Miss Phoebe W. Couzins (Mo.) in closing her address said: "At the

gateway of this nation, the harbor of New York, there soon shall stand

a statue of the Goddess of Liberty, presented by the republic of

France--a magnificent figure of a woman, typifying all that is grand

and glorious and free in self-government. She will hold aloft an

electric torch of great power which is to beam an effulgent light far

out to sea, that ships sailing towards this goodly land may ride

safely into harbor. So should you thus uplift the women of this

nation, and teach these men, at the very threshold, when first their

feet shall touch the shore of this republic, that here woman is

exalted, ennobled and honored; that here she bears aloft the torch of

intelligence and purity which guides our Ship of State into the safe

harbor of wise laws, pure morals and secure institutions."

It had been the custom of these committees, when they reported at all,

to delay doing so until the following year. In 1884, however, those of

both Senate and House submitted reports soon after the hearings. The

favorable recommendation was presented March 28, 1884, signed by

Thomas W. Palmer, Henry W. Blair, Elbridge G. Lapham and Henry B.

Anthony. Senators Francis Marion Cockrell and Joseph E. Brown

dissented.[24] The name of Senator James G. Fair does not appear on

either document, but he had signed an adverse report in 1882.

An adverse majority report from the House Judiciary Committee was

presented by William C. Maybury (Mich.) and began thus:

The right of suffrage is not and never has, under our system of

government, been one of the essential rights of citizenship....

What class or portion of the whole people of any State should be

admitted to suffrage, and should, by virtue of such admission,

exert the active and potential control in the direction of its

affairs, was a question reserved exclusively for the

determination of the State.

[The report loses sight entirely of the point that this question was

not and never has been left to "the people" of a State, but that men

alone usurped the right to decide who should be admitted to the

suffrage, arbitrarily excluded women and have kept them excluded.]

Under the influence of a just fear that without suffrage as a

protective power to the newly-acquired rights and privileges

guaranteed to the former slave he might suffer detriment, and

with this dominant motive in view, originated the Fifteenth

Amendment. It will be noted that by this later amendment the

privilege of suffrage is not sought to be _conferred_ on any

class; but an inhibition is placed upon the States from

_excluding_ from the privilege of suffrage any class on account

of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

[The Fifteenth Amendment does not mention the "privilege" of suffrage.

It says expressly, "The _right_ of citizens of the United States to

vote shall not be denied or abridged." But whether it be a "right" or

a "privilege," where did the negro get that which the States are

forbidden to deny or abridge, if it does not inhere in citizenship?

The report is incorrect in saying that the State is prohibited from

excluding any "class;" it is only the "males" of any class who are

protected from exclusion. The same right or privilege belongs to

women, but they are not protected in the exercise of it. Women never

have asked Congress to grant them any _new_ right or privilege, but

only to prohibit the States from denying or abridging what is already

theirs, as it did in the case of negro men.]

Woman's true sphere is not restricted, but is boundless in

resources and consequences. In it she may employ every energy of

the mind and every affection of the heart, while within its

limitless compass, under Providence, she exercises a power and

influence beyond all other agencies for good. She trains and

guides the life that is, and forms it for the eternity and

immortality that are to be. From the rude contact of life, man is

her shield. He is her guardian from its conflicts. He is the

defender of her rights in his home, and the avenger of her wrongs

everywhere.

[That is, what man considers her true sphere is not restricted, but

she is not allowed to decide for herself what shall be its

dimensions. "Her power for good is beyond all other agencies," but it

is not wanted in affairs of State, where surely it is needed quite as

badly as in any place in the world. "Man is her shield, guardian,

defender and avenger." Witness the Common Law of England, made by men,

under which women lived for centuries and which is still in force in a

number of the States; witness the records of the courts with the

wife-beaters and slayers, the rapists, the seducers, the husbands who

have deserted their families, the schemers who have defrauded widows

and orphans--witness all these and then say if all men are the natural

protectors of women. But even if they were, witness the millions of

women who are not legally entitled to the protection and assistance of

any man. However, the report does not forget these women.]

The exceptional cases of unmarried females are too rare to change

the general policy, while expectancy and hope, constantly being

realized in marriage, are happily extinguishing the exceptions

and bringing all within the rule which governs wife and matron.

To permit the entrance of political contention into the home

would be either useless or pernicious--useless if man and wife

agree, and pernicious if they differ. In the former event the

volume of ballots alone would be increased without changing

results. In the latter, the peace and contentment of home would

be exchanged for the bedlam of political debate and become the

scene of base and demoralizing intrigue.

[What a breadth of statesmanship, what a grasp of the principles of a

republican form of government, to see in the voting of husband and

wife only an "increase of ballots"; what a reflection upon men to

assume that if there were an honest difference of opinion "the home

would become a scene of base and demoralizing intrigue"; what a

recognition of justice to decree that, since possibly there might be a

disagreement, the man should do the voting and the woman should be

forbidden a voice!]

In respect to married women, it may well be doubted whether the

influences which result from the laws of property between husband

and wife, would not make it improbable that the woman should

exercise her suffrage with freedom and independence. This, too,

in despite of the fact that the dependence of woman under the

Common Law has been almost entirely obliterated by statutory

enactments.

[Almost, but not quite, and it would still prevail everywhere had its

obliteration depended upon the committee making this report. Think of

saying in cold blood that, as the husband holds the purse-strings, the

wife would not dare vote with freedom and independence!]

Your committee are of the opinion that while a few intelligent

women, such as appeared before the committee in advocacy of the

pending measure, would defy all obstacles in the way of their

casting the ballot, yet the great mass of the intelligent,

refined and judicious, with the becoming modesty of their sex,

would shrink from the rude contact of the crowd and, with the

exceptions mentioned, leave the ignorant and vile the exclusive

right to speak for the gentler sex in public affairs.

[This opinion has been wholly disproved by the experience of States

where women do vote. The "intelligent and judicious" have learned that

there is more "rude contact" in going to the market, the theater, the

train and the ferry-boat, than in a quiet booth where no man is

permitted to come within a hundred feet. But women are not so "modest

and refined" as to shrink from "rude contact" even, if it would give

them the opportunity to control the conditions which surround and

influence their husbands, their children, their homes and their

community.]

Your committee are of the opinion that the general policy of

female suffrage should remain in abeyance, in so far as the

general Government is concerned, until the States and communities

directly chargeable under our system of government with the

exercise and regulation of this privilege, shall put the seal of

affirmation upon it; and there certainly can be no reason for an

amendment of the Constitution to settle a question within the

jurisdiction of the States, and which they should first settle

for themselves.

[Of course, according to this logic, after the States settle the

question and put the seal of affirmation on it, then the general

Government will take a hand!]

This House Report (No. 1330) was not drastic enough to suit the Hon.

Luke P. Poland (Vt.), so he made his own, in which he said:

No government founded upon the principle that sovereignty resides

in the people has ever allowed all the people to vote, or to

directly participate in making or administering the laws.

Suffrage has never been regarded as the natural right of all the

people or of any particular class or portion of the people.

Suffrage is representation, and it has been given in free

governments to such class of persons as in their judgment [whose

judgment?] would fairly and safely represent the rights and

interests of the whole. The right has generally, if not

universally, been conferred on men above twenty-one years of age,

and often this has been restricted by requiring the ownership of

property or the payment of taxes. [Which?]

The great majority of women are either under the age of

twenty-one, or are married and therefore _under such influence

and control_ as that relation implies and confers. Is there any

necessity for the protection and preservation of the rights of

women, that they must be allowed to vote and, of course, to hold

office and directly to participate in the administration of the

laws?

Nearly every man who votes has a wife or mother or sisters or

daughters; some sustain all these relations or more than one. I

think it certain that the great majority of men when voting or

when engaged as legislators or in administering the laws in some

official character, are fully mindful of the interests of all

that class with whom they are so closely connected, and whose

interests are so bound up with their own, and that, therefore,

they fairly represent all the rights and interests of women as

well as their own. Persons who have been accustomed to see legal

proceedings in the courts, and occasionally to see a female

litigant in court, know very well whether they are apt to suffer

wrong because their rights are determined wholly by men.[25]

There is just as little reason for suspicion that their rights

are not carefully guarded in legislation, and in every way where

legislation can operate.

There is another reason why I think this proposal to enlist the

women of the country as a part of its active political force, and

to cast upon them an equal duty in the political meetings,

campaigns and elections--to make them legislators, jurors, judges

and executive officers--is all wrong. I believe it to be utterly

inconsistent with the very nature and constitution of woman, and

wholly subversive of the sphere and function she was designed to

fill in the home and in society. The office and duty which nature

has devolved upon woman during _all the active and vigorous

portion_ of her life would often render it impossible, and still

more often indelicate, for her to appear and act in caucuses,

conventions or elections, or to act as a member of the

Legislature or as a juror or judge.

I can not bring myself to believe that any large portion of the

intelligent women of this country desire any such thing granted

them, or would perform any such duties if the chance were offered

them.

[To comment upon this would be "to gild refined gold, to paint the

lily, to throw a perfume on the violet." It would be positively

"indelicate."]

William Dorsheimer (N. Y.) agreed with the committee to table the

resolution, but did not endorse their arguments. He signed the

following statement: "I think it probable that the interests of

society will some time require that women should have the right of

suffrage, and I am not willing to say more than that the present is

not an opportune time for submission to the States of the proposed

amendment."

In this, it will be observed, there is no recognition of woman's right

to represent herself, no disposition to grant her petition for her own

sake, but simply the opinion that should there ever be a crisis when

her suffrage was needed it should be allowed as a matter of

expediency.

In the eyes of posterity the Judiciary Committee of this Forty-eighth

Congress will be redeemed from the disgrace of these reports by that

of the minority, signed by Thomas B. Reed, afterwards for many years

Speaker of the House; Ezra B. Taylor (O.); Moses A. McCoid (Ia.);

Thomas M. Browne (Ind.). The question of woman suffrage never has been

and never can be more concisely and logically stated.

No one who listens to the reasons given by the superior class for

the continuance of any system of subjection can fail to be

impressed with the noble disinterestedness of mankind. When the

subjection of persons of African descent was to be maintained,

the good of those persons was always the main object. When it was

the fashion to beat children, to regard them as little animals

who had no rights, it was always for their good that they were

treated with severity, and never on account of the bad temper of

their parents. Hence, when it is proposed to give to the women of

this country an opportunity to present their case to the various

State Legislatures to demand equality of political rights, it is

not surprising to find that the reasons on which the continuance

of the inferiority of women is urged are drawn almost entirely

from a tender consideration of their own good. The anxiety felt

lest they should thereby deteriorate would be an honor to human

nature were it not an historical fact that the same sweet

solicitude has been put up as a barrier against all the progress

which women have made since civilization began.

There is no doubt that if to-day in Turkey or Algiers, countries

where woman's sphere is most thoroughly confined to the home

circle, it was proposed to admit them to social life, to remove

the veil from their faces and permit them to converse in open day

with the friends of their husbands and brothers, the conservative

and judicious Turk or Algerine of the period, if he could be

brought even to consider such a horrible proposition, would point

out that the sphere of woman was to make home happy by those

gentle insipidities which education would destroy; that by

participating in conversation with men they would debase their

natures, and men would thereby lose that ameliorating influence

which still leaves them unfit to associate with women. He would

point out that "nature" had determined that women should be

secluded; that their sphere was to raise and educate the

man-child, and that any change would be a violation of the divine

law which, in the opinion of all conservative men, ordains the

present but never the future.

So in civilized countries when it was proposed that women should

own their own property, that they should have the earnings of

their own labor, there were not wanting those who were sure that

such a proposition could work only evil to women, and that

continually. It would destroy the family, discordant interests

would provoke dispute, and the only real safety for woman was in

the headship of man; not that man wanted superiority for any

selfish reason, but to preserve intact the family relation for

woman's good. To-day a woman's property belongs to herself; her

earnings are her own; she has been emancipated beyond the wildest

hopes of any reformer of twenty-five years ago. Almost every

vocation is open to her. She is proving her usefulness in spheres

which the "nature" worshiped by the conservative of the last

generation absolutely forbade her to enter. Notwithstanding all

these changes the family circle remains unbroken, the man-child

gets as well educated as before, and the ameliorating influence

of woman has become only the more marked.

Thirty years ago hardly any political assemblage of the people

was graced by the presence of women. Had it needed a law to

enable them to be present, what an argument could have been made

against it! How easily it could have been shown that the

coarseness, the dubious expressions, the general vulgarity of the

scene, could have had no other effect than to break down that

purity of thought and word which women have, and which

conservative and radical are alike sedulous to preserve. And yet

the actual presence of women at political meetings has not

debased them but has raised the other sex. Coarseness has not

become diffused through both sexes but has fled from both. To put

the whole matter in a short phrase: The association of the sexes

in the family circle, in society, and in business, having

improved both, there is neither history, reason nor sense to

justify the assertion that association in politics will lower the

one or demoralize the other.

Hence, we would do well to approach the question without

trepidation. We can better leave the "sphere" of woman to the

future than confine it in the chains of the past. Words change

nothing. Prejudices are none the less prejudices because we

vaguely call them "nature," and prate about what nature has

forbidden, when we only mean that the thing we are opposing has

not been hitherto done. "Nature" forbade a steamship to cross the

Atlantic the very moment it was crossing, and yet it arrived just

the same. What the majority call "nature" has stood in the way of

all progress of the past and present, and will stand in the way

of all future progress. It is only another name for conservatism.

With conservatism the minority have no quarrel. It is essential

to the stability of mankind, of government and of social life.

To every new proposal it rightfully calls a halt, demanding

countersign, whether it be friend or foe. The enfranchisement of

women must pass this ordeal like everything else. It must give

good reason for its demand to be, or take its place among the

half-forgotten fantasies which have challenged the support of

mankind and have not stood the test of argument and discussion.

The majority of the committee claim that suffrage is not a right

but a privilege to be guarded by those who have it, and to be by

them doled out to those who shall become worthy. That every

extension of suffrage has been granted in some form or other by

those already holding it is probably true. In some countries,

however, it has been extended upon the simple basis of

expediency, and in others in obedience to a claim of right. If

suffrage be a right, if it be true that no man has a claim to

govern any other man except to the extent that the other man has

a right to govern him, then there can be no discussion of the

question of Woman Suffrage. No reason on earth can be given by

those who claim suffrage as a right of manhood which does not

make it a right of womanhood also. If the suffrage is to be given

man to protect him in his life, liberty and property, the same

reasons urge that it be given to woman, for she has the same

life, liberty and property to protect. If it be urged that her

interests are so bound up in those of man that they are sure to

be protected, the answer is that the same argument was urged as

to the merging in the husband of the wife's right of property,

and was pronounced by the judgment of mankind fallacious in

practice and in principle. If the natures of men and women are so

alike that for that reason no harm is done by suppressing women,

what harm can be done by elevating them to equality? If the

natures be different, what right can there be in refusing

representation to those who might take juster views about many

social and political questions?

Our Government is founded, not on the rule of the wisest and

best, but upon the rule of all. The learned and the ignorant, the

wise and the unwise, the judicious and the injudicious are all

invited to assist in governing, and upon the broad principle that

the best government for mankind is not the government which the

wisest and best would select, but that which the average of

mankind would select. Laws are daily enacted, not because they

seem the wisest even to those legislators who pass them, but

because they represent what the whole people wish. And, in the

long run, it may be just as bad to enact laws in advance of

public sentiment as to hold on to laws behind it. Upon what

principle in a Government like ours can one-half the minds be

denied expression at the polls? Is it because they are untrained

in public affairs? Are they more so than the slaves were when the

right of suffrage was conferred on them? It is objected that to

admit women would be temporarily to lower the suffrage on account

of their lack of training in public duties. What is now asked of

us is not immediate admission to the right, but the privilege of

presenting to the Legislatures of the different States the

amendment, which can not become effective until adopted by

three-fourths of them. It may be said that the agitation and

discussion of this question will, long before its adoption, have

made women as familiar with public affairs as the average of men,

for the agitation is hardly likely to be successful until after a

majority, at least, of women are in favor of it.

We believe in the educating and improving effect of participation

in government. We believe that every citizen in the United States

is made more intelligent, more learned and better educated by his

participation in politics and political campaigns. It must be

remembered that education, like all things else, is relative.

While the average American voter may not be all that impatient

people desire, and is far behind his own future, yet he is

incomparably superior to the average citizen of any other land

where the subject does not fully participate in the government.

Discussions on the stump, and above all the discussions he

himself has with his fellows, breed a desire for knowledge which

will take no refusal and which leads to great general

intelligence. In political discussion, acrimony and hate are not

essential, and have of late years quite perceptibly diminished

and will more and more diminish when discussions by women, and in

the presence of women, become more common. If, then, discussion

of public affairs among men has elevated them in knowledge and

intelligence, why will it not lead to the same results among

women? It is not merely education that makes civilization, but

diffusion of education. The standing of a nation and its future

depend not upon the education of the few, but of the whole. Every

improvement in the status of woman in the matter of education has

been an improvement to the whole race. Women have by education

thus far become more womanly, not less. The same prophecies of

ruin to womanliness were made against her education on general

subjects that are now made against her participation in politics.

It is sometimes asserted that women now have a great influence in

politics through their husbands and brothers. This is undoubtedly

true. But that is just the kind of influence which is not

wholesome for the community, for it is influence unaccompanied by

responsibility. People are always ready to recommend to others

what they would not do themselves. If it be true that women can

not be prevented from exercising political influence, is not that

only another reason why they should be steadied in their

political action by that proper sense of responsibility which

comes from acting themselves?

We conclude then, that every reason which in this country bestows

the ballot upon man is equally applicable to the proposition to

bestow the ballot upon woman, and that in our judgment there is

no foundation for the fear that woman will thereby become

unfitted for all the duties she has hitherto performed.

FOOTNOTES:

[20] For an interesting account of the struggle to secure these

committees see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. III, p. 198.

[21] But it was after five years of persistent appeal to Congress by

Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood, and the enactment of a law, by overwhelming

majorities in both Houses, prohibiting the Supreme Court from denying

admission to lawyers on account of sex, that this act of justice was

accomplished.

[22] This committee was composed of Senators Cockrell (Mo.), Fair

(Nev.), Brown (Ga.), Anthony (R. I.), Blair (N. H.), Palmer (Mich.),

Lapham (N. Y.).

[23] J. Randolph Tucker, Va.; Nathaniel J. Hammond, Ga.; David B.

Culberson, Tex.; Samuel W. Moulton, Ills.; James O. Broadhead, Mo.;

William Dorsheimer, N. Y.; Patrick A. Collins, Mass.; George E. Seney,

O.; William C. Maybury, Mich.; Thomas B. Reed, Me.; Ezra B. Taylor,

O.; Moses A. McCoid, Ia.; Thomas M. Browne, Ind.; Luke P. Poland, Vt.;

Horatio Bisbee, Jr., Fla.

[24] Their report, dated April 23, 1884, was used entire by Senator

Brown in the debate on woman suffrage which took place in the Senate

of the United States January 25, 1887, and will be found in Chapter

VI, which contains also a portion of the majority report included in

the speech of Senator Blair.

[25] Would the men whose crimes very often have sent these "female

litigants" into the courts, be willing to have their cases tried

before a jury of women?

CHAPTER IV.

THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION OF 1885.[26]

The Seventeenth of the national conventions was held in Lincoln Hall,

Washington, D. C., Jan. 20-22, 1885, preceded by the usual brilliant

reception, which was extended by Mr. and Mrs. Spofford each season for

the twelve years during which the association had its headquarters at

the Riggs House.

It is rather amusing to note the custom of the newspaper reporters to

give a detailed description of the dress of each one of the speakers,

usually to the exclusion of the subject-matter of her speech. On this

occasion the public was informed that one lady "spoke in dark bangs

and Bismarck brown;" one "in black and gold with angel sleeves,

boutonniere and ear-drops;" another "in a basque polonaise and snake

bracelets;" another "in black silk dress and bonnet, gold eye-glasses

and black kid gloves." One lady wore "a small bonnet made of

gaudy-colored birds' wings;" one "spoke with a pretty lisp, was

attired in a box-pleated satin skirt, velvet newmarket basque

polonaise, hollyhock corsage bouquet;" another "addressed the meeting

in low tones and a poke bonnet;" still another "discussed the question

in a velvet bonnet and plain linen collar." "A large lady wore a green

cashmere dress with pink ribbons in her hair;" then there was "a slim

lady with tulle ruffles, velvet sacque and silk skirt." Of one it was

said: "Her face, though real feminine in shape, was painted all over

with business till it looked like a man's, and her hair was shingled

and brushed in little banglets." "Miss Anthony," so the report said,

"wore a blue barbe trimmed in lace," while Mrs. Stanton "was attired

in a black silk dress with a white handkerchief around her throat."

One record declares that "there was not a pair of earrings on the

platform, but most of the ladies wore gold watch-chains."

These extracts are taken verbatim from the best newspapers of the

day. The conventions had passed the stage where, according to the

reporters, all of the participants had short hair and wore bloomers,

but, according to the same authority, they had reached the wonderful

attire described above. This was fifteen years ago. The proceedings of

the national convention of 1900 occupied from four to seven columns

daily in each of the Washington papers, and one or more columns were

telegraphed each day to the large newspapers of the United States, and

yet it may be safely said that there was not one line of reference to

the costumes of the ladies in attendance. The business meetings,

speeches, etc., were reported with the same respect and dignity as are

accorded to national conventions of men. The petty personalities of

the past were wholly eliminated and women were presented from an

intellectual standpoint, to be judged upon their merits and not by

their clothes. This result alone is worth the fifty years of endeavor.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton presided over all of the sessions. Mrs.

Lillie Devereux Blake gave a full report of the legislative work done

in New York during the past year. In the address of Mrs. Harriette R.

Shattuck (Mass.) she laid especial stress on the need for women to be

invested with responsibility. Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage (N. Y.)

discussed the woman question from a scientific standpoint. She was

followed by Mrs. Laura de Force Gordon, the second woman admitted to

practice before the U. S. Supreme Court, who answered the question, Is

our Civilization Civilized? and described the legal status of women in

California. Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers (N. Y.) gave a spirited talk

on the Aristocracy of Sex. The principal address of the evening was by

Mrs. Stanton, a long and thoughtful paper in which she said:

Those people who declaim on the inequalities of sex, the

disabilities and limitations of one as against the other, show

themselves as ignorant of the first principles of life as would

that philosopher who should undertake to show the comparative

power of the positive as against the negative electricity, of the

centrifugal as against the centripetal force, the attraction of

the north as against the south end of the magnet. These great

natural forces must be perfectly balanced or the whole material

world would relapse into chaos. Just so the masculine and

feminine elements in humanity must be exactly balanced to redeem

the moral and social world from the chaos which surrounds it.

One might as well talk of separate spheres for the two ends of

the magnet as for man and woman; they may have separate duties in

the same sphere, but their true place is together everywhere.

Having different duties in the same sphere, neither can succeed

without the presence and influence of the other. To restore the

equilibrium of sex is the first step in social, religious and

political progress. It is by the constant repression of the best

elements in humanity, by our false customs, creeds and codes,

that we have thus far retarded civilization....

There would be more sense in insisting on man's limitations

because he can not be a mother, than on woman's because she can

be. Surely maternity is an added power and development of some of

the most tender sentiments of the human heart and not a

"limitation." "Yes," says another pertinacious reasoner, "but it

unfits woman for much of the world's work." Yes, and it fits her

for much of the world's work; a large share of human legislation

would be better done by her because of this deep experience....

If one-half the effort had been expended to exalt the feminine

element that has been made to degrade it, we should have reached

the natural equilibrium long ago. Either sex, in isolation, is

robbed of one-half its power for the accomplishment of any given

work. This was the most fatal dogma of the Christian

religion--that in proportion as men withdrew from all

companionship with women, they could get nearer to God, grow more

like the Divine Ideal.

Telegrams of greetings were received from many associations and

individuals. Miss Frances Ellen Burr, who made a fine stenographic

report of the entire convention, spoke for Connecticut, closing with

an ideal picture of civilization as it might be with the wisdom of

both sexes brought to bear on the problems of society. The following

resolutions were written by Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby:

WHEREAS, The dogmas incorporated in the religious creeds derived

from Judaism, teaching that woman was an afterthought in

creation, her sex a misfortune, marriage a condition of

subordination, and maternity a curse, are contrary to the law of

God as revealed in nature and the precepts of Christ; and,

WHEREAS, These dogmas are an insidious poison, sapping the

vitality of our civilization, blighting woman and palsying

humanity; therefore,

_Resolved_, That we denounce these dogmas wherever they are

enunciated, and we will withdraw our personal support from any

organization so holding and teaching; and,

_Resolved_, That we call upon the Christian ministry, as leaders

of thought, to teach and enforce the fundamental idea of creation

that man was made in the image of God, male and female, and given

equal dominion over the earth, but none over each other. And

further we invite their co-operation in securing the recognition

of the cardinal point of our creed, that in true religion there

is neither male nor female, neither bond nor free, but all are

one.

The resolutions were introduced and advocated by Mrs. Stanton, who

said: "Woman has been licensed to preach in the Methodist church; the

Unitarian and Universalist and some branches of the Baptist

denomination have ordained women, but the majority do not recognize

them officially, although for the first three centuries after the

proclamation of Christianity women had a place in the church. They

were deaconesses and elders, and were ordained and administered the

sacrament. Yet through the Catholic hierarchy these privileges were

taken away in Christendom and they have never been restored. Now we

intend to demand equal rights in the church."

This precipitated a vigorous discussion which extended into the next

day. Miss Anthony was opposed to a consideration of the resolutions

and in giving her reasons said:

I was on the old Garrisonian platform and found long ago that

this matter of settling any question of human rights by people's

interpretation of the Bible is never satisfactory. I hope we

shall not go back to that war. No two can ever interpret alike,

and discussion upon it is time wasted. We all know what we want,

and that is the recognition of woman's perfect equality--in the

Home, the Church and the State. We all know that such recognition

has never been granted her in the centuries of the past. But for

us to begin a discussion here as to who established these dogmas

would be anything but profitable. Let those who wish go back into

the history of the past, but I beg it shall not be done on our

platform.

Mrs. Mary E. McPherson (Ia.) insisted that the Bible did not ignore

women, although custom might do so. The Rev. Dr. McMurdy (D. C.)

declared that women were teachers under the old Jewish dispensation;

that the Catholic church set apart its women, ordained them and gave

them the title "reverend"; that the Episcopal church ordained

deaconesses. He hoped the convention would not take action on this

question. John B. Wolf upheld the resolution. Mrs. Shattuck thought

the church was coming around to a belief in woman suffrage and it

would be a mistake to antagonize it.

Mrs. Colby insisted the resolutions did not attack the Bible, but the

dogmas which grew out of man's interpretation of it, saying:

This dogma of woman's divinely appointed inferiority has sapped

the vitality of our civilization, blighted woman and palsied

humanity. As a Christian woman and a member of an orthodox

church, I stand on this resolution; on the divine plan of

creation as set forth in the first chapter of Genesis, where we

are told that man was created male and female and set over the

world to have equal dominion; and on the gospel of the new

dispensation, in which there is neither male nor female, bond nor

free, but all are one. This resolution avows our loyalty to what

we believe to be the true teachings of the Bible, and the

co-operation of the Christian ministry is invited in striving to

secure the application of the golden rule to women.

Edward M. Davis (Penn.) declared that, while individual members might

favor woman suffrage, not one religious body ever had declared for it,

and the convention ought to express itself on this subject. Mrs.

Gordon pointed out the difference between religion and theology. Mrs.

Stanton, being called on for further remarks, spoke in the most

earnest manner:

You may go over the world and you will find that every form of

religion which has breathed upon this earth has degraded woman.

There is not one which has not made her subject to man. Men may

rejoice in them because they make man the head of the woman. I

have been traveling over the old world during the last few years

and have found new food for thought. What power is it that makes

the Hindoo woman burn herself on the funeral pyre of her husband?

Her religion. What holds the Turkish woman in the harem? Her

religion. By what power do the Mormons perpetuate their system of

polygamy? By their religion. Man, of himself, could not do this;

but when he declares, "Thus saith the Lord," of course he can do

it. So long as ministers stand up and tell us that as Christ is

the head of the church, so is man the head of the woman, how are

we to break the chains which have held women down through the

ages? You Christian women can look at the Hindoo, the Turkish,

the Mormon women, and wonder how they can be held in such

bondage. Observe to-day the work women are doing for the

churches. _The church rests on the shoulders of women._ Have we

ever yet heard a man preach a sermon from Genesis i:27-28, which

declares the full equality of the feminine and masculine element

in the Godhead? They invariably shy at that first chapter. They

always get up in their pulpits and read the second chapter.

Now I ask you if our religion teaches the dignity of woman? It

teaches us that abominable idea of the sixth century--Augustine's

idea--that motherhood is a curse; that woman is the author of

sin, and is most corrupt. Can we ever cultivate any proper sense

of self-respect as long as women take such sentiments from the

mouths of the priesthood?... The canon laws are infamous--so

infamous that a council of the Christian church was swamped by

them. In republican America, and in the light of the nineteenth

century, we must demand that our religion shall teach a higher

idea in regard to woman. People seem to think we have reached the

very end of theology; but let me say that the future is to be as

much purer than the past as our immediate past has been better

than the dark ages. We want to help roll off from the soul of

woman the terrible superstitions that have so long repressed and

crushed her.

Through the determined efforts of Miss Anthony and some others the

resolution was permitted to lie on the table.

Miss Matilda Hindman (Penn.) gave an address on As the Rulers, So the

People, well fortified with statistics. The Rev. Olympia Brown (Wis.)

made a stirring appeal under the title All Are Created Equal. Among

the many excellent addresses were those of Mrs. Colby, Mrs. Annie L.

Diggs (Kas.) and Dr. Alice B. Stockham (Ills.). The usual resolutions

were adopted, and the memorial called forth a number of eulogies:

_Resolved_, That in the death of the Hon. Henry Fawcett, of

England, Senator Henry B. Anthony, the Rev. William Henry

Channing, ex-Secretary of the Treasury Charles J. Folger, Bishop

Matthew Simpson, Madame Mathilde Anneke, Kate Newell Doggett,

Frances Dana Gage, Laura Giddings Julian, Sarah Pugh and

Elizabeth T. Schenck, the year 1884 has been one of irreparable

losses to our movement.

Among the many interesting letters written to the convention was one

from Wm. Lloyd Garrison, inclosing letters received in times past

expressing sympathy with the efforts of the suffrage advocates, from

his father, from Ralph Waldo Emerson and from the Rev. William Henry

Channing, whose body at this very time was being borne across the

ocean to its resting place in this country. A touching message was

read from that faithful and efficient pioneer, Clarina I. H. Nichols,

of California, which ended: "My last words in the good work for

humanity are, 'God is with us.' There can be no failure and no defeat

outside ourselves." The writer passed away before it reached the

convention. Other encouraging letters were received from the Reverends

Anna Garlin Spencer (R. I.), Ada C. Bowles and Phebe A. Hanaford

(Mass.); from Mrs. Julia Foster and her daughters, Rachel and Julia,

in Berlin; from Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick (La.), Mrs. Emma C. Bascom,

of Wisconsin University, and friends and workers in all parts of the

country.

The convention adopted a comprehensive plan of work submitted by Mrs.

Blake, Miss Hindman and Mrs. Colby.[27] At the last session Miss

Anthony made a strong, practical speech on the Present Status of the

Woman Suffrage Question, and Mrs. Stanton closed the convention.

A number of ministers on the following Sunday took as a text the

resolution which had been discussed so vigorously, and used it as an

argument against the enfranchisement of women, some of them going so

far as to denounce the suffrage advocates as infidels and the movement

itself as atheistic and immoral. They wholly ignored the facts--first,

that the resolution was merely against the dogmas which had been

incorporated into the creeds, and was simply a demand that Christian

ministers should teach and enforce only the fundamental declarations

of the Scriptures; second, that there was an emphatic division of

opinion among the members on the resolution; third, that by consent it

was laid on the table; and fourth, that even had it been adopted, it

was neither atheistic nor immoral.

On February 6, 1885, Thomas W. Palmer (Mich.) brought up in the Senate

the joint resolution for a Sixteenth Amendment which had been

favorably reported by the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage the

previous winter, and in its support made a masterly argument which has

not been surpassed in the fifteen years that have since elapsed,

saying in part:

This resolution involves the consideration of the broadest step

in the progress of the struggle for human liberty that has ever

been submitted to any ruler or to any legislative body. Its

taking is pregnant with wide changes in the pathway of future

civilization. Its obstruction will delay and cripple our

advancement. The trinity of principles which Lord Chatham called

the "Bible of the English Constitution," the Magna Charta, the

Petition of Rights, and the Bill of Rights, are towering

landmarks in the history of our race, but they immediately

concerned but few at the time of their erection.

The Declaration of Independence by the colonists and its

successful assertion, the establishment of the right of petition,

the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the property

qualification for suffrage in nearly all the States, the

recognition of the right of women to earn, hold, enjoy and devise

property, are proud and notable gains.

The emancipation of 4,000,000 slaves and the subsequent extension

of suffrage to the male adults among them were measures enlarging

the possibilities of freedom, the full benefits of which have yet

to be realized; but the political emancipation of 26,000,000 of

our citizens, equal to us in most essential respects and superior

to us in many, it seems to me would translate our nation, almost

at a bound, to the broad plateau of universal equality and

co-operation to which all these blood-stained and prayer-worn

steps have surely led.

Like life insurance and the man who carried the first umbrella,

the inception of this movement was greeted with derision. Born of

an apparently hopeless revolt against unjust discrimination,

unequal statutes, and cruel constructions of courts, it has

pressed on and over ridicule, malice, indifference and

conservatism, until it stands in the gray dawn before the most

powerful legislative body on earth and challenges final

consideration.

The laws which degraded our wives have been everywhere repealed

or modified, and our children may now be born of free women. Our

sisters have been recognized as having brains as well as hearts,

and as being capable of transacting their own business affairs.

New avenues of self-support have been found and profitably

entered upon, and the doors of our colleges have ceased to creak

their dismay at the approach of women. Twelve States have

extended limited suffrage through their Legislatures, and three

Territories admit all citizens of suitable age to the ballot-box,

while from no single locality in which it has been tried comes

any word but that of satisfaction concerning the experiment.

The spirit of inquiry attendant upon the agitation and discussion

of this question has permeated every neighborhood in the land,

and none can be so blind as to miss the universal development in

self-respect, self-reliance, general intelligence and increased

capacity among our women. They have lost none of the womanly

graces, but by fitting themselves for counselors and mental

companions have benefited man, more perhaps than themselves.

In considering the objections to this extension of the suffrage

we are fortunate in finding them grouped in the adverse report of

the minority of your committee, and also in confidently

assuming, from the acknowledged ability and evident earnestness

of the distinguished Senators who prepared it, that all is

contained therein in the way of argument or protest which is left

to the opponents of this reform after thirty-seven years of

discussion. I wish that every Senator would examine this report

and note how many of its reasonings are self-refuting and how few

even seem to warrant further antagonism.

They cite the physical superiority of man, but offer no amendment

to increase the voting power of a Sullivan or to disfranchise the

halt, the lame, the blind or the sick. They regard the manly head

of the family as its only proper representative, but would not

exclude the adult bachelor sons. They urge disability to perform

military service as fatal to full citizenship, but would hardly

consent to resign their own rights because they have passed the

age of conscription; or to question those of Quakers, who will

not fight, or of professional men and civic officials, who, like

mothers, are regarded as of more use to the State at home.

They are dismayed by a vision of women in attendance at caucuses

at late hours of the night, but doubtless enjoy their presence at

balls and entertainments until the early dawn. They deprecate the

appearance of women at political meetings, but in my State women

have attended such meetings for years upon the earnest

solicitation of those in charge, and the influence of their

presence has been good. Eloquent women are employed by State

committees of all parties to canvass in their interests and are

highly valued and respected....

They object that many women do not desire the suffrage and that

some would not exercise it. It is probably true, as often

claimed, that many slaves did not desire emancipation in

1863--and there are men in most communities who do not vote, but

we hear of no freedman to-day who asks re-enslavement, and no

proposition is offered to disfranchise all men because some

neglect their duty.

The minority profess a willingness to have this measure

considered as a local issue rather than a national one, but those

who recall the failures to extend the ballot to black men, in the

most liberal Northern States, by a popular vote, may be excused

if they question their frankness in suggesting this transfer of

responsibility. The education of the people of a whole State on

this particular question is a much more laborious and expensive

work than an appeal to the several Legislatures. The subject

would be much more likely to receive intelligent treatment at the

hands of the picked men of a State, where calm discussion may be

had, than at the polls where prejudice and tradition oftentimes

exert a more potent influence than logic and justice. To refuse

this method to those to whom we are bound by the dearest ties

betrays an indifference to their requests or an inexplicable

adhesion to prejudice, which is only sought to be defended by an

asserted regard for women, that to me seems most illogical.

I share no fears of the degradation of women by the ballot. I

believe rather that it will elevate men. I believe the tone of

our politics will be higher, that our caucuses will be more

jealously guarded and our conventions more orderly and decorous.

I believe the polls will be freed from the vulgarity and

coarseness which now too often surround them, and that the

polling booths, instead of being in the least attractive parts of

a ward or town, will be in the most attractive; instead of being

in stables, will be in parlors. I believe the character of

candidates will be more closely scrutinized and that better

officers will be chosen to make and administer the laws. I

believe that the casting of the ballot will be invested with a

seriousness--I had almost said a sanctity--second only to a

religious observance.

The objections enumerated above appear to be the only profferings

against this measure excepting certain fragmentary quotations and

deductions from the sacred Scriptures; and here, Mr. President, I

desire to enter my most solemn protest. The opinions of Paul and

Peter as to what was the best policy for the struggling churches

under their supervision, in deferring to the prejudices of the

communities which they desired to attract and benefit, were not

inspirations for the guidance of our civilization in matters of

political co-operation; and every apparent inhibition of the

levelment of the caste of sex may be neutralized by selections of

other paragraphs and by the general spirit and trend of the Holy

Book.... Sir, my reverence for this grandest of all compilations,

human or divine, compels a protest against its being cast into

the street as a barricade against every moral, political and

social reform; lest, when the march of progress shall have swept

on and over to its consummation, it may appear to the superficial

observer that it is the Bible which has been overthrown and not

its erroneous interpretation.

If with our present experience of the needs and dangers of

co-operative government and our present observation of woman's

social and economic status, we could divest ourselves of our

traditions and prejudices, and the question of suffrage should

come up for incorporation into a new organic law, a distinction

based upon sex would not be entertained for a moment. It seems to

me that we should divest ourselves to the utmost extent possible

of these entanglements of tradition, and judicially examine three

questions relative to the proposed extension of suffrage: First,

Is it right? Second, Is it desirable? Third, Is it expedient? If

these be determined affirmatively our duty is plain.

If the right of the governed and the taxed to a voice in

determining by whom they shall be governed and to what extent and

for what purposes they may be taxed is not a natural right, it is

nevertheless a right to the declaration and establishment of

which by the fathers we owe all that we possess of liberty. They

declared taxation without representation to be tyranny, and

grappled with the most powerful nation of their day in a

seven-years' struggle for the overthrow of such tyranny. It

appears incredible to me that any one can indorse the principles

proclaimed by the patriots of 1776 and deny their application to

women.

Samuel Adams said: "Representation and legislation, as well as

taxation, are inseparable, according to the spirit of our

Constitution and of all others that are free." Again, he said:

"No man can be justly taxed by, or bound in conscience to obey,

any law to which he has not given his consent in person or by his

representative." And again: "No man can take another's property

from him without his consent. This is the law of nature; and a

violation of it is the same thing whether it is done by one man,

who is called a king, or by five hundred of another

denomination."

James Otis, in speaking of the rights of the colonists as

descendants of Englishmen; said they "were not to be cheated out

of them by any phantom of virtual representation or any other

fiction of law or politics." Again: "No such phrase as virtual

representation is known in law or constitution. It is altogether

a subtlety and illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd."

The Declaration of Independence asserts that, to secure the

inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,

governments are instituted among men, "deriving their just powers

from the consent of the governed."

Benjamin Franklin wrote that "liberty or freedom consists in

having an actual share in the appointment of those who frame the

laws and who are the guardians of every man's life, property and

peace;" that "they who have no voice nor vote in the electing of

representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved

to those who have votes and to their representatives."

James Madison said: "Under every view of the subject, it seems

indispensable that the mass of the citizens should not be without

a voice in making the laws which they are to obey, and in

choosing the magistrates who are to administer them." ...

The right of women to personal representation through the ballot

seems to me unassailable, wherever the right of man is conceded

and exercised. I can conceive of no possible abstract

justification for the exclusion of the one and the inclusion of

the other.

Is the recognition of this right desirable? The earliest mention

of the Saxon people is found in the Germany of Tacitus, and in

his terse description of them he states that "in all grave

matters they consult their women." Can we afford to dispute the

benefit of this counseling in the advancement of our race?

The measure of the civilization of any nation may be no more

surely ascertained by its consumption of salt than by the social,

economic and political status of its women. It is not enough for

contentment that we assert the superiority of our women in

intelligence, virtue, and self-sustaining qualities, but we must

consider the profit to them and to the State in their further

advancement.

Our statistics are lamentably meager in information as to the

status of our women outside their mere enumeration, but we learn

that in a single State 42,000 are assessed and pay one-eleventh

of the total burden of taxation, with no voice in its

disbursements. From the imperfect gleaning of the Tenth Census we

learn that of the total enumerated bread-winners of the United

States more than one-seventh are women.... That these 2,647,157

citizens of whom we have official information labor from

necessity and are everywhere underpaid is within the knowledge

and observation of every Senator upon this floor. Only the

Government makes any pretense of paying women in accordance with

the labor performed--without submitting them to the competition

of their starving sisters, whose natural dignity and self-respect

have suffered from being driven by the fierce pressure of want

into the few and crowded avenues for the exchange of their labor

for bread. Is it not the highest exhibit of the moral superiority

of our women that so very few consent to exchange pinching penury

for gilded vice?

Will the possession of the ballot multiply and widen these

avenues to self-support and independence? The most thoughtful

women who have given the subject thorough examination believe it,

and I can not but infer that many men, looking only to their own

selfish interests, fear it.

History teaches that every class which has assumed political

responsibility has been materially elevated and improved thereby,

and I can not believe that the rule would have an exception in

the women of to-day. I do not say that to the idealized women so

generally described by obstructionists--the dainty darlings whose

prototypes are to be found in the heroines of Walter Scott and

Fenimore Cooper--immediate awakening would come; but to the

toilers, the wage-workers and the women of affairs, the

consequent enlargement of possibilities would give new courage

and stimulate to new endeavor, and the State would be the gainer

thereby.

The often-urged fear that the ignorant and vicious would swarm to

the polls while the intelligent and virtuous would stand aloof,

is fully met by the fact that the former class has never asked

for the suffrage or shown interest in its seeking, while the

hundreds of thousands of petitioners are from our best and

noblest women, including those whose efforts for the amelioration

of the wrongs and sufferings of others have won for them

imperishable tablets in the temple of humanity. Would fear be

entertained that the State would suffer mortal harm if, by some

strange revolution, its exclusive control should be turned over

to an oligarchy composed of such women as have been and are

identified with the agitation for the political emancipation of

their sex? Saloons, brothels and gaming-houses might vanish

before such an administration; wars avoidable with safety and

honor might not be undertaken, and taxes might be diverted to

purposes of general sanitation and higher education, but neither

in these respects nor in the efforts to lift the bowed and

strengthen the weak would the right to life, liberty and the

pursuit of happiness be placed in peril. Women have exercised the

highest civil powers in all ages of the world--from Zenobia to

Victoria--and have exhibited statecraft and military capacity of

high degree without detracting from their graces as women or

their virtues as mothers....

The preponderance of women in our churches, our charitable

organizations, our educational councils, has been of such use as

to suggest the benefit of their incorporation into our voting

force to the least observant. A woman who owns railroad or

manufacturing or mining stock may vote unquestioned by the side

of the brightest business men of our continent, but if she

transfers her property into real estate she loses all voice in

its control.

Their abilities, intellectual, physical and political, are as

various as ours, and they err who set up any single standard,

however lovely, by which to determine the rights, needs and

possibilities of the sex. To me the recognition of their capacity

for full citizenship is right and desirable, and it only remains

to consider whether it is safe, whether it is expedient. To this

let experience answer to the extent that the experiment has been

made.

During the first thirty years of the independence of New Jersey,

universal suffrage was limited only by a property qualification;

but we do not learn that divorces were common, that families were

more divided on political than on religious differences, that

children were neglected or that patriotism languished, although

the first seven years of that experiment were years of decimating

war, and the remaining twenty-three of poverty and

recuperation--conditions most conducive to discontent and erratic

legislation.

The reports from Wyoming, which I have examined, are uniform in

satisfaction with the system, and I do not learn therefrom that

women require greater physical strength, fighting qualities or

masculinity to deposit a ballot than a letter or visiting card;

while in their service as jurors they have exhibited greater

courage than their brothers in finding verdicts against

desperadoes in accordance with the facts. Governors, judges,

officers and citizens unite in praises of the influence of women

upon the making and execution of wholesome laws.

In Washington Territory, last fall, out of a total vote of 40,000

there were 12,000 ballots cast by women, and everywhere friends

were rejoiced and opponents silenced as apprehended dangers

vanished upon approach. Some of the comments of converted

newspaper editors which have reached us are worthy of

preservation and future reference. The elections were quiet and

peaceable for the first time; the brawls of brutal men gave place

to the courtesies of social intercourse; saloons were closed, and

nowhere were the ladies insulted or in any way annoyed. Women

vote intelligently and safely, and it does not appear that their

place is solely at home any more than that the farmer should

never leave his farm, the mechanic his shop, the teacher his

desk, the clergyman his study, or the professional man his

office, for the purpose of expressing his wishes and opinions at

the tribunal of the ballot-box.

To-day--and to a greater extent in the near future--we are

confronted with political conditions dangerous to the integrity

of our nation. In the unforeseen but constant absorption of

immigrants and former bondmen into a vast army of untrained

voters, without restrictions as to the intelligence, character or

patriotism, many political economists see the material for

anarchy and public demoralization. It is claimed that the

necessities of parties compel subserviency to the lawless and

vicious classes in our cities, and that, without the addition of

a counterbalancing element, the enactment and enforcement of

wholesome statutes will soon be impossible. Fortunately that

needed element is not far to seek. It stands at the door of the

Congress urging annexation. In its strivings for justice it has

cried aloud in petitions from the best of our land, and more than

one-third of the present voters of five States have indorsed its

cause. Its advocates are no longer the ridiculed few, but the

respected many. A list of the leaders of progressive thought of

this generation who espouse and urge this reform would be too

long and comprehensive for recital.

Mr. President, I do not ask the submission of this amendment, nor

shall I urge its adoption, because it is desired by a portion of

the American women, although in intelligence, property and

numbers that portion would seem to have every requisite for the

enforcement of their demands; neither are we bound to give undue

regard to the timidity and hesitation of that possibly larger

portion who shrink from additional responsibilities; but I ask

and shall urge it because the nation has need of the co-operation

of women in all directions.

The war power of every government compels, upon occasion, all

citizens of suitable age and physique to leave their homes,

families and avocations to be merged in armies, whether they be

willing or unwilling, craven or bold, patriotic or indifferent,

and no one gainsays the right, because the necessities of State

require their services. We have passed the harsh stages incident

to our permanent institution. We have conquered our independence,

conquered the respect of European powers, conquered our neighbors

on the western borders, and at vast cost of life and waste have

conquered our internal differences and emerged a nation

unchallenged from without or within. The great questions of the

future conduct of our people are to be economic and social ones.

No one doubts the superiority of womanly instincts, and

consequent thought in the latter, and the repeated failures and

absurdities exhibited by male legislators in the treatment of the

former, should give pause to any assertion of superiority there.

The day has come when the counsel and service of women are

required by the highest interests of the State, and who shall

gainsay their conscription? We place the ballot in the keeping of

immigrants who have grown middle-aged or old in the environment

of governments dissimilar to the spirit and purpose of ours, and

we do well, because the responsibility accompanying the trust

tends to examination, comparison and consequent political

education; but we decline to avail ourselves of the aid of our

daughters, wives and mothers, who were born and are already

educated under our system, reading the same newspapers, books and

periodicals as ourselves, proud of our common history, tenacious

of our theories of human rights and solicitous for our future

progress. Whatever may have been wisest as to the extension of

suffrage to this tender and humane class when wars of assertion

or conquest were likely to be considered, to-day and to-morrow

and thereafter no valid reason seems assignable for longer

neglect to avail ourselves of their association.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] This chapter closes with the speech in favor of woman suffrage by

Thomas W. Palmer in the U. S. Senate.

[27] The primal object of the National Woman Suffrage Association has

been from its foundation to secure the submission by the Congress of a

Sixteenth Amendment which shall prohibit the several States from

disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex. To this end

all State societies should see that senators and members of Congress

are constantly appealed to by their constituents to labor for the

passage of this amendment by the next Congress.

Woman suffrage associations in the several States are advised to push

the question to a vote in their respective Legislatures. The time for

agitation alone has passed, and the time for aggressive action has

come. It will be found by a close examination of many State

constitutions that by the liberal provisions of their Bill of

Rights--often embodied in Article I--the women of the State can be

enfranchised without waiting for the tedious and hopeless proviso of a

constitutional amendment....

In States where there has been little or no agitation we recommend the

passage of laws granting School Suffrage to women. This first step in

politics is an incentive to larger usefulness and aids greatly in

familiarizing women with the use of the ballot.

We do not specially recommend Municipal Suffrage, as we think that the

agitation expended for the fractional measure had better be directed

towards obtaining the passage of a Full Suffrage Bill, but we leave

this to the discretion of the States.

The acting Vice-President in every State must hold a yearly convention

in the capital or some large town. No efficient organization can exist

without some such annual reunion of the friends.

In each county there should be a county woman suffrage society

auxiliary to the State; in each town or village a local society

auxiliary to the county. Friends desirous of forming a society should

meet, even though few in number, and organize.

CHAPTER V.

THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION OF 1886.

The Eighteenth national convention met in the Church of Our Father,

Washington, D. C., Feb. 17-19, 1886, presided over by Miss Susan B.

Anthony, vice-president-at-large, with twenty-three States

represented. In her opening address Miss Anthony paid an eloquent

tribute to her old friend and co-laborer, their absent president, Mrs.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton; sketched the history of the movement for the

past thirty-six years, and described the first suffrage meeting ever

held in Washington. This had been conducted by Ernestine L. Rose and

herself in 1854, and the audience consisted of twenty or thirty

persons gathered in an upper room of a private house. To-night she

faced a thousand interested listeners.

The first address was given by Mrs. Sarah M. Perkins (O.), Are Women

Citizens? "While suffrage will not revolutionize the world," she said,

"the door of the millennium will have a little child's hand on the

latch when the mothers of the nation have equal power with its

fathers."

In the evening Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby addressed the audience on The

Relation of the Woman Suffrage Movement to the Labor Question. She

began by saying, "All revolutions of thought must be allied to

practical ends." After sketching those already attained by women, she

continued:

The danger threatens that, having accomplished all these so

thoroughly and successfully that they no longer need our help and

already scarcely own their origin, we will be left without the

connecting line between the abstract right on which we stand and

the common heart and sympathy which must be enlisted for our

cause ere it can succeed. Why is it that, having accomplished so

much, the woman suffrage movement does not force itself as a

vital issue into the thoughts of the masses? Is it not because

the ends which it most prominently seeks do not enlist the

self-interest of mankind, and those palpable wrongs which it had

in early days to combat have now almost entirely disappeared?...

We need to vitalize our movement by allying it with great

non-partisan questions, and many of these are involved in the

interests of the wage-earning classes.... We need to labor to

secure a change of the conditions under which workingwomen live.

We need to help them to educative and protective measures, to

better pay, to better knowledge how to make the most of their

resources, to better training, to protection against frauds, to

shelter when health and heart fail. We must help them to see the

connection between the ballot and better hours, exclusion of

children from factories, compulsory education, free

kindergartens; between the ballot and laws relating to liability

of employers, savings banks, adulteration of food and a thousand

things which it may secure when in the hands of enlightened and

virtuous people.

Miss Ada C. Sweet, who for a number of years occupied the unique

position of pension agent in Chicago, supplemented Mrs. Colby's

remarks by urging all women to work for the ballot in order to come to

the rescue of their fellow-women in the hospitals, asylums and other

institutions. She emphasized her remarks by recounting instances of

personal knowledge.

The Rev. Rush R. Shippen, pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church of

Washington, a consistent advocate of equal suffrage, spoke on woman's

advance in every department of the world's work, on the evolution of

that work itself and the necessity for a continued progress in

conditions.

Mrs. May Wright Sewall presented a comprehensive report of the year's

work of the executive committee. The Edmunds Bill had been a special

point of attack because of its arbitrary disfranchisement of Utah

women, and Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace (Ind.) had written a personal plea

against it to every member of the House. At the close of this report a

vote on woman suffrage was called for. The audience voted unanimously

in favor, except one man whose "no" called forth much laughter. Miss

Anthony said she sympathized with him, as she had been laughed at all

her life.

Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.), whose specialty was the Bible argument

for woman's equality, said in the course of her remarks: "I am filled

with shame and sorrow that from listening to men, instead of studying

the Bible for myself, I did once think that the God who said He came

into the world to preach glad tidings to the poor, to break every

yoke and to set the prisoners free, had really come to rivet the

chains with which sin had bound the women, and to forge a gag for them

more cruel and silencing than that put into their mouths by heathen

men; for in many heathen nations women were once selected to preside

at their most sacred altars."

Miss Mary F. Eastman (Mass), in an impressive address, said:

I asked a friend what phase of the subject I should talk about

to-night. She answered, "The despair of it.".. Can you conceive

what it is to native-born American women citizens, accustomed to

the advantages of our schools, our churches and the mingling of

our social life, to ask over and over again for so simple a thing

as that "we, the people," should mean women as well as men; that

our Constitution should mean exactly what it says?...

Men tell us that they speak for us. There is no companionship of

women as equals permitted in the State. A man can not represent a

woman's opinion. It was in inspiration that magnificent

Declaration of Independence was framed. Men builded better than

they knew; they were at the highest perception of principles; but

after declaring this magnificent principle they went back on

it....

Although I hold the attitude of a petitioner, I come not with the

sense that men have any right to give. Our forefathers erected

barriers which exclude women. I want to press it into the

consciousness of the legislator and of the individual citizen

that he is personally responsible for the continuance of this

injustice. We ask that men take down the barriers. We do not come

to pledge that we will be a unit on temperance or virtue or high

living, but we want the right to speak for ourselves, as men

speak for themselves.

Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.) spoke strongly on A Case in

Point. Mrs. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, of St. Louis, devoted her

remarks chiefly to a caustic criticism of Senator George G. Vest, who

had recently declared himself uncompromisingly opposed to woman

suffrage. He was made the target of a number of spicy remarks, and

some of the newspaper correspondents insisted that the presence of the

suffrage convention in the city was responsible for the Senator's

severe illness, which followed immediately afterwards. Mrs.

Meriwether's son, Lee, paid a handsome tribute to "strong-minded

mothers".

Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck (Mass.) addressed the convention on The

Basis of Our Claim, the right of every individual to make his

personality felt in the Government. Madame Clara Neymann (N. Y.) gave

a scholarly paper on German and American Independence Contrasted, in

which she said:

The difference between the German and the American is simply

this: Germans believe in monarchism, in the rule of the Emperor

and Prince Bismarck, while Americans believe in the government by

all the people, high or low, rich or poor. You have conferred the

blessings of free citizenship upon the negro; you invite the

humblest, the lowest men to cast their vote; you make them feel

that they are sovereign human beings; you place those men above

the most virtuous, intelligent women; you set them above your own

daughters. Yes, your own child, if born a girl on this free soil,

is not free, for she stands without the pale of the Constitution.

She, and only she, is deprived of her rightful heritage.

Oh, shame upon the short-sightedness, the delinquency of American

statesmen, who will quietly look on and suffer such an injustice

to exist! Nowhere in the world is woman so highly respected as in

free America, and nowhere does she feel so keenly and deeply her

degradation. The vote--you know it full well--is the insignia of

power, of influence, of position. And from this position the

American woman is debarred.

Do you wonder at the low estimate of American politics? The

exclusion of women means the exclusion of your best men. Not

before the husband can take his wife, the brother his sister, the

father his daughter to the primary meeting, to the political

assembly and to the polls, will he himself become interested and

fulfil his duty as a voter and a citizen....

"Look at the homes of the wealthy, or even of the large

middle-class", it is often said; "what shallowness and pretense

among the women; how they shrink from the responsibility of

motherhood; how they spend their days in idle gossip, in hollow

amusements; how they waste their hours in frivolities; see what

extravagant, unhallowed lives they lead". Sad and true enough!

For there is no aristocracy so pernicious as a moneyed

aristocracy--no woman so dangerous as she who has privileges and

no corresponding duties. There is nothing so wasteful as wasted

energies, nothing so harmful as powers wrongfully directed; and

the gifts and powers of our wealthy, well-to-do women are

wrongfully directed. They are employed in the interest of vanity,

of worldly ambition, of public display, of sense gratification.

From whence arises this misdirected ambition? The harm is caused

by the false standard man holds up to woman. If men would no

longer admire the shallowness of such women they would

undoubtedly aim higher. On the one side man subordinates himself

to woman's whims and caprices, and on the other side she is made

conscious all the time of her dependence and subordination in all

that pertains to the higher interests of life; and while he makes

a slave of her, she revenges herself and makes a slave of him.

See how these women hold men down to their own low level; for

women who have no higher aspirations than their own immediate

pleasure will induce men to do the same. There is an even-handed

justice that rules this world. For every wrong society permits to

exist, society must suffer. Look what fools men are made by

foolish women--women who are brought up with the idea that they

must be ornamental, a beautiful toy for man to play with. See how

they turn around and make a toy of him, an instrument to play

upon at their leisure.

What we ask in place of all this indulgence is simple justice, a

recognition of woman's higher endowment. In giving her larger

duties to perform, nobler aims to accomplish--in making her a

responsible human being--you not only will benefit her, but will

regenerate the manhood of America....

To make the advocates of suffrage responsible for the sins of

American women is simply atrocious, since it is from these very

advocates that every reform for and among women has started; it

is they who preach simplicity, purity, devotion, and who would

gird all womanhood with the armor of self-respect and true

womanliness. That such women are compelled to come before the

public, before the Congress and the Legislatures, and pray for

such rights as are freely given to every unenlightened foreigner

is a burning shame and reflects badly upon the intelligence, the

righteousness of Legislatures and people.

Much indignation was expressed during the convention over the recent

action of Gov. Gilbert A. Pierce, of the Territory of Dakota. The

Legislature, composed of residents, the previous year passed a bill

conferring Full Suffrage on women, which was vetoed by the Governor,

an outsider appointed a short time before by President Chester A.

Arthur. With a stroke of the pen he prevented the enfranchisement of

50,000 women.

Hundreds were turned away at the last evening session and there was

scarcely standing room within the church. A witty and vivacious speech

by Mrs. Helen M. Gougar (Ind.) was the first number on the program.

Mrs. Julia B. Nelson (Minn.) followed in an original dialect poem,

Hans Dunderkopf's Views of Equality. Mrs. Sewall showed the Absurdity

of the American Woman's Disfranchisement:

The inconsistency of the present position of the American woman

is forcibly shown in that she is now making such an advance in

education, studying political science under the best teachers of

constitutional law, and enjoying such advantages at the expense

of the Government, yet is not allowed to make use of this

knowledge in the Government....

Much has been said about the need of the ballot to protect the

industrial interests of men, but is it not as ungallant as it is

illogical that they should have the ballot for their protection

while women, pressed by the same necessities, should be denied

it?...

I may perhaps put it that man is composed of brain and heart and

woman of heart and brain. We must have the brain of man and the

heart of woman employed in the higher developments to come. There

can be no great scheme that does not require to be conceived by

our brains, quickened by our hearts and carried into execution by

our skilled hands. The activities which are considered the

especial sphere of woman need more brain; the realm of State

developed by the brain of man needs more heart. Home and State

have been too long divided. Man must not neglect the interests of

home, woman must care for the State. Our public interests and

private hopes need all the subtle forces of brain and heart.

An interesting feature of these national conventions was the State

reports, which contained not only valuable specific information, but

often felicitous little arguments quite equal to those of the more

formal addresses. Such reports were received in 1886 from thirty

different States. A large number of interesting letters also were

read, among them one from George W. Childs, inclosing check; John W.

Hutchinson, Belva A. Lockwood, the Hon. J. A. Pickler, Madame

Demorest, Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Lucinda B. Chandler, the Rev. Olympia

Brown, Mary E. Haggart, Armenia S. White, Emma C. Bascom, Almeda B.

Gray and many others.

A letter from Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton urged that the question of

woman suffrage should now be carried into the churches and church

conventions for their approval, and that more enlightened teaching

from the pulpit in regard to women should be insisted upon. The letter

was accompanied by a resolution to this effect, both expressed in very

strong language. They were read first in executive session. The

following extracts are taken from the stenographic report of the

meeting:

Mrs. Helen M. Gougar (Ind.) moved that the resolution be laid

upon the table, saying: "A resolution something like this came

into the last convention, and it has done more to cripple my work

and that of other suffragists than anything which has happened in

the whole history of the woman suffrage movement. When you look

this country over you find the slums are opposed to us, while

some of the best leaders and advocates of woman suffrage are

among the Christian people. A bishop of the Roman Catholic Church

stood through my meeting in Peoria not long since. We can not

afford to antagonize the churches. Some of us are orthodox, and

some of us are unorthodox, but this association is for suffrage

and not for the discussion of religious dogmas. I can not stay

within these borders if that resolution is adopted, from the fact

that my hands would be tied. I hope it will not go into open

convention for debate.

MRS. PERKINS (O.): I think we ought to pay due consideration and

respect to our beloved president. I have no objection to sending

missionaries to the churches asking them to pay attention to

woman suffrage; but I do not think the churches are our greatest

enemies. They might have been so in Mrs. Stanton's early days,

but to-day they are our best helpers. If it were not for their

co-operation I could not get a hearing before the public. And now

that they are coming to meet us half way, do not throw stones at

them. I hope that resolution, as worded, will not go into the

convention.

MRS. MERIWETHER (Mo.): I think the resolution could be amended so

as to offend no one. The ministers falsely construe the

Scriptures. We can overwhelm them with arguments for woman

suffrage--with Biblical arguments. We can hurl them like shot and

shell. Herbert Spencer once wrote an article on the different

biases which distort the human mind, and among the first he

reckoned the theological bias. In Christ's time and in the early

Christian days there was no liberty, every one was under the

despotism of the Roman Caesars, but women were on an equality with

men, and the religion that Christ taught included women equally

with men. He made none of the invidious distinctions which the

churches make to-day.

MRS. SHATTUCK (Mass.): We did not pass the resolution of last

year, so it could not have harmed anybody. But I protest against

this fling at masculine interpretation of the Scriptures.

MRS. MINOR (Mo.): I object to the whole thing--resolution and

letter both. I believe in confining ourselves to woman suffrage.

MRS. COLBY (Neb.): I was on that committee of resolutions last

year and wrote the modified one which was presented, and I am

willing to stand by it. I have not found that it hurts the work,

save with a few who do not know what the resolution was, or what

was said about it. The discussion was reported word for word in

the _Woman's Tribune_ and I think no one who read it would say

that it was irreligious or lacked respect for the teachings of

Christ. I believe we must say something in the line of Mrs.

Stanton's idea. She makes no fling at the church. She wants us to

treat the Church as we have the State--viz., negotiate for more

favorable action. We have this fact to deal with--that in no high

orthodox body have women been accorded any privileges.

EDWARD M. DAVIS (Penn.): I think we have never had a resolution

offered here so important as this. We have never had a measure

brought forward which would produce better results. I agree

entirely with Mrs. Stanton on this thing, that the church is the

greatest barrier to woman's progress. We do not want to proclaim

ourselves an irreligious or a religious people. This question of

religion does not touch us either way. We are neutral.

MADAME NEYMANN (N. Y.): Because the clergy has been one-sided, we

do not want to be one-sided. I know of no one for whom I have a

greater admiration than for Mrs. Stanton. Her resolution

antagonizes no one.

MRS. BROOKS (Neb.): Let us do this work in such a way that it

will not arouse the opposition of the most bigoted clergyman. All

this discussion only shows that the old superstitions have got to

be banished.

MRS. SNOW (Me.): Mrs. Stanton wishes to convert the clergy.

MRS. DUNBAR (Md.): I don't want the resolution referred back to

the committee, out of respect to Mrs. Stanton and the manner in

which she has been treated by the clergy. I do not want to lose

the wording of the original resolution, and therefore move that

it be taken up here.

MRS. GOUGAR: I think it is quite enough to undertake to change

the National Constitution without undertaking to change the

Bible. I heartily agree with Mrs. Stanton in her idea of sending

delegates to church councils and convocations, but I do not

sanction this resolution which starts out--"The greatest barrier

to woman's emancipation is found in the superstitions of the

church." That is enough in itself to turn the entire church,

Catholic and Protestant, against us.

MRS. NELSON (Minn.): The resolution is directed against the

superstitions of the church and not against the church, but I

think it would be taken as against the church.

MISS ANTHONY (N. Y.): As the resolution contains the essence of

the letter, I move that the whole subject go to the Plan of Work

Committee.

The meeting adjourned without action, and on Friday morning the

same subject was resumed. A motion to table Mrs. Stanton's

resolution was lost. Miss Anthony then moved that both letter and

resolution be placed in her hands, as the representative of the

president of the association, to be read in open convention

without indorsement. "I do not want any one to say that we young

folks strangle Mrs. Stanton's thought."

THE REV. DR. MCMURDY (D. C.): I do not intend to oppose or favor

the motion, but as a clergyman and a High Church Episcopalian, I

can not see any particular objections to Mrs. Stanton's letter.

The Scriptures must be interpreted naturally. Whenever Paul's

remarks are brought up I explain them in the light of this

nineteenth century as contrasted with the first.

It was finally voted that the letter be read without the

resolution.

The resolution was brought up later in open convention and the final

vote resulted in 32 ayes and 24 noes. This was not at that time a

delegate body, but usually only those voted who were especially

connected with the work of the association. Before the present

convention adjourned a basis of delegate representation was adopted,

and provision made that hereafter only regularly accredited delegates

should be entitled to vote.

The resolution calling upon Congress to take the necessary measures to

secure the ballot for women through an amendment to the Federal

Constitution, was vigorously opposed by the Southern delegates as

contrary to States' Rights, but was finally adopted. There was some

discussion also on the resolution which condemned the disfranchising

of Gentile as well as Mormon women, but which approved the action of

Congress in making disfranchisement a punishment for the crime of

polygamy. A difference of opinion was shown in regard to the latter

clause. This closed the convention.

As a favorable Senate report was pending, no hearing was held before

that committee.

The House Judiciary Committee[28] granted a hearing on the morning of

February 20. The speakers, as usual, were introduced to the chairman

of the committee by Miss Anthony. The first of these, Mrs. Virginia L.

Minor, had attempted to vote in St. Louis, been refused permission,

carried her case to the Supreme Court and received an adverse

decision.[29] Miss Anthony said in reference to this decision: "Chief

Justice Waite declared the United States had no voters. The Dred Scott

Decision was that the negro, not being a voter, was not a citizen. The

Supreme Court decided that women, although citizens, were not

protected in the rights of citizenship by the Fourteenth Amendment."

Mrs. Minor said in part:

I do not stand here to represent rich women but poor women.

Should you give me the right to vote and deny it to my sister I

should spurn the gift. Without the ballot no class is so helpless

as the working women. If the ballot is necessary for man, it is

necessary for woman. We must have one law for all American

citizens.

The Supreme Court has half done the work. When my case came up,

and I asked them that the same law should protect me as protected

the negro, the court said, "When the State gives you the right to

vote, we will perpetuate it; the United States has no voters." I

want to ask you one question. If there are no United States

voters, what right has the U. S. Court to go into the State of

New York, arrest Susan B. Anthony and condemn her under Federal

Law?[30]

Another decision of the Supreme Court said in relation to the

Fourteenth Amendment, that the negro, because of citizenship, was

made a voter in every State of the Union. The court went on to

say that it had a broader significance, that it included the

Chinese or any nationality that should become citizens. That

court has said we are citizens. If the Chinese would have the

right to vote if they were citizens, have not we the right to

vote because of citizenship?

A third decision was in the case of the United States vs. Kellar

in the State of Illinois. A man arrested for illegal voting was

brought before the court; he was born abroad and was the son of

an American woman. Justice Harlan held that because his mother

was a citizen, she had transmitted citizenship to her son,

therefore he had a right to vote. This right must have been

inherent in the mother, else she could not have transmitted it to

her son.

Mrs. Julia B. Nelson (Minn.), who had been for many years teaching the

freed negroes of the South, said:

What are the obligations of the Government to me, a widow,

because my husband gave his life for it? I have been forced to

think. As a law-abiding citizen and taxpayer and one who has

given all she could give to the support of this Government, I

have a right to be heard. I am teaching for it, teaching

citizens. I began teaching freedmen when it was so unpopular that

men could not have done it. The voting question met me in the

office of the mission, which sends out more women than men

because better work is done by them. A woman gets for this work

$15 per month; if capable of being a principal she has $20. A man

in this position receives $75 a month. There must be something

wrong, but I do not need to explain to you that an unrepresented

class must work at a disadvantage.

If it were granted to women to fill all positions for which they

are qualified, they would not be so largely compelled to rush

into those occupations where they are unfairly remunerated. As so

many people have faith that whatever is is right, the law as it

stands has great influence. If it puts woman down as an inferior,

she will surely be regarded as such by the people. If I am

capable of preparing citizens, I am capable of possessing the

rights of a citizen myself. I ask you to remove the barriers

which restrain women from equal opportunities and privileges with

men.

Mrs. Meriwether pointed out the helplessness of mothers to obtain

legal protection for themselves and their children, or to influence

the action of municipal bodies, without the suffrage. Miss Eastman

said in the course of her address:

The first business of government is foreshadowed in the

Constitution, that it is to secure justice between man and man

by allowing no intrusion of any on the rights of others. This

principle is large in application although simple in statement.

The first words, "We, the people," contain the foundation of our

claim. If we limit the application of the word "people," all the

rest falls to the ground. Whatever work of government is referred

to, it all rests on its being managed by "We, the people." If we

strike that out, we have lost the fundamental principle. Who are

the people? I feel that it is not my business to ask men to vote

on my right to be admitted to the franchise. I have been debarred

from my right. You hold the position to do me justice. Why should

I go to one-half of the people and ask whether so clear and

explicit a declaration as this includes me? The suffrage is not

theirs to give, and I would not get it from them easily if it

were. Neither would you get even education if you had to ask them

for it. This question is not for the people at large to settle.

Justice demands that we should be referred to the most

intelligent tribunals in the land, and not remanded to the

popular vote.

Mrs. Clay Bennett based her argument largely on the authority of the

Scriptures. Mrs. Gougar said:

We do not come as Democrats or Republicans, not as Northern or as

Southern, but as women representing a great principle. This is in

line with the Magna Charta, with the Petition of Rights, with the

Articles of Confederation, with the National Constitution. This

is in direct line of the growth of human liberty. The Declaration

of Independence says, "Governments derive their just powers from

the consent of the governed." Are you making a single law which

does not touch me as much as it does you?

Questions are upon you which you can not solve without the moral

sentiment of womanhood. You need us more than we need suffrage.

In our large cities the vicious element rules. The reserve force

is in the womanhood of the nation. Woman suffrage is necessary

for the preservation of the life of the republic. To give women

the ballot is to increase the intelligent and law-abiding vote.

The tramp vote is entirely masculine. By enfranchising the women

of this country, you enfranchise humanity.

Mrs. Colby thus described to the committee the recent vote in Nebraska

on a woman suffrage amendment:

The subject was well discussed; the leading men and the majority

of the press and pulpit favored it. Everything indicated that

here at last the measure might be safely submitted to popular

vote. On election day the women went to the polling places in

nearly every precinct in the State, with their flowers, their

banners, their refreshments and their earnest pleadings. But

every saloon keeper worked against the amendment, backed by the

money and the power of the liquor league. The large foreign vote

went almost solidly against woman suffrage. Nebraska defies the

laws of the United States by allowing foreigners to vote when

they have been only six months on the soil of America. Many of

these, as yet wholly unfamiliar with the institutions of our

country, voted the ballot which was placed in their hands. The

woman suffrage amendment received but a little over one-third of

the votes cast.

Men were still so afraid women did not want to vote that only one

thing remained to convince them we were in earnest, and that was

for us to vote that way. So the next session we had another

amendment introduced, to be voted on by the men as before, but

not to take effect until ratified by a majority of the women. We

were willing to be counted if the Legislature would make it legal

to count us. It refused because the question, it said, had

already been settled by the people. Although we had worked and

pleaded and done all that women could do to obtain our rights of

citizenship, yet the Legislature looking at "the people" did not

see us, and refused to submit the question again. Having failed

to obtain our rights by popular vote, we now appeal to you.

Miss Anthony related the unsuccessful efforts of Mrs. Caroline E.

Merrick and other ladies of Louisiana to have women placed on the

school boards of that State, due wholly to their disfranchisement. In

a forcible speech Mrs. Sewall declared:

In coming here my sense of justice is satisfied, for we belong to

this nation as well as you. This room, this building, this

committee, the whole machinery of government is supported in part

by the money of women and is for their protection as well as for

that of men....

Our question should never be partisan. We do not wish to go

before our State Legislatures crippled with the fact that an

amendment has been submitted by one party rather than the other.

The Republican party gave the ballot to the negro and claimed its

vote in return. We do not wish any party to feel it has a right

to our vote. The Senate now has a majority of Republicans and the

House of Democrats, consequently any measure which is passed by

this Congress will be unpartisan. This question should receive

support of both parties by the higher laws of the universe.

Another name for life is helpfulness. Separation of parts

belonging to one whole is death. Separation of parties on

questions not of partisan interest is death to many issues. It is

in your power to bring the parties together by that higher law of

the universe on this proposition to submit a Sixteenth Amendment

to our Legislatures, that without entanglement of partisan

interests this question can be decided.

The committee were so interested in the address of Madame Neymann that

the time of the hearing was extended in order that she might finish

it. She said in part:

Why Americans, so keen in their sense of what is right and just,

should be so dull on this question of giving woman her due share

of independence, I can not comprehend. Is not this the land where

foreigners flock because they have heard the bugle call of

freedom? Why then is it that your own children, the patriotic

daughters of America, who have been reared and nurtured in free

homes, brought up under the guidance and amidst the blessings of

freedom--why is it that you hold them unworthy of the honor of

being enrolled as citizens and voters? England, Canada and even

Ireland have gone ahead of us, and was not America destined by

its tradition to be first and foremost in this important movement

of making women the equal, the true partner of man?

In a free country the national life stands in direct relation to

the home life, the public life reacts upon the family, and the

family furnishes the material for the State. The lives and the

characters of our children are influenced by the manners and

methods of our Government, and to say that mothers have no right

to be concerned in the politics of the country is simply saying

that the life and character of our children are of no concern to

us.

The citizen's liberty instead of being sacrificed by society has

to be defended by society. Who defends woman's individuality in

our modern State? Universal suffrage is the only guarantee

against despotism. Every man who believes in the subjection of

woman will play the despot whenever you give him an opportunity.

We have no right to ask if it is expedient to grant suffrage to

women. We recognize that the principle is just and justice must

be done though the heavens fall. It is small minds that bring

forth small objections. The man who believes in a just principle

trusts and confides in it, and thus we ask you to confide in

suffrage for women.

On May 6, 1886, the committee report, made by the Hon. John W. Stewart

(Vt.), stated that the resolution was laid on the table. The following

minority report was submitted:

In a Government by the people the ballot is at once a badge of

sovereignty and the means of exercising power. We need not for

our present purpose define the right to vote, nor inquire whence

it comes. Whether it is a natural or a political right, one

arising from social relations and duties, or a necessity

incidental to individual protection and communal welfare, is

immaterial to the discussion. Let the advocates of man's right to

participate in governmental affairs choose their own ground and

we will be content. The voting franchise exists, and it exists

because it has been seized by force or because of some right

antedating its sanction by law. Nativity does not confer it,

because aliens exercise it; it does not arise from taxation, for

many are taxed who can not vote and many vote who are not taxed.

Ability to bear arms is not the test of the voting franchise, as

many legally vote who were never able to bear arms, and others

who have become unable to do so by reason of sickness, accident

or age; nor does education mark the line, for the learned and the

illiterate meet at the ballot box.

With us a portion of the adult population have assumed to

exercise the right, admitted to exist somewhere, of governing,

and have forced another portion into the position of the

governed. That this assumption is just and wise is averred by

some and denied by others. If we call upon these rulers for a

copy of their commission they present one written by themselves.

Children, idiots and convicted felons properly belong to the

governed and not to the governing class, as they are

intellectually or morally unfit to govern. Necessity only places

them there; necessity is an absolute monarch and will be

everywhere obeyed. To this governed class has been added woman,

and we beg the House and the country to inquire why. They are

also "people" and we submit that they are neither moral nor

intellectual incapables, and no necessity for their

disfranchisement can be suggested; on the contrary, we believe

that they are now entitled to immediate and absolute

enfranchisement.

First: Because their own good demands it. Give woman the ballot

and she will have additional means and inducements to a broader

and better education, including a knowledge of affairs, of which

she will not fail to avail herself to the uttermost; give her the

ballot and you add to her means of protection of her person and

estate. The ballot is a powerful weapon of defense sorely needed

by those too weak to wield any other, and to take it from such

and give to those already clothed in strength and fully armed,

would appear to be unjust, unfair and unwise to one unaccustomed

to the sight. Long usage "sanctions and sanctifies" wrongs and

abuses, and causes cruelty to be mistaken for kindness.

The history of woman is for the most part a history of wrong and

outrage. Created the equal companion of man, she early became his

slave, and still is so in most parts of the world. In many

so-called Christian nations of Europe she is to-day yoked with

beasts and is doing the labor of beasts, while her son and

husband are serving in the army, protecting the divine right of

kings and men to slay and destroy. In the farther East she is

still more degraded, being substantially excluded from the world.

Man has not been consciously unjust to woman in the past, nor is

he now, but he believes that she is in her true sphere, not

realizing that he has fixed her sphere, and not God. This is as

true of the barbarian as of the Christian, and no more so. If the

"unspeakable Turk" should be solicited to open the doors of his

harem and let the inmates become free, he would be indignant,

doubtless, and would swear by the beard of the Prophet that he

never would so degrade lovely woman, who, in her sphere, was

intended to be the solace of glorious, superior man.

Yet, as man advances, woman is elevated, and her elevation in

turn advances him. No liberty ever given her has been lost or

abused or regretted. Where most has been given she has become

best. Liberty never degrades her; slavery always does. For her

good, therefore, she needs the ballot.

Second: Woman's vote is needed for the good of others. Our

horizon is misty with apparent dangers. Woman may aid in

dispelling them. She is an enemy of foreign war and domestic

turmoil; she is a friend of peace and home. Her influence for

good in many directions would be multiplied if she possessed the

ballot. She desires the homes of the land to be pure and sober;

with her help they may become so. Without her what is the

prospect in this regard?

We do not invite woman into the "dirty pool of politics," nor

does she intend to enter that pool. Politics is not necessarily

unclean; if it is unclean she is not chargeable with the great

crime, for crime it is. Politics must be purified or we are lost.

To govern this great nation wisely and well is not degrading

service; to do it, all the wisdom, ability and patriotism of all

the people is required. No great moral force should be

unemployed.

But it is sometimes said that women do not desire the ballot.

Some may not; very many do not, perhaps a majority. Such

indifference can not affect the right of those who are not

indifferent. Some men, for one or other insufficient reason,

decline to vote; but no statesman has yet urged general

disfranchisement on that account. It may be true, and in our

judgment it is, that those individuals who so fail to appreciate

the rights and obligations of freemen as to deliberately refuse

to vote should be disfranchised and made aliens, but their

offense should not be visited on vigilant and patriotic citizens.

Neither male nor female suffragists can be forced to use the

ballot, and while the individuals of each class may fail to

appreciate the privilege or recognize the duty the franchise

confers, in the main it will result otherwise.

The conservative woman who feels that her present duties are as

burdensome as she can bear, when she realizes what she can

accomplish for her country and for mankind by the ballot, will as

reverently thank God for the opportunity and will as zealously

discharge her new obligations, as will her more radical sister

who has long and wearily labored and fervently prayed for the

coming of the day of equality of rights, duties and hopes.

E. B. TAYLOR.

W. P. HEPBURN.

L. B. CASWELL.

I concur in the opinion of the minority that the resolution ought

to be adopted.

A. A. RANNEY.

FOOTNOTES:

[28] John Randolph Tucker, Va.; Nathaniel J. Hammond, Ga.; David B.

Culberson, Tex.; Patrick A. Collins, Mass.; George E. Seney, O.;

William C. Oates, Ala.; John H. Rogers, Ark.; John R. Eden, Ill.;

Risden T. Bennett, N. C.; Ezra B. Taylor, O.; Abraham X. Parker, N.

Y.; Ambrose A. Ranney, Mass.; William P. Hepburn, Ia.; John W.

Stewart, Vt.; Lucien B. Caswell, Wis.

[29] See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 715.

[30] This had been done when Miss Anthony voted in Rochester, N. Y.,

in 1872.

CHAPTER VI.

FIRST DISCUSSION AND VOTE IN THE U. S. SENATE--1887.

Although the Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage had reported

several times in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal

Constitution which should prohibit disfranchisement on account of sex,

and although Thomas W. Palmer, in 1885, had delivered a speech on the

question in the Senate, it never had been brought to a discussion and

vote.[31] Urged by the members of the National Association, and by his

own strong convictions as to the justice of the cause, Senator Henry

W. Blair (N. H.), on Dec. 8, 1886, called up the following, which he

had reported for the majority of the committee on February 2 of that

year:

JOINT RESOLUTION PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION OF

THE UNITED STATES EXTENDING THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE TO WOMEN.

_Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the

United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of

each House concurring therein)_, That the following article be

proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an

amendment to the Constitution of the United States; which, when

ratified by three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be

valid as part of said Constitution, namely:

SECTION 1. 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 sex.

SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate

legislation, to enforce the provisions of this article.

Senator Blair supported this resolution in a long and comprehensive

speech, that will be recorded in history as one of the ablest ever

made on this subject, in the course of which he said:[32]

Upon solemn occasions concerning grave public affairs, and when

large numbers of the citizens of the country desire to test the

sentiments of the people upon an amendment of the organic law in

the manner provided by the provisions of that law, it may well

become the duty of Congress to submit the proposition to the

amending power, which is the same as that which created the

original instrument itself--the electors of the several States.

It can hardly be claimed that two-thirds of each branch of

Congress must necessarily be convinced that the Constitution

should be amended, before it submits the same to the judgment of

the States.

If there be any principle upon which our form of government is

founded, and wherein it is different from aristocracies,

monarchies and despotisms, that principle is this: Every human

being of mature powers, not disqualified by ignorance, vice or

crime, is the equal of and is entitled to all the rights and

privileges which belong to any other human being under the law.

The independence, equality and dignity of all human souls is the

fundamental assertion of those who believe in what we call human

freedom. But we are informed that women are represented by men.

This can not reasonably be claimed unless it first be shown that

their consent has been given to such representation, or that they

lack the capacity to consent. But the exclusion of this class

from the suffrage deprives them of the power of assent to

representation even when they possess the requisite ability....

The Czar represents his whole people, just as much as voting men

represent women who do not vote at all.

True it is that the voting men, in excluding women and other

classes from the suffrage, by that act charge themselves with the

trust of administering justice to all, even as the monarch whose

power is based upon force is bound to rule uprightly. But if it

be true that "all just government is founded upon the consent of

the governed," then the government of woman by man, without her

consent given in a sovereign capacity, even if that government be

wise and just in itself, is a violation of natural right and an

enforcement of servitude against her on the part of man. If

woman, like the infant or the defective classes, be incapable of

self-government, then republican society may exclude her from all

participation in the enactment and enforcement of the laws under

which she lives. But in that case, like the infant and the idiot

and the unconsenting subject of tyrannical forms of government,

she is ruled and not represented by man. This much I desire to

say in the beginning in reply to the broad assumption of those

who deny women the suffrage by saying that they are already

represented by their fathers, their husbands, their brothers and

their sons.

The common ground upon which all agree may be stated thus: All

males having certain qualifications are in reason and in law

entitled to vote. These qualifications affect either the body or

the mind or both. The first is the attainment of a certain age.

The age in itself is not material, but maturity of mental

development is material, although soundness of body in itself is

not essential, and want of it never works forfeiture of the

right. Age as a qualification for suffrage is by no means to be

confounded with age as a qualification for service in war.

Society has well established the distinction, and also that one

has no relation whatever to the other--the one having reference

to physical prowess, while the other relates only to the mental

state. This is shown by the ages fixed by law, that of eighteen

years as the commencement of the term of presumed fitness for

military service and forty-five as the period of its termination;

while the age of presumed fitness for the suffrage, which

requires no physical superiority certainly, is set at twenty-one

years when still greater strength of body has been attained than

at the period when liability to the dangers and hardships of war

begins. There are at least three million more male voters in our

country than of the population liable by law to the performance

of military duty. It is still further to be observed that the

right of suffrage continues as long as the mind lasts, while

ordinary liability to military service ceases at a period when

the physical powers, though still strong, are beginning to wane.

The truth is that there is no legal or natural connection between

the liability to fight and the right to vote.

The right to fight may be exercised voluntarily, or the liability

to fight may be enforced by the community, whenever there is need

for it, and the extent to which the physical forces of society

may be called upon in self-defense or in justifiable revolution

is measured not by age or sex, but by necessity, which may go so

far as to call into the field old men and women and the last

vestige of physical force. It can not be claimed that woman has

no right to vote because she is not liable to fight, for she is

so liable, and the freest government on the face of the earth has

the reserved power under the call of necessity to place her in

the forefront of the battle itself; and more than this, woman has

the right, and often has exercised it, to go there. If any one

could question the existence of this reserved power to call woman

to the common defense, either in the hospital or the field, it

would be woman herself, who has been deprived of participation in

the Government and in shaping public policies which have resulted

in dire emergency to the State. But in all times, and under all

forms of government and of social existence, woman has given her

body and her soul to the common defense.

The qualification of age, then, is imposed for the purpose of

securing mental and moral fitness for the suffrage on the part of

those who exercise it. It has no relation to the possession of

physical powers at all.

The property qualification for suffrage is, to my mind, an

invasion of natural right, which elevates mere property to an

equality with life and personal liberty, and it ought never to be

imposed. But, however that may be, its application has no

relation to sex, and its only object is to secure the exercise of

the suffrage under a stronger sense of obligation and

responsibility. The same is true of the qualifications of sanity,

education and obedience to the laws, which exclude dementia,

ignorance and crime from participation in the sovereignty. Every

condition or qualification imposed upon the exercise of the

suffrage, save sex alone, has for its only object or possible

justification the possession of mental and moral fitness, and has

no relation to physical power.

The question then arises why is the qualification of masculinity

required? The distinction between human beings by reason of sex

is a physical distinction. The soul is of no sex. If there be a

distinction of soul by reason of the physical difference, woman

is the superior of man. In proof of this see the minority report

of this committee with all the eulogiums of woman pronounced by

those who, like the serpent of old, would flatter her vanity that

they may continue to wield her power. I repeat that the soul is

of no sex, and that so far as the possession and exercise of

human rights and powers are concerned, sex is but a physical

property, whose possession renders the female just as important

as the male, and in just as great need of power in the government

of society. If there be a difference, however, her average

physical inferiority is really compensated for by a superior

mental and moral fitness to give direction to the course of

society and to the policy of the State. If, then, there be a

distinction between the souls of human beings resulting from sex,

woman is better fitted for the exercise of the suffrage than man.

It is asserted by some that the suffrage is an inherent natural

right, and by others that it is merely a privilege extended to

the individual by society at its discretion. However this may be,

its extension to any class must come through the exercise of the

suffrage by those who already possess it. Therefore, the appeal

by those who have it not must be made to those who are asked to

part with a portion of their own power. It is only human nature

that the male sex should hesitate to yield one-half of its power

to those whose cause, however strong in reason and justice, lacks

that physical force by which so largely the masses of men

themselves have wrung their own rights from rulers and kings.

It is not strange that when overwhelmed with argument and half

won by appeals to his better nature, and ashamed to refuse

blankly that which he finds no reason for longer withholding, man

avoids the dilemma by a pretended elevation of woman to a higher

sphere, where, as an angel, she has certain gauzy, ethereal

resources and superior attributes and functions which render the

possession of mere earthly, every-day powers and privileges

non-essential to her, however mere mortal men may find them

indispensable to their own freedom and happiness. But to the

denial of her right to vote, whether that denial be the blunt

refusal of the ignorant or the polished evasion of the refined

courtier and politician, woman can oppose only her most solemn

and perpetual appeal to the reason of man and to the justice of

Almighty God. She must continually point out the nature and

object of the suffrage and the necessity that she possess it for

her own and the public good.

What, then, is the suffrage, and why is it necessary that woman

should possess and exercise this function of freemen? I quote

briefly from the majority report of the Senate Committee:[33]

"The rights for the maintenance of which human governments are

constituted are life, liberty and property. These rights are

common to men and women alike and both are entitled to the

sovereign power to protect these rights. This right to the

protection of rights appertains to the individual, not to the

family, or to any form of association, whether social or

corporate. Probably not more than five-eighths of the men of

legal age, qualified to vote, are heads of families, and not more

than that proportion of adult women are united with men in the

legal merger of married life. It is, therefore, quite incorrect

to speak of the State as an aggregate of families duly

represented at the ballot-box by their male head. The relation

between the government and the individual is direct; all rights

are individual rights, all duties are individual duties.

"Government in its two highest functions is legislative and

judicial. By these powers the sovereignty prescribes the law and

directs its application to the vindication of rights and the

redress of wrongs. Conscience and intelligence are the only

forces which enter into the exercise of these primary and highest

functions of government. The remaining department is the

executive or administrative, and in all forms of government the

primary element of administration is force, but even in this

department conscience and intelligence are indispensable to its

direction.

"If, now, we are to decide who of our sixty millions of human

beings are, by virtue of their qualifications, to be the

law-making power, by what tests shall the selection be

determined? The suffrage is this great primary law-making power.

It is not the executive power. It is not founded upon force.

Never in the history of this or any other genuine republic has

the law-making power, whether in general elections or in the

framing of laws in legislative assemblies, been vested in

individuals by reason of their physical powers....

"The executive power of itself is a mere physical

instrumentality--an animal quality--and it is confided from

necessity to those who possess that quality, but always with

danger, except so far as wisdom and virtue control its exercise.

Therefore it is obvious that the greater the spiritual forces,

whether found in those who execute the law, or in the large body

by whom the suffrage is exercised, and who direct its execution,

the greater will be the safety and the surer will be the

happiness of the State.

"It is too late to question the intellectual and moral capacity

of woman to understand political issues and intelligently decide

them at the polls. Indeed the pretense is no longer advanced that

woman should not vote because of her mental or moral unfitness to

perform this legislative function; but the suffrage is denied to

her because she can neither hang criminals, suppress mobs nor

handle the enginery of war. We have already seen the untenable

nature of this assumption, because those who make it bestow the

suffrage upon very large classes of men who, however well

qualified they may be to vote, are physically unable to perform

any of the duties which appertain to the execution of the law and

the defense of the State. Scarcely a Senator on this floor is

liable by law to perform military or other administrative duty,

yet this rule set up against the right of women to vote would

disfranchise nearly this whole body.

"But it is unnecessary to grant that woman can not fight. History

is full of examples of her heroism in danger, of her endurance

and fortitude in trial, of her indispensable and supreme service

in hospital and field.... It is hardly worth while to consider

this trivial objection--that she is incompetent for purposes of

national murder or of bloody self-defense--as the basis for

denying a fundamental right, when we consider that if this right

were given to her she would by its very exercise almost certainly

abolish this great crime of the nations, which has always

inflicted upon woman the chief burden of woe."

Mr. Blair then demonstrated the intellectual ability of the woman of

the present day, proving in this respect her capacity and fitness to

vote. He quoted from the minority report of the Senate Committee,

which had been submitted by Senators Brown and Cockrell, saying:

It proceeds to show that both man and woman are designed for a

higher final estate--to-wit, that of matrimony. It seems to be

conceded that man is just as well fitted for matrimony as woman

herself, and the whole subject is illuminated with certain

botanical lore about stamens and pistils, which, however relevant

to matrimony, does not prove that woman should not vote unless at

the same time it proves that man should not vote. And certainly

it can not apply to those women, any more than to those men,

whose highest and final estate never is merged in the family

relation at all....

The right to vote is the great primitive right in which all

freedom originates and culminates. It is the right from which all

others spring, in which they merge, and without which they fall

whenever assailed. This right makes all the difference between

government by and with the consent of the governed, and

government without and against the consent of the governed; and

that is the difference between freedom and slavery. If the right

to vote be not that difference, what is? If either sex as a class

can dispense with the right to vote, then take it from the

strong and do not longer rob the weak of their defense for the

benefit of the strong. But it is impossible to conceive of the

suffrage as a right dependent at all upon such an irrelevant

condition as sex. It is an individual, a personal right, and if

withheld by reason of sex it is a moral robbery.

It is said that the duties of maternity disqualify for the

performance of the act of voting. It can not be, and I think is

not claimed by any one, that the mother who otherwise would be

fit to vote is rendered mentally or morally less fit to exercise

this high function in the State because of motherhood. On the

contrary, if any woman has a motive more than another person, man

or woman, to secure the enactment and enforcement of good laws,

it is the mother, who, besides her own life, person and

property--to the protection of which the ballot is as essential

as to those of man--has her little contingent of immortal beings

to conduct safely to the portals of active life through all the

snares and pitfalls woven around them by bad men and bad laws,

and to prepare rightly for the discharge of all the duties of

their day and generation, including, if boys, the exercise of the

very right denied to their mother.

Certainly if but for motherhood woman should vote, then ten

thousand times more necessary is it that the mother should be

armed with this great social and political power for the sake of

all men and women who are yet to be. It is said that she has not

the time. Let us see. By the best deductions I can make from the

census and from other sources, of the women of voting age in this

country not more than one-half are married and still liable to

the duties of maternity; for it will be remembered that a

considerable proportion of the mothers at any given time are

below the voting age, while another large proportion have passed

beyond the point of this objection. Then why disfranchise the

half to whom your objection, even if valid as to any, does not

apply at all; and most of these, too, the most mature and

therefore the best qualified to vote of any of their sex?