DEBATE
ON
WOMAN SUFFRAGE
IN THE
SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES,
2D SESSION, 49TH CONGRESS,
DECEMBER 8, 1886, AND JANUARY 23, 1887,
BY
SENATORS H.W. BLAIR, J.E. BROWN, J.N. DOLPH,
G.G. VEST, AND GEO. F. HOAR.
WASHINGTON.
1887.
* * * * *
_Wednesday, December 8, 1886._
On the joint resolution (S.R. 5) proposing an amendment to the
Constitution of the United States extending the right of suffrage to
women.
Mr. BLAIR said:
Mr. PRESIDENT: I ask the Senate to proceed to the consideration of
Order of Business 122, being the joint resolution (S.R. 5) proposing
an amendment to the Constitution of the United States extending the
right of suffrage to women.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_. The joint resolution will be read.
The Chief Clerk read as follows:
Joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the
United States extending the right of suffrage to women.
_Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House
concurring therein)_, That the following article be proposed to
the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the
Constitution of the United States; which, when ratified by
three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be valid as part of
said Constitution, namely:
ARTICLE--.
SECTION 1. The rights of citizens of the United States to vote
shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any
State on account of sex.
SEC. 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation,
to enforce the provisions of this article.
Mr. BLAIR. Mr. President, the question before the Senate is this:
Shall a joint resolution providing for an amendment of the national
Constitution, so that the right of citizens of the United States to
vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by
any State, on account of sex, and that Congress shall have power to
enforce the article, be submitted to the Legislatures of the several
States for ratification or rejection?
The answer to this question does not depend necessarily upon the
reply to that other question, whether women ought to be permitted
to exercise the right or privilege of suffrage as do men. The
Legislatures of the several States must decide this in ratifying or
rejecting the proposed amendment.
Upon solemn occasions concerning grave public affairs, and when large
numbers of the citizens of the country desire to test the sentiments
of the people upon an amendment of the organic law in the manner
provided to be done by the provisions of that law, it may well become
the duty of Congress to submit the proposition to the amending power,
which is the same as that which created the original instrument
itself--the people of the several States.
It can hardly be claimed that two-thirds of each branch of Congress
must necessarily be convinced that the Constitution should be amended
as proposed in the joint resolution to be submitted before it has
discretion to submit the same to the judgment of the States. Any
citizen has the right to petition or, through his representative, to
bring in his bill for redress of grievances, or to promote the public
good by legislation; and it can hardly be maintained that, before
any citizen or large body of citizens shall have the privilege of
introducing a bill to the great legislative tribunal, which alone has
primary jurisdiction of the organic law and power to amend or change
it, the Congress, which under the Constitution is simply the moving or
initiating power, must by a two-thirds vote approve the proposition
at issue before its discussion shall be permitted in the forum of the
States. To hold such a doctrine would be contrary to all our ideas of
free discussion, and to lock up the institutions and the interests of
a great and progressive people in fetters of brass.
It is only essential that two-thirds of each House of the Congress
shall deem it necessary for the public good, that the amendment
be proposed to the States for their action. But two-thirds of the
Congress will hardly consider it "necessary" to submit a joint
resolution proposing an amendment of the National Constitution to
the States for consideration, unless the subject matter be of grave
importance, with strong reasons in its favor, and a large support
already developed among the people themselves.
If there be any principle upon which our form of government is
founded, and wherein it is different from aristocracies, monarchies,
and despotisms, that principle is this:
Every human being of mature powers, not disqualified by ignorance,
vice or crime, is the equal of and is entitled to all the rights and
privileges which belong to any other such human being under the law.
The independence, equality, and dignity of all human souls is the
fundamental assertion of those who believe in what we call human
freedom. This principle will hardly be denied by any one, even by
those who oppose the adoption of the resolution. But we are informed
that infants, idiots, and women are represented by men. This cannot
reasonably be claimed unless it be first shown that the consent of
these classes has been given to such representation, or that they
lack the capacity to consent. But the exclusion of these classes from
participation in the Government deprives them of the power of assent
to representation even when they possess the requisite ability; and to
say there can be representation which does not presuppose consent
or authority on the part of the principal who is represented is to
confound all reason and to assert in substance that all actual power,
whether despotic or otherwise, is representative, and therefore free.
In this sense the Czar represents his whole people, just as voting men
represent women who do not vote at all.
True it is that the voting men, by excluding women and other classes
from the suffrage, by that act charge themselves with the trust of
administering justice to all, even as the monarch whose power is based
upon force is bound to rule uprightly. But if it be true that "all
just government is founded upon the consent of the governed," then
the government of woman by man, without her consent, given in her
sovereign capacity, if indeed she be an intelligent creature, and
provided she be competent to exercise the power of suffrage, which is
the sovereignty, even if that government be wise and just in itself,
is a violation of natural right and an enforcement of servitude and
slavery against her on the part of man. If woman, like the infant
or the defective classes, be incapable of self-government, then
republican society may exclude her from all participation in the
enactment and enforcement of the laws under which she lives. But in
that case, like the infant and the fool and the unconsenting subject
of tyrannical forms of government, she is ruled and not represented by
man.
Thus much I desire to say in the beginning in reply to the broad
assumption of those who deny women the suffrage by saying that they
are already represented by their fathers, their husbands, their
brothers, and their sons, or to state the proposition in its only
proper form, that woman whose assent can only be given by an exercise
of sovereignty on her part is represented by man who denies and by
virtue of power and possession refuses to her the exercise of the
suffrage whereby that representation can be made valid.
The claim, then, of the minority of the committee that woman is
represented by the other sex is not well founded, and is based upon
the same assumption of power which lies at the base of all government
anti-republican in form. It can not be claimed that she is as a free
being already represented, for she can only be represented according
to her will by the exercise of her will through the suffrage itself.
As already observed, the exclusion of woman from the suffrage under
our form of government can be justified upon proof, and only upon
proof, that by reason of her sex she is incompetent to exercise that
power. This is a question of fact.
The common ground upon which all agree may be stated thus: All males
having certain qualifications are in reason and in law entitled to
vote. Those qualifications affect either the body or the mind or both.
First, the attainment of a certain age. The age in itself is not
material, but maturity of mental and moral development is material,
soundness of body in itself not being essential, and want of it alone
never working forfeiture of the right, although it may prevent its
exercise.
Age as a qualification for suffrage is by no means to be confounded
with age as a qualification for service in war. Society has well
established the distinction, and that one has no relation whatever to
the other; the one having reference to physical prowess, while the
other relates only to the mental and moral state. This is shown by the
ages fixed by law for these qualifications, that of eighteen years
being fixed as the commencement of the term of presumed fitness
for military service, and forty-five years as the period of its
termination; while the age of presumed fitness for the suffrage, which
requires no physical superiority certainly, is set at twenty-one
years, when still greater strength of body has been attained than
at the period when liability to the dangers and hardships of war
commences; and there are at least three millions more male voters in
our country than of the population liable by law to the performance of
military duty. It is still further to be observed, that the right of
suffrage continues as long as the mind lasts, while ordinary liability
to military service ceases at a period when the physical powers,
though still strong, are beginning to wane. The truth is, that there
is no legal or natural connection between the right or liability to
fight and the right to vote.
The right to fight may be exercised voluntarily or the liability to
fight may be enforced by the community whenever there is an invasion
of right, and the extent to which the physical forces of society
may be called upon in self-defense or in justifiable revolution is
measured not by age or sex, but by necessity, and may go so far as to
call into the field old men and women and the last vestige of physical
force. It can not be claimed that woman has no right to vote because
she is not liable to fight, for she is so liable, and the freest
government on the face of the earth has the reserved power under the
call of necessity to place her in the forefront of battle itself, and
more than this, woman has the right, and often has exercised it, to go
there.
If any one could question the existence of this reserved power of
society to call the force of woman to the common defense, either in
the hospital or the field, it would be woman, who has been deprived of
participation in the government and in shaping the public policy which
has resulted in dire emergency to the state. But in all times, and
under all forms of government and of social existence, woman has given
her body and her soul to the common defense.
The qualification of age, then, is imposed for the purpose of securing
mental and moral fitness for the suffrage on the part of those who
exercise it. It has no relation to the possession of physical powers
at all.
All other qualifications imposed upon male citizens, save only that of
their sex, as prerequisites to the exercise of suffrage have the same
objects in view, and can have no other.
The property qualification is, to my mind, an invasion of natural
right, which elevates mere property to an equality with life and
personal liberty, and ought never to be imposed upon the suffrage.
But, however that may be, its application or removal has no relation
to sex, and its only object is to secure the exercise of the
suffrage under a stronger sense of obligation and responsibility--a
qualification, be it observed, of no consequence save as it influences
the mind of the voter in the exercise of his right.
The same is true of the qualifications of sanity, education, and
obedience to the laws, which exclude dementia, ignorance, and
crime from participation in the sovereignty. Every condition or
qualification imposed upon the exercise of the suffrage by the citizen
save only sex has for its only object or possible justification
the possession of mental and moral fitness, and has no relation to
physical power.
The question then arises why is the qualification of masculinity
required at all?
The distinction between human beings by reason of sex is a physical
distinction. The soul is of no sex. If there be a distinction of soul
by reason of the physical difference, or accompanying that physical
difference, woman is the superior of man in mental and moral
qualities. In proof of this see the report of the minority and all the
eulogiums of woman pronounced by those who, like the serpent of old,
would flatter her vanity that they may continue to wield her power.
I repeat it, that the soul is of no sex, and that sex is, so far as
the possession and exercise of human rights and powers are concerned,
but a physical property, in which the female is just as important as
the male, and the possessor thereof under just as great need of power
in the organization and management of society and the government of
society as man; and if there be a difference, she, by reason of her
average physical inferiority, is really protected, and ought to be
protected, by a superior mental and moral fitness to give direction to
the course of society and the policy of the state. If, then, there be
a distinction between the souls of human beings resulting from sex, I
claim that, by the report of the minority and the universal testimony
of all men, woman is better fitted for the exercise of the suffrage
than man.
It is claimed by some that the suffrage is an inherent natural right,
and by others that it is merely a privilege extended to the individual
by society in its discretion. However this may be, practically any
extension of the exercise of the suffrage to individuals or classes
not now enjoying it must be by concession of those who already possess
it, and such extension without revolution will be through the suffrage
itself exercised by those who have it under existing forms.
The appeal by those who have it not must be made to those who are
asked to part with a portion of their own power, and it is not strange
that human nature, which is an essential element in the male sex,
should hesitate and delay to yield one-half its power to those whose
cause, however strong in reason and justice, lacks that physical
force which so largely has been the means by which the masses of men
themselves hare wrung their own rights from rulers and kings.
It is not strange that when overwhelmed with argument and half won by
appeals to his better nature to concede to woman her equal power in
the state, and ashamed to blankly refuse that which he finds no
reason for longer withholding, man avoids the dilemma by a pretended
elevation of his helpmeet to a higher sphere, where, as an angel,
she has certain gauzy ethereal resources and superior functions,
occupations, and attributes which render the possession of mere
earthly every-day powers and privileges non-essential to woman,
however mere mortal men themselves may find them indispensable to
their own freedom and happiness.
But to the denial of her right to vote, whether that denial be the
blunt refusal of the ignorant or the polished evasion of the refined
courtier and politician, woman can oppose only her most solemn and
perpetual appeal to the reason of man and to the justice of Almighty
God. She must continually point out the nature and object of the
suffrage and the necessity that she possess it for her own and the
public good.
What, then, is the suffrage, and why is it necessary that woman should
possess and exercise this function of freemen? I quote briefly from
the report of the committee:
The rights for the maintenance of which human governments are
constituted are life, liberty, and property. These rights are
common to men and women alike, and whatever citizen or subject
exists as a member of any body-politic, under any form of
government, is entitled to demand from the sovereign power the
full protection of these rights.
This right to the protection of rights appertains to the
individual, not to the family alone, or to any form of
association, whether social or corporate. Probably not more than
five-eighths of the men of legal age, qualified to vote, are heads
of families, and not more than that proportion of adult women
are united with men in the legal merger of married life. It is,
therefore, quite incorrect to speak of the state as an aggregate
of families duly represented at the ballot-box by their male head.
The relation between the government and the individual is direct;
all rights are individual rights, all duties are individual
duties.
Government in its two highest functions is legislative and
judicial. By these powers the sovereignty prescribes the law,
and directs its application to the vindication of rights and the
redress of wrongs. Conscience and intelligence are the only forces
which enter into the exercise of this highest and primary function
of government. The remaining department is the executive or
administrative, and in all forms of government--the republican
as well as in tyranny--the primary element of administration is
force, and even in this department conscience and intelligence are
indispensable to its direction.
If now we are to decide who of our sixty millions of human beings
are to constitute the citizenship of this Republic and by virtue
of their qualifications to be the law-making power, by what tests
shall the selection be determined?
The suffrage which is the sovereignty is this great primary
law-making power. It is not the executive power proper at all. It
is not founded upon force. Only that degree of physical strength
which is essential to a sound body--the home of the healthy mental
and moral constitution--the sound soul in the sound body
is required in the performance of the function of primary
legislation. Never in the history of this or any other genuine
republic has the law-making power, whether in general elections or
in the framing of laws in legislative assemblies, been vested in
individuals who have exercised it by reason of their physical
powers. On the contrary, the physically weak have never for that
reason been deprived of the suffrage nor of the privilege of
service in the public councils so long as they possessed the
necessary powers of locomotion and expression, of conscience and
intelligence, which are common to all. The aged and the physically
weak have, as a rule, by reason of superior wisdom and moral
sense, far more than made good any bodily inferiority by which
they have differed from the more robust members of the community
in the discussion and decisions of the ballot-box and in councils
of the state.
The executive power of itself is a mere physical
instrumentality--an animal quality--and it is confided from
necessity to those individuals who possess that quality, but
always with danger, except so far as wisdom and virtue control its
exercise. And it is obvious that the greater the mass of higher
and spiritual forces, whether found in those to whom the execution
of the law is assigned or in the great mass by whom the suffrage
is exercised, and who direct the execution of the law, the greater
will be the safety and the surer will be the happiness of the
state.
It is too late to question the intellectual and moral capacity
of woman to understand great political issues (which are always
primarily questions of conscience--questions of the intelligent
application of the principles of right and of wrong in public and
private affairs) and properly decide them at the polls. Indeed,
so far as your committee are aware, the pretense is no longer
advanced that woman should not vote by reason of her mental or
moral unfitness to perform this legislative function; but the
suffrage is denied to her because she can not hang criminals,
suppress mobs, nor handle the enginery of war. We have already
seen the untenable nature of this assumption, because those who
make it bestow the suffrage upon very large classes of men who,
however well qualified they may be to vote, are physically unable
to perform any of the duties which appertain to the execution of
the law and the defense of the state. Scarcely a Senator on
this floor is liable by law to perform a military or other
administrative duty, yet the rule so many set up against the right
of women to vote would disfranchise nearly this whole body.
But it unnecessary to grant that woman can not fight. History is
full of examples of her heroism in danger, of her endurance and
fortitude in trial, and of her indispensable and supreme service
in hospital and field; and in the handling of the deft and
horrible machinery and infernal agencies which science and art
have prepared and are preparing for human destruction in future
wars, woman may perform her whole part in the common assault or
the common defense. It is hardly worth while to consider this
trivial objection that she is incompetent for purposes of national
murder or of bloody self-defense as the basis of the denial of a
great fundamental right, when we consider that if that right were
given to her she would by its exercise almost certainly abolish
this great crime of the nations, which has always inflicted upon
her the chief burden of woe.
It will be admitted that the act of voting is operative in government
only as a means of deciding upon the adoption or rejection of measures
or of the selection of officers to enact, administer, and execute the
laws.
In the discharge of these functions it also must be admitted that
intelligence and conscience are the faculties requisite to secure
their proper performance.
In this day when woman has demonstrated that she is fully the
intellectual equal of man in the profound as well as in the politer
walks of learning--in art, science, literature, and, considering her
opportunities, that she is not his inferior in any of the professions
or in the great mass of useful occupations, while she is, in fact,
becoming the chief educator of the race and is the acknowledged
support of the great ministrations of charity and religion; when in
such great organizations as the suffrage associations, missionary
societies, the National Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and even
upon the still larger scale of international action, she has exhibited
her power by mere moral influences and the inspiration of great
purposes, without the aid of legal penalties or even of tangible
inconveniences, to mold and direct the discordant thought and action
of thousands and millions of people scattered over separate States,
and sometimes even living in countries hostile to each other to the
accomplishment of great earthly or heavenly ends, it is unreasonable
to deny to woman the suffrage in political affairs upon the
false allegation that she is wanting in the very qualities most
indispensable and requisite for the proper exercise of this great
right.
The advocates of universal male suffrage have long since ceased
to deny the ballot to woman upon the ground that she is unfit or
incompetent to exercise it.
There is a class of high-stepping objectors, like Ouida, who decry the
sound judgment and moral excellence of woman as compared with man, but
in the same breath these people deny the suffrage to the masses of men
and advocate "the just supremacy of the fittest," so that no time need
be wasted in refutation of those malignant and libelous aspersions
upon our mothers, sisters, and wives, which, when carried to logical
conclusions by their own authors, deny the fundamental principles of
liberty to man and woman alike, and reassert in its baldest form the
dogma that "the existing system of electoral power all over the world
is absurd, and will remain so because in no nation is there the
courage, perhaps in no nation is there the intellectual power, capable
of putting forward and sustaining the logical doctrine of the just
supremacy of the fittest."
In fact the minority of the committee, and this is true of all honest,
intelligent men who believe in the republican system of government at
all, concede that woman has the capacity and moral fitness requisite
to exercise the ballot. That class of women represented by the author
of "Letters from a Chimney Corner," whose work has been adopted by
the minority as the basis of their report, speaking through the "fair
authoress," say that "if women were to be considered in their highest
and final estate as merely individual beings, and if the right to the
ballot were to be conceded to man as an individual, it might perhaps
he logically argued that women also possessed the inherent right to
vote." Let me read from the views of the minority on page 1:
The undersigned minority of the Committee of the Senate on Woman
Suffrage, to whom was referred Senate Resolution No. 5, proposing
an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to grant
the right to vote to the women of the United States, beg leave to
submit the following minority report, consisting of extracts from
a little volume entitled, "Letters from a Chimney Corner," written
by a highly cultivated lady, Mrs. ----, of Chicago, This gifted
lady has discussed the question with so much clearness and force
that we make no apology to the Senate for substituting quotations
from her book in place of anything we might produce. We quote
first from chapter 3, which is entitled "The value of suffrage to
women much overestimated."
The fair authoress says:
"If women were to be considered in their highest and final estate
as merely individual beings, and if the right to the ballot were
to be conceded to man as an individual, it might perhaps be
logically argued that women also possessed the inherent right to
vote. But from the oldest times, and through all the history
of the race, has run the glimmer of an idea, more or less
distinguishable in different ages and under different
circumstances, that neither man nor woman is, as such, individual;
that neither being is of itself a whole, a unit, but each requires
to be supplemented by the other before its true structural
integrity can be achieved. Of this idea, the science of botany
furnishes the moat perfect illustration. The stamens on the one
hand, and the ovary and pistil on the other, may indeed reside in
one blossom, which then exists in a married or reproductive state.
But equally well, the stamens or male organs may reside in one
plant, and the ovary and pistil or female organs may reside in
another. In that case, the two plants are required to make one
structurally complete organization. Each is but half a plant, an
incomplete individual by itself. The life principle of each must
be united to that of the other; the twain must be indeed one flesh
before the organization is either structurally or functionally
complete."
This is a concession of the whole argument, unless the highest and
final estate of woman is to be something else than a mere individual.
It would also follow that if such be her destiny--that is, to be
something else than a mere "individual being"--and if for that reason
she is to be denied the suffrage, then man equally should be denied
the ballot if his highest and final estate is to be something else
than a "mere individual."
Thereupon the minority of the committee, through the "Fair Authoress,"
proceed to show that both man and woman are designed for a higher
final estate--to wit, that of matrimony. It seems to be conceded
that man is just as much fitted for matrimony as woman herself, and
thereupon the whole subject is illuminated with certain botanical lore
about stamens and pistils, which, however relevant to matrimony, does
not seem to me to prove that therefore woman should not vote unless at
the same time it proves that man should not vote either. And certainly
it can not apply to those women any more than to those men whose
highest and final estate never is merged in the family relation at
all, and even "Ouida" concedes "that the project ... to give votes
only to unmarried women may be dismissed without discussion, as it
would be found to be wholly untenable."
There is no escape from it. The discussion has passed so far that
among intelligent people who believe in the republican form--that
is, free government--all mature men and women have under the same
circumstance and conditions the same rights to defend, the same
grievances to redress, and, therefore, the same necessity for the
exercise of this great fundamental right, of all human beings in free
society. For the right to vote is the great primitive right. It is the
right in which all freedom originates and culminates. It is the right
from which all others spring, in which they merge, and without which
they fall whenever assailed.
This right makes, and is all the difference between government by and
with the consent of the governed and government without and against
the consent of the governed; and that is the difference between
freedom and slavery. If the right to vote be not that difference, what
is? No, sir. If either sex as a class can dispense with the right to
vote, then take it from the strong, and no longer rob the weak of
their defense for the benefit of the strong.
But it is impossible to conceive of the suffrage as a right dependent
at all upon such an irrelevant condition as sex. It is an individual,
a personal right. It may be withheld by force; but if withheld by
reason of sex it is a moral robbery.
But it is said that the duties of maternity disqualify for the
performance of the act of voting. It can not be, and I think is not
claimed by any one, that the mother who otherwise would be fit to
vote is rendered mentally or morally less fit to exercise this high
function in the state because of motherhood. On the contrary, if any
woman has a motive more than another person, man or woman, to secure
the enactment and enforcement of good laws, it is the mother, who,
beside her own life, person, and property, to the protection of which
the ballot is as essential as to the same rights possessed by man,
has her little contingent of immortal beings to conduct safely to
the portals of active life through all the snares and pitfalls woven
around them by bad men and bad laws which bad men have made, or good
laws which bad men, unhindered by the good, have defied or have
prostituted, and rightly to prepare, them for the discharge of all the
duties of their day and generation, including the exercise of the very
right denied to their mother.
Certainly, if but for motherhood she should vote, then ten thousand
times more necessary is it that the mother should be guarded and armed
with this great social and political power for the sake of all men and
women who are yet to be. But it is said that she has not the time. Let
us see. By the best deductions I can make from the census and from
other sources there are 15,000,000 women of voting age in this country
at the present time, of whom not more than 10,000,000 are married and
not more than 7,500,000 are still liable to the duties of maternity,
for it will be remembered that a large proportion of the mothers of
our country at any given time are below the voting age, while of those
who are above it another large proportion have passed beyond the point
of this objection. Not more than one-half the female population of
voting age are liable to this objection. Then why disfranchise the
7,500,000, the other half, as to whom your objection, even if valid
as to any, does not apply at all; and these, too, as a class the most
mature and therefore the best qualified to vote of any of their sex?
But how much is there of this objection of want of time or physical
strength to vote, in its application to women who are bearing and
training the coming millions? The families of the country average five
persons in number. If we assume that this gives an average of three
children to every pair, which is probably the full number, or if we
assume that every married mother, after she becomes of voting age,
bears three children, which is certainly the full allowance, and that
twenty-four years are consumed in doing it, there is one child born
every eight years whose coming is to interfere with the exercise of a
duty of privilege which, in most States, and in all the most important
elections, occurs only one day in two years.
That same mother will attend church at least forty times yearly on
the average from her cradle to her grave, beside an infinity of other
social, religious, and industrial obligations which she performs and
assumes to perform because she is a married woman and a mother rather
than for any other reason whatever. Yet it is proposed to deprive
women--yes, all women alike--of an inestimable privilege and the chief
power which can be exercised by any free individual in the state for
the reason that on any given day of election not more than one woman
in twenty of voting age will probably not be able to reach the polls.
It does seem probable that on these interesting occasions if the
husband and wife disagree in politics they could arrange a pair, and
the probability is, that arrangement failing, one could be consummated
with some other lady in like fortunate circumstances, of opposite
political opinions. More men are kept from the polls by drunkenness,
or, being at the polls, vote under the influence of strong drink, to
the reproach and destruction of our free institutions, and who, if
woman could and did vote, would cast the ballot of sobriety, good
order, and reform under her holy influences, than all those who would
be kept from any given election by the necessary engagements of
mothers at home.
When one thinks of the innumerable and trifling causes which keep many
of the best of men and 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. Why,
sir, the greater exposure of man to the casualties of life actually
disables him in such way as to make it physically impossible for him
to exercise the franchise more frequently than is the case with
women, including mothers and all. And if this liability to lose the
opportunity to exercise the right once or possibly twice in a lifetime
is a reason that women should not he allowed to vote at all, why
should men not be disfranchised also by the same rule?
But 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 the
suffrage to women whenever the majority of women desire it. Are, then,
our rights the property of the majority of a disfranchised class to
which we may chance to belong? 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? I know that it is said that the suffrage is a privilege
to be extended by those who have it to those who have it not. But the
matter of right, of moral right, to the franchise does not depend
upon the indifference of those who possess it or of those who do not
possess it to the desire of those women who desire to enjoy their
right and to discharge their duty. 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 while disfranchised, and knowing
the hostility of their "protectors" to the agitation of the subject,
conceal their real sentiments, and 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 to expect an answer
which she knows will subject her to his censure and ridicule or even
his unexpressed disapprobation.
It is like the old appeal of the master to his slave to know if
he would be free. Full well did the wise and wary slave know that
happiness depended upon declared contentment with his lot. But all
the same the world does move. Colored men are free. Colored men vote.
Women will vote. A little further on I shall revert to the evidence of
a general and growing desire on her part and on the part of just and
intelligent men that the suffrage be extended to women.
But 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 were
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 the 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 at all 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 freedom of thought and speech.
Men live with their countrymen and 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 and
war, and whatsoever else the suffrage decides?
But we are told that no government, of which we have authentic
history, ever gave to woman 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 republic ever enfranchised woman
with the ballot--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?
But 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 the fact.
And in these Territories, too, as well as wherever else she has
exercised the suffrage, she has elevated man to her own level, and
has made the voting precinct as respectable and decorous as the
lecture-room or the assemblies of the devout. All the experience there
is refutes the apprehension of those who fear that woman will either
neglect the discharge of her great duty, when allowed its fair and
equal exercise, or that the rude and baser sort will overwhelm and
banish the noble and refined.
But to my mind it seems like trifling with a great subject to dwell
upon topics like this. It can only be justified by the continual
iteration of the objection by the opponents of woman suffrage, who in
the lack of substantial grounds whereupon to base their opposition to
the exercise of a great right by one-half the community declare that
there is no time in which woman can vote.
I will now read an extract from the report of the majority of the
committee, showing to a certain extent the degree of consequence which
this movement has assumed, its extent throughout our country, and
something of its duration. I have not the latest data, for since this
report was compiled there has been action in several States, and a
great deal of popular discussion and a vast amount of demonstration
from the action of popular assemblies.
The committee say:
This movement for woman suffrage has developed during the last
half century into one of great strength. The first petition was
presented to the Legislature of New York in 1835. It was repeated
in 1846, and since that time the petition has been urged upon
nearly every Legislature in the Northern States. Five States
have voted upon the question of amending their constitutions by
striking out the word "male" from the suffrage clause--Kansas in
1867, Michigan in 1874, Colorado in 1877, Nebraska in 1882, and
Oregon in 1884.
The ratio of the popular vote in each case was about one-third for
the amendment and two-thirds against it. Three Territories have or
have had full suffrage for women. In two, Wyoming since 1869
and Washington since 1883, the experiment (!) is an unqualified
success. In Utah Miss Anthony keenly and justly observes that
suffrage is as much of a success for the Mormon women as for the
men.
In eleven States school suffrage for women exists. In Kansas, from
her admission as a State. In Kentucky and Michigan fully as long
a time. School suffrage for women also exists in Colorado,
Minnesota, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York,
Nebraska, and Oregon.
In all these States, except Minnesota, school suffrage was
extended to women by the respective Legislatures, and in Minnesota
by the popular vote, in November, 1876. Not only these eleven
States, but in nearly all the other Northern and Western States
women are elected to the offices of county and city superintendent
of public schools and as members of school boards. In Louisiana
the constitution of 1879 makes women eligible to school offices.
It may also be observed as indicating a rising and controlling
public sentiment in recognition of the right and capacity of woman
for public affairs that she is eligible to such offices as that of
county clerk, register of deeds, and the like in many and perhaps
in all the States. Kansas and Iowa elected several women to these
positions in the election of November, 1885, while President Grant
alone appointed more than five thousand women to the office of
postmaster; and although many women have been appointed in the
Departments and to pension agencies and like important employments
and trusts, so far as your committee are aware no charge of
incompetency or of malfeasance in office has ever yet been
sustained against a woman.
It may be further stated in this connection that nearly every
Northern State has had before it from time to time since 1870 a
bill for the submission of the question of woman suffrage to the
popular vote. In some instances such a resolution has been passed
at one session and failed to be ratified at another by from one
to three votes; thus Iowa passed it in 1870, killed it in 1872;
passed it in 1874, failed to do so in 1876; passed it in 1878, and
failed in 1880; passed it again in 1882, and defeated it in
1884; four times over and over, and this winter these heroic and
indomitable women are trying it in Iowa again.
If men were to make such a struggle for their rights it would be
considered a fine thing, and there would be books and even poetry
written about it.
In New York, since 1880, the women have urged this great measure
before the Legislature each year. There it takes the form of a
bill to prohibit the disfranchisement of women. This bill has
several times come within five votes of passing the assembly.
In many States well sustained efforts for municipal suffrage have
been made, and, as if in rebuke to the conservatism, or worse, of
this great Republic, this right of municipal suffrage is already
enjoyed in the province of Ontario, Canada, and throughout the
island of Great Britain by unmarried women to the same extent as
by men, there being the same property qualification required of
each.
The movement for the amendment of the National Constitution began
by petitioning Congress December, 1865, and since 1869 there have
been consecutive applications to every Congress praying for the
submission to the States of a proposition similar to the joint
resolution herewith reported to the Senate.
The petitions have come from all parts of the country; more
especially from the Northern and Western States, although there is
an extensive and increasing desire for the suffrage existing among
the women in the Southern States, as we are informed by those
whose interest in the subject makes them familiar with the real
state of feeling in that part of our country. It is impossible
to know just what proportion of the people--men and women--have
expressed their desire by petition to the National Legislature
during the last twenty years, but we are informed by Miss Anthony
that in the year 1871 Senator Sumner collected the petitions from
the files of the Senate and House of Representatives, and that
there were then an immense number. A far greater number have been
presented since that time, and the same lady is our authority for
the estimate that in all more than two hundred thousand petitions,
by select and representative men and women, have been poured upon
Congress in behalf of this prayer of woman to be free. Who is so
interested in the framing of the law as woman, whose only defense
is the law? There never was a stronger exhibition of popular
demand by American citizens to be heard in the court of the people
for the vindication of a fundamental right.
Since the submission of the report the attempt has been made to secure
action in several of the State Legislatures. One which came very near
being successful was made in the State of Vermont. The suffrage was
extended, if I am not incorrectly informed, so far as the action of
the house of representatives of that State could give it, and an
effort being made to propose some restriction and condition upon the
suffrage it was defeated, when, as I am told by the friends of the
movement, if it could have reached a vote in the Vermont Legislature
on the naked proposition of suffrage to women as suffrage is extended
to men, they felt the very greatest confidence that they would have
been able to secure favorable action by the Legislature of that State.
Miss Anthony informs me since she came here at the present session
(and I am sorry I have not had the opportunity of extended conference
with her) that in the State of Kansas, where she spent several weeks
in the discussion of the subject before vast masses of people, the
largest halls, rinks, and places for the accommodation of popular
assemblages in the State were crowded to overflowing to listen to
her address. In every instance she has taken a vote of those vast
audiences as to whether they were in favor of woman suffrage or
against it, and in no single instance has there been a solitary vote
against the extension of the right, but affirmative and universal
action of those great assemblies demanding that it be extended to
women. And like demonstrations of popular approval are developing in
all parts of the country, perhaps not to so marked an extent as these
which I have just stated; but it is a growing feeling in this country
that women should have this right, and above all woman and man
demanding that she should have the opportunity to try her case before
the American people, that this right of petition should be heeded by
Congress and the joint resolution for the submission of the matter for
discussion by the States should be passed by the necessary two-thirds
vote.
It is sometimes, too, 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 is left to be fought out by individual action in
the individual States. Under the terms of the Constitution itself the
people of the United States, having some universal common interest
affected by law or by the want of law, are invited to come to this
body and try here their question of right, or at all events through
the agency of Congress to submit that proposition to the people at
large in order that in the general national forum it may receive
discussion, and by the action of three-fourths of the States, if
favorable, their idea may be incorporated in the fundamental law.
I will not detain the Senate further in the discussion of this
subject.
It should be borne in mind that the proposition is to submit to men
the question whether woman shall vote. The jury will certainly not be
prejudiced in her favor as against the public good. There can be no
danger of a verdict in her favor contrary to the evidence in the case.
We ask only for her 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. Millions of women and
thousands of men in our own country demand that she at least have the
opportunity to be heard. Hear, even if you strike.
The lamented Anthony, so long the object of reverence, affection, and
pride in this body, among the last acts of his public life, in
signing the favorable report of this resolution, made the following
declaration:
The Constitution is wisely conservative in the provision of its
own amendment. It is eminently proper that whenever a large
number of the people have indicated a desire for an amendment the
judgment of the amending power should be consulted. In view of the
extensive agitation of the question of woman suffrage, and the
numerous and respectable petitions that have been presented
to Congress in its support, I unite with the committee in
recommending that the proposed amendment be submitted to the
States.
H.B. ANTHONY.
Profoundly convinced of the justice of woman's demand for the
suffrage, and that the proper method of securing the right is by an
amendment of the national Constitution, I urge the adoption of the
joint resolution upon the still broader ground so clearly and calmly
stated by the great Senator whose words I have just read. I appeal to
you, Senators, to grant this petition of woman that she may be heard
for her claim of right. How could you reject that petition, even were
there but one faint voice beseeching your ear? How can you deny the
demand of millions who believe in suffrage for women, and who can not
be forever silenced, for they give voice to the innate cry of the
human heart that justice be done not alone to man, but to that half of
this nation which now is free only by the grace of the other, and that
by our action to-day we 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 citizen without distinction of color or
race.
* * * * *
Further consideration of the resolution postponed until January 25,
1887, when it was resumed, as follows:
_Tuesday, January 25, 1887._
WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
Mr. BLAIR. I now move that the Senate proceed to consider the joint
resolution (S.R. 5) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the
United States extending the right of suffrage to women.
The motion was agreed to; and the Senate, as in Committee of the
Whole, proceeded to consider the joint resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution will be read.
The Chief Clerk read the joint resolution, as follows:
_Resolved (two-thirds of each House concurring therein)_, That the
following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several
States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States:
which, when ratified by three-fourths of the said Legislatures,
shall be valid as part of said Constitution, namely:
ARTICLE--.