But how much is there of this objection of want of time or

physical strength to vote in its application to those women who

are bearing and training the coming millions?... The average

mother will attend church at least forty times yearly from her

cradle to her grave; and there is, besides, an infinity of other

social, religious and industrial obligations which she performs

because she is a married woman and a mother rather than for any

other reason whatever. Yet it is proposed to deprive all women

alike of an inestimable privilege for the reason that on any

given day of election perhaps one woman in twenty of voting age

may not be able to reach the polls....

When one thinks of the innumerable and trifling causes which keep

many of the best of men and the strongest opponents of woman

suffrage from the polls upon important occasions, it is difficult

to be tolerant of the objection that woman by reason of

motherhood has no time to vote....

It is urged that woman does not desire the privilege. If the

right exist at all it is an individual right, and not one which

belongs to a class or to the sex as such. Yet men tell us that

they will vote to give the suffrage to women whenever the

majority of women desire it. What would we say if it were

seriously proposed to recall the suffrage from all colored or

from all white men because a majority of either class should

decline or for any cause fail to vote? If one or many choose not

to claim their right it is no argument for depriving me of mine

or one woman of hers. There are many reasons why some women

declare themselves opposed to the extension of suffrage to their

sex. Some well-fed and pampered, without serious experiences in

life, are incapable of comprehending the subject at all. Vast

numbers, who secretly and earnestly desire it, from the long

habit of deference to the wishes of the other sex upon whom they

are so entirely dependent, and knowing the hostility of their

"protectors" to it, conceal their real sentiments. The "lord" of

the family referring this question to his wife, who has heard him

sneer or worse than sneer at suffragists for half a lifetime,

ought not expect an answer which she knows will subject her to

his censure and ridicule. It is like the old appeal of the master

to his slave to know if he would like to be free. Full well did

the wise and wary slave know that happiness depended upon

declaring contentment with his lot....

We are told that husband and wife will disagree and thus the

suffrage will destroy the family and ruin society. If a married

couple will quarrel at all, they will find the occasion, and it

would be fortunate indeed if their contention might concern

important affairs. There is no peace in the family save where

love is, and the same spirit which enables husband and wife to

enforce the toleration act between themselves in religious

matters will keep the peace between them in political

discussions. At all events this argument is unworthy of notice

unless we are to push it to its logical conclusion, and, for the

sake of peace in the family, to prohibit woman absolutely the

exercise of free speech and action. Men live with their

countrymen and yet disagree with them in politics, religion and

ten thousand of the affairs of life, as often the trifling as the

important. What harm, then, if woman be allowed her thought and

vote upon the tariff, education, temperance, peace, war, and

whatsoever else the suffrage decides.

We are told that no government of which we have authentic history

ever gave to women a share in the sovereignty. This is not true,

for the annals of monarchies and despotisms have been rendered

illustrious by queens of surpassing brilliance and power. But

even if it be true that no nation ever enfranchised woman--even

so until within one hundred years universal or even general

suffrage was unknown among men.

Has the millennium yet dawned? Is all progress at an end? If that

which is should therefore remain, why abolish the slavery of men?

We are informed that woman does not vote when she has the

opportunity. Wherever she has the unrestricted right she

exercises it. The records of Wyoming and Washington demonstrate

this fact.

Mr. Blair then quoted the statistics embodied in the report of the

committee, showing the slow but sure progress of the enfranchisement

of women, and concluded:

It is sometimes urged against this movement for the submission of

a resolution for a National Constitutional Amendment that women

should go to the States and fight it out there. But we did not

send the colored man to the States. No other amendment touching

the general national interest has been left to be fought out by

individual action in the separate States....

We only ask for woman an opportunity to bring her suit in the

great court for the amendment of fundamental law. It is

impossible for any right mind to escape the impression of solemn

responsibility which attaches to our decision. Ridicule and wit

of whatever quality are here as much out of place as in the

debates upon the Declaration of Independence. We are affirming or

denying the right of petition which by all law belongs as much to

women as to men....

Let us by our action to-day indorse, if we do not initiate, a

movement which, in the development of our race, shall guarantee

liberty to all without distinction of sex, even as our glorious

Constitution already grants the suffrage to every male citizen

without distinction of color or race.

As Senator Brown was absent, Senator Cockrell objected to a

consideration of the resolution and it was postponed. The minority

report of the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage signed by these two

Senators consisted wholly of extracts from a series of anonymous

articles which had appeared in the Chicago _Tribune_, entitled

"Letters from a Chimney-Corner."

On January 25, 1887, Senator Blair again called up his resolution and

a spirited debate followed. Senators Joseph E. Brown (Ga.) and George

G. Vest (Mo.) represented the negative; Henry W. Blair (N. H.) and

Joseph N. Dolph (Ore.) the affirmative. Senator Brown opened the

discussion by presenting, word for word, the report signed by Senator

Francis M. Cockrell (Mo.) and himself in 1884. It embodied the stock

objections to woman suffrage, practically all in fact which are ever

made, and was in part as follows:[34]

Mr. President, the joint resolution introduced by my friend, the

Senator from New Hampshire, proposing an amendment to the

Constitution of the United States, conferring the right to vote

upon the women of the United States, is one of paramount

importance, as it involves great questions far-reaching in their

tendency, which seriously affect the very pillars of our social

fabric, which involve the peace and harmony of society, the unity

of the family, and much of the future success of our

Government....

I believe that the Creator intended that the sphere of the males

and females of our race should be different, and that their

duties and obligations, while they differ materially, are equally

important and equally honorable, and that each sex is equally

well qualified by natural endowments for the discharge of the

important duties which pertain to each, and that each sex is

equally competent to discharge those duties.

We find an abundance of evidence, both _in the works of nature_

and in the Divine revelation, to establish the fact that the

family properly regulated is the foundation and pillar of

society, and is the most important of any other human

institution. In the Divine economy it is provided that the man

shall be the head of the family, and shall take upon himself the

solemn obligation of providing for and protecting the family.

Man, by reason of his physical strength, and his other endowments

and faculties, is qualified for the discharge of those duties

that require strength and ability to combat with the sterner

realities and difficulties of life. It is not only his duty to

provide for and protect the family, but as a member of the

community it is also his duty to discharge the laborious and

responsible obligations which the family owe to the State, and

which obligations must be discharged by the head of the family,

until the male members have grown up to manhood and are able to

aid in the discharge of those obligations, when it becomes their

duty each in turn to take charge of and rear a family, for which

he is responsible.

Among other duties which the head of the family owes to the State

is military duty in time of war, which he, _when able-bodied_, is

able to discharge and which the female members of the family are

unable to discharge.[35]

He is also under obligation to discharge jury duty,[36] and by

himself _or his representatives_ to perform his part of the labor

necessary to construct and keep in order roads, bridges, streets

and all grades of public highways.[37] And in this progressive

age upon the male sex is devolved the duty of constructing and

operating our railroads, and the engines and other rolling stock

with which they are operated; of building, equipping and

launching shipping and other water craft of every character

necessary for the transportation of passengers and freight upon

our rivers, our lakes, and upon the high seas.

The labor in our fields, sowing, cultivating and reaping crops

must be discharged _mainly_ by the male sex, as the female sex,

for want of physical strength, are generally unable to discharge

these duties. As it is the duty of the male sex to perform the

obligations to the State, to society and to the family, already

mentioned, with numerous others that might be enumerated, it is

also their duty to aid in the government of the State, which is

simply a great aggregation of families.[38] Society can not be

preserved nor can the people be prosperous without good

government. The government of our country is a government _of the

people_, and it becomes necessary that the _class_ of people upon

whom the responsibility rests should assemble together and

consider and discuss the great questions of governmental policy

which from time to time are presented for their decision.

This often requires the assembling of caucuses in the night time,

as well as public assemblages in the daytime. It is a _laborious

task_, for which the male sex is infinitely better fitted than

the female sex; and after proper consideration and discussion of

the measures that may divide the country from time to time, the

duty devolves upon those who are responsible for the government,

at times and places to be fixed by law, to meet and by ballot to

decide the great questions of government upon which the

prosperity of the country depends.

These are some of the _active and sterner duties_ of life to

which the male sex is by nature better fitted than the female

sex. If in carrying out the policy of the State on great measures

adjudged vital such policy should lead to war, either foreign or

domestic, it would seem to follow very naturally that those who

have been responsible for the management of the State should be

the parties to take the hazards and hardships of the

struggle.[39] Here again man is better fitted by nature for the

discharge of the duty--woman is unfit for it.

On the other hand, the Creator has assigned to woman very

laborious and responsible duties, _by no means less important_

than those imposed upon the male sex, though entirely different

in their character.[40] In the family she is a _queen_. She alone

is fitted for the discharge of the sacred trust of wife and the

endearing relation of mother. While the man is contending with

the sterner duties of life, _the whole time_ of the noble,

affectionate and true woman is required in the discharge of the

delicate and difficult duties assigned her in the family circle,

in her church relations and in the society where her lot is cast.

When the husband returns home weary and worn in the discharge of

the difficult and laborious tasks assigned him, he finds in the

good wife solace and consolation which is nowhere else afforded.

But a still more important duty devolves upon the mother. After

having brought into existence the offspring of the nuptial union,

the children are dependent upon the mother _as they are not upon

any other human being_. The trust is a most sacred, most

responsible and most important one. She molds the character. She

educates the heart as well as the intellect, and she prepares the

future man, now the boy, for honor or dishonor. Upon the manner

in which she discharges her duty depends the fact whether he

shall in future be a useful citizen or a burden to society. She

inculcates lessons of patriotism, manliness, religion and virtue,

_fitting the man by reason of his training_ to be an ornament to

society, or dooming him by her neglect to a life of dishonor and

shame. Society acts unwisely, when it imposes upon her the duties

that by common consent have always been assigned to the stronger

and sterner sex, and the discharge of which causes her to neglect

those sacred and all-important duties to her children and to the

society of which they are members.[41]

In the church, by her piety, her charity and her Christian

purity, she not only aids society by a proper training of her own

children, but the children of others, whom she encourages to come

to the sacred altar. In the Sunday-school room the good woman is

a _princess_ and she exerts an influence which purifies and

ennobles society. In the sick room and among the humble, the poor

and the suffering the good woman is an _angel_ of light....

If the wife and the mother is required to leave the sacred

precincts of home and to attempt to do military duty when the

State is in peril; or if she is to be required to leave her home

from day to day in attendance upon the court as a juror, and to

be shut up in the jury room from night to night with men who are

strangers, while a question of life or property is being

discussed; if she is to attend political meetings, take part in

political discussions and mingle with the male sex at political

gatherings; if she is to become an active politician; if she is

to attend political caucuses at late hours of the night; if she

is to take part in all the unsavory work that may be deemed

necessary for the triumph of her party; and if on election day

she is to leave her home and go upon the streets electioneering

for votes for the candidates who receive her support, and

mingling among the crowds of men who gather round the polls, she

is to press her way through them to the precinct and deposit her

ballot; if she is to take part in the corporate struggles of the

city or town in which she resides, attend to the duties of his

honor, the mayor, the councilman, or of policeman, to say nothing

of the many other like obligations which are disagreeable (!)

even to the male sex, how is she, with all these heavy duties of

citizen, politician and officeholder resting upon her shoulders,

to attend to the more sacred, delicate, refining trust to which

we have already referred, and for which she is peculiarly fitted

by nature? Who is to care for and train the children while she

is absent in the discharge of these masculine duties?[42]

But it has been said that the present law is unjust to woman;

that she is _often_ required to pay tax on the property she holds

without being permitted to take part in framing or administering

the laws by which her property is governed, and that she is taxed

without representation. _That is a great mistake._ It may be very

doubtful whether the male or female sex in the present state of

things has more influence in the administration of the affairs of

the government and the enactment of the laws by which we are

governed.[43]

While the woman does not discharge military duty, nor does she

attend courts and serve on juries, nor does she labor on the

public streets, bridges or highways, nor does she engage actively

and publicly in the discussion of political affairs, nor does she

enter the _crowded precincts of the ballot-box_ to deposit her

suffrage, still the intelligent, cultivated, noble woman is a

power behind the throne. All her influence is in favor of

morality, justice and fair dealing, all her efforts and her

counsel are in favor of good government, wise and wholesome

regulations and a faithful administration of the laws.[44] ...

It would be a gratification, and we are always glad to see the

ladies gratified, to many who have espoused the cause of woman

suffrage if they could take active part in political affairs and

go to the polls and cast their votes alongside the male sex; but

while this would be a gratification to a large number of very

worthy and excellent ladies who take a different view of the

question from that which we entertain, we feel that it would be a

great cruelty to a much larger number of the cultivated, refined,

delicate and lovely women of this country who seek no such

distinction, who would enjoy no such privilege, who would with

womanlike delicacy shrink from the discharge of any such

obligation, and who would sincerely regret that what they

consider the folly of the State had imposed upon them any such

unpleasant duties. But should female suffrage be once established

it would become an imperative necessity that the very large

class, indeed much the largest class, of the women of this

country of the character last described should yield, contrary to

their inclinations and wishes, to the necessity which would

compel them to engage in political strife.

We apprehend no one who has properly considered this question

will doubt, if female suffrage should be established, that the

more ignorant and less refined portions of the female population,

to say nothing of the baser class of females, laying aside

feminine delicacy and disregarding the sacred duties devolving

upon them, to which we have already referred, would rush to the

polls and take pleasure in the crowded association which the

situation would compel, of the two sexes in political meetings

and at the ballot-box....

It is now a problem which perplexes the brain of the ablest

statesmen to determine how we will best preserve our republican

system as against the demoralizing influence of the large class

of our present citizens and voters who by reason of their

illiteracy are unable to read or write the ballot they cast. If

our colored population, who were so recently slaves that even the

males who are voters have had but little opportunity to educate

themselves or to be educated, whose ignorance is now exciting the

liveliest interest of our statesmen, are causes of serious

apprehension, what is to be said in favor of adding to the voting

population all the females of that race, who, on account of the

situation in which they have been placed, have had much less

opportunity to be educated than even the males of their own

race?[45]

It may be said that their votes could be offset by the ballots of

the educated and refined ladies of the white race in the same

section; but who does not know that the ignorant female voters

would be at the polls _en masse_, while the refined and educated,

shrinking from public contact on such occasions, would remain at

home and attend to their domestic and other important duties?[46]

Are we ready to expose the country to the demoralization, and our

institutions to the strain, which would be placed upon them, for

the gratification of a minority of the virtuous and good of our

female population at the expense of the mortification of a very

large majority of the same sex?

It has been frequently urged that the ballot is necessary to

women to enable them to protect themselves in securing

occupations, and to enable them to realize the same compensation

for the like labor which is received by men. This argument is

plausible, but upon a closer examination it will be found to

possess but little real force. The price of labor is and must

continue to be governed by the law of supply and demand, and the

person who has the most physical strength to labor, and the most

pursuits requiring such strength open for employment, will always

command the higher prices.

Ladies make excellent teachers in public schools; many of them

are every way the equals of their male competitors, and still

they secure less wages than males. The reason is obvious. The

number of ladies who offer themselves as teachers is much larger

than the number of males who are willing to teach. The larger

number of females offer to teach _because other occupations are

not open to them_. The smaller number of males offer to teach

_because other more profitable occupations are open_ to most

males who are competent to teach....

The ballot can not impart to the female physical strength which

she does not possess, nor can it open to her pursuits which she

does not have physical ability to engage in; and as long as she

lacks the physical strength to compete with men in the different

departments of labor, there will be more competition in her

department, and she must necessarily receive less wages.[47]

But it is claimed again that females should have the ballot as a

protection against the tyranny of bad husbands. This is also

delusive. If the husband is brutal, arbitrary or tyrannical, and

tyrannizes over her at home, the ballot in her hands would be no

protection against such injustice, but the husband who compelled

her to conform to his wishes in other respects would also compel

her to use the ballot, if she possessed it, as he might please to

dictate. The ballot would, therefore, be of no assistance to the

wife in such case, nor could it heal family strifes or

dissensions. On the contrary, one of the gravest objections to

placing the ballot in the hands of the female sex is that it

would promote unhappiness and dissensions in the family circle.

There should be unity and harmony in the family.[48] ...

When woman becomes a voter she will be more or less of a

politician, and will form political alliances or unite with

political parties which will frequently be antagonistic to those

to which her husband belongs. This will introduce into the family

circle new elements of disagreement and discord which will

frequently end in unhappy divisions, if not in separation and

divorce. This must frequently occur when she becomes an active

politician, identified with a party which is distasteful to her

husband. On the other hand, if she unites with her husband in

party associations and votes with him on all occasions so as not

to disturb the harmony and happiness of the family, then the

ballot is of no service, as it simply _duplicates the vote of the

male_ on each side of the question and leaves the result the

same.[49] ...

It may be said, however, that there is a class of young ladies

who do not choose to marry, and who select professions or

avocations and follow them for a livelihood. This is true, but

this class, compared with the number who unite in matrimony with

the husbands of their choice, is comparatively very small, and it

is the duty of society to encourage the increase of marriages

rather than of celibacy. If the larger number of females select

pursuits or professions which require them to decline marriage,

society to that extent is deprived of the advantage resulting

from the increase of population by marriage.

It is said by those who have examined the question closely that

the largest number of divorces is now found in the communities

where the advocates of female suffrage are most numerous, and

where the _individuality_ of woman as related to her husband,

which such a doctrine inculcates, is increased to the greatest

extent.[50] ...

Senator Brown then introduced a long quotation from the

"Chimney-Corner," covering so exactly the ground of his speech and in

so nearly the same language as to suggest, if not collusion, at least

"two souls with but a single thought," which he thus emphasized in

closing:

The woman with the infant at the breast is in no condition to

plow on the farm, labor hard in the workshop, discharge the

duties of a juryman, conduct cases as an advocate in court,

preside in important cases as a judge, command armies as a

general, or bear arms as a private. These duties, and others of

like character, belong to the male sex; while the more important

duties of home, to which I have already referred, devolve upon

the female sex. We can neither reverse the physical nor the moral

laws of our nature, and as this movement is an attempt to reverse

these laws, and to devolve upon the female sex important and

laborious duties for which they are not by nature physically

competent, I am not prepared to support this bill.

He was followed by Senator Dolph, who said:

Mr. President, I shall not detain the Senate long. I do not feel

satisfied, when a measure so important to the people of this

country and to humanity is about to be submitted to a vote of the

Senate, to remain wholly silent.

Fortunately for the perpetuity of our institutions and the

prosperity of the people, the Federal Constitution contains a

provision for its own amendment. The framers of that instrument

foresaw that time and experience, the growth of the country and

the consequent expansion of the Government, would develop the

necessity for changes in it. Under this provision, at the first

session of the First Congress, ten amendments were submitted to

the Legislatures of the several States, in due time ratified by

the constitutional number, and thus became a part of the

Constitution. Since then there have been added to the

Constitution by the same process five different articles. To

secure an amendment requires the concurrent action of two-thirds

of both branches of Congress and the affirmative action of

three-fourths of the States. The question as to whether this

resolution shall be submitted to the Legislatures for

ratification does not involve the right or policy of the proposed

amendment....

No question in this country has been more ably discussed than

this has been by the women themselves. I do not think a single

objection which is made to woman suffrage is tenable. No one will

contend but that women have sufficient capacity to vote

intelligently. Sacred and profane history is full of the records

of great deeds by women. They have ruled kingdoms, and, my friend

from Georgia to the contrary notwithstanding, they have commanded

armies. They have excelled in statecraft, they have shone in

literature, and, rising superior to their environments and

breaking the shackles with which custom and tyranny have bound

them, they have stood side by side with men in the fields of the

arts and the sciences.

If it were a fact that woman is intellectually inferior to man,

which I do not admit, still that would be no reason why she

should not be permitted to participate in the formation and

control of the government to which she owes allegiance. If we are

to have as a test for the exercise of the right of suffrage a

qualification based upon intelligence, let it be applied to women

and to men alike. If it be admitted that suffrage is a right,

that is the end of controversy; there can no longer be any

argument made against woman suffrage; because, if it is her

right, then, if there were but one poor woman in all the United

States demanding the right it would be tyranny to refuse the

demand.

But our opponents say that suffrage is not a right; that it is a

matter of grace only; that it is a privilege which is conferred

upon or withheld from individual members of society by society at

pleasure. Society as here used means man's government, and the

proposition assumes that men have a right to institute and

control governments for themselves and for women. I admit that in

the governments of the world, past and present, men as a rule

have assumed to be the ruling class; that they have instituted

governments from participation in which they have excluded women;

that they have made laws for themselves and for women, and have

themselves administered them. But, that the provisions conferring

or regulating suffrage, in the constitutions and laws of

governments so constituted, have determined the question of the

_right_ of suffrage, can not be maintained.

Let us suppose, if we can, a community separated from all

others--having no organized government, owing no allegiance to

any existing governments, without any knowledge of the character

of those present or past, so that when they come to form one for

themselves they can do so free from the bias or prejudice of

custom or education--a community composed of an equal number of

men and women, having equal property rights to be defined and to

be protected by law. When such community came to institute a

government--and it would have an undoubted right to institute one

for itself, and the instinct of self-preservation would soon lead

it to do so--will my friend from Georgia tell me by what right,

human or divine, the male portion could exclude the female

portion, equal in number and having equal property rights, from

participation in the formation of such government and in the

enactment of its laws? I understand that the Senator, if he

would answer, would say that he believes the author of our

existence, the ruler of the universe, has given different spheres

to man and woman. Admit that; and still neither in nature nor in

the revealed will of God do I find anything to lead me to believe

that the Creator did not intend that a woman should exercise the

right of self-government.

During the consideration by this body, at the last session, of

the bill to admit Washington Territory into the Union, referring

to the fact that in that Territory woman already had been

enfranchised, I briefly submitted my views on this subject, which

I now ask the Secretary to read.

The Secretary read as follows: " ... I do not believe the

proposition so often asserted that suffrage is a political

privilege only, and not a natural right. It is regulated by the

constitution and laws of a State, I grant, but it needs no

argument to show that a constitution and laws adopted and enacted

by a fragment only of the whole body of the people, but binding

alike on all, are a usurpation of the powers of government.

"Government is but organized society. Whatever its form, it has

its origin in the necessities of mankind and is indispensable for

the maintenance of civilized society. It is essential to every

government that it should represent the supreme power of the

State, and be capable of subjecting the will of its individual

citizens to its authority. Such a government can derive its just

powers only from the consent of the governed, and can be

established only under a fundamental law which is self-imposed.

Every person of suitable age and discretion who is to be subject

to such a government has, in my judgment, a natural right to

participate in its formation. It is a significant fact that,

should Congress pass this bill and authorize the people of

Washington Territory to frame a State constitution and organize a

State government, the fundamental law of the State would be made

by all the citizens who were to be subject to it, and not by

one-half of them. And we shall witness the spectacle of a State

government founded in accordance with the principles of equality,

and have a State at last with a truly republican form of

government.[51]

"The fathers of the republic enunciated the doctrine 'that all

men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator

with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life,

liberty and the pursuit of happiness.' It is strange that any one

in this enlightened age should be found to contend that this

declaration is true only of men, and that a man is endowed by his

Creator with inalienable rights not possessed by a woman. The

lamented Lincoln immortalized the expression that ours is a

government 'of the people, by the people and for the people,' and

yet it is far from that. There can be no government by the people

where one-half of them are allowed no voice in its organization

and control. I regard the struggle going on in this country and

elsewhere for the enfranchisement of women as but a continuation

of the great struggle for human liberty which, from the earliest

dawn of authentic history, has convulsed nations, rent kingdoms

and drenched battlefields with human blood. I look upon the

victories which have been achieved in the cause of woman's

enfranchisement in Washington Territory and elsewhere, as the

crowning victories of all which have been won in the

long-continued, still-continuing contest between liberty and

oppression, and as destined to exert a greater influence upon the

human race than any achieved upon the battlefield in ancient or

modern times."

Mr. President, the movement for woman suffrage has passed the

stage of ridicule. The pending joint resolution may not pass

during this Congress, but the time is not far distant when in

every State of the Union and in every Territory women will be

admitted to an equal voice in the government, and that will be

done whether the Federal Constitution is amended or not....

No measure involving such radical changes in our institutions and

fraught with so great consequences to this country and to

humanity has made such progress as the movement for woman

suffrage. Denunciation will not much longer answer for arguments

by the opponents of this measure. The portrayal of the evils to

flow from woman suffrage such as we have heard pictured to-day by

the Senator from Georgia, the loss of harmony between husband and

wife and the consequent instability of the marriage relation, the

neglect of husbands and children by wives and mothers for the

performance of their political duties, in short the

incapacitating of women for wives and mothers and companions,

will not much longer serve to frighten the timid. Proof is better

than theory. The experiment has been made and the predicted evils

to flow from it have not followed. On the contrary, if we can

believe the almost universal testimony, wherever it has been

tried it has been followed by the most beneficial results.

In Washington Territory, since woman was enfranchised, there have

been two elections. At the first there were 8,368 votes cast by

women out of a total vote of about 34,000. At the second

election, which was held in November last, out of 48,000 votes,

12,000 were cast by women.

I desire also to inform my friend from Georgia that since women

were enfranchised in Washington Territory nature has continued in

her wonted course. The sun rises and sets; there are seed-time

and harvest; seasons come and go. The population has increased

with the usual regularity and rapidity. Marriages have been quite

as frequent and divorces have been no more so. Women have not

lost their influence for good upon society, but men have been

elevated and refined. If we are to believe the testimony which

comes from lawyers, physicians, ministers of the gospel,

merchants, mechanics, farmers and laboring men--the united

testimony of the entire people of the Territory--the results of

woman suffrage there have been all that could be desired by its

friends. Some of the results have been seen in its making the

polls quiet and orderly, awakening a new interest in educational

questions and those of moral reform, securing the passage of

beneficial laws and the proper enforcement of them, elevating

men, and doing so without injury to women.

Senator James B. Eustis (La.) inquired whether, if the right of

suffrage were conferred, women ought to be required to serve on

juries. To this Senator Dolph replied: "I can answer that very

readily. It does not necessarily follow that because a woman is

permitted to vote and thus have a voice in making the laws by which

she is to be governed and by which her property rights are to be

determined, she must perform such duty as service upon a jury. But I

will inform the Senator that in Washington Territory she does serve

upon juries, and with great satisfaction to the judges of the courts

and to all parties who desire to see an honest and efficient

administration of law." The following colloquy then ensued:

MR. EUSTIS: I was aware of the fact that women are required to

serve on juries in Washington Territory because they are allowed

to vote. I understand that under all State laws those duties are

considered correlative. Now, I ask the Senator whether he thinks

it is a decent spectacle to take a mother away from her nursing

infant and lock her up all night to sit on a jury?

MR. DOLPH: I intended to say before I reached this point of being

interrogated that I not only do not believe that there is a

single argument against woman suffrage which is tenable, but also

that there is not a single one which is really worthy of any

serious consideration. The Senator from Louisiana is a lawyer,

and he knows very well that a mother with a nursing infant, that

fact being made known to the court, would be excused. He knows

himself, and he has seen it done a hundred times, that for

trivial excuses compared to that, men have been excused from

service on a jury.

MR. EUSTIS: I will ask the Senator whether he knows that under

the laws of Washington Territory this is a legal excuse from

serving on a jury?

MR. DOLPH: I am not prepared to state that it is; but there is no

question in the world but that any Judge, this fact being made

known, would excuse a woman from attendance upon a jury. No

special authority would be required. I will state further that I

have not learned that there has been any serious objection on the

part of any woman summoned for jury service in that Territory to

performing that duty. I have not learned that it has worked to

the disadvantage of any family, but I do know that the judges of

the courts have taken especial pains to commend the women who

have been called to serve upon juries for the manner in which

they have discharged their duty.

I wish to say further that there is no connection whatever

between jury service and the right of suffrage. The question as

to who shall perform jury service, who shall perform military

service, who shall perform civil official duty, is certainly a

matter to be regulated by the community itself; but the question

of the right to participate in the formation of a government

which controls the life, the property and the destinies of its

citizens, I contend is one which goes back of these mere

regulations for the protection of property and the punishment of

offenses under the laws. It is a matter of right which it is a

tyranny to refuse to any citizen demanding it.

Now, Mr. President, I shall close by saying, God speed the day

when not only in all the States of the Union and in all the

Territories, but everywhere, woman shall stand before the law

freed from the last shackle which has been riveted upon her by

tyranny and the last disability which has been imposed upon her

by ignorance--not only in respect to the right of suffrage but in

every other respect the peer and equal of her brother, man.

Senator Vest then entered into a long and elaborate discussion of the

resolution, in which he said:

Mr. President, any measure of legislation which affects popular

government based on _the will of the people as expressed through

their suffrage_ is not only important but vitally so. If this

government which is based on _the intelligence of the people_,

shall ever be destroyed it will be by injudicious, immature or

corrupt suffrage. If the Ship of State launched by our fathers

shall ever be destroyed, it will be by striking the rock of

universal, unprepared suffrage. Suffrage once given can never be

taken away. Legislatures and conventions may do everything else;

they never can do that. When any particular class or portion of

the community is once invested with this privilege _it is fixed,

accomplished and eternal_.[52]

The Senator who spoke last on this question refers to the

successful experiment in regard to woman suffrage in the

Territories of Wyoming and Washington. It is not upon the plains

of the sparsely-settled Territories of the West that woman

suffrage can be tested. Suffrage in the rural districts and

sparsely-settled regions of this country must from the very

nature of things remain pure when corrupt everywhere else. The

danger of corrupt suffrage is in the cities, and those masses of

population to which civilization tends everywhere in all history.

Wyoming Territory! Washington Territory! Where are their large

cities? Where are the localities in which the strain upon popular

government must come?

The Senator from New Hampshire, who is so conspicuous in this

movement, appalled the country some months since by his ghastly

array of illiteracy in the Southern States.... He proposes to

give the negro women of the South this right of suffrage, utterly

unprepared as they are for it. In a convention some

two-years-and-a-half ago in the city of Louisville an

intelligent negro from the South said the negro men could not

vote the Democratic ticket because the women would not live with

them if they did. The negro men go out in the hotels and upon the

railroad cars; they go to the cities and by attrition they wear

away the prejudice of race; but the women remain at home, and

their emotional natures aggregate and compound the

race-prejudice, and when suffrage is given them what must be the

result?

Mr. President, it is not my purpose to speak of the

inconveniences, for they are nothing more, of woman suffrage.[53]

I trust that as a gentleman I respect the feelings of the ladies

and their advocates. I am not here to ridicule. My purpose only

is to use legitimate argument as to a movement which commands

respectful consideration if for no other reason than because it

comes from women. But it is impossible to divest ourselves of a

certain degree of sentiment when considering this question. I

pity the man who can consider any question affecting the

influence of woman with the cold, dry logic of business. What man

can, without aversion, turn from the blessed memory of that dear

old grandmother, or the gentle words and caressing hand of that

blessed mother gone to the unknown world, to face in its stead

the idea of a female justice of the peace or township constable?

For my part I want when I go to my home--when I turn from the

arena where man contends with man for what we call the prizes of

this paltry world--I want to go back, not to be received in the

masculine embrace of some female ward politician, but to the

earnest, loving look and touch of a true woman. I want to go back

to the jurisdiction of the wife, the mother; and instead of a

lecture upon finance or the tariff or the construction of the

Constitution, I want those blessed, loving details of domestic

life and domestic love.

I have said I would not speak of the inconveniences to arise from

woman suffrage--when the mother is called upon to decide as a

juryman or jurywoman rights of property or rights of life, whilst

her baby is "mewling and puking" in solitary confinement at home.

There are other considerations more important, and one of them to

my mind is insuperable. I speak now respecting women as a sex. I

believe that they are better than men, but I do not believe they

are adapted to the political work of this world. I do not believe

that the Great Intelligence ever intended them to invade the

sphere of work given to men, tearing down and destroying all the

best influences for which God has intended them.

The great evil in this country to-day is in emotional suffrage.

The great danger to-day is in excitable suffrage. If the voters

of this country could think always coolly, and if they could

deliberate, if they could go by judgment and not by passion, our

institutions would survive forever, eternal as the foundations of

the continent itself; but massed together, subject to the

excitement of mobs and of these terrible political contests that

come upon us from year to year under the autonomy of our

government, what would be the result if suffrage were given to

the women of the United States?

Women are essentially emotional. It is no disparagement to them

they are so. It is no more insulting to say that women are

emotional than to say that they are delicately constructed

physically and unfitted to become soldiers or workmen under the

sterner, harder pursuits of life. What we want in this country is

to avoid emotional suffrage, and what we need is to put more

logic into public affairs and less feeling.[54]

There are spheres in which feeling should be paramount. There are

kingdoms in which the heart should reign supreme. That kingdom

belongs to woman, the realm of sentiment, the realm of love, the

realm of the gentler and holier and kindlier attributes that make

the name of wife, mother and sister next to that of God himself.

I would not, and I say it deliberately, degrade woman by giving

her the right of suffrage. I mean the word in its full

signification, because I believe that woman as she is today, the

queen of home and of hearts, is above the political collisions of

this world, and should always be kept above them....

Sir, if it be said to us that this is a natural right belonging

to women, I deny it. The right of suffrage is one to be

determined by expediency and by policy, and given by the State to

whom it pleases. It is not a natural right; it is a right that

comes from the State.[55]

It is claimed that if the suffrage be given to women it is to

protect them. Protect them from whom? The brute that would invade

their rights would coerce the suffrage of his wife or sister or

mother as he would wring from her the hard earnings of her toil

to gratify his own beastly appetites and passions.[56]

It is said that the suffrage is to be given to enlarge the sphere

of woman's influence. Mr. President, it would destroy her

influence. It would take her down from that pedestal where she is

today, influencing as a mother the minds of her offspring,

influencing by her gentle and kindly caress the action of her

husband toward the good and pure.[57]

Senator Vest then presented a list of two hundred men from

Massachusetts, among them forty-five clergymen, remonstrating against

any further extension of suffrage to women. He next presented the

old-time letter of Mrs. Clara T. Leonard of that State protesting

against the enfranchisement of women. Senator Hoar called attention to

the fact that the writer herself was an office-holder, a member of the

State Board of Lunacy and Charity, to which Senator Vest answered:

Ah! but what sort of an office-holder? She held the office

delegated to her by God himself, a ministering angel to the sick,

the afflicted and the insane. What man in his senses would take

from woman this sphere? What man would close to her the

charitable institutions and eleemosynary establishments of the

country? That is part of her kingdom; that is part of her

undisputed sway and realm. Is that the office to which woman

suffragists of this country ask us now to admit them? Is it to be

the director of a hospital? Is it to the presidency of a board of

visitors of an eleemosynary institution? Oh, no; they want to be

President, to be Senators and Members of the House of

Representatives and, God save the mark, ministerial and executive

officers, sheriffs, constables and marshals. Of course, this lady

is found on this board of directors. Where else should a true

woman be found? Where else has she always been found but by the

fevered brow, the palsied hand, the erring intellect, aye, God

bless them, from the cradle to the grave the guide and support of

the faltering steps of childhood and the weakening steps of old

age.[58]

Oh, no, Mr. President, this will not do. If we are to tear down

all the blessed traditions, if we are to desolate our homes and

firesides, if we are to unsex our mothers and wives and sisters

and turn our blessed temples of domestic peace into ward

political-assembly rooms, pass this joint resolution. But for one

I thank God that I am so old-fashioned that I would not give one

memory of my grandmother or of my mother for all the arguments

that could be piled, Pelion upon Ossa, in favor of this political

monstrosity.

I now present a pamphlet sent to me by a lady. I do not know

whether she be wife or mother. She signs this pamphlet as Adeline

D. T. Whitney. I have read it twice, and read it to pure and

gentle and intellectual women. I shall not read it today for my

strength does not suffice.[59] ... There is not one impure,

unintellectual aspiration or thought throughout the whole of it.

Would to God that I knew her, that I could thank her on behalf of

the society and politics of the United States for this

production. She says to her own sex: "After all, men work for

women; or, if they think they do not, it would leave them but

sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such existence as they

could arrange without us."

Oh, how true that is, how true!

This pamphlet of over five thousand words which began, "What is the

law of woman-life? What was she made woman for, and not man?"--might

be described as the apotheosis of the sentimental effusions of

Senators Brown and Vest.

During the discussion Senator George F. Hoar (Mass.) said:

Mr. President, I do not propose to make a speech at this late

hour of the day, it would be cruel to the Senate, and I had not

expected that this measure would be here this afternoon. I was

absent on a public duty and came in just at the close of the

speech of my honorable friend from Missouri. I wish, however, to

say one word in regard to what seemed to be the burden of his

speech.

He says that the women who ask this change in our political

organization are not simply seeking to be put upon school boards

and upon boards of health and charity and to fulfil all the large

number of duties of a political nature for which he must confess

they are fit, but he says they will want to be President of the

United States, and Senators and marshals and sheriffs, and that

seems to him supremely ridiculous. Now I do not understand that

this is the proposition. What they want is simply to be eligible

to such public duty as a majority of their fellow-citizens may

think they are fitted for. The most of the public duties in this

country do not require robust, physical health, or exposure to

what is base or unhealthy; and when those duties are imposed upon

anybody it will be only upon such persons as are fit for them.

My honorable friend spoke of the French revolution and the

horrors in which the women of Paris took part, and from that he

would argue that American wives and mothers and sisters are not

fit for the calm and temperate management of our American

republican life. His argument would require him by the same logic

to agree that republicanism itself is not fit for human society.

The argument is against popular government, whether by men or

women, and the Senator only applies to this new phase of the

claim of equal rights what his predecessors would have argued

against the rights which men now enjoy.

But the Senator thought it was unspeakably absurd that woman with

her sentiment and emotional nature and liability to be moved by

passion and feeling should hold the office of Senator. Why, Mr.

President, the Senator's own speech is a refutation of its own

argument. Everybody knows that my honorable friend from Missouri

is one of the most brilliant men in this country. He is a

logician, he is an orator, he is a man of wide experience, he is

a lawyer entrusted with large interests; yet when he was called

upon to put forth this great effort of his, this afternoon, and

to argue this question which he thinks so clear, what did he do?

_He furnished the gush and the emotion and the eloquence, but

when he wanted an argument he had to call upon two women to

supply it._ If Mrs. Leonard and Mrs. Whitney have to make the

argument in the Senate of the United States for the

distinguished Senator from Missouri, it does not seem to me so

absolutely ridiculous that they should have, or that women like

them should have, seats in this body to make arguments of their

own.

Senator Blair closed the debate by saying in part:

I appeal to Senators not to decide this question upon the

arguments which have been offered here today for or against the

merits of the proposition. I appeal to them to decide it upon

that other principle to which I have adverted, whether one-half

of the American people shall be permitted to go into the arena of

public discussion in the various States, and before their

Legislatures be heard upon the issue, "Shall the Federal

Constitution be so amended as to extend this right of suffrage?"

If, with this opportunity, those who believe in woman suffrage

shall fail, then they must be content; for I agree with the

Senators upon the opposite side of the chamber and with all who

hold that if the suffrage is to be extended at all, it must be by

the operation of existing law. I believe it to be an innate

right; yet even an innate right must be exercised only by the

consent of the controlling forces of the State. That is all woman

asks--that an amendment be submitted.

The opposition had presented three documents, each representing the

views of one woman, and one of these anonymous. Senator Blair

presented a petition for the suffrage from the Woman's Christian

Temperance Union of 200,000 members, signed by Miss Frances E.

Willard, president, and the entire official board. This was

accompanied by a strong personal appeal from a number of distinguished

women, and hundreds of thousands of petitions had been previously

sent. The Senator also received permission to have printed in the

_Congressional Record_ the arguments made by the representatives of

the suffrage movement before the Senate committee in 1880 and

1884.[60]

A vote was then taken on the resolution to submit to the State

Legislatures an amendment to the Federal Constitution forbidding the

disfranchisement of United States citizens on account of sex, which

resulted in 16 yeas, 34 nays, 26 absent.[61] Of the absentees

Senators Chace, Dawes, Plumb and Stanford announced that they would

have voted "yea;" Jones of Arkansas and Butler that they would have

voted "nay."

Thus on January 25, 1887, occurred the first and only discussion and

vote in the United States Senate on the submission of an amendment to

the Federal Constitution which should forbid disfranchisement on

account of sex, that took place up to the end of the nineteenth

century.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] The only time the direct question of woman suffrage ever had been

discussed and voted on in the U. S. Senate was in December, 1866,

on the Bill to Regulate the Franchise for the District of

Columbia--History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 102; and in May,

1874, on the Bill to Establish the Territory of Pembina--the same, p.

545; but these were entirely distinct from the submission of a

constitutional amendment.

[32] Extended space is accorded this discussion, as it might

reasonably be expected that on the floor of the United States Senate

would be made the most exhaustive arguments possible on both sides of

this important question.

[33] This report had been presented Mar. 28, 1884, by Senators T. W.

Palmer, H. W. Blair, E. G. Lapham and H. B. Anthony.

[34] The italics are made by the editors of the History.

[35] Senator Brown did not enter the army during the Civil War.

[36] As a lawyer Senator Brown was always exempt from jury service.

[37] Senator Brown had this done by his representatives, as any woman

could do.

[38] As every private family urgently needs the man and the woman, why

are both not needed in this "great aggregation?"

[39] Do women have no hardships or hazards in time of war?

[40] If her duties are just as laborious, responsible and important as

man's, do they not entitle her to a voice in the Government?

[41] Since this tremendous responsibility is placed upon woman, why

should she not have a voice in the conditions which surround these

children outside the home? Why should man alone determine these

conditions which often counteract all the mother's training?

[42] Senator Brown assumes that all women are wives and the mothers of

young children, and that the mother's sense of duty would not hold her

to the care of her children if she had a chance to go into politics.

[43] Would any man be willing to exchange his influence for that of a

woman in the affairs of government?

[44] This would seem to be the very influence which ought to be

enforced by a vote.

[45] In readjusting the qualifications for the suffrage the Southern

States have been very careful to secure the right to all the

illiterate _white_ men.

[46] Senator Brown says in the preceding paragraph that the "delicate

and lovely women" would not remain at home but would consider it an

imperative duty to go to the polls.

[47] Is it because women lack physical strength that they are not

allowed to practice law in Georgia or to act as notaries public or to

fill any office, even that of school trustee, and that no woman is

permitted to enter the State University? The men should at least give

their "queens" and "princesses" and "angels" an education.

[48] Yes, if the husband has to enforce it with a club. This paragraph

does not tally with the one in the early part of the Senator's speech

where all women were placed on a throne, and all men were declared to

be their natural protectors.

[49] The picture of family life in Georgia is not alluring, but the

Senator takes small account of the woman who does not happen to

possess a "male," or rather to be possessed by one.

[50] Therefore the wife should not be allowed any individuality.

Statistics, however, from the States where women do vote prove exactly

the opposite of this assertion in regard to divorce.

[51] For account of the unconstitutional disfranchisement of the women

of Washington Territory by its Supreme Court, see chapter on that

State.

[52] This does not seem to apply to negro suffrage in the Southern

States.

[53] One hearing Senator Brown's blood-curdling descriptions would

think they were more than "inconveniences."

[54] Observe that Senator Vest's entire argument against woman

suffrage is based wholly on sentiment and emotion and is entirely

devoid of logic.

[55] The Senator meant that it is a right which comes from the men of

the State, from one-half of its people.

[56] Because of a few such brutes millions of women must be deprived

of the suffrage. If women had some control over the conditions which

tend to make men brutes, might the number not be lessened? The Senator

ignores entirely the secret ballot which would prevent the aforesaid

brutes from knowing how the women voted.

[57] In the preceding paragraph she did not seem to be on a pedestal.

[58] The advocates of woman suffrage have repeatedly had bills in the

various Legislatures asking that women might be appointed on the

boards of all State institutions, and as physicians in all where women

and children are placed, but up to the present day not one woman is

allowed this privilege in Senator Vest's own State of Missouri.

[59] This does not accord with the argument of Senator Brown that man

must do the voting for the family on account of his superior physical

strength.

[60] These were Susan B. Anthony, Nancy R. Allen, Lillie Devereux

Blake, Lucinda B. Chandler, Abigail Scott Duniway, Helen M. Gougar,

Mary Seymour Howell, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Dr. Clemence S.

Lozier, Julia Smith Parker, Caroline Gilkey Rogers, Elizabeth Lyle

Saxon, May Wright Sewall, Mary A. Stuart, Sara Andrews Spencer,

Harriette R. Shattuck, Zerelda G. Wallace, Sarah E. Wall--nearly all

of national reputation.

[61] YEAS: Blair, N. H.; Bowen, Col.; Cheney, N. H.; Conger, Mich.;

Cullom, Ills.; Dolph, Ore.; Farwell, Ill.; Hoar, Mass.; Manderson,

Neb.; Mitchell, Ore.; Mitchell, Penn.; Palmer, Mich.; Platt, Conn.;

Sherman, O.; Teller, Col.; Wilson, Iowa--16. NAYS: Beck, Ky., Berry,

Ark, Blackburn, Ky., Brown, Ga., Call, Fla., Cockrell, Mo., Coke,

Tex., Colquitt, Ga., Eustis, La., Evarts, N. Y., George, Miss., Gray,

Del., Hampton, S. C., Harris, Tenn., Hawley, Conn., Ingalls, Kan.,

Jones, Nev., McMillan, Mich., McPherson, N. J., Mahone, Va., Morgan,

Ala., Morrill, Vt., Payne, O., Pugh, Ala., Saulsbury, Del., Sawyer,

Wis., Sewell, N. J., Spooner, Wis., Vance, N. C.; Vest, Mo., Walthall,

Miss., Whitthorne, Tenn., Williams, Cal., Wilson, Md.--34.

ABSENT: Aldrich, R. I., Allison, Ia., Butler, S. C., Camden, W. Va.,

Cameron, Penn., Chace, R. I., Dawes, Mass., Edmunds, Vt., Fair, Nev.,

Frye, Me., Gibson, La., Gorman, Md., Hale, Me., Harrison, Ind., Jones,

Ark., Jones, Fla., Kenna, W. Va., Maxey, Tex., Miller, N. Y., Plumb,

Kan., Ransom, N. C., Riddleberger, Va.; Sabin, Minn., Stanford, Cal.;

Van Wyck, Neb., Voorhees, Ind.--26.

CHAPTER VII.

THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION OF 1887.

The Nineteenth national convention assembled in the M. E. Metropolitan

Church of Washington, Jan. 25, 1887, continuing in session three days.

On no evening was the building large enough to accommodate the

audience. The Rev. John P. Newman, pastor of the church, prayed

earnestly for the blessing of God "on these women, who, through good

and evil report, have been striving for the right."[62] Miss Susan B.

Anthony came directly from the Capitol and opened the convention by

reading a letter from Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who was in England.

She then referred to the fact that while this convention was in

session the United States Senate was discussing the question of woman

suffrage. There would be taken the first direct vote in that body on a

Sixteenth Amendment to enfranchise women. The attention of the

advocates of woman suffrage was directed to Congress for the first

time when the Fourteenth Amendment was under discussion in 1865. That

article in the beginning was broad enough to include women but

political expediency inserted the word "male," so that if any State

should disfranchise any of its _male_ citizens they should be counted

out of the basis of representation. She continued:

This taught us that we might look to Congress. We presented our

first petition in 1865. In December, 1866, came the discussion in

the Senate on the proposition to strike the word "male" from the

District of Columbia Suffrage Bill and nine voted in favor. From

that day we have gone forward pressing our claims on Congress.

Denied in the construction of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth

Amendments we have been trying for a Sixteenth Amendment. We have

gained so much as a special committee, who hear our arguments and

have four times reported in our favor; Senator Hoar, chairman in

1879, Senator Lapham in 1882, Senator Palmer in 1884, and Senator

Blair in 1886. This is the bill which is pending now. We are not

asking Congress to enfranchise us, because it does not possess

that power. We are asking it to submit a proposition to be voted

on by the Legislatures.

Mrs. Stanton's letter said in part:

For half a century we have tried appeals, petitions, arguments,

with thrilling quotations from our greatest jurists and

statesmen, and lo! in the year of our Lord, 1887, the best answer

we can wring from Senators Brown and Cockrell, in the shape of a

minority report, is a "chimney corner letter" written by a woman

ignorant of the first principles of republican government, which,

they say, gives a better statement of the whole question than

they are capable of producing. Verily this is a new departure in

congressional proceedings! Though a woman has not sufficient

capacity to vote, yet she has superior capacity to her

representatives in drawing up a minority report....

But if Senators Cockrell and Brown hope to dispose of the

question by remanding us to "the chimney corner" we trust their

constituents will send them to keep us company, that they may

enliven our retirement and make us satisfied 'in the sphere where

the Creator intended we should be' by daily intoning for us their

inspired minority report.

The one pleasant feature in this original document is the harmony

between the views of these gentlemen and their Creator. The only

drawback to our faith in their knowledge of what exists in the

Divine mind, is in the fact that they can not tell us when, where

and how they interviewed Jehovah. I have always found that when

men have exhausted their own resources, they fall back on "the

intentions of the Creator." But their platitudes have ceased to

have any influence with those women who believe they have the

same facilities for communication with the Divine mind as men

have.

The right and liability to be called on to fight, if we vote, as

continually emphasized by our opponents, is one of the greatest

barriers in our way. If all the heroic deeds of women recorded in

history and our daily journals, and the active virtues so

forcibly illustrated in domestic life, have not yet convinced our

opponents that women are possessed of superior fighting

qualities, the sex may feel called upon in the near future to

give some further illustrations of their prowess. Of one thing

they may be assured, that the next generation will not argue the

question of woman's rights with the infinite patience we have had

for half a century, and to so little purpose. To emancipate

woman from the fourfold bondage she has so long suffered in the

State, the church, the home and the world of work, harder battles

than we have yet fought are still before us.

Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.) paid a beautiful tribute to Miss

Anthony, "the Sir Galahad in search of the Holy Grail," and closed

with an eloquent prophecy of future success. Mrs. Lillie Devereux

Blake (N. Y.) gave a clever satire on The Rights of Men, which was

very imperfectly reported.

....Surely it is time that some one on this platform should say

something for this half of humanity, which we really must confess

after all is an important half. Ought we not admit that men have

wrongs to complain of? Are they not constantly declaring

themselves our slaves? Is it not a well known fact, conceded even

here, that women shine in all the tints of the rainbow while men

must wear only costumes of dull brown and somber black? Nor is

this because men do not like bright colors, for never a belle in

all the sheen of satin and glimmer of pearls looks half so

happily proud as does a man when he has on a uniform, or struts

in a political procession with a white hat on his head, a red

ribbon in his buttonhole and a little cane in his hand.

Then, too, have not men, poor fellows, had to do all the talking

since the world began? Have we not heretofore been the silent

sex? Even to-day a thousand men speak from pulpit and platform

where one woman uplifts her voice.

But let us pass to other and more important rights which have

been denied to man in the past. The first right that any man

ought to be allowed--a right paramount to all others--is the

right to a wife. But look how even in this matter he has been

hardly dealt with. Has he had just standards set before him as to

what a wife should be? No, but he has been led to believe that

the weak woman, the dependent woman, is the one to be desired....

Look again at the unhappy mess into which man all by himself has

brought politics and public affairs. Is it not too bad to leave

him longer alone in his misery? Like the naughty boy who has

broken and destroyed his toys, who needs mamma to help him mend

them, and perhaps also to administer to him such wholesome

discipline as Solomon himself has advised--so does man need woman

to come to his rescue. Look what politics is now. Who to-day can

tell the difference between a Democrat and a Republican? Even a

Mugwump is becoming a doubtful being....

Do not these wrongs which men suffer appeal to our tenderest

sympathies? Is it not evident that the poor fellows can't go on

alone much longer, that it is high time we should take the boys

in hand and show them what a correct government really is?

There is another question which deserves our gravest

consideration. Man sinks or rises with woman; if she is degraded

he is tempted to vice; if she is oppressed he is brutalized. What

is the industrial condition of women to-day?...

In behalf of the sons, the brothers and the husbands of these

wage-earning women we ask for that political power which alone

will insure equality of pay without regard to sex. For the sake

of man's redemption and morality we demand that this injustice

shall cease, for it is not possible for woman to be half-starved

and man not dwarfed; for many women to be degraded and all men's

lives pure; for women to be fallen and no man lost.

We all know that man himself has been most willing to grant to

women every right, every opportunity. If he has hesitated it has

been rather from love and admiration of woman than from any

tyrannical desire of oppression. He has said that women must not

vote because they can not perform military duty. Can they not

serve the nation as well as those men, who during the last war

sent substitutes and to-day hold the highest places in the

Government? But we ask one question: Which every year does most

for the State, the soldier or the mother who risks her life not

to destroy other life but to create it? Of the two it would be

better to disfranchise the soldiers and enfranchise the mothers.

For much as the nation owes to the soldiers, she owes far more to

the mothers who in endless martyrdom make the nation a

possibility....

Man deserves that we should consider his present unhappy

condition. In all ages he has proved his reverence for woman by

embodying every virtue in female form, and has left none for

himself. Truth and chastity, mercy and peace, charity and

justice, all are represented as feminine, and lately, as a proof

of his devotion, he has erected at the entrance to the harbor of

our greatest metropolis a statue of liberty and this too is

represented as a woman.... And so we hail the men, liberty

enlightening a world where woman and man shall alike be free.

One interesting address followed another throughout the convention,

presenting the question of suffrage for women with appeal, humor,

logic, statistics and every variety of argument.

Mrs. Harriette Robinson Shattuck (Mass.) presented in striking

contrast The Women Who Ask and the Women Who Object. Mrs. Elizabeth

Boynton Harbert in a fine address told of Our Motherless Government.

Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) gave for the first time her

masterly speech, The Constitutional Rights of the Women of the United

States, which has been so widely circulated in pamphlet form, and

which closed with this peroration:

There are those who say we have too many voters already. No, we

have not too many. On the contrary, to take away the ballot even

from the ignorant and perverse is to invite discontent, social

disturbance, and crime. The restraints and benedictions of this

little white symbol are so silent and so gentle, so atmospheric,

so like the snow-flakes that come down to guard the slumbering

forces of the earth and prepare them for springing into bud,

blossom, and fruit in due season, that few recognize the divine

alchemy, and many impatient souls are saying we are on the wrong

path--the Old World was right--the government of the few is safe;

the wise, the rich, should rule; the ignorant, the poor, should

serve. But God, sitting between the eternities, has said

otherwise, and we of this land are foreordained to prove His word

just and true. And we will prove it by inviting every newcomer to

our shore to share our liberties so dearly bought and our

responsibilities now grown so heavy that the shoulders which bear

them are staggering under their weight; that by the joys of

freedom and the burdens of responsibility they, with us, may grow

into the stature of perfect men, and our country realize at last

the dreams of the great souls who, "appealing to the Supreme

Judge of the world for the rectitude of their intentions," did

"ordain and establish the Constitution for the United States of

America"--the grandest charter of human rights that the world has

yet conceived.

In an impassioned address Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell (N. Y.) contrasted

The Present and the Past, saying:

The destiny of the world to-day lies in the hearts and brains of

her women. The world can not travel upward faster than the feet

of her women are climbing the paths of progress. Put us back if

you can; veil us in harems; make us beasts of burden; take from

us all knowledge; teach us we are only material; and humanity

will go back to the dark ages. The nineteenth century is closing

over a world arising from bondage. It is the grandest, sublimest

spectacle ever beheld. The world has seen and is still looking at

the luminous writing in the heavens--"The truth shall make you

free"--and for the first time is gathering to itself the true

significance of liberty. All the progress of these years has not

come easily or from conservatism, but from the persistent efforts

of enthusiastic radicals, men and women with ideas in their heads

and courage in their hearts to make them practical.

Ever since woman took her life in her own hands, ever since she

began to think for herself, the dawning of a great light has

flooded the world. We are the mothers of men. Show me the mothers

of a country and I will tell you of the sons. If men would ever

rise above their sensuality and materialism, they must have

mothers whose pure souls, brave hearts and clear intellects have

touched them deeply before their birth and equipped them for the

journey of life....

It is the evening of the nineteenth century, but the starlight is

clearer than the morning of its existence. I look back and see in

each year improvement and advancement. I see woman gathering up

her soul and personality and claiming them as her own against all

odds and the world. I see her asking that this personality may

be impressed upon her nation. I see her speaking her soul from

platforms, preaching in pulpits of a life of which this is the

shadow. I see her pleading before courts, using her brains to

solve the knotty questions of the law. Woman's sphere is the wide

world, her sceptre the mind that God has given her, her kingdom

the largest place that she has the brains to fill and the will to

hold. So is woman influencing the world, and as her sphere widens

the world grows better. With the freedom she now has, see how she

is arousing the public conscience on all questions of right....

What is conservatism? It is the dying faith of a closing century.

What is fanaticism? It is the dawning light of a new era. Yes, a

new era will dawn with the twentieth century. I look to that time

and see woman the redeeming power of the world.

Mrs. Pearson of Nottingham gave a glowing account of the progress of

suffrage in England and the work of the Primrose League; Madame Clara

Neymann (N. Y.) made a scholarly address entitled Skeptics and

Skepticism; Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby (Neb.), the Rev. Rush R. Shippen

of Washington City and Miss Phoebe W. Couzins (Mo.) were among the

speakers. Delegate Joseph M. Carey (Wy.) said in the course of his

address:

Eighteen years ago the right of suffrage was given to the women

of Wyoming. Women have voted as universally and as

conscientiously as men. I have had the honor of voting for women

and of being voted for by them. There are not three per cent. of

women old enough who do not vote in every part of the Territory.

In intelligence, beauty, grace, in perfection of home and social

duties, the women of Wyoming will compare favorably with those of

any other State. I have been asked if they neglect home affairs

on account of politics. I have never known an instance of this. I

have never known a controversy to arise from the wives voting

differently from their husbands, which they often do. If women

could vote in the States to-day they would vote as wisely as

men....

I will say to woman's credit she has not sought office, she is

not a natural office-seeker, but she desires to vote, has

preferences and exercises her rights. The superintendents in

nearly all the counties are women. They have taken a deep

interest in school matters and as a rule they control school

meetings. Three-fourths of the voters present at these are women.

In Cheyenne they alone seem to have the time to attend. Give

woman this right to vote and she will make out of the boys men

more capable of exercising it. I have seen the results and am

satisfied that every woman should have the suffrage.

Mrs. Carey sat on the platform with Miss Anthony, Mrs. Hooker and

other prominent members of the convention. The eloquent address of

Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) on The Conditions of Liberty attracted

special attention. Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers (N. Y.) proved in an

original manner that There is Nothing New under the Sun. In a

statesmanlike paper Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage (N. Y.) set forth the

authority of Congress to secure to woman her right to the ballot:

To protect all citizens in the use of the ballot by national

authority is not to deprive the States of the right of local

self-government. When Andrew Jackson, who had been elected as a

State's Rights man, asserted the supremacy of the National

Government, that assertion, carried out as it was, did not

deprive States of their power of self-government. Neither did the

Reconstruction Acts nor the adoption of the Fourteenth and

Fifteenth Amendments. Yet in many ways it is proved that States

are not sovereign. Besides their inability to coin money, to

declare peace and war, they are proved by their own acts not even

to be self-protective. If women as individuals, as one-half of

the people, call upon the nation for protection, they are doing

no more nor less than so-called sovereign States themselves do.

National aid has been frequently asked to preserve peace, or to

insure that protection found impossible under mere local or State

authority....

In ratifying an amendment States become factors in the nation,

the same as by the acts of their representatives and senators in

Congress. A law created by themselves in this way can be no

interference with their local rights of self-government; because

in helping enact these laws, either through congressional action,

or by legislative ratification of amendments, each State has

arisen above and beyond itself into a higher national realm.

The one right above all others which is not local is the right of

self-government. That right being the corner stone on which the

nation was founded, is a strictly national right. It is not

local, it is not State....

It does not matter by what instrumentality--whether by State

constitution or by statute law--woman has been deprived of her

national right of self-government, it is none the less the duty

of Congress to protect her in regaining it. Surely her right to

govern herself is of as much value as the protection of property,

the quelling of riots, the destruction or establishment of banks,

the guarding of the polls, the securing of a free ballot for the

colored race or the taking of it from a Mormon voter.

In her address on The Work of Women, Miss Mary F. Eastman (Mass.)

said: "Men say the work of the State is theirs. The State is the

people. The origin of government is simply that two men call in a

third for umpire. The ideal of the State is gradually rising. No State

can be finer in its type of government than the individuals who make

it. We enunciate a grand principle, then we are timid and begin

restricting its application. We are a nation of infidels to

principle."

The leading feature of the last evening was the address of Mrs.

Zerelda G. Wallace (Ind.) on Woman's Ballot a Necessity for the

Permanence of Free Institutions. A Washington paper said: "As she

stood upon the platform, holding her hearers as in her hand, she

looked a veritable queen in Israel and the personification of womanly

dignity and lofty bearing. The line of her argument was irresistible,

and her eloquence and pathos perfectly bewildering. Round after round

of applause greeted her as she poured out her words with telling

effect upon the great congregation before her, who were evidently in

perfect accord with her earnest and womanly utterances."

An imperfect extract from a newspaper report will suggest the trend of

her argument:

In this Nineteenth annual convention, reviewing what these

nineteen years have brought, we find that we have won every

position in the field of argument for our cause. By its dignity

and justice we have overcome ridicule, although our progress has

been impeded by the tyranny of custom and prejudice.

I will ask the American question "will it pay" to enfranchise the

women of this nation--I will not say republic? The world has

never been blessed with a republic. Those who think this is a

narrow struggle for woman's rights have never conceived the

height, length and breadth of this momentous question.

The purpose of divinity is enunciated in that it is said He would

create humanity in His image. The purpose of the Creator is that

the two are to have dominion; woman is included in the original

grant. Free she must be before you yourselves will be free. The

highest form of development is to govern one's self. No man

governs himself who practices injustice to another....

We have passed through one Gethsemane because of our refusal to

co-operate with the Deity in His purpose to establish justice and

liberty on this continent. It took a hundred years and a Civil

War to evolve the principle in our nation that all men were

created free and equal. Will it require another century and

another Civil War before there is secured to humanity the

God-given inalienable right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of

happiness?" The most superficial observer can see elements at

work, a confusion of forces, that can only be wiped out in blood,

unless some new, unifying power is brought into Government. No

class was ever known to extend a right or share the application

of a just principle as long as it could safely retain these

exclusively for itself.

We have no quarrel with men. They are grand and just and noble in

exact proportion as their spiritual nature is exalted. As sure

as you live down low to the animal that is in you, will the

animal dominate your nature. Woman is the first to recognize the

Divine. When God was incarnated in humanity, when the Word was

made flesh and born of a woman, the arsenal of Heaven was

exhausted to redeem the race....

Woman is your last resource, and she will not fail you. I have

faith that humanity is to be perfected. Examine the record for

yourselves. I do not agree with the view of some of our divines.

We find the Creator taking a survey, and man is the only creation

he finds imperfect. Therefore a helpmeet is created for him.

According to accepted theology the first thing that helpmeet does

is to precipitate him into sin. I have unbounded faith in the

plans of God and in His ability to carry them out, and when He

said He would make a helpmeet I believe He did it, and that Eve

helped Adam, gave him an impetus toward perfection, instead of

causing him to fall. Man was a noble animal and endowed with

intellectual ability, but Eve found him a moral infant and tried

to teach him to discriminate between good and evil. That is the

first and greatest good which comes to anybody, and Adam, instead

of falling down when he ate the apple, rose up. There is no moral

or spiritual growth possible without being able to discern good

from evil. Adam was an animal superior to all others that

preceded him, but it needed a woman to quicken his spiritual

perceptions.

Eve having taken it upon herself to teach man to know the

difference between good and evil, the responsibility rests upon

woman to teach man to choose the good and refuse the evil. She

will do this if she has freedom of opportunity.

Man has been given schools to develop brain power, and I do not

underrate their value. He has nearly entered into his domain as

far as the material forces are concerned, but there is a moral

and spiritual element in humanity which eludes his grasp in

practically everything he undertakes. This lack of the moral

element is to-day our greatest danger. We do not ask for the

ballot because men are tyrants, but because God has made us the

conservators of the race. To-day we are queens without a scepter;

the penalty to the nation is that men are largely indifferent to

its best interests and many do not vote. Men are under the

influence of women during the formative period of their lives,

first of their mothers, then of women teachers; how can they do

otherwise than underestimate the value of citizenship? How can

the young men of this nation be inspired with a love of justice?

It is a dangerous thing that the education of citizens is given

over to women, unless these teachers have themselves the rights

of citizens. How can you expect such women as have addressed you

here in this convention to teach the youth to honor a Government

which thus dishonors women?

The world has never known but one Susan B. Anthony. God and the

world needed her and God gave her to the world and to humanity.

The next Statue of Liberty will have her features. Of all the

newspaper criticisms and remarks which have been made about her I

read one the other day which exactly suited me; it called her

"that grand old champion of progress."

The women are coming and the men will be better for their coming.

Men say women are not fit to govern because they can not fight.

When men live upon a very low plane so there is only one way to

manage them and that is to knock them on the head, that is true.

It probably was true of government in the beginning, but we are

to grow up out of this low state.

When we reach the highest development, moral and spiritual forces

will govern. That women can and do govern even in our present

undeveloped condition is shown by the fact that three-fourths of

our educators are women. I remember when it used to be said, "You

can not put the boys and girls into the hands of women, because

they can not thrash them." To-day brute force is almost entirely

eliminated from our schools. That women should not take part in

government because they can not fight was probably true in ages

gone by when governments were maintained by brute force, but it

does not obtain in a government ruled by public opinion expressed

on a little piece of paper. Women as a class do not fight, and

that is the reason they are needed to introduce into government a

power of another kind, the power with which women govern their

children and their husbands, that beautiful law of love which is

to be the only thing that remains forever....

Our statesmen are doubting the success of self-government. They

say universal suffrage is a failure, forgetting that we have

never had universal suffrage. The majority of the race has never

expressed its sense in government. We are a living falsehood when

we compare the basic principles of our Government with things as

they are now. It is becoming a common expression, "The voice of

the people is not the voice of God." If you do not find God in

the voice of the people you can not find him anywhere. It is

said, "Power inheres in the people," and the nation is shorn of

half its power for progress as long as the ballot is not in the

hands of women.

What has caused heretofore the downfall of nations? The lack of

morality in government. It will eat out the life of a nation as

it does the heart of an individual. This question of woman's

equal rights, equal duties, equal responsibilities, is the

greatest which has come before us. The destiny of the whole race

is comprised in four things: Religion, education, morals,

politics. Woman is a religious being; she is becoming educated;

she has a high code of morals; she will yet purify politics.

I want to impress upon the audience this thought, that every man

is a direct factor in the legislation of this land. Every woman

is not a direct factor, but yet is more or less responsible for

every evil existing in the community. I have nothing but pity for

that woman who can fold her hands and say she has all the rights

she wants. How can she think of the great problem God has given

us to solve--to redeem the race from superstition and crime--and

not want to put her hand to the wheel of progress and help move

the world?

Mrs. Hannah Whitall Smith (Penn.) pronounced the benediction at the

closing session.

Sixteen States were represented at this Nineteenth convention, and

reports were sent from many more. Mrs. Sewall, chairman of the

executive committee, presented a comprehensive report of the past

year's work, which included appeals to many gatherings of religious

bodies. Conventions had been held in each congressional district of

Kansas and Wisconsin. She referred particularly to the completion of

the last of the three volumes of the History of Woman Suffrage by Miss

Anthony, Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Gage. An elaborate plan of work was

adopted for the coming year, which included the placing of this

History in public libraries, a continuation of the appeals to

religious assemblies, the appointment of delegates to all of the

approaching national political conventions, and the holding by each

vice-president of a series of conventions in the congressional

districts of her State. It was especially desired that arrangements

should be made for the enrollment in every State of the women who want

to vote, and Mrs. Colby was appointed to mature a suitable plan.

Among the extended resolutions adopted were the following:

WHEREAS, For the first time a vote has been taken in the Senate

of the United States on an amendment to the National Constitution

enfranchising women; and

WHEREAS, Nearly one-third of the Senators voted for the

amendment; therefore,

_Resolved_, That we rejoice in this evidence that our demand is

forcing itself upon the attention and action of Congress, and

that when a new Congress shall have assembled, with new men and

new ideas, we may hope to change this minority into a majority.

WHEREAS, The Anti-Polygamy bill passed by both Houses of Congress

provides for the disfranchisement of the non-polygamous women of

Utah; and

WHEREAS, The women thus sought to be disfranchised have been for

years in the peaceable exercise of the ballot, and no charge is

made against them of any crime by reason of which they should

lose their vested rights; therefore,

_Resolved_, That this association recognizes in these measures a

disregard of individual rights which is dangerous to the

liberties of all; since to establish the precedent that the

ballot may be taken away is to threaten the permanency of our

republican form of government.

_Resolved_, That we call the attention of the working women of

the country to the fact that a disfranchised class is always an

oppressed class and that only through the protection of the

ballot can they secure equal pay for equal work.

_Resolved_, That we recognize as hopeful signs of the times the

indorsement of woman suffrage by the Knights of Labor in national

assembly, and by the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union,

and that we congratulate these organizations upon their

recognition of the fact that the ballot in the hands of woman is

necessary for their success.

_Resolved_, That we extend our sympathy to our beloved president,

in the recent death of her husband, Henry B. Stanton; and we

recall with gratitude the fact that he was one of the earliest

and most consistent advocates of human liberty.

Thanks were extended to the United States Senators who voted for a

Sixteenth Amendment. A committee was appointed, Mrs. Blake, chairman,

to wait upon President Grover Cleveland and protest against the

threatened disfranchising of the women of Washington Territory; also

to secure a hearing before the proper congressional committee in

reference to the Edmunds-Tucker Bill, which proposed to disfranchise

both the Gentile and Mormon women of Utah. The usual large number of

letters were received.[63]

The following letter was read from ex-United States Treasurer F. E.

Spinner, the first official to employ women:

I am eighty-five years old, and I can no longer look forward for

future earthly happiness. All my joys are now retrospective, and

in the long vista of years that I constantly look back upon,

there is no time that affords me more pleasure than that when I

was in the Treasury of the United States. The fact that I was

instrumental in introducing women to employment in the offices of

the Government, gives me more real satisfaction than all the

other deeds of my life.

A committee consisting of the national board and chairman of the

executive committee was appointed to arrange for a great international

meeting the next year.

On the opening day of this convention a vote on woman suffrage was

taken in the United States Senate as described in the preceding

chapter; at its close a telegram was received that a Municipal

Suffrage Bill had been passed by the Kansas Legislature; and its

members separated with the consciousness that two distinctly

progressive steps had been taken.

FOOTNOTES:

[62] Dr. Newman was an advocate of suffrage for women. After he became

Bishop he wrote for publication, July 12, 1894: "The exalted mission

of Christianity is to reverse the verdict of the world on the rights

of woman. Until Christ came she had been regarded by State and Church,

in the most highly civilized lands, as the servant of man, created for

his pleasure and subordinated to his authority. Her rights of life,

property and vocation were in his hands for control and final

disposition.

"Against this tyranny we wage a war of extermination. Henceforth in

State and Church, in business and pleasure, whether married or single,

woman is to be esteemed an individual, one of the two equal units of

humanity, to count one the whole world over, and to possess and

exercise the rights of 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.'"

[63] Among the writers were Harriot Stanton Blatch of England, the

Rev. Frederick A. Hinckley, Philadelphia; Prudence Crandall Philleo

(Kan.); Mary V. Cowgill, Mary J. Coggeshall, editor _Woman's

Standard_, (Ia.); Belva A. Lockwood (D. C.); General and Mrs. Rufus

Saxton, Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.); Alice M. Pickler (Dak.); Sarah R.

Langdon Williams, Sarah M. Perkins (O.); Mr. and Mrs. McClung (Tenn.);

telegram signed by Emmeline B. Wells and a long list of names from

Utah.

CHAPTER VIII.

INTERNATIONAL COUNCIL OF WOMEN--HEARING OF 1888.

The year 1888 is distinguished for the largest and most representative

woman's convention held up to that time--the International Council of

Women, which met in Washington, D. C., March 25, continuing until

April 1. The origin of this great body is briefly stated in the

official report as follows: "Visiting England and France in 1882, Mrs.

Stanton conceived the idea of an International Council of Women

interested in the movement for suffrage, and pressed its consideration

on the leading reformers in those countries. A few accepted the idea,

and when Miss Anthony arrived in England early the following year,

they discussed the question fully with each other, and seeing that

such a convention was both advisable and practicable, they resolved to

call it in the near future. On the eve of their departure, at a

reception given them in Liverpool, the subject was presented and

favorably received. Among the guests were Priscilla Bright McLaren,

Margaret Bright Lucas, Alice Scatcherd and Margaret E. Parker. The

initiative steps for an International Council were then taken and a

committee of correspondence appointed.[64]

"When Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony returned to America it was

decided, in consultation with friends, to celebrate the fourth decade

of the woman suffrage movement by calling an International Council.

At its nineteenth annual convention, January, 1887, the National

Suffrage Association had resolved to assume the entire responsibility

and to extend the invitation to all associations of women in the

trades, professions and reforms, as well as those advocating political

rights. The herculean task of making all the necessary arrangements

fell chiefly on Miss Anthony, Miss Rachel G. Foster (Avery) and Mrs.

May Wright Sewall, as Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Spofford were in Europe.

To say nothing of the thought, anxiety, time and force expended, we

can appreciate in some measure the magnitude of the undertaking by its

financial cost of nearly $12,000.

"This was the first attempt to convene an international body of women

and its conception would have been possible only with those to whom

the whole cause of woman is indebted for its most daring and important

innovations. The call for this meeting was issued in June, 1887:

The first public demand for equal educational, industrial,

professional and political rights for women was made in a

convention held at Seneca Falls, New York, in the year 1848.

To celebrate the Fortieth Anniversary of this event, an

International Council of Women will be convened under the

auspices of the National Woman Suffrage Association, in Albaugh's

opera house, Washington, D. C., on March 25, 1888.

It is impossible to overestimate the far-reaching influence of

such a Council. An interchange of opinions on the great questions

now agitating the world will rouse women to new thought, will

intensify their love of liberty and will give them a realizing

sense of the power of combination.

However the governments, religions, laws and customs of nations

may differ, all are agreed on one point, namely: man's

sovereignty in the State, in the Church and in the Home. In an

International Council women may hope to devise new and more

effective methods for securing in these three institutions the

equality and justice which they have so long and so earnestly

sought. Such a Council will impress the important lesson that the

position of women anywhere affects their position everywhere.

Much is said of universal brotherhood, but for weal or woe, more

subtle and more binding is universal sisterhood.

Women recognizing the disparity between their achievements and

their labors, will no doubt agree that they have been trammeled

by their political subordination. Those active in great

philanthropic enterprises sooner or later realize that, so long

as women are not acknowledged to be the political equals of men,

their judgment on political questions will have but little

weight.

It is, however, neither intended nor desired that discussions in

the International Council shall be limited to questions touching

the political rights of women. Formal invitations requesting the

appointment of delegates will be issued to representative

organizations in every department of woman's work. Literary

Clubs, Art Unions, Temperance Unions, Labor Leagues, Missionary,

Peace and Moral Purity Societies, Charitable, Professional,

Educational and Industrial Associations will thus be offered

equal opportunity with Suffrage Societies to be represented in

what should be the ablest and most imposing body of women ever

assembled.

The Council will continue eight days, and its sixteen public

sessions will afford ample opportunity for reporting the various

phases of woman's work and progress in all parts of the world,

during the past forty years. It is hoped that all friends of the

advancement of women will lend their support to this undertaking.

On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association:

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, President.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, First Vice-Pres.

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, Second Vice-Pres.

RACHEL G. FOSTER, Corresponding Sec'y.

ELLEN H. SHELDON, Recording Sec'y.

JANE H. SPOFFORD, Treasurer.

MAY WRIGHT SEWALL, Chairman Ex. Com.

"All of the intervening months from June until the next March were

spent in the extensive preparations necessary to the success of a

convention which proposed to assemble delegates and speakers from many

parts of the world. As the funds had to be raised wholly by private

subscription, no bureau with an expensive pay-roll was established but

the entire burden was carried by a few individuals, who contributed

their services."[65]

Fifty-three organizations of women, national in character, of a

religious, patriotic, charitable, reform, literary and political

nature, were represented on the platform by eighty speakers and

forty-nine delegates, from England, Ireland, France, Norway, Denmark,

Finland, India, Canada and the United States. Among the subjects

discussed were Education, Philanthropies, Temperance, Industries,

Professions, Organizations, Social Purity, Legal, Political and

Religious Conditions. While no restriction was placed upon the fullest

expression of the most widely divergent views upon these vital

questions of the age, the sessions, both executive and public, were

absolutely without friction.

A complete stenographic report of these fifty-three meetings was

transcribed and furnished to the press by a thoroughly organized corps

of women under the direction of Miss Mary F. Seymour of New York City,

an unexcelled if not an unparalleled feat.[66] The management of the

Council by the different committees was perfect in every detail, and

the eight days' proceedings passed without a break, a jar or an

unpleasant circumstance.

Saturday evening, March 23, Mr. and Mrs. Spofford, of the Riggs House,

gave a reception to enable the people of Washington to meet the

distinguished speakers and delegates. The large parlors were thrown

open and finally the big dining-room, but the throng was so dense that

it was almost impossible to move from one room to another.

President and Mrs. Grover Cleveland received the Council Friday

afternoon. Monday evening a reception was given by Senator and Mrs.

Thomas W. Palmer of Michigan, for which eight hundred invitations were

sent to foreign legations, prominent officials and the members of the

Council. Senator and Mrs. Leland Stanford opened their elegant home on

Tuesday afternoon in honor of the pioneers in the woman suffrage

movement. In addition to these many special entertainments were given

for the women lawyers, physicians, ministers, collegiate alumnae,

etc., and those of a semi-private nature were far too numerous for

mention.

Albaugh's Opera House was crowded to its capacity at all of the

sixteen sessions. Religious services were held on both Sundays,

conducted entirely by women representing many different creeds. Some

of the old-time hymns were sung, but many were from modern

writers--Whittier, Samuel Longfellow, John W. Chadwick, Elizabeth

Boynton Harbert, Julia Mills Dunn, etc. The assisting ministers for

the first Sunday were the Reverends Phebe A. Hanaford, Ada C. Bowles,

Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Amanda Deyo. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw

gave the sermon, a matchless discourse on The Heavenly Vision.

"Whereupon, O, King Agrippa, I was not disobedient unto the

heavenly vision." Acts, xxvi:19.

In the beauty of his Oriental home the Psalmist caught the vision

of the events in the midst of which you and I are living to-day.

And though he wrought the vision into the wonderful prophecy of

the 68th Psalm, yet so new and strange were the thoughts to men,

that for thousands of years they failed to catch its spirit and

understand its power.

The vision which appeared to David was a world lost in sin. He

heard its cry for deliverance, he saw its uplifted hands.

Everywhere the eyes of good men were turned toward the skies for

help. For ages had they striven against the forces of evil; they

had sought by every device to turn back the flood-tide of base

passion and avarice, but to no purpose. It seemed as if all men

were engulfed in one common ruin. Patient, sphinx-like, sat

woman, limited by sin, limited by social custom, limited by false

theories, limited by bigotry and by creeds, listening to the

tramp of the weary millions as they passed on through the

centuries, patiently toiling and waiting, humbly bearing the pain

and weariness which fell to her lot.

Century after century came forth from the divine life only to

pass into the great eternity--and still she toiled and still she

waited. At last, in the mute agony of despair, she lifted her

eyes above the earth to heaven and away from the jarring strifes

which surrounded her, and that which dawned upon her gaze was so

full of wonder that her soul burst its prison-house of bondage as

she beheld the vision of true womanhood. She knew then it was not

the purpose of the Divine that she should crouch beneath the

bonds of custom and ignorance. She learned that she was created

not from the side of man, but rather by the side of man. The

world had suffered because she had not kept her

divinely-appointed place. Then she remembered the words of

prophecy, that salvation was to come to the race not through the

man, but through the descendant of the woman. Recognizing her

mission at last, she cried out: "Speak now, Lord, for thy servant

heareth thee." And the answer came: "The Lord giveth the Word,

and the women that publish the tidings are a great host."

[Illustration: THE REV. ANNA HOWARD SHAW.

Vice-President-at-Large of National-American Woman Suffrage

Association.]

To-day the vision is a reality. From every land the voice of

woman is heard proclaiming the word which is given her, and the

wondering world, which for a moment stopped its busy wheel of

life that it might smite and jeer her, has learned at last that

wherever the intuitions of the human mind are called into special

exercise, wherever the art of persuasive eloquence is demanded,

wherever heroic conduct is based upon duty rather than impulse,

wherever her efforts in opening the sacred doors for the benefit

of truth can avail--in one and all these respects woman greatly

excels man. Now the wisest and best people everywhere feel that

if woman enters upon her tasks wielding her own effective armor,

if her inspirations are pure and holy, the Spirit Omnipotent,

whose influence has held sway in all movements and reforms, whose

voice has called into its service the great workmen of every age,

shall, in these last days, fall especially upon woman. If she

venture to obey, what is man that he should attempt to abrogate

her sacred and divine mission? In the presence of what woman has

already accomplished, who shall say that a true woman--noble in

her humility, strong in her gentleness, rising above all

selfishness, gathering up her varied gifts and accomplishments to

consecrate them to God and humanity--who shall say that such an

one is not in a position to do that for which the world will no

longer rank her other than among the first in the work of human

redemption? Then, influenced by lofty motives, stimulated by the

wail of humanity and the glory of God, woman may go forth and

enter into any field of usefulness which opens up before her....

In the Scripture from which the text is taken we recognize a

universal law which has been the experience of every one of us.

Paul is telling the story of a vision he saw, which became the

inspiration of his life, the turning point where his whole

existence was changed, when, in obedience to that vision, he put

himself in relation with the power to which he belonged, and

recognizing in that One which appeared to him on his way from

Jerusalem to Damascus his Divine Master, he also recognized that

the purpose of his life could be fulfilled only when, in

obedience to that Master, he caught and assimilated to himself

the nature of Him, whose servant he was....

Every reformer the world has ever seen has had a similar

experience. Every truth which has been taught to humanity has

passed through a like channel. No one of God's children has ever

gone forth to the world who has not first had revealed to him his

mission, in a vision.

To this Jew, bound by the prejudices of past generations, weighed

down by the bigotry of human creeds, educated in the schools of

an effete philosophy, struggling through the darkness and gloom

which surrounded him, when as a persecutor he sought to

annihilate the disciples of a new faith, there came this vision

into his life; there dawned the electric light of a great truth,

which found beneath the hatred and pride and passion which filled

his life and heart, the divine germ that is implanted in the soul

of each one of God's children....

Then came crowding through his mind new queries: "Can it be that

my fathers were wrong, and that their philosophy and religion do

not contain all there is of truth? Can it be that outside of all

we have known, there lies a great unexplored universe to which

the mind of man can yet attain?" And filled with the divine

purpose, he opened his heart to receive the new truth that came

to him from the vision which God revealed to his soul.

All down through the centuries God has been revealing in visions

the great truths which have lifted the race, step by step, until

to-day womanhood, in this sunset hour of the nineteenth century,

is gathered here from the East and the West, the North and the

South, women of every land, of every race, of all religious

beliefs. But diverse and varied as are our races, our theories,

our religions, yet we come together here with one harmonious

purpose--that of lifting humanity into a higher, purer, truer

life.

To one has come the vision of political freedom. She saw how the

avarice and ambition of one class with power made them forget the

rights of another. She saw how the unjust laws embittered

both--those who made them and those upon whom the injustice

rested. She recognized the great principles of universal

equality, seeing that all alike must be free; that humanity

everywhere must be lifted out of subjection into the free and

full air of divine liberty.

To another was revealed the vision of social freedom. She saw

that sin which crushed the lives of one class, rested lightly on

the lives of the other. She saw its blighting effect on both, and

she lifted up her voice and demanded that there be recognized no

sex in sin.

Another has come hither, who, gazing about her, saw men

brutalized by the rum fiend, the very life of a nation

threatened, and the power of the liquor traffic, with its hand on

the helm of the Ship of State, guiding it with sails full spread

straight upon the rocks to destruction. Then, looking away from

earth, she beheld a vision of what the race and our nation might

become, with all its possibility of wealth and power, if freed

from this burden, and forth upon her mission of deliverance she

sped her way.

Another beheld a vision of what it is to be learned, to explore

the great fields of knowledge which the Infinite has spread

before the world. And this vision has driven her out from the

seclusion of her own quiet life that she might give this great

truth to womanhood everywhere....

And so we come, each bearing her torch of living truth, casting

over the world the light of the vision that has dawned upon her

soul.

But there is still another vision which reaches above earth,

beyond time--a vision which has dawned upon many, that they are

here not to do their own work, but the will of Him who sent them.

And the woman who sees the still higher truth, recognizes the

great power to which she belongs and what her life may become

when, in submission to that Master, she takes upon herself the

nature of Him whom she serves.

We will notice in the second place the purpose of all these

visions which have come to us. Paul was not permitted to dwell on

the vision of truth which came to him. God had a purpose in its

manifestation, and that purpose was revealed when He said to the

wonder-stricken servant, "Arise; for I have appeared unto thee

for this purpose, not that thou behold the truth for thyself, but

to make thee a minister and a witness both of that which thou

hast already seen and of other truths which I shall reveal unto

thee. Go unto the Gentiles. Give them the truth which thou shalt

receive that their eyes may be opened, and that they may be

turned from darkness to light; that they, too, may receive a like

inheritance with thyself...."

This, then, is God's lesson to you and to me. He opens before our

eyes the vision of a great truth and for a moment He permits our

wondering gaze to rest upon it; then He bids us go forth. Jacob

of old saw the vision of God's messengers ascending and

descending, but none of them standing still.

Herein, then, lies the secret of the success of the reformer.

First the vision, then the purpose of the vision. "I was not

disobedient unto the heavenly vision." This is the manly and

noble confession of one of the world's greatest reformers, and in

it we catch a glimpse of the secrets of the success of his

divinely-appointed mission. The difference between the Saul of

Tarsus and Paul the Prisoner of the Lord was measured by his

obedience. This, too, is a universal law, true of the life of

every reformer, who, having had revealed to him a vision of the

great truth, has in obedience to that vision carried it to

humanity. Though at first he holds the truth to himself, and

longs to be lifted up by its power, he soon learns that there is

a giving forth of that which one possesses which enriches the

giver, and that the more he gives of his vision to men the richer

it becomes, the brighter it grows, until it illuminates all his

pathway....

Yet Paul's life was not an idle dream; it was a constant struggle

against the very people whom he tried to save; his greatest foes

were those to whom he was sent. He had learned the lesson all

reformers must sooner or later learn, that the world never

welcomes its deliverers save with the dungeon, the fagot or the

cross. No man or woman has ever sought to lead his fellows to a

higher and better mode of life without learning the power of the

world's ingratitude; and though at times popularity may follow in

the wake of a reformer, yet the reformer knows popularity is not

love. The world will support you when you have compelled it to do

so by manifestations of power, but it will shrink from you as

soon as power and greatness are no longer on your side. This is

the penalty paid by good people who sacrifice themselves for

others. They must live without sympathy; their feelings will be

misunderstood; their efforts will be uncomprehended. Like Paul,

they will be betrayed by friends; like Christ in the agony of

Gethsemane, they must bear their struggle alone.

Our reverence for the reformers of the past is posterity's

judgment of them. But to them, what is that now? They have passed

into the shadows where neither our voice of praise or of blame

disturbs their repose.

This is the hardest lesson the reformer has to learn. When, with

soul aglow with the light of a great truth, she, in obedience to

the vision, turns to take it to the needy one, instead of finding

a world ready to rise up and receive her, she finds it wrapped in

the swaddling clothes of error, eagerly seeking to win others to

its conditions of slavery. She longs to make humanity free; she

listens to their conflicting creeds, and yearns to save them from

the misery they endure. She knows that there is no form of

slavery more bitter or arrogant than error, that truth alone can

make man free, and she longs to bring the heart of the world and

the heart of truth together, that the truth may exercise its

transforming power over the life of the world. The greatest test

of the reformer's courage comes when, with a warm, earnest

longing for humanity, she breaks for it the bread of truth and

the world turns from this life-giving power and asks instead of

bread a stone.

It is just here that so many of God's workmen fail, and

themselves need to turn back to the vision as it appeared to

them, and to gather fresh courage and new inspiration for the

future. This, my sisters, we all must do if we would succeed. The

reformer may be inconsistent, she may be stern or even impatient,

but if the world feels that she is in earnest she can not fail.

Let the truth which she desires to teach first take possession of

herself. Every woman who to-day goes out into the world with a

truth, who has not herself become possessed of that truth, had

far better stay at home.

Who would have dreamed, when at that great anti-slavery meeting

in London, some years ago, the arrogance and pride of men

excluded the women whom God had moved to lift up their voices in

behalf of the baby that was sold by the pound--who would have

dreamed that that very exclusion would be the keynote of woman's

freedom? That out of the prejudice of that hour God should be

able to flash upon the crushed hearts of those excluded the grand

vision which we see manifested here to-day? That out of a longing

for the liberty of a portion of the race, God should be able to

show to women the still larger vision of the freedom of all human

kind?

Grand as is this vision which meets us here, it is but the

dawning of a new day; and as the first beams of morning light

give promise of the radiance which shall envelop the earth when

the sun shall have arisen in all its splendor, so there comes to

us a prophecy of that glorious day when the vision which we are

now beholding, which is beaming in the soul of one, shall enter

the hearts and transfigure the lives of all.

The formal opening of the Council, Monday morning, March 25, was thus

described: "The vast auditorium, perfect in its proportions and

arrangements, was richly decorated with the flags of all nations and

of every State in the Union. The platform was fragrant with evergreens

and flowers, brilliant with rich furniture, crowded with distinguished

women, while soft music with its universal language attuned all hearts

to harmony. The beautiful portrait of the sainted Lucretia Mott,

surrounded with smilax and lilies of the valley, seemed to sanctify

the whole scene and to give a touch of pathos to all the proceedings."

This great meeting, like so many before and since that time, was

opened by Miss Anthony. After the invocation and the hymn, she said in

part:

Forty years ago women had no place anywhere except in their

homes; no pecuniary independence, no purpose in life save that

which came through marriage. From a condition, as many of you can

remember, in which no woman thought of earning her bread by any

other means than sewing, teaching, cooking or factory work, in

these later years the way has been opened to every avenue of

industry, to every profession, whereby woman to-day stands almost

the peer of man in her opportunities for financial independence.

What is true in the world of work is true in education, is true

everywhere.

Men have granted us, in the civil rights which we have been

demanding, everything almost but the pivotal right, the one that

underlies all other rights, the one with which citizens of this

republic may protect themselves--the right to vote.

I have the pleasure of introducing to you this morning the woman

who not only joined with Lucretia Mott in calling the first

convention, but who for the greater part of twenty years has been

president of the National Suffrage Association--Mrs. Elizabeth

Cady Stanton.

The entire audience arose with clapping of hands and waving of

handkerchiefs to greet this leader, who had come from England to

attend the Council. In the course of a long and dignified address of

welcome, she said:

Whether our feet are compressed in iron shoes, our faces hidden

with veils and masks; whether yoked with cows to draw the plow

through its furrows, or classed with idiots, lunatics and

criminals in the laws and constitutions of the State, the

principle is the same; for the humiliations of spirit are as real

as the visible badges of servitude. A difference in government,

religion, laws and social customs makes but little change in the

relative status of woman to the self-constituted governing

classes, so long as subordination in all countries is the rule of

her being. Through suffering we have learned the open sesame to

the hearts of each other. With the spirit forever in bondage, it

is the same whether housed in golden cages with every want

supplied, or wandering in the dreary deserts of life, friendless

and forsaken. Long ago we of America heard the deep yearnings of

the souls of women in foreign lands for freedom responsive to our

own. Mary Wollstonecraft, Madame de Stael, Madam Roland, George

Sand, Frederica Bremer, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Frances

Wright and George Eliot alike have pictured the wrongs of woman

in poetry and prose. Though divided by vast mountain ranges,

oceans and plains, yet the psalms of our lives have been in the

same strain--too long, alas, in the minor key--for hopes deferred

have made the bravest hearts sometimes despairing. But the same

great over-soul has been our faith and inspiration. The steps of

progress already achieved in many countries should encourage us

to tune our harps anew to songs of victory....

I think most of us have come to feel that a voice in the laws is

indispensable to achieve success; that these great moral

struggles for higher education, temperance, peace, the rights of

labor, international arbitration, religious freedom, are all

questions to be finally adjusted by the action of government and

thus, without a direct voice in legislation, woman's influence

will be entirely lost.

Experience has fully proved that sympathy as a civil agent is

vague and powerless until caught and chained in logical

propositions and coined into law. When every prayer and tear

represents a ballot, the mothers of the race will no longer weep

in vain over the miseries of their children. The active interest

women are taking in all the great questions of the day is in

strong contrast with the apathy and indifference in which we

found them half a century ago, and the contrast in their

condition between now and then is equally marked. Those who

inaugurated the movement for woman's enfranchisement, who for

long years endured the merciless storm of ridicule and

persecution, mourned over by friends, ostracized in social life,

scandalized by enemies, denounced by the pulpit, scarified and

caricatured by the press, may well congratulate themselves on the

marked change in public sentiment which this magnificent

gathering of educated women from both hemispheres so triumphantly

illustrates....

We, who like the children of Israel, have been wandering in the

wilderness of prejudice and ridicule for forty years feel a

peculiar tenderness for the young women on whose shoulders we are

about to leave our burdens. Although we have opened a pathway to

the promised land and cleared up much of the underbrush of false

sentiment, logic and rhetoric intertwisted with law and custom,

which blocked all avenues in starting, yet there are still many

obstacles to be encountered before the rough journey is ended.

The younger women are starting with great advantages over us.

They have the results of our experience; they have superior

opportunities for education; they will find a more enlightened

public sentiment for discussion; they will have more courage to

take the rights which belong to them. Hence we may look to them

for speedy conquests. When we think of the vantage-ground woman

holds to-day, in spite of all the artificial obstacles placed in

her way, we are filled with wonder as to what the future mothers

of the race will be when free to have complete development.

Thus far women have been the mere echoes of men. Our laws and

constitutions, our creeds and codes, and the customs of social

life are all of masculine origin. The true woman is as yet a

dream of the future. A just government, a humane religion, a pure

social life await her coming....

At the close of this address Miss Anthony presented greetings from the

Woman's Liberal Association of Bristol, England, signed by many

distinguished names; from the Woman Suffrage Association of Norway,

and from a number of prominent women in Dublin.[67] There were also

individual letters from Mrs. Priscilla Bright McLaren and many other

foreigners.[68]

Dr. Elizabeth C. Sargent and eight other women physicians of San

Francisco sent cordial good wishes. Congratulations were received from

many Americans,[69] and a cablegram from Mrs. Harriot Stanton Blatch,

of England.