quite as much military duty to be done. They will then have a
voice and a vote in the matter, and the men will no longer be
able to throw the country into a war to gratify spite or
ambition, tearing from woman's arms her nearest and dearest. All
men do not like "military duty." "The key to that horrible
enigma, German socialism, is antagonism to the military system,"
and nations are shaken with fear because of it. But when there is
necessity for military duty, women will be found in line. The
person who planned the Tennessee campaign, in which the Northern
armies secured their first victories, was a woman, Anna Ella
Carroll. Gen. Grant acted upon her plan, and was successful. She
was endorsed by President Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Wade, Scott,
and all the nation's leaders in its hour of peril, and yet
congress has not granted her the pension which for ten years her
friends have demanded. Mr. Wadleigh holds his seat in the United
States Senate to-day, because of the "military duty" done by this
woman.
"About 30,000 names," to petitions. There have been 70,000 sent
in during the present session of congress, for a sixteenth
amendment, besides hundreds of individual petitions from women
asking for the removal of their own political disabilities. Men
in this country are occasionally disfranchised for crime, and
sometimes pray for the removal of their political disabilities.
Nine such disfranchised men had the right of voting restored to
them during the last session of congress. But not a single one of
the five hundred women who individually asked to have their
political disabilities removed, was even so much as noticed by an
adverse report, Mr. Wadleigh knows it would make no difference if
300,000 women petitioned. But whether women ask for the ballot or
not has nothing to do with the question. Self-government is the
natural right of every individual, and because woman possesses
this natural right, she should be secured in its exercise.
Mr. Wadleigh says, "nor can woman justly complain of any
partiality in the administration of justice." Let us examine: A
few years ago a married man in Washington, in official position,
forced a confession from his wife at the mouth of a pistol, and
shot his rival dead. Upon trial he was triumphantly acquitted and
afterwards sent abroad as foreign minister. A few months ago a
married woman in Georgia, who had been taunted by her rival with
boasts of having gained her husband's love, found this rival
dancing with him. She drew a knife and killed the woman on the
spot. She was tried, convicted, and, although nursing one infant,
and again about to become a mother, was sentenced to be hanged by
the neck till she was 'dead, dead, dead.' There is Mr. Wadleigh's
equal administration of justice between man and woman! There is
"the sympathy of judges and juries." There is the "extent which
would warrant loud complaint on the part of their adversaries of
the sterner sex." And this woman escaped the gallows not because
of "the sympathy of the judge" or "jury," but because her own sex
took the matter up, and from every part of the country sent
petitions by the hundreds to Governor Colquitt of Georgia, asking
her pardon. That pardon came in the shape of ten years'
imprisonment;--ten years in a cell for a woman, the mother of a
nursing and an unborn infant, while for General Sickles the
mission to Madrid with high honors and a fat salary.
Messrs. Wadleigh of New Hampshire, McMillan of Minnesota, Ingalls
of Kansas, Saulsbury of Delaware, Merrimon of North Carolina and
Hill of Georgia, all senators of the United States, are the
committee that report it "inexpedient" to secure equal rights to
the women of the United States. But we are not discouraged; we
are not disheartened; all the Wadleighs in the Senate, all the
committees of both Houses, the whole congress of the United
States against us, would not lessen our faith, nor our efforts.
We know we are right; we know we shall be successful; we know the
day is not far distant, when this government and the world will
acknowledge the exact and permanent political equality of man and
woman, and we know that until that hour comes woman will be
oppressed, degraded; a slave, without a single right that man
feels himself bound to respect. Work then, women, for your own
freedom. Let the early morning see you busy, and dusky evening
find you planning how you may become FREE.
But the most severe judgment upon Mr. Wadleigh's action came from
his own constituents, who, at the close of the forty-fifth congress
excused his further presence in the United States Senate, sending
in his stead the Hon. Henry W. Blair, a valiant champion of
national protection for national citizens.[37]
In April, 1878, Mrs. Williams transferred the _Ballot-Box_ to Mrs.
Gage, who removed it to Syracuse, New York, and changed its name to
the _National Citizen_. In her prospectus Mrs. Gage said:
The _National Citizen_ will advocate the principle that suffrage
is the citizen's right, and should be protected by national law,
and that, while States may regulate the suffrage, they should
have no power to abolish it. Its especial object will be to
secure national protection to women in the exercise of their
right to vote; it will oppose class legislation of whatever form.
It will support no political party until one arises which is
based upon the exact equality of man and woman.
As the first step towards becoming well is to know you are ill,
one of the principal aims of the _National Citizen_ will be to
make those women discontented who are now content; to waken them
to self-respect and a desire to use the talents they possess; to
educate their consciences aright; to quicken their sense of duty;
to destroy morbid beliefs, and fit them for their high
responsibilities as citizens of a republic. The _National
Citizen_ has no faith in that old theory that "a woman once lost
is lost forever," neither does it believe in the assertion that
"a woman who sins, sinks to depths of wickedness lower than man
can reach." On the contrary it believes there is a future for the
most abandoned, if only the kindly hand of love and sympathy be
extended to rescue them from the degradation into which they have
fallen. The _National Citizen_ will endeavor to keep its readers
informed of the progress of women in foreign countries, and will,
as far as possible, revolutionize this country, striving to make
it live up to its own fundamental principles and become in
reality what it is but in name--a genuine republic.
Instead of holding its usual May anniversary in New York city, the
National Association decided to meet in Rochester to celebrate the
close of the third decade of organized agitation in the United
States, and issued the following call:
The National Association will hold a convention in Rochester, N.
Y., July 19, 1878. This will be the thirtieth anniversary of the
first woman's rights convention, held July 19, 1848, in the
Wesleyan church at Seneca Falls, N. Y., and adjourned to meet,
August 2, in Rochester. Some who took part in that convention
have passed away, but many others, including both Mrs. Mott and
Mrs. Stanton, are still living. This convention will take the
place of the usual May anniversary, and will be largely devoted
to reminiscences. Friends are cordially invited to be present.
CLEMENCE S. LOZIER, M. D., _President_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
The meeting was held in the Unitarian church on Fitzhugh street,
occupied by the same society that had opened its doors in 1848; and
Amy Post, one of the leading spirits of the first convention, still
living in Rochester and in her seventy-seventh year, assisted in
the arrangements. Rochester, known as "The Flower City,"
contributed of its beauty to the adornment of the church. It was
crowded at the first session. Representatives from a large number
of States were present,[38] and there was a pleasant interchange of
greetings between those whose homes were far apart, but who were
friends and co-workers in this great reform. The reunion was more
like the meeting of near and dear relatives than of strangers whose
only bond was work in a common cause. Such are the compensations
which help to sustain reformers while they battle ignorance and
prejudice in order to secure justice. In the absence of the
president, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Mrs. Stanton took the chair and
said:
We are here to celebrate the third decade of woman's struggle in
this country for liberty. Thirty years have passed since many of
us now present met in this place to discuss the true position of
woman as a citizen of a republic. The reports of our first
conventions show that those who inaugurated this movement
understood the significance of the term "citizens." At the very
start we claimed full equality with man. Our meetings were
hastily called and somewhat crudely conducted; but we intuitively
recognized the fact that we were defrauded of our natural rights,
conceded in the national constitution. And thus the greatest
movement of the century was inaugurated. I say greatest, because
through the elevation of woman all humanity is lifted to a higher
plane. To contrast our position thirty years ago, under the old
common law of England, with that we occupy under the advanced
legislation of to-day, is enough to assure us that we have passed
the boundary line--from slavery to freedom. We already see the
mile-stones of a new civilization on every highway.
Look at the department of education, the doors of many colleges
and universities thrown wide open to women; girls contending for,
yea, and winning prizes over their brothers. In the working world
they are rapidly filling places and climbing heights unknown to
them before, realizing, in fact, the dreams, the hopes, the
prophesies of the inspired women of by-gone centuries. In many
departments of learning woman stands the peer of man, and when by
higher education and profitable labor she becomes self-reliant
and independent, then she must and will be free. The moment an
individual or a class is strong enough to stand alone, bondage is
impossible. Jefferson Davis, in a recent speech, says: "A Caesar
could not subject a people fit to be free, nor could a Brutus
save them if they were fit for subjugation."
Looking back over the past thirty years, how long ago seems that
July morning when we gathered round the altar in the old Wesleyan
church in Seneca Falls! It taxes and wearies the memory to think
of all the conventions we have held, the legislatures we have
besieged, the petitions and tracts we have circulated, the
speeches, the calls, the resolutions we have penned, the
never-ending debates we have kept up in public and private, and
yet to each and all our theme is as fresh and absorbing as it was
the day we started. Calm, benignant, subdued as we look on this
platform, if any man should dare to rise in our presence and
controvert a single position we have taken, there is not a woman
here that would not in an instant, with flushed face and flashing
eye, bristle all over with sharp, pointed arguments that would
soon annihilate the most skilled logician, the most profound
philosopher.
To those of you on this platform who for these thirty years have
been the steadfast representatives of woman's cause, my friends
and co-laborers, let me say our work has not been in vain. True,
we have not yet secured the suffrage, but we have aroused public
thought to the many disabilities of our sex, and our countrywomen
to higher self-respect and worthier ambition, and in this
struggle for justice we have deepened and broadened our own lives
and extended the horizon of our vision. Ridiculed, persecuted,
ostracised, we have learned to place a just estimate on popular
opinion, and to feel a just confidence in ourselves. As the
representatives of principles which it was necessary to explain
and defend, we have been compelled to study constitutions and
laws, and in thus seeking to redress the wrongs and vindicate the
rights of the many, we have secured a higher development for
ourselves. Nor is this all. The full fruition of these years of
seed-sowing shall yet be realized, though it may not be by those
who have led in the reform, for many of our number have already
fallen asleep. Another decade and not one of us may be here, but
we have smoothed the rough paths for those who come after us. The
lives of multitudes will be gladdened by the sacrifices we have
made, and the truths we have uttered can never die.
Standing near the gateway of the unknown land and looking back
through the vista of the past, memory recalls many duties in
life's varied relations we would had been better done. The past
to all of us is filled with regrets. We can recall, perchance,
social ambitions disappointed, fond hopes wrecked, ideals in
wealth, power, position, unattained--much that would be
considered success in life unrealized. But I think we should all
agree that the time, the thought, the energy we have devoted to
the freedom of our countrywomen, that the past, in so far as our
lives have represented this great movement, brings us only
unalloyed satisfaction. The rights already obtained, the full
promise of the rising generation of women more than repay us for
the hopes so long deferred, the rights yet denied, the
humiliation of spirit we still suffer.
And for those of you who have been mere spectators of the long,
hard battle we have fought, and are still fighting, I have a
word. Whatever your attitude has been, whether as cold,
indifferent observers--whether you have hurled at us the shafts
of ridicule or of denunciation, we ask you now to lay aside your
old educational prejudices and give this question your earnest
consideration, substituting reason for ridicule, sympathy for
sneers. I urge the young women especially to prepare themselves
to take up the work so soon to fall from our hands. You have had
opportunities for education such as we had not. You hold to-day
the vantage-ground we have won by argument. Show now your
gratitude to us by making the uttermost of yourselves, and by
your earnest, exalted lives secure to those who come after you a
higher outlook, a broader culture, a larger freedom than have yet
been vouchsafed to woman in our own happy land.
Congratulatory letters[39] and telegrams were received from all
portions of the United States and from the old world. Space admits
the publication of but a few, yet all breathed the same hopeful
spirit and confidence in future success. Abigail Bush, who presided
over the first Rochester convention, said:
No one knows what I passed through upon that occasion. I was born
and baptized in the old Scotch Presbyterian church. At that time
its sacred teachings were, "if a woman would know anything let
her ask her husband at home." * * * I well remember the incidents
of that meeting and the thoughts awakened by it. * * * Say to
your convention my full heart is with them in all their
deliberations and counsels, and I trust great good to women will
come of their efforts.
Ernestine L. Rose, a native of Poland, and, next to Frances Wright,
the earliest advocate of woman's enfranchisement in America, wrote
from England:
How I should like to be with you at the anniversary--it reminds
me of the delightful convention we had at Rochester, long, long
ago--and speak of the wonderful change that has taken place in
regard to woman. Compare her present position in society with the
one she occupied _forty_ years ago, when I undertook to
emancipate her from not only barbarous laws, but from what was
even worse, a barbarous public opinion. No one can appreciate the
wonderful change in the social and moral condition of woman,
except by looking back and comparing the past with the present. *
* * Say to the friends, Go on, go on, halt not and rest not.
Remember that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" and of
right. Much has been achieved; but the main, the vital thing, has
yet to come. The suffrage is the magic key to the statute--the
insignia of citizenship in a republic.
Caroline Ashurst Biggs, editor of the _Englishwoman's Review_,
London, wrote:
I have read with great interest in the _National Citizen_ and the
_Woman's Journal_ the announcement of the forthcoming convention
in Rochester. * * * I cannot refrain from sending you a cordial
English congratulation upon the great advance in the social and
legal position of women in America, which has been the result of
your labor. The next few years will see still greater progress.
As soon as the suffrage is granted to women, a concession which
will not be many years in coming either in England or America,
every one of our questions will advance with double force, and
meanwhile our efforts in that direction are simultaneously
helping forward other social, legal, educational and moral
reforms. Our organization in England does not date back so far as
yours. There were only a few isolated thinkers when Mrs. John
Stuart Mill wrote her essay on the enfranchisement of women in
1851. For twenty years, however, it has progressed with few
drawbacks. In some particulars the English laws in respect of
women are in advance of yours, but the connection between England
and America is so close that a gain to one is a gain to the
other.
Lydia E. Becker, editor of the _Women's Suffrage Journal_,
Manchester, England, wrote:
* * * I beg to offer to the venerable pioneers of the movement,
more especially to Lucretia Mott, a tribute of respectful
admiration and gratitude for the services they have rendered in
the cause of enfranchisement. * * * As regards the United
kingdom, the movement in a practical form is but twelve years
old, and in that period, although we have not obtained the
parliamentary franchise, we have seen it supported by at least
one-third of the House of Commons, and our claim admitted as one
which must be dealt with in future measures of parliamentary
reform. We have obtained the municipal franchise and the
school-board franchise. Women have secured the right to enter the
medical profession and to take degrees in the University of
London, besides considerable amendment of the law regarding
married women, though much remains to be done.
Senator Sargent, since minister to Berlin, wrote:
I regret that the necessity to proceed at once to California will
deprive me of the pleasure of attending your convention of July
19, the anniversary of the spirited declaration of rights put
forth thirty years ago by some of the noblest and most
enlightened women of America. Women's rights have made vast
strides since that day, in juster legislation, in widened spheres
of employment, and in the gradual but certain recognition by
large numbers of citizens of the justice and policy of extending
the elective franchise to women. It is now very generally
conceded that the time is rapidly approaching when women will
vote. The friends of the movement have faith in the result; its
enemies grudgingly admit it. Courage and work will hasten the
day. The worst difficulties have already been overcome. The
movement has passed the stage of ridicule, and even that of
abuse, and has entered that of intelligent discussion, its worst
adversaries treating it with respect. You are so familiar with
all the arguments in favor of this great reform that I will not
attempt to state them; but I wish to say that as an observer of
public events, it is my deliberate judgment that your triumph is
near at hand. There are vastly more men and women in the United
States now who believe that women should have the right to vote
than there were in 1848 who believed the slave should be freed.
This is a government of opinions and the growing opinion will be
irresistible.
Respectfully yours, A. A. SARGENT.
The following letters from the great leaders of the anti-slavery
movement were gratefully received. As Mr. Garrison soon after
finished his eventful life, this proved to be his last message to
our association:
BOSTON, June 30, 1878.
MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY--Your urgent and welcome letter, inviting me
to the thirtieth anniversary of the woman's rights movement at
Rochester, came yesterday. Most earnestly do I wish I could be
present to help mark this epoch in our movement, and join in
congratulating the friends on the marvelous results of their
labors. No reform has gathered more devoted and self-sacrificing
friends. No one has had lives more generously given to its
service; and you who have borne such heavy burdens may well
rejoice in the large harvest; for no reform has, I think, had
such rapid success. You who remember the indifference which
almost discouraged us in 1848, and who have so bravely faced
ungenerous opposition and insult since, must look back on the
result with unmixed astonishment and delight. Temperance, and
finance--which is but another name for the labor movement--and
woman's rights, are three radical questions which overtop all
others in value and importance. Woman's claim for the ballot-box
has had a much wider influence than merely to protect woman.
Universal suffrage is itself in danger. Scholars dread it; social
science and journalists attack it. The discussion of woman's
claim has done much to reveal this danger, and rally patriotic
and thoughtful men in defense. In many ways the agitation has
educated the people. Its success shows that the masses are sound
and healthy; and if we gain, in the coming fifteen years, half as
much as we have in the last thirty, woman will hold spear and
shield in her own hands. If I might presume to advise, I should
say close up the ranks and write on our flag only one claim--the
ballot. Everything helps us, and if we are united, success cannot
long be delayed.
Very cordially yours,
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
BOSTON, July 16, 1878.
MY DEAR FRIEND--The thirtieth anniversary of the first woman's
rights convention ever held with special reference to demanding
the elective franchise irrespective of sex well deserves to be
commemorated in the manner set forth in the call for the same, at
Rochester, on the 19th instant. As a substitute for my personal
attendance, I can only send a brief but warm congratulatory
epistle on the cheering progress which the movement has made
within the period named. For how widely different are the
circumstances under which that convention was held, and those
which attend the celebration of its third decade! Then, the
assertion of civil and political equality, alike for men and
women, excited widespread disgust and astonishment, as though it
were a proposition to repeal the laws of nature, and literally to
"turn the world upside down"; and it was ridiculed and
caricatured as little short of lunacy. Now, it is a subject of
increasing interest and grave consideration, from the Atlantic to
the Pacific, and what at first appeared to be so foolish in
pretension is admitted by all reflecting and candid minds to be
deserving of the most respectful treatment. Then, its avowed
friends, were indeed "few and far between," even among those
disfranchised as the penalty of their womanhood. Now, they can be
counted by tens of thousands, and their number is
augmenting--foremost in intelligence, in weight of character, in
strength of understanding, in manly and womanly development, and
in all that goes to make up enlightened citizenship. Then, with
rare exceptions, women were everywhere remanded to poverty and
servile dependence, being precluded from following those
avocations and engaging in those pursuits which make competency
and independence not a difficult achievement. Now, there is
scarcely any situation or profession, in the arrangements of
society, to which they may not and do not aspire, and in which
many of them are not usefully engaged; whether in new and varied
industrial employment, in the arts and sciences, in the highest
range of literature, in philosophic and mathematical
investigations, in the professions of law, medicine, and
divinity, in high scholarship, in educational training and
supervision, in rhetoric and oratory, in the lyceum, or in
discharging the official duties connected with the various
departments of the State and national governments.
Almost all barriers are down except that which prevents women
from going to the polls to help decide who shall be the
law-makers and what shall be the laws, so that the general
welfare may be impartially consulted, and the blessings of
freedom and equal rights be enjoyed by all. That barrier, too,
must give way wherever erected, as sure as time outlasts and
baffles every device of wrong-doing, and truth is stronger than
falsehood, and the law of eternal justice is as reliable as the
law of gravitation. Yes! the grand fundamental truths of the
Declaration of Independence shall yet be reduced to practice in
our land--that the human race are created free and equal; that
government derives its just powers from the consent of the
governed, and that taxation without representation is tyranny.
And I confidently predict that this will be witnessed before the
expiration of another decade.
Yours, to abate nothing of heart or hope,
WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.
Mrs. Mott never seemed more hopeful for the triumph of our
principles than on this occasion. She expressed great satisfaction
in the number of young women who for the first time that day graced
our platform.[40] Though in her eighty-sixth year, her enthusiasm
in the cause for which she had so long labored seemed still
unabated, and her eye sparkled with humor as of yore while giving
some amusing reminiscences of encounters with opponents in the
early days. Always apt in biblical quotations she had proved
herself a worthy antagonist of the clergy on our platform. She had
slain many Abimelechs with short texts of Scripture, whose defeat
was the more humiliating because received at the hand of a woman.
As she recounted in her happiest vein the triumphs of her
coadjutors she was received with the heartiest manifestations of
delight by her auditors. She took a lively interest in the
discussion of the resolutions that had been presented by the
chairman of the committee, Matilda Joslyn Gage:
_Resolved_, That a government of the people, by the people and
for the people is yet to be realized; for that which is formed,
administered and controlled only by men, is practically nothing
more than an enlarged oligarchy, whose assumptions of natural
superiority and of the right to rule are as baseless as those
enforced by the aristocratic powers of the old world.
_Resolved_, That in celebrating our third decade we have reason
to congratulate ourselves on the marked change in woman's
position--in her enlarged opportunities for education and labor,
her greater freedom under improved social customs and civil laws,
and the promise of her speedy enfranchisement in the minor
political rights she has already secured.
_Resolved_, That the International Congress[41] called in Paris,
July 20, to discuss the rights of woman--the eminent Victor Hugo,
its presiding officer--is one of the most encouraging events of
the century, in that statesmen and scholars from all parts of the
world, amid the excitement of the French Exposition, propose to
give five days to deliberations upon this question.
_Resolved_, That the majority report of the chairman of the
Committee on Privileges and Elections, Senator Wadleigh of New
Hampshire, against a sixteenth amendment to secure the political
rights of woman in its weakness, shows the strength of our
reform.
_Resolved_, That the national effort to force citizenship on the
Indians, the decision of Judge Sawyer in the United States
Circuit Court of California against the naturalization of the
Chinese, and the refusal of congress to secure the right of
suffrage to women, are class legislation, dangerous to the
stability of our institutions.
WHEREAS, Woman's rights and duties in all matters of legislation
are the same as those of man.
_Resolved_, That the problems of labor, finance, suffrage,
international rights, internal improvements, and other great
questions, can never be satisfactorily adjusted without the
enlightened thought of woman, and her voice in the councils of
the nation.
_Resolved_, That the question of capital and labor is one of
special interest to us. Man, standing to woman in the position of
capitalist, has robbed her through the ages of the results of her
toil. No just settlement of this question can be attained until
the right of woman to the proceeds of her labor in the family and
elsewhere is recognized, and she is welcomed into every industry
on the basis of equal pay for equal work.
_Resolved_, That as the first duty of every individual is
self-development, the lessons of self-sacrifice and obedience
taught woman by the Christian church have been fatal, not only to
her own vital interests, but through her, to those of the race.
_Resolved_, That the great principle of the Protestant
Reformation, the right of individual conscience and judgment
heretofore exercised by man alone, should now be claimed by
woman; that, in the interpretation of Scripture, she should be
guided by her own reason, and not by the authority of the church.
_Resolved_, That it is through the perversion of the religious
element in woman--playing upon her hopes and fears of the future,
holding this life with all its high duties in abeyance to that
which is to come--that she and the children she has trained have
been so completely subjugated by priestcraft and superstition.
This was the last convention ever attended by Lucretia Mott. Her
family had specially requested that she should not be urged to go;
but on seeing the call, she quietly announced her intention to be
at the meeting, and, with the ever faithful Sarah Pugh as her
companion, she made the journey from Philadelphia in the intense
heat of those July days. Mrs. Mott was the guest of her husband's
nephew, Dr. E.M. Moore, who, fearing that his aunt would be utterly
exhausted, called for her while she was in the midst of her closing
remarks. As she descended the platform, she continued speaking
while she slowly moved down the aisle, shaking hands upon either
side. The audience simultaneously rose, and on behalf of all,
Frederick Douglass ejaculated, "Good-by, dear Lucretia!"
The last three resolutions called out a prolonged discussion[42]
not only in the convention but from the pulpit and press of the
State.
One amusing encounter in the course of the debate is worthy of
note. Perhaps it was due to the intense heat that Mr. Douglass,
usually clear on questions of principle, was misled into opposing
the resolutions. He spoke with great feeling and religious
sentiment of the beautiful Christian doctrine of self-sacrifice.
When he finished, Mrs. Lucy Coleman, always keen in pricking
bubbles, arose and said: "Well, Mr. Douglass, all you say may be
true; but allow me to ask you why you did not remain a slave in
Maryland, and sacrifice yourself, like a Christian, to your master,
instead of running off to Canada to secure your liberty, like a
man? We shall judge your faith, Frederick, by your deeds."
An immense audience assembled at Corinthian Hall in the evening to
listen to the closing speeches[43] of the convention. Mrs. Robinson
of Boston gave an exhaustive review of the work in Massachusetts,
and her daughter, Mrs. Shattuck, gave many amusing experiences as
her father's[44] clerk in the legislature of that State.
The resolutions provoked many attacks from the clergy throughout
the State, led by Rev. A.H. Strong, D.D., president of the Baptist
Theological Seminary in Rochester, Of his sermon the _National
Citizen_ said:
None too soon have we issued our resolutions, proclaiming woman's
right to self-development--to interpret Scripture for herself, to
use her own faculties. In speaking of what Christianity has done
for woman, Dr. Strong stultifies his own assertions by referring
to Switzerland and Germany "where you may see any day hundreds of
women wheeling earth for railroad embankments." Does he not
remember that Switzerland and Germany are Christian countries and
that it is part of their civilization that while women do this
work, some man takes the pay and puts it in his own pocket quite
in heathen fashion? The reverend doctor in the usual style of
opposition to woman--which is to quote something or other having
no bearing upon the question--refers to Cornelia's "jewels,"
forgetting to say that Cornelia delivered public lectures upon
philosophy in Rome, and that Cicero paid the very highest tribute
to her learning and genius.
Dr. Strong advocates the old theory that woman and man are not
two classes standing upon the same level, but that the two are
one--that one on the time-worn theory of common law, the husband;
and talks of the "dignity and delicacy of woman" being due to the
fact of her not having been in public life, and that this
"dignity and delicacy" would all evaporate if once she were
allowed to vote, which reminds one of the story of Baron
Munchausen's horn, into which a certain coach-driver blew all
manner of wicked tunes. The weather being very cold, these tunes
remained frozen in the horn. When hung by the fire, the horn
began to thaw out, and these wicked tunes came pealing forth to
the great amazement of the by-standers. The reverend gentlemen
seems to think women are full of frozen wickedness, which if they
enter public life will be thawed out to the utter demolition of
their "dignity and delicacy" and the disgust of society. He deems
it "too hazardous" to allow women to vote. "Bad women would
vote." Well, what of it? Have they not equal right with bad men,
to self-government? Bad is a relative term. It strikes us that
the very reverend Dr. Strong is a "bad" man--a man who does not
understand true Christianity--who is not just--who would strike
those who are down--who would keep woman in slavery--who quotes
the Bible as his authority: thus fettering woman's conscience,
binding her will, and playing upon her hopes and fears to keep
her in subjection.
From Augustine, down, theologians have tried to compel people to
accept their special interpretation of the Scripture, and the
tortures of the inquisition, the rack, the thumb-screw, the
stake, the persecutions of witchcraft, the whipping of naked
women through the streets of Boston, banishment, trials for
heresy, the halter about Garrison's neck, Lovejoy's death, the
branding of Captain Walker, shouts of infidel and atheist, have
all been for this purpose.
We know the ignorance that exists upon these points. Few have yet
begun to comprehend the influence that ecclesiasticism has had
upon law. Wharton, a recognized authority upon criminal law,
issued his seventh edition before he ascertained the vast bearing
canon law had had upon the civil code, and we advise readers to
consult the array of authorities, English, Latin, German, to
which he, in his preface, refers. We hope to arouse attention
and compel investigation of this subject by lawyers and
theologians as well as by women themselves.
Francis E. Abbot, editor of _The Index_, the organ of the Free
Religious Association, spoke grandly in favor of the resolutions.
He said:
These resolutions we have read with astonishment, admiration and
delight. We should not have believed it possible that the
convention could have been induced to adopt them. They will make
forever memorable in the history of the organized woman movement,
this thirtieth anniversary of its birth. They put the National
Woman Suffrage Association in an inconceivably higher and nobler
position than that occupied by any similar society. They go to
the very root of the matter. They are a bold, dignified, and
magnificent utterance. We congratulate the convention on a record
so splendid in the eyes of all true liberals. From this day forth
the whole woman movement must obey the inspiration of a higher
courage and a grander spirit than have been known to its past.
Opposition must be encountered, tenfold more bitter than was ever
yet experienced. But truth is on the side of these brave women;
the ringing words they have spoken at Rochester will thrill many
a doubting heart and be echoed far down the long avenue of the
years.
During the same week of the Rochester convention, the Paris
International Congress opened it sessions, sending us a telegram of
greeting to which we responded with two hundred and fifty francs as
a tangible evidence of our best wishes. The two remarkable features
of that congress were the promise of so distinguished a man as
Victor Hugo to preside over its deliberations, though at last
prevented by illness; and the fact that the Italian government sent
Mlle. Mozzoni as an official delegate to the congress to study the
civil position of woman in various countries, in order that an
ameliorating change of its code, in respect to woman, could be
wisely made.
The newspapers of the French capital in general treated the
congress with respect. The _Rappel_, Victor Hugo's organ, spoke of
it in a most complimentary manner. Theodore Stanton, in a letter to
the _National Citizen_, said:
In one important respect this congress differed entirely from an
American convention of like character--it made no demand for
suffrage. The word was never mentioned except by the American
delegates. In continental Europe the idea of demanding for woman
a share in the government, is never considered. This is the more
remarkable in France, as this claim was made at the time of the
revolution. But every imaginable side of the question was
discussed, except the side that comprehends all the others. To an
American, therefore, European woman's rights is rather tame; it
is like the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out. But Europe is
moving, and the next international congress will, undoubtedly,
give more attention to suffrage and less to hygiene.
The Eleventh Washington Convention was held January 9, 10, 1879.
The resolutions give an idea of the status of the question, and the
wide range of discussion covered by the speakers:[45]
_Resolved_, That the forty-fifth congress, in ignoring the
individual petitions of more than three hundred women of high
social standing and culture, asking for the removal of their
political disabilities, while promptly enacting special
legislation for the removal of the political disabilities of
every man who petitioned, furnishes an illustration of the
indifference of this congress to the rights of citizens deprived
of political power.
WHEREAS, Senator Blaine says, it is the very essence of tyranny
to count any citizens in the basis of representation who are
denied a voice in their laws and a choice in their rulers;
therefore,
_Resolved_, That counting women in the basis of representation,
while denying them the right of suffrage, is compelling them to
swell the number of their tyrants and is an unwarrantable
usurpation of power over one-half the citizens of this republic.
WHEREAS, In President Hayes' last message, he makes a truly
paternal review of the interests of this republic, both great and
small, from the army, the navy, and our foreign relations, to the
ten little Indians in Hampton, Va., our timber on the western
mountains, and the switches of the Washington railroads; from the
Paris Exposition, the postal service, the abundant harvests, and
the possible bull-dozing of some colored men in various southern
districts, to cruelty to live animals, and the crowded condition
of the mummies, dead ducks and fishes in the Smithsonian
Institute--yet forgets to mention twenty million women robbed of
their social, civil and political rights; therefore,
_Resolved_, That a committee of three be appointed from this
convention to wait upon the president and remind him of the
existence of one-half of the American people whom he has
accidentally overlooked, and of whom it would be wise for him to
make some mention in his future messages.
WHEREAS, All of the vital principles involved in the thirteenth,
fourteenth and fifteenth constitutional amendments have been
denied in their application to women by courts, legislatures and
political parties; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is logical that these amendments should fail
to protect even the male African for whom said courts,
legislatures and parties declare they were expressly designed and
enacted.
_Resolved_, That the judges of the Supreme Court of the United
States in denying Belva A. Lockwood admission to its bar, while
she was entitled under the law and under its rules to that right,
violated their oath of office.
_Resolved_, That the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Edmonds
chairman, in its report on the bill to allow women to practice
law in the courts of the United States in which it declares that
"further legislation is not necessary," evaded the plain question
at issue before it in a manner unworthy of judges learned in the
honorable profession of the law, and thereby sanctioned an
injustice to the women of the whole country.
WHEREAS, The general government has refused to exercise federal
power to protect women in their right to vote in the various
States and territories; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it should forbear to exercise federal power to
disfranchise the women of Utah, who have had a more just and
liberal spirit shown them by Mormon men than Gentile women in the
States have yet perceived in their rulers.
WHEREAS, The proposed legislation for the Chinese women on the
Pacific slope and for outcast women in our cities, and the
opinion of the press that no respectable woman should be seen in
the streets after dark, are all based upon the presumption that
woman's freedom must be forever sacrificed to man's licence;
therefore,
_Resolved_, That the ballot in woman's hand is the only power by
which she can restrain the liberty of those men who make our
streets and highways dangerous to her, and secure the freedom
that belongs to her by day and by night.
[Illustration: Frances E. Willard]
At the close of the convention it was decided at a meeting of the
executive committee to present an address to the president and both
houses of congress, and that a printed copy of the resolutions
should be laid on the desk of every member. The president having
granted a hearing,[46] the following address was presented:
_To his Excellency, the President of the United States_:
WHEREAS, Representatives of associations of women waited upon
your excellency before the delivery of your first and second
annual messages, asking that in those documents you would
remember the disfranchised millions of citizens of the United
States; and,
WHEREAS, Upon careful examination of those messages, we find
therein specifically enumerated, the interests, great and small,
of all classes of men, and recommendations of needful legislation
to protect their civil and political rights, but find no mention
made of any need of legislation to protect the political, civil,
or social rights of one-half of the people of this republic, and,
WHEREAS, There is pending in the Senate a constitutional
amendment to prohibit the several States from disfranchising
United States citizens on account of sex, and a similar amendment
is pending upon a tie vote in the House Judiciary Committee; and
as petitions to so amend the constitution have been presented to
both houses of congress from more than 40,000 well-known citizens
of thirty-five States and five territories,
THEREFORE, we respectfully ask your excellency, in your next
annual message, to make mention of the disfranchised millions of
wives, mothers and daughters of this republic, and to recommend
to congress that women equally with men be protected in the
exercise of their civil and political rights.
On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Corresponding Secretary_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
The delegates from the territory of Utah were also received by the
president. They called his attention to the effect of the
enforcement of the law of 1862 upon 50,000 Mormon women, to render
them outcasts and their children nameless, asking the chief
executive of the nation to give some time to the consideration of
the bill pending under different headings in both houses. The
president asked them to set forth the facts in writing, that he
might carefully weigh so important a matter. A memorial was also
presented to congress by these ladies, closing thus:
We further pray that in any future legislation concerning the
marriage relation in any territory under your jurisdiction you
will consider the rights and the consciences of the women to be
affected by such legislation, and that you will consider the
permanent care and welfare of children as the sure foundation of
the State.
And your petitioners will ever pray.
EMMELINE B. WELLS.
ZINA YOUNG WILLIAMS.
Mr. Cannon of Utah moved that the memorial be referred to the
Committee on the Judiciary with leave to report at any time. It was
so referred. The Judiciary Committee of the Senate brought in a
bill legitimatizing the offspring of plural marriages to a certain
date; also authorizing the president to grant amnesty for past
offenses against the law of 1862.
The _Congressional Record_ of January 24, under the head of
petitions and memorials, said:
The vice-president, Mr. Wheeler of New York, presented the
petition of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage and Susan
B. Anthony, officers of the National Association, praying for the
passage of Senate joint resolution No. 12, providing for an
amendment to the Constitution of the United States, protecting
the rights of women, and also that the House Judiciary Committee
be relieved from the further consideration of a similar
resolution.
Mr. FERRY--If there be no objection I ask that the petition be
read at length.
The VICE-PRESIDENT--The Chair hears no objection, and it will be
reported by the secretary.
The petition was read and referred to the Committee on Privileges
and Elections, as follows:
_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States, in Congress assembled:_
WHEREAS, More than 40,000 men and women, citizens of
thirty-five States and five territories, have petitioned the
forty-fifth congress asking for an amendment to the federal
constitution prohibiting the several States from
disfranchising United States citizens on account of sex; and
WHEREAS, A resolution providing for such constitutional
amendment is upon the calendar (Senate resolution No. 12,
second session forty-fifth congress), and a similar
resolution is pending upon a tie vote in the Judiciary
Committee of the House of Representatives; and
WHEREAS, The women of the United States constitute one-half
of the people of this republic and have an inalienable right
to an equal voice with men in the nation's councils; and
WHEREAS, Women being denied the right to have their opinions
counted at the ballot-box, are compelled to hold all other
rights subject to the favors and caprices of men; and
WHEREAS, In answer to the appeals of so large a number of
honorable petitioners, it is courteous that the forty-fifth
congress should express its opinion upon this grave question
of human rights; therefore,
We pray your honorable body to take from the calendar and
pass Senate resolution No. 12, providing for an amendment to
the constitution protecting the rights of women; and
We further pray you to relieve the House Judiciary Committee
from the further consideration of the woman suffrage
resolution brought to a tie vote in that committee, February
5, 1878, that it may be submitted to the House of
Representatives for immediate action.
And your petitioners will ever pray.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Corresponding Secretary_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
At the opening of the last session of the forty-fifth congress most
earnest appeals (copies of which were sent to every member of
congress) came from all directions for the presentation of a
minority report from the Committee on Privileges and Elections. The
response from our representatives was prompt and most encouraging.
The first favorable report our question had ever received in the
Senate of the United States was presented by the Hon. George F.
Hoar, February 1, 1879:
_The undersigned, a minority of the Committee on Privileges and
Elections, to whom were referred the resolution proposing an
amendment to the constitution prohibiting discrimination in the
right of suffrage on account of sex, and certain petitions in aid
of the same, submit the following minority report:_
The undersigned dissent from the report of the majority of the
committee. The demand for the extension of the right of suffrage
to women is not new. It has been supported by many persons in
this country, in England and on the continent, famous in public
life, in literature and in philosophy. But no single argument of
its advocates seems to us to carry so great a persuasive force as
the difficulty which its ablest opponents encounter in making a
plausible statement of their objections. We trust we do not fail
in deference to our esteemed associates on the committee when we
avow our opinion that their report is no exception to this rule.
The people of the United States and of the several States have
founded their political institutions upon the principle that all
men have an equal right to a share in the government. The
doctrine is expressed in various forms. The Declaration of
Independence asserts that "all men are created equal" and that
"governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed." The Virginia bill of rights, the work of Jefferson and
George Mason, affirms that "no man or set of men are entitled to
exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the rest of
the community but in consideration of public services." The
Massachusetts bill of rights, the work of John Adams, besides
reaffirming these axioms, declares that "all the inhabitants of
this commonwealth, having such qualifications as they shall
establish by their frame of government, have an equal right to
elect officers, and to be elected for public employment." These
principles, after full and profound discussion by a generation of
statesmen whose authority upon these subjects is greater than
that of any other that ever lived, have been accepted by
substantially the whole American people as the dictates alike of
practical wisdom and of natural justice. The experience of a
hundred years has strengthened their hold upon the popular
conviction. Our fathers failed in three particulars to carry
these principles to their logical result. They required a
property qualification for the right to vote and to hold office.
They kept the negro in slavery. They excluded women from a share
in the government. The first two of these inconsistencies have
been remedied. The property test no longer exists. The fifteenth
amendment provides that race, color, or previous servitude shall
no longer be a disqualification. There are certain qualifications
of age, of residence, and, in some instances of education,
demanded; but these are such as all sane men may easily attain.
This report is not the place to discuss or vindicate the
correctness of this theory. In so far as the opponents of woman
suffrage are driven to deny it, for the purpose of an argument
addressed to the American people, they are driven to confess that
they are in the wrong. This people are committed to the doctrine
of universal suffrage by their constitutions, their history and
their opinions. They must stand by it or fall by it. The poorest,
humblest, feeblest of sane men has the ballot in his hand, and no
other man can show a better title to it. Those things wherein men
are unequal--intelligence, ability, integrity, experience, title
to public confidence by reason of previous public service--have
their natural and legitimate influence under a government wherein
each man's vote is counted, to quite as great a degree as under
any other form of government that ever existed.
We believe that the principle of universal suffrage stands to-day
stronger than ever in the judgment of mankind. Some eminent and
accomplished scholars, alarmed by the corruption and recklessness
manifested in our great cities, deceived by exaggerated
representations of the misgovernment of the Southern States by a
race just emerging from slavery, disgusted by the extent to which
great numbers of our fellow-citizens have gone astray in the
metaphysical subtleties of financial discussion, have uttered
their eloquent warnings of the danger of the failure of universal
suffrage. Such utterances from such sources have been frequent.
They were never more abundant than in the early part of the
present century. They are, when made in a serious and patriotic
spirit, to be received with the gratitude due to that greatest of
public benefactors--he who points out to the people their dangers
and their faults.
But popular suffrage is to be tried not by comparison with ideal
standards of excellence, but by comparison with other forms of
government. We are willing to submit our century of it to this
test. The crimes that have stained our history have come chiefly
from its denial, not from its establishment. The misgovernment
and corruption of our great cities have been largely due to men
whose birth and training have been under other systems. The
abuses attributed by political hostility to negro governments at
the South--governments from which the intelligence and education
of the State held themselves sulkily aloof--do not equal those
which existed under the English or French aristocracy within the
memory of living men. There have been crimes, blunders,
corruptions, follies in the history of our republic. Aristides
has been banished from public employment, while Cleon has been
followed by admiring throngs. But few of these things have been
due to the extension of the suffrage. Strike out of our history
the crimes of slavery, strike out the crimes, unparalleled for
ferocity and brutality, committed by an oligarchy in its attempt
to overthrow universal suffrage, and we may safely challenge for
our national and State governments comparison with monarchy or
aristocracy in their best and purest periods.
Either the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence and the
bills of rights are true, or government must rest on no principle
of right whatever, but its powers may be lawfully taken by force
and held by force by any person or class who have strength to do
it, and who persuade themselves that their rule is for the public
interest. Either these doctrines are true, or you can give no
reason for your own possession of the suffrage except that you
have got it. If this doctrine be sound, it follows that no class
of persons can rightfully be excluded from their equal share in
the government, unless they can be proved to lack some quality
essential to the proper exercise of political power.
A person who votes helps, first, to determine the measures of
government; second, to elect persons to be intrusted with public
administration. He should therefore possess, first, an honest
desire for the public welfare; second, sufficient intelligence to
determine what measure or policy is best; third, the capacity to
judge of the character of persons proposed for office; and,
fourth, freedom from undue influence, so that the vote he casts
is his own, and not another's. That person or class casting his
or their own vote, with an honest desire for the public welfare,
and with sufficient intelligence to judge what measure is
advisable and what person may be trusted, fulfill every condition
that the State can rightfully impose.
We are not now dealing with the considerations which should
affect the admission of citizens of other countries to acquire
the right to take part in our government. All nations claim the
right to impose restrictions on the admission of foreigners
trained in attachment to other countries or forms of rule, and to
indifference to their own, whatever they deem the safety of the
State requires. We take it for granted that no person will deny
that the women of America are inspired with a love of country
equal to that which animates their brothers and sons. A capacity
to judge of character, so sure and rapid as to be termed
intuitive, is an especial attribute of woman. One of the greatest
orators of modern times has declared:
I concede away nothing which I ought to assert for our sex
when I say that the collective womanhood of a people like
our own seizes with matchless facility and certainty on the
moral and personal peculiarities and character of marked and
conspicuous men, and that we may very wisely address
ourselves to such a body to learn if a competitor for the
highest honors has revealed that truly noble nature that
entitled him to a place in the hearts of a nation.
We believe that in that determining of public policies by the
collective judgment of the State which constitutes
self-government, the contribution of woman will be of great
importance and value. To all questions into the determination of
which considerations of justice or injustice enter, she will
bring a more refined moral sense than that of man. The most
important public function of the State is the provision for the
education of youths. In those States in which the public school
system has reached its highest excellence, more than ninety per
cent. of the teachers are women. Certainly the vote of the women
of the State should be counted in determining the policy that
shall regulate the school system which they are called to
administer.
It is seldom that particular measures of government are decided
by direct popular vote. They are more often discussed before the
people after they have taken effect, when the party responsible
for them is called to account. The great measures which go to
make up the history of nations are determined not by the voters,
but by their rulers, whether those rulers be hereditary or
elected. The plans of great campaigns are conceived by men of
great military genius and executed by great generals. Great
systems of finance come from the brain of statesmen who have made
finance a special study. The mass of the voters decide to which
party they will intrust power. They do not determine particulars.
But they give to parties their general tone and direction, and
hold them to their accountability. We believe that woman will
give to the political parties of the country a moral temperament
which will have a most beneficent and ennobling effect on
politics.
Woman, also, is specially fitted for the performance of that
function of legislative and executive government which, with the
growth of civilization, becomes yearly more and more
important--the wise and practical economic adjustment of the
details of public expenditures. It may be considered that it
would not be for the public interest to clothe with the suffrage
any class of persons who are so dependent that they will, as a
general rule, be governed by others in its exercise. But we do
not admit that this is true of women. We see no reason to believe
that women will not be as likely to retain their independence of
political judgment, as they now retain their independence of
opinion in regard to the questions which divide religious sects
from one another. These questions deeply excite the feelings of
mankind, yet experience shows that the influence of the wife is
at least as great as that of the husband in determining the
religious opinion of the household. The natural influence exerted
by members of the same family upon each other would doubtless
operate to bring about similarity of opinion on political
questions as on others. So far as this tends to increase the
influence of the family in the State, as compared with that of
unmarried men, we deem it an advantage. Upon all questions which
touch public morals, public education, all which concern the
interest of the household, such a united exertion of political
influence cannot be otherwise than beneficial.
Our conclusion, then, is that the American people must extend the
right of suffrage to woman or abandon the idea that suffrage is a
birthright. The claim that universal suffrage will work mischief
in practice is simply a claim that justice will work mischief in
practice. Many honest and excellent persons, while admitting the
force of the arguments above stated, fear that taking part in
politics will destroy those feminine traits which are the charm
of woman, and are the chief comfort and delight of the household.
If we thought so we should agree with the majority of the
committee in withholding assent to the prayer of the petitioners.
This fear is the result of treating the abuses of the political
function as essential to its exercise. The study of political
questions, the forming an estimate of the character of public men
or public measures, the casting a vote, which is the result of
that study and estimate, certainly have in themselves nothing to
degrade the most delicate and refined nature. The violence, the
fraud, the crime, the chicanery, which, so far as they have
attended masculine struggles for political power, tend to prove,
if they prove anything, the unfitness of men for the suffrage,
are not the result of the act of voting, but are the expressions
of course, criminal and evil natures, excited by the desire for
victory. The admission to the polls of delicate and tender women
would, without injury to them, tend to refine and elevate the
politics in which they took a part. When, in former times, women
were excluded from social banquets, such assemblies were scenes
of ribaldry and excess. The presence of women has substituted for
them the festival of the Christian home.
The majority of the committee state the following as their
reasons for the conclusion to which they come:
_First_--If the petitioners' prayer be granted it will make
several millions of female voters.
_Second_--These voters will be inexperienced in public
affairs.
_Third_--They are quite generally dependent on the other
sex.
_Fourth_--They are incapable of military duty.
_Fifth_--They are without the power to enforce the laws
which their numerical strength may enable them to make.
_Sixth_--Very few of them wish to assume the irksome and
responsible duties which this measure thrusts upon them.
_Seventh_--Such a change should only be made slowly and in
obedience to a general public demand.
_Eighth_--There are but thirty thousand petitioners.
_Ninth_--It would be unjust to impose "the heavy burden of
governing, which so many men seek to evade, on the great
mass of women who do not wish for it, to gratify the few who
do."
_Tenth_--Women now have the sympathy of judges and juries
"to an extent which would warrant loud complaint on the part
of their adversaries of the sterner sex."
_Eleventh_--Such a change should be made, if at all, by the
States. Three-fourths of the States should not force it on
the others. In any State in which "any considerable part of
the women wish for the right to vote, it will be granted
without the intervention of congress."
The first objection of the committee is to the large increase of
the number of the voting population. We believe on the other
hand, that to double the numbers of the constituent body, and to
compose one-half that body of women, would tend to elevate the
standard of the representative both for ability and manly
character. Macaulay in one of his speeches on the Reform bill
refers to the quality of the men who had for half a century been
members for the five most numerous constituencies in
England--Westminster, Southwark, Liverpool, Bristol and Norwich.
Among them were Burke, Fox, Sheridan, Romilly, Windham, Tierney,
Canning, Huskisson. Eight of the nine greatest men who had sat in
parliament for forty years sat for the five largest represented
towns. To increase the numbers of constituencies diminishes the
opportunity for corruption. Size is itself a conservative force
in a republic. As a permanent general rule the people will desire
their own best interest. Disturbing forces, evil and selfish
passions, personal ambitions, are necessarily restricted in their
operation. The larger the field of operation, the more likely are
such influences to neutralize each other.
The objection of inexperience in public affairs applies, of
course, alike to every voter when he first votes. If it be valid,
it would have prevented any extension of the suffrage, and would
exclude from the franchise a very large number of masculine
voters of all ages.
That women are quite generally dependent on the other sex is
true. So it is true that men are quite generally dependent on the
other sex. It is impossible so to measure this dependence as to
declare that man is more dependent on woman or woman upon man. It
is by no means true that the dependence of either on the other
affects the right to the suffrage.
Capacity for military duty has no connection with capacity for
suffrage. The former is wholly physical. It will scarcely be
proposed to disfranchise men who are unfit to be soldiers by
reason of age or bodily infirmity. The suggestion that the
country may be plunged into wars by a majority of women who are
secure from military dangers is not founded in experience. Men of
the military profession, and men of the military age are commonly
quite as eager for war as non-combatants, and will hereafter be
quite as indifferent to its risks and hardships as their mothers
and wives.
The argument that women are without the power to enforce the laws
which their numerical strength may enable them to make, proceeds
from the supposition that it is probable that all the women will
range themselves upon one side in politics and all the men on the
other. Such supposition flatly contradicts the other arguments
drawn from the dependence of women and from their alleged
unwillingness to assume political burdens. So men over fifty
years of age are without the power to enforce obedience to laws
against which the remainder of the voters forcibly rebel. It is
not physical power alone, but power aided by the respect for law
of the people, on which laws depend for their enforcement.
The sixth, eighth and ninth reasons of the committee are the same
proposition differently stated. It is that a share in the
government of the country is a burden, and one which, in the
judgment of a majority of the women of the country, they ought
not to be required to assume. If any citizen deem the exercise of
this franchise a burden and not a privilege, such person is under
no constraint to exercise it. But if it be a birthright, then it
is obvious that no other power than that of the individual
concerned can rightfully restrain its exercise. The committee
concede that women ought to be clothed with the ballot in any
State where any considerable part of the women desire it. This is
a pretty serious confession. On the vital, fundamental question
whether the institutions of this country shall be so far changed
that the number of persons in it who take a part in the
government shall be doubled, the judgment of women is to be and
ought to be decisive. If woman may fitly determine this question,
for what question of public policy is she unfit? What question of
equal importance will ever be submitted to her decision? What has
become of the argument that women are unfit to vote because they
are dependent on men, or because they are unfit for military
duty, or because they are inexperienced, or because they are
without power to enforce obedience to their laws?
The next argument is that by the present arrangement the
administration of justice is so far perverted that one-half the
citizens of the country have an advantage from the sympathies of
juries and judges which "would warrant loud complaint" on the
part of the other half. If this be true, it is doubtless due to
an instinctive feeling on the part of juries and judges that
existing laws and institutions are unjust to women, or to the
fact that juries composed wholly of men are led to do injustice
by their susceptibility to the attractions of women. But
certainly it is a grave defect in any system of government that
it does not administer justice impartially, and the existence of
such a defect is a strong reason for preferring an arrangement
which would remove the feeling that women do not have fair play,
or for so composing juries that, drawn from both sexes, they
would be impartial between the two.
The final objection of the committee is that "such a change
should be made, if at all, by the States. Three-fourths of the
States should not force it upon the others. Whenever any
considerable part of the women in any State wish for the right to
vote, it will be granted without the intervention of congress."
Who can doubt that when two-thirds of congress and three-fourths
of the States have voted for the change, a considerable number of
women in the other States will be found to desire it, so that,
according to the committee's own belief, it can never be forced
by a majority on unwilling communities? The prevention of unjust
discrimination by States against large classes of people in
respect to suffrage is even admitted to be a matter of national
concern and an important function of the national constitution
and laws. It is the duty of congress to propose amendments to the
constitution whenever two-thirds of both houses deem them
necessary. Certainly an amendment will be deemed necessary, if it
can be shown to be required by the principles on which the
constitution is based, and to remove an unjust disfranchisement
from one-half the citizens of the country. The constitutional
evidence of general public demand is to be found not in
petitions, but in the assent of three-fourths of the States
through their legislatures or conventions.
The lessons of experience favor the conclusion that woman is fit
for a share in government. It may be true that in certain
departments of intellectual effort the greatest achievements of
women have as yet never equaled the greatest achievements of
men. But it is equally true that in those same departments women
have exhibited an intellectual ability very far beyond that of
the average of men and very far beyond that of most men who have
shown very great political capacity. But let the comparison be
made in regard to the very thing with which we have to deal. Of
men who have swayed chief executive power, a very considerable
proportion have attained it by usurpation or by election,
processes which imply extraordinary capacity on their part as
compared with other men. The women who have held such power have
come to it as sovereigns by inheritance, or as regents by the
accident of bearing a particular relation to the lawful sovereign
when he was under some incapacity. Yet it is an undisputed fact
that the number of able and successful female sovereigns bears a
vastly greater proportion to the whole number of such sovereigns,
than does the number of able and successful male sovereigns to
the whole number of men who have reigned. An able, energetic,
virtuous king or emperor is the exception and not the rule in the
history of modern Europe. With hardly an exception the female
sovereigns or regents have been wise and popular. Mr. Mill, who
makes this point, says:
We know how small a number of reigning queens history
presents in comparison with that of kings. Of this small
number a far larger proportion have shown talents for rule,
though many of them have occupied the throne in difficult
periods. When to queens and empresses we add regents and
viceroys of provinces, the list of women who have been
eminent rulers of mankind swells to a great length....
Especially is this true if we take into consideration Asia
as well as Europe. 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.
Certainly history gives no warning that should deter the American
people from carrying out the principles upon which their
government rests to this most just and legitimate conclusion.
Those persons who think that free government has anywhere failed,
can only claim that this tends to prove, not the failure of
universal suffrage, but the failure of masculine suffrage. Like
failure has attended the operation of every other great human
institution, the family, the school, the church, whenever woman
has not been permitted to contribute to it her full share. As to
the best example of the perfect family, the perfect school, the
perfect church, the love, the purity, the truth of woman are
essential, so they are equally essential to the perfect example
of the self-governing State.
GEO. F. HOAR,
JOHN H. MITCHELL,
ANGUS CAMERON.
Thousands of copies of this report were published and franked to
every part of the country. On February 7, just one week after the
presentation of the able minority report, the bill allowing women
to practice before the Supreme Court passed the Senate[47] and
received the signature of President Hayes. Senators McDonald, Hoar
and Sargent made the principal speeches. We give Mr. Hoar's speech
in full because of its terse and vigorous presentation of the fact
that congress is a body superior to the Supreme Court of the United
States. Mr. Hoar said:
_Mr. President_--I understand the brief statement which was made,
I think, during this last session by the majority of the
Judiciary Committee in support of their opposition to this bill,
did not disclose that the majority of that committee were opposed
to permitting women to engage in the practice of law or to be
admitted to practice it in the Supreme Court of the United
States, but the point they made, was that the legislation of the
United States left to the Supreme Court the power of determining
by rule who should be admitted to practice before that tribunal,
and that we ought not by legislation to undertake to interfere
with its rules. Now, with the greatest respect for that tribunal,
I conceive that the law-making and not the law-expounding power
in this government ought to determine the question what class of
citizens shall be clothed with the office of the advocate. I
believe that leaving to the Supreme Court by rule to determine
the qualifications or disqualifications of attorneys and
counselors in that court is an exception to the nearly uniform
policy of the States of the Union. Would it be tolerated if the
Supreme Court undertook by rule to establish any other
disqualification, any of those disqualifications which have
existed in regard to holding any other office in the country?
Suppose the court were of the opinion we had been too fast in
relieving persons who took part in the late rebellion from their
disabilities, and that it would not admit persons who had so
taken part to practice before the Supreme Court; is there any
doubt that congress would at once interfere? Suppose the Supreme
Court were of opinion that the people of the United States had
erred in the amendment which had removed the disqualification
from colored persons and declined to admit such persons to
practice in that court; is there any doubt that congress would
interfere and would deem it a fit occasion for the exercise of
the law-making power?
Now, Mr. President, this bill is not a bill merely to admit women
to the privilege of engaging in a particular profession; it is a
bill to secure to the citizen of the United States the right to
select his counsel, and that is all. At present a case is tried
and decided in the State courts of any State of this Union which
may be removed to the Supreme Court of the United States. In the
courts of the State, women are permitted to practice as
advocates, and a woman has been the advocate under whose
direction and care and advocacy the case has been won in the
court below. Is it tolerable that the counsel who has attended
the case from its commencement to its successful termination in
the highest court of the State should not be permitted to attend
upon and defend the rights of that client when the case is
transferred to the Supreme Court of the United States? Everybody
knows, at least every lawyer of experience knows, the
impossibility of transferring with justice to the interests of a
client, a cause from one counsel to another. A suit is instituted
under the advice of a counsel on a certain theory, a certain
remedy is selected, a certain theory of the cause is the one on
which it is staked. Now that must be attended to and defended by
the counsel under whose advice the suit has taken its shape; the
pleadings have been shaped in the courts below.
Under the present system, a citizen of any State in the Union
having selected a counsel of good moral character who has
practiced three years, who possesses all-sufficient professional
and personal qualifications, and having had a cause brought to a
successful result in the State court, is denied by the present
existing and unjust rule having counsel of his choice argue the
cause in the Supreme Court of the United States.
The greatest master of human manners, who read the human heart
and who understood better than any man who ever lived the
varieties of human character, when he desired to solve just what
had puzzled the lawyers and doctors, placed a woman upon the
judgment seat; and yet, under the present existing law, if Portia
herself were alive, she could not defend the opinion she had
given, before the Supreme Court of the United States.
The press commented favorably upon this new point gained for women.
We give a few extracts:
The senators who voted to-day against the bill "to relieve
certain legal disabilities of women" are marked men and have
reason to fear the result of their action.--[Telegraph to the New
York _Tribune_, February 7.
The women get into the Supreme Court in spite of the
determination of the justices. They gained a decided advantage
to-day in the passage by the Senate of a bill providing that any
woman who shall have been a member of the highest court in any
State or territory, or of the Supreme Court of the District of
Columbia, for three years, may be admitted to the Supreme Court.
The bill was called up by Senator McDonald, in antagonism to Mr.
Edmunds' amendment to the constitution which was the pending
order. Mr. Edmunds objected to the consideration of the bill and
voted against it. There was not much discussion, the main
speeches being by Mr. Sargent and Mr. Hoar.--[Special dispatch to
the New York _World_, February 7.
A WOMAN'S RIGHTS VICTORY IN THE SENATE.--The Lockwood bill,
giving women authority to practice before the Supreme Court of
the United States, passed the Senate yesterday by a vote of two
to one, and now it only requires the approval of Mr. Hayes to
become a law. The powerful effect of persistent and industrious
lobbying is manifested in the success of this bill. When it was
first introduced, it is doubtful if one-fourth the members of
congress would have voted for it. Some of the strong-minded
women, who were interested in the bill, stuck to it, held the
fort from day to day, and talked members and senators into
believing it a just measure. Senator McDonald gave Mr. Edmunds a
rebuff yesterday that he will not soon forget. The latter
attempted to administer a rebuke to the Indiana senator for
calling up a bill during the absence of the senator who had
reported it. Mr. McDonald retorted that he knew the objection of
the senator from Vermont was made for the purpose of defeating
the bill and not, as pretended, to give an absent senator
opportunity to speak upon it.--[Washington _Post_, February 8.
The credit for this victory belongs to Mrs. Belva Lockwood, of
this city, who, having been refused admission to the bar of the
United States Supreme Court, appealed to congress, and by dint of
hard work has finally succeeded in having her bill passed by both
houses. She called on Mrs. Hayes last evening, who complimented
her upon her achievement, and informed her that she had sent a
bouquet to Senator Hoar, in token of his efforts in behalf of the
bill.--[Washington _Star_, February 8.
The bill was carried through merely by the energetic advocacy of
Senators McDonald, Sargent and Hoar, whose oratorical efforts
were reenforced by the presence of Mrs. Lockwood. After the
struggle was over, all the senators who advocated the bill were
made the recipients of bouquets, while the three senators whose
names we have given received large baskets of flowers. This is a
pleasing omen of that purification of legal business which it is
hoped will flow from the introduction of women to the courts. It
was not flowers that used to be distributed at Washington and
Albany in the old corrupt times, among legislators, in testimony
of gratitude for their votes. Let us hope that venal legislation
at Washington will be extirpated by the rise of this beautiful
custom.--[New York _Nation_.
It was noticeable that all the presidential candidates dodged the
issue except Senator Blaine, who voted for the bill.--[Chicago
_Inter-Ocean_.
How humiliated poor old Judge Magruder must feel, since the
congress of the United States paid the woman whom he forbade to
open her mouth in his august presence, in his little court, so
much consideration as to pass an act opening to her the doors of
the Supreme Court of the United States. All honor to the brave
woman, who by her own unaided efforts thus achieved honor,
fortune and fame--the just rewards of her own true
worth.--[_Havre Republican_, Havre de Grace, Maryland.
ENTER PORTIA.--An act of congress was not necessary to authorize
women to be lawyers, if their legal acquirements fitted them for
that vocation; nor was it necessary to state, as an expression of
opinion by the national legislature, that some women are so fully
qualified for the legal profession that no barriers should be
permitted to stand in their way. It was needed simply as a key
whereby the hitherto locked door of the Supreme Court of the
United States may be opened if a woman lawyer, with the usual
credentials, should knock thereon. That is all; and there is no
new question opened for profitless debate. The ability of some
women to be lawyers is like the ability of others to make
bread--it rests upon the facts. There is no room for elaborate
argument to prove either their fitness or unfitness for legal
studies, so long as in Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, the
District of Columbia, Iowa and North Carolina there are women in
more or less successful practice and repute. * * * Nowhere are
these great attributes of civilization and regulated
liberty--law, conservatism, justice, equity and mercy in the
administration of human affairs put in broader light or truer,
than they are by the words that Shakespeare puts in the mouth of
this woman jurist.--[_Public Ledger_, Philadelphia, February 12.
When congress recently passed a law allowing women to practice in
the Supreme Court, it was not a subject of any special or eager
comment. A woman who is a lawyer sent flowers to the desks of the
members who voted for the bill, and before they had faded,
comment was at an end. The home was still safe and the country
was not in peril. It was one of the questions which had settled
itself and was a foregone conclusion. * * * United States Senator
Edmunds of Vermont, has fallen into disfavor with the ladies for
voting against the above bill.--[From John W. Forney's
_Progress_, February 22.
On March 3, by motion of Hon. A. G. Riddle, Mrs. Lockwood was
admitted to the bar of the United States Supreme Court,[48] taking
the official oath and receiving the classic sheep-skin; and the
following week she was admitted to practice before the Court of
Claims. The forty-sixth congress contained an unusually large
proportion of new representatives, fresh from the people, ready for
the discussion of new issues, and manifesting a chivalric spirit
toward the consideration of woman's claims as a citizen. On
Tuesday, April 29, the following resolution was submitted to the
Committee on Rules in the House of Representatives:
_Resolved_, That a select committee of nine members be appointed
by the speaker, to be called a Committee on the Rights of Women,
whose duty it shall be to consider and report upon all petitions,
memorials, resolutions and bills that may be presented in the
House relating to the rights of women.
Admitting the justice of a fair consideration of a question
involving every human right of one-half of the population of this
country, Alex. H. Stephens of Georgia, James A. Garfield of Ohio,
Wm. P. Frye of Maine, immediately declared themselves in favor of
the appointment of said committee, and Speaker Randall, the
chairman, ordered it reported to the House. A similar resolution
was introduced in the Senate, before the adjournment of the special
session. This showed a clearer perception of the magnitude of the
question, and the need of its early and earnest consideration, than
at any time during the previous thirty years of argument, heroic
struggle and sacrifice on the altar of woman's freedom.
The anniversary of 1879 was held in St. Louis, Missouri, May 7, 8,
9. Mrs. Virginia L. Minor and Miss Phoebe W. Couzins made all
possible arrangements for the success of the meeting and the
comfort of the delegates.[49] Mrs. Minor briefly stated the object
of the convention and announced that, as the president of the
association had not arrived, Mrs. Joslyn Gage would take the chair.
Miss Couzins gave the address of welcome:
_Mrs. President and Members of the National Woman Suffrage
Association:_
It becomes my pleasant duty to welcome you to the hospitalities
of my native city. To extend to you who for the first time meet
beyond the Mississippi, a greeting--not only in behalf of the
friends of woman suffrage, but for those of our citizens who,
while not in full sympathy with your views, have a desire to hear
you in deliberative council and to cordially tender you the same
courtesies offered other conventions which have chosen St. Louis
as their place of annual gathering.
And I am the more happy to do this because of the opportunity it
affords me to disabuse your minds of certain impressions which
have gone abroad concerning our slowness of action in the line of
advanced ideas. Certainly in some phases of that reformation to
which you and your co-laborers have pledged your lives, your
fortunes--the cause of woman--St. Louis is the leader.
When, eighteen or twenty years since, Harriet Hosmer desired to
study anatomy, to perfect herself in her art, not a college in
New England would open its doors to her; she traveled West, and
through the generous patronage of Wayman Crow of this city, she
became a pupil of the dean of the St. Louis Medical college.
When other cities had refused equality of wages and position, St.
Louis placed Miss Brackett at the head of our normal school,
giving her--a heretofore exclusively male prerogative--the
highest wages, added to the highest educational rank.
And here in St. Louis began the advance march which has finally
broken down the walls of the highest judicial fortress, the
Supreme Court of the United States. Washington University, in
response to my request, unhesitatingly opened its doors, and for
the first time in the history of America, woman was accorded the
right to a legal course of training with man, and, at its close,
after successful examination, I was freely accorded the degree of
Bachelor of Laws! A city or a State that could perpetrate the
anomaly of a female bachelor, is certainly not far behind the
radicalism of the age.
Again, as I turn to its record on suffrage, I find as early as
1866 the Hon. B. Gratz Brown of Missouri made a glowing speech
for woman's enfranchisement, in the United States Senate, on Mr.
Cowan's motion to strike out "male" from the District of Columbia
suffrage bill, which resulted in an organization in 1867, through
the efforts of Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, its first president. And
again, I remember when that hydra-headed evil arose in our midst,
degrading all women and violating all the sweet and sacred
sanctities of life--a blow at our homes and a lasting stigma on
our civilization--the people of this community, led by the
chancellor of Washington University, at the ballot-box but
recently laid that monster away in a tomb, never, I trust, to be
resurrected.
And now, Mrs. President, let me add, in words which but faintly
express the emotion of my heart, the gratitude we feel towards
the noble women who have borne the burden and heat of the day.
They who have been ridiculed, villified, maligned, but through it
all maintained an unswerving allegiance to truth. In the name of
all true womanhood I welcome this association in our midst as
worthy of the highest honor.
We have lived to see the enlargement of woman's thought in all
directions. From our laboratories, libraries, observatories,
schools of medicine and law, universities of science, art and
literature, she is advancing to the examination of the problems
of life, with an eye single only to the glory of truth. Like the
Spartan of old she has thrown her spear into the thickest of the
fray, and will fight gloriously in the midst thereof till she
regains her own. No specious sophistry or vain delusion--no
time-honored tradition or untenable doctrine can evade her
searching investigation.
Mrs. Gage responded to this address in a few earnest, appropriate
words.
Of the many letters[50] read in the convention none was received
with greater joy than the few lines, written with trembling hand,
from Lucretia Mott, then in the eighty-seventh year of her age:
ROADSIDE, Fourth Month, 26, 1879.
MY DEAR SUSAN ANTHONY--It would need no urgent appeal to draw me
to St. Louis had I the strength for the journey. You will have no
need of my worn-out powers. Our cause itself has become
sufficiently attractive. Edward M. Davis has a joint letter on
hand for my signature, so this is enough, with my mite toward
expenses. And to all assembled in St. Louis best wishes for--yes,
full faith in your success. I have signed Edward's letter, so it
is hardly necessary for me to say,
LUCRETIA MOTT.
The distinguishing feature of this convention was an afternoon
session of ladies alone, prompted by an attempt to reenact a law
for the license of prostitution, which had been enforced in St.
Louis a few years before and repealed through the united efforts of
the best men and women of the city. Mrs. Joslyn Gage opened the
meeting by reading extracts from the Woman's Declaration of Rights
presented at the centennial celebration, and drew especial
attention to the clause referring to two separate codes of morals
for men and women, arising from woman's inferior political
position:
There are two points which may be considered open for discussion
during the afternoon--one, the fact that there are existing in
all forms of society, barbaric, semi-civilized, civilized or
enlightened, two separate codes of morals; the strict code to
which women are held accountable, and the lax code which governs
the conduct of men.
The other question which can very properly be discussed at the
present time is, "Why in this country, and in all civilized
nations, do one-half of the population die under five years of
age, and in some countries a very large proportion under one
year?"
A letter was read from Mrs. Josephine E. Butler. As the experiment
of licensing prostitution had been extensively tried in England,
and she had watched the effects of the system not only in her own
country but on the continent, her opinions on this question are
worthy of consideration:
_To the Annual Meeting of the National Suffrage Association in
St. Louis:_
DEAR FRIENDS--As I am unable to be present at your convention on
May 7, 8, 9, and as you ask for a communication from me, I gladly
write you on some of the later phases of our struggle against
legalized prostitution. A brave battle has been fought in St.
Louis against that iniquity, and we have regarded it with
sympathy and admiration; but you are not yet safe against the
devices of those who uphold this white slavery, nor are we safe,
although we know that in the end we shall be conquerors. You tell
me that "England is held up as an example of the beneficial
working of the legalizing of vice." England holds a peculiar
position in regard to the question. She was the last to adopt
this system of slavery and she adopted it in that thorough manner
which characterizes the Anglo-Saxon race. In no other country has
prostitution been regulated by law. It has been understood by the
Latin races, even when morally enervated, that the law could not
without risk of losing its majesty violate justice. In England
alone the regulations are law. Their promoters, by their
hardihood in asking parliament to decree injustice, have brought
on unconsciously to themselves, the beginning of the end of the
whole system. The Englishman is a powerful agent for evil as for
good. In the best times of our history my countrymen possessed
preeminently vigorous minds in vigorous bodies. But when the
animal nature has outgrown the moral, the appetites burst their
proper restraints, and man has no other notion of enjoyment save
bodily pleasure; he passes by a quick and easy transition into a
powerful brute. And this is what the upper-class Englishman has
to a deplorable extent become. There is no creature in the world
so ready as he to domineer, to enslave, to destroy. But together
with this development towards evil, there has been in our country
a counter development. Moral faith is still strong among us.
There are powerful women, as well as strong, pure, and
self-governed men, of the real old Anglo-Saxon type. It was in
England then, which adopted last the hideous slavery, that there
arose first a strong national protest in opposition. English
people rose up against the wicked law before it had been in
operation three months. English men and women determined to carry
abolition not at home only, but abroad, and they promptly carried
their standard to every country on the continent of Europe. In
all these countries men and women came forward at the first
appeal, and said, "We are ready, we only waited for you,
Anglo-Saxons, to take the lead; we have groaned under the
oppression, but there was not force enough among us to take the
initiative step."
We have recently had a visit from Monsieur Aimi Humbert of
Switzerland, our able general secretary for the continent. Much
encouragement was derived from the reports which reached us from
France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and even Spain, where a noble
lady, Donna Concepcion Arenal of Madrid, and several gentlemen
have warmly espoused our cause. The progress is truly
encouraging; yet, on the other hand, it is obvious that the
partisans of this legislation have recently been smitten with a
kind of rage for extending the system everywhere, and are on the
watch to introduce it wherever we are off our guard. In almost
all British colonies they are very busy. At the Cape of Good
Hope, where the Cape parliament had repealed the law, the
governor, Sir Bartle Frere, has been induced by certain
specialists and immoral men, to reintroduce it. But since he
could not count on the parliament at Cape Town for doing this, he
has reintroduced the miserable system by means of a proclamation
or edict, without the sanction and probably, to a great extent,
without the knowledge of parliament. The same game is being
played in other colonies. These facts seem to point to a more
decided and bitter struggle on the question than we have yet
seen. An energetic member of our executive committee, M. Pierson
of Zetten, in Holland, says:
I look upon legalized prostitution as the system in which
the immorality of our age is crystalized, and that in
attacking it we attack in reality the great enemies which
are hiding themselves behind its ramparts. But if we do not
soon overthrow these ramparts we must not think our work is
fruitless. A great work is already achieved; sin is once
more called sin instead of necessary evil, and the true
standard of morality--equal for men and women, for rich and
poor--is once more raised in the face of all the nations.
This legalization of vice which recognized the "necessity" of
impurity for man and the institution of slavery for woman, is the
most open denial which modern times have seen of the principle of
the sacredness of the individual human being. It is the
embodiment of socialism in its worst form. An English high-class
journal confessed this, when it dared to demand that women who
are unchaste shall henceforth be dealt with "not as human beings,
but as foul sewers," or some such "material nuisance" without
souls, without rights and without responsibilities. When the
leaders of public opinion in a country have arrived at such a
point of combined depotism as to recommend such a manner of
dealing with human beings, there is no crime which that country
may not legalize. Were it possible to secure the absolute
physical health of a whole province, or an entire continent by
the destruction of one, only one poor and sinful woman, woe to
that nation which should dare, by that single act of destruction,
to purchase this advantage to the many! It will do it at its
peril.
We entreat our friends in America to renew their alliance with us
in the sacred conflict. Union will be strength. The women of
England are beginning to understand their responsibilities. Like
yourselves, we are laboring to obtain the suffrage. The wrong
which has fallen upon us in this legalizing of vice has taught us
the need of power in legislation. Meanwhile, the crusade against
immorality is educating women for the right use of suffrage when
they obtain it. The two movements must go hand in hand.
Altogether this was an impressive occasion in which women met heart
to heart in discussing the deepest humiliations of their sex. After
eloquent speeches by Mrs. Meriwether, Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. Leonard,
Mrs. Thompson and Rev. Olympia Brown, the audience slowly
dispersed.
The closing scenes of the evening were artistic and interesting.
The platform was tastefully decked with flags and flowers, and the
immense audience that had assembled at an early hour--hundreds
unable to gain admission--made this the crowning session of the
convention. Miss Couzins announced the receipt of an invitation
from Mr. John Wahl, inviting the convention to visit the Merchants'
Exchange, "with assurances of high regard." The announcement was
heard with considerable merriment by those who remembered her
criticisms on Mr. Wahl for his failure to deliver the address of
welcome at the opening of the convention. She also announced the
receipt of an invitation from Secretary Kalb to visit the
fair-grounds, and moved that the convention first visit the
Exchange and then proceed to the fair-grounds in carriages, the
members of the Merchants' Exchange, of course paying the bill. The
motion was carried amidst applause. An invitation was also received
from Dr. Eliot, chancellor of Washington University, to attend the
art lecture of Miss Schoonmaker at the Mary Institute, Monday
evening. In a letter to the editor of the _National Citizen_, Mrs.
Stanton thus describes the incident of the evening:
The delegates from the different States, through May Wright
Thompson of Indianapolis, presented Miss Anthony with two baskets
of exquisite flowers. She referred in the most happy way to Miss
Anthony's untiring devotion to all the unpopular reforms through
years of pitiless persecution, and thanked her in behalf of the
young womanhood of the nation, that their path had been made
smoother by her brave life. Miss Anthony was so overcome with the
delicate compliments and the fragrant flowers at her feet, that
for a few moments she could find no words to express her
appreciation of the unexpected acknowledgement of what all
American women owe her. As she stood before that hushed audience,
her silence was more eloquent than words, for her emotion was
shared by all. With an effort she at last said:
Friends, I have no words to express my gratitude for this
marked attention. I have so long been the target for
criticism and ridicule, I am so unused to praise, that I
stand before you surprised and disarmed. If any one had come
to this platform and abused all womankind, called me hard
names, ridiculed our arguments or denied the justice of our
demands, I could with readiness and confidence have rushed
to the defence, but I cannot make any appropriate reply for
this offering of eloquent words and flowers, and I shall not
attempt it.
Being advertised as the speaker of the evening, she at once began
her address, and as she stood there and made an argument worthy a
senator of the United States, I recalled the infinite patience
with which, for upwards of thirty years, she had labored for
temperance, anti-slavery and woman suffrage, with a faithfulness
worthy the martyrs in the early days of the Christian church, and
said to myself, verily the world now as ever crucifies its
saviors.
Thanks to the untiring industry of Mrs. Minor and Miss Couzins,
the convention was in every way a success, morally, financially,
in crowded audiences, and in the fair, respectful and
complimentary tone of the press. Looking over the proceedings and
resolutions, the thought struck me that the National Association
is the only organization that has steadily maintained the
doctrine of federal power against State rights. The great truths
set forth in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments of United
States supremacy, so clearly seen by us, seem to be vague and dim
to our leading statesmen and lawyers if we may judge by their
speeches and decisions. Your superb speech on State rights should
be published in tract form and scattered over this entire nation.
How can we ever have a homogeneous government so long as
universal principles are bounded by State lines.
The delegates remaining in the city went on Change in a body at 12
o'clock Saturday, on invitation of the president, John Wahl. They
were courteously received and speeches were made by Mesdames
Couzins, Stanton, Anthony, Meriwether and Thompson. Mrs.
Meriwether's speech was immediately telegraphed in full to Memphis.
All wore badges of silk on which in gold letters appeared "N. W. S.
A., May 10, 1879, Merchants' Exchange." From the Exchange the
ladies proceeded in carriages to the fair-grounds, and Zooelogical
Gardens where they took refreshments.
On Saturday evening Miss Couzins gave a delightful reception. Her
parlors were crowded until a late hour, where the friends of woman
suffrage had an opportunity to use their influence socially in
converting many distinguished guests. On Sunday night Mrs. Stanton
was invited by the Rev. Ross C. Houghton to occupy his pulpit in
the Union Methodist church, the largest in the city of that
denomination. She preached from the text in Genesis i., 27, 28. The
sermon was published in the _St. Louis Globe_ the next morning.[51]
Mrs. Thompson was also invited to occupy a Presbyterian pulpit,
but imperative duties compelled her to leave the city.
The enthusiasm aroused by the convention in woman's enfranchisement
was encouraging to those who had so long and earnestly labored in
this cause.[52] This was indeed a week of profitable work. With
arguments and appeals to man's reason and sense of justice on the
platform, to his religious emotions and conscience in the pulpit,
to his honor and courtesy in the parlor, all the varied influences
of public and private life were exerted with marked effect; while
the press on the wings of the wind carried the glad tidings of a
new gospel for woman to every town and hamlet in the State.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] The annual convention of the National Woman Suffrage
Association will be held in Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C.,
January 16, 17, 1877.
As by repeated judicial decisions, woman's right to vote under the
fourteenth amendment has been denied, we must now unitedly demand a
sixteenth amendment to the United States Constitution, that shall
secure this right to the women of the nation. In certain States and
territories where women had already voted, they have been denied
the right by legislative action. Hence it must be clear to every
thinking mind that this fundamental right of citizenship must not
be left to the ignorant majorities in the several States; for
unless it is secured everywhere, it is safe nowhere.
We urge all suffrage associations and friends of woman's
enfranchisement throughout the country to send delegates to this
convention, freighted with mammoth petitions for a sixteenth
amendment. Let all other proposed amendments be held in abeyance to
the sacred rights of the women of this nation. The most reverent
recognition of God in the constitution would be justice and
equality for woman. On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage
Association,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Ex. Committee_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.
_Tenafly, N. J._, November 10, 1876.
[21] Committees: _Finance_--Sara A. Spencer, Ellen Clark Sargent,
Lillie Devereux Blake. _Resolutions_--Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan B.
Anthony. Belva A. Lockwood, Edward M. Davis, C. B. Purvis, M. D.,
Jane G. Swisshelm. _Business_--John Hutchinson. Mary F. Foster,
Rosina M. Parnell, Mary A. S. Carey, Ellen H. Sheldon, S. J.
Messer, Susan A. Edson, M. D.
[22] The speakers at this May anniversary were Mrs. Devereux Blake,
Rev. Olympia Brown, Clara Neyman, Helen Cooke, Helen M. Slocum,
Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Gage and Acting-Governor Lee of Wyoming
territory.
[23] This reception-room, a great convenience to the ladies
visiting the Capitol, has since been removed; and a small, dark,
inaccessible room on the basement floor set aside for their use.
[24] _Yeas_--Anthony, Bruce, Burnside, Cameron of Wis., Dawes,
Ferry, Hoar, Matthews, Mitchell, Rollins, Sargent, Saunders,
Teller--13.
_Nays_--Bailey, Bayard, Beck, Booth, Butler, Christiancy, Cockrell,
Coke, Conkling, Davis of W. Va., Eaton, Edmunds, Eustis, Grover,
Hamlin, Harris, Hereford, Hill, Howe, Kernan, Kirkwood, Lamar,
McDonald, McMillan, McPherson, Morgan, Plumb, Randolph, Saulsbury,
Thurman, Wadleigh--31.
[25] Grace Greenwood, Clara Barton, Abby Hutchinson Patton, Mrs.
Juan Lewis, Mrs. Morgan of Mississippi, Dr. Mary A. Thompson of
Oregon, Marilla M. Ricker, Julia E. Smith, Rev. Olympia Brown, Mrs.
Blake, Mrs. Lockwood, Mrs. Spencer, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton, Dr.
Lozier and others.
[26] This argument was subsequently given before the Committee on
Privileges and Elections and will be found on page 80.
[27] The members of the committee were Belva A. Lockwood, Matilda
Joslyn Gage, Mary A. Thompson, M. D., Marilla M. Ricker, Elizabeth
Boynton Harbert.
[28] At this hearing the speakers were Clemence S. Lozier, M. D.,
New York; Julia E. Smith, Connecticut; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, New
Jersey; Elizabeth Boynton Harbert, Illinois; Matilda Joslyn Gage,
New York; Priscilla Rand Lawrence, Massachusetts; Rev. Olympia
Brown, Connecticut; Mary A. Thompson, M. D., Oregon; Mary Powers
Filley, New Hampshire; Lillie Devereux Blake, New York; Sara
Andrews Spencer, District of Columbia; Isabella Beecher Hooker,
Connecticut; Mary A. Stewart, Delaware.
[29] In the whole course of our struggle for equal rights I never
felt more exasperated than on this occasion, standing before a
committee of men many years my juniors, all comfortably seated in
armchairs, I pleading for rights they all enjoyed though in no
respect my superiors, denied me on the shallow grounds of sex. But
this humiliation I had often felt before. The peculiarly
aggravating feature of the present occasion was the studied
inattention and contempt of the chairman, Senator Wadleigh of New
Hampshire. Having prepared my argument with care, I naturally
desired the attention of every member of the committee, all of
which, with the exception of Senator Wadleigh, I seemingly had. He
however took special pains to show that he did not intend to
listen. He alternately looked over some manuscripts and newspapers
before him, then jumped up to open or close a door or window. He
stretched, yawned, gazed at the ceiling, cut his nails, sharpened
his pencil, changing his occupation and position every two minutes,
effectually preventing the establishment of the faintest magnetic
current between the speakers and the committee. It was with
difficulty I restrained the impulse more than once to hurl my
manuscript at his head.--[E. C. S.
[30] The first hearing was held in the committee room, but that not
being large enough to accommodate the crowds that wished to hear
the arguments, the use of the Senate reception room was granted for
the second, which although very much larger, was packed, with the
corridors leading to it, long before the committee took their
places.
[31] Mr. and Mrs. Holt, of 1,339 L street, entertained their
friends and a numerous company of distinguished guests on Friday
evening, in honor of Mrs. Beecher Hooker. She delivered one of her
ablest speeches on the woman suffrage question. She was listened to
with breathless silence by eminent men and women, who confessed, at
the termination of her speech, that they were "almost persuaded" to
join her ranks--the highest tribute to her eloquent defense of her
position. Mrs. Hooker's intellect is not her only charm. Her
beautiful face and attractive manners all help to make converts.
Mrs. Julia N. Holmes, the poet, one of the most admired ladies
present, and Mrs. Southworth, the novelist, wore black velvet and
diamonds. Mrs. Hodson Burnett, that "Lass o' Lowrie," in colored
and rose silk with princess scarf, looked charmingly. Mrs. Senator
Sargent, Mrs. Charles Nordhoff and her friends, the elegant Miss
Thurman, of Cincinnati, and Miss Joseph, a brilliant brunette with
scarlet roses and jet ornaments, of Washington, were much observed.
Mrs. Dr. Wallace, of the _New York Herald_, wore cuir colored
gros-grain with guipure lace trimmings, flowers and diamonds. Miss
Coyle was richly attired. Mrs. Ingersoll, wife of the exceptional
orator, was the center of observation with Mrs. Hooker; she wore
black velvet, roses, and diamonds--has a noble presence and Grecian
face. General Forney, of Alabama, Hon. John F. Wait, M. C., Captain
Dutton and Colonel Mallory, of U. S. Army, Judge Tabor (Fourth
Auditor), Dr. Cowes, Col. Ingersol, Mrs. Hoffman, of New York, a
prominent lady of the Woman's Congress, lately assembled in this
city, wore a distinguished toilette. Mrs. Spofford, of the Riggs
House, was among the most noticeable ladies present, elegant and
delightful in style and manner. Dr. Josephs and Col. G. W. Rice, of
Boston, were of the most conspicuous gentlemen present, who retired
much edified with the entertainment of the evening.
H. LOUISE GATES.
Society was divided Saturday evening between the literary club
which met at Willard's under the auspices of Mrs. Morrell, and the
reception given at the residence of Senator Rollins, on Capitol
Hill, to Mrs. Beecher Hooker, who spoke on the question of woman
suffrage. It was said of Theodore Parker, if all his hearers stood
on the same lofty plane that he did, his theology would be all
right for them, and so in this matter of woman's rights. If all the
advocates were as cultivated, refined, and convincing as Mrs.
Hooker, one might almost be tempted to surrender. She certainly
possesses that rare magnetic influence which seems to say, "Lend me
your ears and I shall take your heart." Among her listeners we
noticed Mrs. Joseph Ames, Grace Greenwood, Senator and Mrs.
Rollins, Senator and Mrs. Wadleigh, Miss Rollins, Mrs. Solomon
Bundy, Mrs. J. M. Holmes, Mrs. Brainerd, Mr. and Mrs. Doolittle,
Dr. Patton and son, Prof. Thomas Taylor, Miss Robena Taylor, Mrs.
Spofford, of the Riggs House, Prof. G. B. Stebbins, Mrs. Captain
Platt, and Mr. and Mrs. Holt.--[Washington _Post_.
[32] The members of the committee present were Hon. Proctor Knott
(the chairman), General Benjamin F. Butler, Messrs. Lynde, Frye,
Conger, Lapham, Culberson, McMahon. Among the ladies were Mesdames
Knott, Conger, Lynde, Frye.
[33] Mrs. Hooker has won, just as we predicted she would. Senators
Howe, Ferry, Coke, Randolph, Jones, Blaine, Beck, Booth, Allison,
Wallace, Eaton, Johnston, Burnside, Saulsbury, Merrimon, and
Presiding-officer Wheeler, together with nineteen other senators,
have formally invited her to address the Committee on Privileges
and Elections on February 22, an invitation which she has
enthusiastically accepted. Nobody but congressmen will be admitted
to hear the distinguished advocate of woman suffrage.--[Washington
_Post_.
[34] Among those present were Mrs. Senator Beck, Mrs. Stanley
Matthews, Mrs. Sargent, Mrs. Spofford, Mrs. Holmes, Mrs. Snead,
Mrs. Baldwin, Miss Blodgett of New York; Mrs. Baldwin, Mrs.
Spencer, Mrs. Juan Lewis of Philadelphia; Mrs. Morgan of
Mississippi, Mrs. Brooks, Mrs. Olcott, Mrs. Bartlett, Miss Sweet,
Mrs. Myers, Mrs. Gibson, Miss Jenners, Mrs. Levison, Mrs. Hereford,
Mrs. Folsom, Mrs. Mitchell, Mrs. Lynde, Mrs. Eldridge, Miss Snowe,
Mrs. Curtis, Mrs. Hutchinson Patton, Mrs. Boucher and many others.
Of the committee and Senate there were Senators Wadleigh, Cameron
of Wisconsin; Merrimon, Mitchell, Hoar, Vice-president Wheeler,
Senators Jones, Bruce, Beck and others. Several representatives
and their wives also were there, and seemed deeply
interested.--[Washington _Post_.
[35] Mrs. Ricker makes a specialty of looking after the occupants
of the jail--so freely is her purse opened to the poor and
unfortunate that she is known as the prisoners' friend. Many an
alleged criminal owes the dawning of a new life, and the
determination to make it a worthy one, to the efforts of this noble
woman. And Mrs. Ricker's special object in seeking this office was
that prisoners might make depositions before her and thus be saved
the expense of employing notaries from the city.
[36] THE SELFISH RATS--A FABLE BY LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE.--Once some
gray old rats built a ship of State to save themselves from
drowning. It carried them safely for awhile until they grew eager
for more passengers, and so took on board all manner of rats that
had run away from all sorts of places--Irish rats and German rats,
and French rats, and even black rats and dirty sewer rats.
Now there were many lady mice who had followed the rats, and the
rats therefore thought them very nice, but in spite of that would
not let them have any place on the ship, so that they were forced
to cling to a few planks and were every now and then overwhelmed by
the waves. But when the mice begged to be taken on board saying,
"Save us also, we beg you!" The rats only replied, "We are too
crowded already; we love you very much, and we know you are very
uncomfortable, but it is not expedient to make room for you." So
the rats sailed on safely and saw the poor little mice buffeted
about without doing the least thing to save them.
_Moral_: Woe to the weaker.
[37] Senator Blair has just been elected (June, 1885) to a second
term, thus insuring his services to our cause in the Senate for
another six years.
[38] DELEGATES TO THE THIRTIETH ANNIVERSARY.--Alabama, Priscilla
Holmes Drake; California, Ellen Clark Sargent; District of
Columbia, Frederick Douglass, Belva A. Lockwood, Sara Andrews
Spencer, Caroline B. Winslow, M. D.; Indiana, Margaret C. Conklin,
Mary B. Naylor, May Wright Thompson; Massachusetts, Harriet H.
Robinson, Harriette R. Shattuck; Maryland, Lavinia C. Dundore;
Michigan, Catherine A. F. Stebbins, Frances Titus, Sojourner Truth;
Missouri, Phoebe W. Couzins; New Hampshire, Parker Pillsbury; North
Carolina, Elizabeth Oakes Smith; New Jersey, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Sarah M. Hurn; New York, _Albany county_, Arethusa L.
Forbes; _Dutchess_, Helen M. Loder; _Lewis_, Mrs. E. M. Wilcox;
_Madison_, Helen Raymond Jarvis; _Monroe_, Susan B. Anthony, Amy
Post, Sarah H. Willis, Mary H. Hallowell, Mary S. Anthony, Lewia C.
Smith and many others; _Orleans_, Mrs. Plumb, Mrs. Clark;
_Onondaga_, Lucy N. Coleman, Dr. Amelia F. Raymond, Matilda Joslyn
Gage; _Ontario_, Elizabeth C. Atwell, Catherine H. Sands, Elizabeth
Smith Miller, Helen M. Pitts; _Queens_, Mary A. Pell; _Wayne_,
Sarah K. Rathbone, Rebecca B. Thomas; _Wyoming_, Charlotte A.
Cleveland; _Genesee_, the Misses Morton; _New York_, Clemence S.
Lozier, M. D., Helen M. Slocum, Sara A. Barret, M. D., Hamilton
Wilcox; Ohio, Mrs. Ellen Sully Fray; Pennsylvania, Lucretia Mott,
Sarah Pugh, Adeline Thomson, Maria C. Arter, M. D., Mrs. Watson;
South Carolina, Martha Schofield; Wisconsin, Mrs. C. L. Morgan.
[39] From Wendell Phillips, William Lloyd Garrison, Lucy Stone,
Caroline H. Dall, Boston; Hon. A. A. Sargent, Washington; Clara
Barton, Mathilde F. Wendt, Abby Hutchinson Patton, Aaron M. Powell,
Father Benson, Margaret Holley, Mary L. Booth, Sarah Hallock,
Priscilla R. Lawrence, Lillie Devereux Blake, New York; Samuel May,
Elizabeth Powell Bond, John W. Hutchinson, Lucinda B. Chandler,
Sarah E. Wall, Massachusetts; Caroline M. Spear, Robert Purvis,
Edward M. Davis, Philadelphia; Isabella Beecher Hooker, Julia E.
Smith, Lavinia Goodell, Connecticut; Lucy A. Snowe, Ann T. Greeley,
Maine; Caroline F. Barr, Bessie Bisbee Hunt, Mary A. Powers Filley,
New Hampshire; Catherine Cornell Knowles, Rhode Island; Antoinette
Brown Blackwell, New Jersey; Annie Laura Quinby, Joseph B. Quinby,
Sarah R. L. Williams, Rosa L. Segur, Ohio; Sarah C. Owen, Michigan;
Laura Ross Wolcott, M. D., Mary King, Angie King, Wisconsin;
Frances E. Williard, Clara Lyons Peters, Elizabeth Boynton Harbert,
Illinois; Rachel Lockwood Child, Janet Strong, Nancy R. Allen,
Amelia Bloomer, Iowa; Sarah Burger Stearns, Hattie M. White,
Minnesota; Mary F. Thomas, M. D., Emma Molloy, Indiana; Matilda
Hindman, Sarah L. Miller, Pennsylvania; Anna K. Irvine, Virginia L.
Minor, Missouri; Elizabeth H. Duvall, Kentucky; Mrs. G.W. Church,
Tennessee; Mrs. Augusta Williams, Elsie Stuart, Kansas; Ada W.
Lucas, Nebraska; Emeline B. Wells, Annie Godbe, Utah; Mary F.
Shields, Alida C. Avery, M. D., Colorado; Harriet Loughary, Mrs. L.
F. Proebstel, Mrs. Coburn, Abigail Scott Duniway, Oregon; Clarina
I. H. Nichols, Elizabeth B. Schenck, Sarah J. Wallis, Abigail Bush,
Laura de Force Gordon, California; Mrs. A.H.H. Stuart, Washington
Territory; Helen M. Martin, Arkansas; Helen R. Holmes, District of
Columbia; Caroline V. Putnam, Virginia; Elizabeth Avery Meriwether,
Tennessee; Elizabeth L. Saxon, Louisiana; Martha Goodwin Tunstall,
Texas; Priscilla Holmes Drake, Buell D. M'Clung, Alabama; Ellen
Sully Fray, Ontario; Theodore Stanton, France; Ernestine L. Rose,
Caroline Ashurst Biggs, Lydia E. Becker, England.
[40] While May Wright Thompson was speaking she turned to Mrs.
Stanton and said. "How thankful I am for these bright young women
now ready to fill our soon-to-be vacant places. I want to shake
hands with them all before I go, and give them a few words of
encouragement. I do hope they will not be spoiled with too much
praise."
[41] For account of this International Congress, see chapter on
Continental Europe in this volume.
[42] Mrs. Mott, Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Coleman, Mr. Wilcox,
Mrs. Slocum, Mrs. Dundore, Mrs. Stebbins, Mrs. Sands, Mrs. Amy
Post, and Mrs. Elizabeth Oakes-Smith, who having resided in North
Carolina had not been on our platform for many years, were among
the speakers.
[43] By Miss Couzins, Mr. Douglass, Mrs. Spencer.
[44] Mr. Robinson, as "Warrington," was well known as one of the
best writers on the _Springfield Republican_.
[45] Ellen Clark Sargent, California; Elizabeth Oakes Smith, North
Carolina; Elizabeth Cady Stanton, New Jersey; Mrs. Devereux Blake,
Mrs. Joslyn Gage, Helen M. Slocum, Helen Cooke, Susan B. Anthony,
New York; Julia Brown Dunham, Iowa; Marilla M. Ricker, New
Hampshire; Lavinia C. Dundore, Maryland; Robert Purvis, Julia and
Rachel Foster, Pennsylvania; Emeline B. Wells, Zina Young Williams,
Utah; Ellen H. Sheldon, Dr. Caroline Winslow, Sara Andrews Spencer,
Belva A. Lockwood, Frederick Douglass, Julia A. Wilbur, Dr. Cora M.
Bland, Washington.
[46] The president invited the ladies into the library, that they
might be secure from interruption, and gave them throughout a most
respectful and courteous hearing, asking questions and showing
evident interest in the subject, and at the close promising sincere
consideration of the question.
[47] At its final action, the bill was called up by Hon. J. E.
McDonald of Indiana. After some discussion it was passed without
amendment--40 to 20. _Yeas_--Allison, Anthony, Barnum, Beck,
Blaine, Booth, Burnside, Cameron (Pennsylvania), Cameron
(Wisconsin), Dawes, Dorsey, Ferry, Garland, Gordon, Hamlin, Hoar,
Howe, Ingalls, Jones (Florida), Jones (Nevada), Kellogg, Kirkwood,
McCreery, McDonald, McMillan, McPherson, Matthews, Mitchell,
Oglesby, Ransom, Rollins, Sargent, Teller, Voorhees, Wadleigh,
Windom, Withers. _Nays_--Baily, Chaffee, Coke, Davis (Illinois),
Davis (West Virginia), Eaton, Edmunds, Eustis, Grover, Harris,
Hereford, Hill, Kernan, Maxey, Merrimon, Morgan, Randolph,
Saulsbury, Wallace, White.
[48] Conspicuous in the large and distinguished audience present
were Senator M'Donald, Attorney-general Williams, Hon. Jeremiah
Wilson, Judge Shellabarger, Hon. George W. Julian, who with many
others extended hearty congratulations to Mrs. Lockwood.
[49] _Washington, D. C._--Sara A. Spencer. _Illinois_--Clara Lyon
Peters, Watseka; Mrs. G. P. Graham, Martha L. Mathews, Amanda E.
and Matilda S. Frazer, Aledo; Hannah J. Coffee, Abby B. Trego,
Orion; Mrs. Senator Hanna, Fairfield; Sarah F. Nourse, Moline;
Mrs. E. P. Reynolds, Rock Island; Cynthia Leonard, Chicago.
_Missouri_--Virginia L. Minor, Mrs. M. A. Peoquine, Mrs. P. W.
Thomas, Eliza J. Patrick, Mrs. E. M. Dan, Eliza A. Robbins, Phoebe
W. Couzins, Alex. Robbins, St. Louis; James L. Allen, Oregon; Miss
A. J. Sparks, Warrensburg. _Wisconsin_--Rev. Olympia Brown, Racine.
_New York_--Susan B. Anthony, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Mary R. Pell,
Florence Pell. _Indiana_--Helen Austin, Richmond; May Wright
Thompson, Amy E. Dunn, Gertrude Garrison, Mary E. Haggart,
Indianapolis. _Tennessee_--Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Minor Lee
Meriwether, Memphis, _Kentucky_--Mary B. Clay, Richmond.
_Louisiana_--Emily P. Collins, Ponchatoula. _Ohio_--Eva L. Pinney,
South Newbury. _Pennsylvania_--Mrs. L. P. Danforth, Julia and
Rachel Foster, Philadelphia.