NATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS OF WOMEN 1042-1073
First societies on record -- Progress by decades -- Women's club
houses -- Changed status of women's conventions -- List of
National Associations -- Evolution of their objects -- Women
gradually learning the disadvantages of disfranchisement --
4,000,000 enrolled in organized work for the good of humanity --
Must necessarily become great factor in public life -- Government
will be obliged to have their assistance.
APPENDIX.
EMINENT ADVOCATES OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE 1075-1085
Presidents, Vice-presidents, Supreme Court Judges, U. S. Senators
and Representatives, Governors of States, Presidents of
Universities, Clergymen and other noted individuals who advocate
the enfranchisement of women.
TESTIMONY FROM WOMAN SUFFRAGE STATES 1085-1094
Signed statements from the highest authorities in Colorado,
Idaho, Utah and Wyoming as to the value of woman's vote in public
affairs and the absence of predicted evils.
NEW YORK 1094-1096
Legal opinion on Suffrage and Office-holding for Women.
WASHINGTON 1096-1098
Detailed statement of women's voting and their unconstitutional
disfranchisement by the Territorial Supreme Court.
CONSTITUTION OF NATIONAL-AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION 1098-1104
Resume of its principal points -- Officers -- Standing and
Special Committees -- Life Members -- List of delegates to
national conventions.
ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF SUBJECTS 1105-1121
ALPHABETICAL INDEX OF PROPER NAMES 1122-1144
CHAPTER I.
WOMAN'S CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT TO VOTE.
In the early days of the movement to enfranchise women, no other
method was considered than that of altering the constitution of each
individual State, as it was generally accepted that the right to
prescribe the qualifications for the suffrage rested entirely with the
States and that the National Constitution could not be invoked for
this purpose. While the word "male" was not used in this document, yet
with the one exception of New Jersey, where women exercised the full
suffrage from the adoption of its first constitution in 1776 until
1807, there is no record of any woman's being permitted to vote. At
the inception of the republic women were almost wholly uneducated;
they were unknown in the industrial world; there were very few
property owners among them; the manifold exactions of domestic duties
absorbed all their time, strength and interest; and for these and many
other causes they were not public factors in even the smallest sense
of the word. One could readily believe that the founders of the
Government never imagined a time when women would ask for a voice were
it not for the significant fact that every State constitution, except
the one mentioned above, was careful to put up an absolute barrier
against such a contingency by confining the elective franchise
strictly to "male" citizens--and there it has stood impassable down to
the present day.
It was almost the exact middle of the nineteenth century before the
first demand was made by women for the right to represent
themselves--the right for which their forefathers had fought a
seven-years' war, and the one which had been made the corner-stone of
the new Government. The complete story of the startling results which
followed this demand never has been told but once, and that was when
Vol. I of this History of Woman Suffrage was written. It was related
then by the two who were the principal personages in a period which
tried women's souls as they were never tried before--Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.[3]
This movement for the freedom of women was scarcely launched when the
long-threatened Civil War broke forth and precipitated the struggle
for the liberty of another class whose slavery seemed far more
terrible than the servitude of white women. The five years' ordeal
which followed developed women as all the previous centuries had not
been able to do, and when peace reigned once more, when an entire race
had been born into freedom and the republic had been consecrated anew,
the whole status of the American woman had been changed and the lines
which circumscribed her old sphere had been forever obliterated. Women
were studying laws, constitutions and public questions as never before
in all history, and, as they saw millions of colored men endowed with
the full prerogatives of citizenship, they began to ask, "Am I not
also a citizen of this great republic and entitled to all its rights
and privileges?"
Up to this time the word "male" never had appeared in the Federal
Constitution. In 1865, when the leaders among women were beginning to
gather up their scattered forces, and the Fourteenth Amendment was
under discussion, they saw to their amazement and indignation that it
was proposed to incorporate in that instrument this discriminating
word. Miss Anthony was the first to sound the alarm, and Mrs. Stanton
quickly came to her aid in the attempt to prevent this desecration of
the people's Bill of Rights. The thrilling account of their efforts to
thwart this highhanded act, their abandonment in consequence by nearly
all of their co-workers before and during the war, their anger and
humiliation at seeing the former slaves, whom they had helped to free,
made their political superiors and endowed with a personal
representation in Government which women had been pilloried for
asking--all this is graphically told in Vol. II of the History of
Woman Suffrage, Chaps. XVII and XXI. The story with many personal
touches is also related in the Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony,
Chaps. XV and XVI.
The Fourteenth Amendment was declared adopted July 28, 1868,[4] and
the women felt that the ground had been swept from beneath their feet,
as now the barriers opposed to their enfranchisement by all the State
constitutions had been doubly and trebly strengthened by sanction of
the National Constitution. The first ray of encouragement came in
October, 1869, when, at a State woman suffrage convention held in St.
Louis, Mo., Francis Minor, a leading attorney of that city, declared
that this very Fourteenth Amendment in enfranchising colored men had
performed a like service for all women. His argument was embodied
concisely in the following resolutions, which were adopted by that
convention with great enthusiasm, and by the National Association at
its annual convention in Washington, D. C., the next January:
WHEREAS, All persons born or naturalized in the United States,
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside; therefore be
it
_Resolved_, 1. That the immunities and privileges of American
citizenship, however defined, are national in character and
paramount to all State authority.
2. That while the Constitution of the United States leaves the
qualification of electors to the several States, it nowhere gives
them the right to _deprive_ any citizen of the elective franchise
which is possessed by any other citizen--to _regulate_ not
including the right to _prohibit_.
3. That, as the Constitution of the United States expressly
declares that no State shall make or enforce any laws that shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States, those provisions of the several State constitutions which
exclude women from the franchise on account of sex are violative
alike of the spirit and letter of the Federal Constitution.
4. That, as the subject of _naturalization_ is expressly withheld
from the States, and as the States clearly have no right to
deprive of the franchise naturalized citizens, among whom women
are expressly included, still more clearly have they no right to
deprive native-born women citizens of the franchise.
In support of these resolutions various portions of the National
Constitution were quoted, including Article IV, Section 2: "The
citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States;" and Section 4: "The
United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a
republican form of government." Many other authorities were cited,
including numerous court decisions, as to the right of women to the
suffrage now that their citizenship had been clearly established and
the protection of its privileges and immunities guaranteed.
This position was sustained by many of the best lawyers in the United
States, including members of Congress. The previous May the National
Woman Suffrage Association had been formed in New York City, and
henceforth this right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment was made
the keynote of all its speeches, resolutions, etc., as will be seen in
the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, Chap. XXIII.
For the first time the Federal Constitution had defined the term
"citizen," leaving no doubt that a woman was a citizen in the fullest
meaning of the word. Until now there had been but one Supreme Court
decision on this point--that of Chief Justice Taney in 1857, in the
Dred Scott Case, which declared that citizens were "the political body
who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty
and hold the power, and conduct the Government through their
representatives." This plainly had barred negroes and white women from
citizenship.
At the next general election, in 1872, women attempted to vote in many
parts of the country, in some cases their votes being received, in
others rejected.[5] The vote of Miss Anthony was accepted in
Rochester, N. Y., and she was then arrested for a criminal offense,
tried and fined in the U. S. Circuit Court at Canandaigua, by
Associate Justice Ward Hunt of the U. S. Supreme Court. There is no
more flagrant judicial outrage on record. The full account of this
case, in which she was refused the right of trial by jury as
guaranteed by the Constitution, will be found in Vol. II, History of
Woman Suffrage, p. 627 and following; also much more in detail in the
Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, p. 423, with her great
Constitutional Argument delivered in fifty of the postoffice districts
of the two counties before the trial, p. 977 and following.
The vote of Mrs. Virginia L. Minor was refused in St. Louis and she
brought suit against the inspectors of election. The case was decided
against her in the Circuit Court of the county and the Supreme Court
of Missouri. She then carried it to the Supreme Court of the United
States--_Minor vs. Happersett et al._ No. 182, October term, 1874. The
case was argued by her husband, Francis Minor, and after the lapse of
a quarter of a century it is still believed that his argument could
not have been excelled. The decision was delivered by Chief Justice
Waite, March 29, 1875, and was in brief: "The National Constitution
does not define the privileges and immunities of citizens. The United
States has no voters of its own creation. The Constitution does not
confer the right of suffrage upon any one, but the franchise must be
regulated by the States. The Fourteenth Amendment does not add to the
privileges and immunities of a citizen; it simply furnishes an
additional guarantee to protect those he already has. Before the
passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments the States had the
power to disfranchise on account of race or color. These Amendments,
ratified by the States, simply forbade that discrimination but did not
forbid that against sex."
The full text of argument and decision will be found in the History of
Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 715 and following. In making this decision
the Court was compelled to reverse absolutely its own finding of three
years previous in what was known as the _Slaughter House Cases_ (16
Wallace) which said: "The negro having by the Fourteenth Amendment
been declared to be a citizen of the United States, _is thus made a
voter_ in every State in the Union."
The Fifteenth Amendment says: "The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of
servitude." No right is conferred by this amendment. It simply
guarantees protection for a right already existing in the citizen, and
the negro having been declared a citizen by the Fourteenth Amendment
is thus protected in his right to vote. But whence did he obtain this
right unless from the National Constitution, which the Supreme Court
in the Minor decision declares "does not confer the right of suffrage
upon any one"? Volume II of this History of Woman Suffrage, containing
nearly 1,000 pages, is devoted mainly to a recital of the efforts on
the part of women to obtain and exercise the franchise through the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. This decision of the Supreme
Court destroyed the last hope, although it did not shake the belief of
the leaders of this movement in the justice and legality of their
claim.
A number of the women contended that, if the National Constitution did
not confer Full Suffrage, it did at least guarantee Federal
Suffrage--the right to vote for Congressional Representatives--and in
this opinion they were sustained by eminent lawyers. The National
Association, however, never made an issue of this question,
considering that it would be useless, but it has a Standing Committee
on Federal Suffrage empowered to make such efforts in this direction
as it deems advisable.[6]
The assertion is made that if Congress had no authority over the
election of its own members, it would be wholly unable to perpetuate
itself should the States at any time decide that they no longer care
to be under the authority of a central governing body, and refuse to
elect Representatives. Many able reports have been made by this
Standing Committee, and the question was clearly stated in an article
in _The Arena_, December, 1891, by Francis Minor, who gave the
question of woman suffrage a more thorough legal examination,
perhaps, than any other man. He prepared the following bill which was
presented in the House of Representatives, April 25, 1892, by the Hon.
Clarence D. Clark, member from Wyoming:
AN ACT TO PROTECT THE RIGHT OF CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES TO
REGISTER AND TO VOTE FOR MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
WHEREAS, The right to choose Members of the House of
Representatives is vested by the Constitution in the people of
the several States, without distinction of sex, but for want of
proper legislation has hitherto been restricted to one-half of
the people; for the purpose, therefore, of correcting this error
and of giving effect to the Constitution:
_Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled:_ That at all
elections hereafter held in the several States of this Union for
members of the House of Representatives, the right of citizens of
the United States, of either sex, above the age of twenty-one
years, to register and to vote for such Representatives shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on
account of sex.
The argument for the authority of Congress to pass this law is based
partly on Article I of the Federal Constitution:
SECTION 2. 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.
SECTION 4. The time, place and manner of holding elections for
Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by
the Legislature thereof, but the Congress may at any time by law
make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of
choosing Senators.[7]
Congress is here endowed unquestionably with the right to regulate the
election of Representatives. James Madison, one of the framers of the
Constitution, when asked the intention of this clause, in the Virginia
convention of 1788, called to ratify this instrument, answered that
the power was reserved to Congress because "should the people of any
State by any means be deprived of the right of suffrage, it was judged
proper that it should be remedied by the General Government."
[Elliott's Debates, Vol. II, p. 266.]
Again Madison said in _The Federalist_ (No. 54), in speaking of the
enumeration for Representatives:
The Federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety
in the case of our slaves when it views them in the mixed
character of persons and property. This is in fact their true
character. It is the character bestowed on them by the laws under
which they live; and it will not be denied that these are the
proper criteria; because it is only under the pretext that the
laws have transformed the negroes into subjects of property, that
_a place is disputed them in the computation of numbers_; and it
is admitted that, if the laws were to restore the rights which
have been taken away, _the negroes could no longer be refused an
equal share of representation_.
Therefore, as women _are_ counted in the enumeration on which the
Congressional apportionment is based, they are legally entitled to an
equal share in direct representation.
In 1884 the case of Jasper Yarbrough and others who had been sentenced
to hard labor in the penitentiary in Georgia for preventing a colored
man from voting for a member of Congress, was brought to the U. S.
Supreme Court by a petition for a writ of _habeas corpus_. The
decision rendered March 2, virtually nullified that given by this
court in the case of Mrs. Minor in 1875, as quoted above, which held
that "the National Constitution has no voters," for this one declared:
But it is not correct to say that the right to vote for a member
of Congress does not depend on the Constitution of the United
States. The office, if it be properly called an office, is
created by the Constitution and by that alone. It also declares
how it shall be filled, namely, by election. Its language is:
"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen
every second year by the people of the several States; and the
electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite
for electors of the most numerous branch of the State
Legislature."
The States in prescribing the qualifications of voters for the
most numerous branch of their own Legislature, do not do this
with reference to the election for members of Congress. Nor can
they prescribe the qualifications for those _eo nomine_ [by that
name].
They define who are to vote for the popular branch of their own
Legislature, and the Constitution of the United States says the
same persons shall vote for members of Congress in that State.
It adopts the qualification thus furnished as the qualification
of its own electors for members of Congress. _It is not true,
therefore, that the electors for members of Congress owe their
right to vote to the State law in any sense which makes the
exercise of the right to depend exclusively on the law of the
State._
Counsel for petitioners seizing upon the expression found in the
opinion of the Court in the case of _Minor vs. Happersett_, "that
the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right
of suffrage upon any one," without reference to the connection in
which it is used, insists that the voters in this case do not owe
their right to vote in any sense to that instrument. But the
Court was combating the argument that this right was conferred on
all citizens, and therefore upon women as well as men.(!)
In opposition to that idea it was said the Constitution adopts,
as the qualification for voters for members of Congress, that
which prevails in the State where the voting is to be done;
therefore, said the opinion, the right is not definitely
conferred on any person or class of persons by the Constitution
alone, because you have to look to the law of the State for the
description of the class. But the Court did not intend to say
that, when the class or the person is thus ascertained, his right
to vote for a member of Congress was not _fundamentally based
upon the Constitution which created the office of member of
Congress_, and declared it should be elective, and pointed to the
means of ascertaining who should be electors.
The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, by its limitation of
the power of the States in the exercise of their right to
prescribe the qualifications of voters in their own elections,
and by its limitation of the power of the United States over that
subject, clearly shows that the right of suffrage was considered
to be of supreme importance to the National Government and _was
not intended to be left within the exclusive control of the
States_.
In such cases this Fifteenth Article of amendment does _proprio
vigore_ [by its own force] substantially _confer on the negro the
right to vote_, and Congress has the power to protect and enforce
that right. In the case of _United States vs. Happersett_, so
much relied on by counsel, this Court said, in regard to the
Fifteenth Amendment, that it has invested the citizens of the
United States with a new constitutional right which is within the
protecting power of Congress. That right is an exemption from
discrimination in the exercise of the elective franchise on
account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.
This new constitutional right was mainly designed for [male]
citizens of African descent. The principle, however, that the
protection of the exercise of this right _is within the power of
Congress_, is as necessary to the right of other citizens to vote
in general as to the right to be protected against
discrimination.
This legal hair-splitting is beyond the comprehension of the average
lay mind and will be viewed by future generations with as much
contempt as is felt by the present in regard to the infamous decision
of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case in 1857. If it decides
anything it is that the right to vote for Congressional
Representatives is a Federal right, vested in all the people by the
National Constitution, and one which it is beyond the power of the
States to regulate. Therefore, no State has the power to deprive women
of the right to vote for Representatives in Congress.
Those who hold that women are already entitled to Federal Suffrage
under the National Constitution, further support their claim by a
series of decisions as to the citizenship of women and the inherent
rights which it carries. They quote especially the case of the _United
States vs. Kellar_. The defendant was indicted by a Federal grand jury
in Illinois for illegal voting in a Congressional election, as he
never had been naturalized. He and his mother were born in Prussia,
but came to the United States when he was a minor, and she married a
naturalized citizen. The case was tried in June, 1882, in the Circuit
Court of the United States for the Southern District of Illinois, by
Associate Justice Harlan of the U. S. Supreme Court, who discharged
the defendant. He held that the mother, having become a citizen by
marriage while the son was a minor, transferred citizenship to him. In
other words she transmitted a Federal Citizenship including the right
to vote which she did not herself possess, thus enfranchising a child
born while she was an alien. The whole matter was settled not by State
but by Federal authority.[8] If a mother can confer this right on a
son, why not on a daughter? But why does she not possess it herself?
The clause of the National Constitution which established suffrage at
the time that instrument was framed, does not mention the sex of the
elector.
The argument for Federal Suffrage was presented in a masterly manner
before the National Convention of 1889 by U. S. Senator Henry W. Blair
(N. H.); and it was discussed by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Minor. See
present volume, Chap. IX.
From this bare outline of the claim that women already possess Federal
Suffrage, or that Congress has authority to confer it without the
sanction of the States, readers can continue the investigation.
Notwithstanding its apparent equity, the leaders of the National
Association, including Miss Anthony herself, felt convinced after the
decision against Mrs. Minor that it would be useless to expect from
the Supreme Court any interpretation of the Constitution which would
permit women to exercise the right of suffrage. They had learned,
however, through the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
Amendments, that it had been possible to amend this document in such a
way as to enfranchise an entire new class of voters--or in other words
to protect them in the exercise of a right which it seemed that in
some mysterious way they already possessed. As the Fourteenth
Amendment declared the negroes to be citizens, and the Fifteenth
forbade the United States or any State to deny or abridge "the right
of citizens of the United States to vote, on account of race, color or
previous condition of servitude," it was clearly evident that this
right inhered in citizenship. This being the case women must already
have it, but as there was no national authority prohibiting the States
from denying or abridging it, each of them did so by putting the word
"male" in its constitution as a qualification for suffrage; just as
many of them had used the word "white" until the adoption of the
Fifteenth Amendment by a three-fourths majority made this
unconstitutional. Therefore, since the _Minor vs. Happersett_
decision, the National Association has directed its principal efforts
to secure from Congress the submission to the several State
Legislatures of a Sixteenth Amendment which should prohibit
disfranchisement on account of "sex," as the Fifteenth had done on
account of "color."
The association does not discourage attempts in various States to
secure from their respective Legislatures the submission of an
amendment to the voters which shall strike out this word "male" from
their own constitutions. On the contrary, it assists every such
attempt with money, speakers and influence, but having seen such
amendments voted on sixteen times and adopted only twice (in Colorado
and Idaho), it is confirmed in the opinion that the quickest and
surest way to secure woman suffrage will be by an amendment to the
Federal Constitution. In other words it holds that women should be
permitted to carry their case to the selected men of the Legislatures
rather than to the masses of the voters.
From 1869 until the decision in the Minor case in 1875, the National
Association went before committees of every Congress with appeals for
a Declaratory Act which would permit women to vote under the
Fourteenth Amendment. Since that decision it has asked for a Sixteenth
Amendment. In both cases it has been supported by petitions of
hundreds of thousands of names.
The ablest women this nation has produced have presented the arguments
and pleadings. Many of the older advocates have passed away, but new
ones have taken their place. It is the unvarying testimony of the
Senate and House Committees who have granted these hearings, that no
body of men has appeared before them for any purpose whose dignity,
logic and acumen have exceeded, if indeed they have equaled, those of
the members of this association. They have been heard always with
respect, often with cordiality, but their appeals have fallen, if not
upon deaf, at least upon indifferent ears. They have asked these
committees to report to their respective Houses a resolution to submit
this Sixteenth Amendment. Sometimes the majority of the committee has
been hostile to woman suffrage and presented an adverse report:
sometimes it has been friendly and presented one favorable; sometimes
there have been an opposing majority and a friendly minority report,
or vice versa; but more often no action whatever has been taken.
During these thirty years eleven favorable reports have been
made--five from Senate, six from House Committees.[9]
In the History of Woman Suffrage, Vols. II and III, will be found a
full record of various debates which occurred in Senate and House on
different phases of the movement to secure suffrage for women previous
to 1884, when the present volume begins. In 1885 Thomas W. Palmer gave
his great speech in the United States Senate in advocacy of their
enfranchisement; and in 1887 occurred the first and only discussion
and vote in that body on a Sixteenth Amendment for this purpose, both
of which are described herein under their respective dates.
In the following chapters will be found an account of the annual
conventions of the National Suffrage Association since 1883, and of
the American until the two societies united in 1890, with many of the
resolutions and speeches for which these meetings have been
distinguished. They contain also portions of the addresses, covering
every phase of this subject, made at the hearings before Congressional
Committees, and the arguments advanced for and against woman suffrage
in the favorable and adverse reports of these committees, thus
presenting both sides of the question. Readers who follow the story
will be obliged to acknowledge that the very considerable progress
which has been made toward obtaining the franchise is due to the
unceasing and long-continued efforts of this association far more than
to all other agencies combined; and that the women who compose this
body have demonstrated their capacity and their right to a voice in
the Government infinitely beyond any class to whom it has been granted
since the republic was founded.
FOOTNOTES:
[3] The part of this record with which Miss Anthony herself was
directly connected, and which comprises by far the greater portion of
the whole, is given with many personal incidents in her Life and Work.
[Husted-Harper.]
[4] ARTICLE XIV.
_Section 1._ All persons born or naturalized in the United States and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States
and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property,
without due process of law, or deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
_Section 2._ Representatives shall be apportioned among the several
States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole
number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when
the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for
President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in
Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the
members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the _male_
inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens
of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation
in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall
be reduced in the proportion which the number of such _male_ citizens
shall bear to the whole number of _male_ citizens twenty-one years of
age in such State.
[5] Women also had attempted to vote in local and State elections in
1870 and 1871. An account of the trials and decisions which followed
will be found in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, Chap. XXV.
[6] The most earnest advocates of the constitutional right of women to
Federal Suffrage are Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett, Ky.; Mrs. Clara B.
Colby, D. C.; Mrs. Martha E. Root, Mich.; Miss Sara Winthrop Smith,
Conn. They have done a large amount of persistent but ineffectual work
in the endeavor to obtain a recognition of this right.
[7] Senator John Sherman did at one time introduce a bill for this
purpose.
[8] This is precisely what was done in the case of Susan B. Anthony
above referred to.
[9] The first report, in 1871, was signed by Representatives Benjamin
F. Butler (Mass.) and William A. Loughridge (Ia.): History of Woman
Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 464.
The second, in 1879, was signed by Senators George F. Hoar (Mass.),
John H. Mitchell (Ore.), Angus Cameron (Wis.): Id., Vol. III, p. 131.
The third, in 1882, was signed by Senators Elbridge G. Lapham (N. Y.),
Thomas W. Ferry (Mich.), Henry W. Blair (N. H.), Henry B. Anthony (R.
I.): Id., p. 231.
The fourth, in 1883, was signed by Representative John D. White (Ky.):
Id., p. 263.
For the fifth and sixth, in 1884, see Chap. III of present volume; for
the seventh and eighth, in 1886, Id., Chap. V. (See also, Chap. VI.);
for the ninth and tenth, in 1890, Id., Chap. X; for the eleventh, in
1892, Id., Chap. XII.
It is worthy of notice that from 1879 to 1891, inclusive, Miss Susan
B. Anthony was enabled to spend the congressional season in Washington
[see pp. 188, 366], and during this time nine of these eleven
favorable reports were made.
For adverse reports see History of Woman Suffrage: 1871, Vol. II, p.
461; 1878, Vol. III, p. 112; 1882, Id., p. 237; 1884, present volume,
Chap. III (see also, Chap. VI); 1892, Id., Chap. XII; 1894, Id., Chap.
XIV; 1896, Id., Chap. XVI.
CHAPTER II.
THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION OF 1884.
The first Woman's Rights Convention on record was held in Seneca
Falls, N. Y., in July, 1848; the second in Salem, O., in April, 1850;
the third in Worcester, Mass., in October, 1850. By this time the
movement for the civil, educational and political rights of women was
fully initiated, and every year thenceforth to the beginning of the
Civil War national conventions were held in various States for the
purpose of agitating the question and creating a favorable public
sentiment. These were addressed by the ablest men and women of the
time, and the discussions included the whole scope of women's wrongs,
which in those days were many and grievous.
Immediately after the war the political disabilities of the negro man
were so closely akin to those of all women that the advocates of
universal suffrage organized under the name of the Equal Rights
Association. The "reconstruction period," however, engendered so many
differences of opinion, and a platform so broad permitted such
latitude of debate, the women soon became convinced that their own
cause was being sacrificed. Therefore in May, 1869, under the
leadership of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony,
the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed in New York City,
having for its sole object the enfranchisement of women. From this
time it held a convention in Washington, D. C., every winter.
The above mentioned associations and conventions, as well as the
American Woman Suffrage Association, formed at Cleveland, O., in
November, 1869, under the leadership of Mrs. Lucy Stone, are described
in detail in the preceding volumes of this History. The present volume
begins with the usual convention of the National Association in
Washington in 1884. This place was selected for a twofold purpose:
because here a more cosmopolitan audience could be secured than in any
other city, including representatives from every State in the Union
and from all the nations of the world; and because here the
association could carry directly to the only tribunal which had power
to act, its demand for a submission to the State Legislatures of an
amendment to the Federal Constitution which should forbid
disfranchisement on account of sex. During each of these conventions
it was the custom for committees of the Senate and House to grant
hearings to the leading advocates of this proposition.
The Sixteenth of these annual conventions met in Lincoln Hall, in
response to the usual Call,[10] March 4, 1884, continuing in session
four days.[11]
On the evening before the convention a handsome reception was given at
the Riggs House by Charles W. and Mrs. Jane H. Spofford to Miss Susan
B. Anthony, which was attended by several hundred prominent men and
women. Delegates were present from twenty-six States and
Territories.[12] Miss Anthony was in the chair at the opening session
and read a letter from Mrs. Stanton, who was detained at home, in
which she paid a glowing tribute to Wendell Phillips, the staunch
defender of the rights of women, who had died the preceding month.
Mrs. Mary B. Clay, in speaking of the work in her State, said:
In talking to a Kentuckian on the subject of woman's right to
qualify under the law, you have to batter down his self-conceit
that he is just and generous and chivalric toward woman, and
that she can not possibly need other protection than he gives her
with his own right arm--while he forgets that it is from man
alone woman needs protection, and often does she need the right
to protect herself from the avarice, brutality or neglect of the
one nearest to her. The only remedy for her, as for man himself,
in this republic, is the ballot in her hand. He thinks he is
generous to woman when he supplies her wants, forgetting that he
has first robbed her by law of all her property in marriage, and
then may or may not give her that which is her own by right of
inheritance....
A mother, legally so, has no right to her child, the husband
having the right to will it to whom he pleases, and even to will
away from the mother the unborn child at his death. The wife does
not own her own property, personal or real, unless given for her
sole use and benefit. If a husband may rent the wife's land, or
use it during his life and hers, and take the increase or rental
of it, and after her death still hold it and deprive her children
of its use, which he does by curtesy, and if she can not make a
will and bequeath it at her death, then I say she is robbed, and
insulted in the bargain, by such so-called ownership of land. "A
woman fleeing from her husband and seeking refuge or protection
in a neighbor's house, the man protecting her makes himself
liable to the husband, who can recover damages by law." "If a
husband refuse to sue for a wife who has been slandered or
beaten, she can not sue for herself." These are Kentucky laws.
Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck closed her record for Massachusetts by
saying: "The dead wall of indifference is at last broken down and the
women 'remonstrants,' by their active resistance to our advancing
progress, are not only turning the attention of the public in our
direction and making the whole community interested, but also are
paving the way for future political action themselves. By
remonstrating they have expressed their opinion and entered into
politics."
Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway gave a full report of the situation in
Oregon, and a hopeful outlook for the success of the pending suffrage
amendment.[13] This was followed later by a strong address. A letter
was read from Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.). Dr. Clemence S. Lozier
(N. Y.) spoke briefly, saying that for eleven years her parlor had
been opened each month for suffrage meetings, and that "this question
is the foundation of Christianity; for Christians can look up and
truly say 'Our Father' only when they can treat each other as brothers
and sisters." Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) gave an eloquent
address on The Outlook, answering the four stock questions: Why do not
more women ask for the ballot? Will not voting destroy the womanly
instincts? Will not women be contaminated by going to the polls? Will
they not take away employment from men?
At the opening of the evening session Miss Anthony read a letter from
Mrs. Millicent Garrett Fawcett of England, and an extract from a
recent speech by her husband, Henry Fawcett, member of Parliament and
Postmaster General, strongly advocating the removal of all political
disabilities of women. Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert (Ills.) spoke on
The Statesmanship of Women, citing illustrious examples in all parts
of the world. Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) gave a trenchant and
humorous speech on The Unknown Quantity in Politics, showing the
indirect influence of women which unfortunately is not accompanied
with responsibility. She took up leading candidates and their records,
criticising or commending; illustrated how in every department women
are neglected and forgotten, and closed as follows:
It is better to have the power of self-protection than to depend
on any man, whether he be the Governor in his chair of State, or
the hunted outlaw wandering through the night, hungry and cold
and with murder in his heart. We are tired of the pretense that
we have special privileges and the reality that we have none; of
the fiction that we are queens, and the fact that we are
subjects; of the symbolism which exalts our sex but is only a
meaningless mockery. We demand that these shadows shall take
substance. The coat of arms of the State of New York represents
Liberty and Justice supporting a shield on which is seen the sun
rising over the hills that guard the Hudson. How are justice and
liberty depicted? As a police judge and an independent voter? Oh,
no; as two noble and lovely women! What an absurdity in a State
where there is neither liberty nor justice for any woman! We ask
that this symbolism shall assume reality, for a redeemed and
enfranchised womanhood will be the best safeguard of justice.
Mrs. Blake was followed by Mrs. Martha McClellan Brown, of Cincinnati
Wesleyan College, who spoke on Disabilities of Woman. Miss Anthony
read the report from Missouri by Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, who strongly
supported her belief in the constitutional right of women to the
franchise. A letter of greeting was read from Miss Fannie M. Bagby,
managing editor St. Louis _Chronicle_; Miss Phoebe W. Couzins (Mo.)
gave a brilliant address entitled What Answer?
At the evening session the hall was crowded. The speech of Mrs. Belva
A. Lockwood (D. C.), the first woman admitted to practice before the
Supreme Court, was a severe criticism on the disfranchising of the
women in Utah as proposed by bills now before Congress. It was a clear
and strong legal argument which would be marred by an attempt at
quotation.
In an address on Women Before the Law, the report says:
Mrs. Helen M. Gougar of Indiana traced the development of human
liberty as shown in the history of the ballot, which was at first
given to a certain class of believers in orthodox religions, then
to property holders, then to all white men. She showed how class
legislation had been gradually done away with by allowing
believer and unbeliever, rich and poor, white and black, to vote
unquestioned and unhindered, and as a result of this onward march
of justice, the last remaining form of class legislation, now
shown by the sex ballot, must pass away. She declared the
sex-line to be the lowest standard upon which to base a privilege
and unworthy the civilization of the present time. She answered
many of the popular objections to woman suffrage by showing that
if education were to be made the test of the ballot, women would
not be the disfranchised class in America, as three-fifths of all
graduates from the public schools in the last ten years have been
women. If morality were to be made a test, women would do more
voting than men. The ratio of law-abiding women to men is as one
to every 103; of drunken women to drunken men, one to every
1,000. Reasoning from these facts, if sobriety, virtue and
intelligence were necessary qualifications, women enfranchised
would largely reflect these elements in the Government.
At noon on March 6 the delegates were courteously received at the
White House by President Chester A. Arthur.
During the afternoon session the Pennsylvania report was presented by
Edward M. Davis, son-in-law of Lucretia Mott, and an exhaustive
account of Woman's Work in Philadelphia by Mrs. Lucretia L.
Blankenburg. A letter from Mrs. Anna C. Wait (Kas.) was read by Mrs.
Bertha H. Ellsworth, who closed with a tribute to Mrs. Wait and a poem
dedicated to Kansas.
The guest of the convention, Mrs. Jessie M. Wellstood of Edinburgh,
presented a report made by Miss Eliza Wigham, secretary of the
Scotland Suffrage Association, prefaced with some earnest remarks in
which she said:
To those who are sitting at ease, folding their hands and sweetly
saying: "I have all the rights I want, why should I trouble about
these matters?" let me quote the burning words of the grand old
prophet Isaiah, which entered into my soul and stirred it to
action: "Rise up, ye women that are at ease; hear my voice, ye
careless daughters, give ear unto my speech; many days shall ye
be troubled, ye careless women, etc." It is just because we fold
our hands and sit at ease that so many of our less fortunate
fellow creatures are leading lives of misery, want, sin and
shame.
In the evening Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) delivered a beautiful
address on Forgotten Women, which she closed with these words: "It was
not a grander thing to lead the forlorn hope in 1776, not a grander
thing to strike the shackles from the black slaves in 1863, than it
would be in 1884 to carry a presidential campaign on the basis of
Political Equality to Women. The career, the fame, to match that of
Washington, to match that of Lincoln, awaits the man who will espouse
the cause of forgotten womanhood and introduce that womanhood to
political influence and political freedom."
Interesting addresses were made by Mrs. Mary E. Haggart (Ind.), Why Do
Not Women Vote? and by the Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, pastor of the
Second Universalist Church, Jersey City, on New Jersey as a
Leader--the first to grant suffrage to women. They voted from 1776
until the Legislature took away the right in 1807.
At the afternoon session of the last day Mrs. Lizzie D. Fyler, a
lawyer of Arkansas, gave an extended resume of the legal and
educational position of women in that State, which was shown to be in
advance of many of the eastern and western States. George W. Clark,
one of the old Abolition singers contemporaneous with the Hutchinsons,
expressed a strong belief in woman suffrage and offered a tribute of
song to Wendell Phillips. Brief addresses were made by Mrs. J. Ellen
Foster (Ia.) and Mrs. Morrison (Mass.). A letter of greeting was read
from the corresponding secretary, Rachel G. Foster, Julia and Mrs.
Julia Foster (Penn.), written in Florence, Italy. Mrs. Caroline Gilkey
Rogers described School Suffrage in Lansingburgh, N. Y.
An eloquent address was made by Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.),
in which she said:
There are a great many excellent people in the world who are
strongly prejudiced against what they designate "isms," but who
are always glad of any opportunity of serving God, as they
express it. I ask what can finite beings do to serve Omnipotence
unless it be to exert all their powers for the good of humanity,
for the uplifting of man, which, if aught of ours could do, must
rejoice our Creator. When we see more than one-half of the adult
human family--reasonably industrious and intelligent, if we make
for them no larger claim, and certainly the _raison d'etre_ of
the other half--called to account by the laws of the land and
held in strict obedience to them without the slightest voice in
their making, with neither form nor shadow of representation
before State or country, do we not see that there rests upon the
entire race a stigma that materialist and idealist, agnostic and
churchman, should each and all hasten to remove?
"Behold, the fields are white unto harvest, but the laborers are
few!" How can it be longer tolerated that the wives and mothers,
the sisters and daughters, of a land claiming the highest degree
of civilization and boasting of freedom as its watchword, should
still rank before the law with criminals, idiots and slaves? I
feel as confident as I do of my existence, that the apathy which
we are now fighting against, especially among our own sex,
springs mainly from want of thought; the women of culture
throughout the country placidly accept the comfortable conditions
in which they find themselves. They receive without question the
formulated theories of woman's sphere as they accept the
formulated theories of the orthodox religions into which they may
chance to have been born; occasionally an original thinker steps
out of the ranks and finds herself after a while with a few
followers. They remain but few, however, for it is too much
trouble to think.
At the evening session the Rev. Florence Kollock (Ills.) spoke on The
Ethics of Woman Suffrage, saying in part:
By what moral right stands a law upon the statute books that
infringes upon the rights and duties of womanhood, that prohibits
a mother from the full discharge of the duties of her sacred
office, as all are prohibited through the law that forbids them
the opportunity of throwing their whole moral strength, influence
and convictions against the existence and growth of social and
political iniquities and in defense of truth and purity? The
great evils of our day are of such a nature that all, regardless
of moral principles or sex, suffer from their effects, proving
clearly that all have a moral obligation in these matters, and
the fact that one human being suffers from an evil carries with
it the highest authority to remove that evil.
The silent influence of woman has failed to accomplish the
desired good of humanity, has failed to bring about the needed
moral reforms, and all observing persons are ready to concede
that posing is a weak way of combating giant evils--that
attitudism can not take the place of activity. To suppress the
full utterance of the moral convictions of those who so largely
mold the character of the race is a crime against humanity,
against progress, against God.
Mrs. Shattuck, in discussing the question, said:
It is absolutely necessary for the improvement of the race that
the manly and womanly elements shall be side by side in all walks
of life, and the fact that our social status, our literature and
our educational systems have been greatly improved by woman's
co-operation with man, points to the eternal truth that man and
woman must work hand in hand in the State also, in order that it
shall be uplifted and saved. Woman herself will not be harmed by
the ballot, for the acquisition of greater responsibilities
improves and not degrades the recipient thereof. If the ballot
has made man worse it will make woman worse, and not otherwise.
Whoever studies the history of the race from age to age and
nation to nation finds the world has advanced and not retrograded
by giving responsibility to the individual. The opposition to
woman suffrage strikes a blow at the foundation-stone of this
republic, which is self-representation by means of the ballot. At
the bottom of this opposition is a subtle distrust of American
institutions, an idea of "restricted suffrage" which is creeping
into our republic through so-called aristocratic channels.
A distinguishing feature of this convention was the large number of
letters and reports sent from abroad, undoubtedly due to the fact that
Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony had spent the preceding year in Europe,
making the acquaintance and arousing the interest of foreign men and
women in the status of the suffrage question in the United States.
Among these letters was one from Miss Frances Power Cobbe in which she
said: "The final and complete emancipation of our sex ere long, I
think, is absolutely certain. All is going well here and I hope with
you in America; and with all my heart, dear Miss Anthony, I wish you
and the woman's convention triumphant success."
Miss Jane Cobden, daughter of Richard Cobden, said in the course of
her letter: "I feel all the more certain of the righteousness of the
work in which I am so much engaged, because I know from words spoken
and written by my father as far back as 1845, that had he been living
at the present day I should have had his sympathy. He was nothing if
not consistent, and so he said in a speech delivered in London that
year on Free Trade: 'There are many ladies present, I am happy to say.
Now it is a very anomalous and singular fact that they can not vote
themselves and yet they have the power of conferring votes upon other
people. I wish they had the franchise, for they would often make a
much better use of it than their husbands.'"
Miss Caroline Ashurst Biggs, for many years editor of the
_Englishwoman's Review_, sent a full report of the situation in
England. There was a letter of greeting also from Miss Lydia Becker,
editor of the _Women's Suffrage Journal_ and member of the Manchester
School Board. John P. Thomasson and Peter A. Taylor, members of
Parliament, favored woman suffrage in the strongest terms, the latter
saying: "Justice never can be done to the rising generations till the
influence of the mother is freed from the ignominy of exclusion from
the great political and social work of the day." Mrs. Thomasson,
daughter of Margaret Bright Lucas, and Mrs. Taylor, known as the
organizer of the women's suffrage movement in England, also sent
cordial good wishes.[14]
The wife of Jacob Bright, who was largely responsible for the Married
Women's Property Bill, presented a review of present suffrage laws;
his sister, Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren, wife of Duncan McLaren, M.
P., and the great Abolitionist, Mrs. Elizabeth Pease Nichol of
Edinburgh, sent long and valuable letters. Mrs. McLaren wrote:
I was in Exeter Hall, London, on the day our Parliament
assembled; a prayer-meeting was held there the whole of that day.
Earnest were the intercessions that the hearts of our rulers
might be influenced to repeal every vestige of the Contagious
Diseases Acts; and the women especially prayed that our men might
be led to send representatives to Parliament of much higher
morality than such Acts testified to, and that the eyes of the
women of their country might be opened to see the iniquity of
such legislation. I venture to express that the burden of my
prayer had been, whilst sitting in that meeting, that the eyes of
the women there assembled, and of the women throughout our
country, might be opened to see that we could not expect men who
did not consider morality to be a necessary part of their own
character, to regard it as needful for the men who were to
represent them in Parliament; that we needed a new moral power
to be brought into exercise at our elections, and as Parliament
was meeting that day and one of its first acts would be to bring
in a new reform bill, that we might unite in prayer that the
petitions so long put forth by many of the women of this land,
that their claim to the suffrage should be included in this new
Act for the extended representation of the people, might be
righteously answered; and the power given to women not only to
pray for what was just and right, but to have by the
Parliamentary vote a direct power to promote that higher
legislation which they all so much desired. I know nothing which
calls for more faith and patience than to hear women pleading for
justice, and refusing to help get it in the only legitimate
way....
Whilst we have our anomalies here, you have a glaring
inconsistency in your country. It is not a property qualification
which gives a vote in America. Is not every human being, who is
of age, according to your Constitution, entitled to equal justice
and freedom? Are you women not human beings? The lowest and most
ignorant man who leaves any shore and lands on yours, ere he has
earned a home or made family ties, becomes a citizen of your
great country; whilst your own women, who during a life-time may
have done much service and given much to the State, are denied
the right accorded to that man, however low his condition may be.
You are fighting to overcome this great monopoly of citizenship.
We watch your proceedings with deep interest. We rejoice in your
successes and sympathize with you in your endeavors to gain fresh
victories.
Congratulatory letters were received from Ewing Whittle, M. D., of the
Royal Academy, Liverpool, and Miss Isabella M. S. Tod, the well-known
reformer of Belfast. M. Leon Richer, the eminent writer of Paris, and
Mlle. Hubertine Auclert, editor of _La Citoyenne_, sent cordial words
of co-operation. There were also greetings from Mrs. Ernestine L.
Rose, a Polish exile, one of the first women lecturers in America;
from the wife and daughter of A. A. Sargent, U. S. Minister to Berlin;
from Theodore Stanton; Miss Florence Kelley, daughter of the Hon.
William D. Kelley; the wife of Moncure D. Conway; Rosamond, daughter
of Robert Dale Owen; Mrs. Charlotte B. Wilbour and Dr. Frances E.
Dickinson, all Americans residing abroad.
Among the noted men and women of the United States who sent letters
endorsing equal suffrage, were George William Curtis, William Lloyd
Garrison, U. S. Senators Henry B. Anthony and Henry W. Blair, the Hon.
George W. Julian, the Hon. William I. Bowditch, Robert Purvis, the
Rev. Anna Oliver, Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, the "mother" of Ben Hur,
and Mrs. Abby Hutchinson Patton.[15]
To this assembly Bishop Matthew Simpson, of the Methodist Episcopal
Church, sent almost his last public utterance:
For more than thirty years I have been in favor of woman
suffrage. I was led to this position not by the consideration of
the question of natural rights or of alleged injustice or of
inequality before the law, but by what I believed would be the
influence of woman on the great moral questions of the day. Were
the ballot in the hands of women, I am satisfied that the evils
of intemperance would be greatly lessened, and I fear that
without that ballot we shall not succeed against the saloons and
kindred evils in large cities. You will doubtless have many
obstacles placed in your way; there will be many conflicts to
sustain; but I have no doubt that the coming years will see the
triumph of your cause; and that our higher civilization and
morality will rejoice in the work which enlightened woman will
accomplish.
The resolutions presented by Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert (Ills.),
chairman of the committee, were adopted.
WHEREAS, The fundamental idea of a republic is the right of
self-government, the right of every citizen to choose her own
representatives to enact the laws by which she is governed; and
WHEREAS, This right can be secured only by the exercise of the
suffrage; therefore
_Resolved_, That the ballot in the hand of every qualified
citizen constitutes the true political status of the people, and
to deprive one-half of the people of the use of the ballot is to
deny the first principle of a republican government.
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of Congress to submit a
Sixteenth Amendment to the National Constitution, securing to
women the right of suffrage; first, because the disfranchisement
of one-half of the people deprives that half of the means of
self-protection and support, limits their resources for
self-development and weakens their influence on popular thought;
second, because giving all men the absolute authority to decide
the social, civil and political status of women, creates a spirit
of caste, unrepublican in tendency; third, because in depriving
the State of the united wisdom of man and woman, that important
"consensus of the competent," our form of government becomes in
fact an oligarchy of males instead of a republic of the people.
_Resolved_, That since the women citizens of the United States
have thus far failed to receive proper recognition from any of
the existing political parties, we recommend the appointment by
this convention of a committee on future political action.
_Resolved_, That as there is a general awakening to the rights of
women in all European countries, the time has arrived to take the
initiative steps for a grand International Woman Suffrage
Convention, to be held in either England or America, and that for
this purpose a committee of three be appointed at this convention
to correspond with leading persons in different countries
interested in the elevation of women.
Miss Couzins submitted the following, which was unanimously accepted:
_Resolved_, That in the death of Wendell Phillips the nation has
lost one of its greatest moral heroes, its most eloquent orator
and honest advocate of justice and equality for all classes; and
woman in her struggle for enfranchisement has lost in him a
steadfast friend and wise counselor. His consistency in the
application of republican principles of government brought him to
the woman suffrage platform at the inauguration of the movement,
where he remained faithful to the end. The National Woman
Suffrage Association in convention assembled, would express their
gratitude for his brave words for woman before the Legislatures
of so many States and on so many platforms, both in England and
America, and would extend their sincere sympathy to her who was
his constant inspiration to the utterance of the highest truth,
his noble wife, Ann Green Phillips.
_Resolved_, That the services of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland,
who directed the armies of the republic up the Tennessee river
and then southward to the center of the Confederate power to its
base in northern Alabama, cutting the Memphis and Charleston
railroad and thus breaking the backbone of the rebellion, entitle
her justly to the name of the military genius of the war; that
her long struggle for recognition at the hands of our Government
commends her to the sympathy of all who believe in truth and
justice; and the continued refusal of the Government to
acknowledge this woman's service, which saved to us the Union,
defeated national bankruptcy and prevented the intervention of
foreign powers, merits the condemnation of all lovers of right,
and we hereby not only send to her our loving recognition and
sympathy, but pledge ourselves to arouse this nation to the fact
of her services.[16]
The plan of work submitted by Mrs. Gougar, chairman of the committee,
was adopted.[17] This was supplemented by suggestions of the national
board as to methods of organization.[18]
The following officers were elected: president, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, N. Y.; vice-presidents-at-large, Susan B. Anthony, Matilda
Joslyn Gage, N. Y., the Rev. Olympia Brown, Wis., Phoebe W. Couzins,
Mo., Abigail Scott Duniway, Ore.; recording secretaries, Ellen H.
Sheldon, D. C., Julia T. Foster, Penn.; Pearl Adams, Ills.;
corresponding secretary, Rachel G. Foster (Avery), Penn.; foreign
corresponding secretaries, Caroline Ashurst Biggs, Lydia E. Becker,
England; Marguerite Berry Stanton, Hubertine Auclert, France;
treasurer, Jane H. Spofford, D. C.; auditors, Ruth C. Dennison, Julia
A. Wilbur, D. C.; chairman of executive committee, May Wright Sewall,
Ind., and vice-presidents in every State.
The financial report showed the receipts for 1884 to be in round
numbers $2,000, and a balance of $300 still remaining in the treasury.
In her address closing the convention Miss Anthony said:
The reason men are so slow in conceding political equality to
women is because they can not believe that women suffer the
humiliation of disfranchisement as they would. A dear and noble
friend, one who aided our work most efficiently in the early
days, said to me, "Why do you say the 'emancipation of women?'" I
replied, "Because women are political slaves!" Is it not strange
that men think that what to them would be degradation, slavery,
is to women elevation, liberty? Men put the right of suffrage for
themselves above all price, and count the denial of it the most
severe punishment. If a man serving a term in State's prison has
one friend outside who cares for him, that friend will get up a
petition begging the Governor to commute his sentence, if for not
more than forty-eight hours prior to its expiration, so that,
when he comes out of prison he may not be compelled to suffer the
disgrace of disfranchisement and may not be doomed to walk among
his fellows with the mark of Cain upon his forehead. The only
penalty inflicted upon the men, who a few years ago laid the
knife at the throat of the Nation, was that of disfranchisement,
which all men, loyal and disloyal, felt was too grievous to be
borne, and our Government made haste to permit every one, even
the leader of them all, to escape from this humiliation, this
degradation, and again to be honored with the crowning right of
United States citizenship. How can men thus delude themselves
with the idea that what to them is ignominy unbearable is to
women honor and glory unspeakable.[19]
An able address from Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage (N. Y.) arrived too late
for the convention. It was a denial of the superiority of man from a
scientific standpoint, and was so original in thought that it deserves
to be reproduced almost in full:
....We must bear in mind the old theologic belief that the earth
was flat, the center of the universe, around which all else
revolved--that all created things animate and inanimate, were
made for man alone--that woman was not part of the original plan
of creation but was an after-thought for man's special use and
benefit. So that a science which proves the falsity of any of
these theological conceptions aids in the overthrow of all.
The first great battle fought by science for woman was a
Geographical one lasting for twelve centuries. But finally,
Columbus, sustained and sent on his way by Isabella in 1492,
followed by Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe twenty years
later, settled the question of the earth's rotundity and was the
first step toward woman's enfranchisement.
Another great battle was in progress at the same time and the
second victory was an Astronomical one. Copernicus was born, the
telescope discovered, the earth sank to its subordinate place in
the solar system and another battle for woman was won.
Chemistry, long opposed under the name of Alchemy, at last gained
a victory, and by its union of diverse atoms began to teach men
that nature is a system of nuptials, and that the feminine is
everywhere present as an absolute necessity of life.
Geology continued this lesson. It not only taught the immense age
of creation, but the motherhood of even the rocks.
Botany was destined for a fierce battle, as when Linnaeus declared
the sexual nature of plants, he was shunned as having degraded
the works of God by a recognition of the feminine in plant life.
Philology owes its rank to Catherine II of Russia, who, in
assembling her great congress of deputies from the numerous
provinces of her empire, gave the first impetus to this science.
Max Mueller declares the evidence of language to be irrefragable,
and it is the only history we possess prior to historic periods.
Through Philology we ascend to the dawn of nations and learn of
the domestic, religious and governmental habits of people who
left neither monuments nor writing to speak for them. From it we
learn the original meaning of our terms, father and mother.
Father, says Mueller, who is a recognized philological authority,
is derived from the root "Pa," which means to protect, to
support, to nourish. Among the earliest Aryans, the word _mater_
(mother), from the root "Ma," signified maker; creation being
thus distinctively associated with the feminine. Taylor, in his
Primitive Culture says the husband acknowledged the offspring of
his wife as his own as thus only had he a right to claim the
title of father.
While Philology has opened a new fount of historic knowledge,
Biology, the seventh and most important witness, the latest
science in opposition to divine authority, is the first to deny
the theory of man's original perfection. Science gained many
triumphs, conquered many superstitions, before the world caught a
glimpse of the result toward which each step was tending--the
enfranchisement of woman.
Through Biology we learn that the first manifestation of life is
feminine. The albuminous protoplasm lying in silent darkness on
the bottom of the sea, possessing within itself all the phenomena
exhibited by the highest forms of life, as sensation, motion,
nutrition and reproduction, produces its like, and in all forms
of life the capacity for reproduction undeniably stamps the
feminine. Not only does science establish the fact that
primordial life is feminine, but it also proves that a greater
expenditure of vital force is requisite for the production of the
feminine than for the masculine.
The experiments of Meehan, Gentry, Treat, Herrick, Wallace,
Combe, Wood and many others, show sex to depend upon environment
and nutrition. A meager, contracted environment, together with
innutritious or scanty food, results in a weakened vitality and
the birth of males; a broad, generous environment together with
abundant nutrition, in the birth of females. The most perfect
plant produces feminine flowers; the best nurtured insect or
animal demonstrates the same law. From every summary of vital
statistics we gather further proof that more abundant vitality,
fewer infantile deaths and greater comparative longevity belong
to woman. It is a recognized fact that quick reaction to a
stimulus is proof of superior vitality. In England, where very
complete vital statistics have been recorded for many years, it
is shown that while the mean duration of man's life within the
last thirty years has increased five per cent. that of woman has
increased more than eight per cent. Our own last census (tenth)
shows New Hampshire to be the State most favorable for longevity.
While one in seventy-four of its inhabitants is eighty years old,
among native white men the proportion is but one to eighty, while
among native white women, the very great preponderance of one to
fifty-eight is shown.
That the vitality of the world is at a depressed standard is
proven by the fact that more boys are born than girls, the per
cent. varying in different countries. Male infants are more often
deformed, suffer from abnormal characteristics, and more speedily
succumb to infantile diseases than female infants, so that within
a few years, notwithstanding the large proportion of male births,
the balance of life is upon the feminine side. Many children are
born to a rising people, but this biological truth is curiously
supplemented by the fact that the proportion of girls born among
such people, is always in excess of boys; while in races dying
out, the very large proportion of boys' births over those of
girls is equally noticeable.
From these hastily presented scientific facts it is manifest that
woman possesses in a higher degree than man that adaptation to
the conditions surrounding her which is everywhere accepted as
evidence of superior vitality and higher physical rank in life;
and when biology becomes more fully understood it will also be
universally acknowledged that the primal creative power, like the
first manifestation of life, is feminine.
FOOTNOTES:
[10] The Call ended as follows: "The satisfactory results of
Unrestricted Suffrage for Women in Wyoming Territory, of School
Suffrage in twelve States, of Municipal and School Suffrage in England
and Scotland, of Municipal and Parliamentary Suffrage in the Isle of
Man, with the recent triumph in Washington Territory; also the
constant agitation of the suffrage question in this country and in
England, and the demands that women are everywhere making for larger
liberties, are most encouraging signs of the times. This is the
supreme hour for all who are interested in the enfranchisement of
women to dedicate their time and money to the success of this
movement, and by their generous contributions to strengthen those upon
whom rests the responsibility of carrying forward this beneficent
reform.
"ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, President.
"SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Vice-Pres't at Large.
"MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, Ch. Ex. Committee.
"JANE H. SPOFFORD, Treasurer."
[11] The report of this convention, edited by Miss Anthony and Mrs.
Stanton, is the most complete of any ever issued by the association
and has been placed in most of the public libraries of the United
States.
[12] A list of delegates and those making State reports from year to
year will be found in the last chapter of the Appendix.
[13] The history of the work in the various States, as detailed more
or less fully in these reports from year to year, will be found
recorded in the State chapters.
[14] Letters were received from S. Alfred Steinthal, treasurer of the
Manchester society; F. Henrietta Mueller, member of the London School
Board; Frances Lord, poor-law guardian in London; Eliza Orme,
England's first woman lawyer; Dr. Agnes McLaren, Hannah Ford, Mary A.
Estlin, Anna M. and Mary Priestman, Margaret Priestman Tanner, Rebecca
Moore, Margaret E. Parker, all distinguished English women.
[15] California--Clarina I. H. Nichols, Mrs. S. J. Manning, Sarah Knox
Goodrich; Colorado--Dr. Alida C. Avery, Henry C. Dillon;
Connecticut--Frances Ellen Burr; District of Columbia--Cornelia A.
Sheldon; Illinois--Dr. Alice B. Stockham, Ada H. Kepley, Pearl Adams,
Lucinda B. Chandler, Annette Porter, M. D.; Iowa--Caroline A. Ingham,
Jonathan and Mary V. S. Cowgill, M. A. Root; Kansas--Ex-Governor and
Mrs. J. P. St. John, Mary A. Humphrey, Lorenzo Westover, Susan E.
Wattles, Mrs. Van Coleman; Kentucky--Ellen B. Dietrick;
Massachusetts--Lilian Whiting; Michigan--Catharine A. F. Stebbins,
Mrs. R. M. Young, Cordelia F. Briggs; Maine--Ellen French Foster,
Lavina M. Snow; Minnesota--Eliza B. Gamble, Laura Howe Carpenter, Mrs.
T. B. Walker; Missouri--Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Annie R. Irvine;
Nebraska--Judge and Mrs. A.D. Yocum, Madame Charlton Edholm, Harriet
S. Brooks; New Jersey--Theresa Walling Seabrook, Augusta Cooper; New
Hampshire--Armenia S. White, Eliza Morrill; New York--Madame Clara
Neymann, Mary F. Seymour, Jean Brooks Greenleaf, Mary F. Gilbert,
Mathilde F. Wendt, Helen M. Loder, Augusta Lilienthal, Amy Post, Sarah
H. Hallock, Elizabeth Oakes Smith; Ohio--Frances Dana Gage;
Pennsylvania--Adeline Thomson, Deborah A. Pennock, Matilda Hindman,
Hattie M. Du Bois, Mrs. Lovisa C. McCullough; Rhode Island--Catherine
C. Knowles; Texas--Jennie Bland Beauchamp; Virginia--N. O. Town;
Washington Ty.--Barbara J. Thompson; Wisconsin--Almeda B. Gray,
Evaleen L. Mason, Mathilde Anneke; Canada--Dr. Emily H. Stowe.
[16] For a full account of Miss Carroll's services and such
congressional action as was taken, see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol.
II, pp. 3 and 863. It is the story of a national disgrace.
[17] _Resolved_, That we hold a convention in every unorganized State
and Territory during the present year, as far as possible, at the
capital.
_Resolved_, That we consider the enfranchisement of the women citizens
of the United States the paramount issue of the hour, therefore
_Resolved_, That we will, by all honorable methods, oppose the
election of any presidential candidate who is a known opponent to
woman suffrage, and we recommend similar action on the part of our
State associations in regard to State and congressional candidates and
further
_Resolved_, That the officers of this convention shall communicate
with presidential nominees of the several political parties and
ascertain their position upon this question.
_Resolved_, That all Legislatures shall be requested to memorialize
Congress upon the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, this to be the duty of the vice presidents of the States
and Territories.
WHEREAS, The National Government, through Congress and the Supreme
Court, has persistently refused to protect the women of the several
States and Territories in "the right of the citizen to vote,"
therefore
_Resolved_, That this association most earnestly protests against
national interference to abolish the right where it has been secured
by the Legislature--as, for example, the Edmunds Tucker Bill, which
proposes to disfranchise all the women of Utah, thus inflicting the
most degrading penalty upon the innocent equally with the guilty, by
robbing them of their most sacred right of citizenship.
[18] The method of organization must be governed by circumstances. In
some localities it is best to call a public meeting, in others to
invite the friends of the movement to a private conference. Both women
and men should be members and co-operate, and the society should be
organized on as broad and liberal a basis as possible.
Hold conventions, picnics, teas, and occasionally have a lecture from
some one who will draw a large crowd. Utilize your own talent,
encourage your young women and men to speak, read essays and debate on
the question. Hold public celebrations of the birthdays of eminent
women, and in that way interest many who would not attend a pronounced
suffrage meeting.
Persons who can not be induced to attend a public meeting will often
accept an invitation to a parlor conference or entertainment where
woman suffrage can be made the subject of conversation. Cultured women
and men, who "have given the matter no thought," can be interested
through a paper presenting the life and work of such women as Margaret
Fuller, Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, etc., or showing the rise and
progress of the woman suffrage movement, giving short biographies of
the leaders.
Advocate suffrage through your local papers. Send them short, pithy
communications, and, when possible, secure a column in each, to be
edited by the society.
Invite pastors of churches to select from the numerous appropriate
texts in the Bible and preach occasionally upon this subject.
A strong effort should be made to circulate literature. Every society
should own a copy of the Woman Question in Europe, by Theodore
Stanton, of the History of Woman Suffrage, by Mrs. Stanton, Miss
Anthony and Mrs. Gage, of Mrs. Robinson's Massachusetts in the Woman
Suffrage Movement, of T. W. Higginson's Common Sense for Women, of
John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women, and of Frances Power Cobbe's
Duties of Women. These will furnish ammunition for arguments and
debates.
Suffrage leaflets should be circulated in parlors and places of
business, and "pockets" should be filled and hung in railroad
stations, post-offices and hotels, that "he who runs may read." Over
these should be printed "Woman Suffrage--Take and Read."
All the above methods aim rather at the education of the popular mind
than the judiciary and legislative branches of the Government. The
next step is to educate the representatives in Congress and on the
bench of the Supreme Court in the principles of constitutional law and
republican government, that they may understand the justice of the
demands for a Sixteenth Amendment which shall forbid the several
States to deny or abridge the rights of women citizens of the United
States.
[19] Miss Anthony never wrote her addresses and no stenographic
reports were made. Brief and inadequate newspaper accounts are all
that remain.
CHAPTER III.
CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS AND REPORTS OF 1884.
Both Senate and House of the preceding Congress had appointed Select
Committees on Woman Suffrage to whom all petitions, etc., were
referred.[20] The Senate of the Forty-eighth Congress renewed this
committee, but the House declined to do so. Early in the session, Dec.
19, 1883, the Committee on Rules refused to report such a committee
but authorized Speaker Warren Keifer of Ohio to present the question
to the House. A spirited debate followed which displayed the sentiment
of members against the question of woman suffrage itself. John H.
Reagan of Texas was the principal opponent, saying in the course of
his remarks:
I hope that it will not be considered ungracious in me that I
oppose the wish of any lady. But when she so far misunderstands
her duty as to want to go to working on the roads and making
rails and serving in the militia and going into the army, I want
to protect her against it. I do not think that sort of employment
suits her sex or her physical strength. I think also, when we
attempt to overturn the social status of the world as it has
existed for six thousand years, we ought to begin somewhere where
we have a constitutional basis to stand upon....
But I suppose whoever clamors for action here finds a warrant for
it in the clamor outside, and it is not necessary to look to the
Constitution for it; it is not necessary to regard the interests
of civilization and the experience of ages in determining our
social as well as our political policy; but we will arrange it so
that there shall be no one to nurse the babies, no one to
superintend the household, but all shall go into the political
scramble, and we shall go back as rapidly as we can march into
barbarism. That is the effect of such doings as this,
disregarding the social interests of society for a clamor that
never ought to have been made.
Mr. Reagan then rambled into a long discussion of the rights allowed
under the Constitution, although no action had been proposed except
the mere appointment of a Select Committee, to whom all questions
relating to woman suffrage might be referred, such as already existed
in the Senate.
James B. Belford of Colorado in an able reply said:
I have no doubt that this House will be gratified with the
profound respect which the gentleman from Texas has expressed for
the Constitution of the country. The last distinguished act with
which he was connected was its attempted overthrow; and a man who
was engaged in an enterprise of that kind can fight a class to
whom his mother belonged. I desire to know whether a woman is a
citizen of the United States or an outcast without any political
rights whatever....
What is the proposition presented by the gentleman from Ohio?
That we will constitute a committee to whom shall be referred all
petitions presented by women. Is not the right of petition a
constitutional right? Has not woman, in this country at least,
risen above the horizon of servitude, discredit and disgrace, and
has she not a right, representing as she does in many instances
great questions of property, to present her appeals to this
National Council and have them judiciously considered? I think it
is due to our wives, daughters, mothers and sisters to afford
them an avenue through which they can legitimately and judicially
reach the ear of this great nation.
Moved by Mr. Reagan's attacks, Mr. Keifer made a strong plea for the
rights of women, which deserves a place in history, saying in part:
We must remember that we stand here committed in a large sense to
the matter of woman suffrage. In the Territories of Wyoming and
Utah for fifteen years past women have had the right to vote on
all questions which men can vote upon; and the Congress of the
United States has stood by without disapproving the legislative
acts of those Territories. And we now have before us a law passed
at the last session of the Legislature of Washington, giving to
its women the right to vote. We have not passed upon the question
one way or the other, but we have the right to pass upon it.
This, I think, seems to dispose sufficiently of the question of
constitutional legislative power without trampling upon the toes
of any State-rights man.
The right of petition belongs to all persons within the limits of
our republic, and with the right of petition goes the right on
the part of the Congress through constitutional means to grant
relief. Do gentlemen claim it is unconstitutional to amend the
Constitution? I know that claim was made at one time on the floor
of this House and on the floor of the Senate. When it was
proposed to abolish slavery in the United States, distinguished
gentlemen argued that it was unconstitutional to amend the
Constitution so as to abolish slavery. But all that has passed
away and we now find ourselves, in the light of the present,
seeing clearly that we may amend the Constitution in any way we
please, pursuing always the proper constitutional methods of
doing so.
There are considerations due to the women of this country which
ought not to be lightly thrust aside. For thirty-five years they
have been petitioning and holding conventions and demanding that
certain relief should be granted them, to the extent of allowing
them to exercise the right of suffrage. In that thirty-five years
we have seen great things accomplished. We have seen some of the
subtleties of the Common Law, which were spread over this
country, swept away. There is hardly anybody anywhere who now
adheres to the doctrine that a married woman can not make a
contract, and that she has no rights or liabilities except those
which are centered in her husband. Even the old Common-Law maxim
that "husband and wife are one, and that one the husband," has
been largely modified under the influence of these patriotic,
earnest ladies who have taken hold of this question and
enlightened the world upon it. There are now in the vaults of
this Capitol _hundreds of thousands of petitions_ for relief,
sent in here by women and by those who believed that women ought
to have certain rights and privileges of citizenship granted to
them. For sixteen years there has been held in this city,
annually, a convention composed of representative women from all
parts of the country. These conventions, as well as various State
and local conventions, have been appealing for relief; and they
ought not to be met by the statement that we will not even give
them the poor privilege of a committee to whom their petitions
and memorials may be referred.
We have made some progress. In 1871 there was a very strong
minority report made in this House in favor of woman suffrage.
Notwithstanding the notion that we must stand by all our old
ideas, the Supreme Court of the United States, after deliberately
considering the question, admitted a woman to practice at the bar
of that Court.[21] A hundred years ago, in the darkness of which
some gentlemen desire still to live, I suppose they would not
have done this. Favorable reports on this subject were made by
the Committee on Privileges and Elections in the Senate of the
Forty-fifth Congress, and in the last Congress by a Select
Committee of the Senate and of the House. The Legislatures of
many of the States have expressed their judgment on the matter.
There has been a great deal of progress in that direction. The
Senate and the House of Representatives of the last Congress
provided Select Committees to whom all matters relating to woman
suffrage could be referred. Will this House take a step backward
on this question?
I want especially to notify the gentleman from Texas that we are
not standing still on this matter. Eleven States--New Hampshire,
Vermont, Massachusetts, New York, Michigan, Kentucky, Minnesota,
Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado and Oregon--have authorized women to
vote for school trustees and members of school boards. Kentucky
extends this right to widows who have children and pay taxes.
Women are nominated and voted for not only in the eleven States
and three Territories, but in nearly all the Northern and Western
States. Pennsylvania, Illinois, Iowa and other States have large
numbers of women county superintendents of public schools. And
let me say, for the benefit of the Democratic party, that in the
great, progressive western State of Kansas the Democracy rose so
high as to nominate and vote for a woman for State Superintendent
of Public Instruction at the last election. So there has been a
little growing away from those old ideas and notions, even among
the Democracy. We are permitting women to fill public offices.
Why should they not participate in the election of officers who
are to govern them? We require them to pay taxes and there are a
great many burdens imposed upon them. Kansas, Michigan, Colorado
and Nebraska have in recent years submitted the question of woman
suffrage to a vote of the people and more than one-third of the
electors of each voted in favor. Oregon has now a similar
proposition pending.
By the laws of all the States women are required to pay taxes;
but we are practically working on the theory that these women
shall be taxed without the right of representation. Taxation
without representation led to the separation of the colonies from
the mother country. They were not so much opposed to being taxed
as they were to being taxed without representation. The patriots
of that day conceived the idea that there was a principle
somewhere involved in the right of representation. So they
evolved and formulated that Revolutionary maxim, "Millions for
defense, but not one cent for tribute." The basis of that maxim
was that they would not give to the payment of taxes without the
right of representation. Revolution and war made representation
and taxation correlative. But the States tax all women on their
property. For illustration, 8,000 women of Boston and 34,000 in
Massachusetts pay $2,000,000 of taxes, one-eleventh of the entire
tax of that great and wealthy State. The same ratio will be found
to prevail in all the other States.
Progress has gone on elsewhere than in the United States. England
has been moving forward in this matter, and we should not stand
behind her in anything....
I am one of those who do not believe that to give to women common
rights and privileges will degrade them, but on the contrary I
believe it will ennoble them; and I believe further that to put
them on an equality in the matter of rights and privileges with
men will enhance their charms and not lessen their beauty.
The vote resulted--yeas, 85; nays, 124; not voting, 112. Of the
affirmative votes 72 were Republican, 13 Democratic; of the negative,
4 were Republican, 120 Democratic.
In January, 1884, after the return of the members from their holiday
recess, Miss Anthony addressed letters to the 112 absentees, asking
each how he would have voted had he been present. Fifty-two replies
were received, 26 from Republicans, all of whom would have voted yes;
26 from Democrats, 10 of whom would have voted yes, 10, no, and 6
could not tell which way they would have voted.
In the hope that this respectable minority could be increased to a
majority, the Hon. John D. White (Ky.) made a further attempt, Feb. 7,
1884, to secure the desired committee, saying in his speech upon this
question:
It seems to me to be an anomalous state of affairs that in a
great Nation like this one-half of the people should have no
committee to which they could address their appeals.
Women consider they have the same political rights as men. I
might read from such distinguished authority as Miss Susan B.
Anthony, whose name has been jeered in her native State, and who
has been prosecuted there for voting, but who stands before the
American people to-day the peer of any woman in the nation, and
the superior of half the men occupying a representative capacity.
It does seem to me hard that when a woman like this comes to
Congress, instructed by thousands and tens of thousands of her
sex, in order to be heard she should be compelled to hang around
the doors of the Judiciary Committee, or of some other committee,
pre-eminently occupied with other matters. But we are told there
is no room. Yet we have a room where lobbyists of every sort are
provided for. And are we to be told that no room in this wing of
the Capitol can be had where respectable women of the nation can
present arguments for the calm consideration of their friends in
this body? I ask simply for the opportunity to be afforded the
representatives of the political rights of women to be heard in
making respectful argument to the law-making power of the nation.
Byron M. Cutcheon (Mich.) also spoke in favor of the committee,
saying:
Ever since the organization of this House I have received
petitions from my constituents in regard to this matter of the
political rights of women, but there seems to be no committee to
which they could properly be referred. A few years since, when
this question of woman suffrage was submitted to the people in my
State, more than 40,000 electors were in favor of it. It seems to
me, without committing ourselves on the question of the political
rights of women, it is but respectful to a very large number of
people in all our States that there should be a committee to
receive and consider and report upon these petitions which come
to us from time to time.
The House refused to allow a vote.
The Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage granted a hearing March 7,
1884, at 10:30 a. m., in the Senate reception room, to the speakers
and delegates in attendance at the convention, the entire committee
being present.[22] In introducing the speakers Miss Anthony said:
"This is the sixteenth year that we have come before Congress in
person, and the nineteenth by petitions, asking national protection
for the citizen's right to vote, when the citizen happens to be a
woman."
MRS. HARRIET R. SHATTUCK (Mass.): We canvassed four localities in
the city of Boston, two in smaller cities, two in country
districts and made one record also of school teachers in nine
schools of one town. The teachers were unanimously in favor of
woman suffrage, and in the nine localities we found that the
proportion of women in favor was very much larger than of those
opposed. The total of women canvassed was 814. Those in favor
were 405, those opposed, 44; indifferent, 166; refused to sign,
160; not seen, 39. These canvasses were made by respectable,
responsible women, and they swore before a Justice of the Peace
as to the truth of their statements. Thus we have in
Massachusetts this reliable canvass of women showing those in
favor are to those opposed as nine to one....
MRS. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL (Ind.): ... My friend has said that men
have always kept us just a little below them where they could
shower upon us favors and they have done that generously. So they
have, but, gentlemen, has your sex been more generous to women
than they have been generous toward you in their favors? Neither
can dispense with the service of the other, neither can dispense
with the reverence of the other or with the aid of the other in
social life. The men of this nation are rapidly finding that they
can not dispense with the service of woman in business life. I
know that they are also feeling the need of the moral support of
woman in their political life.
You, gentlemen, by lifting the women of the nation into political
equality would simply place us where we could lift you where you
never yet have stood--upon a moral equality with us. I do not
speak to you as individuals but as the representatives of your
sex, as I stand here the representative of mine, and never until
we are your equals politically will the moral standard for men be
what it now is for women, and it is none too high. Let woman's
standard be still more elevated, and let yours come up to match
it.
We do not appeal to you as Republicans or as Democrats. We were
reared with our brothers under the political belief and faith of
our fathers, and probably as much influenced by that rearing as
they were. We shall go to strengthen both the parties, neither
the one nor the other the more, probably. So this is not a
partisan measure; it is a just measure, which is our due, because
of what we are, men and women both, by virtue of our heritage and
our one Father, our one Mother eternal.
MRS. HELEN M. GOUGAR (Ind.): I maintain there is no political
question paramount to that of woman suffrage before the people of
America to-day. Political parties would have us believe that
tariff is the great question of the hour. It is an insult to the
intelligence of the present to say that when one-half of the
citizens of this republic are denied a direct voice in making the
laws under which they shall live, that the tariff, the civil
rights of the negro, or any other question which can be brought
up, is equal to the one of giving political freedom to women.
I ask you to let me have a voice in the laws under which I shall
live because the older empires of the earth are sending to the
United States a population drawn very largely from their asylums,
penitentiaries, jails and poor-houses. They are emptying those
men upon our shores, and within a few months they are intrusted
with the ballot, the law-making power in this republic, and they
and their representatives are seated in official and legislative
positions. I, as an American-born woman, enter my protest at
being compelled to live under laws made by this class of men
while I am denied the protection that can only come from the
ballot. While I would not have you take this right from those men
whom we invite to our shores, I do ask you, in the face of this
immense foreign immigration, to enfranchise the tax-paying,
intelligent, moral, native-born women of America.
....We have in our State the signatures of over 5,000 of the
school teachers asking for woman's ballot. I ask you if the
Government does not need the voice of those 5,000 educated
teachers as much as it needs the voice of the 240 criminals who
are, on an average, sent out of the penitentiary of Indiana each
year, to go to the ballot-box upon every question, and make laws
under which those teachers must live, and under which the mothers
of our State must keep their homes and rear their children?
On behalf of the mothers of this country I demand that their
hands shall be loosened before the ballot-box, and that they
shall have the privilege of throwing the mother heart into the
laws which shall follow their sons not only to the age of
majority, but even after their hair has turned gray and they have
seats in the United States Congress; yes, to the very confines of
eternity. This can be done in no indirect way; it can not be done
by silent influence; it can not be done by prayer. While I do not
underestimate the power of prayer, I say give me my ballot with
which to send statesmen instead of modern politicians into our
legislative halls. I would rather have that ballot on election
day than the prayers of all the disfranchised women in the
universe!
....Our forefathers did not object to taxation, but they did
object to taxation without representation, and we object to it.
We are willing to contribute our share to the support of this
Government, as we always have done; but we demand our little yes
and no in the form of the ballot so that we shall have a direct
influence in distributing the taxes.
I am amenable to the gallows and the penitentiary, and it is no
more than right that I shall have a voice in framing the laws
under which I shall be rewarded or punished. It is written in the
law of every State in this Union that a person tried in the
courts shall have a jury of his peers; yet so long as the word
"male" stands as it does in the Constitution of the United States
and the States, no woman can have a jury of her peers. I protest
in the name of justice against going into the court-room and
being compelled to run the gauntlet of the gutter and
saloon--yes, even of the police court and of the jail--as is done
in selecting a male jury to try the interests of woman, whether
relating to life, property or reputation....
The political party that presumes to fight the moral battles of
the future must have the women in its ranks. We are non-partisan.
We come as Democrats, Republicans, Prohibitionists and
Green-backers, and if there were half a dozen other political
parties some of us would affiliate with them. We ask this
beneficent action upon your part, because we believe the
intelligence and justice of the hour demand it. We ask you in the
name of equity and humanity alone, and not in that of any
party....
You ask us if we are impatient. Yes; we are impatient. Some of us
may die, and I want our grand old standard-bearer, Susan B.
Anthony, whose name will go down to history beside those of
George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and Wendell Phillips--I want
that woman to go to Heaven a free angel from this republic. The
power lies in your hands to make all women free.
MRS. CAROLINE GILKEY ROGERS (N. Y.): It is often said to us that
when _all_ the women ask for the ballot it will be granted. Did
_all_ the married women petition the Legislatures of their States
to secure to them the right to hold in their own name the
property which belonged to them? To secure to the poor forsaken
wife the right to her earnings? _All_ the women did not ask for
these rights, but _all_ accepted them with joy and gladness when
they were obtained, and so it will be with the franchise. Woman's
right to self-government does not depend upon the numbers that
demand it, but upon precisely the same principles on which man
claims it for himself. Where did man get the authority which he
now exercises to govern one-half of humanity; from what power the
right to place woman, his helpmeet in life, in an inferior
position? Came it from nature? Nature made woman his superior
when it made her his mother--his equal when it fitted her to hold
the sacred position of wife. Did women meet in council and
voluntarily give up all their right to be their own law-makers?
The power of the strong over the weak makes man the master. Thus,
and thus only, does he gain the authority.
It is all very well to say, "Convert the women." While we most
heartily wish they could all feel as we do, yet when it comes to
the decision of this great question they are mere ciphers, for if
it is settled by the States it will be left to the men, not to
the women, to decide. Or if suffrage comes to women through a
Sixteenth Amendment to the National Constitution, it will be
decided by Legislatures elected by men only. In neither case will
women have an opportunity of passing upon the question. So reason
tells us we must devote our best efforts to converting those to
whom we must look for the removal of the barriers which now
prevent our exercising the right of suffrage....
MRS. MARY SEYMOUR HOWELL (N. Y.): We ask for the ballot for the
good of the race. Huxley says: "Admitting, for the sake of
argument, that woman is the weaker, mentally and physically, for
that very reason she should have the ballot and every help which
the world can give her." When you debar from your councils and
legislative halls the purity, the spirituality and the love of
woman, then those councils are apt to become coarse and brutal.
God gave us to you to help you in this little journey to a better
land, and by our love and our intellect to help make our country
pure and noble, and if you would have statesmen you must have
stateswomen to bear them....
MRS. LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE (N. Y.): It is often said that we have
too many voters; that the aggregate of vice and ignorance among
us should not be increased by giving women the right of suffrage.
In the enormous immigration which pours upon our shores every
year, numbering nearly half a million, there come twice as many
men as women. What does this mean? It means a constant
preponderance of the masculine over the feminine; and it means
also, of course, a preponderance of the voting power of the
foreign men as compared to the native born men. To those who fear
that our American institutions are threatened by this gigantic
inroad of foreigners, I commend the reflection that the best
safeguard against any such preponderance of foreign influence is
to put the ballot in the hands of the American born woman, and of
all other women also, so that if the foreign born man
overbalances us in numbers we shall be always in a majority on
the side of the liberty which is secured by our institutions....
MRS. ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT: From the great State of Illinois
I come, representing 200,000 men and women of that State who have
recorded their written petitions for woman's ballot, 90,000 of
these being citizens under the law, male voters; those 90,000
have signed petitions for the right of woman to vote on the
temperance question; 90,000 women also signed those petitions;
50,000 men and women signed the petitions for the school vote,
and 60,000 more have signed petitions that the full right of
suffrage might be accorded to woman.
This growth of public sentiment has been occasioned by the needs
of the children and the working women of that great State. I come
here to ask you to make a niche in the statesmanship and
legislation of the nation for the domestic interests of the
people. You recognize that the masculine thought is more often
turned to material and political interests. I claim that the
mother-thought, the woman-element needed, is to supplement the
statesmanship of American men on political and industrial affairs
with domestic legislation.
In her closing address Miss Anthony took up the question of obtaining
suffrage for women through the States instead of Congress and said:
My answer is that I do not wish to see the women of the
thirty-eight States of this Union compelled to leave their homes
to canvass each one of these, school district by school district.
It is asking too much of a moneyless class. The joint earnings of
the marriage co-partnership in all the States belong legally to
the husband. It is only that wife who goes outside the home to
work whom the law permits to own and control the money she earns.
Therefore, to ask of women, the vast majority of whom are without
an independent dollar of their own, to make a thorough canvass of
their several States, is asking an impossibility.
We have already made the experiment of canvassing four
States--Kansas in 1867, Michigan in 1874, Colorado in 1877,
Nebraska in 1882--and in each, with the best campaign possible
for us to make, we obtained a vote of only one-third. One man out
of every three voted for the enfranchisement of the women of his
household, while two out of every three voted against it....
We beg, therefore, that instead of insisting that a majority of
the individual voters must be converted before women shall have
the franchise, you will give us the more hopeful task of
appealing to the representative men in the Legislatures of the
several States. You need not fear that we shall get suffrage too
quickly if Congress submits the proposition, for even then we
shall have a long siege in going from Legislature to Legislature
to secure the vote of three-fourths of the States necessary to
ratify the amendment. It may require twenty years after Congress
has taken the initiative step, to obtain action by the requisite
number, but once submitted by Congress it always will stand until
ratified by the States.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton's paper on Self-Government the Best Means
of Self-Development was read to the committee. A few extracts will
serve to show its broad scope:
The basic idea of a republic is the right of self-government, the
right of every citizen to choose his own representatives and to
have a voice in the laws under which he lives. As this right can
be secured only by the exercise of the suffrage, the ballot in
the hand of every qualified citizen constitutes the true
political status of the people in a republic.
The right of suffrage is simply the right to govern one's self.
Every human being is born into the world with this right, and the
desire to exercise it comes naturally with the feeling of life's
responsibilities. Those only who are capable of appreciating this
dignity, can measure the extent to which women are defrauded, and
they only can measure the loss to the councils of the nation of
the wisdom of representative women. They who say that women do
not desire the right of suffrage, that they prefer masculine
domination to self-government, falsify every page of history,
every fact in human experience.
It has taken the whole power of the civil and canon law to hold
woman in the subordinate position which it is said she willingly
accepts. If woman naturally has no will, no self-assertion, no
opinions of her own, what means the terrible persecution of the
sex under all forms of religious fanaticism, culminating in
witchcraft in which scarce one wizard to a thousand witches was
sacrificed? So powerful and merciless has been the struggle to
dominate the feminine element in humanity, that we may well
wonder at the steady, determined resistance maintained by woman
through the centuries. To every step of progress which she has
made from slavery to the partial freedom she now enjoys, the
Church and the State alike have made the most cruel opposition,
and yet, under all circumstances she has shown her love of
individual freedom, her desire for self-government, while her
achievements in practical affairs and her courage in the great
emergencies of life have vindicated her capacity to exercise this
right....
The right of suffrage in a republic means self-government, and
self-government means education, development, self-reliance,
independence, courage in the hour of danger. That women may
attain these virtues we demand the exercise of this right. Not
that we suppose we should at once be transformed into a higher
order of beings with all the elements of sovereignty, wisdom,
goodness and power full-fledged, but because the exercise of the
suffrage is the primary school in which the citizen learns how to
use the ballot as a weapon of defense; it is the open sesame to
the land of freedom and equality. The ballot is the scepter of
power in the hand of every citizen. Woman can never have an equal
chance with man in the struggle of life until she too wields this
power. So long as women have no voice in the Government under
which they live they will be an ostracised class, and invidious
distinctions will be made against them in the world of work.
Thrown on their own resources they have all the hardships that
men have to encounter in earning their daily bread, with the
added disabilities which grow out of disfranchisement. Men of the
republic, why make life harder for your daughters by these
artificial distinctions? Surely, if governments were made to
protect the weak against the strong, they are in greater need
than your stalwart sons of every political right which can give
them protection, dignity and power....
The disfranchisement of one-half the people places a dangerous
power in the hands of the other half. All history shows that one
class never did legislate with justice for another, and all
philosophy shows they never can, as the relations of class grow
out of either natural or artificial advantages which one has over
the other and which it will maintain if possible. It is folly to
say that women are not a class, so long as there is any
difference in the code of laws for men and women, any
discrimination in the customs of society, giving advantages to
men over women; so long as in all our State constitutions women
are ranked with lunatics, idiots, paupers and criminals. When you
say that one-half the people shall be governed by the other half,
surely the class distinction is about as broad as it can be....
The disfranchisement of one-half the people deprives the State of
the united wisdom of man and woman--that "consensus of the
competent" so necessary in national affairs--making our
Government an oligarchy of males, instead of a republic of the
people, thus perpetuating with all its evils a dominant masculine
civilization. But in answer to this it is said that although
women do not vote, yet they have an indirect influence in
Government through their husbands and brothers. Yes, an
"irresponsible power," of all kinds of influence the most
dangerous....
The dogged, unreasonable persecutions of sex in all ages, the
evident determination to eliminate, as far as possible, the
feminine element in humanity, has been the most fruitful cause of
the moral chaos the race has suffered, under every form of
government and religion.... The loss to women themselves of the
highest development of which they are capable is sad, but when
this involves a lower type of manhood and danger to our free
institutions, it is still more sad. The primal work in every
country, for its own safety, should be the education and freedom
of woman.
The arguments before the Judiciary Committee of the House were given
the next morning, March 8, twelve of the fifteen members being
present.[23] Miss Anthony opened the hearing with an earnest address
in which she referred to the hundreds of thousands of petitions which
had been sent to Congress for woman suffrage--far more than for any
other measure--and continued:
Negro suffrage was again and again overwhelmingly voted down in
various States--New York, Connecticut, Ohio, etc.--and you know,
gentlemen, that if the negro had never had the right to vote
until the majority of the rank and file of white men,
particularly foreign-born men, had voted "Yes," he would have
gone without it till the crack of doom. It was because of the
prejudice of the unthinking majority that Congress submitted the
question of the negro's enfranchisement to the Legislatures of
the several States, to be adjudicated by the educated, broadened
representatives of the people. We now appeal to you to lift the
decision of woman suffrage from the vote of the populace to that
of the Legislatures, that you may thereby be as considerate, as
just, to the women of this nation as you were to the male
ex-slaves.
Every new privilege granted to women has been by the
Legislatures. The liberal laws for married women, the right of
the wife to own and control her inherited property and separate
earnings, the right of women to vote at school elections in a
dozen States, the right to vote on all questions in three
Territories, have all been gained through the Legislatures. Had
any one of these beneficent propositions been submitted to the
masses, do you believe a majority would have placed their
sanction upon them? I do not.
It takes all too many of us women, and too much of our hard
earnings, from our homes and from the works of charity and
education of our respective localities, even to come to
Washington, session after session, until Congress shall have
submitted the proposition, and then to go from Legislature to
Legislature, urging its adoption; but when you insist that we
shall beg at the feet of each and every individual voter of each
and every one of the thirty-eight States, native and foreign,
white and black, educated and ignorant, you doom us to
incalculable hardships and sacrifices and to most exasperating
insults and humiliations. I pray you, therefore, save us from the
fate of working and waiting for our freedom until we shall have
educated the masses of men to consent to give their wives and
sisters equality of rights with themselves. You surely will not
compel us to wait the enlightenment of all the freedmen of this
nation and all the newly-made voters from the monarchial
governments of the Old World!
Liberty for one's self is a natural instinct possessed alike by
all, but to be willing to accord liberty to another is the result
of education, of self-discipline, of the practice of the golden
rule--"Do unto others as you would that others should do unto
you." Therefore we ask that the question of equality of rights to
women shall be arbitrated upon by the picked men of the nation in
Congress, and the picked men of the several States in their
respective Legislatures.
THE REV. FLORENCE KILLOCK (Ills.): ... Called as I am into the
homes of the people through the requirements of my office, I know
whereof I speak when I say that I am as faithfully fulfilling its
sacred duties when I come before you urging this claim, as when,
on my bended knees, I plead at the throne of God for the
salvation of souls.
I know too well the suffering that might be alleviated, the
terrible wrongs that might be righted, the sins that might be
punished, could the moral power of the women of our land be
utilized--could it be brought to bear on those great questions
which affect so vitally the welfare of society. The gigantic evil
of intemperance is prostrating the finest powers of our country
and threatening the life of social purity; it is in truth the
fell destroyer of peace, virtue and domestic and national safety,
and upon the unoffending the blow falls with the greatest weight.
Why should not they who suffer the most deeply through this evil,
be authorized before the law of the land to protect themselves
and their loved ones from its fearful ravages? Is it other than
simple justice which I ask for them? I have listened to too many
sad stories from heart-broken wives and mothers not to know that
the demand which the women of the land make in this matter comes
not from love of power, is not prompted by false ambition,
springs not from unwomanly aspirations, but does come from a
direful need of self-protection and an earnest desire to protect
those dearer than life itself.
Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee, in the same spirit in which
I seek the aid of Heaven in my endeavor to promote the spiritual
welfare of mankind, I now and here seek your aid in promoting the
highest moral welfare of every man, woman and child. This you
will do in giving your vote and influence for the equality of
women before the law, and as you thus confer this new power upon
the women of our land, like the bread cast upon the waters, it
shall come to you in a higher, nobler type of womanhood, in
sweeter homes, in purer social life, in all that contributes to
the welfare of the individual and the state.
MRS. MARY B. CLAY (Ky.): We do not come here to plead as
individual women with individual men, but as a subject class with
a ruling class; nor do we come as suffering individuals--though
God knows some of us might do that with propriety--but as the
suffering millions whom we represent....
We are born of the same parents as men and raised in the same
family. We are possessed of the same loves and animosities as our
brothers, and we inherit equally with them the substance of our
fathers. So long as we are minors the Government treats us as
equals, but when we come of age, when we are capable of feeling
and knowing the difference, the boy becomes a free human being,
while the girl remains a slave, a subject, and no moral heroism,
no self-sacrificing patriotism, ever entitles her to her freedom.
Is this just? Is it not, indeed, barbarous?
If American men intend always to keep women slaves, political and
civil, they make a great mistake when they let the girl, with the
boy, learn the alphabet, for no educated class will long remain
in subjection. We are told that men protect us; that they are
generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your
protectors were women, and they took all your property and your
children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well
or better done than your own, would you think much of the
chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up
your pocket-handkerchief?
Each one of you is responsible for these laws continuing as they
are, and you can not avoid responsibility by saying that you did
not help to make them. Great injustice is done us in the fact
that we are not tried by a jury of our peers. Great injustice is
done us everywhere by our not having a vote. Human nature is
naturally selfish, and, as woman is deprived of the ballot, and
powerless either to punish or reward, man, loving his bread and
butter more than justice, will ever thrust her aside for the
benefit of those who can help him, those with ballots in their
hands.
....All that is good in the home, and largely the highest
principles taught in your youth, were given by your mothers. How
then it is possible for you to return this love and interest, as
soon as you are capable of acting, by riveting the chains which
hold them still slaves, politically and civilly?
You need woman's presence and counsel in legislation as much as
she needs yours in the home; you need the association and
influence of woman; her intuitive knowledge of men's character
and the effect of measures upon the household; you need her for
the economical details of public work; you need her sense of
justice and moral courage to execute the laws; you need her for
all that is just, merciful and good in government. But above all,
women themselves need the ballot for self-protection, and as we
are by common right and the laws of God free human beings, we
demand that you no longer hold us your subjects--your political
slaves.
MRS. MARY E. HAGGART (Ind.): When Abraham Lincoln penned the
immortal emancipation proclamation he did not stop to inquire
whether every man and every woman in Southern slavery did or did
not want to be free. Whether women do or do not wish to vote does
not affect the question of their right to do so. The right of man
to the ballot is a logical deduction from the principles
enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. And singular to
say, while this inheres in all people alike, the privilege of
exercising it is withheld from women by a class who have no right
to say whether they are willing or not that women should vote.
Their right to the ballot was long ago settled beyond a quibble,
by laws and principles of justice which are superior to the codes
of men, who have usurped the power to regulate the voting
privileges of citizens. If this right be inherent and existing in
the great body of society before governments are formed, it
follows that all citizens of a republic, be they male or female,
are alike entitled to its exercise.
....Is there a man among you willing to resign his own right to
the ballot and to place his own business interests and general
welfare at the mercy of the votes of others? Would you not resent
an attempt on the part of any man, or set of men, to fix your
mental status, assign your work in life and lay out with
mathematical precision your exact sphere in the world? And yet
men undertake to adjust the limitations of the Elizabeth Cady
Stantons, the Susan B. Anthonys, the Harriet Beecher Stowes, the
Frances E. Willards, the Harriet Hosmers of the world, and
continue to talk with patronizing condescension of female
retirement, female duties and female spheres.
The question is not whether women want or do not want to vote,
but how can republican inconsistencies be wiped out, justice
universally recognized and impartially administered, and the
civil and political errors of the past effectually repaired.
Whoever admits that men have a right to the franchise must
include in the admission women also, for there are no reasons
capable of demonstrating an abstract right in behalf of one sex
which are not equally applicable to the other....
The assertion that women do not want to vote is absolutely
without authority, so long as each individual woman does not
speak out for herself. In Ohio 225,000, and in Illinois 185,000,
have signified a desire to use the ballot for home protection,
and yet it is still asserted in those States that women do not
want it. Over 100,000 women have already notified this Congress
that they desire equality of political rights, and still it is
declared all around us that women do not want to vote. Gentlemen,
this is most emphatically an assertion which no individual can be
justified in making for another.
Since the elective franchise is the parent stem from which branch
out legal, industrial, social and educational enterprises
necessary to the welfare of the citizens, it will be readily seen
how women engaged in reforms, public charities, social
enterprises, are hampered and trammeled in their progress without
the ballot. Women have beheld their plans frustrated, their
Herculean labor undone, their lives wasted, for want of
legislative power through the citizen's emblem of sovereignty....
All ranks and occupations are beginning to realize that monstrous
evils must ever crowd upon both classes while one side of
humanity only is represented, and while one sex has the
irresponsible keeping of the rights and privileges of the other.
To-day, throughout the length and breadth of our land, woman
finds the greatest need of the ballot through an almost
overpowering desire to have her wishes and opinions crystallized
into law.
I have no hesitancy in saying that if the conditions which
surround the women of this nation to-day were the conditions of
the male citizens of the country, they would rise up and
pronounce them the exact definition of civil and political
slavery, instead of the true interpretation of natural justice
and civil equity.
Many persons claim that men are born with the right to vote, as
they are to the right of life, liberty and happiness; that
suffrage is the gift of the State, and that the State has a right
to regulate it in any way that it may deem best for the common
good. If men are born with the right to life, liberty and
happiness, they are also born with the right to give expression
as to how these are to be maintained; and in this nation, which
professes to rest upon the consent of the governed, this
expression is given through the ballot. Consequently the
expression of a freeman's will is as God-given as his right to be
free. Since the year of Magna Charta we have repudiated the idea
of representation by proxy.
We all know that there are thousands of women in this nation who
are owners of property, mothers of children, devoted to their
homes and families and to all the duties and responsibilities
which grow out of social life, and hence are most deeply
interested in the public welfare. They have just as much at
stake in this Government, which affords them no opportunity of
giving or withholding their consent, as men who are consulted.
John Quincy Adams said in that grand speech in defense of the
petitions of the women of Plymouth: "The women are not only
justified, but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do
depart from the domestic sphere and enter upon the concerns of
their country, of humanity and of God."