Parker Pillsbury 25 00
Mrs. Luther Marsh 20 00
Lydia Mott 25 00
Mrs. P. H. and M. Jones 25 00
Susan B. Anthony 50 00
Cora A. Syme 10 00
Two Ladies, $5 each 10 00
Frances D. Gage 13 00
Samuel J. May 10 00
L. Francis 10 00
Westchester E. R. Association (per
E. A. Studwell) 15 00
Jane Clegg 15 00
Joseph and Mary Post 10 00
Charlotte D. Lozier, M.D. 5 00
Elizabeth W. Brown 5 00
Oliver Johnson 5 00
A. O. Willcox 5 00
J. K. H. Wilcox 5 00
E. Cummings 5 00
Mary C. Sawyer 5 00
J. C. Fergusson 5 00
Fred. H. Hernan 5 00
Harry H. Hall 5 00
Charles P. Somerby 5 00
Robert J. Johnston 5 00
Mrs. S. M. Chickering 5 00
J. Miller McKim 5 00
Sarah E. Wall 3 00
R. F. Hudson 2 00
Mrs. Gayno 2 00
Mrs. Dodge 2 00
Mrs. L. Francis 2 00
Mrs. Elmer Stone 2 00
Hannah W. Bell 2 00
S. S. Foster 1 00
Mrs. Brown 5 00
T. W. Higginson 1 00
S. D. White 1 00
Cash 1 00
A. Noble, Sr. 1 00
C. B. Halsart 1 00
E. Underhill 1 00
A. M. Powell 1 00
J. E. Snodgrass 1 00
Mrs. Hibbard 1 00
Nellie Lord 1 00
D. B. and A. Morey 1 00
R. Salmon 1 00
Adolphus O. Johnson 1 00
Levi K. Joslin 1 00
Mary F. Davis 1 00
Wm. P. Bolles 1 00
Cash 1 00
E. Ostrander 1 00
Esther Titus 1 00
L. B. Humphrey 1 00
Martha Hudson 1 00
Susan M. Davis 1 00
Sojourner Truth 1 00
T. M. Newbold 1 00
M. E. Woodson 50
Mrs. M. Johnson 50
Ann Ellsworth Hunt 50
L. Blake 50
J. L. Langworthy 50
T. B. Pierce 50
Esther C. Pierce 50
E. Campbell 50
M. H. McKinnon 50
Mrs. J. B. Mix, M.D. 50
Samuel D. Moore 25
M. P. Allen 25
R. Williams 25
P. E. Kipp 25
_Pledges._
Anna E. Dickinson $100 00
Margaret E. Winchester 100 00
A. O. Wilcox 55 00
C. and M. H. Prince 25 00
Gillis, Harney & Co. 25 00
H. Hart 20 00
D. B. and A. B. Morey 20 00
John Smith 10 00
C. F. Wallace 5 00
C. E. Reason 5 00
Mrs. C. E. Collins 5 00
Euphemia Cochrane 5 00
Melissa Johnson 5 00
W. F. Douley 2 00
Mrs. H. P. Baldwin 1 00
Dr. Chavau 1 00
S. A. Turner 1 00
Dio Lewis, M.D. 50 00
R. C. Browning 30 00
George H. Taylor, M.D. 5 00
* * * * *
SOJOURNER TRUTH ON THE PRESS.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE WORLD:--We have had the pleasure of entertaining
Mrs. Stowe's "Lybian Sybil" at our home for the last week, and can
bear our testimony to the marvelous wisdom and goodness of this
remarkable woman. She was a slave in this State for forty years, and
has devoted forty years of freedom to the best interests of her race.
Though eighty years of age, she is as active and clear-sighted as
ever, and "understands the whole question of reconstruction, all its
'quagmires and pitfalls,' as she says, as well as any man does."
The morning after the Equal Rights Convention, as the daily journals
one by one made their appearance, turning to the youngsters of the
household, she said: "Children, as there is no school to-day, will you
read Sojourner the reports of the Convention? I want to see whether
these young sprigs of the press do me justice. You know, children, I
don't read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can
see through a millstone, though I can't see through a spelling-book.
What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter! I know and
do what is right better than many big men who read. And there's that
property qualification! just as bad. As if men and women themselves,
who made money, were not of more value than the thing they made. If I
were a delegate to the Constitutional Convention I could make
suffrage as clear as daylight; but I am afraid these Republicans will
'purty, purty' about all manner of small things week out and week in,
and never settle this foundation question after all." Sojourner then
gathered up her bag and shawl, and walked into the parlor in a stately
manner, and there, surrounded by the children, the papers were duly
read and considered. The _Express_, the _Post_, the _Commercial
Advertiser_, the _World_, the _Times_, the _Herald_, the _Tribune_,
and the _Sun_, all passed in review. The _World_ seemed to please
Sojourner more than any other journal. She said she liked the wit of
the _World's_ reporter; all the little texts running through the
speeches, such as "Sojourner on Popping Up," "No Grumbling," "Digging
Stumps," "Biz," to show what is coming, so that one can get ready to
cry or laugh, as the case may be--a kind of sign-board, a milestone,
to tell where we are going, and how fast we go. The readers then call
her attention to the solid columns of the other papers, and the
versification of the _World_. She said she did not like the dead calm.
She liked the breaking up into verses, like her songs. That is a good
thing; it gives the reporter time to take breath and sharpen his pen,
and think of some witty thing to say; for life is a hard battle
anyway, and if we can laugh and sing a little as we fight the good
fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. "But, children, why did
you not send for some of those wicked Democratic papers that abuse all
good people and good things." "They are all here," said the readers in
chorus. "We have read you all the Republicans and the Democrats say."
"Why, children, I can't tell one from the other. The millennium must
be here, when one can't tell saints from sinners, Republicans from
Democrats. Is the _World_ Horace Greeley's paper?" "Oh, no; the
_World_ is Democratic!" "Democratic! Why, children, the _World_ does
move! But there is one thing I don't exactly see; if the Democrats are
all ready to give equal rights to all, what are the Republicans making
such a fuss about? Mr. Greeley was ready for this twenty years ago; if
he had gone on as fast as the Democrats he should have been on the
platform, at the conventions, making speeches, and writing
resolutions, long ago." "Oh," said some one of larger growth, "Mr.
Greeley is busy with tariffs and protective duties. What do you think,
Sojourner, of free trade? Do you not think if England and France have
more dry-goods than they want that they had better send them to us,
and we in turn send them our fruits and flowers and grains; our
timber, iron, fish, and ice?" "Yes, I go for everything free. Let
nature, like individuals, make the most of what God has given them,
have their neighbors to do the same, and then do all they can to serve
each other. There is no use in one man, or one nation, to try to do or
be everything. It is a good thing to be dependent on each other for
something, it makes us civil and peaceable. But," said Sojourner,
"where is Theodore Tilton's paper?" "Oh, the _Independent_ is a
weekly, it came out before the Convention." "But Theodore is not a
weekly; why did he not come to the Convention and tell us what he
thought?" "Well, here is his last paper, with a grand editorial," and
Sojourner listened to the end with interest. "That's good," said she,
"but he don't say woman." "Oh, he is talking about sectarianism, not
suffrage; the Church, not the State." "No matter, the Church wrongs
woman as much as the State. 'Wives, obey your husbands,' is as bad as
the common law. 'The husband and wife are one, and that one the
husband.' I am afraid Theodore and Horace are playing bo-peep with
their shadows. Did you tell me that Mr. Greeley is a delegate to the
Constitutional Convention?" Yes, and I hope that he will soon wake up
to the fact that the Democrats are going ahead of him, and instead of
writing articles on 'Democracy run mad,' on tariffs and mining
interests, it behooves him to be studying what genuine republicanism
is, and whether we are to realize it in the Empire State this very
year or not. "Speaking of shadows," said Sojourner, "I wish the
_World_ to know that when I go among fashionable people in the Church
of the Puritans, I do not carry 'rations' in my bag; I keep my shadow
there. I have good friends enough to give me clothes and rations. I
stand on principle, always in one place, so everybody knows where to
find Sojourner, and I don't want my shadow even to be dogging about
here and there and everywhere, so I keep it in this bag." "I think,"
said one of the group, "the press should hereafter speak of you as
Mrs. Stowe's Lybian Sybil, and not as 'old church woman.'" "Oh, child,
that's good enough. The _Herald_ used to call me 'old black nigger,'
so this sounds respectable. Have you read the _Herald_ too, children?
Is that born again? Well, we are all walking the right way together.
I'll tell you what I'm thinking. My speeches in the Convention read
well. I should like to have the substance put together, improved a
little, and published in tract form, headed 'Sojourner Truth on
Suffrage;' for if these timid men, like Greeley, knew that Sojourner
was out for 'universal suffrage,' they would not be so afraid to
handle the question. Yes, children, I am going to rouse the people on
equality. I must sojourn once to the ballot-box before I die. I hear
the ballot-box is a beautiful glass globe, so you can see all the
votes as they go in. Now, the first time I vote I'll see if a woman's
vote looks any different from the rest--if it makes any stir or
commotion. If it don't inside, it need not outside. That good speech
of Henry Ward Beecher's made my heart leap for joy; he just hit the
nail right on the head when he said you never lost anything by asking
everything; if you bait the suffrage-hook with a woman you will
certainly catch a black man. There is a great deal in that philosophy,
children. Now I must go and take a smoke!" I tell you in confidence,
Mr. Editor, Sojourner smokes!
Yours respectfully, E. C. S.
P. S.--She says she has been sent into the smoking-car so often she
smoked in self-defense--she would rather swallow her own smoke than
another's.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XIX.
THE KANSAS CAMPAIGN, 1867.
IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE IN KANSAS--A VIGOROUS CANVASS ANTICIPATED.
ST. LOUIS, April 3.
The _Democrat's_ Topeka, Kansas, special says: "A large convention of
those in favor of impartial suffrage is in session in this city. Lucy
Stone and Dr. Blackwell, and delegates from different parts of the
State are in attendance.
"An association has been formed for the purpose of canvassing the
State thoroughly and distributing documents. The object is to carry
the female suffrage clause as well as the negro. The officers of the
association are Gov. Crawford, for President; Lieut. Gov. Green, for
Vice-President; Judge S. N. Wood, for Corresponding Secretary; and an
Executive Committee of fourteen, including such men as Chas. Robinson,
J. P. Root, J. B. Abbot, Col. Moonlight, all the members of the
Supreme Court, and other leading men of the State. Arrangements are
made to have the most prominent advocates of impartial suffrage from
the East to stump the State. Money will be raised to conduct the fall
campaign, which will probably be the most vigorously conducted of any
which has yet taken place."
The _State Record_, Kansas, says: "The opponents of woman suffrage use
the argument very freely that its advocates are not in favor of negro
suffrage. This is wickedly and wilfully false. The most earnest and
influential supporters of woman suffrage in the State are equally
anxious to give the negro his rights, and Republicans, generally, will
vote for both propositions. We hope none will be deceived by these
false charges made by those who write and speak in the interest of
saloons, and who to turn expect to be elevated to office through their
agency. The most bitter and relentless and united efforts now making
against woman suffrage, are by those who are devoting their lives to
degrading men and women too, and we are sorry to see a few respectable
men keeping them company, under the foolish impression that the
movement originated and is carried on by those who aim to defeat negro
suffrage. We earnestly hope the day is near at hand when all men and
women everywhere will be allowed to exercise their political rights."
Extract from a letter written by Mrs. S. N. Wood for the Lawrence
_Tribune_, May, 1867: "The women of Cottonwood Falls have passed
through this horrid furnace of an election, and come out unscathed.
Our laws require that a majority of all the legal voters in the
district must vote to issue bonds to build a school-house, before
bonds can be issued. As women were legal voters, to stay at home was
to vote against bonds. The election had to be conducted exactly as
other elections. It was a busy time; none of our men liked to leave
their work to spend the day at the polls, so three women were chosen
and qualified to act as judges. No guardians of the ballot-box ever
acted with more ability or behaved with more propriety and dignity
than they. There was not the least rudeness among the men; no brawling
or swearing. Not a woman there lost a particle of refinement, or
became a grain coarser, or neglected her family. Not one of the
misguided women whose bad influences Mr. Reynolds, of the _Journal_,
so much dreads, came to the polls. That kind of women, I judge, are
literally opposed to women demoralizing themselves by voting. But if
such lived in our district, and had offered to vote, I trust their
votes would have been received and counted just the same as the votes
of the men who support and encourage them in their wicked career. I
never knew what men meant when talking about bonds, until I learned
that I must vote on the subject. I wanted to vote intelligently;
sought the requisite information; and I went to the polls feeling
stronger and safer for that little knowledge gained. When I came home
my little ones hailed me as lovingly as ever, and the same mother-love
guided my hands for their comfort.
"In 1858, a 'woman's rights' man, in Kansas, believing that there
should be a perfect equality as to property rights between men and
women, wrote to Gerrit Smith, Wm. Goodell, Lucy Stone, and other
advocates of woman's rights, asking them to send him a form of a law
that would secure that object. Among others he received the framework
of a law written by Lucy Stone. He wrote it over according to her
pattern, and Lyman Allen introduced it into the Legislature. It became
a law in February, 1859. The original in Lucy Stone's handwriting is
yet in existence. The law is virtually the one that, to-day, on our
statute book testifies to the honest sense of justice that their
conflict with tyranny nurtured in our men in the early days of Kansas.
It testifies to Lucy Stone's zeal in behalf of her sex."
The following address to the Southern people was largely circulated in
Kansas during the spring campaign, by Mr. Blackwell.
WHAT THE SOUTH CAN DO.
HOW THE SOUTHERN STATES CAN MAKE THEMSELVES MASTERS OF THE SITUATION.
TO THE LEGISLATURES OF THE SOUTHERN STATES:--I write to you as the
intellectual leaders of the Southern people--men who should be able
and willing to transcend the prejudices of section--to suggest the
only ground of settlement between North and South which, in my
judgment, can be successfully adopted.
Let me state the political situation. The radical principles of the
North are immovably fixed upon negro suffrage as a condition of
Southern State reconstruction. The proposed Constitutional Amendment
is not regarded as a finality. It satisfies nobody, not even its
authors. In the minds of the Northern people the negroes are now
associated with the idea of loyalty to the Union. They are considered
citizens. They are respected as "our allies." It is believed in the
North that a majority of the white people of the South are at heart
the enemies of the Union. The advocates of negro suffrage daily grow
stronger and more numerous.
On the other hand, a majority of the Southern white population are
inflexibly opposed to negro suffrage in any form, universal or
qualified, and are prepared to resist its introduction by every means
in their power. In alliance with the President and the Northern
Democracy, they protest against any and all terms of reconstruction,
demand unconditional readmission, and await in gloomy silence the
Republican initiative.
This absolute and growing antagonism can only end, if continued, in
one of two results, either in a renewal of civil war, or in a
concession by the South of political equality to the negro. But in
case of war, the South can not possibly succeed. The North is to-day
far stronger in men and money, in farms and factories, than she was in
1860. She is now trained to war, conscious of overwhelming strength,
flushed with victory, and respected, as never before, by the nations
of Europe. Moreover, she is much more united in political sentiment.
Do not again deceive yourselves. If you should resort to arms, the
North would be practically unanimous. The President would instantly be
impeached and a radical successor appointed. The South has lost social
unity with the loss of slavery. She can not fight better than before.
And the braver her action, the more terrible would be her fate.
Gentlemen, these are facts--not theories. Wise men try to see things
as they are, uncolored by opinion or preference. The interest of both
North and South, since they must live together, is peace, harmony, and
real fraternity. No adjustment can fully succeed unless it is
acceptable to both sections. Therefore the statesman and patriot must
find a common ground as a basis of permanent reconciliation.
Now the radicalism of the North is actual, organic, and progressive.
Recognize the fact. But if "governments derive their just powers from
the consent of the governed"--if "taxation without representation is
tyranny"--and "on these two commandments hang all the (Republican) law
and the prophets"--then these propositions are as applicable to women
as to negroes. "Consistency is a jewel." The principle is so broad
that, if you accept it in its entirety, you can afford to lead--not
follow.
The population of the late slave States is about 12,000,000; 8,000,000
white, 4,000,000 black. The radicals demand suffrage for the black men
on the ground named above. Very good. Say to them, as Mr. Cowan said
to the advocates of negro male suffrage in the District, "Apply your
principle! Give suffrage to all men and women of mature age and sound
mind, and we will accept it as the basis of State and National
reconstruction."
Consider the result from the Southern standpoint. Your 4,000,000 of
Southern white women will counterbalance your 4,000,000 of negro men
and women, and thus the political supremacy of your white race will
remain unchanged.
Think well of this. It is a calculation of the relative political
influences of white women and of negroes which perhaps your people
have not yet considered. Let us make the statement in figures.
Estimating one male voter to every five persons, your present vote is:
White males 1,600,000
Add white females 1,600,000
---------
Total white voters 3,200,000
Negro males 800,000
Negro females 800,000
---------
Total negro voters 1,600,000
Suppose all the negroes vote one way and all the whites the other,
your white majority would be 1,600,000--equal to your present total
vote. Thus you would control your own State legislation. Meanwhile,
your influence in the councils of the nation will be greater than ever
before, because your emancipated slaves will be counted in the basis
of representation, instead of as formerly, in the ratio of five for
three. In the light of the history of your Confederacy, can any
Southerner fear to trust the women of the South with the ballot?
But the propriety of your making the proposal lies deeper than any
consideration of sectional expediency. If you must try the Republican
experiment, try it fully and fairly. Since you are compelled to union
with the North, remove every seed of future controversy. If you are to
share the future government of your States with a race you deem
naturally and hopelessly inferior, avert the social chaos, which seems
to you so imminent, by utilizing the intelligence and patriotism of
the wives and daughters of the South. Plant yourselves upon the
logical Northern principle. Then no new demands can ever be made upon
you. No future inroads of fanaticism can renew sectional discord.
The effect upon the North would be to revolutionize political parties.
"Justice satisfies everybody." The negro, thus protected against
oppression by possessing the ballot, would cease to be the prominent
object of philanthropic interest. Northern distrust, disarmed by
Southern magnanimity, would give place to the liveliest sentiments of
confidence and regard. The great political desideratum would be
attained. The negro question would be forever removed from the
political arena. National parties would again crystallize upon
legitimate questions of National interest--questions of tariff,
finance, and foreign relations. The disastrous conflict between
Federal and State jurisdiction would cease. North and South, no
longer hammer and anvil, would forget and forgive the past.
School-houses and churches would be our fortifications and
intrenchments. Capital and population would flow, like the
Mississippi, toward the Gulf. The black race would gravitate by the
law of nature toward the tropics. The memory and spirit of Washington
would be cherished; and every deed of genuine gallantry and humanity
would be treasured as the common glory of the republic.
Do you say that Northern Republicans would not accept such a
proposition? They can not avoid it. The matter is in your own hands.
In New Jersey (then a slave State) from 1776 to 1807, a period of
thirty-one years, women and negroes voted on precisely the same
footing as white men. No catastrophe, social or political, ensued. The
following is an extract from the New Jersey election law of 1797:
"SEC. 9. Every voter shall openly and in full view deliver his or her
ballot, which shall be a single written ticket containing the names of
the person, or persons, for whom he or she votes," etc.
Your Southern Legislatures can extend suffrage on equal terms to "all
inhabitants," as the New Jersey State Convention did in 1776. Then let
the Republicans in Congress refuse to admit your Senators and
Representatives, if they dare. If so, they will go under. Upon that
issue fairly made up, the men of positive convictions would rally
round the new and consistent Democratic party. The very element which
has destroyed slavery would side with the victorious South, and "out
of the nettle danger you would pluck the flower safety."
Respectfully yours, HENRY B. BLACKWELL.
NEW YORK, January 15, 1867.
* * * * *
SUPPRESSED PROCEEDINGS.
The Republican State Central Committee met last week in Leavenworth.
The Leavenworth papers published or pretended to publish the
proceedings of the Committee, but suppressed an important portion.
Fortunately, Mr. Taylor, the honest and able editor of the Wyandotte
_Gazette_, is a member of the Committee, and was present at the
meeting. From his paper we get the following that was for some cause
or other suppressed:
"Mr. Taylor offered the following resolution:
"_Resolved_, That the Republican State Central Committee do not
indorse, but distinctly repudiate, as speakers, in behalf and under
the auspices of the Republican party, such persons as have defamed, or
do hereafter defame, in their public addresses, the women of Kansas,
or those ladies who have been urging upon the people of Kansas the
propriety of enfranchising the women of the State.
"Whiting moved to lay the resolution on the table.
"_Ayes_--Whiting, Eskridge--2.
"_Noes_--Taylor--1.
"Taylor moved to strike the name of I. S. Kalloch from the list of
speakers in the Republican State Canvass.
"_Ayes_--Taylor--1.
"_Noes_--Whiting, Eskridge--2.
PROTEST OF MR. TAYLOR.
"The undersigned, a member of the Republican State Central Committee
of Kansas, protests against the action of the Committee this day had
so far as relates to the placing of the names of I. S. Kalloch, C. V.
Eskridge, and P. B. Plumb, on the list of speakers to canvass the
State in behalf of Republican principles, for the reason that they
have within the last few weeks, in public addresses, published
articles, used ungentlemanly, indecent, and infamously defamatory
language, when alluding to a large and respectable portion of the
women of Kansas, or to women now engaged in canvassing the State in
favor of impartial suffrage.
"R. B. TAYLOR.
"LEAVENWORTH, Sept. 18, 1867.
_Address by the Women's Impartial Suffrage Association of Lawrence,
Kansas._
TO THE WOMEN OF KANSAS:--At the coming election on the 5th of
November, questions of the greatest importance to every citizen of
Kansas, whether man or woman, will be presented for the action of the
people. Shall the right of suffrage be extended to negroes? Shall the
right of suffrage be extended to women?
The question of the enfranchisement of the negro now mainly occupies
the attention of the Republican party. Upon the same principle, viz:
that of equal rights and equal justice to all, we ask the ballot for
woman, and expect to obtain it.
One great obstacle that the advocates of female suffrage have to
contend with is the declaration on the part of many good and
intelligent women that they do not want to vote. They say they are
contented with their present condition; they have all the rights they
want, and do not need the ballot; and they will take no interest in
the matter, except to deprecate its agitation by women. Women of
Kansas, let us reason together for a little concerning this matter.
Honored wives and mothers, dwelling at ease in the comfortable homes
your husbands provide for you, declare you do not want to vote, and
would consider it almost a reflection on your husbands to desire such
a thing, do you consider yourselves capable of forming a correct
judgment in reference to any matter of public interest? You read the
newspapers and are familiar with the literature of the day, and pride
yourselves upon your general information and intelligence; can you
then form a judgment as to the justness of any law, or the character
of any candidate for office? Were any one to assert that you were not
capable of this, you would resent it as an insult.
But, say you, we feel no interest in public measures, laws,
candidates, etc.; our sphere, cares, and duties are at home. So
thought thousands of American women five years ago; but war, as the
result of public measures, laws and candidates, called from the
hearthstones and hearts of these same women, husbands, brothers, sons,
and slew them on the field of battle--in crowded hospitals--in rebel
prisons. Think you the women of America then had no interest in public
measures? Can it be that any woman who has given one of her household
to save our country will declare that she takes no interest in the
government and affairs of that country? Consider a moment whether you
have any interest in matters more immediately pressing upon our
attention. Is it of any importance to you whether the dram-shops be
closed or not? Perhaps your husbands are safe--above suspicion or fear
of temptation; but those little sons playing around your knee, that
young brother who is about to leave the paternal roof, when the hour
comes that they shall go forth into the world, is it of any concern to
you whether temptation meet them at every corner? Said a rumseller who
is bitterly opposed to female suffrage, "What more do you want? a man
can not now get license to sell liquor without the names of a majority
of all the women of the ward upon his petition." Very true, but mark
this, unless the women of Kansas obtain the ballot, that law will soon
be blotted from the statute book.
Again: the women of Kansas now vote on questions concerning the
erection of school-houses and matters pertaining to the facilities for
the education of their children. Where has this provision wrought
anything but good? How many school districts now have commodious
school-houses because the women of the district, who were mothers and
wanted schools for their children, outnumbered the men, who, though
large landholders, are not residents or had no children and did not
want schools? Can it be that any woman who has felt and wielded the
power for good that the ballot gave her, in this respect, will yet
declare that she does not want to vote?
If, then, you are capable of forming opinions on matters of public
interest, and if you admit that you are in some degree liable to be
affected by public affairs, in the name of Heaven, of Right, of
Home--in the name of Husband, Brothers, Sons, can you not--will you
not, give your voice in favor of right, and against wrong? Begin now,
if you have never done so before, to inquire into the character of our
law-makers, the justness of our laws, the regard our country pays to
the rights of all. If you do not feel the need of so doing for
yourselves, yet for the sake of generations yet to come, interest
yourselves, "that our officers may be peace and our exactors
righteousness." If you are in circumstances of ease and comfort,
because shielded from every rude wind by noble protectors--father
husband, son--yet listen to the cry of thousands of women less favored
than yourselves, whose natural protectors, as we style them, the
licensed dram-shop transforms into abusive tyrants, from whom they
must be protected, or who, being deprived of husband and father, cry
aloud of the injustice inflicted upon them in their dependent
condition by laws framed in unrighteousness. Listen, we say, to their
cry, and will you not desire, yea will you not demand the right to
give your voice on all these questions in the only way in which you
can effectually do so--the use of the ballot? Why, it would seem that
every earnest, philanthropic woman would desire to do so, even were
she obliged to go to the polls in their present condition instead of
the reformed and purified state that will inevitably result from the
enfranchisement of women.
The women of Kansas who, next to the Pilgrim mothers of America, have
endured more privations and taken a more active part in public affairs
than any other women of America, should of all others have a voice in
controlling the affairs of State and framing the laws by which they
shall be governed. Say some opposers, "the good and true women would
not vote, but only the ignorant and vicious." What a monstrous libel
upon the intelligence and public spirit of the women of Kansas! and
just so certainly as women obtain the ballot, as far as the
intelligent and virtuous outnumber the ignorant and abandoned, will
the vote of women swell the majority for just and righteous
measures--for the moral and upright man--the man who has never imbrued
his hands in blood--who has never robbed woman of her virtue--whose
senses are never drowned in the intoxicating bowl. Why! this is the
great moral question of the day! It is not that the prominent opposers
of this measure fear that it will drag women down; it is because they
fear, and justly, that women will lift suffrage so far into the realm
of purity and morality that they can never be able even to offer
themselves as candidates for office. Then will the destinies of our
country be no more decided at drunken orgies, amid scenes that our
opponents say it would degrade us to witness, but all questions of
public weal will be decided in the hearts and at the firesides of
pure-hearted men and women, surrounded by those whose destinies are
dearer than life, and that decision shall be enforced when men and
women shall together go up to the temple of justice to deposit their
ballots.
Whatever, then, may be the opinion of fair ladies who dwell in ceiled
houses in our older Eastern States and cities, who like lilies,
neither toil nor spin, whose fair hands would gather close their
silken apparel at the thought of touching the homelier garments of
many a heroine of Kansas--whatever they may say in reference to this
question, we, the women of the Spartan State, declare, we want to
vote.
By order of the Executive Committee.
MRS. HON. E. G. ROSS, MRS. GRIFFITH,
MRS. EX GOV. ROBINSON, MRS. R. S. TENNEY,
MRS. JUDGE THACHER, MRS. REV. W. A. STARRETT,
MRS. JUDGE MILLER, MRS. REV. R. CORDLEY,
MRS. JUDGE BURNETT, MRS. REV. G. S. DEARBORN,
MRS. JUDGE HENDRY, MRS. REV. J. S. BROWN,
MRS. H. M. SIMPSON, MRS. REV. GEORGE MEYER,
MRS. ROBT. MORROW, MRS. J. H. LANE,
MRS. MAJOR PLATT, MRS. JAMES HORTON,
MRS. MAJOR WHITNEY, MRS. F. W. SPARR,
MRS. S. DENMAN, MRS. JANE B. ARCHIBALD,
MRS. HENDERSEN, MRS. CONE,
MRS. J. O. ADAMS, MRS. WELSH,
MRS. MARY WHITCOMB, MRS. MARSH,
MRS. THERMUTIUS SUTHERLAND,
LAWRENCE, Sept. 24, 1867. _Committee on Address._
N. B.--Friends wishing tracts on the subject of equal rights, should
address Equal Rights Office, 77 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence,
Kansas.
THE HUTCHINSONS' KANSAS SUFFRAGE SONG.
Words By P. P. Fowler and J. W. H.
As sung at the meetings and concerts during ther grand campaign on the
suffrage issue the season of 1867 in Kansas, and at the polls in
Leavenworth, by the Tribe of John, on the day of election.
O, say what thrilling songs of fairies,
Wafted o'er the Kansas prairies,
Charm the ear while zephyrs speed 'em!
Woman's pleading for her freedom.
CHORUS--Clear the way, the songs are floating;
Clear the way, the world is noting;
Prepare the way, the right promoting,
And ballots, too, for woman's voting.
We frankly say to fathers, brothers,
Husbands, too, and several others,
We're bound to win our right of voting,
Don't you hear the music floating?
We come to take with you our station,
Brave defenders of the nation,
And aim by noble, just endeavor
To elevate our sex forever.
By this vote we'll rid our nation
Of its vile intoxication.
Can't get rum? Oh, what a pity!
_Dram-shops_ closed in every city.
Fear not, we'll darn each worthy stocking,
Duly keep the cradle rocking,
And beg you heed the words we utter,
The ballot wins our bread and butter.
All hail, brave Kansas! first in duty,
Yours, the meed of praise and beauty,
You'll nobly crown your deeds of daring,
Freedom to our sex declaring.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XXV.
TRIALS AND DECISIONS.
LETTER FROM MISS ANTHONY ANNOUNCING HER HAVING VOTED.
ROCHESTER, November 5, 1872.
DEAR MRS. STANTON: Well, I have been and gone and done it! positively
voted the Republican ticket--straight--this A.M. at seven o'clock, and
_swore my vote in, at that_; was registered on Friday and fifteen
other women followed suit in this ward, then in sundry other wards
some twenty or thirty women _tried_ to _register_, but all save two
were refused. All my three sisters voted--Rhoda De Garmo, too. Amy
Post was rejected, and she will immediately bring action against the
registrars; then another woman who was registered, but vote refused,
will bring action for that--similar to the Washington action. Hon.
Henry R. Selden will be our counsel; he has read up the law and all of
our arguments, and is satisfied that we are right, and ditto Judge
Samuel Selden, his elder brother. So we are in for a fine agitation in
Rochester on this question.
I hope the morning telegrams will tell of many women all over the
country trying to vote. It is splendid that without any concert of
action so many should have moved here.
Thanks for the Hartford papers. What a magnificent meeting you had!
Splendid climax of the campaign--the two ablest and most eloquent
women on one platform and the Governor of the State by your side. I
was with you in spirit that evening; the chairman of the Committee had
both telegraphed and written me all about the arrangements.
Haven't we wedged ourselves into the work pretty fairly and fully, and
now that the Republicans have taken our votes--for it _is the
Republican members_ of the board; the Democratic paper is out _against
us strong_, and that scared the Democrats on the registry boards.
How I wish you were here to write up the funny things said and done.
Rhoda De Garmo told them she wouldn't swear nor affirm, "but would
tell them the truth," and they accepted that. When the Democrats said
that my vote should _not_ go in the box, one Republican said to the
other, "What do you say, Marsh?" "I say put it in." "So do I," said
Jones; "and we'll fight it out on this line if it takes all winter."
Mary Hallowell was just here. She and Sarah Willis tried to register,
but were refused; also Mrs. Mann, the Unitarian minister's wife, and
Mary Curtis, sister of Catharine Stebbins. Not a jeer, not a word, not
a look disrespectful has met a single woman.
If only now _all the Woman Suffrage women_ would work to _this_ end of
_enforcing the existing Constitutional supremacy of National law_ over
State law, what strides we might make this very winter! But I'm
awfully tired; for five days I have been on the constant run, but to
splendid purpose; so all right. I hope you voted too.
Affectionately, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
* * * * *
JUDGE SELDEN TO MISS ANTHONY.
ROCHESTER, November 27, 1872.
MISS ANTHONY--DEAR MADAM: The District Attorney says he can not attend
to your case on any day but Friday. So it will be indispensable for
you to be ready Friday morning, and I will do the best I can to attend
to it.
I suppose the Commissioner will, as a matter of course, hold you for
trial at the Circuit Court, _whatever your rights may be in the
matter_.
In my opinion, however, the idea that you can be charged with a
_crime_ on account of voting, or offering to vote, when you honestly
believed yourself to be a voter, is simply preposterous, whether your
belief _was right or wrong_.
However, the learned (!) gentlemen engaged in this movement seem to
suppose they can make a crime out of your honest deposit of your
ballot, and _perhaps_ they can find a respectable court or jury that
will be of their opinion. If they do so I shall be greatly
disappointed.
Yours, truly, H. R. SELDEN.
(_Boston Transcript._)
The last work came on the New York Calender; a person is discovered to
have voted who had no right to; this is believed to be the first case
of the kind ever heard of in New York, and its heinousness is perhaps
aggravated by the fact that the perpetrator is a woman, who, in the
vigorous language of the Court, "must have known when she did it that
she was a woman." We await in breathless suspense the impending
sentence.
The Rochester _Evening Express_ of Friday, May 23, 1873, under the
heading of "An Amiable Consideration of Miss Anthony's Case," said:
United States District Attorney Crowley is a gallant gentleman, as
gallant indeed as District Attorneys can afford to be, but he
confesses himself no match for Miss Anthony. That lady has stumped
Monroe County in behalf of impartial suffrage, and it appears that the
Government very prudently declines to give her case to the jury in
this county. The fact is, it is morally certain that no jury could be
obtained in Monroe that would convict the lady of wrongdoing in
voting, while it is highly probable that four juries out of five would
acquit her. It is understood, of course, that the Court and
prosecuting officers are merely fulfilling their official functions in
recognizing this departure from ordinary practice at the polls, but
would feel as deeply astonished at a verdict of guilty as the general
public. The District Attorney is fortunate in having as a contestant
(defendant, he would professionally call her) in this friendly little
duel, a lady who is the embodiment of American common sense, courage,
and ability; and we are certain that after this tournament is
adjourned he will accept, with his usual urbanity, the aid of ladies'
ballots to lift him to some other place where his conceded abilities
shall be more widely known.
The New York _Commercial Advertiser_, under the heading, "Miss Anthony
and the Jury of her Peers," said: There is perplexity in the Northern
District of New York. It was in that jurisdiction that Miss Susan B.
Anthony and sundry "erring sisters" voted at the November election.
For this they were arrested and indicted. The venue was laid in Monroe
County and there the trial was to take place. Miss Anthony then
proceeded to stump Monroe County and every town and village thereof,
asking her bucolic hearers the solemn conundrum, "Is it a crime for a
United States citizen to vote?" The answer is supposed generally to be
in the negative, and so convincing is Sister Anthony's rhetoric
regarded that it is supposed no jury can be found to convict her. Her
case has gone to the jurymen of Monroe in her own persuasive pleadings
before they are summoned. The District Attorney has, therefore,
postponed the trial to another term of the Court, and changed the
place thereof to Ontario County; whereupon the brave Susan takes the
stump in Ontario, and personally makes known her woes and wants. It is
a regular St. Anthony's dance she leads the District Attorney; and, in
spite of winter cold or summer heat, she will carry her case from
county to county precisely as fast as the venue is changed. One must
rise very early in the morning to get the start of this active apostle
of the sisterhood.
Rochester _Democrat and Chronicle_: If Miss Anthony has converted
every man in Monroe County to her views of the Suffrage question, as
the District Attorney intimates in his recent efforts to have her case
adjourned, it is pretty good evidence--unless every man in Monroe
County is a fool--that the lady has done no wrong. "Her case," remarks
the Auburn _Bulletin_, "will probably be carried over to another term,
and all she has to do is to canvass and convert another county. A
shrewd woman that! Again we say, she ought to vote."
The Syracuse _Standard_ said: Miss S. B. Anthony is sharp enough for a
successful politician. She is under arrest in Rochester for voting
illegally, and she is conducting her case in a way that beats even
lawyers. She stumped the county of Monroe and spoke in every school
district so powerfully that she has actually converted nearly the
entire male population to the Woman Suffrage doctrine. The sentiment
is so universal that the United States District Attorney dare not
trust his case to a jury drawn from that county, and has changed the
venue to Ontario County. Now Miss Anthony proposes to stump Ontario
immediately, and has procured the services of Mrs. Matilda Joslyn
Gage, of Fayetteville, to assist her. By the time the case comes on
Miss Anthony will have Ontario County converted to her doctrines.
The Rochester _Union and Advertiser_ quoted the above and commented as
follows: We give in another column to-day, from a legal friend, a
communication which shows very clearly that Miss Anthony is engaged in
a work that will be likely to bring her to grief. It is nothing more
nor less than an attempt to corrupt the source of that justice, under
law, which flows from trial by jury. Miss Anthony's case has passed
from its gayest to its gravest character. United States Courts are not
stages for the enactment of comedy or farce, and the promptness and
decision of their judges in sentencing to prison culprits convicted
before them shows that they are no respecters of persons.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY AS A CORRUPTIONIST.
_To the Editors of the Union and Advertiser:_
Gentlemen--I saw this morning with equal surprise and regret in the
_Democrat and Chronicle_ the following article:
"We understand that Miss Susan B. Anthony, in company with Mrs.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, intends to lecture through Ontario County. She is
confident that by June 16th a jury of twelve men can not be found in
that county who will render a verdict of guilty against the women who
are to be tried for illegal voting at the last fall election."
I had learned from the same source that Miss Anthony had made such an
effort in Monroe County, and it was stated elsewhere that her trial
had been sent thence to Ontario County by reason of such efforts to
persuade juries of the justice of her cause. I can scarcely credit
these statements.
Reduced to simple terms, it is an attempt by public lectures and
female influence, by an accused party so to affect jurors 'that a jury
of twelve men can not be found in that county who will render a
verdict of guilty.' If this may be a part of the administration of
justice, then the United States Attorney may by similar or other means
attempt beforehand to secure an opposite result; and the
administration of justice is brought into contempt, and corruption has
entered the jury-box.... There is a statute and common law offense
known as embracery, which is defined to consist "in such practices as
lead to affect the administration of justice, _improperly working upon
the minds of jurors_." It seems clear, adds Russell in his Treatise on
Laws and Misdemeanors, 'that _any attempt whatever to corrupt or
influence or instruct a jury in the cause beforehand, or any way
incline them to be more favorable to the one side than the other_, by
money, letters, threats, or _persuasions_, EXCEPT ONLY by the strength
of evidence and the arguments of the counsel in OPEN COURT AT THE
TRIAL OF THE CAUSE, is a proper act of EMBRACERY, whether the jurors
upon whom the attempt is made _give any verdict or not_, and whether
the verdict given be true or false.' ... I trust no merely temporary
excitement in respect to female suffrage will lead good citizens to
sanction any attempt whatever to influence jurors out of Court, either
before or during the trial of a cause. It is alike an insult to the
juror and an imputation on our public virtue.
LEX.
_May 24, 1873._
[New York _Sun_, Saturday, January 4, 1873].
GOING TO JAIL FOR VOTING FOR GRANT.
The arrest of the fifteen women of Rochester, and the imprisonment of
the renowned Miss Susan B. Anthony, for voting at the November
election, afford a curious illustration of the extent to which the
United States Government is stretching its hand in these matters. If
these women violated any law at all by voting, it was clearly a
statute of the State of New York, and that State might be safely left
to to vindicate the majesty of its own laws. Is is only by an
overstrained construction of the XIV. and XV. Amendments, that the
National Government can force its long finger into the Rochester case
at all.
But so it is. Eager to crowd in and regulate the elections at every
poll In the Union, the power at Washington strikes down a whole State
Government in Louisiana, and holds to bail a handful of women in New
York. Nothing can escape its eye or elude its grasp. It can soar high;
it can stoop low. It can enjoin a Governor in New Orleans; it can jug
a woman in Rochester. Nothing is too big for it to grapple with;
nothing is too small for it to meddle with.... By the by, we advise
Miss Anthony not to go to jail. Perhaps she feels that she deserves
some punishment for voting for General Grant, but it is a bailable
offense. "Going to jail for the good of the cause" may do for poetry,
but it becomes very prosaic when reduced to practice. Let Miss Anthony
enter into bonds, adjust her spectacles, face her accusers, and argue
her own case.
The Worcester _Spy_ said: Miss Susan B. Anthony, whatever else she may
be, is evidently of the right stuff for a reformer. Of all the woman
suffragists she has the most courage and resource, and fights her own
and her sisters' battle with the most wonderful energy, resolution,
and hopefulness. It is well known that she is now under indictment for
voting illegally in Rochester last November. Voting illegally in her
case means simply voting, for it is held that women can not lawfully
vote at all. She is to be tried soon, but in the meantime, while at
large on bail, she has devoted her time to missionary work on behalf
of woman suffrage, and has spoken, it is said, in almost every school
district in Monroe County, where her trial would have been held in the
natural course of things. She has argued her cause so well that almost
all the male population of the county has been converted to her views
on this subject. The District Attorney is afraid to trust the case to
a jury from that county, and has obtained a change of venue to Ontario
on the ground that a fair trial can not be had in Monroe.
Miss Anthony, rather cheered than discouraged by this unwilling
testimony to the strength of her cause and her powers of persuasion,
has made arrangements to canvass Ontario County as thoroughly as
Monroe. As county lines do not inclose distinct varieties of the human
race, it is fair to presume that the people of the former county will
be as susceptible to argument and appeal, as those of the latter, and
by the time the case comes on, an Ontario jury will be as little
likely to convict as a Monroe jury is now supposed to be. Some foolish
and bigoted people who edit newspapers, are complaining that Miss
Anthony's proceedings are highly improper, inasmuch as they are
intended to influence the decision of a cause pending in the courts.
They even talk about contempt of court, and declare that Miss Anthony
should be compelled to desist from making these invidious harangues.
We suspect that the courts will not venture to interfere with this
lady's speech-making tour, but will be of the opinion that she has the
same right which other people, male or female, have to explain her
political views, and make converts to them if she can. We have never
known it claimed before that a person accused of an offense was
thereby deprived of the common right of free speech on political and
other questions.
The New York _Evening Post_ said: The proceedings of the Circuit Court
of the United States at Canandaigua yesterday, before which Miss Susan
B. Anthony was on trial for voting in Rochester at the late general
election, were very remarkable. Hitherto the advocates of the right of
our countrywomen to vote have hardly obtained a hearing, but Miss
Anthony has made an important step in advance. It is a great gain to
obtain a judicial hearing for her cause; to have the merits of woman
suffrage carefully considered by careful and able men. The appearance
of so eminent and distinguished a lawyer as Henry R. Selden in her
defense will give to the question a new aspect in the minds of the
people. The position he took is still more encouraging to those who
think that women have a legal right to vote. The distinction he made
between the absoluteness of this right and the belief of Miss Anthony
that she possessed such a right, since the guilt relates only to the
legal guilt in this particular instance, is of no general importance;
but his emphatic testimony, irrespective of the present case, that all
women have both an absolute and a legal right to vote, is a fact to
command attention.
So convinced was Judge Selden of the validity of this opinion, that
for the second time in his professional life, as he himself said, he
was compelled to offer himself as a witness in behalf of his client.
Being sworn, he testified that before the defendant voted she called
on him for advice as to her legal right to vote; that he took time to
examine the question very carefully, and then advised her that "she
was as much a voter as I or any other man"; that he believed then that
she had a legal right to vote, and he believed so now, and on that
advice she voted. It seems likely that the decision of the Court will
be in Miss Anthony's favor. If such be the result the advocates of
woman suffrage will change places with the public. They will no longer
be forced to obtain hearings from Congressional and Legislative
Committees for their claims, but will exercise their right to vote by
the authority of a legal precedent against which positive laws
forbidding them from voting will be the only remedy. It is a question
whether such laws can be passed in this country. A careful examination
of the subject must precede any such legislation, and, the inference
from the result of Judge Selden's investigation is that the more the
subject is studied the less likely will any legislative body be to
forbid those women who want to vote from so doing.
[The Rochester _Evening Express_, June 21st.]
THE NATIONAL CASES AT CANANDAIGUA.
The trial of Miss Anthony at Canandaigua on a charge of having voted
illegally on the 5th of November last, in this city, has attracted
attention throughout this country and in England. It was a great
National trial, intended as Judge Hunt said, as the purpose of the act
of voting in this case, to settle a principle. The eminence of the
judge presiding and the reputation of the counsel engaged in the case,
gave it further significance. All the counsel won new laurels in this
contest. Judge Selden could scarcely increase the respect for his
character and legal ability by any fresh contest in the forum, but he
evinced the power of his logical faculties and his perfect
acquaintance with law and legal precedent in his closely reasoned
argument. Mr. Crowley, United States District Attorney, made a very
able argument in reply, which all agree was worthy of his high
position and of the cause in which he appeared for the Government. Mr.
Van Voorhis showed legal erudition careful examination of the case in
hand, and of the law and decision of courts bearing upon it, making
bold and strong points which commanded the attention and respect of
the Court, and elicited the approbation of clients and people.
[_Commercial Advertiser_, June 18, 1873.]
THE FEMALE SUFFRAGISTS.
When a jurist as eminent as Judge Henry R. Selden testifies that he
told Miss Anthony before election that she had a right to vote, and
this after a careful examination of the question, the whole subject
assumes new importance, and Mr. Selden at once becomes the central
object of adoration by all the gentle believers in woman's right to
the ballot. And when the same able lawyer advocates the cause of Miss
Anthony in the United States Courts, there is abundant reason why
other men, both lay and legal, should put themselves in an attitude,
at least of willingness to change their convictions upon this topic,
which now threatens to take on very enlarged proportions. The points
made in the argument by Mr. Selden are that the defendant had a legal
right to vote; that even if no such right existed, if she believed she
had such right and voted in good faith, that she committed no offense;
and lastly, he argued that she did vote in pursuance of such belief.
The point that Miss Anthony had acted illegally only because she was a
woman, was well put. Had her brother, under the same circumstances
done the same thing, his act would have been not only innocent but
laudable. The crime was, therefore, not in the act done, but in the
sex of the person who did it. Women, remarked the Judge, have the same
interest in the maintenance of good government as men. No greater
absurdity, to use no harsher term, can be presented to the human mind
than that of rewarding men and punishing women for the same act,
without giving women any voice in the question of which shall be
rewarded and which punished. How grateful to Judge Selden must all the
suffragists be! He has struck the strongest and most promising blow in
their behalf that has yet been given. Dred Scott was the pivot on
which the Constitution turned before the war. Miss Anthony seems
likely to occupy a similar position now.
[From _Democrat and Chronicle_, Rochester, July, 1873.]
WOMEN'S MEETING.
A meeting of the women's tax-payers' association was held at the
Mayor's office yesterday afternoon, the President, Mrs. Lewia C.
Smith, in the chair. It had been expected that Judge Selden would
address the meeting, but in consequence of professional engagements he
had been unable to prepare such an address as he desired, but will
speak at a future meeting.
Miss Susan B. Anthony was present, and addressed the meeting. She
stated that she had received many letters urging her not to be
disheartened by the result of her case, and she assured all that she
was far from being discouraged. In fact, she considered that they had
won a victory by showing to the world that in order to accomplish her
defeat the courts were obliged to set aside everything, even the
sacred right of trial by jury. Miss Anthony read extracts from letters
received from Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury. Mrs.
Stanton pours out her indignation in a letter to Mrs. Gage and Miss
Anthony thus:
"To have my right to the earth and the fullness thereof equally with
man; to do my work and say my say without his let or hindrance, or
even question, has filled me with indignation ever since I began to
think; and one more act of puny legislation, in line with all that has
been done in the past, does not add a feather's weight to my chronic
indignation.
"The insult of being tried by men--judges, lawyers, juries, all
men--for violating the laws and constitutions of men, made for the
degradation and subjugation of my whole sex; to be forever publicly
impaled by the unwavering finger of scorn, by party press, and pulpit,
so far transcends a petty verdict of a petty judge in a given case,
that my continuous wrath against the whole dynasty of tyrants in our
political, religious, and social life, has not left one stagnant drop
of blood in my veins to rouse for any single act of insult.
"The outrage of trying intelligent, educated, well-bred, native-born
American women by juries of men, made up of the riff-raff from the
monarchies and empires of the old world, or ignorant natives of the
new, who do not read the newspapers, nor form opinions on current
events or United States citizens' rights, so overtops the insult of
any verdict they could possibly render, that indignation at what they
might say is swallowed up in the outrage that they have the right to
say anything in limiting the rights of women as citizens in this
republic. What are Centennials and Fourth of Julys to us, when our
most sacred rights can be made foot-balls for the multitude. Do not,
therefore, argue from my silence, that I do not feel every fresh stab
at womanhood. Instead of applying lint to the wounds, my own thought
has been, how can we wrest the sword from the hand of the tyrant."
The following resolutions were then offered and adopted:
_Resolved_, That the gross outrage committed in the case of Miss
Anthony by the United States Circuit Court, the stamping under foot by
Justice Hunt of the Constitution of the United States, and all the
forms of law, in order to defeat a woman who could not be defeated
otherwise, has in no way discouraged the true friends of woman
suffrage, but to the contrary, the unjustifiable means to which the
Court was compelled to resort in order to convict Miss Anthony has not
only aroused the old woman's rights women into new life and action,
but shocked all thinking minds throughout the country, to a
consideration of the vital question of American citizenship. Does it,
or does it not give to the possessor the right to vote?
_Resolved_, That we arraign Ward Hunt, a Justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors in his office,
committed on the trial of Susan B. Anthony, on a charge of knowingly
voting illegally for a representative in Congress. He denied the right
of trial by jury; he refused to permit her counsel to address the jury
in her behalf; he refused the request of her counsel that the jury be
polled; he directed the clerk to enter a verdict of guilty without
consulting the jury; he had prejudged her case, and had written his
opinion against her before he came to the Court, or had heard the
evidence, or the arguments of her counsel. He tried her in a manner
indicating that he had undertaken to accomplish a certain result, and
that he must do in spite of law or evidence. His assertion that the
facts were admitted in her case is false. No facts were admitted on
Miss Anthony's trial, except that she was a woman and had voted. The
one fact of consequence to the United States was, whether or not Miss
Anthony voted for a representative in Congress. To prove this the
United States District Attorney proved that she handed to the
inspectors four folded ballots, the contents of which were unknown. It
did not appear that the ballots were not blanks. There were six boxes,
and each elector might cast six ballots. Upon such evidence Judge Hunt
decided that it was proved that Miss Anthony voted for a
representative in Congress, and refused to submit the case, or the
question of fact, to the jury. Therefore,
_Resolved_, That a violation of the Constitution so palpable, a
disregard of the forms of of law so flagrant, demand the impeachment
of Justice Hunt, and his removal from a bench he has proved himself
unfit to occupy.
_Resolved_, That we will petition Congress to reverse by Congressional
enactment the judgments of Judge Hunt against Miss Anthony and the
Inspectors of Election. These fiats of a judicial dictator must not be
allowed to remain upon the records of the Court. Trial by jury must be
restored to its throne, from which Judge Hunt has hurled it. A
constitutional right so sacred must be vindicated by Congress. There
is no other tribunal to which we can appeal. Therefore we shall
confidently ask Congress to reverse these unjust judgments and rebuke
and impeach this unjust judge.
_Resolved_, That to the Hon. Henry R. Selden for his able and earnest
defense of their citizen's right to vote, the women of this country
owe a debt of gratitude beyond their present power to pay or
appreciate.
_Resolved_, That we tender our thanks to John Van Voorhis, counsel for
the inspectors of the Eighth Ward, for his prompt and efficient
defense of their right and duty to register the names and receive the
votes of all United States citizens.
_Resolved_, That we bid Godspeed to our co-laborer, Susan B. Anthony,
for the courage and persistence shown during her trial, and thank her
for her assurance to the Court (which he did not need) of her unshaken
conviction of the legality of her vote, and of her determination to
persist in the exercise of her citizen's right of suffrage.
_Resolved_, That we tender our thanks to the inspectors of election of
the Eighth Ward, Messrs. Jones, Marsh, and Hall, for their manliness
and courage in receiving the women's vote and maintaining their right
and duty in so doing through their long and unfair trial."
A paper of considerable length was read by Mrs. Hebard, which was very
fine, and set forth the woman question in a philosophical manner.
Mrs. L. C. Smith said that in stamping his seal of death upon trial by
jury, Judge Hunt had proved beyond all cavil the inseparability of
man's and woman's interests. For in order to withhold the right of
franchise from woman he was obliged to abolish trial by jury, man's
only safeguard against the tyranny of the bench.
The meeting then adjourned to meet at three o'clock P.M. on the 24th
inst.
Miss Anthony received material sympathy from many persons who sent
money to aid in the payment of her fine--Dr. E. B. Foote, of New York,
sending $25, and Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, $100, accompanied by a
letter. Dr. Foote has kindly furnished Miss Anthony's reply to him for
publication:
ROCHESTER, July 2, 1873.
DR. E. B. FOOTE--MY DEAR SIR: Your letter of June 18, inclosing the
quarter of the United States Government's fine for my alleged
violation of _State law_ was most welcome, I have waited this
acknowledgment from fact of my absence from home since the judge
pronounced that verdict and penalty. What a comedy! Such a _grave
offense_ and such a paltry punishment!
Now if the United States Government would only demand the payment of
the $100 and costs--but it will never do it, because all parties
_know_ I will never _pay a dime--no, not one._ It, is quite enough for
me pay all the _just claims_ of the trial; my own counsel, etc. I owe
no allegiance to the Government's penalties until I have a voice in
it, and shall pay none. What the Government can _exact_ it may,
whether of cash or imprisonment.
Do you know my _one regret now is_ that I am _not possessed of some
real estate_ here in Rochester so that my name would be on the tax
list, and I would _refuse to pay the taxes thereon_, and then I could
carry that branch of the question into the Courts. _Protests_ are no
longer worth the paper they are written on. Downright resistance, the
actual throwing of the tea overboard, is now the word and work. With
many thanks for the $25.
Sincerely yours, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE ABOVE HUMAN LAW.
LETTER FROM GERRIT SMITH.
PETERBORO, August 15, 1873
SUSAN B. ANTHONY--DEAR FRIEND: I have your letter. So you have not
paid your fine; are not able to pay it; and are not willing to pay it!
I send you herein the money to pay it. If you shall still decline
doing so, then use the money at your own discretion, to promote the
cause of woman suffrage.
I trust that you feel kindly toward Judge Hunt. He is an honest man
and an able judge. He would oppress no person--emphatically, no woman.
It was a light fine that he imposed upon you. Moreover, he did not
require you to be imprisoned until it was paid. In taking your case
out of the bands of the jury, he did what he believed he had a perfect
right to do; and what [HAND] provided there was no fact to be
passed upon) he had precedents for doing. And yet Judge Hunt
erred--erred as, but too probably, every other judge would, in like
circumstances, have erred. At the hazard of being called, for the ten
thousandth time, a visionary and a fanatic for holding opinions which,
though they will be entirely welcome to the more enlightened future
sense of men, are as entirely repugnant to their present sense, I
venture to say that the Judge erred in allowing himself to look into
the Constitution. Indeed, yours was a case that neither called for nor
permitted the opening of any law-book whatever. You have not forgotten
how frequently, in the days of slavery, the Constitution was quoted in
behalf of the abomination. As if that paper had been drawn up and
agreed upon by both the blacks and the whites, instead of the whites
only; and as if slavery protected the rights of the slave instead of
annihilating them. I thank God that I was withheld from the great
folly and great sin of acknowledging a law for slavery--a law for any
piracy--least of all for the superlative piracy. Nor have you
forgotten how incessantly, in the late war, our enemies, Northern as
well as Southern, were calling for this observance of the
Constitution. As if the purpose of that paper was to serve those
whose parricidal hands were at the throat of our Nation. I recall but
one instance in which I was ever reconciled to profanity. It was when,
during the war, I was witnessing a heated conversation between a
patriotic Republican and a rabid secession Democrat. The Republican
was arguing that the Government should put forth all its powers to
suppress the rebellion. At this stage the Democrat thrust in the
stereotyped rebel phrase: "but only according to the Constitution."
This interruption provoked the Republican to exclaim, as he hurried
on, "Damn the Constitution!" The oath so happily helped to express my
own feeling that I had no more heart to censure it than the recording
angel had to preserve the record of Uncle Toby's famous oath.
And now, in your case, is another wrongful use of the Constitution.
The instrument is cited against woman, as if she had united with man
in making it, and was, therefore, morally bound by the flagrant
usurpation, and legally concluded by it. Moreover, an excuse for
turning the Constitution against her is that doing so deprives her of
nothing but the pastime of dropping in a box a little piece of paper.
Nevertheless, this dropping, inasmuch as it expresses her choice of
the guardians of her person and property, is her great natural right
to provide for the safety of her life and of the means to sustain it.
She has no rights whatever, and she lives upon mere privileges and
favors, if others may usurp her rights. In fact she lies at the mercy
of men, if men only may choose into whose hands to put the control of
her person and property.... I do not complain of Judge Hunt's
interpretations of the Constitution on the suffrage question. I do not
complain of his refusing to accept the constitutional recognition of
woman's right to vote, though that right seems to lie on the very
surface of the Constitution amongst her rights of citizenship. Nor do
I complain of his passing by this recognition to dig down into the
Constitution for proofs of there being two kinds of citizens--one that
can vote and one that can not vote. What I complain of is that he did
not hold as void, instead of arguing them to be valid, any words in
the instrument which seemed to him to favor the disfranchisement of
woman and consequent robbery and destruction of her rights. What I
complain of is that, instead of his conscientious regard for his oath,
he was not prepared to ignore and scout all human law so far as it is
antagonistic to natural law and natural rights....
How striking and instructive is the following extract from a speech
made a year or two ago in the Spanish Parliament: "Natural rights
dwell essentially in the individual, and are derived directly from his
own moral nature. They are therefore, so to speak, unlegislatable,
since they do not arise from the law, do not depend on the law, and,
not depending on the law, can not be abrogated by the law. Born of the
organic constitution of the individual, with the individual they live
and die, unless a tyrannical, unrighteous, and iniquitous law tears
them from him, and then he will have the right to protest forever
against this wrong and the iniquity of the law, and to rise against it
whenever he can. Well, my lords, the inalienable rights of the Cubans
have been torn from them by unrighteous, tyrannical, and iniquitous
laws." Would that Judge Hunt and all our judges might, ere long, take
the ground of this sublimely eloquent Spaniard, that natural rights
are "unlegislatable".... Would that my much esteemed friend, Judge
Hunt, had so far outgrown bad law and grown into good law, as to have
pronounced at your trial the disenthralment of woman, and thus have
set the name of Hunt in immortality by the side of the names of
Brougham and Mansfield, and others who have had the wisdom and the
courage to thrust aside false paper law and install in its place that
sovereign law which is written upon the heart and upon the very
foundations of human being! He does not doubt that they did right. He
honors them for having done as they did. Nor can he doubt that to deny
to woman all part in the making and executing of laws under which her
life and property may be taken from her is a crime against her, which
no paper law can sanction and which God's law must condemn.... This
worship of the Constitution!--how blinding and belittling! I would
that every judge who tends to this weakness (and nearly every judge,
yes, and nearly every other person tends to it) might find his steps
arrested by the warning example of Daniel Webster. This pre-eminently
intellectual man, whom nature had fitted to soar in the high sphere of
absolute and everlasting law, had so shrivelled his soul by his
worship of the Constitution that he came, at last, to desire no other
inscription on his grave-stone than his shameless confession of such
base worship. And all this, notwithstanding the Constitution was, in
his eye, the great bulwark of slavery!
Be of good courage and good cheer, my brave and faithful sister! I
trust our country is on the eve of great and blessed changes.... Best
of all, the ballot can not much longer be withheld from woman. Men are
fast coming to see that it belongs to her as fully as to themselves,
and that the country is in perishing need of her wielding it. If the
silly portion of our ladies will but cease from their silly
apprehension that the plan is to _make_ them vote whether they will or
no, and also cease from their ignorant and childish admissions that
they already have all the rights they want--then will the American
women quickly be enfranchised, and their nation will rapidly achieve a
far higher civilization than it is possible for any nation to arrive
at which is guilty of the folly and the sin of clothing man with all
political power and reducing women to a political cipher.
Cordially yours, GERRIT SMITH.
WASHINGTON NOTES.
BY GRACE GREENWOOD.
When I said that in the dull languor of our summer collapse we felt
none of your fierce Northern excitements, I should have excepted the
Anthony suffrage case. That touched nearly if not deeply. The ark of
the holy political covenant resting here--the sacred mules that draw
it being stabled in the Capitol for half a year at a time--the woman
who has laid unsanctified hands upon it, is naturally regarded with
peculiar horror. I did not take exception to the _Times'_ article of
June 19th on this case. It was mild and courteous in tone, and the
view taken of the XIV. Amendment plea seems to me the only sound one.
I certainly do not want to get into your political preserves by any
quibble or dodge. I want my right there freely granted and guaranteed,
and will be politely treated when I come, or I won't stay. The
promised land of justice and equality is not to be reached by a short
cut. I fear we have a large part of the forty years of struggle and
zigzaging before us yet. I am pretty sure our Moses has not appeared.
I think he will be a woman. Often the way seems dark, as well as long,
when I see so much fooling with the great question of woman's claims
to equal educational advantages with men; to just remuneration for
good work, especially in teaching, and fair credit for her share in
the patriotic and benevolent enterprises of the age. I do not say that
equal pay for equal services will never be accorded to woman, even in
the civil service, till she has the ballot to back her demand; but
that is the private opinion of many high Government officials. I do
not say that woman's right to be represented, as well as taxed, will
never be recognized as a logical practical result of the democratic
principle till the Democrats come in power. But it may be so. The
Gospel was first offered to the Jews, but first accepted by the
Gentiles.
In your article, fair as it was in spirit, you failed to touch upon
two points which struck me rather painfully. It seems that Judge Hunt,
after pronouncing a learned, and, I suppose, a sound opinion,
peremptorily ordered the jury to bring the defendant in guilty. Now,
could not twelve honest, intelligent jurymen be trusted to defend
their birthright against one woman? Why such zeal, such more than
Roman sternness? Again, in the trial of the inspectors of election,
why were both judge and jurymen so merciful? No verdict of guilty was
ordered, and the council of twelve who had seen fit to punish Miss
Anthony by a fine of $100 and costs, merely mulcted in the modest sum
of $25, each defenseless defendant sinning against light. Was it that
they considered in their manly clemency the fact that women have
superior facilities for earning money, or did they give heed to the
old, old excuse, "The woman tempted me, and I did register"?
It surely is strange that such severe penalties should be visited on a
woman, for a first and only indiscretion in the suffrage line, when a
man may rise up on election morning and go forth, voting and to vote.
If he be of an excitable and mercurial nature, one of the sort of
citizens which sweet Ireland empties on us by the county, he may
sportively flit about among the polls, from ward to ward, of the
metropolis, and no man says to him nay; he may even travel hilariously
from city to city, with free passes and free drinks--who treats Miss
Anthony?--making festive calls, and dropping ballots for cards, and
no disturbance comes of it--he is neither fined nor confined. So, it
would seem, "a little voting is a dangerous thing."
Say what you will, the whole question of woman's status in the State
and the Church, in society and the family, is full of absurd
contradictions and monstrous anomalies. We are so responsible, yet
irresponsible--we are idols, we are idiots--we are everything, we are
nothing. We are the Caryatides, rearing up the entablature of the
temple of liberty we are never allowed to enter. We may plot against a
government, and hang for it; but if we help to found and sustain a
government by patriotic effort and devotion, by toil and hardship, by
courage, loyalty, and faith, by the sacrifice of those nearest and
dearest to us, and then venture to clutch at the crumbs that fall from
the table where our Masters Jonathan, Patrick, Hans, and Sambo sit at
feast, you arrest us, imprison us, try us, fine us, and then add
injury to insult, by calling us old, ugly, and fanatical.
One is forcibly reminded of the sermon of the colored brother on
woman, the heads of which discourse were: "Firstly. What am woman?
Secondly. Whar did she come from? Thirdly. Who does she belong to?
Fourthly. Which way am she gwine to?"
The law and the Gospel have settled the "secondly" and "thirdly."
Woman came from man, and belongs to him by the mortgage he holds on
her through that spare-rib; but "firstly" and "fourthly" remain as
profound and unsolvable questions as they were before the Ethiopian
divine wrestled with them. But perhaps this troublous and perplexed
existence is our "be-all and end-all"; that in the life beyond, man
may foreclose that old mortgage and re-absorb woman into his glorified
and all-sufficient being.
I have never believed with Miss Anthony, that the XIV. Amendment was
going to help us. I have never accepted certain other of her theories;
but I believe in and accept her as a woman of intense convictions, of
high courage and constancy; and I don't like to hear her ridiculed and
abused. If anything can make me think meanly of my young brothers of
the press, it is the way they pelt and pester Susan B. Anthony. For
shame, boys! Never a one of you will make the man she is. Even some of
our Washington editors turn aside from the fair game. Providence, in
its inscrutable wisdom, has provided for them in the Board of Public
Works, to vent their virtuous indignation and manly scorn of the woman
they are determined shall stand in perpetual pillory in the
market-place of this great, free Republic.--_New York Times_.
The Washington, D. C., _Star_ says of Judge Hunt's opinion: "If his
views are to prevail, of what effect are the suffrage amendments to
the Federal Constitution."
[_The County Post_, Washington Co., N. Y., Friday, June 27, 1873].
NOT A VOTER.
The United States Courts have pronounced on Miss Anthony's case, which
she so adroitly made by voting last fall, in company with fourteen
others of her sex. The decision was adverse to the claim made by this
devoted friend of female suffrage, that as the Constitution now stood,
women had a right to vote. Accordingly the indomitable old lady was
found guilty of violating the law regulating the purity of the
ballot-box, and fined one hundred dollars and costs. A good many
journals seem to regard this as a good joke on Susan B, as they call
her, and make it the excuse for more poor jokes of their own. It may
be stupid to confess it, but we can not see where the laugh comes in.
If it is a mere question of who has got the best of it, Miss Anthony
is still ahead; she has voted, and the American Constitution has
survived the shock. Fining her one hundred dollars does not rub out
that fact that fourteen women voted, and went home, and the world
jogged on as before. The decision of the judge does not prove that it
is wrong for women to vote, it does not even prove that Miss Anthony
did wrong in voting. It only shows that one judge on the bench differs
in opinion from other equally well qualified judges off the bench. It
is not our province to find fault with this decision of the United
States Court at Rochester. Miss Anthony may be wrong in attempting to
vote; of that we are not certain. But of the greater question back of
it, of Miss Anthony's inherent right to vote we have no question, and
that after all is the more important matter. This Rochester breakwater
may damn back the stream for a while, but it is bound to come,
sweeping away all barriers. The opposition to extending the suffrage
to the other sex is founded alone on prejudice arising from social
custom. Reason and logic are both against it. Women will not be
voters possibly for some years to come; it is not desirable that the
franchise should come too quick; but they are certain to have the full
privilege of citizenship in the end.
[_The Age_, Thursday, July 31, 1873.]
KU-KLUX PRISONERS.
The Ku-Klux prisoners are, it seems, now to be released. They are
persons some of whom had committed assaults and other offenses
cognizable by the laws of the States where they lived, and the Ku-Klux
legislation by Congress was a political device as unnecessary as it
was unconstitutional. Perhaps the most ridiculous, as well as the most
unjust prosecution under the Ku-Klux law was that instituted against
Miss Anthony for voting in Rochester. Under her view of her rights,
she presented herself at the polls, and submitted her claims to the
proper officers, who decided that she had a right to vote. She
practiced no fraud or concealment of any kind. She did what every good
citizen here would do, if any doubt arose from assessment,
registration, or residence, as to his right to vote. He would state
the case to the election officers, and abide their decision. Yet this,
we are told, is a criminal offense under the Ku-Klux law, for which a
citizen who has done exactly what he ought to have done, may be fined
and imprisoned as a criminal. Nay, if, as often happens, a point of
doubt is submitted to our Court of Common Pleas and decided in favor
of the applicant, he is still liable to criminal prosecution under the
Federal Ku-Klux law, if a United States Commissioner or Judge differs
from the State Judge in the construction of the State law. Since the
victims of the Ku-Klux act are now receiving pardons, we hope the fine
of $100 unlawfully imposed on Miss Anthony may be remitted. We do not
think there was a case of more gross injustice ever practiced under
forms of law, than the conviction of that lady for a criminal offense
in voting, with the assent of the legal election officers to whom her
right was submitted. If all the victims of this unconstitutional law
were as innocent as she was, they can not be too soon released. Even
those who were guilty of offenses cognizable by the State law, were
unjustly tried and condemned under an unconstitutional statute passed
for political effect.
[From the Philadelphia _Age_].
THE FUNNY CASE OF MISS ANTHONY.
The case of Miss Susan B. Anthony seems to be dismissed with a laugh
by most of the press; but from the first institution of a prosecution
against her under the Ku-Klux law, we have regarded the proceeding as
one in which the injustice was not cloaked by the absurdity. The law
was passed by Congress on a political cry that massacre and outrage
menaced negroes at the polls in the Southern States, and now we have
it used to oppress a woman in Rochester, New York. We are not debarred
from saying "oppressed" because the judge left the fine to be levied
on her property instead of imprisoning her person--in a State in which
women have, we suppose, long been exempt from imprisonment for debt.
But the chief outrage in the case is that it affords the first case,
we believe, in the United States, or anywhere in modern times, of a
conviction for a crime when there was no criminal intent. The proof,
or the presumption of this, is essential to a crime in the criminal
law of every civilized nation. The case of Miss Anthony was that of a
lady who believed that the much vaunted amendments of the Federal
Constitution extended to white women; and many lawyers and Congressmen
have also avowed this opinion. We do not hold it, but we do not doubt
that Miss Anthony does, very sincerely. We think as the Judge says in
her case, that the Federal Constitution has nothing to do with the
matter; that is wholly regulated by the Constitution of New York. But
every word of his argument was equally strong to show that he, a
Federal Judge, had nothing to do with the matter, and that it wholly
belonged to the courts of New York. They know, we presume, no law that
can create a crime without a criminal intention, and we deny the right
of Congress or any earthly authority to pass so monstrous a law. Every
day in criminal courts that point arises. If a man charged with
larceny is proved to have taken the goods of another, but under some
idea that he had a right to them, no matter how erroneous, the
criminal prosecution is instantly dismissed. Our eminent jurist,
Judge King, used to say: "This is a civil suit run mad." Has any
citizen of Philadelphia supposed that if there is a doubt as to his
right to vote--one of those numerous doubts that arise in changes of
residence, time of registration, naturalization, etc.--and wishing
scrupulously to do right, he go to the window and fully and fairly
state his case, and the election officers consider it, and adjudge
that he should vote then and there, has any citizen heretofore known
that he thus became liable to conviction for a crime under the Ku-Klux
laws, if some judge of a court should think the election officers
decided the point erroneously?
Yet that is the doctrine of Miss Anthony's case. Her garb and person
sufficed to tell she was a woman when she approached the polls, and
there was also argument over the matter, exhibiting afresh the fact
notorious at her home, that she claimed a lawful right to vote under
certain amendments of the Constitution. She was no repeater or false
personator, or probably she would not be persecuted, and certainly she
would be pardoned.
She submitted her right to the election officers, and they, the judges
appointed by the law, decided in her favor. It is just the case we
have supposed in Philadelphia, and which often really occurs here, and
may occur anywhere. And now we are told the Ku-Klux law makes this
hitherto laudable and innocent mode of procedure a crime, punishable
with fine and imprisonment! This is the decision over which many
journals are laughing because the first victim is a woman. We can not
see the joke.
[Chicago _Evening Journal_, Dec. 1, 1874].
Mrs. Myra Bradwell, the editor and publisher of the _Legal News_, of
this city, is a warm advocate of woman's rights. In the last number of
the _News_, speaking of Susan B. Anthony, she declares that Judge Ward
Hunt, of the Federal bench, "violated the Constitution of the United
States more, to convict her of illegal voting, than she did in voting,
for he had sworn to support it, she had not."
Sister Myra is evidently not afraid of being hauled up for contempt of
court.
[St. Louis _Daily Globe_, Thursday, June 26, 1873].
MISS ANTHONY'S CASE.
JUDGE HUNT'S DECISION REVIEWED--SHE HAD A RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL.
_Editor of St. Louis Globe_:--I ask the favor of a small space in your
paper to notice the very remarkable decision of Judge Hunt, in the
case of the United States _vs._ Susan B. Anthony.
The Judge tells us "that the right of voting, or the privilege of
voting, is a right or privilege arising under the constitution of the
States, and not of the united States. If the right belongs to any
particular person, it is because such person is entitled to it as a
citizen of the State where he offers to exercise it, and not because
of citizenship of the United States."
If this position be true (which I do not admit), then Judge Hunt
should have pronounced the act of Congress unconstitutional, and
dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction. If the matter belongs
exclusively to the States, then the United States have nothing to do
with it, and clearly have no right to interfere and punish a person
for the (supposed) violation of a State law. But this is one of the
least of the criticisms to which this opinion is exposed. A far graver
one consists in the fact that the defendant was denied the right of a
trial by jury.
The Supreme Court of the United States say: "Another guarantee of
freedom was broken when Milligan was denied a trial by jury. The great
minds of the country have differed on the correct interpretation to be
given to various provisions of the Federal Constitution, and judicial
decision has been often invoked to settle their true meaning; but,
until recently, no one ever doubted that the right of trial by jury
was fortified in the organic law against the power of attack. It is
now assailed; but if ideas can be expressed in words, and language has
any meaning, this right--one of the most valuable in a free
country--is preserved to every one accused of crime, who is not
attached to the army, or navy, or militia in actual service. The VI.
Amendment affirms that in 'all criminal prosecutions the accused shall
enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury,'
language broad enough to embrace all persons and cases."--_Ex parte
Milligan, 4 Wallace, p. 122._
It is true a jury was impaneled, but this was all, for we are informed
that, at the conclusion of the opinion, Judge Selden requested that
the case should be submitted to the jury upon the question of intent,
and upon certain propositions of law; but the court declined to submit
the case upon any question whatever, and directed them to render a
verdict of guilty against the defendant.
I have been pained to witness, on the part of some of our newspapers,
a disposition to treat this decision with indifference, by some even
with levity. Has it come to this, that because she is a woman the
defendant can not get a fair and impartial trial? The case of the
inspectors was not treated in this way--but then they were men.
JUSTICE.
[_The Journal_, Thursday, July 30, 1874].
THE ALBANY LAW JOURNAL ON SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S CASE.
_To the Editor of the Syracuse Journal_:--I wish to call the attention
of the readers of _The Journal_, especially legal ones, to the
underlying intent and unjust perversions of the Albany _Law Journal_
of this month, in its leading article, entitled "Can a Judge direct a
Verdict of Guilty?"
This _Law Journal_, which professes to lead the legal craft of the
Empire State in the devious ways of legal justice, has but now,
thirteen months after its date, a review of Miss Anthony's celebrated
trial, as conducted by Judge Ward Hunt. Having taken a year and a
month to get the first principles of justice and of constitutional law
through his head, the belated editor of that law journal has come to
the conclusion--self-evident as it ought to be to a child--that a
judge has no legal right to take from an accused person the right of
trial by jury. Sapient editor, wise man! No second Solomon, you. You,
with all your legal lore, have at last managed to see, in a year and a
month, what the veriest simple woman in the land, all uneducated as
women are in the technicalities of the law, had no difficulty of
seeing in an hour. Right of trial by jury holds all other legal rights
within its grasp. Deprive a man or woman of that, and of what use is
your habeas corpus act, of what use your law of penalties or
acquittal? The terrors of the middle ages, the _lettres de cachet_,
sequestration, confiscation, rayless dungeons, and iron masks at once
rise in view.
We will, however, allow to this editor one grain of sense, as he
acknowledges the dangerous power in the hands of judges of the United
States Circuit Court, a power they possess outside of right, a power
through which one of them can, as did Judge Ward Hunt in Miss
Anthony's case, transcend his legal rights, to warp and bend
constitutional guarantees to his own ends, and having so done that
there is no legal appeal from his unwarrantable decision. A United
States judge is practically irresponsible. Nothing can touch him for
illegality in office but a Congressional impeachment, which from a
combination of circumstances is difficult to bring about. He holds the
dearest rights of American citizens at pleasure in his hands, and this
is law and justice in the United States. These are solely and entirely
man-made laws. No woman had finger or tongue in the matter.
But Mr. Albany _Law Journal_ editor, after acknowledging their
injustice toward accused persons, and their dangers to the liberties
of every individual, tells Miss Anthony that "if she" is dissatisfied
with "our laws," meaning, of course, man-made laws like these, "she
would better adopt the methods of reform that men use, or, better
still, emigrate." Was ever a more disreputable phrase penned?
Disgraceful to its author, and doubly so, as he pretends to be a
teacher of law. This is the language of a very Nero come to judgment.
"Our laws." Whose laws, pray? The laws of men made for "our" benefit
alone. Is this what Mr. Editor of the Albany _Law Journal_ means?
Pray, Mr. Albany _Law Journal_, what are "the methods of reform that
men use," when they are dissatisfied with "our laws," only to speak
against such laws, and to vote for men to make better ones? Miss
Anthony has tried both of "the methods of reform men use," and for
doing the last was arrested, tried, fined, and all but imprisoned. It
seems "the methods of reform men use" are, after all, not just the
kind of methods for Miss Anthony and her friends to use. But then, Mr.
Albany _Law Journal_ allows Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage one other
alternative, which he deems a "better one," _i.e._, to "emigrate."
Mr. Editor continues: "We can well afford to lose her who rehearsed
the story of her wrongs in public addresses, in twenty-nine of the
post-office districts of Monroe, and twenty-one of Ontario, in her
canvass of those counties prior to her trial, and Mrs. Matilda Joslyn
Gage, who made a speech on this subject in Canandaigua and sixteen
other towns of Ontario County, previous to Miss Anthony's trial, June
17, 1873, with a view, of course, of influencing public opinion in
that region, so that a conviction could not be had."
As Judge Hunt trampled on the citizen's right of trial by jury, so Mr.
Albany _Law Journal_ shows himself to be of the same ilk, by desiring
to trample on that other guaranteed constitutional right of free
speech. He would ostracise Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage; he would banish
them from the country because they dared to use one of "the methods of
reform that men use," _i.e._, speaking of their "wrongs" in order to
educate and enlighten public opinion. If old Greece could banish her
best citizen, Aristides, simply because he was her most just one, Miss
Anthony and myself certainly ought to consider it a matter of
self-gratulation that we are deemed fit for banishment because of our
demand for justice; justice not merely for ourselves, but for one-half
the nation.
That editor's contempt of rights and justice, as shown in his article,
is simply amazing. He might as well have said in so many words, "This
country and its government is for the benefit of us males alone; you
women are part and parcel of our property; if you are not suited with
all things as we fix them for you, then get out from our country."
This is the tenor of what Mr. Albany _Law Journal_ editor says. Does
not every honest lawyer's face tingle with shame when he reads this
disgraceful sentiment in that journal to which he so constantly looks
for instruction in the higher departments of justice? Does not his
republicanism revolt from such a sentiment? Does he not here recognize
the enunciation of a principle as directly opposed to liberty as even
Judge Hunt's control of jury trial?
This journal shows that the right to do a thing and the power to do it
are distinctly separate. Judge Hunt did what he had the power to do,
but not the right to do. Mr. _Law Journal_ possesses neither the right
nor the power of banishing those citizens who do not conform to his
wishes, but he has evinced a desire to hold such power, and did he
have it, the country would find in him a tyrant of the same class as
Judge Hunt.
As dilatory as this editor has been in reviewing this important case,
he is equally timid in his criticism upon it. Currying to judicial and
political power, he terms Judge Hunt's willful and knowing infraction
of law "a mistake," but in regard to Miss Anthony, he says, "she
intended deliberately to break the law." A large class of people
believe just the contrary. We who know Miss Anthony well, and who
believe with her, know that, on the contrary, she intended to do an
act which is protected by the law, instead of breaking law; she was
acting under authority of the law. Because Judge Hunt defied the law;
because the editor of the Albany _Law Journal_ is inexcusably ignorant
of, or recklessly indifferent to the law, it does not follow that Miss
Anthony belongs to that class, or should be judged by their corrupt
standard. Miss Anthony, in common with hundreds, nay, thousands of
other women, as well as of a large class of scholarly men--men of
intelligence and a broad sense of justice--men, too, of political
insight--fully believes that to woman, equally with man, does the
Constitution secure political rights. These persons, this large class,
believe that the XIII., XIV., and XV. Amendments to the national
Constitution overrode and destroyed all those parts of State
constitutions which were, or are now, by expression contrary to their
provisions, and they believe that the fundamental right of citizens of
the United States is the right to take part in making the laws which
shall govern them; the exercise of this right to be regulated (not
prevented) by States. They do not concede Miss Anthony to have been a
law-breaker as the Albany _Law Journal_, the Judiciary Committee of
the House of Representatives, and other friends of Judge Hunt concede
her to have been. If the judiciary of the country is so far powerful,
and so far irresponsible as to warp the law in favor of its own
prejudices, even to the extent of preventing trial by jury, as Judge
Hunt is conceded to have done, then our judiciary and not our
criminals is our dangerous class. With such judges as Hunt, who has
attempted to crush out the trial by jury, and make of the jury merely
an ornamental tail to his judicial kite; with such teachers as the
Albany _Law Journal_, which, while acknowledging Hunt's outrageous
illegality of action, yet calls it "a mistake," and speaks of him as
"a good and pure" man, the administrators and the expounders of law
have become the most dangerous enemies of the people. The eminent
Judge Brady recognizes the low condition of legal honor, and in a
recent speech, said he hoped to see the day when his legal brethren
would understand that it was their duty to assist in the
administration of justice, and not to lend themselves to degrading
efforts to defeat it. We commend these remarks to the consideration of
Judge Hunt and the editor of the Albany _Law Journal_.
With that lack of self-respect which seems to inhere in all opponents
of woman suffrage, that editor, in addition to all else, tries to
indulge in a little facetiousness over the threadbare witticisms that
Miss Anthony "was a woman when she voted." Coming down through the
lips of Judge Hunt and the United States District Attorney of the
prosecution, it reaches the law editor in time for him to say that "on
the trial of Miss Anthony she conceded that on the day of election she
was a woman," and in a parenthesis ("we know that she generally was a
woman, and are not surprised to learn that she was on election day.")
What an amazing platitude this is to fall from the lips of a teacher
of law. That the United States District Attorney engaged in the
prosecution should degrade the dignity of the law by the question (to
Judge Selden) "if it was conceded that on the day of election Miss
Anthony was a woman?" to which the reply was, "Yes, now and ever heart
and soul a woman"; that Judge Hunt should ask her "if she voted as a
female"? to which he got the answer, "No, sir, I voted as a citizen of
the United States"; those questions, I say, were not so much a matter
of surprise under the peculiar forms of the trial, but that a law
journal should so far forget its dignity; should so far descend from
argument, from discussion of law to unseemly banter on the question of
sex; that it should so far stoop from a canvass of the most important
trial that ever took place, to a senile jest on woman, must be matter
of astonishment to every candid mind in the legal fraternity, and
certainly has a tendency to convince the female portion of the country
that the male man is fast losing his right to the definition of "man,
a reasoning animal."
In regard to that editor's expressed desire that the case of Miss
Anthony should have gone to the jury, as they would have brought in a
verdict of guilty, I will inform him that one of those jurymen told me
his verdict would have been "not guilty" had he been allowed by Judge
Hunt to express his opinions, "nor would he have been alone." This was
just what Hunt knew and feared and was determined should not take
place. Therefore he gagged the jury and ordered the verdict of guilty
entered--a verdict which, as this editor acknowledges, was never
rendered.
_Fayetteville, N. Y._ MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.
ULYSSES S. GRANT,
PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
_To all to whom those Presents shall come, Greeting_:
WHEREAS, at the June term, 1873, of the United States Circuit Court of
the Northern District of New York, one Beverly W. Jones, one Edwin T.
Marsh, and one William B. Hall were convicted of illegally registering
certain persons as voters, and receiving their votes, and were
sentenced each to pay a fine of twenty-five dollars,
AND WHEREAS, the Honorable H. A. Sargent asks that they be pardoned,
in view of the peculiar circumstances of their offense,
_Now, therefore_, be it known, that I, Ulysses S. Grant, President of
the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers
other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby grant
to the said Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, a
full and unconditional pardon.
_In testimony whereof_, I have hereunto signed my name and caused the
Seal of the United States to be affixed.
[SEAL.] Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of March, A.D.
1874, and of the Independence of the United States the
Ninety-eighth.
By the President. U. S. GRANT.
HAMILTON FISH, Secretary of State.
CORRESPONDENCE FROM WASHINGTON--SPECIAL TO THE _COMMONWEALTH_.
WASHINGTON, _April 14, 1874_.
SUSAN ANTHONY'S CASE.
Speaking of women, reminds me that a report will soon be made by the
Judiciary Committee upon the petition of Susan B. Anthony for a
remission of her fine for voting in the last Presidential campaign for
General Grant and Henry Wilson. The friends of woman's suffrage
confidently expect a favorable report upon this subject from the
committee. It was a clear case of a decision by a judge in excess of
his authority, and acting without warrant of law. It will not be a
decision if favorably made into which the right of suffrage will
necessarily enter. Miss Anthony claims her conviction was
unconstitutional under the law, the judge having refused her the right
of trial by jury in that he directed the jury to bring in a verdict of
guilty. She insists that this proceeding of the judge was in
derogation of her legal right of trial by jury, and as by law she had
no appeal in a criminal case from the decision of a single judge, that
it is the duty, as it is in the power, of Congress to remit the fine
which she has been ordered to pay with the costs. This simply involves
a legal question, and one which the Judiciary Committee will be quite
likely to decide in Susan's favor as she has both law and precedent on
her side. If the committee report favorably to the House, it will be
quite likely to pass on its merits as a legal question, giving many
members an opportunity to vote as their sympathies would direct
without committing themselves squarely to the question of woman's
suffrage. It is a step that will pave the way to this in the future.
Mr. Sargent has introduced a similar bill in the Senate, and Senator
Carpenter is pledged not only to its support but announces himself
ready to work for its passage.
The question of whether woman shall vote has become one of live issues
in politics to-day, and must be met by parliaments and people whether
they will or no. Susan B. Anthony, as the pioneer in this crusade,
holds the respectful consideration of a large number of our public
men. They have learned that she is in earnest in the advocacy of equal
rights, social and political, for her sex. She has no other religion
than work for this cause, unless it be war upon what she calls the
male despotism of both church and State. She will have gained in this,
the great cause to which she has consecrated her life, a substantial
victory. Notwithstanding it does not bear directly upon the question
of suffrage, it will be a recognition of the fact that judges can not
with impunity make decisions that woman has no rights that they are
bound to respect, and the rebuke that this remission of her fine, if
ordered by Congress, will be to the judge presiding in her case is one
that his associates throughout the country will be sure to heed. This
will at the same time give courage and hope to the friends of equal
rights to all regardless of race, sex, or previous condition of
servitude.
MINOR vs. HAPPERSETT.
(_Toledo Sunday Journal, April, 1875_,)
We insert to-day a communication from a friend of equal rights, who
highly condemns the interpretation of the Constitution by the Supreme
Court--his opinion also being from a legal standpoint. There is no
doubt but that although the mere letter of the Constitution may be
adhered to, _women_ not being _specified_ as being _people and not
non-entities_, the interpretation is clear behind the spirit of the
Constitution. It is then the manifest duty of Congress, since the
Supreme Court gives the conservative interpretation, to so amend the
Constitution as to bring it up unmistakably to the design of the
framers, which was representation for all the people.
THE GREAT USURPATION.
_President Woman's Suffrage Association, Toledo, Ohio_:
DEAR MADAM: What a fraud is practiced by the administration of this
government upon the provisions of the Constitution of the United
States! As government is administered, the female portion of the
public are defrauded of constitutional right, and made to become
political slaves. Since the beginning, all the way down to the present
day, woman has been debarred of all political privilege, though
reckoned and accounted as one of the people, in matters of census and
taxation. Her disabilities in this behalf were removed by the adoption
of the National Constitution; but nullification of that Constitution
and a high handed usurpation on the part of the States, have ever
hindered the enjoyment of her constitutional rights. But so long as
she is classed by the Constitution as one of the people--so long as
the people are the owners, the proprietors of the government
established by the Constitution--so long as it provides for
self-government, popular sovereignty--so long must she be _entitled_
to take part in administration, though prevented from doing so by fine
and imprisonment.
I am awakened to this subject of woman suffrage by a decision of the
Supreme Court of the United States, made at Washington this week. I
have not seen the text of the opinion read by the Chief Justice, but I
find this statement in the Court news of Monday last:
"No. 182.--Virginia L. Minor agt. Reese Happersett: in error to
Supreme Court of Missouri.--The plaintiff in error instituted an
action against Happersett, who was the judge of an election, for
denying her the right to vote. She based her right to vote upon the
ground that as a citizen of the United States she had that right under
the Constitution. Mr. Chief Justice Waite delivered the opinion,
holding, first, that women are and always have been citizens of the
United States as well as men; second, the Constitution of the United
States does not attach the right of voting to the right of
citizenship; third, nor does the Constitution of any of the States
make the right to vote coextensive with citizenship; fourth,
consequently, women are not entitled to vote by virtue of the
Constitution of the United States, when the State laws do not give the
right. Affirmed."
The great usurpation is now affirmed, legalized, by the decree of the
Judicial Department of this government! More than 20,000,000 of the
people of this Nation have been declared without the pale of political
rights secured to them by the Constitution of the fathers. This
decision indorses the disfranchisement of every female in the land, so
long endured by her. Her citizenship, which the National Constitution
makes evidence of her copartnership, or tenancy in common, or
proprietorship in the Government, is worthless--is only a name; and
does not enable her to exercise the privileges and immunities of our
system of self-government which that Constitution declares this
government to be--a government by and for its citizens. Woman can not
now exercise her constitutional right--she is only a cipher, important
once in a decade, in numbering the people--she is only a political
slave, a helpless Helot. Make ready, adorn your person, O woman, to
celebrate the coming centennial of the Declaration of American
Independence of the British throne! Mark! a woman sits upon that
throne and wears the royal crown! But, glorious parchment is that old
Declaration. That instrument marks an epoch in government and
political philosophy. It certifies the rights of the human race. Its
truths sounded in American ears on every fourth of July, for one
hundred years, save one, have, nevertheless, failed in their
realization, and, to-day, one half the population of this Nation can
not exercise a political right. How happens this state of
affairs?--not that the Constitution hinders woman and prevents her
participation in matters of government, for it is abundant in its
provisions in her behalf. Let me examine and try to ascertain the
point of difficulty. I copy from the Constitution a provision which
covers the entire question of woman's right of suffrage:
"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen
every second year, by the people of the several States; and
the electors in each State shall have the qualifications
requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State
Legislature."--[_Art._ 1. _Sec._ 2.]
The law and logic of woman's right--her political right--to vote for
members of Congress, President and Vice-President, appear thus in
argument: These officers are to be chosen "by the people of the
several States"--that is by the men and women of the Nation. The
personality of the people, by the creative fiat, is distinguished by
difference of sex, male and female. The choosers, the people of the
several States, are required to have certain qualifications to enable
them to choose, and these qualifications are to be subject to State
regulations. The right to vote for these officers of the United States
is anchored in the Constitution--no State may nullify that right--it
can only regulate its exercise:--for example, prescribe, as
qualifications for access to the ballot-box, that the chooser or
voter shall be twenty-one years old, a resident of the State for one
year, of the county or town for thirty days, etc.--these are properly
qualifications and such as the Constitution intends. Every State
Constitution limits the right to a part only of the people, which is
denial of right to the other portion of the people, and not regulation
or the right by way of adjective qualifications, as illustrated above.
Can sex either qualify or disqualify a chooser, one of the people to
cast a ballot for President? All the States, in unchecked
nullification, pronounce in the affirmative and write it in their
constitutions--the masculine qualifies, the feminine disqualifies--and
this has just now been echoed by the Supreme Court of the United
States! My mind and reason forbid my acceptance of such postulate.
The term "people" comprehends and includes female persons as well as
male persons. It is impossible, therefore, that sex, either the one or
the other, is contemplated by the Constitution as a qualification or
disqualification for suffrage. There must be National officers,
President, etc., else no government; they are to be chosen--this calls
for choosers or voters; the "people" are to choose--the people are a
majority of persons--these persons are, some male, some female--no
limitation is indicated as to which shall belong the right to vote;
sex, it seems, is out of the question, as the people are of both
sexes, so both male and female must vote or choose at the polls. Let
the States regulate the approaches to the ballot-box, but not deny the
right of user, by the people of the Nation. The Constitution exacts
all this--it is plain, it is positive--there is no hint in the same
that there shall be had at the polls any preference on account of sex.
Expulsion of woman from the polls by State nullification is a gigantic
wrong--a villainous usurpation.
Again, some things carry in their very face the absurd, the
incongruous, the ridiculous; States enacting laws and forming
constitutions which are interpreted as warrants of right to vote--the
masculine gender, this qualifies for voting--the feminine, this
disqualifies the voter. How ridiculous! Virility the distinguishing
qualification of voters in the United States! How queer this looks and
sounds. Sex is elemental--inherent in all the people, and should never
be deemed ground of qualification or disqualification to vote, any
more than the height or weight of person. But the Supreme Court of the
United States wink at the wickedness of the States as nullifiers, and
allow the masculine usurpation to remain. Perhaps this grave body of
learned Justices look upon the question of qualification in a broader
or other sense than that taught by Dr. Webster. Their decision, it
seems, turns upon the use and meaning of that word. This, then, is the
solemn conclusion of the embodied justice of the land--_qualification
to vote_, MASCULINE GENDER!--and not things in common belonging to
every person of the entire population, no matter what the sex; such as
age, residence, etc.
Madam, you have no available political rights--the Constitution
intends you shall have and exercise them, and it has made provisions
accordingly--but the false interpretations of the courts, and the
trespassing State Constitutions have hitherto hindered you. But I
believe a day of revolution, call it reckoning if you please, is at
hand--fast approaching. President Lincoln liberated by proclamation,
three or four millions of chattel slaves. President Grant has the
power, Constitutional power, to liberate, to-day, twenty millions of
political slaves, of which, I am sorry to say, you are one. Let
politicians and political parties beware how they treat this question
of woman suffrage. What became of the old Whig Party, in consequence
of its alliance with chattel slavery. _Illium fuit._
Sincerely yours, etc., HORACE DRESSER.
[The Toledo _Sunday Journal._]
The New York _Evening Post_ has a long article relative to the
decision of the Supreme Court regarding the right of women to vote
under the Constitution of the United States, coinciding in the
decision. It closes by saying: "The advocates of woman suffrage will
scarcely be disappointed by this judgment. We do not believe that
sincere friends of the proposed reform will regret the failure to
secure it by trickery."
There are few who have maintained that the XIV. and XV. Amendments
secured suffrage to women as well as to colored men, who would be
willing to admit that they desired to obtain suffrage through
trickery? Either it is, or is not, conveyed through the Constitution
and the Amendments. Certainly if it is, they have a right to avail
themselves of it; and even if it is not, it is nevertheless, a right.
The woman suffragists believe that the withholdal from women of the
right of suffrage is a fraud and an imposition. To secure them what is
already their right, can not involve trickery. Every day and every
hour that the right of suffrage is withheld from women, a monstrous
wrong is practiced upon them. As long as there were no women who
demanded the ballot, and by tacit consent it was relinquished, the
fraud practiced by debarring them from it was merely of a negative
character--but the privilege should have been left open; but from the
moment that one woman demanded it, an outrage was practiced upon her
by the entire people in denying it her, and the plea that it is not
woman's sphere, which is sometimes made, is the most shallow
subterfuge of any, for it is not for men, but for woman alone, to
determine what that sphere is, or is not.
FOOTNOTES:
[208] Alvin Stewart, one of the noble pioneers in Anti-Slavery.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
The transcriber made changes as below indicated
to the text to correct obvious errors:
1. p. 10. permanance --> permanence
2. p. 18, batte-field --> battle-field
3. p. 80, menancing --> menacing
4. p. 84, ALL HUMAN GOVERNMENT. --> ALL HUMAN GOVERNMENT."
5. p. 88, Footnote #47, no footnote marker in footnote text.
6. p. 103, enfrachising --> enfranchising
7. p. 112, I have read --> "I have read
8. p. 119, Doubtles --> Doubtless
9. p. 125, it will led --> it will lead
10. p. 139, Do they like --> "Do they like
11. p. 189, "I ask you --> I ask you
12. p. 190, resolutions --> resolutions.
13. p. 224, consience --> conscience
14. p. 246, Thank you --> Thank you.
15. p. 284, Footnote #99, TRIAN --> TRAIN
16. p. 327, inviduous --> invidious
17. p. 348, everhelp --> everheld
18. p. 371, suffage --> suffrage
19. p. 424, indignat --> indignant
20. p. 435, devolop --> develop
21. p. 438, Aniversary --> Anniversary
22. p. 439, sincerly --> sincerely
23. p. 442, Athony --> Anthony
24. p. 444, appropiate --> appropriate
25. p. 455, delaring --> declaring
26. p. 530, sate --> state
27. p. 531, elswhere --> elsewhere
28. p. 554, surrended --> surrendered
29. p. 587, Dictrict --> District
30. p. 638, stautte --> statute
31. p. 666, syonymous --> synonymous
32. p. 691, ursurped --> usurped
33. p. 692, eithth --> eight
34. p. 708, folowing --> following
35. p. 723, 4 Wallace, 351-323 (left as published)
36. p. 727, plantiff --> plaintiff
37. p. 733, privieges --> privileges
38. p. 755, disabilty --> disability
39. p. 791, acording --> according
40. p. 803, Footnote #188, standardized punctutation in list of
states and individuals
41. p. 900, a a (left as published)
42. p. 921, Wom n's --> Woman's
43. p. 934, ther campaign (left as published)
44. p. 947, dissatified --> dissatisfied
45. p. 950, [HAND] replaces image of hand pointing right