenting on section 2 of article 1. He

says further:

American citizenship does not necessarily depend upon nor

co-exist with the legal capacity to hold office or the right

of suffrage, either or both of them.

No person in the United States did ever exercise the right

of suffrage in virtue of the naked, unassisted fact of

citizenship. (_Id._)

There is a distinction between political rights and

political powers. The former belong to all citizens alike,

and cohere in the very name and nature of citizenship. The

latter (voting and holding office) does not belong to all

citizens alike, nor to any citizen merely in virtue of

citizenship. His power always depends upon extraneous facts

and superadded qualifications; which facts and

qualifications are common to both citizens and aliens.

(Bates on Citizenship.)

I read these hasty citations of authority which happen to be

convenient to show that there is a distinction between political

power and political rights, and in further support of the

distinction between citizenship, or civil rights, and political

rights.

Mr. SARGENT.--Will my friend allow me a moment?

Mr. MERRIMON.--Yes, sir.

Mr. SARGENT.--The author there is commenting on the second

section of the first article of the Constitution, and I think his

reasoning on that upon general principles may be correct, at any

rate it is in consonance with the authority that he cites. But

it will be observed that by the XIV. article, section 1, it is

provided that--

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.

And then it says:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge

the privileges or immunities of citizens,

Covering the whole broad ground. Whatever may be the privileges

and immunities of citizens are covered and protected by this

clause. This is subsequent to the article commented on there and

changes the spirit of the old Constitution, is inconsistent with

it, repeals it, or modifies it _pro tanto_; or else there would

be no object in the adoption of the XIV. article.

Mr. MERRIMON.--I was just coming to the discussion of that

Amendment. The XIV. Amendment applies to civil rights. As I have

shown, a citizen merely by virtue of citizenship does not enjoy

political rights; neither the right to vote nor the right to hold

office. The manifest object and purpose of the XIV. Amendment was

to secure to all the American people equality of right in the

States, equality of right under the United States, civilly, not

politically; and that is made more manifest when we consider the

second section of the XIV. Amendment. It is in these words:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several

States according to their respective numbers, counting the

whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not

taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the

choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the

United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive

and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the

Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male

inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,

and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged,

except for participation in rebellion or other crime, 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.

Thus it appears the amendments recognized the right of the State

itself to regulate the political right to vote. The XV. article

of Amendment still further confirms my view. It provides that

"the right of citizens of the United States to vote"--and that

word "vote" is material there--"the right of citizens of the

United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the

United States or by any State." Note what follows: "On account of

race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The right of a

citizen of the United States in the first place to vote shall not

be abridged on account of three considerations, to-wit: race,

color, or previous condition of servitude. Why was it limited to

those three causes? Manifestly because the framers of this

article saw that Congress had the power to abridge the rights of

the colored race--indeed, any race--in the matter of voting and

in the matter of holding office as well. Can it be contended that

the United States would not have the power to-day to provide that

a negro or an Indian or a Chinese or a Mongolian, if naturalized,

and a citizen, should not hold office under the United States

Government? It is plain they would have such power. But they can

not act upon the ground of race, color, or previous condition as

to the matter of voting, and the restriction is to that alone.

This clause provides expressly that as to voting the right of no

human being shall be abridged because of his race, or his color,

or his previous condition of servitude, but such right may be

abridged for any other cause or consideration. This amendment did

not impose a restriction simply on the power of the United

States. In order to protect the colored race in the Southern

States, and indeed I may say throughout the whole Union, this

provision embraces the States as well as the United States, and

provides that the States shall not have power to abridge the

right to vote on any one of three accounts--race, color, or

previous condition of servitude. But that does not imply that the

States shall not have the power to abridge this right for other

causes. Each State has the power to-day to abridge the right to

vote because a man can not read, because he can not write, or for

any similar cause. The States have power to provide that a man

shall not be allowed to hold office or to vote because he can not

read or because he can not write, or for any cause whatever. That

is not only so according to the plain construction to be given to

the XV. Amendment, but some of the States exercise such power in

this country to-day.

Mr. SARGENT.--Will the Senator allow me to direct his mind to one

consideration?

Mr. MERRIMON.--I will.

Mr. SARGENT.--The XV. Amendment to the Constitution which the

Senator refers to, reads: "The right of citizens of the United

States to vote shall not be denied or abridged:" It does not

create a right, it says "the right"; it speaks of something

existing which shall not be denied. The right, then, to vote is

the right of a citizen of the United States; the right exists. In

other words, the right which exists of citizens of the United

States to vote shall not be denied or abridged.

Mr. MERRIMON.--There is no affirmative provision or principle in

the Constitution that confers such a right, and my friend arrives

at his conclusion by a simple inference; that is all. And I

apprehend that a right of so much moment, contravening the whole

policy of the Government, heretofore, can not be established by a

simple inference; and especially in the strength and in the face

of the fact, however it might be as to other matters, that the

United States shall not have the power to abridge the right for

the cause mentioned. Besides this, if I concede what the

honorable Senator says, he must acknowledge that it is within the

power of the United States to abridge the right to vote for other

causes than those stated. The constitution of Connecticut

prescribes these qualifications: Every white male citizen of the

United States; one year's residence; freehold of the yearly value

of six dollars; good moral character; able to read any article of

the Constitution or any section of the statutes of the State. But

if that State had undertaken to restrict the right to vote

because a man was black or because he belonged to a particular

race, or because heretofore he had been subject to a condition of

servitude, that would be absolutely null and void; or if they had

put in that he should not vote because he was white it would be

null and void.

Next, by the constitution of Massachusetts, the right to vote is

limited to "male citizens (excepting persons or paupers under

guardianship); residence in the State one year; in the town or

district six months; having paid all required taxes." That

constitution has existed since 1780. It was provided further in

that constitution that "no person shall have the right to vote or

to be eligible to office under this Commonwealth who shall not be

able to read the constitution in the English language and write

his name. So that the power which I insist belongs to the United

States, and I think I have shown belongs to the States, not only

exists, but is actually exercised by States, at least two States

of the Union, at this moment; and indeed in nearly or quite all

the States there are more or less restrictions of the right to

vote; and the State and the Union have absolute power to abridge

the political right to vote except for three causes only, and

those three causes are race, color, or previous condition of

servitude.

Mr. STEWART.--I hope that the Senate will not suppose that there

is any constitutional question here involved. It is simply a

question of regulating the suffrage in a Territory, exclusively

under the jurisdiction of the Congress of the United States.

There is no doubt of the power of Congress to allow women to vote

in the Territories, and I hope there will not be a great deal of

time spent on that matter.

Mr. MERRIMON.--Why do you want to go into a remote, sparsely

settled Territory to make the experiment?

Mr. STEWART.--Why not try it everywhere? Why not try it in North

Carolina? Because we can not.

Mr. MERRIMON.--Why not try it in this city?

Mr. STEWART.--Because we have not the power to do it.

Mr. MERRIMON.--You have in the District of Columbia.

Mr. SARGENT.--We tried the question of negro suffrage in Nebraska

first.

Mr. STEWART.--Negro suffrage was opened in a Territory when there

were less people in it than there are here, and see how that has

spread.

Mr. MERRIMON.--My friend did not hear my question. Why not confer

suffrage on the women of the District of Columbia.

Mr. SARGENT.--We will the first time we get a chance.

Mr. STEWART.--The Senator from North Carolina asks, "Why not try

it here?" The question has been suggested whether there is not a

constitutional reason for not trying it here, and that

constitutional question applies to males as well as females. The

Constitution says that Congress shall have exclusive power of

legislation within the District of Columbia, and it shall

exercise like power over places owned by the United States with

the consent of the States for arsenals, dock-yards, and other

needful buildings, making this District under the exclusive

control of Congress. I think that nothing but the emergencies of

the case could have justified the experiment we tried here with

negro suffrage; but we did it. We now have a fair field in the

West where the country is rich and inviting, as my friend from

Minnesota says, a country that is able to become a State; the

land fertile, the climate salubrious, and is to be occupied by

the very best people, and we can try it there under the most

favorable auspices.

Mr. CONKLING.--May I ask a question?

Mr. STEWART.--Most certainly.

Mr. CONKLING.--The Senator has assured us so often that he is in

earnest, that I know he will be able to afford those like me who

are following him, although they may be somewhat in the dark, the

requisite information. Some Senator inquired of my friend why he

did not try the experiment here, and he answered that Congress

has power to legislate here, and therefore there is no experiment

to try here. Now I know my friend does not mean to paddle out of

any thing, because he has courage enough to stand up to it; and I

submit to him that that is rather "thin." Under the organic law

of this District men vote here annually; the things upon which

they vote are prescribed; and if the Senator is in earnest, I

should like to know some better reason why he does not try it

here. An amendment is in order on this bill to try it here. We

have confessedly in this District, exceptionally in this District

the entire power upon this question; and if the Senator is in

earnest, knowing as he does that under the organic law, of which

as a member of the committee of investigation he has learned so

much, voting is to be done and is now committed exclusively to

men and denied to women, I beg him to state some broader and

better answer to the question why he does not try it here. And

let me remind him at the same time that under the rules of the

Senate an amendment is in order to this bill; he need not go

beyond this bill in order to insure the right in the District of

Columbia.

Mr. STEWART.--Inasmuch as the Senator from New York has

designated me as the leader whom he is to follow, and I take it

for granted he is in earnest in his question, I shall occupy the

time of the Senate briefly in answering it. When the question

arises for suffrage at all in this District, with my present

ideas, I shall vote for female suffrage in this District. I was

saying that I do not think there need be any popular voting at

all in this District by males or females, for the reason that the

great mass of people here are merely sojourners. I think we

should govern the District directly by the Congress of the United

States, that can pass all needful laws. When the question comes

up properly as to the District, it will be time enough to meet

it. Here is the question directly up as to a Territory, and there

is no doubt about this being a good opportunity.

Mr. CONKLING.--I beg to inquire when ever in time or eternity

that question will come up here, unless some champion who has the

courage and genius of my friend brings it up? Who shall bring it

up if he refuses to do it? And when a bill is pending to which

that amendment is appropriate, and his attention is called to it,

if he flinches, if he goes back, who shall we hope for to come

hereafter who will break a lance in such a cause? I say to him

that unless he wants to discourage me and other men of less

courage who are trying to follow him, he must not flinch by

saying that he can not do anything about it until it comes on a

motion to bring it up. He should bring it up himself.

Mr. STEWART.--The only fear I have as to the Senator from New

York is that he will not have sufficient courage to follow.

(Laughter.) The question is up now. The question is squarely up

on this amendment whether we will allow the females in this

distant Territory to vote. I propose to vote for it. He has said

that I was his leader. The only question now is whether he has

the courage to follow my lead, I following the lead of the

Senator from California. I want to put his courage to the fullest

test now. I only ask him to follow me in this one little step. If

he breaks down here, I hope he will not say any thing more about

it; and I am afraid he will. I will say to him, however, that the

time will come when he will look very much astonished if anybody

questions the right of a female to vote; and when that time

comes, I shall never mention his past record to him because I do

not mention unpleasant things to gentlemen. I say that for his

benefit in case he should not do the gallant thing he proposes to

do of following me, I following the lead of the Senator from

California. The question is squarely up, and is nothing more than

this: will you give women a chance to try this experiment where

it is admitted it can do no harm, and where a large portion if

not a majority of the people of the United States believe it will

do a great good? Try this experiment there; and if the struggle

which is inaugurated there shall spread over the country as the

struggle that was inaugurated in Kansas spread over the country

and finally terminated in the colored man having full rights, if

it should have full effect on the rest of the country, so be it.

I rather think it will.

Mr. MERRIMON.--In the discussion in which I engaged, I was more

anxious about the principle involved than I was about the

particular amendment, and therefore I hardly mentioned it in the

hasty argument which I submitted. In order to support my position

now, I desire to read a report from the Judiciary Committee which

embraces the very subject under discussion, the question of the

power of the State governments and the Federal Government to

abridge the right to vote and hold office. The subject came

before that committee in the way of a petition of certain

citizens of the State of Rhode Island who insisted that their

rights as citizens of the United States were abridged--

Mr. STEWART.--Will the Senator allow me to ask him a question?

Mr. MERRIMON.--Certainly.

Mr. STEWART.--Suppose the American people come to the conclusion

that it is right that females should vote, does not the Senator

think there will be plenty of ways to accomplish it

notwithstanding that report of the Judiciary Committee?

Mr. MERRIMON.--O yes, I think so; but I do not care to debate

that. My object was to throw light on this question. I do not

want a wrong construction put upon the powers of the Government

at this day. It is important that we should be upon the right

line and keep upon it; and with a view to strengthen my argument

I ask the Clerk to read the report which I send to the desk. It

is very brief; and I beg leave to say now that it is well known

to the Senate and must be known to the country that this

committee embraces the ablest lawyers in this country on

constitutional law.

The CHIEF CLERK read the following report submitted by Mr.

EDMUNDS on the 26th of May, 1870:

The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the

petition of citizens of Rhode Island setting forth, by

reference, the XIV. and XV. Articles of Amendment to the

Constitution of the United States, and stating that, "the

State of Rhode Island, notwithstanding the provisions of the

above-named amendments, persists, in and by the first

section of article 2 of the constitution of said State, in

denying and abridging the right of about 10,000 citizens of

the United States to vote at any and all elections holden in

said State," and praying that Congress will "pass such

appropriate legislation as may be found necessary to obtain

for, and secure to, the citizens of the United States

resident in Rhode Island all the rights, privileges, and

immunities guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the

United States," respectfully report:

That the constitution of Rhode Island, adopted in 1842,

prescribes two alternative classes of qualifications for

voting. The first gives to _all_ male citizens of the United

States of a certain age, etc., the right to vote, if they

own real estate of the value of $134, or which shall rent

for $7 per annum. The second gives to every male _native_

citizen of the United States of a certain age, etc., the

right to vote, if he pays a tax of $1 a year, etc., although

he may not own real estate. No man or party has ever

questioned the right of the people of Rhode Island and of

every other State to establish such a constitution of

government as maybe agreeable to their views of the public

welfare in that State, although its provision as to suffrage

may not conform to the opinions of other States. At the time

when this constitution of Rhode Island was adopted the right

to regulate the qualifications of voters belonged

exclusively to the respective States. The petition under

consideration fully recognizes this, but it raises the

question (although studiously framed in such a manner as not

to declare or insist upon such a conclusion) whether, by the

XIV. and XV. Amendments to the Constitution of the United

States, natives of foreign countries who have become

citizens of the United States are not entitled to vote in

Rhode Island, without regard to the qualifications imposed

by her Constitution?

The committee is unanimously of the opinion that this

question must be answered in the negative.

The "privileges and immunities of citizens of the United

States" mentioned in the petition as secured by the XIV.

Amendment do not include the right of suffrage. If they did,

the right must necessarily exist in _all_ citizens of the

United States from the mere fact of citizenship, without the

power in any State or in Congress to abridge the same in any

degree; and in such case, therefore, no qualification of any

kind could be imposed, and all persons (being citizens),

males and females, infants, lunatics, and criminals, without

respect to age, length of residence, or any other thing,

would be entitled to participate directly in all elections.

Every provision in every State which experience has proved

to be essential to security and good order in society would

thereby be overthrown. It is enough to say that the rights

secured by this amendment to the constitution are of an

altogether different character.

The XV. Amendment does apply to rights of suffrage, and to

those only. By it the State of Rhode Island, in common with

every other State, is forbidden to deny or abridge the right

of citizens of the United States "to vote on account of

race, color, or previous condition of servitude." But,

plainly, the constitution of Rhode Island does not preclude

any citizen from voting on either or any of the grounds thus

prohibited. No fact of race, or color, or previous servitude

prevents any citizen from voting in Rhode Island. Neither of

these qualities depends in any degree upon the place of his

nativity. This seems too obvious to need discussion. It is

also a fact, appearing in the public records of Congress and

doubtless known to the petitioners, that when the XV.

Amendment was under consideration by Congress it was

proposed to embrace in it a prohibition of any denial of

suffrage, on account of "nativity," and that this

proposition was not agreed to, for the reason that Congress

did not think it expedient to restrict the ancient powers of

the States in these respects any further than appeared to be

absolutely needful to secure to the whole people the great

results of the overthrow of the rebellion.

The committee is therefore of opinion that there is nothing

in the provisions of the constitution of Rhode Island

referred to in conflict with the Constitution of the United

States.

Whether these provisions are wise or right in themselves is

a matter over which neither the committee nor Congress has

any control. That subject belongs to the people of Rhode

Island, who it must be presumed will correct any and all

errors that may from time to time be found to exist in her

internal affairs.

Mr. MERRIMON.--I think the Senator from Nevada will be unable to

answer that position.

Mr. CARPENTER (Mr. INGALLS in the chair.)--Mr. President-----

Mr. EDMUNDS.--Before the Senator from Wisconsin proceeds with his

remarks, I should like to ask the chairman of the committee

whether he means to include Indians and Canadians? The language

is "every inhabitant of the United States."

Mr. SARGENT.--No, it is qualified further, as the Senator will

see if the whole section is read.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--Not as to the first election.

Mr. SARGENT.--I think myself the section is very inartificially

drawn.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--I do not know but that it is very artificially

drawn, if it is intended to include the Indian and the Canadian.

Mr. SARGENT.--To answer the Senator from Vermont I ask that the

final proviso of the section be read, which qualifies the part he

referred to.

The CHIEF CLERK read as follows:

_Provided, further_, That the right of suffrage and of

holding office shall be exercised only by citizens of the

United States, and those who shall have declared on oath,

before a competent court of record, their intention to

become such, and shall have taken an oath to support the

Constitution and Government of the United States.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--That does not relate to the first election.

Mr. SARGENT.--That objection applies to the details of the bill;

it does not apply to my amendment.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--That is true.

The PRESIDING OFFICER.--The Senator from Wisconsin is entitled to

the floor.

Mr. CARPENTER.--Mr. President, as the yeas and nays have been

ordered on this question and I shall vote for this amendment,

without going into any argument of the general question, I desire

to say one word as to the reason why I shall so vote.

I believe it is not one of woman's rights, but it is one of man's

that the franchise should be extended to women. I believe there

is no situation in which man can be placed where the aid of woman

is not beneficial; that in all the relations of life, in all the

occupations and all the duties of life it was the intention of

God in creating the race that woman should be the helpmate of

man, everywhere and in all circumstances and occupations. Look

through your country, look in your railroad cars, look in your

post-offices, look in your dry-goods stores, and there you see

everything decent and orderly and quiet. Why? Because women go

there. The only place in this country from which they are

excluded by law is the voting place, and in many of our large

cities those places are the most disgraceful that can be found

under our institutions. Now, I believe if the elections were open

to ladies as well as gentlemen, to women as well as men, there

would be as much order, quiet, and decency at the voting places

as there is in a railroad car, and for precisely the same reason.

If our wives and mothers and daughters were going to these

election places there would be order and decency there, or there

would be a row once for all that would make them decent. I have

more confidence in the influence of women at the elections in New

York City to reform the condition of things that exists there and

bring about decency and order at the elections and the prevention

of violence and fraud, than I have in all the Army and Navy that

the President can send there under the election bill which was

put through here by my honorable friend from New York (Mr.

Conkling).

Without enlarging on the subject, I shall vote for this

amendment, not because this Territory is located, as some Senator

has said, near Minnesota. I would vote for female suffrage in the

District of Columbia to-morrow; I would vote for it in the State

of Wisconsin; I would vote for it anywhere and everywhere if I

had an opportunity to do so.

Mr. MORRILL, of Maine.--Mr. President, I shall vote against this

amendment, and for the reason that I do not consider the right

of suffrage a woman's right or a man's right. I do not understand

it to be a natural right at all. It is a political right; and I

do not understand, as applied to women, that it is a privilege at

all. It is akin to a service; and it is a very rough service. It

is in its nature akin to militia service. The man who exercises

the ballot must be prepared to defend it with the bayonet; and

therefore the propriety of its being confined in all ages to men.

That it is not a natural right is apparent to anybody who

reflects upon it; and it never was so considered in any country

in the world.

We talk about it here now as a natural right, and my honorable

friend who sits next me (Mr. Morton) has invoked the principles

of the Declaration of Independence and said that it stands with

those rights which are called inherent, such as life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness. It is not so in any sense whatever,

and never was so regarded. If it were, do you not perceive that

it applies as well to infants as to adults? If it is natural to

all citizens, then it applies, as I have said, to infants as well

as to adults. I regard it as strictly a political right. It does

not inhere in man naturally, or in woman; and I do not propose,

myself, to impose it on women. It is a severe, rugged service,

which in my judgment ought not to be imposed on women.

My honorable friend from Wisconsin says there is no position in

life in which the society of woman would not be an improvement.

How is it on the deck of a battle-ship? How is it in military

affairs? Should she be placed in the militia to enforce the

results of a ballot? Is there any one of us who believes that? Is

there anybody here who would be glad to see a woman in the

train-band, on the muster-field, at the cannon's mouth, or on the

decks of your war-ships? That is what your argument means, if it

means anything logically.

But sir, I am not going to argue the proposition at all. I am

going to vote against it because the right of suffrage is that

rugged and severe service which man has no right to devolve upon

woman. It is enough to say that when the American women want the

ballot, when they come to hanker for it, and fall in love with

the exercise of the ballot at the polls, I am in favor of their

voting, but not until then; and I am not in favor of that

sentimental sort of stuff which is gotten up somewhere or other

by portions of the people who would force it upon the American

women as a general proposition. Whenever they come to desire it,

whenever the American women come to ask it, and particularly when

they come to demand it, or even to solicit it, there will be no

question as to what the American Congress will do; but until that

time comes I shall vote steadily against it.

Nobody will be surprised at these sentiments from me who has had

occasion to know the sentiments that I have expressed on this

same subject on former occasions. I will send to the desk and ask

to have read a paragraph or two from a speech made by me some

years ago on the subject of suffrage.

The CHIEF CLERK read as follows:

Universal suffrage is affirmed by its advocates as among the

absolute or natural rights of man, in the sense of mankind,

extending to females as well as males, and susceptible of no

limitation unless as opposed to child or infant. It is

supposed to originate in rights independent of citizenship;

like the absolute rights of liberty, personal security, and

possession of property, it is natural to man. It exists, of

course, independent of sex or condition, manhood or

womanhood. To admit it in the adult and deny it to the youth

would be to abridge the right and ignore the principle. Now,

sir, in practice its extension to women would contravene all

our notions of the family; "put asunder" husband and wife,

and subvert the fundamental principles of family government,

in which the husband is, by all usage and law, human and

divine, the representative head. Besides, it ignores woman,

womanhood, and all that is womanly; all those distinctions

of sex whose objects are apparent in creation, essential in

character, and vital to society, these all disappear in the

manly and impressive demonstration of balloting at a popular

election. Here maids, women, wives, men, and husbands

promiscuously assemble to vindicate the rights of human

nature.

Moreover, it associates the wife and mother with policies of

State, with public affairs, with making, interpreting, and

executing the laws, with police and war, and necessarily

disseverates her from purely domestic affairs, peculiar care

for and duties of the family; and, worst of all, assigns her

duties revolting to her nature and constitution, and wholly

incompatible with those which spring from womanhood.

Besides, the ballot is the inseparable concomitant of the

bayonet. Those who practice the one must be prepared to

exercise the other. To introduce woman at the polls is to

enroll her in the militia; to transfer her from the class of

non-combatants to the class of combatants.--_Congressional

Globe_, part 1, second session Thirty-ninth Congress,

1866-'67, page 40.

Mr. SARGENT.--I have no doubt of the consistency of my friend

from Maine on this proposition and on every other. I have no

doubt that the remarks which he made formerly on this subject he

repeats to-day with the same idea of their entire correctness;

but I differ with him upon both the propositions which he

advances. He says that women do not desire the right of suffrage

and there is no evidence before Congress that they do desire it.

Why, sir, the tables of your committee-rooms have been loaded

with petitions from every State in this Union on this subject,

and they come forward day after day.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--And remonstrances also.

Mr. SARGENT.--Very few indeed.

Mr. STEWART.--I suggest to my friend from California if the only

question is whether women desire the right of suffrage or not,

that can only be determined by submitting it to them. When we

wish to ascertain whether the male citizens of the country desire

a proposition, we submit the question to them and let them vote

upon it.

Mr. SARGENT.--That suggestion is very just. But the fact that

there are remonstrances against the extension of the suffrage to

women shows that there is agitation, and agitation shows interest

in the matter. If this opinion were not in danger of prevailing,

if it were not sweeping over the country, we would get no

remonstrances; it would be looked upon as mere idle wind blowing

nowhere and amounting to nothing. I say these petitions are

coming here in every form. There are large and popular

conventions, attended by ladies and attended by a great many men,

making strong efforts to this end. There is as much agitation on

this point as there was for the abolition of slavery before the

war broke out.

Now I come to the other proposition of my friend from Maine. He

says the ballot and the bayonet go together, and that he who

handles the one must be prepared to handle the other. What do you

do with men who are past the years of military service and

exempted by your laws? Do you deprive them of the ballot? That of

itself is a sufficient answer to that argument. They are not

inseparable. Fortunately for our country the necessity for the

use of the bayonet occurs very seldom; but when it does occur

there are large classes of male voters who are not called to the

field, but are exempted by the policy of our law. No one believes

that if women had this privilege, or this immunity, or this

right--whatever you may call it--put into their hands we would

therefore require of them to do things that would degrade or

unsex them, or that would be improper for them to perform. I

believe that men would have the same respect for women with the

ballot in their hands as without it.

It is not for the few women who remonstrate from luxurious

parlors, sitting upon sofas, in the glare of the gaslight,

changing and choosing their phrases, but for the great class of

laboring women in the country that I appeal for this redress. I

appeal for the women who have been struggling on in these

Government offices, doing the same work that men do, aye, and in

many cases doing it better, for about one-half of the pay. Do you

suppose if they had ballots they would not make their voices

heard here and get for the same work the same pay? Who ever knew

a labor strike of women to succeed? When women in New York City

and other places are bowed down to the earth by their

labor--making shirts at a shilling a day--and they strike for

more pay, for more bread, for an opportunity to live, who ever

heard of one of their strikes succeeding? Men strike from their

workshops and they succeed, and why? Because they have the

ballot; because they have political force, because they have the

power of citizenship behind them in its fullest sense. Give these

poor struggling women the same chance and they can make their way

to a fair remuneration of wages in the public offices, and they

can make their way in the workshops, and these toiling mothers,

widows, and sisters supporting orphan brothers and sisters will

have some opportunity to vindicate their rights and to procure

not merely political rights, but a chance to live, and a chance

to avoid infamy.

Senators talk about this question as if the ballot was not

demanded for women. Will you tell me why it was that the great

party which controls both branches of Congress and holds the

Executive, when it met in Philadelphia at that grand convention,

put a plank in its platform stating that these demands for

further rights should be respectfully considered? Do you think

there was no agitation, no desire on the part of women for the

ballot when that great convention could be moved to a declaration

like this:

The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the

loyal women or America for their noble devotion to the cause

of freedom. Their admission to higher fields of usefulness

is viewed with satisfaction, and the honest demand of any

class of citizens for additional rights shall be treated

with respectful consideration.

Was that mere euphuism, mere phrasing? Did that mean nothing? Did

it respond to no demand? Ay, sir, did it not only respond to a

demand which was there pressed, but did it not imply a duty, a

pledge which this party ought to redeem?

But the Senator from Maine, as well as the Senator from North

Carolina, asserts that the XIV. Amendment of the Constitution has

no relation whatever to political rights, that it relates to

something with reference to social equality, something in the far

distance, but does not touch this question at all. When I called

the attention of the Senator from North Carolina to the XV.

Amendment which says "the right of citizens to vote shall not be

denied or abridged," assuming the right to exist, not saying that

the right hereafter shall exist and shall not be abridged; but

the right now existing by fair intendment shall not be abridged,

he replied "that I deduced this right by an inference," and he

thought a right of this kind ought not to stand on mere

inference. His argument for the opposite construction, that the

right to vote may be abridged for any other cause than those

enumerated in the amendment, is drawn only by an inference from

it. The affirmative language is that the right shall not be

abridged for certain causes; and then by an inference the Senator

says it may be abridged for others. In other words, his argument

is that I am not at liberty to infer from the Constitution of the

United States rights for women or rights for mankind. I shall not

extend it by inference in favor of freedom, but any inference

which will limit its operation, which will destroy or curtail its

meaning, is legitimate.

Mr. MERRIMON: What clause of the Constitution does the Senator

assert creates the right?

Mr. SARGENT: The first section of the XV. Amendment declares that

the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be

denied or abridged--speaking of it as an affirmative right; not

speaking of it as here established but as a right which of course

must have been established by the XIV. Amendment.

Now, sir, to show that I do not strain the interpretation of the

Constitution, I desire to refer to some few authorities even

under the old Constitution which go very far to answer the

authority that the Senator cited. Bushrod Washington, a member of

the United States Supreme Court, and well known as a jurist of

high attainments and great powers of mind, in the case of

Corfield _vs._ Coryell declared what I shall read, which is

approvingly cited by Kent, the master writer upon American law,

in the second volume of his Commentaries:

It was declared in Corfield _vs._ Coryell that the

privileges and immunities conceded by the Constitution of

the United States to citizens in the several States were to

be confined to those which were in their nature fundamental,

and belonged of right to the citizens of all free

governments. Such are the rights of protection of life and

liberty, and to acquire and enjoy property, and to pay no

higher impositions than other citizens, and to pass through

or reside in the State at pleasure, and to enjoy the

elective franchise according to the regulations of the laws

of the State.

Those, according to the decision in Corfield _vs._ Coryell, cited

approvingly by Chancellor Kent, are the rights and immunities of

citizens of the United States. Then comes in the XIV. Amendment

to the Constitution of the United States, which declares that

"all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and

subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United

States," and further, that "no State shall make or enforce any

law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens

of the United States."

Now, sir, I quote from Bouvier's Law Dictionary, under the title

"citizen." He gives what the word means, first in English law,

and then he comes down to American law:

One who, under the Constitution and laws of the United

States, has a right to vote for Representatives in Congress

and other public officers, and who is qualified to fill

offices in the gift of the people.

In the face of authorities like these, who shall deny that the

right to vote is one of those privileges and immunities of

citizenship, or that citizenship itself carries with it that

highest right? Go into literature and you find the same

definition; as, for instance, in the work which I hold in my hand

entitled "Words and their Uses," by R. Grant White. He says:

A citizen is a person who has certain political rights, and

the word is properly used only to imply or suggest the

possession of these rights.

Is it a mere question of privilege or immunity? It is a right

which exists and so it is considered in all the law; so it is

treated in the well-considered decisions on the subject, and by

the text writers.

By the pledge which was given by the dominant party of the

country in their last National Convention, by the allegiance

which Democrats themselves owe to the Constitution of the United

States, by the higher benefit which will be conferred upon

society, upon the women themselves who are struggling for a

chance in life, and upon men themselves by the purification of

society, I ask that this amendment be adopted.

Mr. BAYARD: I should like to ask the honorable Senator a question

before he takes his seat. I understand that he denies the power

of the Congress of the United States or of a State to exclude a

female from voting, to make an exclusion based upon sex, because

it would be an infringement of her rights as a citizen, under the

meaning of that word in the Constitution, according to the

construction given it by the courts. I should like to ask him

whether he considers that an exclusion by reason of age is not

just as arbitrary and unauthorized as the exclusion by reason of

sex, and by what right can it be that a State or the United

States shall arbitrarily fix a period in a person's life at which

he shall attain his civil rights? In most of the States, and by

the common law of England, the age of twenty-one years was fixed

as what they term the majority, when a person becomes _sui

juris_. Under the laws of the various States of this Union,

following the laws of other civilized communities of older date,

a period has been fixed in the life of man at which he attains

his civil rights. Ordinarily it is at the age of twenty-one

years; under the civil law it is twenty-five; it is so in France;

it is so in Spain; it is so in the French and Spanish Colonies.

Among the English-speaking people the age of twenty-one years is

the period fixed. If the rights which have been spoken of by the

Senator from Indiana and the Senator from California are

inalienable, natural rights, are part and parcel of those

"privileges and immunities" referred to by the Constitution of

the United States, how can it be that a law, a mere arbitrary

enactment by a State or by Congress, shall exclude a man who is

twenty years and six months old from exercising those inalienable

rights, those privileges and immunities which six months after,

by the mere difference of time, they permit him to enjoy? I have

stated the question at length for the purpose of letting the

Senator from California answer it more fully.

Mr. SARGENT: Mr. President, I do not think the Constitution

prevents a regulation of the power to vote. The States

unquestionably have a right to fix the time when voting shall

take place, to fix the places where the voting shall be done, and

they have the right to fix the age at which voting shall be

exercised. But under the Constitution they have no power to

prescribe a test which is not equally attainable by all persons.

They have no right to say that only white men shall vote, for

that would exclude black men. They have no right to say that only

black men shall vote, for that would exclude white men. They have

no right to say that only men shall vote, for that would exclude

women. The Constitution says that all shall be put on an equality

in this respect, that any test which may be required shall apply

to all alike, men and women, black or white.

Mr. BAYARD: But the law does no such thing. There are classes,

and a very large and great class in the State that the Senator

represents, who can not become citizens of the United States and

can not vote there.

Mr. SARGENT: Why not?

Mr. BAYARD: Because of their race; because they are Asiatics and

not Africans.

Mr. SARGENT: The Constitution of the United States does not

prevent it.

Mr. BAYARD: No; but the law of Congress prevents it. The Senator

says these are all entitled under the law.

Mr. SARGENT: I will not detain the Senate now on the point

referred to by the Senator. He has shifted his ground and I will

not follow him. Whenever legislation comes up on that subject I

will discuss it. They are not citizens of the United States. I am

dealing now with citizens whose privileges and immunities as such

no one has a right to abridge.

Mr. FERRY, of Michigan: It is not my intention to speak on the

merits of this proposition; but inasmuch as the Senator from

Maine (Mr. Morrill) has raised the question of consistency and

appealed to his record, it reminds me of the fact that the

question of woman suffrage appeared as early, I think, as 1858,

before the Legislature of Michigan. I had the honor of holding a

seat in the Senate of the State at that time, and the question

was referred to the committee of which I was a member, and it

fell to my lot to report upon it. If my recollection serves me

rightly the resolution favoring the right of women to vote was

lost by but a majority of three in the Michigan Senate.

Mr. EDMUNDS: Which way was the report?

Mr. FERRY, of Michigan: I am reminded by the Senator from Vermont

that perhaps I have not intimated which side the report took. The

report was in favor of woman suffrage, and it may be regarded as

having contributed to so large a vote. To-day, sir, is the first

time since that occasion that I have been officially called upon

to record my judgment upon the same question. I have had no

reason since that report was drawn to shake my belief that the

right of suffrage will not be jeopardized or perverted if wielded

by the hand of woman. Believing that now and desiring to act in

accord with my action in 1858 in the Senate of my native State. I

am glad of the opportunity to prove my consistency by voting for

woman suffrage to-day.

Mr. ANTHONY: Mr. President, I am quite content that this

experiment of female suffrage should be tried in this new

Territory. I believe that female suffrage is coming with the

other ameliorations and changes which have been tending for so

many years in the same direction. I have not taken any part in

the measures which have been agitated to hasten that event. I

think it will come in its own good time; but I should do very

great injustice to myself if I should allow it to be supposed

that my opinion is based upon some of the arguments that have

been made here. I do not believe that suffrage is a natural

right. I believe it is a right that grows out of society, a

political right, and that it is within the body-politic to decide

upon its limits, its modifications, and its conditions. The only

question in my mind is whether it is proper and expedient. I

think that the XIV. Amendment has nothing whatever to do with it.

Mr. MORTON: Mr. President, the Senators from Rhode Island, Maine,

and North Carolina have all said that the right to vote is not a

natural right, but merely a political right. Is not that a

distinction without a difference? If I have a natural right, I

have a right to use the necessary and proper means to enforce

that right; it is a part of it. To say that I have a natural

right but have not the right to use the means for its protection

is illogical; it makes nonsense of it. The natural and proper

means to enforce any right are a part of it. The right of

self-defense is one of the natural rights; everybody concedes it,

and to take from me the natural and effective means of defending

myself is to take from me the right itself. Government is the

means of securing natural rights, and should depend upon the

consent of the governed. Therefore the right to give or to

withhold my consent is a part of the natural right. Let us come

down to the substance and put away these shadowy distinctions. To

say that I have the right of self-defense, but that I have no

right to use the knife or any instrument necessary to protect my

life against the assassin, is nonsense. So far as the right of

government is concerned, the right to assent, to consent, or to

dissent, the natural means under our system is the right to vote.

You can not conceive any other. Therefore it is a part of the

right and without it the other is worth nothing.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I wish to ask the Senator from Indiana whether

persons under the age of twenty-one and eighteen years

respectively have not all the natural rights that grown-up people

have?

Mr. MORTON: I think I can answer that question very readily, if

the Senator is through.

Mr. EDMUNDS: That is my only question at present.

Mr. MORTON: Every right must have some sort of regulation.

Mr. EDMUNDS: That does not answer the question.

Mr. MORTON: Wait until I get through. We have in our country, and

I believe generally in Europe, certainly in England, agreed that

twenty-one years is the age when men and women have come into the

full possession of their understanding and are supposed to be so

well informed that they can take upon themselves the government

of their own fortunes and the control of their own property. The

mere fact that this thing is to be regulated does not take away

the right. The natural right to own and control property is

regulated in that way. There must be some age fixed. We know the

infant can not do it; we know the child ten years old has not the

necessary knowledge of the world or strength of understanding;

and we have agreed upon a certain age when men and women come to

the possession of their understanding and are able to take care

of their own rights, whatever they may be.

Mr. EDMUNDS: May I ask the Senator, after all, what his opinion

is, whether a child of tender years, say ten years of age, has

not every natural right that a man of seventy has?

Mr. MORTON: Certainly.

Mr. EDMUNDS: Morally, legally, and every other way?

Mr. MORTON: To my mind that furnishes no argument at all.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I am not arguing it.

Mr. MORTON: It is merely putting an extreme case to say that a

woman twenty-five years of age shall not have the right to vote

because if she votes the child in her arms has the right to vote.

Is there any force in that?

Mr. EDMUNDS: I have not put any case at all. I am asking the

Senator from Indiana, which he seems to be very unwilling to

answer, whether a child of tender years has or has not, in his

opinion, the same natural rights that a grown-up person has. That

can be answered one way or the other without saying it is an

argument.

Mr. MORTON: I suppose the child has the right, certainly the

incipient right; but that amounts to nothing when you apply it to

a child that has not the strength, the experience, the knowledge

of the world, or the age to exercise it. The common sense of

mankind in this and every other country fixes a certain age when

men and women shall be regarded as mature and qualified to take

care of themselves.

Mr. EDMUNDS: They do not fix the same age, let me suggest to the

Senator.

Mr. MORTON: Now, Mr. President, unless we are prepared to deny

the very fundamental doctrine upon which our Government is based,

we must admit that women have the same rights that men have. The

Senator from North Carolina will not deny that women have the

same natural rights that men have. The Senator nods his assent.

Then if that is so, they have the same natural right to use the

means necessary to protect those rights that men have. That

right, so far as men are concerned, is the ballot.

Mr. MERRIMON: Natural means.

Mr. MORTON: Whatever means are necessary and proper to the

protection of a natural right are natural means.

Mr. BAYARD: Did the Senator from Indiana answer the Senator from

Vermont in the affirmative or negative?

Mr. MORTON: I tried to answer him.

Mr. BAYARD: I merely ask the question. He says now very

triumphantly to the Senator from North Carolina that the rights

of men and women are the same, their natural rights are the same.

Mr. MORTON: Yes.

Mr. BAYARD: I ask are the rights of children different from those

of men?

Mr. MORTON: I think not, but I do not think there is any force in

that argument, as I said before. There is a certain common sense

and a certain practical regulation of natural rights all the

world over.

Mr. EDMUNDS: But is it the common sense of men alone, let me

suggest to the Senator. The children may differ with us; they

generally do on such questions.

Mr. MORTON: I will not spend any time on that argument.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I think that is wise.

Mr. MORTON: To say that the mature woman has not the right to

vote because the child in her arms must have the same right,

comes so near making nonsense of the whole business that I

dismiss it, and come back to the other statement, that women

having the same natural rights that men have, have the right to

the use the same means for their protection; and as the means

under our form of government for the protection of the natural

rights of men is the right to vote, women should have the same

right and power accorded to them. The whole theory of natural

rights is mere trash unless you shall give women the right and

the power to protect them. The Declaration of Independence says

that governments are instituted for that purpose, and that they

must depend upon the consent of the governed; and as the women

are one-half of the governed, they have a right to give one-half

of the consent.

The Senator from North Carolina says that the women of the

country have consented to our form of government, because they

have not dissented. They have no power to refuse their consent.

They may remonstrate and scold about it, but that amounts to

nothing; their consent one way or the other means nothing except

so far as their influence may be concerned. There were four and a

half million of slaves who did not remonstrate against their

bondage. Why? They had no means of doing it, and if they had had

it would not have amounted to anything. Would the Senator argue

from that, that they had no natural rights, or that they were

consenting to their bondage? When you take into consideration the

fact that men have all "political power and all the other sources

of influence and power over women," it is not very strange

perhaps that a majority of them are not asking for the right of

suffrage. Some women at least are asking for it; I know that very

many women all over the country believe they have the right to

vote and ought to vote who never go near a political meeting and

never sign petitions or anything of that kind. I would be willing

to-day to submit the question to the votes of the women of the

United States whether they should have that privilege or not. But

suppose that a majority do not want the ballot, how does that

affect the rights of the minority who do want it? One woman can

not consent for another.

I believe women will never have their rights in this country,

will never enjoy the same means for taking care of themselves and

making an honest living in the world, until they have the right

to vote. As soon as they have that right you will find they will

be placed upon an equality with men. The Senator from California

refers to the fact, and it is a notorious fact, that in every

State in this Union, women are paid only about one-half for the

same quantity and the same kind of labor that men receive. Does

any man say that there is any sense or any justice in that

distinction? Will that ever be remedied until woman has the right

to vote? It never will.

I believe, Mr. President, in every point of view the right of

suffrage should be extended to woman. I maintain that it is a

God-given right to take part in the administration of that

government which controls their earthly destinies and interests.

I believe it is for the interest of the men, for the interest of

children, for the interest of our country, for the interest of

the race.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I could name a dozen instances all of which show

that in all the States of this Union, speaking as a general rule,

as it is in Great Britain and in almost all other civilized

countries, the law, instead of discriminating against womanhood,

discriminates in its favor in every respect whatever except the

political respect of voting. That is a fact that no man can

truthfully deny who has studied the history of society or who

knows anything about the history of legislation in civilized

States. Therefore, it does not do to say that the right to vote,

the privilege of voting, or the duty of voting--because I use

those phrases as not having the peculiar meaning that the Senator

from California imputes to them, is essential to the protection

of the female sex as such, because, as I have said, the

protection that the law gives them is now in all respects, where

their rights or privileges come in collision with the rest of

society, greater than is extended to men.

The Senator from Indiana insists--and he has a perfect right to

do so, of course--that the right to vote is a natural right, and,

therefore, if females are excluded from voting, as they are by

the constitutions and laws of the various States, it is an

infringement upon natural right, and that that infringement ought

to be abolished. Of course, his conclusion is correct if his

premises are true; but is the right to vote a natural right? Can

the Senator refer me to the work of any writer upon natural or

municipal law from the beginning of the world to the year 1860,

which maintains, or asserts, or insinuates, or suggests that the

right to vote in a political community is a natural right?

Mr. MORTON: I do not call to mind any author.

Mr. EDMUNDS: No; the Senator does not. With candor he says so,

because the Senator, learned in history as he is, knows, as the

rest of us know, that there is no such thing. He knows that in

all the discussions and all the turmoils of society where the

rights of men and women in political respects, the rights of

society at large, have been discussed and turned over and over

and all manner of experiments in government tried and suggested,

it never has been suggested that the right to participate in the

government of a political community is a natural right belonging

to every human being.

Mr. MORTON: I ask the Senator, if there are natural rights, do

not the natural and necessary means to protect those rights

become a part of them? What is the right worth if that be denied?

Mr. EDMUNDS: I answer no, in the broad sense in which the Senator

has put it. If he asks of me as to a state of nature, without

being organized into any social or political community whatever,

then I answer yes, and every man is what the civil writers called

in old times a barbarian; and he is invested, upon his own

judgment and in his own right, with the power of defending and

affirming whatever natural rights he has against all comers,

exactly as a nation stands in respect to another nation; no man

has a right to impose upon him any restraint; no man has a right

to demand from him any concession; he is absolutely independent;

and when his rights or claims come in conflict with those of

anybody else he "fights it out" or runs away. So far, there is

natural right, no doubt, but I hope the Senator has not gone back

quite so far from the present condition of the world as to wish

to discuss questions of that kind. That is not what he means.

What he means by natural rights no doubt is what organized

communities recognize as things of natural right, and those are

things which are inherent in the person but are regulated and

limited and restrained according to the rights and necessities of

all the other persons in the community. In an organized society

the right of self-defense is not a natural right in the broad

sense, so that under all circumstances A B or C D has a right to

defend himself against all aggression. An officer may come to

arrest me on a warrant issued by a court irregularly. I have not

the right to slay the officer because he takes me on the

warrant. My place to resist is not by my natural force, not by

raising a mob, but by going to the court that issued the warrant

and showing that it had been issued contrary to law. And yet on

the Senator's notion every time a man is brought under the law,

if he does not agree with the law, his business is to fight. The

community can not get along in that way. There is no such right

as that in society.

Mr. STEWART: I ask the Senator what right, whether it be a

natural right or an acquired right, has one man to govern

another, or has society to govern the individual?

Mr. EDMUNDS: What right?

Mr. STEWART: Is it a natural or acquired right?

Mr. EDMUNDS: No man has a natural right to govern another, or an

acquired right, or a political right, or a civil right that I

know of, unless he is appointed the guardian of somebody. Of

course, of that the Senator has not any experience; certainly not

on the side of being a ward.

Mr. STEWART: Then what right has society, the body of men, to

govern an individual? Is it a natural right or an acquired right?

Mr. EDMUNDS: Suppose I should answer the Senator and say I do not

know?

Mr. STEWART: What right have they to take from him his freedom in

his savage state to do as he pleases? And if they have a right to

take it from him, what right have they to say he shall not

participate with them equally in the regulations that shall be

made for his government? If they have a right to govern him, he

has a right, whether it be natural or not, to have a voice in it,

if the principle of equality and fair play is one of the

fundamental principles that should govern mankind.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I see the Senator's point. The substance of it is,

if I correctly understand him, that if society has a right to

govern him, he has a right to govern society, and that makes

equality; and if the majority has a right to control him, he has

a right to control the majority, and there is equality! Very

well. I leave the Senator, with his point, to enjoy it.

Now, let us return to the subject. It is perfectly plain that the

right to vote is one which society, as it is organized, is to

determine by its fundamental laws. Society does determine, in the

State of Vermont, if you please, that voting must only be

exercised by males above the age of twenty-one years, those who

are not in the penitentiary, those who are not in the lunatic

asylums, those who are not idiots, and so on. The laws of Indiana

may provide the same thing, or may declare that the age shall be

twenty, or may declare as the Roman law used to do, that it shall

be twenty-five, and so on; or it may declare as the Constitution

of the United States does as to the age of Senators and as to the

age of the President of the United States. On the argument of

Senators in favor of this amendment to this bill, there would

exist no right whatever in constituted society to make any

limitation upon the free exercise of political rights to vote and

hold office in respect to age. Why say a man can not be a member

of the Senate until he is thirty years of age? Who can say he is

not just as good at twenty-nine?

The Senator from Indiana says that common sense teaches that we

must put some limitation on this. So it does; and common sense

has taught that it is left to each political community to

determine what are the qualifications and limitations upon the

privilege of exercising political rights; and it has always been

so, and it always will be so, because when the Senator proposes

to say that the other sex may vote--which I admit he has a

perfect right to say, and society may so say--he does not

undertake to say that ladies of seventeen, instead of eighteen,

shall vote, because they come of age in my State at eighteen, and

do in many of the States--the Senator does not propose to say

that all ladies of seventeen shall vote; and yet it is impossible

to say that there is any distinction in respect to intelligence

as a matter of right, any philosophical distinction between one

year and another. True, as the Senator says, you may run it down

so far that at last you have reached a condition of infancy, and

there everybody says the child is not wise enough to vote, is not

wise enough to do anything without having guardianship and

tutelage. But if you put it upon the ground of natural right, the

child has just as good a right to say to you that he shall be the

judge of it, as you have to say to him that you must be; and this

shows that the notion of any natural right of anybody of any age

to participate in the government of society is an absolute

absurdity. It is one of those figments of the imagination that

have crawled into some people's brains within a very few years,

and will go out again as other delusions do.

Then when you come to the XIV. Amendment it is equally obvious

that that has nothing to do with the subject. If anybody had

thought it related to suffrage when the XV. Amendment was passed,

nobody would have voted for it, because on that theory the right

to vote did exist in all colored persons, females as well as

males; and yet nobody of any party or any creed pretended at that

time when we proposed the XV. Amendment that we had guaranteed

the right to vote by the XIV. Nobody suspected it; nobody

suggested it; and nobody believed in it, and very few people do

now, for the simple reason that the XIV. Amendment was directed,

as everybody knows, by its language, by its history, by its

relation to other laws, to what are called civil rights; but I am

not going to define what they are, because to do so takes time.

So, Mr. President, the XV. Amendment was passed in order to

secure a right to vote without regard to race, color, or previous

condition of servitude.

Then you come to the real question which is involved here; and

that is the propriety of providing that females, twenty-one years

of age, not idiots, not lunatics, not in the

penitentiary--standing upon the same limitations that men do in

these respects--are to vote. That presents a fair question, one

that we have a perfect right to pass upon; and I have only said

what I have in order to show that we had not better run crazy

over the idea that we were dealing with natural and inalienable

rights, and that we were violating human rights if we happened to

say no, or that we were vindicating human rights in the sense now

spoken of if we should say yes. We are merely considering a

question of political expediency, as confessedly we have the

power in governing the Territories to let anybody vote we choose.

We can put the whole concern in Pembina, if we think it wise,

into the hands of the madmen up there, and I do not know but that

they are in the majority, for I certainly know nothing about

it.... If no other Senator wishes to make any remarks, I move to

lay the bill upon the table.

Mr. SARGENT: I ask for the yeas and nays on that motion.

Mr. HAGER: I hope the Senator from Vermont will withdraw his

motion. I desire to make a few remarks.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Clayton in the chair). The motion is

not debatable.

Mr. HAGER: I ask the Senator to withdraw the motion for a few

minutes.

Mr. EDMUNDS: If the Senator will renew it when he finishes his

remarks, I will do so.

Mr. HAGER: Very well.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I withdraw the motion.

Mr. HAGER: Mr. President, it seems to me strange that a question

of so much importance as that raised by this amendment appears to

be, from the positions taken by Senators on the floor, should be

presented upon this bill, which, if amended as proposed, will not

confer the right of suffrage upon females throughout the country;

and for us to undertake to legislate upon this question in regard

to a distant Territory where perhaps there are few or no women,

unless they be of the Indian race, is to me a very astonishing

thing.... If suffrage should be extended to females let it come

up as a distinct, independent proposition by itself, and then

every Senator can take his position in regard to a question which

affects the whole country, and not a distant Territory merely.

That is the way, in my opinion, to get at it.... Inasmuch as in

the wisdom of the Government and people of the United States the

right to the elective franchise has been conferred upon the black

race in this country, I see no reason on the ground of

qualification why it should not be conferred upon females.... But

I am unwilling to legislate by piecemeal in this manner. If there

is any good in it; if, as the Senator from Indiana says, as a

matter of right women should be entitled to the franchise, that

right should be co-extensive with the whole country, and not be

limited to the little Territory of Pembina, which is not yet

organized.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--I renew the motion to lay the bill on the table.

Mr. SARGENT.--On that motion I ask for the yeas and nays. The

yeas and nays were ordered.

Mr. RAMSEY.--I should like to appeal to the Senator from Vermont

to withdraw the motion for five minutes.

Mr. STEWART.--We will not lay it on the table.

Mr. RAMSEY.--Very well; let the vote be taken. The question being

taken by yeas and nays, resulted--yeas, 24; nays, 24; as follows:

YEAS--Messrs. Bayard, Buckingham, Conkling, Conover, Cooper,

Davis, Edmunds, Frelinghuysen, Hager, Hamilton of Maryland,

Howe, Ingalls, Johnston, Jones, MeCreery, Merrimon, Morrill

of Maine, Norwood, Ransom, Scott, Sherman, Wadleigh,

Washburn, and Wright--24.

NAYS--Messrs. Bogy, Boreman, Boutwell, Carpenter, Chandler,

Clayton, Ferry of Michigan, Flanagan, Gilbert, Harvey,

Hitchcock, Logan, Mitchell, Morton, Patterson, Pratt,

Ramsey, Sargent, Spencer, Sprague, Stewart, Tipton, West,

and Windom--24.

ABSENT--Messrs. Alcorn, Allison, Anthony, Brownlow, Cameron,

Cragin, Dennis, Dorsey, Fenton, Ferry of Connecticut,

Goldthwaite, Gordon, Hamilton of Texas, Hamlin, Kelly,

Lewis, Morrill of Vermont, Oglesby, Pease, Robertson,

Saulsbury, Schurz, Stevenson, Stockton, and Thurman--25.

So the motion was not agreed to.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CLAYTON in the chair.)--The question

is on the amendment of the Senator from California [Mr.

SARGENT], upon which the yeas and nays have been ordered.

Mr. BAYARD.--Mr. President, it would seem scarcely credible that

in the Senate of the United States an abrupt and sudden change in

so fundamental a relation as that borne by the two sexes to our

system of Government should be proposed as an "experiment," and

that it should be gravely recommended that a newly organized

Territory under act of Congress should be set aside for this

"experiment," which is in direct, grossly irreverent disregard of

all that we have known as a rule, our great fundamental rule, in

organizing a government of laws, whether colonial, State, or

Federal, in this country.

I frankly say, Mr. President, that which strikes me most forcibly

is the gross irreverence of this proposition, its utter disregard

of that Divine will by which man and woman were created

different, physically, intellectually, and morally, and in

defiance of which we are now to have this poor, weak, futile

attempt of man to set up his schemes of amelioration in defiance

of every tradition, of every revelation, of all human experience,

enlightened as it has been by Divine permission. It seems to me

that to introduce so grave a subject as this, to spring it here

upon the Senate without notice in the shape of an amendment to a

pending measure, to propose thus to experiment with the great

laws that lie at the very foundation of human society, and to do

it for the most part in the trivial tone which we have witnessed

during this debate, is not only mortifying, but it renders one

almost hopeless of the permanence of our Government if this is to

be the example set by one of the Houses of Congress, that which

claims to be more sedate and deliberate, if it proposes in this

light and perfunctory way to deal with questions of this grave

nature and import. Sir, there is no time at present for that

preparation which such a subject demands at the hands of any

sensible man, mindful of his responsibilities, who seeks to deal

with it.

This is an attempt to disregard laws promulgated by the Almighty

Himself. It is irreverent legislation in the simplest and

strongest sense of the word. Nay, sir, not only so, but it is a

step in defiance of the laws of revealed religion as given to

men. If there be one institution which it seems to me has

affected the character of this country, which has affected the

whole character of modern civilization, the results of which we

can but imperfectly trace and but partly recognize, it is the

effect of the institution of Christian marriage, the mysterious

tie uniting the one man and the one woman until they shall become

one and not two persons. It is an institution which is

mysterious, which is beyond the reach and the understanding of

man, but he certainly can best exhibit his sense of duty and

proper obligation when he reverently shall submit to and

recognize its wisdom. All such laws as proposed by this amendment

are stumbling-blocks, and are meant to be stumbling-blocks in the

way of that perfect union of the sexes which was intended by the

law of Christian marriage.

Suffrage is a political franchise; it is not a right; because the

word "right" is used in reference to voting in the XIV. Amendment

to the Constitution, that does not make it a right. It is in the

very nature of government a political privilege confided,

according to the exigency, the expediency, by the wisdom of

those who control the government, to a certain class. If this

right to vote be what the Senator from Indiana declares it to be,

a natural and inalienable right, then you have no more right to

deny it to a person who is under the age of twenty-one than you

have to deny it to a person who is over the age of twenty-one

years. Sir, the difference is radical. Voting is no right; it is

a privilege granted, a franchise which is granted to certain

classes, more or less extended according to the supposed

expediency which shall control the minds of those who frame the

constitution of government for a people. There is no wrong done,

so far as the abnegation of a right is involved, by denying this

to certain classes of a community, whether on account of age or

sex or any other supposed causes of disqualification. In this

country the whole foundation of our institutions has been that

the male sex when arrived at years of supposed discretion alone

should take part in the political control of the country.

It is not necessary for me to speak now of other influences than

those that come from politics; it is not necessary for me to

dwell upon the actual and potential influences that control the

fate of men and of nations. We all know they are not those most

apparent. We all know it is the passions, the affections, the

sympathies, and desires of the human heart and human ambition

that control the vote, and not the vote that controls them. And

now you propose to try an "experiment" upon a community composed

of your own fellow-citizens, which is in defiance of all human

experience, all suggestions of philosophy, of your own laws, and

of every lesson you should have drawn from every civilized nation

that has preceded you.

Under the operation of this Amendment, what will become of the

family hearthstone around which cluster the very best influences

of human education? You will have a family with two heads--a

"house divided against itself." You will no longer have that

healthful and necessary subordination of wife to husband, and

that unity of relationship which is required by a true and a real

Christian marriage. You will have substituted a system of

contention and difference warring against the laws of nature

herself, and attempting by these new fangled, petty, puny, and

most contemptible contrivances, organized in defiance of the best

lessons of human experience, to confuse, impede, and disarrange

the palpable will of the Creator of the world. I can see in this

proposition for female suffrage the end of all that home life and

education which are the best nursery for a nation's virtue. I can

see in all these attempts to invade the relations between man and

wife, to establish differences, to declare those to be two whom

God hath declared to be one, elements of chaotic disorder,

elements of destruction to all those things which are, after all,

our best reliance for a good and a pure and an honest government.

As I said, Mr. President, I rose simply to express my

astonishment that a measure of this kind could have received the

assent which it apparently has received from the Senate of the

United States in the vote just recorded. The subject is too

broad, it is too deep, it is too serious to attempt to discuss it

unprepared and within the time which is allotted to me. I

sincerely hope that if this subject is to be acted upon, it will

be after long, serious, severe, close consideration. Let all

sides of the subject be viewed in all its vastness and

far-reaching consequences. Let Senators consider the results, and

let at least their aims in this matter be something higher than

mere political and partisan considerations, which I fear have

animated much of the discussion to which we have listened. Mr.

President, I trust sincerely that the vote just taken, indicating

the refusal of the Senate to lay this bill upon the table, may

not indicate the will of the Senate in respect of this Amendment.

We have no right to subject this or any other portion of our

fellow-citizens to so sad, so untoward, so unhappy an experiment

as is here proposed. I have sat in this Chamber, and seen laws

leveled with the most serious and cruel penalties against a class

of people practicing polygamy in our Territories. What will this

law do? Will it not in fact sever those relations to which I have

referred as being essential for the virtue and safety of a State?

What is your State unless it is founded upon virtuous and happy

homes? And where can there be a virtuous and happy home unless a

Christian marriage shall have consecrated it?

No, Mr. President, I trust that this Amendment will not be

adopted, that we shall not trifle in this way with the happiness

of a large portion of our fellow-citizens, that we shall not set

what I must consider this indecorous example of government; and I

trust that the vote of the Senate most emphatically will stop

here, and I trust stop permanently even the suggestion of

granting the political franchise of voting to the women of

America. They do not need it, sir. I can not, of course, speak

for all, but I know that I can speak the sentiment of many when I

say that to them the proposition is abhorrent to take them from

the retirement where their sway is so admitted, so beneficent, so

elevating, and to throw them into another sphere for which they

are totally unfitted and where all that at present adorns and

protects them must be taken away by the rough and vulgar contact

with those struggles which men are much better fitted to meet.

No, sir; the relations of the sexes as they exist to-day under

the laws of this country have produced happy and stable

government, or at least are not responsible for the evil features

which we witness. The best protection for the women of America is

in the respect and the love which the men of America bear to

them. Every man conversant with the practical affairs of life

knows that the fact, that the mere fact that it is a woman who

seeks her rights in a court of justice alone gives her an

advantage over her contestant which few men are able to resist, I

would put it to any who has practiced law in the courts of this

country; let him stand before a jury composed only of men, let

the case be tried only by men; let all the witnesses be men; and

the plaintiff or the defendant be a woman, and if you choose to

add to that, even more unprotected than women generally are, a

widow or an orphan, and does not every one recognize the

difficulty, not to find protection for her rights, but the

difficulty to induce the men who compose the juries of America to

hold the balance of justice steadily enough to insure that the

rights of others are not invaded by the force of sympathy for her

sex? These are common every-day illustrations. They could be

multiplied _ad infinitum_.

Mr. President, there never was a greater mistake, there never was

a falser fact stated than that the women of America need any

protection further than the love borne to them by their

fellow-countrymen. Every right, every privilege, many that men do

not attempt, many that men can not hope for, are theirs most

freely. Do not imperil the advantages which they have, do not

attempt in this hasty, ill-considered, shallow way to interfere

with the relations which are founded upon the laws of nature

herself. Depend upon it, Mr. President, man's wisdom is best

shown by humble attention, by humble obedience to the great laws

of nature; and those discoveries which have led men to their

chiefest enjoyment and greatest advantages have been from the

great minds of those who did lay their ears near the heart of

nature, listened to its beatings, and did not attempt to correct

God's handiwork by their own futile attempts at improvement.

Mr. STEWART.--Mr. President, I listened to the speech of the

Senator from Delaware with great attention; I appreciate his

feelings on the subject; and it has occasioned me to have some

reflection upon this subject during the time he was speaking. I

want to call the attention of the Senator from Delaware and of

the Senate and of the country to a few facts in regard to this

matter of woman's rights, and to see whether it has not been well

to change some of the ancient order of things. There was a time

among our Anglo-Saxon fathers when it was seriously discussed in

the law-books what size the whip should be with which a husband

could properly chastise his wife. If it was no larger than the

thumb, I believe no action would lie. Those were the good old

times, and those times you can see illustrated to-day all over

the world where savages----

Mr. SARGENT.--That was when we were near to nature.

Mr. STEWART.--Yes; that was when man held sway, and when God's

law of man's supremacy was omnipotent! Then harmony was

preserved. If you will go out into my State and see the Indian

women carrying the loads on their backs and the men riding on

horses, and the women doing the work, you will see the harmony of

the supremacy of man! Now, I undertake to say that there is no

surer criterion of the civilization of any nation than the

position which woman occupies; and the less dependent she is, the

more she has to do with the management of society, the more she

is regarded as an individual, the higher that society stands; but

where she depends exclusively on man and man's justice, there you

have absolute barbarism. Do you think that women have been less

loyal to their husbands, do you think that virtue has been less

protected in this country since the rights of women were

vindicated by the law, since they were entitled to hold property?

Have they not been as good wives as they were formerly? Has

society been injured thereby? Show me the nation that elevates

its women and acknowledges their rights and protects them by the

law and severs them in point of protection from the caprice or

the sympathy of men--show me that nation, and that nation shall

be first. It is one of the evidences of the advance of

civilization in America that woman does occupy the position she

does here; and it is idle to say that society will be destroyed

by recognizing her as having rights to protect.

It is very well for women who chance to have kind husbands and

luxurious homes, under the flattery of their husbands, to sneer

at their less fortunate sisters who are debarred every right. It

is very well for those who have luxury and power and wealth to

trample upon the unfortunate that cry for bread and for help. It

is very easy to philosophize about laws and say that women are

not fit for this place and not fit for that; that it is

indelicate, and all that kind of thing, to allow her to earn an

honest living or to have a place in a Department where she can do

work; it is very well for us to say, "Here, we will give her only

half pay for the same labor;" but they who serve and they who

suffer feel it differently. How is the voice of women on this

subject to be heard? Shall it be heard from that class only who

are satisfied with their protection, or shall the voice of the

weak and the starving be heard? There is no way for it to be

heard. We see it daily. You talk about degradation. One of the

great sources of the degradation of this country, one of the

great sources of the breaking up of families and destroying

society is your low groggeries and your gambling-houses and your

places of resort for bad men, that are tolerated in spite of your

laws and will be so long as men only vote. The women suffer by

these things; and that consideration alone has often made me

hesitate upon this question. I do believe that if the good women

of America could speak to-day they would reform many evils that

we wink at or allow to exist because we want the votes of the

parties who are committing these sins against society. I say let

the women have a voice; and when it is said that this is

ill-considered, that this is not the proper time, and that this

is too serious a business to be considered by the Senate of the

United States on this bill, I tell you society is marching on to

it, and as I remarked before, it will not be ten years before

there will be no voice in this Senate against female suffrage. It

is necessary for women, if they are to be protected in society

and not to be the prey of man, that they shall have the ballot to

protect themselves. It is the only thing in a free government

that can protect any one; and whether it is a natural right or an

artificial right it is nonsense to discuss. It is a necessary

right; it is necessary to freedom; it is necessary to equal

rights; it is necessary to protection; it is necessary for every

class to have the ballot if we are to have a square deal.

Mr. BOREMAN.--I had not intended to utter a word. I supposed the

bill would pass upon the report which was made by the committee.

I am inclined now to think that if it had not been for the

unfortunate, if I may say so, amendment offered by my friend from

California [Mr. Sargent] it would have passed long since. But

this question of woman suffrage is one upon which all our friends

probably do not desire to vote either one way or the other, and

it is a very convenient way to get rid of voting on the question

directly to lay this bill on the table. Fortunately that question

has been settled for the present, and I am glad the Senate has

seen fit not to lay the bill on the table.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--The Senator speaks about people not wishing to vote

on the amendment directly; and as I made the motion to lay on the

table I assume that he refers to me. I beg to disabuse his mind

on that subject, inasmuch as I am opposed to the amendment and am

perfectly free to vote against it, and in doing so I suppose I

represent, according to the latest advices I have, a very large

majority of the people of Vermont.

Mr. BOREMAN.--I agree with the Senator from Vermont on the

subject of woman suffrage myself.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--Then I hope the Senator will not suggest that I am

trying to dodge the question by moving to lay the bill on the

table.

Mr. BOREMAN.--Not at all. I did not allude to the Senator who

made the motion; and the remark I made was more intended to be

playful than serious. I simply thought that probably the bill had

enough friends to pass it if that subject was not mooted. I may

be mistaken. However, I shall be glad to have a vote on the bill

either with or without woman suffrage incorporated in it. I shall

vote against incorporating it, but if it is put there I shall

nevertheless be gratified to have the bill passed. I feel no

interest in it except as representing what I believe to be the

interests and wishes of those to be affected by it. I think the

circumstances are such as to justify Congress in organizing the

Territory, else as representing the committee I should not have

reported the bill. That is all I desire to say.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Anthony in the chair).--The question

is on the amendment of the Senator from California [Mr. Sargent],

upon which the yeas and nays have been ordered.

The Secretary proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. JOHNSON (when his name was called).--On this question I am

paired with the Senator from Alabama [Mr. Spencer]. If he were

here he would vote "yea" and I should vote "nay."

Mr. BOGY (after having first voted in the negative).--I rise to

withdraw my vote. At the time I voted I forgot that I was paired

with the Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Dorsey]. I should have voted

"nay" and he would have voted "yea."

The PRESIDING OFFICER.--The vote will be withdrawn if there be no

objection.

Mr. MORRILL, of Maine (after having first voted in the

negative).--It occurs to me that I am paired with the Senator

from Illinois (Mr. Oglesby). If he were here he would vote "yea"

and I should vote "nay." I ask leave to withdraw my vote.

The PRESIDING OFFICER.--Leave will be granted if there is no

objection.

The roll-call having been concluded, the result was

announced--yeas 19, nays 27; as follows:

YEAS--Messrs. Anthony, Carpenter, Chandler, Conover, Ferry

of Michigan, Flanagan, Gilbert, Harvey, Mitchell, Morton,

Patterson, Pratt, Sargent, Sprague, Stewart, Tipton,

Washburn, West, and Windom--19.

NAYS--Messrs. Allison, Bayard, Boreman, Boutwell,

Buckingham, Clayton, Conkling, Cooper, Davis, Edmunds,

Frelinghuysen, Hager, Hamilton of Maryland, Hitchcock,

Jones, Kelly, McCreery, Merrimon, Morrill of Vermont,

Norwood, Ramsey, Ransom, Saulsbury, Scott, Sherman,

Wadleigh, and Wright--27.

ABSENT--Messrs. Alcorn, Bogy, Brownlow, Cameron, Cragin,

Dennis, Dorsey, Fenton, Ferry of Connecticut, Goldthwaite,

Gordon, Hamilton of Texas, Hamlin, Howe, Ingalls, Johnson,

Lewis, Logan, Morrill of Maine, Oglesby, Pease, Robertson,

Schurz, Spencer, Stevenson, Stockton, and Thurman--27.

So the amendment was rejected.

The PRESIDING OFFICER.--The question now is on ordering the bill

to be engrossed for a third reading.

Mr. MORTON called for the yeas and nays; and they were ordered.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--I ask the chairman of the committee if the clause

still stands in the bill which authorizes all the male

inhabitants of that Territory to vote at the first election?

Mr. BOREMAN.--I think the Senator is mistaken about that.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--I am not asking whether I am mistaken or not; I am

asking if the clause remains as it stood reported by the

committee?

Mr. BOREMAN.--Yes, sir.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--That is enough for me.

Mr. RAMSEY.--There is nothing new in that.

The question being taken by yeas and nays, resulted--yeas 19,

nays 29; as follows:

YEAS--Messrs. Bogy, Boreman, Chandler, Clayton, Ferry of

Michigan, Flanagan, Harvey, Hitchcock, Jones, Kelly, Logan,

Mitchell, Patterson, Pratt, Ramsey, Sherman, Tipton,

Wadleigh, and Windom--19.

NAYS--Messrs. Anthony, Bayard, Boutwell, Buckingham,

Carpenter, Conkling, Conover, Davis, Edmunds, Frelinghuysen,

Gilbert, Hager, Hamilton of Maryland, Ingalls, Johnson,

McCreery, Merrimon, Morrill of Maine, Morrill of Vermont,

Norwood, Ransom, Sargent, Saulsbury, Scott, Sprague,

Stewart, Washburn, West, and Wright--29.

ABSENT--Messrs. Alcorn, Allison, Brownlow, Cameron, Cooper,

Cragin, Dennis, Dorsey, Fenton, Ferry of Connecticut,

Golthwaite, Gordon, Hamilton of Texas, Hamlin, Howe, Lewis,

Morton, Oglesby, Pease, Robertson, Schurz, Spencer,

Stevenson, Stockton, and Thurman--25.

So the bill was rejected.

Though the measure was lost, and the women sad under repeated

disappointments, yet the progress was noted with gratitude. In 1866

only nine Senators voted in favor of woman's enfranchisement after a

three days' discussion of the measure. In 1874, after eight years of

education, nineteen voted aye to the proposition.

The seventh Washington Convention was held January 14th and 15th,

1875, in Lincoln Hall as usual. Mrs. Stanton opened the proceedings by

stating that owing to the death of the President of the association,

Martha C. Wright, the duties of presiding officer devolved upon her.

After paying a well-merited tribute to her noble coadjutor, she said

that many of their noblest friends had passed away. Among them Dr.

Harriot K. Hunt, Hon. Gerrit Smith, and Rev. Beriah Green.