universal suffrage; hence the several States should so amend
their constitutions as to make education compulsory, and, as a
stimulus to the rising generation, declare that after 1885 all
who exercise the right of suffrage must be able to read and write
the English language. For, while the national government should
secure the equal right of suffrage to all citizens, the State
should regulate its exercise by proper attainable qualifications.
On January 10, 1878, our champion in the Senate, Hon. A. A.
Sargent, of California, by unanimous consent, presented the
following joint resolution, which was read twice and referred to
the Committee on Privileges and Elections:
JOINT RESOLUTION _proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of
the United States_.--
_Resolved_ by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in congress assembled, two-thirds of
each House concurring therein, That the following article be
proposed to the legislatures of the several States as an
amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which, when
ratified by three-fourths of the said legislatures, shall be
valid as part of the said constitution, namely:
ARTICLE 16, SEC. 1.--The right of citizens of the United States
to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any State on account of sex.
SEC. 2.--Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation.
The Committee on Privileges and Elections granted hearings to the
National Association on January 11, 12, when the delegates,[28]
representing the several States, made their respective arguments
and appeals. Clemence S. Lozier, M. D., president of the
association, first addressed the committee and read the following
extract from a recent letter from Victor Hugo:
Our ill-balanced society seems as if it would take from woman all
that nature had endowed her with. In our codes there is something
to recast. It is what I call the woman-law. Man has had his law;
he has made it for himself. Woman has only the law of man. She by
this law is civilly a minor and morally a slave. Her education is
embued with this twofold character of inferiority. Hence many
sufferings to her which man must justly share. There must be
reform here, and it will be to the benefit of civilization,
truth, and light.
In concluding, Dr. Lozier said: I have now the honor to introduce
Miss Julia E. Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn., who will speak to you
concerning the resistance of her sister and herself to the
payment of taxes in her native town, on the ground that they are
unrepresented in all town meetings, and therefore have no voice
in the expenditure of the taxes which they are compelled to pay.
Miss SMITH said: _Gentlemen of the Committee_--This is the first
time in my life that I have trod these halls, and what has
brought me here? I say, oppression--oppression of women by men.
Under the law they have taken from us $2,000 worth of
meadow-land, and sold it for taxes of less than $50, and we were
obliged to redeem it, for we could not lose the most valuable
part of our farm. They have come into our house and said, "You
must pay so much; we must execute the laws"; and we are not
allowed to have a voice in the matter, or to modify laws that are
odious.
I have come to Washington, as men cannot address you for us. We
have no power at all; we are totally defenseless. [Miss Smith
then read two short letters written by her sister Abby to the
Springfield _Republican_.] These tell our brief story, and may I
not ask, gentlemen, that they shall so plead with you that you
will report to the Senate unanimously in favor of the sixteenth
amendment, which we ask in order that the women of these United
States who shall come after us may be saved the desecration of
their homes which we have suffered, and our country may be
relieved from the disgrace of refusing representation to that
half of its people that men call the better half, because it
includes their wives and daughters and mothers?
ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT, vice-president for Illinois:
_Gentlemen of the Committee_--We recognize your duty as men
intrusted with the control and guidance of the government to
carefully weigh every phase of this momentous question. Has the
time arrived when it will be safe and expedient to make a
practical application of these great principles of our government
to one-half of the governed, one-half of the citizens of the
United States? The favorite argument of the opposition has been
that women are represented by men, hence have no cause for
complaint. Any careful student of the progress of liberty must
admit that the only possible method for securing justice to the
represented is for their representatives to be made entirely
responsible to their constituents, and promptly removable by
them. We are only secure in delegating power when we can dictate
its use, limit the same, or revoke it. How many of your honorable
committee would vote to make the presidency an office for life,
said office to descend to the heirs in a male line forever, with
no reserved power of impeachment? Yet you would be more fairly
represented than are American women, since they have never
elected their representatives. So far as women are concerned you
are self-constituted rulers. We cannot hope for complete
representation while we are powerless to recall, impeach, or
punish our representatives. We meet with a case in point in the
history of Virginia. Bancroft gives us the following quotation
from the official records:
The freedom of elections was further impaired by "frequent
false returns," made by the sheriffs. Against these the
people had no sufficient redress, for the sheriffs were
responsible neither to them nor to officers of their
appointment. And how could a more pregnant cause of
discontent exist in a country where the elective franchise
was cherished as the dearest civil privilege?--If land is to
be taxed, none but landholders should elect the
legislature.--The other freemen, who are the more in number,
may refuse to be bound by those laws in which they have no
representation, and we are so well acquainted with the
temper of the people that we have reason to believe they had
rather pay their taxes than lose that privilege.
Would those statesmen have dared to tax those landholders and yet
deny them the privilege of choosing their representatives? And
if, forsooth, they had, would not each one of you have declared
such act unconstitutional and unjust? We are the daughters of
those liberty-loving patriots. Their blood flows in our veins,
and in view of the recognized physiological fact that special
characteristics are transmitted from fathers to daughters, do you
wonder that we tax-paying, American-born citizens of these United
States are here to protest in the name of liberty and justice? We
recognize, however, that you are not responsible for the present
political condition of women, and that the question confronting
you, as statesmen called to administer justice under existing
conditions, is, "What are the capacities of this great class for
self-government?" You have cautiously summoned us to adduce proof
that the ballot in the hands of women would prove a help, not a
hindrance; would bring wings, not weights.
First, then, we ask you in the significant name of history to
read the record of woman as a ruler from the time when Deborah
judged Israel, and the land had rest and peace forty years, even
down to this present when Victoria Regina, the Empress Queen,
rules her vast kingdom so ably that we sometimes hear American
men talk about a return "to the good old ways of limited
monarchy," with woman for a ruler. John Stuart Mill, after
studious research, testifies as follows:
When to queens and emperors we add regents and viceroys of
provinces, the list of women who have been eminent rulers of
mankind swells to a great length. The fact is so undeniable
that some one long ago tried to retort the argument by
saying that queens are better than kings, because under
kings women govern, but under queens, men. Especially is her
wonderful talent for governing evinced in Asia. If a Hindoo
principality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically
governed; if order is preserved without oppression; if
cultivation is extending, and the people prosperous, in
three cases out of four that principality is under a woman's
rule. This fact, to me an entirely unexpected one, I have
collected from a long official knowledge of Hindoo
governments. There are many such instances; for though by
Hindoo institutions a woman cannot reign, she is the legal
regent of a kingdom during the minority of the heir--and
minorities are frequent, the lives of the male rulers being
so often prematurely terminated through their inactivity and
excesses. When we consider that these princesses have never
been seen in public, have never conversed with any man not
of their own family, except from behind a curtain; that they
do not read, and if they did, there is no book in their
languages which can give them the smallest instruction on
political affairs, the example they afford of the natural
capacity of women for government is very striking.
In view of these facts, does it not appear that if there is any
one distinctively feminine characteristic, it is the
mother-instinct for government? But now with clearer vision we
reread the record of the past. True, we find no Raphael or
Beethoven, no Phidias or Michael Angelo among women. No woman has
painted the greatest picture, carved the finest statue, composed
the noblest oratorio or opera. Not many women's names appear
after Joan of Arc's in the long list of warriors; but, as a
ruler, woman stands to-day the peer of man.
While man has rendered such royal service in the realm of art,
woman has not been idle. Infinite wisdom has intrusted to her the
living, breathing marble or canvas, and with smiles and tears,
prayers and songs has she patiently wrought developing the latent
possibilities of the divine Christ-child, the infant Washington,
the baby Lincoln. Ah! since God and men have intrusted to woman
the weightiest responsibility known to earth, the development and
education of the human soul, need you fear to intrust her with
citizenship? Is the ballot more precious than the soul of your
child? If it is safe in the home, in the school-room, the
Sunday-school, to place in woman's hands the education of your
children, is it not safe to allow that mother to express her
choice in regard to which one of these sons, her boys whom she
has taught and nursed, shall make laws for her guidance?
Just here, in imagination, is heard the question, "How much help
could we expect from women on financial questions?" We accept the
masculine idea of woman's mathematical deficiencies. We have had
slight opportunity for discovering the best proportions of a
silver dollar, owing to the fact that the family specimens have
been zealously guarded by the male members; and yet, we may have
some latent possibilities in that direction, since already the
"brethren" in our debt-burdened churches wail out from the depths
of masculine indebtedness and interest-tables, "Our sisters, we
pray you come over and help us!" And, in view of the fact of the
present condition of finances, in view of the fact of the
enormous taxes you impose upon us, can you look us calmly in the
face and assert that matters might, would, should, or could have
been worse, even though Julia Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore, or
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had voted on the silver bill?
A moment since I referred to the great responsibilities of
motherhood, and doubtless your mental comment was, "Yes, that is
woman's peculiar sphere; there she should be content to remain."
It _is_ our sphere--beautiful, glorious, almost infinite in its
possibilities. We accept the work; we only ask for opportunity to
perform it. The sphere has enlarged, that is all. There has been
a new revelation. That historic "first gun" proclaimed a
wonderful message to the daughters of America; for, when the
smoke of the cannonading had lifted, the entire horizon of woman
was broadened, illuminated, glorified. On that April morn, when a
nation of citizens suddenly sprang into an army of warriors, with
a patriotism as intense, a consecration as true, American women
quietly assumed their vacated places and became citizens. New
boundaries were defined. A Mary Somerville or Maria Mitchell
seized the telescope and alone with God and the stars, cast a new
horoscope for woman. And the new truth, electrifying, glorifying
American womanhood to-day, is the discovery that the State is
but the larger family, the nation the old homestead, and that in
this national home there is a room and a corner and a duty for
"mother." A duty recognized by such a statesman as John Adams,
who wrote to his wife in regard to her mother:
Your mother had a clear and penetrating understanding and a
profound judgment, as well as an honest, a friendly and
charitable heart. There is one thing, however, which you
will forgive me if I hint to you. Let me ask you rather if
you are not of my opinion. Were not her talents and virtues
too much confined to private, social and domestic life? My
opinion of the duties of religion and morality comprehends a
very extensive connection with society at large and the
great interests of the public. Does not natural morality
and, much more, Christian benevolence make it our
indispensable duty to endeavor to serve our fellow-creatures
to the utmost of our power in promoting and supporting those
great political systems and general regulations upon which
the happiness of multitudes depends? The benevolence,
charity, capacity and industry which exerted in private life
would make a family, a parish or a town happy, employed upon
a larger scale and in support of the great principles of
virtue and freedom of political regulations, might secure
whole nations and generations from misery, want and
contempt.
Intense domestic life is selfish. The home evidently needs
fathers as much as mothers. Tender, wise fatherhood is beautiful
as motherhood, but there are orphaned children to be cared for.
These duties to the State and nation as mothers, true to the
highest needs of our children, we dare not ignore; and the nation
cannot much longer afford to have us ignore them.
As statesmen, walking on the shore piled high with the
"drift-wood of kings," the wrecks of nations and governments, you
have discovered the one word emblazoned as an epitaph on each and
every one, "Luxury, luxury, luxury!" You have hitherto placed a
premium upon woman's idleness, helplessness, dependence. The
children of most of our fashionable women are being educated by
foreign nurses. How can you expect them to develop into patriotic
American statesmen? For the sake of country I plead--for the sake
of a responsible, exalted womanhood; for the sake of a purer
womanhood; for home and truth, and native land. As a daughter,
with holiest, tenderest, most grateful memories clinging to the
almost sacred name of father; as a wife, receiving constant
encouragement, support, and cooeperation from one who has revealed
to her the genuine nobility of true manhood; as a mother, whose
heart still thrills at the first greeting from her little son;
and as a sister, watching with intense interest the entrance of a
brother into the great world of work, I could not be half so
loyal to woman's cause were it not a synonym for the equal rights
of humanity--a diviner justice for all!
With one practical question I rest my case. The world objected to
woman's entrance into literature, the pulpit, the lyceum, the
college, the school. What has she wrought? Our wisest thinkers
and historians assert that literature has been purified. Poets
and judges at international collegiate contests award to woman's
thought the highest prize. Miss Lucia Peabody received upon the
occasion of her second election to the Boston school board the
highest vote ever polled for any candidate. Since woman has
proved faithful over a few things, need you fear to summon her to
your side to assist you in executing the will of the nation? And
now, yielding to none in intense love of womanhood; standing here
beneath the very dome of the national capitol overshadowed by the
old flag; with the blood of the revolutionary patriots coursing
through my veins; as a native-born, tax-paying American citizen,
I ask equality before the law.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON said: _Gentlemen of the Committee_: In
appearing before you to ask for a sixteenth amendment to the
United States Constitution, permit me to say that with the Hon.
Charles Sumner, we believe that our constitution, fairly
interpreted, already secures to the humblest individual all the
rights, privileges and immunities of American citizens. But as
statesmen differ in their interpretations of constitutional law
as widely as they differ in their organizations, the rights of
every class of citizens must be clearly defined in concise,
unmistakable language. All the great principles of liberty
declared by the fathers gave no protection to the black man of
the republic for a century, and when, with higher light and
knowledge his emancipation and enfranchisement were proclaimed,
it was said that the great truths set forth in the prolonged
debates of thirty years on the individual rights of the black
man, culminating in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to
the constitution, had no significance for woman. Hence we ask
that this anomalous class of beings, not recognized by the
supreme powers as either "persons" or "citizens" may be defined
and their rights declared in the constitution.
In the adjustment of the question of suffrage now before the
people of this country for settlement, it is of the highest
importance that the organic law of the land should be so framed
and construed as to work injustice to none, but secure as far as
possible perfect political equality among all classes of
citizens. In determining your right and power to legislate on
this question, consider what has been done already.
As the national constitution declares that "all persons born or
naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State
wherein they reside," it is evident: _First_--That the immunities
and privileges of American citizenship, however defined, are
national in character, and paramount to all State authority.
_Second_--That while the constitution leaves the qualification of
electors to the several States, it nowhere gives them the right
to deprive any citizen of the elective franchise; the State may
regulate but not abolish the right of suffrage for any class.
_Third_--As the Constitution of the United States expressly
declares that no State shall make or enforce any law that shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States, those provisions of the several State constitutions that
exclude citizens from the franchise on account of sex, alike
violate the spirit and letter of the Federal constitution.
_Fourth_--As the question of naturalization is expressly withheld
from the States, and as the States would clearly have no right to
deprive of the franchise naturalized citizens, among whom women
are expressly included, still more clearly have they no right to
deprive native-born women-citizens of the right.
Let me give you a few extracts from the national constitution
upon which these propositions are based:
_Preamble:_ We, the people of the United States, in order to
form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure
domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and
establish this constitution.
This is declared to be a government "of the people." All power,
it is said, centers in the people. Our State constitutions also
open with the words, "We, the people." Does any one pretend to
say that men alone constitute races and peoples? When we say
parents, do we not mean mothers as well as fathers? When we say
children, do we not mean girls as well as boys? When we say
people, do we not mean women as well as men? When the race shall
spring, Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, it will
be time enough thus to ignore the fact that one-half the human
family are women. Individual rights, individual conscience and
judgment are our great American ideas, the fundamental principles
of our political and religious faith. Men may as well attempt to
do our repenting, confessing, and believing, as our voting--as
well represent us at the throne of grace as at the ballot-box.
ARTICLE 1, SEC. 9.--No bill of attainder, or _ex post facto_
law shall be passed; no title of nobility shall be granted
by the United States.
SEC. 10.--No State shall pass any bill of attainder, _ex
post facto_ law, or law impairing the obligation of
contracts, or grant any title of nobility.
Notwithstanding these provisions of the constitution, bills of
attainder have been passed by the introduction of the word "male"
into all the State constitutions denying to woman the right of
suffrage, and thereby making sex a crime. A citizen disfranchised
in a republic is a citizen attainted. When we place in the hands
of one class of citizens the right to make, interpret and execute
the law for another class wholly unrepresented in the government,
we have made an order of nobility.
ARTICLE 4, SEC. 2.--The citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in
the several States.
The elective franchise is one of the privileges secured by this
section approved in Dunham _vs._ Lamphere (3 Gray Mass. Rep.,
276), and Bennett _vs._ Boggs (Baldwin's Rep., p. 72, Circuit
Court U. S.).
ARTICLE 4, SEC. 4.--The United States shall guarantee to
every State in the Union a republican form of government.
How can that form of government be called republican in which
one-half the people are forever deprived of all participation in
its affairs?
ARTICLE 6.--This Constitution, and the laws of the United
States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, ... shall
be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every
State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution
or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.
ARTICLE 14, SEC. 1.--All persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States.... No State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and
immunities of citizens of the United States.
In the discussion of the enfranchisement of woman, suffrage is
now claimed by one class of thinkers as a privilege based upon
citizenship and secured by the Constitution of the United States,
as by lexicographers as well as by the constitution itself, the
definition of citizen includes women as well as men. No State can
rightfully deprive a woman-citizen of the United States of any
fundamental right which is hers in common with all other
citizens. The States have the right to regulate, but not to
prohibit the elective franchise to citizens of the United States.
Thus the States may determine the qualifications of electors.
They may require the elector to be of a certain age--to have had
a fixed residence--to be of sane mind and unconvicted of
crime,--because these are qualifications or conditions that all
citizens, sooner or later, may attain. But to go beyond this, and
say to one-half the citizens of the State, notwithstanding you
possess all of these qualifications, you shall never vote, is of
the very essence of despotism. It is a bill of attainder of the
most odious character.
A further investigation of the subject will show that the
constitutions of all the States, with the exception of Virginia
and Massachusetts, read substantially alike. "White male
citizens" shall be entitled to vote, and this is supposed to
exclude all other citizens. There is no direct exclusion except
in the two States above named. Now the error lies in supposing
that an enabling clause is necessary at all. The right of the
people of a State to participate in a government of their own
creation requires no enabling clause, neither can it be taken
from them by implication. To hold otherwise would be to
interpolate in the constitution a prohibition that does not
exist.
In framing a constitution, the people are assembled in their
sovereign capacity, and being possessed of all rights and powers,
what is not surrendered is retained. Nothing short of a direct
prohibition can work a deprivation of rights that are
fundamental. In the language of John Jay to the people of New
York, urging the adoption of the constitution of the United
States: "Silence and blank paper neither give nor take away
anything." And Alexander Hamilton says (_Federalist_, No. 83):
Every man of discernment must at once perceive the wide
difference between silence and abolition. The mode and
manner in which the people shall take part in the government
of their creation may be prescribed by the constitution, but
the right itself is antecedent to all constitutions. It is
inalienable, and can neither be bought nor sold nor given
away.
But even if it should be held that this view is untenable, and
that women are disfranchised by the several State constitutions,
directly or by implication, then I say that such prohibitions are
clearly in conflict with the Constitution of the United States
and yield thereto.
Another class of thinkers, equally interested in woman's
enfranchisement, maintain that there is, as yet, no power in the
United States Constitution to protect the rights of all United
States citizens, in all latitudes and longitudes, and in all
conditions whatever. When the constitution was adopted, the
fathers thought they had secured national unity. This was the
opinion of Southern as well as Northern statesmen. It was
supposed that the question of State rights was then forever
settled. Hon. Charles Sumner, speaking on this point in the
United States Senate, March 7, 1866, said the object of the
constitution was to ordain, under the authority of the people, a
national government possessing unity and power. The
confederation had been merely an agreement "between the States,"
styled, "a league of firm friendship." Found to be feeble and
inoperative through the pretension of State rights, it gave way
to the constitution which, instead of a "league," created a
"union," in the name of the people of the United States.
Beginning with these inspiring and enacting words, "We, the
people," it was popular and national. Here was no concession to
State rights, but a recognition of the power of the people, from
whom the constitution proceeded. The States are acknowledged; but
they are all treated as component parts of the Union in which
they are absorbed under the constitution, which is the supreme
law. There is but one sovereignty, and that is the sovereignty of
the United States. On this very account the adoption of the
constitution was opposed by Patrick Henry and George Mason. The
first exclaimed, "That this is a consolidated government is
demonstrably clear; the question turns on that poor little thing,
'We, the people,' instead of the States." The second exclaimed,
"Whether the constitution is good or bad, it is a national
government, and no longer a confederation." But against this
powerful opposition the constitution was adopted in the name of
the people of the United States. Throughout the discussions,
State rights was treated with little favor. Madison said: "The
States are only political societies, and never possessed the
right of sovereignty." Gerry said: "The States have only
corporate rights." Wilson, the philanthropic member from
Pennsylvania, afterward a learned Judge of the Supreme Court of
the United States and author of the "Lectures on Law," said:
"Will a regard to State rights justify the sacrifice of the
rights of men? If we proceed on any other foundation than the
last, our building will neither be solid nor lasting."
Those of us who understand the dignity, power and protection of
the ballot, have steadily petitioned congress for the last ten
years to secure to the women of the republic the exercise of
their right to the elective franchise. We began by asking a
sixteenth amendment to the national constitution. March 15, 1869,
the Hon. George W. Julian submitted a joint resolution to
congress, to enfranchise the women of the republic, by proposing
a sixteenth amendment:
ARTICLE 16.--The right of suffrage in the United States
shall be based on citizenship, and shall be regulated by
Congress, and all citizens of the United States, whether
native or naturalized, shall enjoy this right equally,
without any distinction or discrimination whatever founded
on sex.
While the discussion was pending for the emancipation and
enfranchisement of the slaves of the South, and popular thought
led back to the consideration of the fundamental principles of
our government, it was clearly seen that all the arguments for
the civil and political rights of the African race applied to
women also. Seeing this, some Republicans stood ready to carry
these principles to their logical results. Democrats, too, saw
the drift of the argument, and though not in favor of extending
suffrage to either black men, or women, yet, to embarrass
Republican legislation, it was said, they proposed amendments for
woman suffrage to all bills brought forward for enfranchising the
negroes.
And thus, during the passage of the thirteenth, fourteenth and
fifteenth amendments, and the District suffrage bill, the
question of woman suffrage was often and ably discussed in the
Senate and House, and received both Republican and Democratic
votes in its favor. Many able lawyers and judges gave it as their
opinion that women as well as Africans were enfranchised by the
fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments. Accordingly, we abandoned,
for the time being, our demand for a sixteenth amendment, and
pleaded our right of suffrage, as already secured by the
fourteenth amendment--the argument lying in a nut-shell. For if,
as therein asserted, all persons born or naturalized in the
United States are citizens of the United States; and if a
citizen, according to the best authorities, is one possessed of
all the rights and privileges of citizenship, namely, the right
to make laws and choose lawmakers, women, being persons, must be
citizens, and therefore entitled to the rights of citizenship,
the chief of which is the right to vote.
Accordingly, women tested their right, registered and voted--the
inspectors of election accepting the argument, for which
inspectors and women alike were arrested, tried and punished; the
courts deciding that although by the fourteenth amendment they
were citizens, still, citizenship did not carry with it the right
to vote. But granting the premise of the Supreme Court decision,
"that the constitution does not confer suffrage on any one," then
it inhered with the citizen before the constitution was framed.
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
inauguration of our national independence.
But however the letter and spirit of the constitution may be
interpreted by the people, the judiciary of the nation has
uniformly proved itself the echo of the party in power. 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. An African, by virtue of his
United States citizenship, is declared, under recent amendments,
a voter in every State of 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." Such
vacillating interpretations of constitutional law must unsettle
our faith in judicial authority, and undermine the liberties of
the whole people. Seeing by these decisions of the courts that
the theory of our government, the Declaration of Independence,
and recent constitutional amendments, have no significance for
woman, that all the grand principles of equality are glittering
generalities for her, we must fall back once more to our former
demand of a sixteenth amendment to the federal constitution,
that, in clear, unmistakable language, shall declare the status
of woman in this republic.
The Declaration of Independence struck a blow at every existent
form of government by making the individual the source of all
power. This is the sun, and the one central truth around which
all genuine republics must keep their course or perish. National
supremacy means something more than 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. Women are the only class of citizens still wholly
unrepresented in the government, and yet we possess every
requisite qualification for voters in the United States. Women
possess property and education; we take out naturalization-papers
and passports and register ships. We preempt lands, pay taxes
(women sometimes work out the road-tax with their own hands) and
suffer for our own violation of laws. We are neither idiots,
lunatics, nor criminals, and according to our State constitution
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 neither the
States nor the United States can legally exercise, being
forbidden in article 1, sections 9, 10, of the constitution. Our
rulers have the right to regulate the suffrage, but they cannot
abolish it 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. All concessions of privileges or
redress of grievances are mockery for any class that have no
voice in the laws, and law-makers; 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 and withhold rights at their
pleasure, the many cannot be said to enjoy the blessings of
self-government.
William H. Seward said in his great speech on "Freedom and
Union," in the United States Senate, February 29, 1860:
Mankind have a natural right, a natural instinct, and a
natural capacity for self-government; and when, as here,
they are sufficiently ripened by culture, they will and must
have self-government, and no other.
Jefferson said:
The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time;
the hand of freedom may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.
Few people comprehend the length and breadth of the principle we
are advocating to-day, and how closely it is allied to everything
vital in our system of government. Our personal grievances, such
as being robbed of property and children by unjust husbands;
denied admission into the colleges, the trades and professions;
compelled to work at starving prices, by no means round out this
whole question. In asking for a sixteenth amendment to the United
States Constitution, and the protection of congress against the
injustice of State law, we are fighting the same battle as
Jefferson and Hamilton fought in 1776, as Calhoun and Clay in
1828, as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in 1860, namely, the
limit of State rights and federal power. The enfranchisement of
woman involves the same vital principle of our government that is
dividing and distracting the two great political parties at this
hour.
There is nothing a foreigner coming here finds it so difficult to
understand as the wheel within a wheel in our national and State
governments, and the possibility of carrying them on without
friction; and this is the difficulty and danger we are fast
finding out. The recent amendments are steps in the right
direction toward national unity, securing equal rights to all
citizens, in every latitude and longitude. But our congressional
debates, judicial decisions, and the utterances of campaign
orators, continually falling back to the old ground, are bundles
of contradictions on this vital question. Inasmuch as we are,
first, citizens of the United States, and second, of the State
wherein we reside, the primal rights of all citizens should be
regulated by the national government, and complete equality in
civil and political rights everywhere secured. When women are
denied the right to enter institutions of learning, and practice
in the professions, unjust discriminations made against sex even
more degrading and humiliating than were ever made against color,
surely woman, too, should be protected by a civil-rights bill and
a sixteenth amendment that should make her political status equal
with all other citizens of the republic.
The right of suffrage, like the currency of the post-office
department, demands national regulation. We can all remember the
losses sustained by citizens in traveling from one State to
another under the old system of State banks. We can imagine the
confusion if each State regulated its post-offices, and the
transit of the mails across its borders. The benefits we find in
uniformity and unity in these great interests would pervade all
others where equal conditions were secured. Some citizens are
asking for a national bankrupt law, that a person released from
his debts in one State may be free in every other. Some are for a
religious freedom amendment that shall forever separate church
and State; forbidding a religious test as a condition of suffrage
or a qualification for office; forbidding the reading of the
Bible in the schools and the exempting of church property and
sectarian institutions of learning or charity from taxation. Some
are demanding a national marriage law, that a man legally married
in one State may not be a bigamist in another. Some are asking a
national prohibitory law, that a reformed drunkard who is
shielded from temptation in one State may not be environed with
dangers in another. And thus many individual interests point to a
growing feeling among the people in favor of homogeneous
legislation. As several of the States are beginning to legislate
on the woman suffrage question, it is of vital moment that there
should be some national action.
As the laws now are, a woman who can vote, hold office, be tried
by a jury of her own peers--yea, and sit on the bench as justice
of the peace in the territory of Wyoming, may be reduced to a
political pariah in the State of New York. A woman who can vote
and hold office on the school board, and act as county
superintendent in Kansas and Minnesota, is denied these rights in
passing into Pennsylvania. A woman who can be a member of the
school board in Maine, Wisconsin, Iowa, and California, loses all
these privileges in New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware. When
representatives from the territories are sent to congress by the
votes of women, it is time to have some national recognition of
this class of citizens.
This demand of national protection for national citizens is fated
to grow stronger every day. The government of the United States,
as the constitution is now interpreted, is powerless to give a
just equivalent for the supreme allegiance it claims. One sound
democratic principle fully recognized and carried to its logical
results in our government, declaring all citizens equal before
the law, would soon chase away the metaphysical mists and fogs
that cloud our political views in so many directions. When
congress is asked to put the name of God in the constitution, and
thereby pledge the nation to some theological faith in which some
United States citizens may not believe and thus subject a certain
class to political ostracism and social persecution, it is asked
not to protect but to oppress the citizens of the several States
in their most sacred rights--to think, reason, and decide all
questions of religion and conscience for themselves, without fear
or favor from the government. Popular sentiment and church
persecution is all that an advanced thinker in science and
religion should be called on to combat. The State should rather
throw its shield of protection around those uttering liberal,
progressive ideas; for the nation has the same interest in every
new thought as it has in the invention of new machinery to
lighten labor, in the discovery of wells of oil, or mines of
coal, copper, iron, silver or gold. As in the laboratory of
nature new forms of beauty are forever revealing themselves, so
in the world of thought a higher outlook gives a clearer vision
of the heights man in freedom shall yet attain. The day is past
for persecuting the philosophers of the physical sciences. But
what a holocaust of martyrs bigotry is still making of those
bearing the richest treasures of thought, in religion and social
ethics, in their efforts to roll off the mountains of
superstition that have so long darkened the human mind!
The numerous demands by the people for national protection in
many rights not specified in the constitution, prove that the
people have outgrown the compact that satisfied the fathers, and
the more it is expounded and understood the more clearly its
monarchical features can be traced to its English origin. And it
is not at all surprising that, with no chart or compass for a
republic, our fathers, with all their educational prejudices in
favor of the mother country, with her literature and systems of
jurisprudence, should have also adopted her ideas of government,
and in drawing up their national compact engrafted the new
republic on the old constitutional monarchy, a union whose
incompatibility has involved their sons in continued discussion
as to the true meaning of the instrument. A recent writer says:
The Constitution of the United States is the result of a
fourfold compromise: _First_--Of unity with individual
interests; of national sovereignty with the so-called
sovereignty of States; _Second_--Of the republic with
monarchy; _Third_--Of freedom with slavery; _Fourth_--Of
democracy with aristocracy.
It is founded, therefore, on the fourfold combination of
principles perfectly incompatible and eternally excluding each
other; founded for the purpose of equally preserving these
principles in spite of their incompatibility, and of carrying
out their practical results--in other words, for the purpose of
making an impossible thing possible. And a century of discussion
has not yet made the constitution understood. It has no settled
interpretation. Being a series of compromises, it can be
expounded in favor of many directly opposite principles.
A distinguished American statesman remarked that the war of the
rebellion was waged "to expound the constitution." It is a
pertinent question now, shall all other contradictory principles
be retained in the constitution until they, too, are expounded by
civil war? On what theory is it less dangerous to defraud twenty
million women of their inalienable rights than four million
negroes? Is not the same principle involved in both cases? We ask
congress to pass a sixteenth amendment, not only for woman's
protection, but for the safety of the nation. Our people are
filled with unrest to-day because there is no fair understanding
of the basis of individual rights, nor the legitimate power of
the national government. The Republican party took the ground
during the war that congress had the right to establish a
national currency in every State; that it had the right to
emancipate and enfranchise the slaves; to change their political
status in one-half the States of the union; to pass a civil
rights bill, securing to the freedman a place in the schools,
colleges, trades, professions, hotels, and all public conveyances
for travel. And they maintained their right to do all these as
the best measures for peace, though compelled by war.
And now, when congress is asked to extend the same protection to
the women of the nation, we are told they have not the power, and
we are remanded to the States. They say the emancipation of the
slave was a war measure, a military necessity; that his
enfranchisement was a political necessity. We might with
propriety ask if the present condition of the nation, with its
political outlook, its election frauds daily reported, the
corrupt action of men in official position, governors, judges,
and boards of canvassers, has not brought us to a moral necessity
where some new element is needed in government. But, alas! when
women appeal to congress for the protection of their natural
rights of person and property, they send us for redress to the
courts, and the courts remand us to the States. You did not trust
the Southern freedman to the arbitrary will of courts and States!
Why send your mothers, wives and daughters to the unwashed,
unlettered, unthinking masses that carry popular elections?
We are told by one class of philosophers that the growing
tendency to increase national power and authority is leading to a
dangerous centralization; that the safety of the republic rests
in local self-government. Says the editor of the Boston _Index_:
What is local self-government? Briefly, that without any
interference from without, every citizen should manage his
own personal affairs in his own way, according to his own
pleasure; that every town should manage its own town affairs
in the same manner and under the same restriction; every
county its own county affairs, every State its own State
affairs. But the independent exercise of this autonomy, by
personal and corporate individuals, has one fundamental
condition, viz.: the maintenance of all these
individualities intact, each in its own sphere of action,
with its rights uninfringed and its freedom uncurtailed in
that sphere, yet each also preserving its just relation to
all the rest in an all comprehensive social organization.
Every citizen would thus stand, as it were, in the center of
several concentric and enlarging circles of relationship to
his kind; he would have duties and rights in each relation,
not only as an individual but also as a member of town,
county, State and national organization. His local
self-government will be at his highest possible point of
realization, when in each of these relations his individual
duties are discharged and his rights maintained.
On the other hand, what is centralization?
It is such a disorganization of this well-balanced,
harmonious and natural system as shall result in the
absorption of all substantial power by a central authority,
to the destruction of the autonomy of the various
individualities above mentioned; such as was produced, for
instance, when the _municipia_ of the Roman empire lost
their corporate independence and melted into the vast
imperial despotism which prepared the way for the collapse
of society under the blows of Northern barbarism. Such a
centralization must inevitably be produced by decay of that
stubborn stickling for rights, out of which local
self-government has always grown. That is, if individual
rights in the citizen, the town, the county, the State,
shall not be vindicated as beyond all price, and defended
with the utmost jealousy, at whatever cost, the spirit of
liberty must have already died out, and the dreary process
of centralization be already far advanced. It will thus be
evident that the preservation of individual rights is the
only possible preventative of centralization, and that free
society has no interest to be compared for an instant in
importance with that of preserving these individual rights.
No nation is free in which this is not the paramount
concern. Woe to America when her sons and her daughters
begin to sneer at rights! Just so long as the citizens are
protected individually in their rights, the towns and
counties and States cannot be stripped; but if the former
lose all love for their own liberties as equal units of
society, the latter will become the empty shells of
creatures long perished. The nation as such, therefore, if
it would be itself free and non-centralized, must find its
own supreme interest in the protection of its individual
citizens in the fullest possible enjoyment of their equal
rights and liberties.
As this question of woman's enfranchisement is one of national
safety, we ask you to remember that we are citizens of the United
States, and, as such, claim the protection of the national flag
in the exercise of our national rights, in every latitude and
longitude, on sea, land, at home as well as abroad; against the
tyranny of States, as well as against foreign aggressions. Local
authorities may regulate the exercise of these rights; they may
settle all minor questions of property, but the inalienable
personal rights of citizenship should be declared by the
constitution, interpreted by the Supreme Court, protected by
congress and enforced by the arm of the executive. It is nonsense
to talk of State rights until the graver question of personal
liberties is first understood and adjusted. President Hayes, in
reply to an address of welcome at Charlottesville, Va., September
25, 1877, said:
Equality under the laws for all citizens is the corner-stone
of the structure of the restored harmony from which the
ancient friendship is to rise. In this pathway I am going,
the pathway where your illustrious men led--your Jefferson,
your Madison, your Monroe, your Washington.
If, in this statement, President Hayes is thoroughly sincere,
then he will not hesitate to approve emphatically the principle
of national protection for national citizens. He will see that
the protection of all the national citizens in all their rights,
civil, political, and religious--not by the muskets of United
States troops, but by the peaceable authority of United States
courts--is not a principle that applies to a single section of
the country, but to all sections alike; he will see that the
incorporation of such a principle in the constitution cannot be
regarded as a measure of force imposed upon the vanquished, since
it would be law alike to the vanquished and the victor. In short,
he will see that there is no other sufficient guarantee of that
equality of all citizens, which he well declares to be the
"corner-stone of the structure of restored harmony." The Boston
_Journal_ of July 19, said:
There are cases where it seems as if the constitution should
empower the federal government to step in and protect the
citizen in the State, when the local authorities are in
league with the assassins; but, as it now reads, no such
provision exists.
That the constitution does not make such provision is not the
fault of the president; it must be attributed to the leading
Republicans who had it in their power once to change the
constitution so as to give the most ample powers to the general
government. When Attorney-General Devens was charged last May
with negligence in not prosecuting the parties accused of the
Mountain Meadow massacre, his defense was, that this horrible
crime was not against the United States, but against the
territory of Utah. Yet, it was a great company of industrious,
honest, unoffending United States citizens who were foully and
brutally murdered in cold blood. When Chief-Justice Waite gave
his charge to the jury in the Ellentown conspiracy cases, at
Charleston, S. C., June 1, 1877, he said:
That a number of citizens of the United States have been
killed, there can be no question; but that is not enough to
enable the government of the United States to interfere for
their protection. Under the constitution that duty belongs
to the State alone. But when an unlawful combination is made
to interfere with any of the rights of natural citizenship
secured to citizens of the United States by the national
constitution, then an offense is committed against the laws
of the United States, and it is not only the right but the
absolute duty of the national government to interfere and
afford the citizens that protection which every good
government is bound to give.
General Hawley, in an address before a college last spring, said:
Why, it is asked, does our government permit outrages in a
State which it would exert all its authority to redress,
even at the risk of war, if they were perpetrated under a
foreign government? Are the rights of American citizens more
sacred on the soil of Great Britain or France than on the
soil of one of our own States? Not at all. But the
government of the United States is clothed with power to act
with imperial sovereignty in the one case, while in the
other its authority is limited to the degree of utter
impotency, in certain circumstances. The State sovereignty
excludes the Federal over most matters of dealing between
man and man, and if the State laws are properly enforced
there is not likely to be any ground of complaint, but if
they are not, the federal government, if not specially
called on according to the terms of the constitution, is
helpless. Citizen A.B., grievously wronged, beaten, robbed,
lynched within a hair's breadth of death, may apply in vain
to any and all prosecuting officers of the State. The forms
of law that might give him redress are all there; the
prosecuting officers, judges, and sheriffs, that might act,
are there; but, under an oppressive and tyrannical public
sentiment, they refuse to move. In such an exigency the
government of the United States can do no more than the
government of any neighboring State; that is, unless the
State concerned calls for aid, or unless the offense rises
to the dignity of insurrection or rebellion. The reason is,
that the framers of our governmental system left to the
several States the sole guardianship of the personal and
relative private rights of the people.
Such is the imperfect development of our own nationality in this
respect that we have really no right as yet to call ourselves a
nation in the true sense of the word, nor shall we have while
this state of things continues. Thousands have begun to feel this
keenly, of which a few illustrations may suffice. A communication
to the New York _Tribune_, June 9, signed "Merchant," said:
Before getting into a quarrel and perhaps war with Mexico
about the treatment of our flag and citizens, would it not
be as well, think you, for the government to try and make
the flag a protection to the citizens on our own soil?
That is what it has never been since the foundation of our
government in a large portion of our common country. The kind of
government the people of this country expect and intend to
have--State rights or no State rights, no matter how much blood
and treasure it may cost--is a government to protect the humblest
citizen in the exercise of all his rights.
When the rebellion of the South against the government began, one
of the most noted secessionists of Baltimore asked one of the
regular army officers what the government expected to gain by
making war on the South. "Well," the officer replied, laying his
hand on the cannon by which he was standing, "we intend to use
these until it is as safe for a Northern man to express his
political opinions in the South, as it is for a Southern man to
express his in the North." Senator Blaine, at a banquet in
Trenton, N. J., July 2, declared that a "government which did not
offer protection to every citizen in every State had no right to
demand allegiance." Ex-Senator Wade, of Ohio, in a letter to the
Washington _National Republican_ of July 16, said of the
president's policy:
I greatly fear this policy, under cover of what is called
local self-government, is but an ignominious surrender of
the principles of nationality for which our armies fought
and for which thousands upon thousands of our brave men
died, and without which the war was a failure and our
boasted government a myth.
Behind the slavery of the colored race was the principle of State
rights. Their emancipation and enfranchisement were important,
not only as a vindication of our great republican idea of
individual rights, but as the first blow in favor of national
unity--of a consistent, homogeneous government. As all our
difficulties, State and national, are finally referred to the
constitution, it is of vital importance that that instrument
should not be susceptible of a different interpretation from
every possible standpoint. It is folly to spend another century
in expounding the equivocal language of the constitution. If
under that instrument, supposed to be the _Magna Charta_ of
American liberties, all United States citizens do not stand equal
before the law, it should without further delay be so amended as
in plain, unmistakable language to declare what are the rights,
privileges, and immunities that belong to citizens of a republic.
There is no reason why the people of to-day should be governed by
the laws and constitutions of men long since dead and buried.
Surely those who understand the vital issues of this hour are
better able to legislate for the living present than those who
governed a hundred years ago. If the nineteenth century is to be
governed by the opinions of the eighteenth, and the twentieth by
the nineteenth, the world will always be governed by dead men....
The cry of centralization could have little significance if the
constitution were so amended as to protect all United States
citizens in their inalienable rights. That national supremacy
that holds individual freedom and equality more sacred than State
rights and secures representation to all classes of people, is a
very different form of centralization from that in which all the
forces of society are centered in a single arm. But the
recognition of the principle of national supremacy, as declared
in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, has been practically
nullified and the results of the war surrendered, by remanding
woman to the States for the protection of her civil and political
rights. The Supreme Court decisions and the congressional reports
on this point are in direct conflict with the idea of national
unity, and the principle of States rights involved in this
discussion must in time remand all United States citizens alike
to State authority for the protection of those rights declared to
inhere in the people at the foundation of the government.
You may listen to our demands, gentlemen, with dull ears, and
smile incredulously at the idea of danger to our institutions
from continued violation of the civil and political rights of
women, but the question of what citizens shall enjoy the rights
of suffrage involves our national existence; for, if the
constitutional rights of the humblest citizen may be invaded with
impunity, laws interpreted on the side of injustice, judicial
decisions based not on reason, sound argument, nor the spirit and
letter of our declarations and theories of government, but on the
customs of society and what dead men are supposed to have
thought, not what they said--what will the rights of the ruling
powers even be in the future with a people educated into such
modes of thought and action? The treatment of every individual in
a community--in our courts, prisons, asylums, of every class of
petitioners before congress--strengthens or undermines the
foundations of that temple of liberty whose corner-stones were
laid one century ago with bleeding hands and anxious hearts, with
the hardships, privations, and sacrifices of a seven years' war.
He who is able from the conflicts of the present to forecast the
future events, cannot but contemplate with anxiety the fate of
this republic, unless our constitution be at once subjected to a
thorough emendation, making it more comprehensively democratic.
A review of the history of our nation during the century will
show the American people that all the obstacles that have impeded
their political, moral and material progress from the dominion of
slavery down to the present epidemic of political corruptions,
are directly and indirectly traceable to the federal constitution
as their source and support. Hence the necessity of prompt and
appropriate amendments. Nothing that is incorrect in principle
can ever be productive of beneficial results, and no custom or
authority is able to alter or overrule this inviolate law of
development. The catch-phrases of politicians, such as "organic
development," "the logic of events," and "things will regulate
themselves," have deceived the thoughtless long enough. There is
just one road to safety, and that is to understand the law
governing the situation and to bring the nation in line with it.
Grave political problems are solved in two ways--by a wise
forethought, and reformation; or by general dissatisfaction,
resistance, and revolution.
In closing, let me remind you, gentlemen, that woman has not been
a heedless spectator of all the great events of the century, nor
a dull listener to the grand debates on human freedom and
equality. She has learned the lesson of self-sacrifice,
self-discipline, and self-government in the same school with the
heroes of American liberty.[29]
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, of New York, corresponding secretary of the
association, said: _Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the
Committee_--You have heard the general argument for woman from
Mrs. Stanton, but there are women here from all parts of the
Union, and each one feels that she must say a word to show how
united we stand. It is because we have respect for law that we
come before you to-day. We recognize the fact that in good law
lies the security of all our rights, but as woman has been denied
the constructive rights of the declaration and constitution, she
is obliged to ask for a direct recognition in the adoption of a
sixteenth amendment.
The first principle of liberty is division of power. In the
country of the czar or the sultan there is no liberty of thought
or action. In limited monarchies power is somewhat divided, and
we find larger liberty and a broader civilization. Coming to the
United States we find a still greater division of power, a still
more extended liberty--civil, religious, political. No nation in
the world is as respected as our own; no title so proud as that
of American citizen; it carries with it abroad a protection as
large as did that of Rome two thousand years ago. But as proud as
is this name of American citizen, it brings with it only shame
and humiliation to one-half of the nation. Woman has no part nor
lot in the matter. The pride of citizenship is not for her, for
woman is still a political slave. While the form of our
government seems to include the whole people, one-half of them
are denied a right to participate in its benefits, are denied the
right of self-government. Woman equally with man has natural
rights; woman equally with man is a responsible being.
It is said women are not fit for freedom. Well, then, secure us
freedom and make us fit for it. Macaulay said many politicians of
his time were in the habit of laying it down as a self-evident
proposition that no people were fit to be free till they were in
a condition to use their freedom; "but," said Macaulay, "this
maxim is worthy of the fool in the old story, who resolved not to
go into the water till he had learned to swim. If men [or women]
are to wait for liberty till they become good and wise in
slavery, they may indeed wait forever."
There has been much talk about precedent. Many women in this
country vote upon school questions, and in England at all
municipal elections. I wish to call your attention a little
further back, to the time that the Saxons first established free
government in England. Women, as well as men, took part in the
Witenagemote, the great national council of our Saxon ancestors
in England. When Whightred, king of Kent, in the seventh century,
assembled the national legislature at Baghamstead to enact a new
code of laws, the queen, abbesses, and many ladies of quality
signed the decrees. Also, at Beaconsfield, the abbesses took part
in the council. In the reign of Henry III. four women took seats
in parliament, and in the reign of Edward I. ten ladies were
called to parliament and helped to govern Great Britain. Also, in
1252, Henry left his Queen Elinor as keeper of the great seal, or
lord chancellor, while he went abroad. She sat in the Aula Regia,
the highest court of the kingdom, holding the highest judicial
power in great Britain. Not only among our forefathers in Britain
do we find that women took part in government, but, going back to
the Roman Empire, we find the Emperor Heliogabalus introducing
his mother into the senate, and giving her a seat near the
consuls. He also established a senate of women, which met on the
Collis Quirinalis. When Aurelian was emperor he favored the
representation of women, and determined to revive this senate,
which in lapse of time had fallen to decay. Plutarch mentions
that women sat and deliberated in councils, and on questions of
peace and war. Hence we have precedents extending very far back
into history.
It is sometimes said that women do not desire freedom. But I tell
you the desire for freedom lives in every heart. It may be hidden
as the water of the never-freezing, rapid-flowing river Neva is
hidden. In the winter the ice from Lake Lagoda floats down till
it is met by the ice setting up from the sea, when they unite and
form a compact mass over it. Men stand upon it, sledges run over
it, splendid palaces are built upon it; but beneath all the Neva
still rapidly flows, itself unfrozen. The presence of these women
before you shows their desire for freedom. They have come from
the North, from the South, from the East, from the West, and from
the far Pacific slope, demanding freedom for themselves and for
all women.
Our demands are often met by the most intolerable tyranny. The
Albany _Law Journal_, one of the most influential legal journals
of the great State of New York, had the assurance a few years ago
to tell Miss Anthony and myself if we were not suited with "our
laws" we could leave the country. What laws did they mean? Men's
laws. If we were not suited with these men's laws, made by them
to protect themselves, we could leave the country. We were
advised to expatriate ourselves, to banish ourselves. But we
shall not do it. It is our country, and we shall stay here and
change the laws. We shall secure their amendment, so that under
them there shall be exact and permanent political equality
between men and women. Change is not only a law of life; it is an
essential proof of the existence of life. This country has
attained its greatness by ever enlarging the bounds of freedom.
In our hearts we feel that there is a word sweeter than mother,
home, or heaven. That word is LIBERTY. We ask it of you now. We
say to you, secure to us this liberty--the same liberty you have
yourselves. In doing this you will not render yourselves poor,
but will make us rich indeed.
Mrs. STEWART of Delaware, in illustrating the folly of adverse
arguments based on woman's ignorance of political affairs, gave
an amusing account of her colored man servant the first time he
voted. He had been full of bright anticipations of the coming
election day, and when it dawned at last, he asked if he could be
spared from his work an hour or so, to vote. "Certainly, Jo,"
said she, "by all means; go to the polls and do your duty as a
citizen." Elated with his new-found dignity, Jo ran down the
road, and with a light heart and shining face deposited his vote.
On his return Mrs. Stewart questioned him as to his success at
the polls. "Well," said he, "first one man nabbed me and gave me
the tickets he said I ought to vote, and then another man did the
same. I said yes to both and put the tickets in my pocket. I had
no use for those Republican or Democratic bits of paper." "Well,
Jo," said Mrs. Stewart, "what did you do?" "Why I took that piece
of paper that I paid $2.50 for and put it in the box. I knew that
was worth something." "Alas! Jo," said his mistress, "you voted
your tax receipt, so your first vote has counted nothing." Do you
think, gentlemen, said Mrs. Stewart, that such women as attend
our conventions, and speak from our platform, could make so
ludicrous a blunder? I think not.
The Rev. OLYMPIA BROWN, a delegate from Connecticut, addressed
the committee as follows: _Gentlemen of the Committee_--I would
not intrude upon your time and exhaust your patience by any
further hearing upon this subject if it were not that men are
continually saying to us that we do not want the ballot; that it
is only a handful of women that have ever asked for it; and I
think by our coming up from these different States, from
Delaware, from Oregon, from Missouri, from Connecticut, from New
Hampshire, and giving our testimony, we shall convince you that
it is not a few merely, but that it is a general demand from the
women in all the different States of the Union; and if we come
here with stammering tongues, causing you to laugh by the very
absurdity of the manner in which we advocate our opinions, it
will only convince you that it is not a few "gifted" women, but
the rank and file of the women of our country unaccustomed to
such proceedings as these, who come here to tell you that we all
desire the right of suffrage. Nor shall our mistakes and
inability to advocate our cause in an effective manner be an
argument against us, because it is not the province of voters to
conduct meetings in Washington. It is rather their province to
stay at home and quietly read the proceeding of members of
congress, and if they find these proceedings correct, to vote to
return them another year. So that our very mistakes shall argue
for us and not against us.
In the ages past the right of citizenship meant the right to
enjoy or possess or attain all those civil and political rights
that are enjoyed by any other citizen. But here we have a class
who can bear the burdens and punishments of citizens, but cannot
enjoy their privileges and rights. But even the meanest may
petition, and so we come with our thousands of petitions, asking
you to protect us against the unjust discriminations imposed by
State laws. Nor do we find that there is any conflict between the
duties of the national government and the functions of the State.
The United States government has to do with general interests,
but everything that is special, has to do with sectional
interests, belongs to the State. Said Charles Sumner:
The State exercises its proper functions when it makes local
laws, promotes local charities, and by its local knowledge
brings the guardianship of government to the homes of its
citizens; but the State transcends its proper functions when
in any manner it interferes with those equal rights recorded
in the Declaration of Independence.
The State is local, the United States is universal. And, says
Charles Sumner, "What can be more universal than the rights of
man?" I would add, "What can be more universal than the rights of
woman?" extending further than the rights of man, because woman
is the heaven-appointed guardian of the home; because woman by
her influence and in her office as an educator makes the
character of man; because women are to be found wherever men are
to be found, as their mothers bringing them into the world,
watching them, teaching them, guiding them into manhood. Wherever
there is a home, wherever there is a human interest, there is to
be felt the interest of women, and so this cause is the most
universal of any cause under the sun; and, therefore, it has a
claim upon the general government. Therefore we come petitioning
that you will protect us in our rights, by aiding us in the
passage of the sixteenth amendment, which will make the
constitution plain in our favor, or by such actions as will
enable us to cast our ballots at the polls without being
interfered with by State authorities. And we hope you will do
this at no distant day. I hope you will not send my sister, the
honorable lady from Delaware, to the boy, Jo, to ask him to
define her position in the republic. I hope you will not bid any
of these women at home to ask ignorant men whether they may be
allowed to discharge their obligations as citizens in the matter
of suffrage. I hope you will not put your wives and mothers in
the power of men who have never given a half hour's consideration
to the subject of government, and who are wholly unfit to
exercise their judgment as to whether women should have the right
of suffrage.
I will not insult your common sense by bringing up the old
arguments as to whether we have the right to vote. I believe
every man of you knows we have that right--that our right to vote
is based upon the same authority as yours. I believe every man
understands that, according to the declaration and the
constitution, women should be allowed to exercise the right of
suffrage, and therefore it is not necessary for me to do more
than bear my testimony from the State of Connecticut, and tell
you that the women from the rank and file, the law-abiding women,
desire the ballot; not only that they desire it, but they mean
to have it. And to accomplish this result I need not remind you
that they will work year in and year out, that they will besiege
members of congress everywhere, and that they will come here year
after year asking you to protect them in their rights and to see
that justice is done in the republic. Therefore, for your own
peace, we hope you will not keep us waiting a long time. The fact
that some States have made, temporarily, some good laws, does not
weaken our demand upon you for the protection which the ballot
gives to every citizen. Our interests are still uncared for, and
we do not wish to be thus sent from pillar to post to get our
rights. We wish to take our stand as citizens of the United
States, as we have been declared to be by the Supreme Court, and
we wish to be protected in the rights of citizenship. We hope the
day is at hand when our prayers will be heard by you. Let us have
at an early day in the _Congressional Record_, a report of the
proceedings of this committee, and the action of the Senate in
favor of woman's right to vote.
Brief remarks were also made by Mrs. Lawrence of Massachusetts,
Mary A. Thompson, M. D., of Oregon, Mary Powers Filley of New
Hampshire, Mrs. Blake of New York, Mrs. Hooker of Connecticut, and
Sara Andrews Spencer of Washington.
At the close of these two day's hearings before the Committee on
Privileges and Elections,[30] Senator Hoar of Massachusetts,
offered, and the committee adopted the following complimentary
resolution:
_Resolved_, That the arguments upon the very important questions
discussed before the committee have been presented with
propriety, dignity and ability, and that the committee will
consider the same on Tuesday next, at 10 A.M.
The Washington _Evening Star_ of January 11, 1876, said:
The woman suffrage question will be a great political issue some
day. A movement in the direction of alleged rights by a body of
American citizens cannot be forever checked, even though its
progress may for many years be very gradual. Now that the
advocates of suffrage for woman have become convinced that the
thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments are not
sufficiently explicit to make woman's right to vote unquestioned,
and that a sixteenth amendment is necessary to effect the
practical exercise of the right, the millennial period that they
look for is to all intents and purposes indefinitely postponed,
for constitutional amendments are not passed in a day. But there
are so many sound arguments to be advanced in favor of woman
suffrage that it cannot fail in time to be weighed as a matter of
policy, after it shall have been overwhelmingly conceded as a
matter of right. And it is noticeable that the arguments of the
opponents are coming more and more to be based on expediency, and
hardly attempt to answer the claim that as American citizens
women are entitled to the right. If the whole body of American
women desired the practical exercise of this right, it is hard to
see what valid opposition to their claims could be made. All this
however does not amend the constitution. Woman suffrage must
become a matter of policy for a political party before it can be
realized. Congress does not pass revolutionary measures on
abstract considerations of right. This question is of a nature to
become a living political issue after it has been sufficiently
ridiculed.
On Saturday evening, January 12, a reception was given to the
delegates to the convention by Hon. Alexander H. Stephens of
Georgia, at the National Hotel. The suite of rooms so long occupied
by this liberal representative of the South, was thus opened to
unwonted guests--women asking for the same rights gained at the
point of the sword by his former slaves! Seated in his wheel-chair,
from which he had so often been carried by a faithful attendant to
his place in the House of Representatives, he cordially welcomed
the ladies as they gathered about him, assuring them of his
interest in this question and promising his aid.
For the first time Miss Julia Smith of anti-tax fame, of
Glastonbury, Connecticut, was present at a Washington convention.
She was the recipient of much social attention. A reception was
tendered her by Mrs. Spofford of the Riggs House, giving people an
opportunity to meet this heroic woman of eighty-three, who, with
her younger sister Abby, had year after year suffered the sale of
their fine Jersey cows and beautiful meadow lands, rather than pay
taxes while unrepresented. Many women, notable in art, science and
literature, and men high in political station were present on this
occasion. All crowded about Miss Smith, as, supported by Mrs.
Hooker, in response to a call for a speech, particularly in regard
to the Gladstonbury cows, as famous as herself, she said:
There are but two of our cows left at present, Taxey and Votey.
It is something a little peculiar that Taxey is very obtrusive;
why, I can scarcely step out of doors without being confronted by
her, while Votey is quiet and shy, but she is growing more docile
and domesticated every day, and it is my opinion that in a very
short time, wherever you find Taxey there Votey will be also.
At the close of Miss Smith's remarks, Abby Hutchinson Patton sang
"Auld Lang Syne" in a very effective manner; one or two readings
followed, a few modern ballads were sung, and thus closed the
first of the many delightful receptions given by Mr. and Mrs.
Spofford to the officers and members of the National Association.
Mrs. Hooker spent several weeks at the Riggs House, holding
frequent woman suffrage conversazioni in its elegant parlors; also
speaking upon the question at receptions given in her honor by the
wives of members of congress, or residents of Washington.[31]
During the week of the convention, public attention was called to a
scarcely known Anti-Woman Suffrage Society, formed in 1871, of
which Mrs. General Sherman, Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren and Mrs. Almira
Lincoln Phelps were officers, by the publication of an undelivered
letter from Mrs. Phelps to Mrs. Hooker:
_To the Editor of the Post:_
The following was written nearly seven years since, but was never
sent to Mrs. Hooker. The letter chanced to appear among old
papers, and as there is a meeting of women suffragists, with Mrs.
Hooker present, and, moreover, as they have mentioned the names
of Mrs. Dahlgren and Mrs. General Sherman, opposers, I am willing
to bear my share of the opposition, as I acted as corresponding
secretary to the Anti-Suffrage Society, which was formed under
the auspices of these ladies.
Mrs. DAHLGREN.
EUTAW PLACE, BALTIMORE, January, 30, 1871.
_To Mrs. Beecher Hooker:_
DEAR MADAM--Hoping you will receive kindly what I am about to
write, I will proceed without apologies. I have confidence in
your nobleness of soul, and that you know enough of me to believe
in my devotion to the best interests of woman. I can scarcely
realize that you are giving your name and influence to a cause,
which, with some good but, as I think, misguided women, numbers
among its advocates others with loose morals. * * * We are, my
dear madam, as I suppose, related through our common ancester
Thomas Hooker. * * * Your husband, I believe, stands in the same
relation to that good and noble man. Perhaps he may think with
you on this woman suffrage question, but it does seem to me that
a wife honoring her husband would not wish to join in such a
crusade as is now going on to put woman on an equality with the
rabble at the "hustings." If we could with propriety petition the
Almighty to change the condition of the sexes and let men take a
turn in bearing children and in suffering the physical ailments
peculiar to women, which render them unfit for certain positions
and business, why, in this case, if we really wish to be men, and
thought God would change the established order, we might make our
petition; but why ask congress to make us men? Circumstances drew
me from the quiet of domestic life while I was yet young; but
success in labors which involved publicity, and which may have
been of advantage to society, was never considered as an
equivalent to my own heart for the loss of such retirement. In
the name of my sainted sister, Emma Willard, and of my friend
Lydia Sigourney, and I think I might say in the name of the women
of the past generation, who have been prominent as writers and
educators (the exception may be made of Mary Wollstonecraft,
Frances Wright, and a few licentious French writers) in our own
country and in Europe, let me urge the high-souled and honorable
of our sex to turn their energies into that channel which will
enable them to act for the true interests of their sex.
Yours respectfully,
ALMIRA LINCOLN PHELPS.
To which Mrs. Hooker, through _The Post_, replied:
WASHINGTON, January 15, 1878.
Mrs. DAHLGREN--_Dear Madam_: Permit me to thank you for the
opportunity to exonerate myself and the women of the suffrage
movement all over the United States from the charge of favoring
immorality in any form. I did not know before that Mrs. Phelps,
whom I have always held in highest esteem as an educator and as
one of the most advanced thinkers of her day, had so misconceived
the drift of our movement; and you will pardon me, dear madam,
for saying that it is hardly possible that Mrs. Sherman and
yourself, in your opposition to it, can have been influenced by
any apprehension that the women suffragists of the United States
would, if entrusted with legislative power, proceed to use it for
the desecration of their own sex, and the pollution of the souls
of their husbands, brothers and sons. But having been publicly
accused through your instrumentality of sympathy with the
licentious practices of men, I shall take the liberty to send you
a dozen copies of a little book entitled, "Womanhood; its
Sanctities and Fidelities," which I published in 1874 for the
specific purpose of bringing to the notice of American women the
wonderful work being done across the water in the suppression of
"State Patronage of Vice." * * * It is with a deep sense of
gratitude to God that I am able to say that, according to my
knowledge and belief, every woman in our movement, whether
officer or private, is in sympathy with the spirit of this little
book. I know of no inharmony here, however we may differ upon
minor points of expediency as to the best methods of working for
the political advancement of woman. And further, it is the deep
conviction of us all that the chief stumbling-block in the way of
our obtaining the use of the ballot, is the apprehension among
men of low degree that they will surely be limited in their base
and brutal and sensual indulgencies when women are armed with
equal political power.
As to my husband, to whose ancestry Mrs. Phelps so kindly
alludes, permit me to say that he is not only descended from
Thomas Hooker, the beloved first pastor of the old Centre Church
in Hartford, and founder of the State of Connecticut, but further
back his lineage takes root in one of England's most honored
names, Richard Hooker, surnamed "The Judicious"; and I have been
accustomed to say that, however it may be as to learning and
position, the characteristic of judiciousness has not departed
from the American stock. I will only add that Mr. Hooker is
treasurer of our State suffrage association, and has spoken on
the platform with me as president, whenever his professional
duties would permit, and that he is the author of a tract on "The
Bible and Woman Suffrage." Our society has printed several
thousand copies of this tract, and the London National Women's
Suffrage Society has reprinted it with words of high commendation
for distribution in Great Britain. * * * And now, dear madam,
thanking you once more for this most unexpected and most grateful
opportunity for correcting misapprehensions that others may have
entertained as well as Mrs. Phelps in regard to the design and
tendencies of our movement, may I not ask that you will kindly
read and consider the papers I shall take the liberty to send
you, and hand them to your co-workers at your convenience?
That we all, as women who love our country and our kind, may be
led to honor each other in our personal relations, while we work
each in her respective way for that higher order of manhood and
womanhood that alone can exalt our nation to the ideal of the
fathers and mothers of the early republic, and preserve us an
honored place among the peoples of the earth, is the prayer of
Yours sincerely,
ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.
Evidently left without even the name of Mrs. Sherman or the
Anti-Suffrage Society to sustain her, Mrs. Dahlgren memorialized
the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections against the
submission of the sixteenth amendment:
_To the Honorable Committee on Privileges and Elections:_
GENTLEMEN--Allow me, in courtesy, as a petitioner, to present one
or two considerations regarding a sixteenth amendment, by which
it is proposed to confer the right of suffrage upon the women of
the United States. I ask this favor also in the interests of the
masses of silent women, whose silence does not give consent, but
who, in most modest earnestness, deprecate having the political
life forced upon them.
This grave question is not one of simple expediency or the
reverse; it might properly be held, were this the case, as a
legitimate subject for agitation. Our reasons of dissent to this
dangerous inroad upon all precedent, lie deeper and strike
higher. They are based upon that which in all Christian nations
must be recognized as the higher law, the fundamental law upon
which Christian society in its very construction must rest; and
that law, as defined by the Almighty, is immutable. Through it
the women of this Christian land, as mothers, wives, sisters,
daughters, have distinct duties to perform of the most complex
order, yet of the very highest and most sacred nature.
If in addition to all these responsibilities, others,
appertaining to the domain assigned to men, are allotted to us,
we shall be made the victims of an oppression not intended by a
kind and wise Providence, and from which the refining influences
of Christian civilization have emancipated us. We have but to
look at the condition of our Indian sister, upon whose bended
back the heavy pack is laid by her lord and master; who treads in
subjection the beaten pathway of equal rights, and compare her
situation with our own, to thank the God of Christian nations who
has placed us above that plane, where right is might, and might
is tyranny. We cannot without prayer and protest see our
cherished privileges endangered, and have granted us only in
exchange the so-called equal rights. We need more, and we claim,
through our physical weakness and your courtesy as Christian
gentlemen, that protection which we need for the proper discharge
of those sacred and inalienable functions and rights conferred
upon us by God. To these the vote, which is not a natural right
(otherwise why not confer it upon idiots, lunatics, and adult
boys) would be adverse.
When women ask for a distinct political life, a separate vote,
they forget or they willfully ignore the higher law, whose logic
may be thus condensed: Marriage is a sacred unity. The family,
through it, is the foundation of the State. Each family is
represented by its head, just as the State ultimately finds the
same unity, through a series of representations. Out of this come
peace, concord, proper representation, and adjustment--union.
The new doctrine, which is illusive, may be thus defined:
Marriage is a mere compact, and means diversity. Each family,
therefore, must have a separate individual representation, out of
which arises diversity or division, and discord is the
corner-stone of the State.
Gentlemen, we cannot displace the corner-stone without
destruction to the edifice itself! The subject is so vast, has so
many side issues, that a volume might as readily be laid before
your honorable committee as these few words hastily written with
an aching woman's heart. Personally, if any woman in this vast
land has a grievance by not having a vote, I may claim that
grievance to be mine. With father, brother, husband, son, taken
away by death, I stand utterly alone, with minor children to
educate and considerable property interests to guard. But I would
deem it unpatriotic to ask for a general law which must prove
disastrous to my country, in order to meet that exceptional
position in which, by the adorable will of God, I am placed. I
prefer, indeed, to trust to that moral influence over men which
intelligence never fails to exercise, and which is really more
potent in the management of business affairs than the direct
vote. In this I am doubtless as old-fashioned as were our
grandmothers, who assisted to mold this vast republic. They knew
that the greatest good for the greatest number was the only safe
legislative law, and that to it all exceptional cases must
submit.
Gentlemen, in conclusion, a sophism in legislation is not a mere
abstraction; it must speedily bear fruit in material results of
the most disastrous nature, and I implore your honorable
committee, in behalf of our common country, not to open a
Pandora's box by way of experiment from whence so much evil must
issue, and which once opened may never again be closed.
Very respectfully,
MADELEINE VINTON DAHLGREN.
Mrs. Dahlgren was ably reviewed by Virginia L. Minor of St. Louis,
and the Toledo Woman Suffrage Association. Mrs. Minor said:
In assuming to speak for the "silent masses" of women, Mrs.
Dahlgren declares that silence does not give consent; very
inconsequently forgetting, that if it does not on one side of the
question, it may not on the other, and that she may no more
represent them than do we.
The Toledo society, through its president Mrs. Rose L. Segur, said:
We agree with you that this grave question is not one of
expediency. It is simply one of right and justice, and therefore
a most legitimate subject for agitation. As a moral force woman
must have a voice in the government, or partial and unjust
legislation is the result from which arise the evils consequent
upon a government based upon the enslavement of half its
citizens.
To this Mrs. Dahlgren replied briefly, charging the ladies with
incapacity to comprehend her.
The week following the convention a hearing was granted by the
House Judiciary Committee to Dr. Mary Walker of Washington, Mary A.
Tillotson of New Jersey and Mrs. N. Cromwell of Arkansas, urging a
report in favor of woman's enfranchisement. On January 28, the
House sub-committee on territories granted a hearing to Dr. Mary
Walker and Sara Andrews Spencer, in opposition to the bill
proposing the disfranchisement of the women of Utah as a means of
suppressing polygamy.
On January 30 the House Judiciary Committee granted Mrs. Hooker a
hearing. Of the eleven members of the committee nearly all were
present.[32] The room and all the corridors leading to it were
crowded with men and women eager to hear Mrs. Hooker's speech. At
the close of the two hours occupied in its delivery, Chairman Knott
thanked her in the name of the committee for her able argument.
Immediately after this hearing Mr. Frye of Maine, in presenting in
the House of Representatives the petitions of 30,000 persons asking
the right of women to vote upon the question of temperance,
referred in a very complimentary manner to Mrs. Hooker's argument,
to which he had just listened. Upon this prayer a hearing was
granted to the president and ex-president of the Woman's Christian
Temperance Union, Frances E. Willard and Annie E. Wittenmyer.
Hon. George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, February 4, presented in the
Senate the 120 petitions with their 6,261 signatures, which, by
special request of its officers, had been returned to the
headquarters of the American Association, in Boston. In her appeal
to the friends to circulate the petitions, both State and national,
Lucy Stone, chairman of its executive committee, said:
The American Suffrage Association has always recommended
petitions to congress for a sixteenth amendment. But it
recognizes the far greater importance of petitioning the State
legislatures. _First_--Because suffrage is a subject referred by
the constitution to the voters of each State. _Second_--Because
we cannot expect a congress composed solely of representatives of
States which deny suffrage to women, to submit an amendment which
their own States have not yet approved. Just so it would have
been impossible to secure the submission of negro suffrage by a
congress composed solely of representatives from States which
restricted suffrage to white men. While therefore we advise our
friends to circulate both petitions together for signature, we
urge them to give special prominence to those which apply to
their own State legislatures, and to see that these are presented
and urged by competent speakers next winter.
By request of a large number of the senators,[33] the Committee on
Privileges and Elections granted a special hearing to Mrs. Hooker
on Washington's birthday--February 22, 1878. It being understood
that the wives of the senators were bringing all the forces of
fashionable society to bear in aid of Mrs. Dahlgren's protest
against the pending sixteenth amendment, the officers of the
National Association issued cards of invitation asking their
presence at this hearing. We copy from the Washington _Post_:
The conflicting rumors as to who would be admitted to hear Mrs.
Hooker's argument before the Senate Committee on Privileges and
Elections, led to the assembling of large numbers of women in
various places about the capitol yesterday morning. At 11 o'clock
the doors were opened and the committee-room at once filled.[34]
Mrs. Hooker, with the fervor and eloquence of her family,
reviewed all the popular arguments against woman suffrage. She
said she once believed that twenty years was little time enough
for a foreigner to live in this country before he could cast a
ballot. She understands the spirit of our institutions better
now. If disfranchisement meant annihilation, there might be
safety in disfranchising the poor, the ignorant, the vicious. But
it does not. It means danger to everything we hold dear.
The corner-stone of this republic is God's own doctrine of
liberty and responsibility. Liberty is the steam, responsibility
the brakes, and election-day, the safety-valve. The foreigner
comes to this country expecting to find it a paradise. He finds,
indeed, a ladder reaching to the skies, but resting upon the
earth, and he is at the bottom round. But on one day in the year
he is as good as the richest man in the land. He can make the
banker stand in the line behind him until he votes, and if he has
wrongs he learns how to right them. If he has mistaken ideas of
liberty, he is instructed what freedom means.
Wire-pulling politicians may well fear to have women
enfranchised. There are too many of them, and they have had too
much experience in looking after the details of their households
to be easily duped by the tricks of politicians. You can't keep
women away from primary meetings as you do intelligent men. Women
know that every corner in the house must be inspected if the
house is to be clean. Fathers and brothers want women to vote so
that they can have a decent place for a primary meeting, a decent
place to vote in and a decent man to vote for.
The Indian question would have been peacefully and righteously
settled long ago without any standing army, if Lucretia Mott
could have led in the councils of the nation, and the millions
spent in fighting the Indians might have been used in
kindergartens for the poor, to some lasting benefit. Down with
the army, down with appropriation bills to repair the
consequences of wrong-doing, when women vote. Millions more of
women would ask for this if it were not for the cruelty and abuse
men have heaped upon the advocates of woman suffrage. Men have
made it a terrible martyrdom for women even to ask for their
rights, and then say to us, "convert the women." No, no, men have
put up the bars. They must take them down. Mrs. Hooker reviewed
the Chinese question, the labor question, the subjects of
compulsory education, reformation, police regulations, the social
evil, and many other topics upon which men vainly attempt to
legislate without the loving wisdom of mothers, sisters and
daughters. The senators most interested in the argument were
observed to be those previously most unfriendly to woman
suffrage.
It was during this winter that Marilla M. Ricker of New Hampshire,
then studying criminal law in Washington and already having quite
an extensive practice, applied to the commissioners of the District
of Columbia for an appointment as notary public. The question of
the eligibility of woman to the office was referred to the
district-attorney, Hon. Albert G. Riddle, formerly a member of
congress from Ohio, and at that time one of the most prominent
criminal and civil lawyers before the bar. Mr. Riddle's reply was
an able and exhaustive argument, clearly showing there was no law
to prevent women from holding the office. But notwithstanding this
opinion from their own attorney, the commissioners rejected Mrs.
Ricker's application.[35]
Bills to prohibit the Supreme Court from denying the admission of
lawyers on the ground of sex had been introduced at each session of
congress during the past four years. The House bill No. 1,077,
entitled "A bill to relieve certain disabilities of women," was
this year championed by Hon. John M. Glover of Missouri, and passed
by a vote of 169 ayes to 87 nays. In the Senate, Hon. George F.
Edmunds of Vermont, chairman of the Judiciary Committee reported
adversely. While the question was pending, Mrs. Lockwood addressed
a brief to the Senate, ably refuting the assertion of the Court
that it was contrary to English precedent:
_To the Honorable, the Senate of the United States:_
The provisions of this bill are so stringent, that to the
ordinary mind it would seem that the conditions are hard enough
for the applicant to have well earned the honor of the
preferment, without making _sex_ a disability. The fourteenth
amendment to the constitution declares that:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are _citizens_ of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.
Nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or
property without due process of law, nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
To deny the right asked in this bill would be to deny to women
citizens the rights guaranteed in the Declaration of Independence
to be self-evident and inalienable, "life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness"; a denial of one of the fundamental rights
of a portion of the citizens of the commonwealth to acquire
property in the most honorable profession of the law, thereby
perpetuating an invidious distinction between male and female
citizens equally amenable to the law, and having an equal
interest in all of the institutions created and perpetuated by
this government. The articles of confederation declare that:
The free inhabitants of each of these States--paupers and
fugitives from justice excepted--shall be entitled to all
privileges and immunities of free citizens in the several
States.
Article 4 of the constitution says:
Full faith and credit shall be given in each State to the
public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every
other State.
Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Wyoming,
Utah, and the District of Columbia admit women to the bar. What
then? Shall the second cooerdinate branch of the government, the
judiciary, refuse to grant what it will not permit the States to
deny, the privileges and immunities of citizens, and say to
women-attorneys when they have followed their cases through the
State courts to that tribunal beyond which there is no appeal,
"You cannot come in here we are too holy," or in the words of the
learned chancellor declare that:
By the uniform practice of the court from its organization
to the present time, and by a fair construction of its
rules, none but men are admitted to practice before it as
attorneys and counselors. This is in accordance with
immemorial usage in England, and the law and practice in all
the States until within a recent period, and the court does
not feel called upon to make a change until such a change is
required by statute, or a more extended practice in the
highest courts of the States.
With all due respect for this opinion, we beg leave to quote the
rule for admission to the bar of that court as laid down in the
rule book:
RULE NO. 2.--_Attorneys_: It shall be requisite to the
admission of attorneys or counselors to practice in this
court, that they shall have been such for three years past
in the Supreme Courts of the States to which they
respectively belong, and that their private and professional
character shall appear to be fair.
There is nothing in this rule or in the oath which follows it,
either express or implied, which confines the membership of the
bar of the United States Supreme Court to the male sex. Had any
such term been included therein it would virtually be nullified
by the first paragraph of the United States Revised Statutes,
ratified by the forty-third congress, June 20, 1875, in which
occur the following words:
In determining the meaning of the Revised Statutes, or of
any act or resolution of congress passed subsequent to
February 25, 1871, words importing the singular number may
extend and be applied to several persons or things; words
importing the masculine gender may be applied to _females_,
etc., etc.
Now, as to "immemorial usage in England." The executive branch of
that government has been vested in an honored and honorable woman
for the past forty years. Is it to be supposed if this
distinguished lady or any one of her accomplished daughters
should ask to be heard at the bar of the Court of the Queen's
Bench, the practice of which the United States Supreme Court has
set up as its model, that she would be refused?
Blackstone recounts that Ann, Countess of Pembroke, held the
office of sheriff of Westmoreland and exercised its duties in
person. At the assizes at Appleby she sat with the judges on the
bench. (See Coke on Lit., p. 326.) The Scotch sheriff is properly
a judge, and by the statute 20, Geo., II, c. 43, he must be a
lawyer of three years standing.
Eleanor, Queen of Henry III. of England, in the year 1253, was
appointed lady-keeper of the great seal, or the supreme
chancellor of England, and sat in the _Aula Regia_, or King's
Court. She in turn appointed Kilkenny, arch-deacon of Coventry,
as the sealer of writs and common-law instruments, but the more
important matters she executed in person.
Queen Elizabeth held the great seal at three several times during
her remarkable reign. After the death of Lord-keeper Bacon she
presided for two months in the _Aula Regia_.
It is claimed that "admission to the bar constitutes an office."
Every woman postmaster, pension agent and notary public
throughout the land is a bonded officer of the government. The
Western States have elected women as school superintendents and
appointed them as enrolling and engrossing clerks in their
several legislatures, and as State librarians. Of what use are
our seminaries and colleges for women if after they have passed
through the curriculum of the schools there is for them no
preferment, and no emolument; no application of the knowledge of
the arts and sciences acquired, and no recognition of the
excellence attained?
But this country, now in the second year of the second century of
her history, is no longer in her leading strings, that she should
look to Mother England for a precedent to do justice to the
daughters of the land. She had to make a precedent when the first
male lawyer was admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme
Court. Ah! this country is one that has not hesitated when the
necessity has arisen to make precedents and write them in blood.
There was no precedent for this free republican government and
the war of the rebellion; no precedent for the emancipation of
the slave; no precedent for the labor strikes of last summer. The
more extended practice, and the more extended public opinion
referred to by the learned chancellor have already been
accomplished. Ah! that very opinion, telegraphed throughout the
land by the associated press, brought back the response of the
people as on the wings of the wind asking you for that special
act now so nearly consummated, which shall open this professional
door to women.
BELVA A. LOCKWOOD, _Attorney and Solicitor_.
_Washington, D. C._, March 7, 1878.
Mrs. Lockwood's bill, with Senator Edmond's adverse report, was
reached on the Senate calendar April 22, 1878, and provoked a
spirited discussion. Hon. A. A. Sargent, made a gallant fight in
favor of the bill, introducing the following amendment:
No person shall be excluded from practicing as an attorney
and counselor at law in any court of the United States on
account of sex.
Mr. SARGENT: Mr. President, the best evidence that members of the
legal profession have no jealousy against the admission of women
to the bar who have the proper learning, is shown by this
document which I hold in my hand, signed by one hundred and
fifty-five lawyers of the District of Columbia, embracing the
most eminent men in the ranks of that profession. That there is
no jealousy or consideration of impropriety on the part of the
various States is shown by the fact that the legislatures of many
of the States have recently admitted women to the bar; and my own
State, California, has passed such a law within the last week or
two; Illinois has done the same thing; so have Michigan,
Minnesota, Missouri and North Carolina; and Wyoming, Utah and the
District of Columbia among the territories have also done it.
There is no reason in principle why women should not be admitted
to this profession or the profession of medicine, provided they
have the learning to enable them to be useful in those
professions, and useful to themselves. Where is the propriety in
opening our colleges, our higher institutions of learning, or any
institutions of learning, to women, and then when they have
acquired in the race with men the cultivation for higher
employment, to shut them out? There certainly is none. We should
either restrict the laws allowing the liberal education of women,
or, we should allow them to exercise the talents which are
cultivated at the public expense in such departments of
enterprise and knowledge as will be useful to society and will
enable them to gain a living. The tendency is in this direction.
I believe the time has passed to consider it a ridiculous thing
for women to appear upon the lecture platform or in the pulpit,
for women to attend to the treatment of diseases as physicians
and nurses, to engage in any literary employment, or appear at
the bar. Some excellent women in the United States are now
practicing at the bar, acceptably received before courts and
juries; and when they have conducted their cases to a successful
issue or an unsuccessful one in any court below, why should the
United States courts to which an appeal may be taken and where
their adversaries of the male sex may follow the case up, why
should these courts be closed to these women? * * *
Mr. GARLAND: I should like to ask the senator from California if
the courts of the United States cannot admit them upon their own
motion anyhow?
Mr. SARGENT: I think there is nothing in the law prohibiting it,
but the Supreme Court of the United States recently in passing
upon the question of the admission of a certain lady, said that
until some legislation took place they did not like to depart
from the precedent set in England, or until there was more
general practice among the States. The learned chief-justice,
perhaps, did not sufficiently reflect when he stated that there
were no English precedents. The fact is that Elizabeth herself
sat in the _Aula Regia_ and administered the law, and in both
Scotland and England women have fulfilled the function of judges.
The instances are not numerous but they are well established in
history. I myself have had my attention called to the fact that
in the various States the women are now admitted by special
legislation to the bar. I do not think there is anything in the
law, properly considered, that would debar a woman from coming
into this profession. I think the Supreme Court should not have
required further legislation, but it seems to have done so, and
that makes the necessity for the amendment which I have now
offered.
The chairman of the committee in reporting this bill back from
the Judiciary Committee said that the bill as it passed the House
of Representatives gave privileges to women which men did not
enjoy; that is to say, the Supreme Court can by a change of rule
require further qualification of men, whereas in regard to women,
if this provision were put into the statute, the Supreme Court
could not rule them out even though it may be necessary in its
judgment to get a higher standard of qualifications than its
present rules prescribe. Although I observe that my time is up, I
ask indulgence for a moment or two longer. As this is a question
of some interest and women cannot appear here to speak for
themselves, I hope I may be allowed to speak for them a moment.
Now, there is something in the objection stated by the chairman
of the Committee on the Judiciary--that is to say, the bill would
take the rule of the Supreme Court and put it in the statute and
apply it to women, thereby conferring exceptional privileges; but
that is not my intention at all, and therefore I have proposed
that women shall not be excluded from practicing law, if they are
otherwise qualified, on account of sex, and that is the provision
which I want to send back to the Judiciary Committee.
Mr. GARLAND: I wish to ask one question of the senator from
California. Suppose the court should exclude women, but not on
account of sex, then what is their remedy?
Mr. SARGENT: I do not see any pretense that the court could
exclude them on except on account of sex.
Mr. GARLAND: If I recollect the rule of the Supreme Court in
regard to the admission of practitioners (and I had to appear
there twice to present my claim before I could carry on my
profession in that court), I do not think any legislation is
necessary to aid them by giving them any more access to that
court than they have at present under the rules of the Supreme
Court.
Mr. SARGENT: I believe if the laws now existing were properly
construed (of course I speak with all deference to the Supreme
Court, but I express the opinion) they would be admitted, but
unfortunately the court does not take that view of it, and it
will wait for legislation. I purpose that the legislation shall
follow. If there is anything in principle why this privilege
should not be granted to women who are otherwise qualified, then
let the bill be defeated on that ground; but I say there is no
difference in principle whatever, not the slightest. There is no
reason because a citizen of the United States is a woman that she
should be deprived of her rights as a citizen, and these are
rights of a citizen. She has the same right to life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness and employment, commensurate with her
capacities, as a man has; and, as to the question of capacity,
the history of the world shows from Queen Elizabeth and Queen
Isabella down to Madame Dudevant and Mrs. Stowe, that capacity is
not a question of sex.
Mr. MCDONALD: I have simply to say, Mr. President, that a number
of States and territories have authorized the admission of women
to the legal profession, and they have become members of the bar
of the highest courts of judicature. It may very frequently
occur, and has in some instances I believe really occurred, that
cases in which they have been thus employed have been brought to
the Supreme Court of the United States. To have the door closed
against them when the cause is brought here, not by them, or when
in the prosecution of the suits of their clients they find it
necessary to come here, seems to me entirely unjust. I therefore
favor the bill with the amendment. The proposed amendment is
perhaps better because it does away with any tendency to
discrimination in regard to the admissibility of women to
practice in the Supreme Court.
The PRESIDING OFFICER: The senator from California moves that the
bill be recommitted to the Committee on Judiciary.
Mr. SARGENT: I have the promise of the chairman of the committee
that the bill will soon be reported back, and therefore I am
willing that it go to the committee, and I make the motion that
it be recommitted. [The motion was agreed to.]
Mr. SARGENT: I ask that the amendment which I propose be printed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER: The order to print will be made.
Mary Clemmer, the gifted correspondent of the New York
_Independent_, learning that Senator Wadleigh was about to report
adversely upon the sixteenth amendment, wrote the following private
letter, which, as a record of her own sentiments on the question,
she gave to Miss Anthony for publication in this history:
Hon. BAINBRIDGE WADLEIGH--_Dear Sir_: The more I think of it the
more I regret that, as chairman of the Committee on Privileges
and Elections, you regard with less favor the enfranchisement of
women than did your distinguished predecessor, Senator Morton. At
this moment, when your committee is discussing that subject, I
sigh for the large outlook, the just mind, the unselfish decision
of that great legislator. You were his friend, you respected his
intellect, you believed in his integrity, you sit in his seat.
You are to prepare the report that he would prepare were he still
upon the earth. May I ask you to bring to that labor as fair a
spirit, as unprejudiced an outlook, as just a decision as he
would have done?
I ask this not as a partisan of woman's rights, but as a lover of
the human race. In this faint dawn of woman's day, I discern not
woman's development of freedom merely, but the promise of that
higher, finer, purer civilization which is to redeem the world,
the lack of which makes men tyrants and women slaves. You cannot
be unconscious of the fact that a new race of women is born into
the world, who, while they lack no womanly attribute, are the
peers of any man in intellect and aspiration. It will be
impossible long to deny to such women that equality before the
law granted to the lowest creature that crawls, if he happens to
be a man; denied to the highest creature that asks it, if she
happens to be a woman.
On what authority, save that of the gross regality of physical
strength, do you deny to a thoughtful, educated, tax-paying
person the common rights of citizenship because she is a woman? I
am a property-owner, the head of a household. By what right do
you assume to define and curtail for me my prerogatives as a
citizen, while as a tax-payer you make not the slightest
distinction between me and a man? Leave to my own perception what
is proper for me as a lady, to my own discretion what is wise for
me as a woman, to my own conscience what is my duty to my race
and to my God. Leave to unerring nature to protect the subtle
boundaries which define the distinctive life and action of the
sexes, while you as a legislator do everything in your power to
secure to every creature of God an equal chance to make the best
and most of himself.
If American men could say as Huxley says, "I scorn to lay a
single obstacle in the way of those whom nature from the
beginning has so heavily burdened," the sexes would cease to war,
men and women would reign together, the equal companions,
friends, helpers, and lovers that nature intended they should be.
But what is love, tenderness, protection, even, unless rooted in
justice? Tyranny and servitude, that is all. Brute supremacy,
spiritual slavery. By what authority do you say that the country
is not prepared for a more enlightened franchise, for political
equality, if six women citizens, earnest, eloquent,
long-suffering, come to you and demand both? No words can express
my regret if to the minority report I see appended only the
honored name of George F. Hoar of Massachusetts.
Your friend, MARY CLEMMER.
In response to all these arguments, appeals and petitions, Senator
Wadleigh, from the Committee on Privileges and Elections, presented
the following adverse report, June 14, 1878:
_The Committee on Privileges and Elections, to whom was referred
the Resolution (S. Res. 12) proposing an Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States, and certain Petitions for and
Remonstrances against the same, make the following Report:_
This proposed amendment forbids the United States, or any State
to deny or abridge the right to vote on account of sex. If
adopted, it will make several millions of female voters, totally
inexperienced in political affairs, quite generally dependent
upon the other sex, all incapable of performing military duty and
without the power to enforce the laws which their numerical
strength may enable them to make, and comparatively very few of
whom wish to assume the irksome and responsible political duties
which this measure thrusts upon them. An experiment so novel, a
change so great, should only be made slowly and in response to a
general public demand, of the existence of which there is no
evidence before your committee.
[Illustration: Marilla M. Ricker]
Petitions from various parts of the country, containing by
estimate about 30,000 names, have been presented to congress
asking for this legislation. They were procured through the
efforts of woman suffrage societies, thoroughly organized, with
active and zealous managers. The ease with which signatures may
be procured to any petition is well known. The small number of
petitioners, when compared with that of the intelligent women in
the country, is striking evidence that there exists among them no
general desire to take up the heavy burden of governing, which so
many men seek to evade. It would be unjust, unwise and impolitic
to impose that burden on the great mass of women throughout the
country who do not wish for it, to gratify the comparatively few
who do.
It has been strongly urged that without the right of suffrage,
women are, and will be, subjected to great oppression and
injustice.
But every one who has examined the subject at all knows that,
without female suffrage, legislation for years has improved and
is still improving the condition of woman. The disabilities
imposed upon her by the common law have, one by one, been swept
away, until in most of the States she has the full right to her
property and all, or nearly all, the rights which can be granted
without impairing or destroying the marriage relation. These
changes have been wrought by the spirit of the age, and are not,
generally at least, the result of any agitation by women in their
own behalf.
Nor can women justly complain of any partiality in the
administration of justice. They have the sympathy of judges and
particularly of juries to an extent which would warrant loud
complaint on the part of their adversaries of the sterner sex.
Their appeals to legislatures against injustice are never
unheeded, and there is no doubt that when any considerable part
of the women of any State really wish for the right to vote, it
will be granted without the intervention of congress.
Any State may grant the right of suffrage to women. Some of them
have done so to a limited extent, and perhaps with good results.
It is evident that in some States public opinion is much more
strongly in favor of it than it is in others. Your committee
regard it as unwise and inexpedient to enable three-fourths in
number of the States, through an amendment to the national
constitution, to force woman suffrage upon the other fourth in
which the public opinion of both sexes may be strongly adverse to
such a change.
For these reasons, your committee report back said resolution
with a recommendation that it be indefinitely postponed.
This adverse report was all the more disappointing because Mr.
Wadleigh, as Mrs. Clemmer's letter states, filled the place of Hon.
Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, one of the most steadfast friends of
woman suffrage, who, at the last session of congress, had asked as
a special favor the reference of our petitions to the Committee on
Privileges and Elections, of which he was chairman, that they might
receive proper attention and that he might report favorably upon
them. In the discussion on the Pembina bill in 1874, Senator
Morton made an earnest speech in favor of woman's enfranchisement.
In his premature death our cause lost one of its bravest champions.
Senator Wadleigh's report called forth severe criticism; notably
from the _New Northwest_ of Oregon, the _Woman's Journal_ of
Boston, the _Inter-Ocean_ of Chicago, the _Evening Telegram_ and
the _National Citizen_ of New York. We quote from the latter:
The report is not a statesman-like answer based upon fundamental
principles, but a mere politician's dodge--a species of
dust-throwing quite in vogue in Washington. "Several millions of
voters totally inexperienced in political affairs"! They would
have about as much experience as the fathers in 1776, as the
negroes in 1870, as the Irish, English, Italians, Norwegians,
Danes, French, Germans, Portuguese, Scotch, Russians, Turks,
Mexicans, Hungarians, Swedes and Indians, who form a good part of
the voting population of this country. Did Mr. Wadleigh never
hear of Agnes C. Jencks--the woman who has stirred up politics to
its deepest depth; who has shaken the seat of President Hayes;
who has set in motion the whole machinery of government, and who,
when brought to the witness stand has for hours successfully
baffled such wily politicians as Ben Butler and McMahon;--a woman
who thwarts alike Republican and Democrat, and at her own will
puts the brakes on all this turmoil of her own raising? Does
Senator Wadleigh know nothing of that woman's "experience in
politics"?
"Quite dependent upon the other sex." It used to be said the
negroes were "quite dependent" upon their masters, that it would
really be an abuse of the poor things to set them free, but when
free and controlling the results of their own labor, it was found
the masters had been the ones "quite dependent," and thousands of
them who before the war rolled in luxury, have since been in the
depths of poverty--some of them even dependent upon the bounty of
their former slaves. When men cease to rob women of their
earnings they will find them generally, as thousands now are,
capable of self-care.[36]