LOUISIANA--TEXAS--ARKANSAS--MISSISSIPPI.
St. Anna's Asylum, Managed by Women--Constitutional Convention,
1879--Women Petition--Clara Merrick Guthrie--Petition Referred to
Committee on Suffrage--A Hearing Granted--Mrs. Keating--Mrs.
Saxon--Mrs. Merrick--Col. John M. Sandige--Efforts of the Women all
in Vain--Action in 1885--Gov. McEnery--The _Daily Picayune_--Women
as Members of the School Board--Physiology in the Schools--Miss
Eliza Rudolph--Mrs. E. J. Nicholson--Judge Merrick's Digest of
Laws--Texas--Arkansas--Mississippi--Sarah A. Dorsey 789
CHAPTER LV. (CONTINUED).
DISTRICT OF
COLUMBIA--MARYLAND--DELAWARE--KENTUCKY--TENNESSEE--VIRGINIA--WEST
VIRGINIA--NORTH CAROLINA--SOUTH
CAROLINA--FLORIDA--ALABAMA--GEORGIA.
Secretary Chase--Women in the Government Departments--Myrtilla
Miner--Mrs. O'Connor's Tribute--District of Columbia Suffrage
Bill--The Universal Franchise Association, 1867--Bill for a
Prohibitory Law Presented by Hon. S. C. Pomeroy, 1869--A Bill for
Equal Wages for the Women in the Departments, Introduced by Hon. S.
M. Arnell, 1870--In 1871 Congress Passed the Organic Act for the
District Confining the Right of Suffrage to Males--In 1875 it
Withdrew all Legislative Power from the People--Women in Law,
Medicine, Journalism and the Charities--Dental College Opened to
Women--Mary A. Stewart--The Clay Sisters--The School of
Pharmacy--Elizabeth Avery Meriwether--Judge Underwood--Mary Bayard
Clarke--Dr. Susan Dimock--Governor
Chamberlain--Coffee-Growing--Priscilla Holmes Drake--Alexander H.
Stephens 808
CHAPTER LV. (CONCLUDED).
CANADA.
Miss Phelps of St. Catharines--The Revolt of the Thirteen
Colonies--First Parliament--Property Rights of Married
Women--School Suffrage Thirty Years--Municipal Suffrage, 1882,
1884--Women Voting in Toronto, 1886--Mrs. Curzon--Dr. Emily H.
Stone--Woman's Literary Club of Toronto--Nova Scotia--New
Brunswick--Miss Harriet Stewart 831
CHAPTER LVI.
GREAT BRITAIN.
Women Send Members to Parliament--Sidney Smith, Sir Robert Peel,
Richard Cobden--The Ladies of Oldham--Jeremy Bentham--Anne
Knight--Northern Reform Society, 1858--Mrs. Matilda
Biggs--Unmarried Women and Widows Petition Parliament--Associations
Formed in London, Manchester, Edinburgh, 1867--John Stuart Mill in
Parliament--Seventy-three Votes for his Bill--John Bright's
Vote--Women Register and Vote--Lord-Chief-Justice of England
Declares their Constitutional Right--The Courts Give Adverse
Decisions--Jacob Bright Secures the Municipal Franchise--First
Public Meeting--Division on Jacob Bright's Bill to Remove Political
Disabilities--Mr. Gladstone's Speech--Work of 1871-72--Fourth Vote
on the Suffrage Bill--Jacob Bright Fails of Reelection--Efforts of
Mr. Forsyth--Memorial of the National Society--Some Account of the
Workers--Vote of the New Parliament, 1875--Organized
Opposition--Diminished Adverse Vote of 1878--Mr. Courtney's
Resolution--Letters--Great Demonstrations at
Manchester--London--Bristol--Nottingham--Birmingham--Sheffield--
Glasgow--Victory in the Isle of Man--Passage of the Municipal
Franchise Bill for Scotland--Mr. Mason's Resolution--Reduction
of Adverse Majority to 16--Liberal Conference at Leeds--Mr.
Woodall's Amendment to Reform Bill of 1884--Meeting at
Edinburgh--Other Meetings--Estimated Number of Women
Householders--Circulars to Members of Parliament--Debate on
the Amendment--Resolutions of the Society--Further Debate--Defeat
of the Amendment--Meeting at St. James Hall--Conclusion 833
CHAPTER LVII.
CONTINENTAL EUROPE.
The Woman Question in the Back-ground--In France the Agitation
Dates from the Upheaval of 1789;--International Women's Rights
Convention in Paris, 1878--Mlle. Hubertine Auclert Leads the Demand
for Suffrage--Agitation Began in Italy with the Kingdom--Concepcion
Arenal in Spain--Coeducation in Portugal--Germany: Leipsic and
Berlin--Austria in Advance of Germany Caroline Svetla of
Bohemia--Austria Unsurpassed in Contradictions--Marriage
Emancipates from Tutelage in Hungary--Dr. Henrietta Jacobs of
Holland--Dr. Isala Van Diest of Belgium--In Switzerland the
Catholic Cantons Lag Behind--Marie Goegg, the Leader--Sweden Stands
First--Universities Open to Women in Norway--Associations in
Denmark--Liberality of Russia toward Women--Poland--The
Orient--Turkey--Jewish Wives--The Greek Woman in Turkey--The Greek
Woman in Greece--An Unique Episode--Woman's Rights in the American
Sense not Known 895
CHAPTER LVIII.
REMINISCENCES.
BY E. C. S. 922
Appendix 955
INDEX 985
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE CENTENNIAL YEAR--1876.
The Dawn of the New Century--Washington Convention--Congressional
Hearing--Woman's Protest--May Anniversary--Centennial Parlors in
Philadelphia--Letters and Delegates to Presidential
Conventions--50,000 Documents sent out--The Centennial Autograph
Book--The Fourth of July--Independence Square--Susan B. Anthony
reads the Declaration of Rights--Convention in Dr. Furness'
Church, Lucretia Mott, Presiding--The Hutchinson Family, John and
Asa--The Twenty-eighth Anniversary, July 19, Edward M. Davis,
Presiding--Letters, Ernestine L. Rose, Clarina I. H. Nichols--The
_Ballot-Box_--Retrospect--The Woman's Pavilion.
During the sessions of 1871-72 congress enacted laws providing for
the celebration of the one-hundredth anniversary of American
independence, to be held July 4, 1876, in Philadelphia, the
historic city from whence was issued the famous declaration of
1776.
The first act provided for the appointment by the president of a
"Centennial Commission," consisting of two members from each State
and territory in the Union; the second incorporated the Centennial
Board of Finance and provided for the issue of stock to the amount
of $10,000,000, in 1,000,000 shares of $10 each. It was at first
proposed to distribute the stock among the people of the different
States and territories according to the ratio of their population,
but subscriptions were afterward received without regard to States.
The stockholders organized a board of directors, April 1, 1873. The
design of the exhibition was to make it a comprehensive display of
the industrial, intellectual and moral progress of the nation
during the first century of its existence; but by the earnest
invitation of our government foreign nations so generally
participated that it was truly, as its name implied, an
"International and World's Exposition."
The centennial year opened amid the wildest rejoicing. In honor of
the nation's birthday extensive preparations were made for the
great event. Crowds of people eager to participate in the
celebration, everywhere flocked from the adjacent country to the
nearest village or city, filling the streets and adding to the
general gala look, all through the day and evening of December 31,
1875. From early gas-light upon every side the blowing of horns,
throwing of torpedos, explosion of fire-crackers, gave premonition
of more enthusiastic exultation. As the clock struck twelve every
house suddenly blossomed with red, white and blue; public and
private buildings burst into a blaze of light that rivaled the
noon-day sun, while screaming whistles, booming cannon, pealing
bells, joyous music and brilliant fire-works made the midnight
which ushered in the centennial 1876, a never-to-be-forgotten hour.
Portraits of the presidents from Washington and Lincoln
laurel-crowned, to Grant, sword in hand, met the eye on every side.
Stars in flames of fire lighted the foreign flags of welcome to
other nations. Every window, door and roof-top was filled with gay
and joyous people. Carriages laden with men, women and children in
holiday attire enthusiastically waving the national flag and
singing its songs of freedom. Battalions of soldiers marched
through the streets; Roman candles, whizzing rockets, and
gaily-colored balloons shot upward, filling the sky with trails of
fire and adding to the brilliancy of the scene, while all minor
sounds were drowned in the martial music. Thus did the old world
and the new commemorate the birth of a nation founded on the
principle of self-government.
The prolonged preparations for the centennial celebration naturally
roused the women of the nation to new thought as to their status as
citizens of a republic, as well as to their rightful share in the
progress of the century. The oft-repeated declarations of the
fathers had a deeper significance for those who realized the
degradation of disfranchisement, and they queried with each other
as to what part, with becoming self-respect, they could take in the
coming festivities.[1] Woman's achievements in art, science and
industry would necessarily be recognized in the Exposition; but
with the dawn of a new era, after a hundred years of education in a
republic, she asked more than a simple recognition of the products
of her hand and brain; with her growing intelligence, virtue and
patriotism, she demanded the higher ideal of womanhood that should
welcome her as an equal factor in government, with all the rights
and honors of citizenship fully accorded. During the entire
century, women who understood the genius of free institutions had
ever and anon made their indignant protests in both public and
private before State legislatures, congressional committees and
statesmen at their own firesides; and now, after discussing the
right of self-government so exhaustively in the late anti-slavery
conflict, it seemed to them that the time had come to make some
application of these principles to the women of the nation. Hence
it was with a deeper sense of injustice than ever before that the
National Suffrage Association issued the call for the annual
Washington Convention of 1876:
CALL FOR THE EIGHTH ANNUAL WASHINGTON CONVENTION.--The National
Woman Suffrage Association will hold its Eighth Annual Convention
in Tallmadge Hall, Washington, D. C., January 27, 28, 1876. In
this one-hundredth year of the Republic, the women of the United
States will once more assemble under the shadow of the national
capitol to press their claims to self-government.
That property has its rights, was acknowledged in England long
before the revolutionary war, and this recognized right made "no
taxation without representation" the most effective battle-cry of
that period. But the question of property representation fades
from view beside the greater question of the right of each
individual, millionaire or pauper, to personal representation. In
the progress of the war our fathers grew in wisdom, and the
Declaration of Independence was the first national assertion of
the right of individual representation. That "governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed,"
thenceforward became the watchword of the world. Our flag, which
beckons the emigrant from every foreign shore, means to him
self-government.
But while in theory our government recognizes the rights of all
people, in practice it is far behind the Declaration of
Independence and the national constitution. On what just ground
is discrimination made between men and women? Why should women,
more than men, be governed without their own consent? Why should
women, more than men, be denied trial by a jury of their peers?
On what authority are women taxed while unrepresented? By what
right do men declare themselves invested with power to legislate
for women? For the discussion of these vital questions friends
are invited to take part in the convention.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _President_, Fayetteville, N. Y.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Ch'n Ex. Com._, Rochester, N. Y.
At the opening session of this convention the president, Matilda
Joslyn Gage, said:
I would remind you, fellow-citizens, that this is our first
convention in the dawn of the new century. In 1776 we inaugurated
our experiment of self-government. Unbelief in man's capacity to
govern himself was freely expressed by every European monarchy
except France. When John Adams was Minister to England, the
newspapers of that country were filled with prophecies that the
new-born republic would soon gladly return to British allegiance.
But these hundred years have taught them the worth of liberty;
the Declaration of Independence has become the alphabet of
nations; Europe, Asia, Africa, South America and the isles of the
sea, will unite this year to do our nation honor. Our flag is
everywhere on sea and land. It has searched the North Pole,
explored every desert, upheld religious liberty of every faith
and protected political refugees from every nation, but it has
not yet secured equal rights to women.
This year is to be one of general discussion upon the science of
government; its origin, its powers, its history. If our present
declaration cannot be so interpreted as to cover the rights of
women, we must issue one that will. I have received letters from
many of the Western States and from this District, urging us to
prepare a woman's declaration, and to celebrate the coming Fourth
of July with our own chosen orators and in our own way. I notice
a general awakening among women at this time. But a day or two
since the women of this District demanded suffrage for themselves
in a petition of 25,000 names. The men are quiet under their
disfranchisement, making no attempt for their rights--fit slaves
of a powerful ring.
The following protest was presented by Mrs. Gage, adopted by the
convention, printed and extensively circulated:
_To the Political Sovereigns of the United States in Independence
Hall assembled:_
We, the undersigned women of the United States, asserting our
faith in the principles of the Declaration of Independence and in
the constitution of the United States, proclaiming it as the best
form of government in the world, declare ourselves a part of the
people of the nation unjustly deprived of the guaranteed and
reserved rights belonging to citizens of the United States;
because we have never given our consent to this government;
because we have never delegated our rights to others; because
this government is false to its underlying principles; because it
has refused to one-half its citizens the only means of
self-government--the ballot; because it has been deaf to our
appeals, our petitions and our prayers;
Therefore, in presence of the assembled nations of all the world,
we protest against this government of the United States as an
oligarchy of sex, and not a true republic; and we protest against
calling this a centennial celebration of the independence of the
people of the United States.
Letters[2] were read and a series of resolutions were discussed and
adopted:
_Resolved_, That the demand for woman suffrage is but the
next step in the great movement which began with _Magna
Charta_, and which has ever since tended toward vesting
government in the whole body of the people.
_Resolved_, That we demand of the forty-fourth congress, in
order that it may adequately celebrate the centennial year,
the admission to the polls of the women of all the
territories, and a submission to the legislatures of the
several States of an amendment securing to women the
elective franchise.
_Resolved_, That the enfranchisement of women means wiser
and truer wedlock, purer and happier homes, healthier and
better children, and strikes, as nothing else does, at the
very roots of pauperism and crime.
_Resolved_, That if Colorado would come into the Union in a
befitting manner for the celebration of the centennial of
the Declaration of Independence, she should give the ballot
to brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, and thus
present to the nation a truly free State.
_Resolved_, That the right of suffrage being vested in the
women of Utah by their constitutional and lawful
enfranchisement, and by six years of use, we denounce the
proposition about to be again presented to congress for the
disfranchisement of the women in that territory, as an
outrage on the freedom of thousands of legal voters and a
gross innovation of vested rights; we demand the abolition
of the system of numbering the ballots, in order that the
women may be thoroughly free to vote as they choose, without
supervision or dictation, and that the chair appoint a
committee of three persons, with power to add to their
number, to memorialize congress, and otherwise to watch over
the rights of the women of Utah in this regard during the
next twelve months.
BELVA A. LOCKWOOD presented the annual report: The question of
woman suffrage is to be submitted to the people of Iowa during
the present centennial year, if this legislature ratifies the
action of the previous one. Colorado has not embodied the word
"male" in her constitution, and a vigorous effort is being made
to introduce woman suffrage there. In Minnesota women are allowed
to vote on school questions and to hold office by a recent
constitutional amendment. In Michigan, in 1874, the vote for
woman suffrage was 40,000, about 1,000 more votes than were
polled for the new constitution. The Connecticut legislature,
during the past year appointed a committee to consider and report
the expediency of making women eligible to the position of
electors for president and vice-president. The committee made a
unanimous report in its favor, and secured for its passage 82
votes, while 101 votes were cast against it. In Massachusetts,
Governor Rice, in his inaugural address, recommended to the
legislature to secure to women the right to vote for presidential
electors. An address to the legislature of New York by Mesdames
Gage, Blake and Lozier upon this question, was favorably received
and extensively quoted by the press. At an agricultural fair in
Illinois the Hon. James R. Doolittle advocated household
suffrage. In the Senate of the thirteenth legislature of the
State of Texas, Senator Dohoney, Chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, made a report strongly advocating woman suffrage; and
in 1875, when a member of the Constitutional Convention, he
advocated the same doctrine, and was ably assisted by Hon. W. G.
L. Weaver. The governor of that State, in his message,
recommended that women school teachers should receive equal pay
for equal work. The word "male" does not occur in the new
constitution. In the territories of Wyoming and Utah, woman
suffrage still continues after five years' experiment, and we
have not learned that households have been broken up or that
babies have ceased to be rocked.
Women physicians, women journalists and women editors have come
to be a feature of our institutions. Laura De Force Gordon, a
member of our association, is editing a popular daily--the
_Leader_--in Sacramento, Cal. Women are now admitted to the bar
in Kansas, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Utah, Wyoming and
the District of Columbia. They are eligible and are serving as
school superintendents in Kansas, Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa and
Wisconsin. Illinois allows them to be notaries public. As
postmasters they have proved competent, and one woman, Miss Ada
Sweet, is pension agent at Chicago. Julia K. Sutherland has been
appointed commissioner of deeds for the State of California. In
England women vote on the same terms as men on municipal,
parochial and educational matters. In Holland, Austria and
Sweden, women vote on a property qualification. The Peruvian
Minister of Justice has declared that Peru places women on the
same footing as men. Thus all over the world is the idea of human
rights taking root and cropping out in a healthful rather than a
spasmodic outgrowth.
The grand-daughter of Paley, true to her ancestral blood, has
excelled all the young men in Cambridge in moral science. Julia
J. Thomas, of Cornell University, daughter of Dr. Mary F. Thomas,
of Indiana, in the recent inter-collegiate contest, took the
first prize of $300, over eight male competitors, in Greek. The
recent decision in the United States Supreme Court, of Minor
_vs._ Happersett, will have as much force in suppressing the
individuality and self-assertion of women as had the opinion of
Judge Taney, in the Dred-Scott case, in suppressing the
emancipation of slavery. The day has come when precedents are
made rather than blindly followed. The refusal of the Superior
Court of Philadelphia to allow Carrie S. Burnham to practice law,
because there was no precedent, was a weak evasion of common law
and common sense. One hundred years ago there was no precedent
for a man practicing law in the State of Pennsylvania, and yet we
have not learned that there was any difficulty in establishing a
precedent. I do not now remember any precedent for the
Declaration of Independence of the United Colonies, and yet
during a century it has not been overturned. The rebellion of the
South had no precedent, and yet, if I remember, there was an
issue joined, and the United States found that she had
jurisdiction of the case.
The admission of women to Cornell University; their reception on
equal footing in Syracuse University, receiving in both equal
honorary degrees; the establishment of Wellesley College, with
full professorships and capable women to fill them; the agitation
of the question in Washington of the establishment of a
university for women, all show a mental awakening in the popular
mind not hitherto known. A new era is opening in the history of
the world. The seed sown twenty-five years ago by Mrs. Stanton
and other brave women is bearing fruit.
SARA ANDREWS SPENCER said it was interesting to pair off the
objections and let them answer each other like paradoxes. Women
will be influenced by their husbands and will vote for bad men to
please them. Women have too much influence now, and if we give
them any more latitude they will make men all vote their way.
Owing to the composition and structure of the female brain, women
are incapable of understanding political affairs. If women are
allowed to vote they will crowd all the men out of office, and
men will be obliged to stay at home and take care of the
children. That is, owing to the composition and structure of the
female brain, women are so exactly adapted to political affairs
that men wouldn't stand any chance if women were allowed to enter
into competition with them. Women don't want it. Women shouldn't
have it, for they don't know how to use it. Grace Greenwood (who
was one of the seventy-two women who tried to vote) said men were
like the stingy boy at school with a cake. "Now," said he, "all
you that don't ask for it don't want it, and all you that do ask
for it sha'n't have it."
REV. OLYMPIA BROWN, pastor of the Universalist church in
Bridgeport, Conn., gave her views on the rights of women under
the constitution, and believed that they were entitled to the
ballot as an inalienable right. In this country, under existing
rulings of the courts as to the meaning of the constitution, no
one appeared likely to enjoy the ballot for all time except the
colored men, unless the clause, "previous condition of
servitude," as a congressman expressed it, referred to widows.
That being true, the constitution paid a premium only on colored
men, and widows. If the constitution did not guarantee suffrage,
and congress did not bestow it, then the republic was of no
account and its boast devoid of significance and meaning. Its
life had been in vain--dead to the interests for which it was
created. She wanted congress to pass a sixteenth amendment,
declaring all its citizens enfranchised, or a declaratory act
setting forth that the constitution already guaranteed to them
that right.
Hon. FREDERICK DOUGLASS said he was not quite in accord with all
the sentiments that had been uttered during the afternoon, yet he
was willing that the largest latitude should be taken by the
advocates of the cause. He was not afraid that at some distant
period the blacks of the South would rise and disfranchise the
whites. While he was not willing to be addressed as the ignorant,
besotted creature that the negro is sometimes called, he was
willing to be a part of the bridge over which women should march
to the full enjoyment of their rights.
Miss PHOEBE COUZINS of St. Louis reviewed in an able manner the
decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Virginia L. Minor.
Mrs. DEVEREUX BLAKE spoke on the rights and duties of
citizenship. She cited a number of authorities, including a
recent decision of the Supreme Court, to prove that women are
citizens, although deprived of the privileges of citizenship.
Taking up the three duties of citizenship--paying taxes, serving
on jury, and military service--she said woman had done her share
of the first for a hundred years; that the women of the country
now contributed, directly and indirectly, one-third of its
revenues, and that the House of Representatives had just robbed
them of $500,000 to pay for a centennial celebration in which
they had no part. As for serving on jury, they did not claim that
as a privilege, as it was usually regarded as a most disagreeable
duty; but they did claim the right of women, when arraigned in
court, to be tried by a jury of their peers, which was not
accorded when the jury was composed wholly of men. Lastly, as to
serving their country in time of war, it was a fact that women
had actually enlisted and fought in our late war, until their sex
was discovered, when they were summarily dismissed without being
paid for their services.
Hon. Aaron A. Sargent, of California, in the United States
Senate, and Hon. Samuel S. Cox, of New York, in the House of
Representatives, presented the memorial asking the enfranchisement
of the women of the District of Columbia, as follows:
IN THE SENATE, Tuesday, January 25, 1876.
Mr. SARGENT: I present a memorial asking for the establishment of
a government in the District of Columbia which shall secure to
its women the right to vote. This petition is signed by many
eminent ladies of the country: Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage,
President of the National Woman Suffrage Association, and the
following officers of that society: Lucretia Mott, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Henrietta Payne Westbrook, Isabella
Beecher Hooker, Mathilde F. Wendt, Ellen Clark Sargent; also by
Mary F. Foster, President of the District of Columbia Woman's
Franchise Association; Susan A. Edson, M. D.; Mrs. E. D. E. N.
Southworth, the distinguished authoress; Mrs. Dr. Caroline B.
Winslow; Belva A. Lockwood, a practicing lawyer in this District;
Sara Andrews Spencer, and Mrs. A. E. Wood.
These intelligent ladies set forth their petition in language and
with facts and arguments which I think should meet the ear of the
Senate, and I ask that it be read by the secretary in order that
their desires may be known.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: Is there objection? The chair hears
none, and the secretary will report the petition. The secretary
read:
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States in Congress assembled:_
Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States has affirmed
the decision of the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia in the cases of Spencer _vs._ The Board of
Registration, and Webster _vs._ The Judges of Election, and
has decided that "by the operation of the first section of
the fourteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United
States, women have been advanced to full citizenship and
clothed with the capacity to become voters; and further,
that this first section of the fourteenth amendment does not
execute itself, but requires the supervision of legislative
power in the exercise of legislative discretion to give it
effect"; and whereas the congress of the United States is
the legislative body having exclusive jurisdiction over the
District of Columbia, and in enfranchising the colored men
and refusing to enfranchise women, white or colored, made an
unjust discrimination against sex, and did not give the
intelligence and moral power of the citizens of said
District a fair opportunity for expression at the polls; and
whereas woman suffrage is not an experiment, but has had a
fair trial in Wyoming, where women hold office, where they
vote, where they have the most orderly society of any of the
territories, where the experiment is approved by the
executive officers of the United States, by their courts, by
their press and by the people generally, and where it has
"rescued that territory from a state of comparative
lawlessness" and rendered it "one of the most orderly in the
Union"; and whereas upon the woman suffrage amendment to
Senate bill number 44 of the second session of the
forty-third congress, votes were recorded in favor of woman
suffrage by the two senators from Indiana, the two from
Florida, the two from Michigan, the two from Rhode Island,
one from Kansas, one from Louisiana, one from Massachusetts,
one from Minnesota, one from Nebraska, one from Nevada, one
from Oregon, one from South Carolina, one from Texas, and
one from Wisconsin; and whereas a fair trial of equal
suffrage for men and women in the District of Columbia,
under the immediate supervision of congress, would
demonstrate to the people of the whole country that justice
to women is policy for men; and whereas the women of the
United States are governed without their own consent, are
denied trial by a jury of their peers, are taxed without
representation, and are subject to manifold wrongs resulting
from unjust and arbitrary exercise of power over an
unrepresented class; and whereas in this centennial year of
the republic the spirit of 1776 is breathing its influence
upon the people, melting away prejudices and animosities and
infusing into our national councils a finer sense of justice
and a clearer perception of individual rights; therefore,
We pray your honorable body to establish a government for
the District of Columbia which shall secure to its women the
right to vote.
Mr. SARGEANT: Even if this document were not accompanied by the
signatures of eminent ladies known throughout the land for their
virtues, intelligence and high character, the considerations
which it presents would be worthy of the attention of the senate.
I have no doubt that the great movement of which this is a part
will prevail. It is working its progress day by day throughout
the country. It is making itself felt both in social and
political life. The petitioners here well say that there has been
a successful experiment of the exercise of female suffrage in one
of our territories; that a territory has been redeemed from
lawlessness; that the judges, the press, the people generally of
Wyoming approve the results of this great experiment. I know of
no better place than the capital of a nation where a more
decisive trial can be made, if such is needed, to establish the
expediency of woman suffrage. As to its justice, who shall deny
it? I ask, for the purpose of due consideration, that this
petition be referred to the Committee on the District of
Columbia, so that in preparing any scheme for the government of
the District which is likely to come before this congress, due
weight may be given to the considerations presented.
The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The petition will be referred to the
Committee on the District of Columbia.
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Friday, March 31, 1876.
Mr. COX: Mr. Speaker, I am requested to present a memorial,
asking for a form of government in the District of Columbia which
shall secure to its women the right to vote; and I ask the grace
and favor to have this memorial printed in the _Record_.
Mr. BANKS: Mr. Speaker, I beg the privilege of saying a few words
in favor of the request made by the gentleman from New York who
presents this memorial. It is a hundred years this day since Mrs.
Abigail Adams, of Massachusetts, wrote to her husband, John
Adams, then a member of the continental convention, entreating
him to give to women the power to protect their own rights and
predicting a general revolution if justice was denied them. Mrs.
Adams was one of the noblest women of that period, distinguished
by heroism and patriotism never surpassed in any age. She was
wife of the second and mother of the sixth president of the
United States, and her beneficent influence was felt in political
as well as in social circles. It was perhaps the first demand for
the recognition of the rights of her sex made in this country,
and is one of the centennial incidents that should be remembered.
It came from a good quarter. This memorial represents half a
million of American women. They ask for the organization of a
government in the District of Columbia that will recognize their
political rights. I voted some years ago to give women the right
to vote in this District, and recalling the course of its
government I think it would have done no harm if they had enjoyed
political rights.
Mr. KASSON: I suggest that the memorial be printed without the
names.
Mr. COX: There are no names appended except those of the officers
of the National Woman Suffrage Association; and I hope they will
be printed with the memorial.
Mr. HENDEE: I trust the gentleman will allow this petition to be
referred to the committee of which I am a member: the Committee
for the District of Columbia. There being no objection, the
memorial was read and referred to the Committee for the District
of Columbia, and ordered to be printed in the _Record_.
At the close of the convention a hearing was granted to the ladies
before the committees of the Senate and House of Representatives on
the District of Columbia.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, of New York, said: _Mr. Chairman and
Gentlemen of the Committee_: On behalf of the National
Association, which has its officers in every State and territory
of the Union, and which numbers many thousands of members, and on
behalf of the Woman's Franchise Association of the District of
Columbia, we appear before you, asking that the right of suffrage
be secured equally to the men and women of this District. Art. 1,
sec. 8, clauses 17, 18 of the Constitution of the United States
reads:
Congress shall have power to exercise exclusive legislation
in all cases whatsoever over such district as may become the
seat of government of the United States, * * * * * to make
all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying
into execution the foregoing powers.
Congress is therefore constitutionally the special guardian of
the rights of the people of the District of Columbia. It
possesses peculiar rights, peculiar duties, peculiar powers in
regard to this District. At the present time the men and women
are alike disfranchised. Our memorial asks that in forming a new
government they may be alike enfranchised. It is often said as
an argument against granting suffrage to women that they do not
wish to vote; do not ask for the ballot. This association,
numbering thousands in the United States, through its
representatives, now asks you, in this memorial, for suffrage in
this District. Petitions from every State in the Union have been
sent to your honorable body. One of these, signed by thirty-five
thousand women, was sent to congress in one large roll; but what
is the value of a petition signed by even a million of an
unrepresented class?
The city papers of the national capital, once bitterly opposed to
all effort in this direction, now fully recognize the dignity of
the demand, and have ceased to oppose it. One of these said,
editorially, to-day, that the vast audiences assembling at our
conventions, the large majority being women, and evidently in
sympathy with the movement, were proof of the great interest
women take in this subject, though many are too timid to openly
make the demand. The woman's temperance movement began two years
ago as a crusade of prayer and song, and the women engaged
therein have now resolved themselves into a national
organization, whose second convention, held in October last,
numbering delegates from twenty-two States, almost unanimously
passed a resolution demanding the ballot to aid them in their
temperance work. We who make our constant demand for suffrage,
knew that these women were in process of education, and would
soon be forced to ask for the key to all reform.
The ballot says yes or no to all questions. Without it women are
prohibited from practically expressing their opinions. The very
fact that the women of this District make this demand of you more
urgently than men proves that they desire it more and see its
uses better. The men of this District who quietly remain
disfranchised have the spirit of slaves, and if asking for the
ballot is any proof of fitness for its use, then the women who do
ask for it here prove themselves in this respect superior to men,
more alive to the interests of this District, and better fitted
to administer the government. Women who are not interested in
questions of reform would soon become so if they possessed the
ballot. They are now in the condition we were when we heard of
the famine in Persia two years ago. Our sympathies were aroused
for a brief while, but Persia was far away, we could render it no
certain aid, and the sufferings of the people soon passed from
our minds.
Our approaching centennial celebration is to commemorate the
Declaration of Independence, which was based on individual
rights. For ages it was a question where the governing power
rightfully belonged; patriarch, priest, and monarch each claimed
it by divine right. Our country declared it vested in the
individual. Not only was this clearly stated in the Declaration
of Independence, but the same ground was maintained in the secret
proceedings upon framing the constitution. The old confederation
was abandoned because it did not secure the independence and
safety of the people. It has recently been asked in congressional
debates, "What is the grand idea of the centennial?" The answer
was, "It is the illustration in spirit and truth of the
principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the
constitution."
These principles are:
_First_--The natural rights of each individual.
_Second_--The exact equality of these rights.
_Third_--That rights not delegated are retained by the
individual.
_Fourth_--That no person shall exercise the rights of others
without delegated authority.
_Fifth_--That non-use of rights does not destroy them.
Rights did not come new-born into the world with the revolution.
Our fathers were men of middle age before they understood their
own rights, but when they did they compelled the recognition of
the world, and now the nations of the earth are this year invited
to join you in the celebration of these principles of free
government.
We have special reasons for asking you to secure suffrage to the
women of the District of Columbia. Woman Suffrage has been tried
in Wyoming, and ample testimony of its beneficial results has
been furnished, but it is a far distant territory, and those not
especially interested will not examine the evidence. It has been
tried in Utah, but with great opposition on account of the
peculiar religious belief and customs of the people. But the
District of Columbia is directly under the eye of congress. It is
the capital of the nation, and three-fifths of the property of
the District belongs to the United States. The people of the
whole country would therefore be interested in observing the
practical workings of this system on national soil. With 7,316
more women than men in this District, we call your special
attention to the inconsistency and injustice of granting suffrage
to a minority and withholding it from a majority, as you have
done in the past. If the District is your special ward, then
women, being in the majority here, have peculiar claims upon you
for a consideration of their rights. The freedom of this country
is only half won. The women of to-day have less freedom than our
fathers of the revolution, for they were permitted local
self-government, while women have no share in local, State, or
general government.
Our memorial calls your attention to the Pembina debate in 1874,
when senators from eighteen States recognized the right of
self-government as inhering in women. One senator said: "I
believe women never will enjoy equality with men in taking care
of themselves until they have the right to vote." Another, "that
the question was being considered by a large portion of the
people of the United States." When the discussion was concluded
and the vote taken, twenty-two senators recorded their votes for
woman suffrage in that distant territory. During the debate
several senators publicly declared their intention of voting for
woman suffrage in the District of Columbia whenever the
opportunity was presented. These senators recognize the fact that
the ballot is not only a right, but that it is opportunity for
woman; that it is the one means of helping her to help herself.
In asking you to secure the ballot to the women of the District
we do not ask you to create a right. That is beyond your power.
We ask you to protect them in the exercise of a right.
Mrs. SARA ANDREWS SPENCER, Secretary of the District of Columbia
Woman's Franchise Association, said: For no legal or political
right I have ever claimed in the District of Columbia do I ask a
stronger, clearer charter than the Declaration of Independence,
and the constitution of the United States as it stood before the
fourteenth amendment had entered the minds of men. A judicial
decision, rendered by nine men, upon the rights of ten millions
of women of this republic, need not, does not, change the
convictions of one woman in regard to her own heaven-endowed
rights, duties, and responsibilities.
We have resorted to all the measures dictated by those who rule
over us for securing the freedom to exercise rights which are
sacredly our own, rights which are ours by Divine inheritance,
and which men can neither confer nor take away. We are not only
daughters of our Father in heaven, and joint heirs with you
there; but we are daughters of this republic, and joint heirs
with you here. Every act of legislation which has been placed as
a bar in our way as citizens has been an act of injustice, and
every expedient to which we have resorted for securing
recognition of citizenship has been with protest against the
existence of these acts of unauthorized power.
When any man expresses doubt to me as to the use that I or any
other woman might make of the ballot if we had it, my answer is,
What is that to you? If you have for years defrauded me of my
rightful inheritance, and then, as a stroke of policy, or from
late conviction, concluded to restore to me my own domain, must I
ask you whether I may make of it a garden of flowers, or a field
of wheat, or a pasture for kine? If I choose I may counsel with
you. If experience has given you wisdom, even of this world, in
managing your property and mine, I should be wise to learn from
you. But injustice is not wont to yield wisdom; grapes do not
grow of thorns, nor figs of thistles.
Born of the unjust and cruel subjection of woman to man, we have
in these United States a harvest of 116,000 paupers, 36,000
criminals, and such a mighty host of blind, deaf and dumb,
idiotic, insane, feeble-minded, and children with tendencies to
crime, as almost to lead one to hope for the extinction of the
human race rather than for its perpetuation after its own kind.
The wisdom of man licenses the dram-shop, and then rears
station-houses, jails, and gibbets to provide for the victims. In
this District we have 135 teachers of public schools and 238
police officers, and the last report shows that public safety
demands a police force of 900. We have 31,671 children of school
age; 31,671 reasons why I want to vote. We have here 7,000 more
children of school age than there are seats in all the public
schools, and from the swarm of poor, ignorant, and vagrant
children, the lists of criminals and paupers are constantly
supplied. To provide for these evils there is an annual
expenditure of $350,000, not including expenses of courts, while
for education the annual expenditure is $280,000.
Will you say that the wives and the mothers, the house and
homekeepers of this small territory, have no interest in all
these things? If dram-shops are licensed and brothels protected,
are not our sons, our brothers, tempted and ruined, our daughters
lured from their homes, and lost to earth and heaven? Long and
patiently women have borne wrongs too deep to be put into words;
wrongs for which men have provided no redress and have found no
remedy. When five years ago, with our social atmosphere poisoned
with vices which as women we had no power to remove, men in
authority began a series of attempts to fasten upon us by law the
huge typical vice of all the ages--the social evil--in a form so
degrading to all womanhood that no man, though he were the prince
of profligates, would submit to its regulations for a day; then
we cried out so that the world heard us. We know the plague is
only stayed for a brief while. The hydra-headed monster every now
and then lifts a new front, and must be smitten again. Four times
in four successive years a little company of women of the
District have appeared before committees and compelled the
discussion and defeat of bills designed to fasten these measures
upon the community under the guise of security for public health
and morality. The last annual report of the board of health
speaks tenderly of the need of protecting vicious men by these
regulations, and says:
The legalization of houses of ill-fame for so humane a
purpose, startling as it may be to the moral sense, has many
powerful advocates among the thoughtful, wise, and
philanthropic of communities.
The report quotes approvingly Dr. Gross, of Philadelphia, who
says in behalf of laws to license the social evil:
The prejudices which surround the subject must be swept
away, and men must march to the front and discharge their
duty, however much they may be reproached and abused by the
ignorant and foolish.
Aside from the higher ground of our inherent right to
self-government, we declare here and now that the women of this
District are not safe without the ballot. Our firesides, our
liberties are in constant peril, while men who have no concern
for our welfare may legislate against our dearest interests. If
we would inaugurate any measure of protection for our own sex, we
are bound hand and foot by man. The law is his, the treasury is
his, the power is his, and he need not even hear our cry, except
at his good will and pleasure.
If man had legislated justly and wisely for the interests of this
District, if its financial condition was sound, its social and
moral atmosphere pure, and all was well, there would be some show
of reason in your refusing to hazard a new experiment, even
though we could demonstrate it to be founded upon eternal
justice. But the history of the successive forms of government in
the District of Columbia is a history of failures. So will it
continue to be until you adopt a plan founded upon truly
republican principles. When, a few years ago, you put the ballot
into the hands of the swarming masses of freedmen who had
gathered here with the ignorance and vices of slaves, and refused
to enfranchise women, white or colored, you gave this District no
fair trial of a republican form of government. You did not even
protect the interests of the colored race. You admitted that the
colored man was not really free until he held the ballot in his
hand, and therefore you enfranchised him and left the woman twice
his slave. I know colored women in Washington far the superiors,
intellectually and morally, of the masses of men, who declare
that they now endure wrongs and abuses unknown in slavery.
There is not an interest in this District that is not as vital to
me as to any man in Washington--that is not more vital to me than
it can be to any member of this honorable body. As a citizen,
seeking the welfare of this community, as a wife and mother
desiring the safety of my children, which of you can claim a
deeper interest than I in questions of markets, taxes, finance,
banks, railroads, highways, the public debt and interest thereon,
boards of health, sanitary and police regulations, station-houses
(wherein I find many a wreck of womanhood, ruined in her youth
and beauty), schools, asylums, and charities? Why deny me a voice
in any or all of these? Do you doubt that I would use the ballot
in the interests of order, retrenchment, and reform? Do you deny
a right of mine, which you will admit I know how to prize,
because there are women who do not appreciate its value, do not
demand it, possibly might not (any better than men) know how to
use it? What a mockery of justice! What a flagrant violation of
individual rights! I would cry out against it if no other woman
in the land felt the wrong. But among the 10,000,000 of mothers
of 14,000,000 of children in this country, vast numbers of
thoughtful, philanthropic, and pure women have come to see this
truth, and desire to express their mother love and home love at
the ballot-box!
Frederick Douglass once said: "Whole nations have been bathed in
blood to establish the simplest possible propositions. For
instance, that a man's head is _his_ head; his body is _his_
body; his feet are _his_ feet, and if he chooses to run away with
them it is nobody's business"; and all honor to him, he added,
"Now, these propositions have been established for the colored
man. Why does not man establish them for woman, his wife, his
mother?"
Determined to surround the colored man with every possible
guarantee of protection in the possession of his freedom,
congress stopped the wheels of legislation, and made the whole
country wait, while day after day and night after night his
friends fought inch by inch the ground for the civil rights bill.
During that debate Senator Frelinghuysen said:
When I took the oath as senator, I took the oath to support
the Constitution of the United States, which declares
equality for all: and in advocating this bill I am doing my
sworn duty in endeavoring to secure equal rights for every
citizen of the United States.
But where slept his "sworn duty" when he recorded his vote in the
Senate against woman suffrage? With marvelous inconsistency, as a
reason for opposing woman suffrage, during the Pembina debate,
May 27, 1874, Senator Merrimon said of the relation of women to
the Constitution of the United States:
They have sustained it under all circumstances with their
love, their hands, and their hearts; with their smiles and
their tears they have educated their children to live for
it, and to die for it.
Therefore the honorable gentleman denies them the right to vote.
Upon the civil rights bill, Senator Howe said:
I do not know but what the passage of this bill will break
up the common schools. I admit that I have some fear on that
point. Every step of this terrible march has been met with a
threat; but let justice be done although the common schools
and the heavens do fall.
In reply to the point made by Mr. Stockton that the people of the
United States would not accept this bill, Mr. Howe said:
I would not turn back if I knew that of the forty million
people of the United States not one million would sustain
it. If this generation does not accept it there is a
generation to come that will accept it. What does this
provide? Not that the black man should be helped on his way;
not at all; but only that, as he staggers along, he shall
not be retarded, shall not be tripped up and made to fall.
Brave and tender words these for our black brother; but see how
prone men are to invert truth, justice, and mercy in dealing with
women. During the Pembina debate, Senator Merrimon said:
I know there are a few women in the country who complain;
but those who complain, compared with those who do not
complain, are as one to a million.
As a literal fact, the women who have complained, have
petitioned, sued, reasoned, plead, have knocked at the doors of
your legislatures and courts, are as one to fifty in this
country, as we who watch the record know; and even that is a
small proportion of those who would, but dare not; who are bound
hand and foot, and will be bound until you make them free. But if
no others feel the wrong but those who have dared to complain; if
the poor, the ignorant, the betrayed, the ruined do not
understand the question, and the well-fed and comfortable "have
all the rights they want," do you give that for answer to our
just demand? What do we ask? Not that poor woman "shall be helped
on her way"--not at all; but only that, "as she staggers along,
she shall not be retarded, shall not be tripped up, shall not be
made to fall."
And here on this national soil, for the women of this District of
Columbia--your peculiar wards--I ask you to try the experiment of
exact, even-handed justice; to give us a voice in the laws under
which we must live, by which we are tried, judged and condemned.
I ask it for myself, that I may the better help other women. I
ask it for other women, that they may the better help themselves.
As you hope for justice and mercy in your hour of need, may you
hear and answer.
Rev. Olympia Brown, of Connecticut; Belva A. Lockwood, of
Washington; and Phoebe Couzins, of St. Louis, also addressed the
committees; enforcing their arguments with wit, humor, pathos and
eloquence.
On her way home from Washington, Mrs. Gage stopped in Philadelphia
to secure rooms for the National Association during the centennial
summer, and decided upon Carpenter Hall, in case it could be
obtained. This hall belongs to the Carpenter Company of
Philadelphia, perhaps the oldest existing association of that city,
it having maintained an uninterrupted organization from the year
1724, about forty years after the establishment of the colonial
government by William Penn, and was much in use during the early
days of the revolution. The doors of the State House, where the
continental congress intended to meet, were found closed against
it; but the Carpenter Company, numbering many eminent patriots,
offered its hall for their use; and here met the first continental
congress, September 5, 1774. John Adams, describing its opening
ceremonies, said:
Here was a scene worthy of the painter's art. Washington was
kneeling there, and Randolph, Rutledge, Lee and Jay; and by their
side there stood, bowed in reverence, the Puritan patriots of New
England, who at that moment had reason to believe that an armed
soldiery was wasting their humble households. It was believed
that Boston had been bombarded and destroyed.[3] They prayed
fervently for America, for the congress, for the province of
Massachusetts Bay, and especially for the town of Boston. Who can
realize the emotions with which in that hour of danger they
turned imploringly to heaven for Divine interposition. It was
enough to melt a heart of stone. I saw the tears gush into the
eyes of old, gray, pacific Quakers of Philadelphia.
The action of this congress, which sat but seven weeks, was
momentous in the history of the world. "From the moment of their
first debate," said De Tocqueville, "Europe was moved." The
convention which in 1781 framed the constitution of the United
States, also met in Carpenter Hall in secret session for four
months before agreeing upon its provisions. This hall seemed the
most appropriate place for establishing the centennial rooms of the
National Woman Suffrage Association, but the effort to obtain
it proved unavailing[4] as will be seen by the following
correspondence:
_To the President and Officers of the Carpenter Company of
Philadelphia:_
The National Woman Suffrage Association will hold its
headquarters in Philadelphia the centennial season of 1876, and
desires to secure your historic hall for that purpose. We know
your habit and custom of denying its use to all societies, yet we
make our request because our objects are in accord with the
principles which emanated from within its walls a hundred years
ago, and we shall use it in carrying out those principles of
liberty and equality upon which our government is based.
We design to advertise our headquarters to the world, and old
Carpenter Hall, if used by us, would become more widely
celebrated as the birth-place of liberty. Our work in it would
cause it to be more than ever held in reverence by future ages,
and pilgrimages by men and women would be made to it as to
another Mecca shrine.
We propose to place a person in charge, with pamphlets, speeches,
tracts, etc., and to hold public meetings for the enunciation of
our principles and the furtherance of our demands. Hoping you
will grant this request,
I am respectfully yours, MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE,
_President of the National Woman Suffrage Association._
Two months afterward, the following reply was received:
HALL, CARPENTER COURT, 322 Chestnut St.,}
PHILADELPHIA, April 24, 1876.}
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _President of the Woman Suffrage
Association_:
Your communication asking permission to occupy Carpenter Hall for
your convention was duly received, and presented to the company
at a stated meeting held the 16th instant, when on motion it was
unanimously resolved to postpone the subject indefinitely.
[Extract of minutes]. GEORGE WATSON, _Secretary_.
It was a matter of no moment to those men that women were soon to
assemble in Philadelphia, whose love of liberty was as deep, whose
patriotism was as pure as that of the fathers who met within its
walls in 1774, and whose deliberations had given that hall its
historic interest.
In the midst of these preparations the usual May anniversary was
held:
CALL FOR THE MAY ANNIVERSARY, 1876.--The National Woman Suffrage
Association will hold its Ninth Annual Convention in Masonic
Hall, New York, corner of Sixth avenue and Twenty-third street,
May 10, 11, 1876.
This convention occuring in the centennial year of the republic,
will be a most important one. The underlying principles of
government will this year be discussed as never before; both
foreigners and citizens will query as to how closely this country
has lived up to its own principles. The long-debated question as
to the source of the governing power was answered a century ago
by the famous Declaration of Independence which shook to the
foundation all recognized power and proclaimed the right of the
individual as above all forms of government; but while thus
declaring itself, it has held the women of the nation accountable
to laws they have had no share in making, and taught as their one
duty, that doctrine of tyrants, unquestioning obedience. Liberty
to-day is, therefore, but the heritage of one-half the people,
and the centennial will be but the celebration of the
independence of one-half the nation. The men alone of this
country live in a republic, the women enter the second hundred
years of national life as political slaves.
That no structure is stronger than its weakest point is a law of
mechanics that will apply equally to government. In so far as
this government has denied justice to woman, it is weak, and
preparing for its own downfall. All the insurrections,
rebellions, and martyrdoms of history have grown out of the
desire for liberty, and in woman's heart this desire is as strong
as in man's. At every vital time in the nation's life, men and
women have worked together; everywhere has woman stood by the
side of father, brother, husband, son in defense of liberty;
without her aid the republic could never have been established;
and yet women are still suffering under all the oppressions
complained of in 1776; which can only be remedied by securing
impartial suffrage to all citizens without distinction of sex.
All persons who believe republican principles should be carried
out in spirit and in truth, are invited to be present at the May
convention.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _President_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
This May anniversary, commencing on the same day with the opening
of the centennial exhibition, was marked with more than usual
earnestness. As popular thought naturally turned with increasing
interest at such an hour to the underlying principles of
government, woman's demand for political equality received a new
impulse. The famous Smith sisters, of Glastonbury, Connecticut,
attended this convention, and were most cordially welcomed. The
officers[5] for the centennial year were chosen and a campaign[6]
and congressional[7] committee appointed to take charge of affairs
at Philadelphia and Washington. The resolutions show the general
drift of the discussions:[8]
WHEREAS, The right of self-government inheres in the individual
before governments are founded, constitutions framed, or courts
created; and
WHEREAS, Governments exist to protect the people in the enjoyment
of their natural rights, and when any government becomes
destructive of this end, it is the right of the people to resist
and abolish it; and
WHEREAS, The women of the United States, for one hundred years,
have been denied the exercise of their natural right of
self-government and self-protection; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is the natural right and most sacred duty of
the women of these United States to rebel against the injustice,
usurpation and tyranny of our present government.
WHEREAS, The men of 1776 rebelled against a government which did
not claim to be of the people, but, on the contrary, upheld the
"divine right of kings"; and
WHEREAS, The women of this nation to-day, under a government
which claims to be based upon individual rights, to be "of the
people, by the people, and for the people," in an infinitely
greater degree are suffering all the wrongs which led to the war
of the revolution; and WHEREAS, The oppression is all the more
keenly felt because our masters, instead of dwelling in a foreign
land, are our husbands, our fathers, our brothers and our sons;
therefore,
_Resolved_, That the women of this nation, in 1876, have greater
cause for discontent, rebellion and revolution, than the men of
1776.
_Resolved_, That with Abigail Adams, in 1776, we believe that
"the passion for liberty cannot be strong in the breasts of those
who are accustomed to deprive their fellow-creatures of liberty";
that, as Abigail Adams predicted, "We are determined to foment a
rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by laws in which we
have no voice or representation."
WHEREAS, We believe in the principles of the Declaration of
Independence and of the Constitution of the United States, and
believe a true republic is the best form of government in the
world; and
WHEREAS, This government is false to its underlying principles in
denying to women the only means of self-government, the ballot;
and
WHEREAS, One-half of the citizens of this nation, after a century
of boasted liberty, are still political slaves; therefore,
_Resolved_, That we protest against calling the present
centennial celebration a celebration of the independence of the
people of the United States.
_Resolved_, That we meet in our respective towns and districts on
the Fourth of July, 1876, and declare ourselves no longer bound
to obey laws in whose making we have had no voice, and, in
presence of the assembled nations of the world gathered on this
soil to celebrate our nation's centennial, demand justice for the
women of this land.
WHEREAS, The men of this nation have established for men of all
nations, races and color, on this soil, at the cost of countless
lives, the proposition (in the language of Frederick Douglass)
"that a man's head is his head, his body is his body, his feet
are his feet"; therefore,
_Resolved_, That justice, equity and chivalry demand that man at
once establish for his wife and mother the corresponding
proposition, that a woman's head is her head, her body is her
body, her feet are her feet, and that all ownership and mastery
over her person, property, conscience, and liberty of speech and
action, are in violation of the supreme law of the land.
_Resolved_, That we rejoice in the resistance of Julia and Abby
Smith, Abby Kelly Foster, Sarah E. Wall and many more resolute
women in various parts of the country, to taxation without
representation.
_Resolved_, That the thanks of the National Woman Suffrage
Association are hereby tendered to Hon. A. A. Sargent, of
California, for his earnest words in behalf of woman suffrage on
the floor of the United States Senate, Jan. 25, 1876; and to Hon.
N. P. Banks, of Massachusetts, for his appeal in behalf of the
centennial woman suffrage memorial in the United States House of
Representatives, March 31, 1876.
_Resolved_, That the repeated attempts to license the social evil
are a practical confession of the weakness, profligacy and
general unfitness of men to legislate for women, and should be
regarded with alarm as a proof that their firesides and liberties
are in constant peril while men alone make and execute the laws
of this country.
WHEREAS, There are 7,000 more women than men in the District of
Columbia, and no form of government for said District has allowed
women any voice in making the laws under which they live;
therefore,
_Resolved_, That in this centennial year the congress of the
United States having exclusive jurisdiction over that territory
should establish a truly republican form of government by
granting equal suffrage to the men and women of the District of
Columbia.
Immediately at the close of the May convention Mrs. Gage again went
to Philadelphia to complete the arrangements in regard to the
centennial headquarters. Large and convenient rooms were soon
found upon Arch street, terms agreed upon and a lease drawn, when
it transpired that a husband's consent and signature must be
obtained, although the property was owned by a woman, as by the
laws of Pennsylvania a married woman's property is under her
husband's control. Although arrangements for this room had been
made with the real owner, the terms being perfectly satisfactory to
her, the husband refused his ratification, tearing up the lease,
with abuse of the women who claimed control of their own property,
and a general defiance of all women who dared work for the
enfranchisement of their sex. Thus again were women refused rooms
in Philadelphia in which to enter their protest against the tyranny
of this republic, and for the same reason--they were slaves. Had
the patriots of the revolutionary period asked rooms of King
George, in which to foster their treason to his government, the
refusal could have been no more positive than in these cases.
The quarters finally obtained were very desirable; fine large
parlors on the first floor, on Chestnut street, at the fashionable
west end, directly opposite the Young Men's Christian Association.
The other members of the committee being married ladies, Miss
Anthony, as a _feme sole_, was alone held capable of making a
contract, and was therefore obliged to assume the pecuniary
responsibility of the rooms. Thus it is ever the married women who
are more especially classed with lunatics, idiots and criminals,
and held incapable of managing their own business. It has always
been part of the code of slavery, that the slave had no right to
property; all his earnings and gifts belonging by law, to the
master. Married women come under this same civil code. The
following letter was extensively circulated and published in all
the leading journals:
NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE PARLORS, }
1,431 Chestnut Street, PHILADELPHIA, PA. }
The National Woman Suffrage Association has established its
centennial headquarters in Philadelphia, at 1,431 Chestnut
street. The parlors, in charge of the officers of the
association, are devoted to the special work of the year,
pertaining to the centennial celebration and the political party
conventions; also to calls, receptions, conversazioni, etc. On
the table a centennial autograph book receives the names of
visitors. Friends at a distance, both men and women, who cannot
call, are invited to send their names, with date and residence,
accompanied by a short expressive sentiment and a contribution
toward expenses. In the rooms are books, papers, reports and
decisions, speeches, tracts, and photographs of distinguished
women; also mottoes and pictures expressive of woman's
condition. In addition to the parlor gatherings, meetings and
conventions will be held during the season in various halls and
churches throughout the city.
On July Fourth, while the men of this nation and the world are
rejoicing that "All men are free and equal" in the United States,
a declaration of rights for women will be issued from these
headquarters, and a protest against calling this centennial a
celebration of the independence of the people, while one-half are
still political slaves.
Let the women of the whole land, on that day, in meetings, in
parlors, in kitchens, wherever they may be, unite with us in this
declaration and protest. And, immediately thereafter, send full
reports, in manuscript or print, of their resolutions, speeches
and action, for record in our centennial book, that the world may
see that the women of 1876 know and feel their political
degradation no less than did the men of 1776.
The first woman's rights convention the world ever knew, called
by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, met at Seneca Falls,
N. Y., July 19, 20, 1848. In commemoration of the twenty-eighth
anniversary of that event, the National Woman Suffrage
Association will hold in ---- hall, Philadelphia, July 19, 20, of
the present year, a grand mass convention, in which eminent
reformers from the new and old world will take part. Friends are
especially invited to be present on this historic occasion.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.
From these headquarters numberless documents were issued during the
month of June. As the presidential nominating conventions were soon
to meet, letters were addressed to both the Republican and
Democratic parties, urging them to recognize the political rights
of women in their platforms. Thousands of copies of these letters
were scattered throughout the nation:
_To the President and Members of the National Republican
Convention, Cincinnati, O., June 14, 1876._
GENTLEMEN: The National Woman Suffrage Association asks you to
place in your platform the following plank:
_Resolved_, That the right to the use of the ballot inheres
in every citizen of the United States; and we pledge
ourselves to secure the exercise of this right to all
citizens, irrespective of sex.
In asking the insertion of this plank, we propose no change of
fundamental principles. Our question is as old as the nation. Our
government was framed on the political basis of the consent of
the governed. And from July 4, 1776, until the present year,
1876, the nation has constantly advanced toward a fuller practice
of our fundamental theory, that the governed are the source of
all power. Your nominating convention, occurring in this
centennial year of the republic, presents a good opportunity for
the complete recognition of these first principles. Our
government has not yet answered the end for which it was framed,
while one-half the people of the United States are deprived of
the right of self-government. Before the Revolution, Great
Britain claimed the right to legislate for the colonies in all
cases whatsoever; the men of this nation now as unjustly claim
the right to legislate for women in all cases whatsoever.
The call for your nominating convention invites the cooeperation
of "all voters who desire to inaugurate and enforce the rights of
every citizen, including the full and free exercise of the right
of suffrage." Women are citizens; declared to be by the highest
legislative and judicial authorities; but they are citizens
deprived of "the full and free exercise of the right of
suffrage." Your platform of 1872 declared "the Republican party
mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of the nation for
their noble devotion to the cause of freedom." Devotion to
freedom is no new thing for the women of this nation. From the
earliest history of our country, woman has shown herself as
patriotic as man in every great emergency in the nation's life.
From the Revolution to the present hour, woman has stood by the
side of father, husband, son and brother in defense of liberty.
The heroic and self-sacrificing deeds of the women of this
republic, both in peace and war, must not be forgotten. Together
men and women have made this country what it is. And to-day, in
this one-hundredth year of our existence, the women--as members
of the nation--as citizens of the United States--ask national
recognition of their right of suffrage.
The Declaration of Independence struck a blow at every existent
form of government, by declaring the individual the source of all
power. Upon this one newly proclaimed truth our nation arose. But
if States may deny suffrage to any class of citizens, or confer
it at will upon any class--as according to the Minor-Happersett
decision of the Supreme Court--a decision rendered under the
auspices of the Republican party against suffrage as a
constituent element of United States citizenship--we then possess
no true national life. If States can deny suffrage to citizens of
the United States, then States possess more power than the United
States, and are more truly national in the character of their
governments. National supremacy does not chiefly mean power "to
levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish
commerce"; it means national protection and security in the
exercise of the right of self-government, which comes alone, by
and through the use of the ballot.
Even granting the premise of the Supreme-Court decision that "the
Constitution of the United States does not confer suffrage on any
one"; our national life does not date from that instrument. The
constitution is not the original declaration of rights. It was
not framed until eleven years after our existence as a nation,
nor fully ratified until nearly fourteen years after the
commencement of our national life. This centennial celebration of
our nation's birth does not date from the constitution, but from
the Declaration of Independence. The declared purpose of the
civil war was the settlement of the question of supremacy between
the States and the United States. The documents sent out by the
Republican party in this present campaign, warn the people that
the Democrats intend another battle for State sovereignty, to be
fought this year at the ballot-box.
The National Woman Suffrage Association calls your attention to
the fact that the Republican party has itself reopened this
battle, and now holds the anomalous position of having settled
the question of State sovereignty in the case of black men, and
again opened it, through the Minor-Happersett decision, not only
in the case of women citizens, but also in the case of men
citizens, for all other causes save those specified in the
fifteenth amendment. Your party has yet one opportunity to
retrieve its position. The political power of this country has
always shown itself superior to the judicial power--the latter
ever shaping and basing its decisions on the policy of the
dominant party. A pledge, therefore, by your convention to secure
national protection in the enjoyment of perfect equality of
rights, civil and political, to all citizens, will so define the
policy of the Republican party as to open the way to a full and
final adjustment of this question on the basis of United States
supremacy.
Aside from the higher motive of justice, we suggest your adoption
of this principle of equal rights to women, as a means of
securing your own future existence. The party of reform in this
country is the party that lives. The party that ceases to
represent the vital principles of truth and justice dies. If you
would save the life of the Republican party you should now take
broad national ground on this question of suffrage.
By this act you will do most to promote the general welfare,
secure the blessings of liberty to yourselves and your posterity,
and establish on this continent a genuine republic that shall
know no class, caste, race, or sex--where all the people are
citizens, and all citizens are equal before the law.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.
_Centennial Headquarters_,
1,431 Chestnut street, _Philadelphia_, June 10, 1876.
_To the President and Members of the National Democratic
Convention assembled at St. Louis, June 27, 1876_:
GENTLEMEN: In reading the call for your convention, the National
Woman Suffrage Association was gratified to find that your
invitation was not limited to voters, but cordially extended to
all citizens of the United States. We accordingly send delegates
from our association, asking for them a voice in your
proceedings, and also a plank in your platform declaring the
political rights of women.
Women are the only class of citizens still wholly unrepresented
in the government, and yet we possess every qualification
requisite for voters in the several States. Women possess
property and education; we take out naturalization papers and
passports; we preempt lands, pay taxes, and suffer for our own
violation of the laws. We are neither idiots, lunatics, nor
criminals; and, according to your State constitutions, lack but
one qualification for voters, namely, sex, which is an
insurmountable qualification, and therefore equivalent to a bill
of attainder against one-half the people; a power no State nor
congress can legally exercise, being forbidden in article 1,
sections 9, 10, of our constitution. Our rulers may have the
right to regulate the suffrage, but they can not abolish it
altogether for any class of citizens, as has been done in the
case of the women of this republic, without a direct violation of
the fundamental law of the land.
As you hold the constitution of the fathers to be a sacred legacy
to us and our children forever, we ask you to so interpret that
_Magna Charta_ of human rights as to secure justice and equality
to all United States citizens irrespective of sex. We desire to
call your attention to the violation of the essential principle
of self-government in the disfranchisement of the women of the
several States, and we appeal to you, not only because as a
minority you are in a position to consider principles, but
because you were the party first to extend suffrage by removing
the property qualification from all white men, and thus making
the political status of the richest and poorest citizen the same.
That act of justice to the laboring masses insured your power,
with but few interruptions, until the war.
When the District of Columbia suffrage bill was under discussion
in 1866, it was a Democratic senator (Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania)
who proposed an amendment to strike out the word "male," and thus
extend the right of suffrage to the women, as well as the black
men of the District. That amendment gave us a splendid discussion
on woman suffrage that lasted three days in the Senate of the
United States. It was a Democratic legislature that secured the
right of suffrage to the women of Wyoming, and we now ask you in
national convention to pledge the Democratic party to extend this
act of justice to the women throughout the nation, and thus call
to your side a new political force that will restore and
perpetuate your power for years to come.
The Republican party gave us a plank in their platform in 1872,
pledging themselves to a "respectful consideration" of our
demands. But by their constitutional interpretations, legislative
enactments, and judicial decisions, so far from redeeming their
pledge, they have buried our petitions and appeals under laws in
direct opposition to their high-sounding promises and
professions. And now (1876) they give us another plank in their
platform, approving the "substantial advance made toward the
establishment of equal rights for women"; cunningly reminding us
that the privileges and immunities we now enjoy are all due to
Republican legislation--although, under a Republican dynasty,
inspectors of election have been arrested and imprisoned for
taking the votes of women; temperance women arrested and
imprisoned for praying in the streets; houses, lands, bonds, and
stock of women seized and sold for their refusal to pay unjust
taxation--and, more than all, we have this singular spectacle: a
Republican woman, who had spoken for the Republican party
throughout the last presidential campaign, arrested by Republican
officers for voting the Republican ticket, denied the right of
trial by jury by a Republican judge, convicted and sentenced to a
fine of one hundred dollars and costs of prosecution; and all
this for asserting at the polls the most sacred of all the rights
of American citizenship--the right of suffrage--specifically
secured by recent Republican amendments to the federal
constitution.
Again, the Supreme Court of the United States, by its recent
decision in the Minor-Happersett case, has stultified its own
interpretation of constitutional law. A negro, by virtue of his
United States citizenship, is declared under recent amendments a
voter in every State in the Union; but when a woman, by virtue of
her United States citizenship, applies to the Supreme Court for
protection in the exercise of this same right, she is remanded to
the State by the unanimous decision of the nine judges on the
bench, that "the Constitution of the United States does not
confer the right of suffrage upon any one."
All concessions of privileges or redress of grievances are but
mockery for any class that has no voice in the laws and
lawmakers. Hence we demand the ballot--that scepter of power--in
our own hands, as the only sure protection for our rights of
person and property under all conditions. If the few may grant or
withhold rights at their own pleasure, the many cannot be said to
enjoy the blessings of self-government. Jefferson said, "The God
who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of
force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." While the first and
highest motive we would urge on you is the recognition in all
your action of the great principles of justice and equality that
underlie our form of government, it is not unworthy to remind you
that the party that takes this onward step will reap its just
reward.
Had you heeded our appeals made to you in Tammany Hall, New York,
in 1868, and again in Baltimore, in 1872, your party might now
have been in power, as you would have had, what neither party can
boast to-day, a live issue on which to rouse the enthusiasm of
the people. Reform is the watchword of the hour; but how can we
hope for honor and honesty in either party in minor matters, so
long as both consent to rob one-half the people--their own
mothers, sisters, wives and daughters--of their most sacred
rights? As a party you defended the right of self-government in
Louisiana ably and eloquently during the last session of
congress. Are the rights of women in all the Southern States,
whose slaves are now their rulers, less sacred than those of the
men of Louisiana? "The whole art of government," says Jefferson,
"consists in being honest."
It needs but little observation to see that the tide of progress,
in all countries, is setting toward the emancipation and
enfranchisement of women; and this step in civilization is to be
taken in our day and generation. Whether the Democratic party
will take the initiative in this reform, and reap the glory of
crowning fifteen million women with the rights of American
citizenship, and thereby vindicate our theory of self-government,
is the momentous question we ask you to decide in this eventful
hour, as we round out the first century of our national life.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.
_Centennial Headquarters_,
1,431 Chestnut street, _Philadelphia_, June 20, 1876.
In addition to these letters delegates were sent to both the
Republican and Democratic conventions. Sara Andrews Spencer and
Elizabeth Boynton Harbert were present at the Republican convention
at Cincinnati; both addressed the committee on platform and
resolutions, and Mrs. Spencer, on motion of Hon. George F. Hoar,
was permitted to address the convention. Mrs. Virginia L. Minor and
Miss Phoebe W. Couzins were the delegates to the Democratic
convention at St. Louis, and the latter addressed that vast
assembly.[9]
For a long time there had been a growing demand for a woman's
declaration to be issued on July Fourth, 1876. "Let us then protest
against the falsehood of the nation"; "If the old Declaration does
not include women, let us have one that will"; "Let our rulers be
arraigned"; "A declaration of independence for women must be issued
on the Fourth of July, 1876," were demands that came from all parts
of the country. The officers of the association had long had such
action in view, having, at the Washington convention, early in
1875, announced their intention of working in Philadelphia during
the centennial season, and were strengthened in their determination
by the hearty indorsement they received. At the May convention in
New York, Matilda Joslyn Gage, in her opening speech, announced
that a declaration of independence for women would be issued on the
Fourth of July, 1876. In response to this general feeling, the
officers of the National Association prepared a declaration of
rights of the women of the United States, and articles of
impeachment against the government.
Application was made by the secretary, Miss Anthony, to General
Hawley, president of the centennial commission, for seats for fifty
officers of the association. General Hawley replied that "only
officials were invited"--that even his own wife had no place--that
merely representatives and officers of the government had seats
assigned them. "Then" said she, "as women have no share in the
government, they are to have no seats on the platform," to which
General Hawley assented; adding, however, that Mrs. Gillespie, of
the woman's centennial commission, had fifty seats placed at her
disposal, thus showing it to be in his power to grant places to
women whenever he so chose to do. Miss Anthony said: "I ask seats
for the officers of the National Woman Suffrage Association; we
represent one-half the people, and why should we be denied all part
in this centennial celebration?" Miss Anthony, however, secured a
reporter's ticket by virtue of representing her brother's paper,
_The Leavenworth Times_, and, ultimately, cards of invitation were
sent to four others,[10] representing the 20,000,000 disfranchised
citizens of the nation.
Mrs. Stanton, as president of the association, wrote General
Hawley, asking the opportunity to present the woman's protest and
bill of rights at the close of the reading of the Declaration of
Independence. Just its simple presentation and nothing more. She
wrote:
We do not ask to read our declaration, only to present it to the
president of the United States, that it may become an historical
part of the proceedings.
Mrs. Spencer, bearer of this letter, in presenting it to General
Hawley, said:
The women of the United States make a slight request on the
occasion of the centennial celebration of the birth of the
nation; we only ask that we may silently present our declaration
of rights.
General HAWLEY replied: It seems a very slight request, but our
programme is published, our speakers engaged, our arrangements
for the day decided upon, and we can not make even so slight a
change as that you ask.
Mrs. SPENCER replied: We are aware that your programme is
published, your speakers engaged, your entire arrangements
decided upon, without consulting with the women of the United
States; for that very reason we desire to enter our protest. We
are aware that this government has been conducted for one hundred
years without consulting the women of the United States; for this
reason we desire to enter our protest.
General HAWLEY replied: Undoubtedly we have not lived up to our
own original Declaration of Independence in many respects. I
express no opinion upon your question. It is a proper subject of
discussion at the Cincinnati convention, at the St. Louis
convention,, in the Senate of the United States, in the State
legislatures, in the courts, wherever you can obtain a hearing.
But to-morrow we propose to celebrate what we have done the last
hundred years; not what we have failed to do. We have much to do
in the future. I understand the full significance of your very
slight request. If granted, it would be the event of the day--the
topic of discussion to the exclusion of all others. I am sorry to
refuse so slight a demand; we cannot grant it.
General Hawley also addressed a letter to Mrs. Stanton:
DEAR MADAM: I regret to say it is impossible for us to make any
change in our programme, or make any addition to it at this late
hour.
Yours very respectfully,
JOS. R. HAWLEY, _President U. S. C. C._
As General Grant was not to attend the celebration, the acting
vice-president, Thomas W. Ferry, representing the government, was
to officiate in his place, and he, too, was addressed by note, and
courteously requested to make time for the reception of this
declaration. As Mr. Ferry was a well-known sympathizer with the
demands of woman for political rights, it was presumable that he
would render his aid. Yet he was forgetful that in his position
that day he represented, not the exposition, but the government of
a hundred years, and he too refused; thus this simple request of
woman for a half moment's recognition on the nation's centennial
birthday was denied by all in authority.[11] While the women of
the nation were thus absolutely forbidden the right of public
protest, lavish preparations were made for the reception and
entertainment of foreign potentates and the myrmidons of monarchial
institutions. Dom Pedro, emperor of Brazil, a representative of
that form of government against which the United States is a
perpetual defiance and protest, was welcomed with fulsome
adulation, and given a seat of honor near the officers of the day;
Prince Oscar of Sweden, a stripling of sixteen, on whose shoulder
rests the promise of a future kingship, was seated near. Count
Rochambeau of France, the Japanese commissioners, high officials
from Russia and Prussia, from Austria, Spain, England, Turkey,
representing the barbarism and semi-civilization of the day, found
no difficulty in securing recognition and places of honor upon that
platform, where representative womanhood was denied.
Though refused by their own countrymen a place and part in the
centennial celebration, the women who had taken this presentation
in hand were not to be conquered. They had respectfully asked for
recognition; now that it had been denied, they determined to seize
upon the moment when the reading of the Declaration of Independence
closed, to proclaim to the world the tyranny and injustice of the
nation toward one-half its people. Five officers of the National
Woman Suffrage Association, with that heroic spirit which has ever
animated lovers of liberty in resistance to tyranny, determined,
whatever the result, to present the woman's declaration of rights
at the chosen hour. They would not, they dared not sacrifice the
golden opportunity to which they had so long looked forward; their
work was not for themselves alone, nor for the present generation,
but for all women of all time. The hopes of posterity were in their
hands and they determined to place on record for the daughters of
1976, the fact that their mothers of 1876 had asserted their
equality of rights, and impeached the government of that day for
its injustice toward woman. Thus, in taking a grander step toward
freedom than ever before, they would leave one bright remembrance
for the women of the next centennial.
That historic Fourth of July dawned at last, one of the most
oppressive days of that terribly heated season. Susan B. Anthony,
Matilda Joslyn Gage, Sara Andrews Spencer, Lillie Devereux Blake
and Phoebe W. Couzins made their way through the crowds under the
broiling sun to Independence Square, carrying the Woman's
Declaration of Rights. This declaration had been handsomely
engrossed by one of their number, and signed by the oldest and most
prominent advocates of woman's enfranchisement. Their tickets of
admission proved open sesame through the military and all other
barriers, and a few moments before the opening of the ceremonies,
these women found themselves within the precincts from which most
of their sex were excluded.
The declaration of 1776 was read by Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia,
about whose family clusters so much of historic fame. The close of
his reading was deemed the appropriate moment for the presentation
of the woman's declaration. Not quite sure how their approach might
be met--not quite certain if at this final moment they would be
permitted to reach the presiding officer--those ladies arose and
made their way down the aisle. The bustle of preparation for the
Brazilian hymn covered their advance. The foreign guests, the
military and civil officers who filled the space directly in front
of the speaker's stand, courteously made way, while Miss Anthony in
fitting words presented the declaration. Mr. Ferry's face paled, as
bowing low, with no word, he received the declaration, which thus
became part of the day's proceedings; the ladies turned, scattering
printed copies, as they deliberately walked down the platform. On
every side eager hands were stretched; men stood on seats and asked
for them, while General Hawley, thus defied and beaten in his
audacious denial to women the right to present their declaration,
shouted, "Order, order!"
Passing out, these ladies made their way to a platform erected for
the musicians in front of Independence Hall. Here on this old
historic ground, under the shadow of Washington's statue, back of
them the old bell that proclaimed "liberty to all the land, and all
the inhabitants thereof," they took their places, and to a
listening, applauding crowd, Miss Anthony read[12] the Declaration
of Rights for Women by the National Woman Suffrage Association,
July 4, 1876:
While the nation is buoyant with patriotism, and all hearts are
attuned to praise, it is with sorrow we come to strike the one
discordant note, on this one-hundredth anniversary of our
country's birth. When subjects of kings, emperors, and czars,
from the old world join in our national jubilee, shall the women
of the republic refuse to lay their hands with benedictions on
the nation's head? Surveying America's exposition, surpassing in
magnificence those of London, Paris, and Vienna, shall we not
rejoice at the success of the youngest rival among the nations of
the earth? May not our hearts, in unison with all, swell with
pride at our great achievements as a people; our free speech,
free press, free schools, free church, and the rapid progress we
have made in material wealth, trade, commerce and the inventive
arts? And we do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our
experiment of self-government. Our faith is firm and unwavering
in the broad principles of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not
only as abstract truths, but as the corner stones of a republic.
Yet we cannot forget, even in this glad hour, that while all men
of every race, and clime, and condition, have been invested with
the full rights of citizenship under our hospitable flag, all
women still suffer the degradation of disfranchisement.
The history of our country the past hundred years has been a
series of assumptions and usurpations of power over woman, in
direct opposition to the principles of just government,
acknowledged by the United States as its foundation, which are:
_First_--The natural rights of each individual.
_Second_--The equality of these rights.
_Third_--That rights not delegated are retained by the
individual.
_Fourth_--That no person can exercise the rights of others
without delegated authority.
_Fifth_--That the non-use of rights does not destroy them.
And for the violation of these fundamental principles of our
government, we arraign our rulers on this Fourth day of July,
1876,--and these are our articles of impeachment:
_Bills of attainder_ have been passed by the introduction of
the word "male" into all the State constitutions, denying to
women the right of suffrage, and thereby making sex a
crime--an exercise of power clearly forbidden in article I,
sections 9, 10, of the United States constitution.
_The writ of habeas corpus_, the only protection against
_lettres de cachet_ and all forms of unjust imprisonment,
which the constitution declares "shall not be suspended,
except when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public
safety demands it," is held inoperative in every State of
the Union, in case of a married woman against her
husband--the marital rights of the husband being in all
cases primary, and the rights of the wife secondary.
_The right of trial by a jury of one's peers_ was so
jealously guarded that States refused to ratify the original
constitution until it was guaranteed by the sixth amendment.
And yet the women of this nation have never been allowed a
jury of their peers--being tried in all cases by men, native
and foreign, educated and ignorant, virtuous and vicious.
Young girls have been arraigned in our courts for the crime
of infanticide; tried, convicted, hanged--victims,
perchance, of judge, jurors, advocates--while no woman's
voice could be heard in their defense. And not only are
women denied a jury of their peers, but in some cases, jury
trial altogether. During the war, a woman was tried and
hanged by military law, in defiance of the fifth amendment,
which specifically declares: "No person shall be held to
answer for a capital or otherwise infamous crime, unless on
a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases
... of persons in actual service in time of war." During the
last presidential campaign, a woman, arrested for voting,
was denied the protection of a jury, tried, convicted, and
sentenced to a fine and costs of prosecution, by the
absolute power of a judge of the Supreme Court of the United
States.
_Taxation without representation_, the immediate cause of
the rebellion of the colonies against Great Britain, is one
of the grievous wrongs the women of this country have
suffered during the century. Deploring war, with all the
demoralization that follows in its train, we have been taxed
to support standing armies, with their waste of life and
wealth. Believing in temperance, we have been taxed to
support the vice, crime and pauperism of the liquor traffic.
While we suffer its wrongs and abuses infinitely more than
man, we have no power to protect our sons against this giant
evil. During the temperance crusade, mothers were arrested,
fined, imprisoned, for even praying and singing in the
streets, while men blockade the sidewalks with impunity,
even on Sunday, with their military parades and political
processions. Believing in honesty, we are taxed to support a
dangerous army of civilians, buying and selling the offices
of government and sacrificing the best interests of the
people. And, moreover, we are taxed to support the very
legislators and judges who make laws, and render decisions
adverse to woman. And for refusing to pay such unjust
taxation, the houses, lands, bonds, and stock of women have
been seized and sold within the present year, thus proving
Lord Coke's assertion, that "The very act of taxing a man's
property without his consent is, in effect, disfranchising
him of every civil right."
_Unequal codes for men and women._ Held by law a perpetual
minor, deemed incapable of self-protection, even in the
industries of the world, woman is denied equality of rights.
The fact of sex, not the quantity or quality of work, in
most cases, decides the pay and position; and because of
this injustice thousands of fatherless girls are compelled
to choose between a life of shame and starvation. Laws
catering to man's vices have created two codes of morals in
which penalties are graded according to the political status
of the offender. Under such laws, women are fined and
imprisoned if found alone in the streets, or in public
places of resort, at certain hours. Under the pretense of
regulating public morals, police officers seizing the
occupants of disreputable houses, march the women in
platoons to prison, while the men, partners in their guilt,
go free. While making a show of virtue in forbidding the
importation of Chinese women on the Pacific coast for
immoral purposes, our rulers, in many States, and even under
the shadow of the national capitol, are now proposing to
legalize the sale of American womanhood for the same vile
purposes.
_Special legislation for woman_ has placed us in a most
anomalous position. Women invested with the rights of
citizens in one section--voters, jurors,
office-holders--crossing an imaginary line, are subjects in
the next. In some States, a married woman may hold property
and transact business in her own name; in others, her
earnings belong to her husband. In some States, a woman may
testify against her husband, sue and be sued in the courts;
in others, she has no redress in case of damage to person,
property, or character. In case of divorce on account of
adultery in the husband, the innocent wife is held to
possess no right to children or property, unless by special
decree of the court. But in no State of the Union has the
wife the right to her own person, or to any part of the
joint earnings of the co-partnership during the life of her
husband. In some States women may enter the law schools and
practice in the courts; in others they are forbidden. In
some universities girls enjoy equal educational advantages
with boys, while many of the proudest institutions in the
land deny them admittance, though the sons of China, Japan
and Africa are welcomed there. But the privileges already
granted in the several States are by no means secure. The
right of suffrage once exercised by women in certain States
and territories has been denied by subsequent legislation. A
bill is now pending in congress to disfranchise the women of
Utah, thus interfering to deprive United States citizens of
the same rights which the Supreme Court has declared the
national government powerless to protect anywhere. Laws
passed after years of untiring effort, guaranteeing married
women certain rights of property, and mothers the custody of
their children, have been repealed in States where we
supposed all was safe. Thus have our most sacred rights been
made the football of legislative caprice, proving that a
power which grants as a privilege what by nature is a right,
may withhold the same as a penalty when deeming it necessary
for its own perpetuation.
_Representation of woman_ has had no place in the nation's
thought. Since the incorporation of the thirteen original
States, twenty-four have been admitted to the Union, not one
of which has recognized woman's right of self-government. On
this birthday of our national liberties, July Fourth, 1876,
Colorado, like all her elder sisters, comes into the Union
with the invidious word "male" in her constitution.
_Universal manhood suffrage_, by establishing an aristocracy
of sex, imposes upon the women of this nation a more
absolute and cruel depotism than monarchy; in that, woman
finds a political master in her father, husband, brother,
son. The aristocracies of the old world are based upon
birth, wealth, refinement, education, nobility, brave deeds
of chivalry; in this nation, on sex alone; exalting brute
force above moral power, vice above virtue, ignorance above
education, and the son above the mother who bore him.
_The judiciary above the nation_ has proved itself but the
echo of the party in power, by upholding and enforcing laws
that are opposed to the spirit and letter of the
constitution. When the slave power was dominant, the Supreme
Court decided that a black man was not a citizen, because he
had not the right to vote; and when the constitution was so
amended as to make all persons citizens, the same high
tribunal decided that a woman, though a citizen, had not the
right to vote. Such vacillating interpretations of
constitutional law unsettle our faith in judicial authority,
and undermine the liberties of the whole people.
These articles of impeachment against our rulers we now submit to
the impartial judgment of the people. To all these wrongs and
oppressions woman has not submitted in silence and resignation.
From the beginning of the century, when Abigail Adams, the wife
of one president and mother of another, said, "We will not hold
ourselves bound to obey laws in which we have no voice or
representation," until now, woman's discontent has been steadily
increasing, culminating nearly thirty years ago in a simultaneous
movement among the women of the nation, demanding the right of
suffrage. In making our just demands, a higher motive than the
pride of sex inspires us; we feel that national safety and
stability depend on the complete recognition of the broad
principles of our government. Woman's degraded, helpless position
is the weak point in our institutions to-day; a disturbing force
everywhere, severing family ties, filling our asylums with the
deaf, the dumb, the blind; our prisons with criminals, our cities
with drunkenness and prostitution; our homes with disease and
death. It was the boast of the founders of the republic, that the
rights for which they contended were the rights of human nature.
If these rights are ignored in the case of one-half the people,
the nation is surely preparing for its downfall. Governments try
themselves. The recognition of a governing and a governed class
is incompatible with the first principles of freedom. Woman has
not been a heedless spectator of the events of this century, nor
a dull listener to the grand arguments for the equal rights of
humanity. From the earliest history of our country woman has
shown equal devotion with man to the cause of freedom, and has
stood firmly by his side in its defense. Together, they have made
this country what it is. Woman's wealth, thought and labor have
cemented the stones of every monument man has reared to liberty.
And now, at the close of a hundred years, as the hour-hand of the
great clock that marks the centuries points to 1876, we declare
our faith in the principles of self-government; our full equality
with man in natural rights; that woman was made first for her own
happiness, with the absolute right to herself--to all the
opportunities and advantages life affords for her complete
development; and we deny that dogma of the centuries,
incorporated in the codes of all nations--that woman was made for
man--her best interests, in all cases, to be sacrificed to his
will. We ask of our rulers, at this hour, no special favors, no
special privileges, no special legislation. We ask justice, we
ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that
belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and
our daughters forever.[13]
The declaration was warmly applauded at many points, and after
scattering another large number of printed copies, the delegation
hastened to the convention of the National Association. A meeting
had been appointed for twelve, in the old historic First Unitarian
church, where Rev. Wm. H. Furness preached for fifty years, but
whose pulpit was then filled by Joseph May, a son of Rev. Samuel J.
May. To this place the ladies made their way to find the church
crowded with an expectant audience, which greeted them with thanks
for what they had just done; the first act of this historic day
taking place on the old centennial platform in Independence Square,
the last in a church so long devoted to equality and justice. The
venerable Lucretia Mott, then in her eighty-fourth year, presided.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton read the Declaration of Rights. Its
reception by the listening audience proclaimed its need and its
justice. The reading was followed by speeches upon the various
points of the declaration.
Belva A. Lockwood took up the judiciary, showing the way that body
lends itself to party politics. Matilda Joslyn Gage spoke upon the
writ of _habeas corpus_, showing what a mockery to married women
was that constitutional guarantee. Lucretia Mott reviewed the
progress of the reform from the first convention. Sara Andrews
Spencer illustrated the evils arising from two codes of morality.
Mrs. Devereux Blake spoke upon trial by jury; Susan B. Anthony upon
taxation without representation, illustrating her remarks by
incidents of unjust taxation of women during the present year.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton spoke upon the aristocracy of sex, and the
evils arising from manhood suffrage. Judge Esther Morris, of
Wyoming, said a few words in regard to suffrage in that territory.
Mrs. Margaret Parker, president of the woman suffrage club of
Dundee, Scotland, and of the newly-formed Christian Woman's
International Temperance Union, said she had seen nothing like this
in Great Britain--it was worth the journey across the Atlantic. Mr.
J. H. Raper, of Manchester, England, characterized it as the
historic meeting of the day, and said the patriot of a hundred
years hence would seek for every incident connected with it, and
the next centennial would be adorned by the portraits of the women
who sat upon that platform.
The Hutchinsons, themselves of historic fame, were present. They
were in their happiest vein, interspersing the speeches with
appropriate and felicitous songs. Lucretia Mott did not confine
herself to a single speech, but, in Quaker style, whenever the
spirit moved made many happy points. When she first arose to speak,
a call came from the audience for her to ascend the pulpit in order
that she might be seen. As she complied with this request,
ascending the long winding staircase into the old-fashioned octagon
pulpit, she said, "I am somewhat like Zaccheus of old who climbed
the sycamore tree his Lord to see; I climb this pulpit, not because
I am of lofty mind, but because I am short of stature that you may
see me." As her sweet and placid countenance appeared above the
pulpit, the Hutchinsons, by happy inspiration, burst into "Nearer,
my God, to Thee." The effect was marvelous; the audience at once
arose, and spontaneously joined in the hymn.
Phoebe W. Couzins, with great pathos, referred to woman's work in
the war, and the parade of the Grand Army of the Republic the
preceding evening; she said:
In such an hour as this, with my soul stirred to its deepest
depths, I feel unequal to the task of uttering words befitting
the occasion, and to follow the dear saint who has just spoken;
how can I? I am but a beginner, and to-day I feel that to sit at
the feet of these dear women who have borne the heat and burden
of this contest, and to learn of them is the attitude I should
assume. It is not the time for argument or rhetoric. It is the
time for introspection and prayer. We have come from Independence
Square, where the nation is celebrating its centennial birthday
of a masculine freedom. You have just heard from Mrs. Stanton the
reading of Woman's Declaration of Rights; that document has
already been presented in engrossed form, tied with the symbolic
red, white and blue, to the presiding officer of the day, Senator
Thomas W. Ferry, on their platform in yonder square; and the John
Hampden of our cause, the immortal Susan B. Anthony, rendered it
historic, by reading it from the steps of Independence Hall, to
an immense audience there gathered, that could not gain access to
the square or platform. [Great applause.] I cannot express to you
in fitting language the thoughts and feelings which stirred me as
I sat on the platform, awaiting the presentation of that
document.
We were about to commit an overt act. Gen. Hawley, president of
the centennial commission and manager of the programme, had
peremptorily forbidden its presentation. Yet in the face of
this--in the face of the assembled nation and representatives
from the crowned heads of Europe, a handful of women actuated by
the same high principles as our fathers, stirred by the same
desire for freedom, moved by the same impulse for liberty, were
to again proclaim the right of self-government; were again to
impeach the spirit of King George manifested in our rulers, and
declare that taxation without representation is tyranny, that the
divine right of one-half of the people to rule the other half is
also despotism. As I followed the reading of Richard Henry Lee,
and marked the wild enthusiasm of its reception, and remembered
that at its close, a document, as noble, as divine, as grand, as
historic as that, was to be presented _in silence_; an act, as
heroic, as worthy, as sublime, was to be performed in the face of
the contemptuous amazement of the assembled world, I trembled
with suppressed emotion. When Susan Anthony arose, with a look of
intense pain, yet heroic determination in her face, I silently
committed her to the Great Father who seeth not in part, to
strengthen and comfort her heroic heart, and then she was lost to
view in the sudden uprising caused by the burst of applause
instituted by General Hawley in behalf of the Brazilian emperor.
And thus at the close of the reading of a document which
repudiated kings and declared the right of every person to life,
to liberty and the pursuit of individual happiness, the American
people, applauding a crowned monarch, received _in silence_ the
immortal document and protest of its discrowned queens!
Shall I recount the emotion that swayed me, as I thought of all
that woman had done to build up this country; to sustain its
unity, to perpetuate its principles; of its self-denying and
heroic Pilgrim and revolutionary mothers; of the work of woman in
the anti-slavery cause; the agony and death of her travail in its
second birth for freedom; sustaining the nation by prayers, by
self-sacrificing contributions, by patriotic endeavors, by
encouraging words; and, reviewing the programme, and all the
attendant pageants, remembered that in these grand centennial
celebrations, when the nation rounded out its first century, _not
a tribute_, not a recognition in any shape, form or manner was
paid to woman; that upon the platform, as honored guests, sat
those who had been false in the hour of our country's peril; that
upon this historic soil, stood the now freeman, once a slave,
whose liberty and life were given him at the hands of woman; that
the inhabitants of the far off isles of the sea, India, Asia,
Africa, Europe, were gladly welcomed as free citizens, while
woman, a suppliant beggar, pleaded of one man, invested with
autocratic power, for the simple boon of presenting a protest in
silence, against her degradation, and was _denied_!
I stood yesterday on the corner of Broad and Chestnut streets,
watching the march of the Grand Army of the Republic. As the torn
and tattered battle flags came by, all the terrors of that war
tragedy suddenly rushed over me, and I sat down and wept. Looking
again, I saw the car of wounded, soldiers; as in thought I was
suddenly transported to the banks of the Mississippi I felt the
air full of the horrors of the battle of Shiloh, and saw two
young girls waiting the landing of a steamer that had been
dispatched to succor the wounded on that terrible field. They
were watching for "mother"--who for the first time had left her
home charge, and hushing her own heart's pleadings, heard only
her country's call, and gone down to that field of carnage to
tenderly care for the soldier. As they boarded the steamer; what
a sight met their eyes! Maimed, bleeding, dying soldiers by the
hundreds, were on cots on deck, on boxes filled with amputated
limbs, and the dead were awaiting the last sad rites. Like
ministering angels walked two women, their mother and the now
sainted Margaret Breckenridge of Kentucky, amid these rows of
sufferers, with strong nerve and steady arm, comforting the
soldier boy, so far from friends and home; binding up the ghastly
wound, bathing the feverish brow, smoothing the dying pillow, and
with tender mother's prayer and tear, closing the eyes of the
dead. The first revelation of war; how it burned our youthful
brain! How it moved us to divine compassion, how it stirred us to
even give up our mother to the work for years, as we heard the
piteous pleading, "Don't leave us, mother"--"Oh, mother, we can
never forget." But alas they _did_ forget! This scene repeated
again, and again, during that long conflict, with hundreds of
women offering a like service in camp and floating hospital,
leaving sweet homes, without money, price or thought of
emolument, going to these battle-fields and tenderly nursing the
army of the republic to life again; while back of them were tens
of thousands other women of the great sanitary army, who, in
self-sacrifice at home, were sending lint, bandages, clothing,
delicacies of food and raiment of all kinds, by car-load and
ship-load, to comfort and ameliorate the sufferings of the grand
army of the republic, and yet as I watched its march in this
centennial year, its gala day--_not a tribute_ marked its
gratitude to her who had proved its savior and friend, in the
hour of peril.
Again, came the colored man in rank and file--and in thought I
saw the fifteenth-amendment jubilee, which proclaimed his
emancipation. As banner after banner passed me, with the name of
Garrison, of Phillips, of Douglass, I looked in vain for the name
of Harriet Beecher Stowe, whose one book, "Uncle Tom's
Cabin"--did more to arouse the whole world to the horrors of
slavery, than did the words or works of any ten men. I searched
for a tribute to Lucretia Mott and other women of that conflict,
but none appeared. And so to-day, standing here with heart and
brain convulsed with all these memories and scenes, can you
wonder that we are stirred to profoundest depths, as we review
the base ingratitude of this nation to its women? It has taxed
its women, and asked the women, in whose veins flows the blood of
their Pilgrim and Revolutionary mothers, to assist by money,
individual effort and presence, to make it a year of jubilee for
the proclamation of a ransomed male nationality. Zenobia, in
gilded chains it may be, but chains nevertheless, marches through
the streets of Philadelphia to-day, an appendage of the chariot
wheels which proclaim the coming of her king, her lord, her
master, whether he be white or black, native or foreign-born,
virtuous or vile, lettered or unlettered. As the state-house
bell, with its inscription, "Proclaim liberty--throughout the
land, unto all the inhabitants thereof," pealed forth its
jubilant reiteration,--the daughters of Jefferson, of Hancock, of
Adams, and Patrick Henry, who have been politically outlawed and
ostracized by their own countrymen, here had no liberty
proclaimed for them; they are not inhabitants, only sojourners in
the land of their fathers, and as the slaves in meek subjection
to the will of the master placed the crown of sovereignty on the
alien from Europe, Asia, Africa, she is asked to sing in dulcet
strains: "The king is dead--long live the king!"
And thus to-day we round out the first century of a professed
republic,--with woman figuratively representing freedom--and yet
all free, save woman.
For five long hours of that hot mid-summer's day, that crowded
audience listened earnestly to woman's demand for equality of
rights before the law. When the convention at last adjourned, the
Hutchinsons singing, "A Hundred Years Hence,"[14] it was slowly
and reluctantly that the great audience left the house. Judged by
its immediate influence, it was a wonderful meeting. No elaborate
preparations had been made, for not until late on Friday evening
had it been decided upon, hoping still, as we did, for a
recognition in the general celebration on Independence Square.
Speakers were not prepared, hardly a moment of thought had been
given as to what should be said, but words fitting for the hour
came to lips rendered eloquent by the pressure of intense emotion.
Day after day visitors to the woman suffrage parlors referred to
this meeting in glowing terms. Ladies from distant States, in
Philadelphia to visit the exposition, said that meeting was worth
the whole expense of the journey. Young women with all the
attractions of the day and the exposition enticing them, yet said,
"The best of all I have seen in Philadelphia was that meeting."
Women to whom a dollar was of great value, said, "As much as I need
money, I would not have missed that meeting for a hundred dollars";
while in the midst of conversation visitors would burst forth, "Was
there _ever_ such a meeting as that in Dr. Furness' church?" and
thus was Woman's Declaration of Rights joyously received.
The day was also celebrated by women in convocations of their own
all over the country.[15]