DEBATE

ON

WOMAN SUFFRAGE

Wednesday, December 8, 1886.

On the joint resolution (S.R. 5) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the
United States extending the right of suffrage to women.

Mr. BLAIR said:

Mr. PRESIDENT: I ask the Senate to proceed to the consideration of Order of
Business 122, being the joint resolution (S.R. 5) proposing an amendment to the
Constitution of the United States extending the right of suffrage to women.

The motion was agreed to.

The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The joint resolution will be read.

The Chief Clerk read as follows:

Joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States
extending the right of suffrage to women.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of
America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein),
That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as
an amendment to the Constitution of the United States; which, when ratified by
three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be valid as part of said
Constitution, namely:

ARTICLE—.

SECTION 1. The rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

SEC. 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce
the provisions of this article.

Mr. BLAIR. Mr. President, the question before the Senate is this: Shall a joint
resolution providing for an amendment of the national Constitution, so that the right
of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States, or by any State, on account of sex, and that Congress shall have power
to enforce the article, be submitted to the Legislatures of the several States for
ratification or rejection?

The answer to this question does not depend necessarily upon the reply to that
other question, whether women ought to be permitted to exercise the right or
privilege of suffrage as do men. The Legislatures of the several States must decide
this in ratifying or rejecting the proposed amendment.

Upon solemn occasions concerning grave public affairs, and when large numbers of
the citizens of the country desire to test the sentiments of the people upon an
amendment of the organic law in the manner provided to be done by the provisions of
that law, it may well become the duty of Congress to submit the proposition to the
amending power, which is the same as that which created the original instrument
itself—the people of the several States.

It can hardly be claimed that two-thirds of each branch of Congress must
necessarily be convinced that the Constitution should be amended as proposed in the
joint resolution to be submitted before it has discretion to submit the same to the
judgment of the States. Any citizen has the right to petition or, through his
representative, to bring in his bill for redress of grievances, or to promote the
public good by legislation; and it can hardly be maintained that, before any citizen
or large body of citizens shall have the privilege of introducing a bill to the great
legislative tribunal, which alone has primary jurisdiction of the organic law and
power to amend or change it, the Congress, which under the Constitution is simply the
moving or initiating power, must by a two-thirds vote approve the proposition at
issue before its discussion shall be permitted in the forum of the States. To hold
such a doctrine would be contrary to all our ideas of free discussion, and to lock up
the institutions and the interests of a great and progressive people in fetters of
brass.

It is only essential that two-thirds of each House of the Congress shall deem it
necessary for the public good, that the amendment be proposed to the States for their
action. But two-thirds of the Congress will hardly consider it “necessary” to submit
a joint resolution proposing an amendment of the National Constitution to the States
for consideration, unless the subject matter be of grave importance, with strong
reasons in its favor, and a large support already developed among the people
themselves.

If there be any principle upon which our form of government is founded, and
wherein it is different from aristocracies, monarchies, and despotisms, that
principle is this:

Every human being of mature powers, not disqualified by ignorance, vice or crime,
is the equal of and is entitled to all the rights and privileges which belong to any
other such human being under the law.

The independence, equality, and dignity of all human souls is the fundamental
assertion of those who believe in what we call human freedom. This principle will
hardly be denied by any one, even by those who oppose the adoption of the resolution.
But we are informed that infants, idiots, and women are represented by men. This
cannot reasonably be claimed unless it be first shown that the consent of these
classes has been given to such representation, or that they lack the capacity to
consent. But the exclusion of these classes from participation in the Government
deprives them of the power of assent to representation even when they possess the
requisite ability; and to say there can be representation which does not presuppose
consent or authority on the part of the principal who is represented is to confound
all reason and to assert in substance that all actual power, whether despotic or
otherwise, is representative, and therefore free. In this sense the Czar represents
his whole people, just as voting men represent women who do not vote at all.

True it is that the voting men, by excluding women and other classes from the
suffrage, by that act charge themselves with the trust of administering justice to
all, even as the monarch whose power is based upon force is bound to rule uprightly.
But if it be true that “all just government is founded upon the consent of the
governed,” then the government of woman by man, without her consent, given in her
sovereign capacity, if indeed she be an intelligent creature, and provided she be
competent to exercise the power of suffrage, which is the sovereignty, even if that
government be wise and just in itself, is a violation of natural right and an
enforcement of servitude and slavery against her on the part of man. If woman, like
the infant or the defective classes, be incapable of self-government, then republican
society may exclude her from all participation in the enactment and enforcement of
the laws under which she lives. But in that case, like the infant and the fool and
the unconsenting subject of tyrannical forms of government, she is ruled and not
represented by man.

Thus much I desire to say in the beginning in reply to the broad assumption of
those who deny women the suffrage by saying that they are already represented by
their fathers, their husbands, their brothers, and their sons, or to state the
proposition in its only proper form, that woman whose assent can only be given by an
exercise of sovereignty on her part is represented by man who denies and by virtue of
power and possession refuses to her the exercise of the suffrage whereby that
representation can be made valid.

The claim, then, of the minority of the committee that woman is represented by the
other sex is not well founded, and is based upon the same assumption of power which
lies at the base of all government anti-republican in form. It can not be claimed
that she is as a free being already represented, for she can only be represented
according to her will by the exercise of her will through the suffrage itself.

As already observed, the exclusion of woman from the suffrage under our form of
government can be justified upon proof, and only upon proof, that by reason of her
sex she is incompetent to exercise that power. This is a question of fact.

The common ground upon which all agree may be stated thus: All males having
certain qualifications are in reason and in law entitled to vote. Those
qualifications affect either the body or the mind or both.

First, the attainment of a certain age. The age in itself is not material, but
maturity of mental and moral development is material, soundness of body in itself not
being essential, and want of it alone never working forfeiture of the right, although
it may prevent its exercise.

Age as a qualification for suffrage is by no means to be confounded with age as a
qualification for service in war. Society has well established the distinction, and
that one has no relation whatever to the other; the one having reference to physical
prowess, while the other relates only to the mental and moral state. This is shown by
the ages fixed by law for these qualifications, that of eighteen years being fixed as
the commencement of the term of presumed fitness for military service, and forty-five
years as the period of its termination; while the age of presumed fitness for the
suffrage, which requires no physical superiority certainly, is set at twenty-one
years, when still greater strength of body has been attained than at the period when
liability to the dangers and hardships of war commences; and there are at least three
millions more male voters in our country than of the population liable by law to the
performance of military duty. It is still further to be observed, that the right of
suffrage continues as long as the mind lasts, while ordinary liability to military
service ceases at a period when the physical powers, though still strong, are
beginning to wane. The truth is, that there is no legal or natural connection between
the right or liability to fight and the right to vote.

The right to fight may be exercised voluntarily or the liability to fight may be
enforced by the community whenever there is an invasion of right, and the extent to
which the physical forces of society may be called upon in self-defense or in
justifiable revolution is measured not by age or sex, but by necessity, and may go so
far as to call into the field old men and women and the last vestige of physical
force. It can not be claimed that woman has no right to vote because she is not
liable to fight, for she is so liable, and the freest government on the face of the
earth has the reserved power under the call of necessity to place her in the
forefront of battle itself, and more than this, woman has the right, and often has
exercised it, to go there.

If any one could question the existence of this reserved power of society to call
the force of woman to the common defense, either in the hospital or the field, it
would be woman, who has been deprived of participation in the government and in
shaping the public policy which has resulted in dire emergency to the state. But in
all times, and under all forms of government and of social existence, woman has given
her body and her soul to the common defense.

The qualification of age, then, is imposed for the purpose of securing mental and
moral fitness for the suffrage on the part of those who exercise it. It has no
relation to the possession of physical powers at all.

All other qualifications imposed upon male citizens, save only that of their sex,
as prerequisites to the exercise of suffrage have the same objects in view, and can
have no other.

The property qualification is, to my mind, an invasion of natural right, which
elevates mere property to an equality with life and personal liberty, and ought never
to be imposed upon the suffrage. But, however that may be, its application or removal
has no relation to sex, and its only object is to secure the exercise of the suffrage
under a stronger sense of obligation and responsibility—a qualification, be it
observed, of no consequence save as it influences the mind of the voter in the
exercise of his right.

The same is true of the qualifications of sanity, education, and obedience to the
laws, which exclude dementia, ignorance, and crime from participation in the
sovereignty. Every condition or qualification imposed upon the exercise of the
suffrage by the citizen save only sex has for its only object or possible
justification the possession of mental and moral fitness, and has no relation to
physical power.

The question then arises why is the qualification of masculinity required at
all?

The distinction between human beings by reason of sex is a physical distinction.
The soul is of no sex. If there be a distinction of soul by reason of the physical
difference, or accompanying that physical difference, woman is the superior of man in
mental and moral qualities. In proof of this see the report of the minority and all
the eulogiums of woman pronounced by those who, like the serpent of old, would
flatter her vanity that they may continue to wield her power.

I repeat it, that the soul is of no sex, and that sex is, so far as the possession
and exercise of human rights and powers are concerned, but a physical property, in
which the female is just as important as the male, and the possessor thereof under
just as great need of power in the organization and management of society and the
government of society as man; and if there be a difference, she, by reason of her
average physical inferiority, is really protected, and ought to be protected, by a
superior mental and moral fitness to give direction to the course of society and the
policy of the state. If, then, there be a distinction between the souls of human
beings resulting from sex, I claim that, by the report of the minority and the
universal testimony of all men, woman is better fitted for the exercise of the
suffrage than man.

It is claimed by some that the suffrage is an inherent natural right, and by
others that it is merely a privilege extended to the individual by society in its
discretion. However this may be, practically any extension of the exercise of the
suffrage to individuals or classes not now enjoying it must be by concession of those
who already possess it, and such extension without revolution will be through the
suffrage itself exercised by those who have it under existing forms.

The appeal by those who have it not must be made to those who are asked to part
with a portion of their own power, and it is not strange that human nature, which is
an essential element in the male sex, should hesitate and delay to yield one-half its
power to those whose cause, however strong in reason and justice, lacks that physical
force which so largely has been the means by which the masses of men themselves hare
wrung their own rights from rulers and kings.

It is not strange that when overwhelmed with argument and half won by appeals to
his better nature to concede to woman her equal power in the state, and ashamed to
blankly refuse that which he finds no reason for longer withholding, man avoids the
dilemma by a pretended elevation of his helpmeet to a higher sphere, where, as an
angel, she has certain gauzy ethereal resources and superior functions, occupations,
and attributes which render the possession of mere earthly every-day powers and
privileges non-essential to woman, however mere mortal men themselves may find them
indispensable to their own freedom and happiness.

But to the denial of her right to vote, whether that denial be the blunt refusal
of the ignorant or the polished evasion of the refined courtier and politician, woman
can oppose only her most solemn and perpetual appeal to the reason of man and to the
justice of Almighty God. She must continually point out the nature and object of the
suffrage and the necessity that she possess it for her own and the public good.

What, then, is the suffrage, and why is it necessary that woman should possess and
exercise this function of freemen? I quote briefly from the report of the
committee:

The rights for the maintenance of which human governments are constituted are
life, liberty, and property. These rights are common to men and women alike, and
whatever citizen or subject exists as a member of any body-politic, under any form
of government, is entitled to demand from the sovereign power the full protection
of these rights.

This right to the protection of rights appertains to the individual, not to the
family alone, or to any form of association, whether social or corporate. Probably
not more than five-eighths of the men of legal age, qualified to vote, are heads of
families, and not more than that proportion of adult women are united with men in
the legal merger of married life. It is, therefore, quite incorrect to speak of the
state as an aggregate of families duly represented at the ballot-box by their male
head. The relation between the government and the individual is direct; all rights
are individual rights, all duties are individual duties.

Government in its two highest functions is legislative and judicial. By these
powers the sovereignty prescribes the law, and directs its application to the
vindication of rights and the redress of wrongs. Conscience and intelligence are
the only forces which enter into the exercise of this highest and primary function
of government. The remaining department is the executive or administrative, and in
all forms of government—the republican as well as in tyranny—the
primary element of administration is force, and even in this department conscience
and intelligence are indispensable to its direction.

If now we are to decide who of our sixty millions of human beings are to
constitute the citizenship of this Republic and by virtue of their qualifications
to be the law-making power, by what tests shall the selection be determined?

The suffrage which is the sovereignty is this great primary law-making power. It
is not the executive power proper at all. It is not founded upon force. Only that
degree of physical strength which is essential to a sound body—the home of
the healthy mental and moral constitution—the sound soul in the sound body is
required in the performance of the function of primary legislation. Never in the
history of this or any other genuine republic has the law-making power, whether in
general elections or in the framing of laws in legislative assemblies, been vested
in individuals who have exercised it by reason of their physical powers. On the
contrary, the physically weak have never for that reason been deprived of the
suffrage nor of the privilege of service in the public councils so long as they
possessed the necessary powers of locomotion and expression, of conscience and
intelligence, which are common to all. The aged and the physically weak have, as a
rule, by reason of superior wisdom and moral sense, far more than made good any
bodily inferiority by which they have differed from the more robust members of the
community in the discussion and decisions of the ballot-box and in councils of the
state.

The executive power of itself is a mere physical instrumentality—an animal
quality—and it is confided from necessity to those individuals who possess
that quality, but always with danger, except so far as wisdom and virtue control
its exercise. And it is obvious that the greater the mass of higher and spiritual
forces, whether found in those to whom the execution of the law is assigned or in
the great mass by whom the suffrage is exercised, and who direct the execution of
the law, the greater will be the safety and the surer will be the happiness of the
state.

It is too late to question the intellectual and moral capacity of woman to
understand great political issues (which are always primarily questions of
conscience—questions of the intelligent application of the principles of
right and of wrong in public and private affairs) and properly decide them at the
polls. Indeed, so far as your committee are aware, the pretense is no longer
advanced that woman should not vote by reason of her mental or moral unfitness to
perform this legislative function; but the suffrage is denied to her because she
can not hang criminals, suppress mobs, nor handle the enginery of war. We have
already seen the untenable nature of this assumption, because those who make it
bestow the suffrage upon very large classes of men who, however well qualified they
may be to vote, are physically unable to perform any of the duties which appertain
to the execution of the law and the defense of the state. Scarcely a Senator on
this floor is liable by law to perform a military or other administrative duty, yet
the rule so many set up against the right of women to vote would disfranchise
nearly this whole body.

But it unnecessary to grant that woman can not fight. History is full of
examples of her heroism in danger, of her endurance and fortitude in trial, and of
her indispensable and supreme service in hospital and field; and in the handling of
the deft and horrible machinery and infernal agencies which science and art have
prepared and are preparing for human destruction in future wars, woman may perform
her whole part in the common assault or the common defense. It is hardly worth
while to consider this trivial objection that she is incompetent for purposes of
national murder or of bloody self-defense as the basis of the denial of a great
fundamental right, when we consider that if that right were given to her she would
by its exercise almost certainly abolish this great crime of the nations, which has
always inflicted upon her the chief burden of woe.

It will be admitted that the act of voting is operative in government only as a
means of deciding upon the adoption or rejection of measures or of the selection of
officers to enact, administer, and execute the laws.

In the discharge of these functions it also must be admitted that intelligence and
conscience are the faculties requisite to secure their proper performance.

In this day when woman has demonstrated that she is fully the intellectual equal
of man in the profound as well as in the politer walks of learning—in art,
science, literature, and, considering her opportunities, that she is not his inferior
in any of the professions or in the great mass of useful occupations, while she is,
in fact, becoming the chief educator of the race and is the acknowledged support of
the great ministrations of charity and religion; when in such great organizations as
the suffrage associations, missionary societies, the National Woman’s Christian
Temperance Union, and even upon the still larger scale of international action, she
has exhibited her power by mere moral influences and the inspiration of great
purposes, without the aid of legal penalties or even of tangible inconveniences, to
mold and direct the discordant thought and action of thousands and millions of people
scattered over separate States, and sometimes even living in countries hostile to
each other to the accomplishment of great earthly or heavenly ends, it is
unreasonable to deny to woman the suffrage in political affairs upon the false
allegation that she is wanting in the very qualities most indispensable and requisite
for the proper exercise of this great right.

The advocates of universal male suffrage have long since ceased to deny the ballot
to woman upon the ground that she is unfit or incompetent to exercise it.

There is a class of high-stepping objectors, like Ouida, who decry the sound
judgment and moral excellence of woman as compared with man, but in the same breath
these people deny the suffrage to the masses of men and advocate “the just supremacy
of the fittest,” so that no time need be wasted in refutation of those malignant and
libelous aspersions upon our mothers, sisters, and wives, which, when carried to
logical conclusions by their own authors, deny the fundamental principles of liberty
to man and woman alike, and reassert in its baldest form the dogma that “the existing
system of electoral power all over the world is absurd, and will remain so because in
no nation is there the courage, perhaps in no nation is there the intellectual power,
capable of putting forward and sustaining the logical doctrine of the just supremacy
of the fittest.”

In fact the minority of the committee, and this is true of all honest, intelligent
men who believe in the republican system of government at all, concede that woman has
the capacity and moral fitness requisite to exercise the ballot. That class of women
represented by the author of “Letters from a Chimney Corner,” whose work has been
adopted by the minority as the basis of their report, speaking through the “fair
authoress,” say that “if women were to be considered in their highest and final
estate as merely individual beings, and if the right to the ballot were to be
conceded to man as an individual, it might perhaps he logically argued that women
also possessed the inherent right to vote.” Let me read from the views of the
minority on page 1:

The undersigned minority of the Committee of the Senate on Woman Suffrage, to whom
was referred Senate Resolution No. 5, proposing an amendment to the Constitution of
the United States to grant the right to vote to the women of the United States, beg
leave to submit the following minority report, consisting of extracts from a little
volume entitled, “Letters from a Chimney Corner,” written by a highly cultivated
lady, Mrs. ——, of Chicago, This gifted lady has discussed the question
with so much clearness and force that we make no apology to the Senate for
substituting quotations from her book in place of anything we might produce. We
quote first from chapter 3, which is entitled “The value of suffrage to women much
overestimated.”

The fair authoress says:

“If women were to be considered in their highest and final estate as merely
individual beings, and if the right to the ballot were to be conceded to man as an
individual, it might perhaps be logically argued that women also possessed the
inherent right to vote. But from the oldest times, and through all the history of
the race, has run the glimmer of an idea, more or less distinguishable in different
ages and under different circumstances, that neither man nor woman is, as such,
individual; that neither being is of itself a whole, a unit, but each requires to
be supplemented by the other before its true structural integrity can be achieved.
Of this idea, the science of botany furnishes the moat perfect illustration. The
stamens on the one hand, and the ovary and pistil on the other, may indeed reside
in one blossom, which then exists in a married or reproductive state. But equally
well, the stamens or male organs may reside in one plant, and the ovary and pistil
or female organs may reside in another. In that case, the two plants are required
to make one structurally complete organization. Each is but half a plant, an
incomplete individual by itself. The life principle of each must be united to that
of the other; the twain must be indeed one flesh before the organization is either
structurally or functionally complete.”

This is a concession of the whole argument, unless the highest and final estate of
woman is to be something else than a mere individual. It would also follow that if
such be her destiny—that is, to be something else than a mere “individual
being”—and if for that reason she is to be denied the suffrage, then man
equally should be denied the ballot if his highest and final estate is to be
something else than a “mere individual.”

Thereupon the minority of the committee, through the “Fair Authoress,” proceed to
show that both man and woman are designed for a higher final estate—to wit,
that of matrimony. It seems to be conceded that man is just as much fitted for
matrimony as woman herself, and thereupon the whole subject is illuminated with
certain botanical lore about stamens and pistils, which, however relevant to
matrimony, does not seem to me to prove that therefore woman should not vote unless
at the same time it proves that man should not vote either. And certainly it can not
apply to those women any more than to those men whose highest and final estate never
is merged in the family relation at all, and even “Ouida” concedes “that the project
… to give votes only to unmarried women may be dismissed without discussion, as it
would be found to be wholly untenable.”

There is no escape from it. The discussion has passed so far that among
intelligent people who believe in the republican form—that is, free
government—all mature men and women have under the same circumstance and
conditions the same rights to defend, the same grievances to redress, and, therefore,
the same necessity for the exercise of this great fundamental right, of all human
beings in free society. For the right to vote is the great primitive right. It is the
right in which all freedom originates and culminates. It is the right from which all
others spring, in which they merge, and without which they fall whenever
assailed.

This right makes, and is all the difference between government by and with the
consent of the governed and government without and against the consent of the
governed; and that is the difference between freedom and slavery. If the right to
vote be not that difference, what is? No, sir. If either sex as a class can dispense
with the right to vote, then take it from the strong, and no longer rob the weak of
their defense for the benefit of the strong.

But it is impossible to conceive of the suffrage as a right dependent at all upon
such an irrelevant condition as sex. It is an individual, a personal right. It may be
withheld by force; but if withheld by reason of sex it is a moral robbery.

But it is said that the duties of maternity disqualify for the performance of the
act of voting. It can not be, and I think is not claimed by any one, that the mother
who otherwise would be fit to vote is rendered mentally or morally less fit to
exercise this high function in the state because of motherhood. On the contrary, if
any woman has a motive more than another person, man or woman, to secure the
enactment and enforcement of good laws, it is the mother, who, beside her own life,
person, and property, to the protection of which the ballot is as essential as to the
same rights possessed by man, has her little contingent of immortal beings to conduct
safely to the portals of active life through all the snares and pitfalls woven around
them by bad men and bad laws which bad men have made, or good laws which bad men,
unhindered by the good, have defied or have prostituted, and rightly to prepare, them
for the discharge of all the duties of their day and generation, including the
exercise of the very right denied to their mother.

Certainly, if but for motherhood she should vote, then ten thousand times more
necessary is it that the mother should be guarded and armed with this great social
and political power for the sake of all men and women who are yet to be. But it is
said that she has not the time. Let us see. By the best deductions I can make from
the census and from other sources there are 15,000,000 women of voting age in this
country at the present time, of whom not more than 10,000,000 are married and not
more than 7,500,000 are still liable to the duties of maternity, for it will be
remembered that a large proportion of the mothers of our country at any given time
are below the voting age, while of those who are above it another large proportion
have passed beyond the point of this objection. Not more than one-half the female
population of voting age are liable to this objection. Then why disfranchise the
7,500,000, the other half, as to whom your objection, even if valid as to any, does
not apply at all; and these, too, as a class the most mature and therefore the best
qualified to vote of any of their sex? But how much is there of this objection of
want of time or physical strength to vote, in its application to women who are
bearing and training the coming millions? The families of the country average five
persons in number. If we assume that this gives an average of three children to every
pair, which is probably the full number, or if we assume that every married mother,
after she becomes of voting age, bears three children, which is certainly the full
allowance, and that twenty-four years are consumed in doing it, there is one child
born every eight years whose coming is to interfere with the exercise of a duty of
privilege which, in most States, and in all the most important elections, occurs only
one day in two years.

That same mother will attend church at least forty times yearly on the average
from her cradle to her grave, beside an infinity of other social, religious, and
industrial obligations which she performs and assumes to perform because she is a
married woman and a mother rather than for any other reason whatever. Yet it is
proposed to deprive women—yes, all women alike—of an inestimable
privilege and the chief power which can be exercised by any free individual in the
state for the reason that on any given day of election not more than one woman in
twenty of voting age will probably not be able to reach the polls. It does seem
probable that on these interesting occasions if the husband and wife disagree in
politics they could arrange a pair, and the probability is, that arrangement failing,
one could be consummated with some other lady in like fortunate circumstances, of
opposite political opinions. More men are kept from the polls by drunkenness, or,
being at the polls, vote under the influence of strong drink, to the reproach and
destruction of our free institutions, and who, if woman could and did vote, would
cast the ballot of sobriety, good order, and reform under her holy influences, than
all those who would be kept from any given election by the necessary engagements of
mothers at home.

When one thinks of the innumerable and trifling causes which keep many of the best
of men and strongest opponents of woman suffrage from the polls upon important
occasions it is difficult to be tolerant of the objection that woman by reason of
motherhood has no time to vote. Why, sir, the greater exposure of man to the
casualties of life actually disables him in such way as to make it physically
impossible for him to exercise the franchise more frequently than is the case with
women, including mothers and all. And if this liability to lose the opportunity to
exercise the right once or possibly twice in a lifetime is a reason that women should
not he allowed to vote at all, why should men not be disfranchised also by the same
rule?

But it is urged that woman does not desire the privilege. If the right exist at
all it is an individual right, and not one which belongs to a class or to the sex as
such. Yet men tell us that they will vote the suffrage to women whenever the majority
of women desire it. Are, then, our rights the property of the majority of a
disfranchised class to which we may chance to belong? What would we say if it were
seriously proposed to recall the suffrage from all colored or from all white men
because a majority of either class should decline or for any cause fail to vote? I
know that it is said that the suffrage is a privilege to be extended by those who
have it to those who have it not. But the matter of right, of moral right, to the
franchise does not depend upon the indifference of those who possess it or of those
who do not possess it to the desire of those women who desire to enjoy their right
and to discharge their duty. If one or many choose not to claim their right it is no
argument for depriving me of mine or one woman of hers. There are many reasons why
some women declare themselves opposed to the extension of suffrage to their sex. Some
well-fed and pampered, without serious experiences in life, are incapable of
comprehending the subject at all. Vast numbers, who secretly and earnestly desire it
from the long habit of deference to the wishes of the other sex, upon whom they are
so entirely dependent while disfranchised, and knowing the hostility of their
“protectors” to the agitation of the subject, conceal their real sentiments, and the
“lord” of the family referring this question to his wife, who has heard him sneer or
worse than sneer at suffragists for half a lifetime, ought not to expect an answer
which she knows will subject her to his censure and ridicule or even his unexpressed
disapprobation.

It is like the old appeal of the master to his slave to know if he would be free.
Full well did the wise and wary slave know that happiness depended upon declared
contentment with his lot. But all the same the world does move. Colored men are free.
Colored men vote. Women will vote. A little further on I shall revert to the evidence
of a general and growing desire on her part and on the part of just and intelligent
men that the suffrage be extended to women.

But we are told that husband and wife will disagree and thus the suffrage will
destroy the family and ruin society. If a married couple will quarrel at all, they
will find the occasion, and it were fortunate indeed if their contention might
concern important affairs. There is no peace in the family save where love is, and
the same spirit which enables the husband and wife to enforce the toleration act
between themselves in religious matters will keep the peace between them in political
discussions. At all events, this argument is unworthy of notice at all unless we are
to push it to its logical conclusion, and, for the sake of peace in the family, to
prohibit woman absolutely the exercise of freedom of thought and speech. Men live
with their countrymen and disagree with them in politics, religion, and ten thousand
of the affairs of life, as often the trifling as the important. What harm, then, if
woman be allowed her thought and vote upon the tariff, education, temperance, peace
and war, and whatsoever else the suffrage decides?

But we are told that no government, of which we have authentic history, ever gave
to woman a share in the sovereignty.

This is not true, for the annals of monarchies and despotisms have been rendered
illustrious by queens of surpassing brilliance and power. But even if it be true that
no republic ever enfranchised woman with the ballot—even so until within one
hundred years universal or even general suffrage was unknown among men.

Has the millennium yet dawned? Is all progress at an end? If that which is should
therefore remain, why abolish the slavery of men?

But we are informed that woman does not vote when she has the opportunity.
Wherever she has the unrestricted right she exercises it. The records of Wyoming and
Washington demonstrate the fact.

And in these Territories, too, as well as wherever else she has exercised the
suffrage, she has elevated man to her own level, and has made the voting precinct as
respectable and decorous as the lecture-room or the assemblies of the devout. All the
experience there is refutes the apprehension of those who fear that woman will either
neglect the discharge of her great duty, when allowed its fair and equal exercise, or
that the rude and baser sort will overwhelm and banish the noble and refined.

But to my mind it seems like trifling with a great subject to dwell upon topics
like this. It can only be justified by the continual iteration of the objection by
the opponents of woman suffrage, who in the lack of substantial grounds whereupon to
base their opposition to the exercise of a great right by one-half the community
declare that there is no time in which woman can vote.

I will now read an extract from the report of the majority of the committee,
showing to a certain extent the degree of consequence which this movement has
assumed, its extent throughout our country, and something of its duration. I have not
the latest data, for since this report was compiled there has been action in several
States, and a great deal of popular discussion and a vast amount of demonstration
from the action of popular assemblies.

The committee say:

This movement for woman suffrage has developed during the last half century into
one of great strength. The first petition was presented to the Legislature of New
York in 1835. It was repeated in 1846, and since that time the petition has been
urged upon nearly every Legislature in the Northern States. Five States have voted
upon the question of amending their constitutions by striking out the word “male”
from the suffrage clause—Kansas in 1867, Michigan in 1874, Colorado in 1877,
Nebraska in 1882, and Oregon in 1884.

The ratio of the popular vote in each case was about one-third for the amendment
and two-thirds against it. Three Territories have or have had full suffrage for
women. In two, Wyoming since 1869 and Washington since 1883, the experiment (!) is
an unqualified success. In Utah Miss Anthony keenly and justly observes that
suffrage is as much of a success for the Mormon women as for the men.

In eleven States school suffrage for women exists. In Kansas, from her admission
as a State. In Kentucky and Michigan fully as long a time. School suffrage for
women also exists in Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont,
New York, Nebraska, and Oregon.

In all these States, except Minnesota, school suffrage was extended to women by
the respective Legislatures, and in Minnesota by the popular vote, in November,
1876. Not only these eleven States, but in nearly all the other Northern and
Western States women are elected to the offices of county and city superintendent
of public schools and as members of school boards. In Louisiana the constitution of
1879 makes women eligible to school offices.

It may also be observed as indicating a rising and controlling public sentiment
in recognition of the right and capacity of woman for public affairs that she is
eligible to such offices as that of county clerk, register of deeds, and the like
in many and perhaps in all the States. Kansas and Iowa elected several women to
these positions in the election of November, 1885, while President Grant alone
appointed more than five thousand women to the office of postmaster; and although
many women have been appointed in the Departments and to pension agencies and like
important employments and trusts, so far as your committee are aware no charge of
incompetency or of malfeasance in office has ever yet been sustained against a
woman.

It may be further stated in this connection that nearly every Northern State has
had before it from time to time since 1870 a bill for the submission of the
question of woman suffrage to the popular vote. In some instances such a resolution
has been passed at one session and failed to be ratified at another by from one to
three votes; thus Iowa passed it in 1870, killed it in 1872; passed it in 1874,
failed to do so in 1876; passed it in 1878, and failed in 1880; passed it again in
1882, and defeated it in 1884; four times over and over, and this winter these
heroic and indomitable women are trying it in Iowa again.

If men were to make such a struggle for their rights it would be considered a
fine thing, and there would be books and even poetry written about it.

In New York, since 1880, the women have urged this great measure before the
Legislature each year. There it takes the form of a bill to prohibit the
disfranchisement of women. This bill has several times come within five votes of
passing the assembly.

In many States well sustained efforts for municipal suffrage have been made,
and, as if in rebuke to the conservatism, or worse, of this great Republic, this
right of municipal suffrage is already enjoyed in the province of Ontario, Canada,
and throughout the island of Great Britain by unmarried women to the same extent as
by men, there being the same property qualification required of each.

The movement for the amendment of the National Constitution began by petitioning
Congress December, 1865, and since 1869 there have been consecutive applications to
every Congress praying for the submission to the States of a proposition similar to
the joint resolution herewith reported to the Senate.

The petitions have come from all parts of the country; more especially from the
Northern and Western States, although there is an extensive and increasing desire
for the suffrage existing among the women in the Southern States, as we are
informed by those whose interest in the subject makes them familiar with the real
state of feeling in that part of our country. It is impossible to know just what
proportion of the people—men and women—have expressed their desire by
petition to the National Legislature during the last twenty years, but we are
informed by Miss Anthony that in the year 1871 Senator Sumner collected the
petitions from the files of the Senate and House of Representatives, and that there
were then an immense number. A far greater number have been presented since that
time, and the same lady is our authority for the estimate that in all more than two
hundred thousand petitions, by select and representative men and women, have been
poured upon Congress in behalf of this prayer of woman to be free. Who is so
interested in the framing of the law as woman, whose only defense is the law? There
never was a stronger exhibition of popular demand by American citizens to be heard
in the court of the people for the vindication of a fundamental right.

Since the submission of the report the attempt has been made to secure action in
several of the State Legislatures. One which came very near being successful was made
in the State of Vermont. The suffrage was extended, if I am not incorrectly informed,
so far as the action of the house of representatives of that State could give it, and
an effort being made to propose some restriction and condition upon the suffrage it
was defeated, when, as I am told by the friends of the movement, if it could have
reached a vote in the Vermont Legislature on the naked proposition of suffrage to
women as suffrage is extended to men, they felt the very greatest confidence that
they would have been able to secure favorable action by the Legislature of that
State.

Miss Anthony informs me since she came here at the present session (and I am sorry
I have not had the opportunity of extended conference with her) that in the State of
Kansas, where she spent several weeks in the discussion of the subject before vast
masses of people, the largest halls, rinks, and places for the accommodation of
popular assemblages in the State were crowded to overflowing to listen to her
address. In every instance she has taken a vote of those vast audiences as to whether
they were in favor of woman suffrage or against it, and in no single instance has
there been a solitary vote against the extension of the right, but affirmative and
universal action of those great assemblies demanding that it be extended to women.
And like demonstrations of popular approval are developing in all parts of the
country, perhaps not to so marked an extent as these which I have just stated; but it
is a growing feeling in this country that women should have this right, and above all
woman and man demanding that she should have the opportunity to try her case before
the American people, that this right of petition should be heeded by Congress and the
joint resolution for the submission of the matter for discussion by the States should
be passed by the necessary two-thirds vote.

It is sometimes, too, urged against this movement for the submission of a
resolution for a national constitutional amendment that women should go to the States
and fight it out there. But we did not send the colored man to the States. No other
amendment touching the general national interest is left to be fought out by
individual action in the individual States. Under the terms of the Constitution
itself the people of the United States, having some universal common interest
affected by law or by the want of law, are invited to come to this body and try here
their question of right, or at all events through the agency of Congress to submit
that proposition to the people at large in order that in the general national forum
it may receive discussion, and by the action of three-fourths of the States, if
favorable, their idea may be incorporated in the fundamental law.

I will not detain the Senate further in the discussion of this subject.

It should be borne in mind that the proposition is to submit to men the question
whether woman shall vote. The jury will certainly not be prejudiced in her favor as
against the public good. There can be no danger of a verdict in her favor contrary to
the evidence in the case.

We ask only for her an opportunity to bring her suit in the great court for the
amendment of fundamental law. It is impossible for any right mind to escape the
impression of solemn responsibility which attaches to our decision. Ridicule and wit
of whatever quality are here as much out of place as in the debates upon the
Declaration of Independence. We are affirming or denying the right of petition which
by all law belongs as much to women as to men. Millions of women and thousands of men
in our own country demand that she at least have the opportunity to be heard. Hear,
even if you strike.

The lamented Anthony, so long the object of reverence, affection, and pride in
this body, among the last acts of his public life, in signing the favorable report of
this resolution, made the following declaration:

The Constitution is wisely conservative in the provision of its own amendment.
It is eminently proper that whenever a large number of the people have indicated a
desire for an amendment the judgment of the amending power should be consulted. In
view of the extensive agitation of the question of woman suffrage, and the numerous
and respectable petitions that have been presented to Congress in its support, I
unite with the committee in recommending that the proposed amendment be submitted
to the States.

H.B. ANTHONY.

Profoundly convinced of the justice of woman’s demand for the suffrage, and that
the proper method of securing the right is by an amendment of the national
Constitution, I urge the adoption of the joint resolution upon the still broader
ground so clearly and calmly stated by the great Senator whose words I have just
read. I appeal to you, Senators, to grant this petition of woman that she may be
heard for her claim of right. How could you reject that petition, even were there but
one faint voice beseeching your ear? How can you deny the demand of millions who
believe in suffrage for women, and who can not be forever silenced, for they give
voice to the innate cry of the human heart that justice be done not alone to man, but
to that half of this nation which now is free only by the grace of the other, and
that by our action to-day we indorse, if we do not initiate, a movement which, in the
development of our race, shall guarantee liberty to all without distinction of sex,
even as our glorious Constitution already grants the suffrage to every citizen
without distinction of color or race.

Further consideration of the resolution postponed until January 25, 1887, when it
was resumed, as follows:

Tuesday, January 25, 1887.

Mr. BLAIR. I now move that the Senate proceed to consider the joint resolution
(S.R. 5) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States extending
the right of suffrage to women.

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, proceeded
to consider the joint resolution.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution will be read.

The Chief Clerk read the joint resolution, as follows:

Resolved (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the
following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an
amendment to the Constitution of the United States: which, when ratified by
three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be valid as part of said
Constitution, namely:

ARTICLE—.

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Sec. 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce
the provisions of this article.

Mr. BROWN. Mr. President, the joint resolution introduced by my friend, the
Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. BLAIR], proposing an amendment to the Constitution of
the United States, conferring the right to vote upon the women of the United States,
is one of paramount importance, as it involves great questions far reaching in their
tendency, which seriously affect the very pillars of our social fabric, which involve
the peace and harmony of society, the unity of the family, and much of the future
success of our Government. The question should therefore he met fairly and discussed
with firmness, but with moderation and forbearance.

No one contributes anything valuable to the debate by the use of harsh terms, or
by impugning motives, or by disparaging the arguments of the opposition. Where the
prosperity of the race and the peace of society are involved, we should, on both
sides, meet fairly the arguments of our respective opponents.

This question has been discussed a great deal outside of Congress, sometimes in
bad temper and sometimes illogically and unprofitably, but the advocates of the
proposed amendment and the opponents of it have each put forth, probably in their
strongest form, the reasons and arguments which are considered by each as conclusive
in favor of the cause they advocate. I do not expect to contribute much that is new
on a subject that has been so often and so ably discussed; but what I have to say
will be in the main a reproduction in substance of what I and others have already
said on the subject, and which I think important enough to be placed upon the record
in the argument of the case.

In connection with my friend, the honorable Senator from Missouri [Mr. COCKRELL],
I have in a report set forth substantially the reasons and arguments which to my mind
establish the fact that the proposed legislation would be injudicious and unwise, and
I shall not hesitate to reiterate here such portions of what was then said as seem to
me to be important.

I believe that the Creator intended that the sphere of the males and females of
our race should be different, and that their duties and obligations, while they
differ materially, are equally important and equally honorable, and that each sex is
equally well qualified by natural endowments for the discharge of the important
duties which pertain to each, and that each sex is equally competent to discharge
those duties.

We find an abundance of evidence, both in the works of nature and in the Divine
revelation, to establish the fact that the family properly regulated is the
foundation and pillar of society, and is the most important of any other human
institution.

In the Divine economy it is provided that the man shall be the head of the family,
and shall take upon himself the solemn obligation of providing for and protecting the
family.

Man, by reason of his physical strength, and his other endowments and faculties,
is qualified for the discharge of those duties that require strength and ability to
combat with the sterner realities and difficulties of life. The different classes of
outdoor labor which require physical strength and endurance are by nature assigned to
man, the head of the family, as part of his task. He discharges such labors as
require greater physical endurance and strength than the female sex are usually found
to possess.

It is not only his duty to provide for and protect the family, but as a member of
the community it is also his duty to discharge the laborious and responsible
obligations which the family owe to the State, and which obligations must be
discharged by the head of the family, until the male members of the family have grown
up to manhood and are able to aid in the discharge of those obligations, when it
becomes their duty each in his turn to take charge of and rear a family, for which he
is responsible.

Among other duties which the head of the family owes to the State, is military
duty in time of war, which he, when able-bodied, is able to discharge, and which the
female members of the family are unable to discharge.

He is also under obligation to discharge jury duty, and by himself or his
representatives to perform his part of the labor necessary to construct and keep in
order roads, bridges, streets, and all grades of public highways. And in this
progressive age upon the male sex is devolved the duty of constructing and operating
our railroads, and the engines and other rolling-stock with which they are operated;
of building, equipping, and launching, shipping and other water craft of every
character necessary for the transportation of passengers and freight upon our rivers,
our lakes, and upon the high seas.

The labor in our fields, sowing, cultivating, and reaping crops must be discharged
mainly by the male sex, as the female sex, for want of physical strength, are
generally unable to discharge these duties. As it is the duty of the male sex to
perform the obligations to the State, to society, and to the family, already
mentioned, with numerous others that might be enumerated, it is also their duty to
aid in the government of the State, which is simply a great aggregation of families.
Society can not be preserved nor can the people be prosperous without good
government. The government of our country is a government of the people, and it
becomes necessary that the class of people upon whom the responsibility rests should
assemble together and consider and discuss the great questions of governmental policy
which from time to time are presented for their decision.

This often requires the assembling of caucuses in the night time, as well as
public assemblages in the daytime. It is a laborious task, for which the male sex is
infinitely better fitted than the female sex; and after proper consideration and
discussion of the measures that may divide the country from time to time, the duty
devolves upon those who are responsible for the government, at times and places to be
fixed by law, to meet and by ballot to decide the great questions of government upon
which the prosperity of the country depends.

These are some of the active and sterner duties of life to which the male sex is
by nature better fitted than the female sex. If in carrying out the policy of the
State on great measures adjudged vital such policy should lead to war, either foreign
or domestic, it would seem to follow very naturally that those who have been
responsible for the management of the State should be the parties to take the hazards
and hardships of the struggle.

Here, again, man is better fitted by nature for the discharge of the
duty—woman is unfit for it. So much for some of the duties imposed upon the
male sex, for the discharge of which the Creator has endowed them with proper
strength and faculties.

On the other hand, the Creator has assigned to woman very laborious and
responsible duties, by no means less important than those imposed upon the male sex,
though entirely different in their character. In the family she is a queen. She alone
is fitted for the discharge of the sacred trust of wife and the endearing relation of
mother.

While the man is contending with the sterner duties of life, the whole time of the
noble, affectionate, and true woman is required in the discharge of the delicate and
difficult duties assigned her in the family circle, in her church relations, and in
the society where her lot is cast. When the husband returns home weary and worn in
the discharge of the difficult and laborious task assigned him, he finds in the good
wife solace and consolation, which is nowhere else afforded. If he is despondent and
distressed, she cheers his heart with words of kindness; if he is sick or
languishing, she soothes, comforts, and ministers to him as no one but an
affectionate wife can do. If his burdens are onerous, she divides their weight by the
exercise of her love and her sympathy.

But a still more important duty devolves upon the mother. After having brought
into existence the offspring of the nuptial union, the children are dependent upon
the mother as they are not upon any other human being. The trust is a most sacred,
most responsible, and most important one. To watch over them in their infancy, and as
the mind begins to expand to train, direct, and educate it in the paths of virtue and
usefulness is the high trust assigned to the mother. She trains the twig as the tree
should be inclined.

She molds the character. She educates the heart as well as the intellect, and she
prepares the future man, now the boy, for honor or dishonor. Upon the manner in which
she discharges her duty depends the fact whether he shall in future be a useful
citizen or a burden to society. She inculcates lessons of patriotism, manliness,
religion, and virtue, fitting the man by reason of his training to be an ornament to
society, or dooming him by her neglect to a life of dishonor and shame. Society acts
unwisely when it imposes upon her the duties that by common consent have always been
assigned to the stronger and sterner sex, and the discharge of which causes her to
neglect those sacred and all important duties to her children and to the society of
which they are members.

In the church, by her piety, her charity, and her Christian purity, she not only
aids society by a proper training of her own children, but the children of others,
whom she encourages to come to the sacred altar, are taught to walk in the paths of
rectitude, honor, and religion. In the Sunday-school room the good woman is a
princess, and she exerts an influence which purifies and ennobles society, training
the young in the truths of religion, making the Sunday-school the nursery of the
church, and elevating society to the higher planes of pure religion, virtue, and
patriotism. In the sick room and among the humble, the poor, and the suffering, the
good woman, like an angel of light, cheers the hearts and revives the hopes of the
poor, the suffering, and the despondent.

It would be a vain attempt to undertake to enumerate the refining, endearing, and
ennobling influences exercised by the true woman in her relations to the family and
to society when she occupies the sphere assigned to her by the laws of nature and the
Divine inspiration, which are our surest guide for the present and the future life.
But how can woman be expected to meet these heavy responsibilities, and to discharge
these delicate and most important duties of wife, Christian, teacher, minister of
mercy, friend of the suffering, and consoler of the despondent and needy, if we
impose upon her the grosser, rougher, and harsher duties which nature has assigned to
the male sex?

If the wife and the mother is required to leave the sacred precincts of home, and
to attempt to do military duty when the state is in peril; or if she is to be
required to leave her home from day to day in attendance upon the court as a juror,
and to be shut up in the jury room from night to night with men who are strangers
while a question of life or property is being discussed; if she is to attend
political meetings, take part in political discussions, and mingle with the male sex
at political gatherings; if she is to become an active politician; if she is to
attend political caucuses at late hours of the night; if she is to take part in all
the unsavory work that may be deemed necessary for the triumph of her party; and if
on election day she is to leave her home and go upon the streets electioneering for
votes for the candidates who receive her support, and mingling among the crowds of
men who gather round the polls, she is to press her way through them to the precinct
and deposit her ballot; if she is to take part in the corporate struggles of the city
or town in which she resides, attend to the duties of his honor, the mayor, the
councilman, or of policeman, to say nothing of the many other like obligations which
are disagreeable even to the male sex, how is she, with all these heavy duties of
citizen, politician, and officeholder resting upon her shoulders, to attend to the
more sacred, delicate, and refining trust to which we have already referred, and for
which she is peculiarly fitted by nature? If she is to discharge the duties last
mentioned, how is she, in connection with them, to discharge the more refining,
elevating, and ennobling duties of wife, mother, Christian, and friend, which are
found in the sphere where nature has placed her? Who is to care for and train the
children while she is absent in the discharge of these masculine duties?

If it were proper to reverse the order of nature and assign woman to the sterner
duties devolved upon the male sex, and to attempt to assign man to the more refining,
delicate, and ennobling duties of the woman, man would be found entirely incompetent
to the discharge of the obligations which nature has devolved upon the gentler sex,
and society must be greatly injured by the attempted change. But if we are told that
the object of this movement is not to reverse this order of nature, but only to
devolve upon the gentler sex a portion of the more rigorous duties imposed by nature
upon the stronger sex, we reply that society must be injured, as the woman would not
be able to discharge those duties so well, by reason of her want of physical
strength, as the male, upon whom they are devolved, and to the extent that the duties
are to be divided, the male would be infinitely less competent to discharge the
delicate and sacred trusts which nature has assigned to the female.

But it has been said that the present law is unjust to woman; that she is often
required to pay tax on the property she holds without being permitted to take part in
framing or administering the laws by which her property is governed, and that she is
taxed without representation. That is a great mistake.

It may be very doubtful whether the male or female sex in the present state of
things has more influence in the administration of the affairs of the Government and
the enactment of the laws by which we are governed.

While the woman does not discharge military duty, nor does she attend courts and
serve on juries, nor does she labor on the public streets, bridges, or highways, nor
does she engage actively and publicly in the discussion of political affairs, nor
does she enter the crowded precincts of the ballot-box to deposit her suffrage, still
the intelligent, cultivated, noble woman is a power behind the throne. All her
influence is in favor of morality, justice, and fair dealing, all her efforts and her
counsel are in favor of good government, wise and wholesome regulations, and a
faithful administration of the laws. Such a woman, by her gentleness, kindness, and
Christian bearing, impresses her views and her counsels upon her father, her husband,
her brothers, her sons, and her other male friends who imperceptibly yield to her
influence many times without even being conscious of it. She rules not with a rod of
iron, but with the queenly scepter; she binds not with hooks of steel but with silken
cords; she governs not by physical efforts, but by moral suasion and feminine purity
and delicacy. Her dominion is one of love, not of arbitrary power.

We are satisfied, therefore, that the pure, cultivated, and pious ladies of this
country now exercise a very powerful, but quiet, imperceptible influence in popular
affairs, much greater than they can ever again exercise if female suffrage should be
enacted and they should be compelled actively to take part in the affairs of state
and the corruptions of party politics.

It would be a gratification, and we are always glad to see the ladies gratified,
to many who have espoused the cause of woman suffrage if they could take active part
in political affairs, and go to the polls and cast their votes alongside the male
sex; but while this would be a gratification to a large number of very worthy and
excellent ladies who take a different view of the question from that which we
entertain, we feel that it would be a great cruelty to a much larger number of the
cultivated, refined, delicate, and lovely women of this country who seek no such
distinction, who would enjoy no such privilege, who would with woman-like delicacy
shrink from the discharge of any such obligation, and who would sincerely regret
that, what they consider the folly of the state, had imposed upon them any such
unpleasant duties.

But should female suffrage be once established it would become an imperative
necessity that the very large class, indeed much the largest class, of the women of
this country of the character last described should yield, contrary to their
inclinations and wishes, to the necessity which would compel them to engage in
political strife. We apprehend no one who has properly considered this question will
doubt if female suffrage should be established that the more ignorant and less
refined portions of the female population of this country, to say nothing of the
baser class of females, laying aside feminine delicacy and disregarding the sacred
duties devolving upon them, to which we have already referred, would rush to the
polls and take pleasure in the crowded association which the situation would compel,
of the two sexes in political meetings, and at the ballot-box.

If all the baser and more ignorant portion of the female sex crowd to the polls
and deposit their suffrage this compels the very large class of intelligent,
virtuous, and refined females, including wives and mothers, who have much more
important duties to perform, to leave their sacred labors at home, relinquishing for
a time the God-given important trust which has been placed in their hands, to go
contrary to their wishes to the polls and vote, to counteract the suffrage of the
less worthy class of our female population. If they fail to do this the best
interests of the country must suffer by a preponderance of ignorance and vice at the
polls.

It is now a problem which perplexes the brain of the ablest statesmen to determine
how we will best preserve our republican system as against the demoralizing influence
of the large class of our present citizens and voters who by reason of their
illiteracy are unable to read or write the ballot they cast.

Certainly no statesman who has carefully observed the situation would desire to
add very largely to this burden of ignorance. But who does not apprehend the fact if
universal female suffrage should be established that we will, especially in the
Southern States, add a very large number to the voting population whose ignorance
utterly disqualifies them for discharging the trust. If our colored population who
were so recently slaves that even the males who are voters have had but little
opportunity to educate themselves or to be educated, whose ignorance is now exciting
the liveliest interest of our statesmen, are causes of serious apprehension, what is
to be said in favor of adding to the voting population all the females of that race,
who, on account of the situation in which they have been placed, have had much less
opportunity to be educated than even the males of their own race.

We do not say it is their fault that they are not educated, but the fact is
undeniable that they are grossly ignorant, with very few exceptions, and probably not
one in a hundred of them could read and write the ballot that they would be
authorized to cast. What says the statesman to the propriety of adding this immense
mass of ignorance to the voting population of the Union in its present condition?

It may be said that their votes could be offset by the ballots of the educated and
refined ladies of the white race in the same section; but who does not know that the
ignorant female voters would be at the polls en masse, while the refined and
educated, shrinking from public contact on such occasions, would remain at home and
attend to their domestic and other important duties, leaving the country too often to
the control of those who could afford under the circumstances to take part in the
strifes of politics, and to come in contact with the unpleasant surroundings before
they could reach the polls. Are we ready to expose the country to the demoralization,
and our institutions to the strain, which would be placed upon them for the
gratification of a minority of the virtuous and good of our female population at the
expense of the mortification of a very large majority of the same sex?

It has been frequently urged with great earnestness by those who advocate woman
suffrage that the ballot is necessary to the women to enable them to protect
themselves in securing occupations, and to enable them to realize the same
compensation for the like labor which is received by men. This argument is plausible,
but upon a closer examination it will be found to possess but little real force. The
price of labor is and must continue to be governed by the law of supply and demand,
and the person who has the most physical strength to labor, and the most pursuits
requiring such strength open for employment, will always command the higher
prices.

Ladies make excellent teachers in public schools; many of them are every way the
equals of their male competitors, and still they secure less wages than males. The
reason is obvious. The number of ladies who offer themselves as teachers is much
larger than the number of males who are willing to teach. The larger number of
females offer to teach because other occupations are not open to them. The smaller
number of males offer to teach because other more profitable occupations are open to
most males who are competent to teach. The result is that the competition for
positions of teachers to be filled by ladies is so great as to reduce the price: but
as males can not be employed at that price, and are necessary in certain places in
the schools, those seeking their services have to pay a higher rate for them.

Persons having a larger number of places open to them with fewer competitors
command higher wages than those who have a smaller number of places open to them with
more competitors. This is the law of society. It is the law of supply and demand,
which can not be changed by legislation. Then it follows that the ballot can not
enable those who have to compete with the larger number to command the same prices as
those who compete with the smaller number in the labor market. As the Legislature has
no power to regulate in practice that of which the advocates of woman suffrage
complain, the ballot in the hands of females could not aid its regulation.

The ballot can not impart to the female physical strength which she does not
possess, nor can it open to her pursuits which she does not have physical ability to
engage in; and as long as she lacks the physical strength to compete with men in the
different departments of labor, there will be more competition in her department, and
she must necessarily receive less wages.

But it is claimed again, that females should have the ballot as a protection
against the tyranny of bad husbands. This is also delusive. If the husband is brutal,
arbitrary, or tyrannical, and tyrannizes over her at home, the ballot in her hands
would be no protection against such injustice, but the husband who compelled her to
conform to his wishes in other respects would also compel her to use the ballot, if
she possessed it, as he might please to dictate. The ballot would therefore be of no
assistance to the wife in such case, nor could it heal family strifes or dissensions.
On the contrary, one of the gravest objections to placing the ballot in the hands of
the female sex is that it would promote unhappiness and dissensions in the family
circle. There should be unity and harmony in the family.

At present the man represents the family in meeting the demands of the law and of
society upon the family. So far as the rougher, coarser duties are concerned, the man
represents the family, and the individuality of the woman is not brought into
prominence; but when the ballot is placed in the hands of woman her individuality is
enlarged, and she is expected to answer for herself the demands of the law and of
society on her individual account, and not as the weaker member of the family to
answer by her husband. This naturally draws her out from the dignified and cultivated
refinement of her womanly position, and brings her into a closer contact with the
rougher elements of society, which tends to destroy that higher reverence and respect
which her refinement and dignity in the relation of wife and mother have always
inspired in those who approached her in her honorable and useful retirement.

When she becomes a voter she will be more or less of a politician, and will form
political alliances or unite with political parties which will frequently be
antagonistic to those to which her husband belongs. This will introduce into the
family circle new elements of disagreement and discord which will frequently end in
unhappy divisions, if not in separation or divorce. This must frequently occur when
she becomes an active politician, identified with a party which is distasteful to her
husband. On the other hand, if she unites with her husband in party associations and
votes with him on all occasions so as not to disturb the harmony and happiness of the
family, then the ballot is of no service as it simply duplicates the vote of the male
on each side of the question and leaves the result the same.

Again, if the family is the unit of society, and the state is composed of an
aggregation of families, then it is important to society that there be as many happy
families as possible, and it becomes the duty of man and woman alike to unite in the
holy relations of matrimony.

As this is the only legal and proper mode of rendering obedience to the early
command to multiply and replenish the earth, whatever tends to discourage the holy
relation of matrimony is in disobedience of this command, and any change which
encourages such disobedience is violative of the Divine law, and can not result in
advantage to the state. Before forming this relation it is the duty of young men who
have to take upon themselves the responsibilities of providing for and protecting the
family to select some profession or pursuit that is most congenial to their tastes,
and in which they will be most likely to be successful; but this can not be permitted
to the young ladies, or if permitted it can not be practically carried out after
matrimony.

As it might frequently happen that the young man had selected one profession or
pursuit, and the young lady another, the result would be that after marriage she must
drop the profession or pursuit of her choice, and employ herself in the sacred duties
of wife and mother at home, and in rearing, educating, and elevating the family,
while the husband pursues the profession of his choice.

It may be said, however, that there is a class of young ladies who do not choose
to marry, and who select professions or avocations and follow them for a livelihood.
This is true, but this class, compared with the number who unite in matrimony with
the husbands of their choice, is comparatively very small, and it is the duty of
society to encourage the increase of marriages rather than of celibacy. If the larger
number of females select pursuits or professions which require them to decline
marriage, society to that extent is deprived of the advantage resulting from the
increase of population by marriage.

It is said by those who have examined the question closely that the largest number
of divorces is now found in the communities where the advocates of female suffrage
are most numerous, and where the individuality of woman as related to her husband,
which such a doctrine inculcates, is increased to the greatest extent.

If this be true, it is a strong plea in the interests of the family and of society
against granting the petition of the advocates of woman suffrage.

After all, this is a local question, which properly belongs to the different
States of the Union, each acting for itself, and to the Territories of the Union,
when not acting in conflict with the laws of the United States.

The fact that a State adopts the rule of female suffrage neither increases nor
diminishes its power in the Union, as the number of Representatives in Congress to
which each State is entitled and the number of members in the electoral college
appointed by each is determined by its aggregate population and not by the proportion
of its voting population, so long as no race or class as defined by the Constitution
is excluded from the exercise of the right of suffrage.

Now, Mr. President, I shall make no apology for adding to what I have said some
extracts from an able and well-written volume, entitled “Letters from the Chimney
Corner,” written by a highly cultivated lady of Chicago. This gifted lady has
discussed the question with so much clearness and force that I can make no mistake by
substituting some of the thoughts taken from her book for anything I might add on
this question. While discussing the relations of the sexes, and showing that neither
sex is of itself a whole, a unit, and that each requires to be supplemented by the
other before its true structural integrity can be achieved, she adds:

Now, everywhere throughout nature, to the male and female ideal, certain distinct
powers and properties belong. The lines of demarkation are not always clear, not
always straight lines: they are frequently wavering, shadowy, and difficult to
follow, yet on the whole whatever physical strength, personal aggressiveness, the
intellectual scope and vigor which manage vast material enterprises are emphasized,
there the masculine ideal is present. On the other hand, wherever refinement,
tenderness, delicacy, sprightliness, spiritual acumen, and force, are to the fore,
there the feminine ideal is represented, and these terms will be found nearly enough
for all practical purposes to represent the differing endowments of actual men and
women. Different powers suggest different activities, and under the division of labor
here indicated the control of the state, legislation, the power of the ballot, would
seem to fall to the share of man. Nor does this decision carry with it any injustice,
any robbery of just or natural right to woman.

In her hands is placed a moral and spiritual power far greater than the power of
the ballot. In her married or reproductive state the forming and shaping of human
souls in their most plastic period is her destiny. Nor do her labors or her
responsibilities end with infancy or childhood. Throughout his entire course, from
the cradle to the grave, man is ever under the moral and spiritual influence and
control of woman. With this power goes a tremendous responsibility for its true
management and use. If woman shall ever rise to the full height of her power and
privileges in this direction, she will have enough of the world’s work upon her hands
without attempting legislation.

It may be argued that the possession of civil power confers dignity, and is of
itself a re-enforcement of whatever natural power an individual may possess; but the
dignity of womanhood, when it is fully understood and appreciated, needs no such
re-enforcement, nor are the peculiar needs of woman such as the law can reach.

Whenever laws are needed for the protection of her legal status and rights, there
has been found to be little difficulty in obtaining them by means of the votes of
men; but the deeper and more vital needs of woman and of society are those which are
outside altogether of the pale of the law, and which can only be reached by the moral
forces lodged in the hands of woman herself, acting in an enlarged and general
capacity.

For instance, whenever a man or woman has been wronged in marriage the law may
indeed step in with a divorce, but does that divorce give back to either party the
dream of love, the happy home, the prattle of children, and the sweet outlook for
future years which were destroyed by that wrong? It is not a legal power which is
needed in this case; it is a moral power which shall prevent the wrong, or, if
committed, shall induce penitence, forgiveness, a purer life, and the healing of the
wound.

This power has been lodged by the Creator in the hands of woman herself, and if
she has not been rightly trained to use it there is no redress for her at the hands
of the law. The law alone can never compel men to respect the chastity of woman. They
must first recognize its value in themselves by living up to the high level of their
duties as maidens, wives, and mothers; they must impress men with the beauty and
sacredness of purity, and then whatever laws are necessary and available for its
protection will be easily obtained, with a certainty, also, that they can be
enforced, because the moral sentiments of men will be enlisted in their support.

Privileges bring responsibilities, and before women clamor for more work to do, it
were better that they should attend more thoughtfully to the duties which lie all
about them, in the home and social circle. Until society is cleansed of the moral
foulness which infests it, which, as we have seen, lies beyond the reach of civil
law, women have no call to go forth into wider fields, claiming to be therein the
rightful and natural purifiers. Let them first make the home sweet and pure, and the
streams which flow therefrom will sweeten and purify all the rest.

As between the power of the ballot and this moral force exerted by women there can
not be an instant’s doubt as to the choice. In natural refinement and elevation of
character, the ideal woman stands a step above the ideal man. If she descends from
this fortunate position to take part in the coarse scramble for material power, what
chance will she have as against man’s aggressive forces; and what can she possibly
gain that she can not win more directly, more effectually, and with far more dignity
and glory to herself by the exercise of her own womanly prerogatives? She has, under
God, the formation and rearing of men in her own hands.

If they do not turn out in the end to be men who respect woman, who will protect
and defend her in the exercise of every one of her God-given rights, it is because
she has failed in her duty toward them; has not been taught to comprehend her own
power and to use it to its best ends. For women to seek to control men by the power
of suffrage is like David essaying the armor of Saul. What woman needs is her own
sheepskin sling and her few smooth pebbles from the bed of the brook, and then let
her go forth in the name of the Lord God of Hosts, and a victory as sure and decisive
as that of the shepherd of Israel awaits her.

Again, in chapter 4, entitled “The Power of the Home,” the author says, in
substance: It is, perhaps, of minor consequence that women should have felt
themselves emancipated from buttons and bread making; but that they should have
learned to look in the least degree slightingly upon the great duties of women as
lovers of husbands, as lovers of children, as the fountain and source of what is
highest and purest and holiest, and not less of what is homely and comfortable and
satisfying in the home, is a serious misfortune. Women can hardly be said to have
lost, perhaps what they have so rarely in any age generally attained, that dignity
which knows how to command, united with a sweetness which seems all the while to be
complying, the power, supple and strong, which rescues the character of the ideal
woman from the charge of weakness, and at the same time exhibits its utmost of grace
and fascination.

But that of late years the gift has not been cultivated, has not, in fact, thrown
out such natural off-shoots as gave grace and glory to some earlier social epochs,
must be evident, it would seem, to any thoughtful observer.

If, instead of trying to grasp more material power, women would pursue those
studies and investigations which tend to make them familiar with what science teaches
concerning the influence of the mother and the home upon the child; of how completely
the Creator in giving the genesis of the human race into the hands of woman has made
her not only capable of, but responsible for, the regeneration of the world; if they
would reflect that nature by making man the bond slave of his passions has put the
lever into the hands of woman by which she can control him, and if they would learn
to use these powers, not as bad women do for vile and selfish ends, but as the
mothers of the race ought, for pure, holy, and redemptive purposes, then would the
sphere of women be enlarged to some purpose; the atmosphere of the home would be
purified and vitalized, and the work of redeeming man from his vices would be
hopefully begun.

The following thoughts are also from the same source: Is this emancipation of
woman, if that is the proper phrase for it, a final end, or only the means to an end?
Are women to be as the outcome of it emancipated from their world-old sphere of
marriage and motherhood, and control of the moral and spiritual destinies of the
race, or are they to be emancipated, in order to the proper fulfillment of these
functions? It would seem that most of the advanced women of the day would answer the
first of these questions affirmatively. Women, I think it has been authoritatively
stated, are to be emancipated in order that they may become fully developed human
beings, something broader and stronger, something higher and finer, more delicate,
more aesthetic, more generally rarefied and sublimated than the old-fashioned type of
womanhood, the wife and the mother.

And the result of the woman movement seems more or less in a line thus far with
this theoretic aim. Of advanced women a less proportion are inclined to marry than of
the old-fashioned type; of those who do marry a great proportion are restless in
marriage bonds or seek release from them, while of those who do remain in married
life many bear no children, and few, indeed, become mothers of large families. The
woman’s vitality is concentrated in the brain and fructifies more in intellectual
than in physical forms.

Now, women who do not marry are one of two things; either they belong to a class
which we shrink from naming or they become old maids.

An old maid may be in herself a very useful and commendable person and a valuable
member of society; many are all this. But she has still this sad drawback, she can
not perpetuate herself; and since all history and observation go to prove that the
great final end of creation, whatever it may be, can only be achieved through the
perpetuity and increasing progress of the race, it follows that unmarried woman is
not the most necessary, the indispensable type of woman. If there were no other class
of females left upon the earth but the women who do not bear children, then the world
would be a failure, creation would be nonplussed.

If, then, the movement for the emancipation of woman has for its final end the
making of never so fine a quality, never so sublimated a sort of non-child-bearing
women, it is an absurdity upon the face of it.

From the standpoint of the Chimney Corner it appears that too many even of the
most gifted and liberal-minded of the leaders in the woman’s rights movement have not
yet discovered this flaw in their logic. They seek to individualize women, not
seeing, apparently, that individualized women, old maids, and individualized men, old
bachelors, though they may be useful in certain minor ways, are, after all, to speak
with the relentlessness of science, fragmentary and abortive, so far as the great
scheme of the universe is concerned, and often become, in addition, seriously
detrimental to the right progress of society. The man and woman united in marriage
form the unit of the race; they alone rightly wield the self-perpetuating power upon
which all human progress depends; without which the race itself must perish, the
universe become null.

Reaching this point of the argument, it becomes evident that while the development
of the individual man or individual woman is no doubt of great importance, since, as
Margaret Fuller has justly said, “there must be units before there can be union,” it
is chiefly so because of their relation to each other. Their character should be
developed with a view to their future union with each other, and not to be
independent of it. When the leaders of the woman’s movement fully realize this, and
shape their course accordingly, they will have made a great advance both in the value
of their work and its claim upon public sympathy. Moreover, they will have reached a
point from which it will be possible for them to investigate reform and idealize the
relations existing between men and women.

Mr. President, it is no part of my purpose in any manner whatever to speak
disrespectfully of the large number of intelligent ladies, sometimes called
strong-minded, who are constantly going before the public, agitating this question of
female suffrage. While some of them may, as is frequently charged, be courting
notoriety, I have no doubt they are generally earnestly engaged in a work which, in
their opinion, would better their condition and would do no injury to society.

In all this, however, I believe they are mistaken.

I think the mental and physical structure of the sexes, of itself, sufficiently
demonstrates the fact that the sterner, more laborious, and more difficult duties of
society are to be performed by the male sex; while the more delicate duties of life,
which require less physical strength, and the proper training of youth, with the
proper discharge of domestic duties, belong to the female sex. Nature has so arranged
it that the male sex can not attend properly to the duties assigned by the law of
nature to the female sex, and that the female sex can not discharge the more rigorous
duties required of the male sex.

This movement is an attempt to reverse the very laws of our being, and to drag
woman into an arena for which she is not suited, and to devolve upon her onerous
duties which the Creator never intended that she should perform.

While the husband discharges the laborious and fatiguing duties of important
official positions, and conducts political campaigns, and discharges the duties
connected with the ballot-box, or while he bears arms in time of war, or discharges
executive or judicial duties, or the duties of juryman, requiring close confinement
and many times great mental fatigue; or while the husband in a different sphere of
life discharges the laborious duties of the plantation, the workshop, or the machine
shop, it devolves upon the wife to attend to the duties connected with home life, to
care for infant children, and to train carefully and properly those who in the
youthful period are further advanced towards maturity.

The woman with the infant at the breast is in no condition to plow on the farm,
labor hard in the workshop, discharge the duties of a juryman, conduct causes as an
advocate in court, preside in important cases as a judge, command armies as a
general, or bear arms as a private. These duties, and others of like character,
belong to the male sex; while the more important duties of home, to which I have
already referred, devolve upon the female sex. We can neither reverse the physical
nor the moral laws of our nature, and as this movement is an attempt to reverse these
laws, and to devolve upon the female sex important and laborious duties for which
they are not by nature physically competent, I am not prepared to support this
bill.

My opinion is that a very large majority of the American people, yes, a large
majority of the female sex, oppose it, and that they act wisely in doing so. I
therefore protest against its passage.

Mr. DOLPH. Mr. President, I shall not detain the Senate long. I do not feel
satisfied when a measure so important to the people of this country and to humanity
is about to be submitted to a vote of the Senate to remain wholly silent.

The pending question is upon the adoption of a joint resolution in the usual form
submitting to the legislatures of the several States of the Union for their
ratification an additional article as an amendment to the Federal Constitution, which
is as follows:

ARTICLE—,

SECTION I. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

SEC. 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce
the provisions of this article.

Fortunately for the perpetuity of our institutions and the prosperity of the
people, the Federal Constitution contains a provision for its own amendment. The
framers of that instrument foresaw that time and experience, the growth of the
country and the consequent expansion of the Government, would develop the necessity
for changes in it, and they therefore wisely provided in Article V as follows:

The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall
propose amendments to this Constitution, or, on the application of the Legislatures
of two-thirds of the several States, shall call a convention for proposing
amendments, which in either case shall be valid to all intents and purposes, as
part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three-fourths of
the several States, or by conventions in three-fourths thereof, as the one or the
other mode of ratification may be proposed by the Congress.

Under this provision, at the first session of the First Congress, ten amendments
were submitted to the Legislatures of the several States, in due time ratified by the
constitutional number of States, and became a part of the Constitution. Since then
there have been added to the Constitution by the same process five different
articles.

To secure an amendment to the Constitution under this article requires the
concurrent action of two-thirds of both branches of Congress and the affirmative
action of three-fourths of the States. Of course Congress can refuse to submit a
proposed amendment to the Legislatures of the several States, no matter how general
the demand for such submission may be, but I am inclined to believe with the senior
Senator from New Hampshire [Mr. BLAIR], in the proposition submitted by him in a
speech he made early in the present session upon the pending resolution, that the
question as to whether this resolution shall be submitted to the Legislatures of the
several States for ratification does not involve the right or policy of the proposed
amendment. I am also inclined to believe with him that should the demand by the
people for the submission by Congress to the Legislatures of the several States of a
proposed amendment become general it would he the duty of the Congress to submit such
amendment irrespective of the individual views of the members of Congress, and thus
give the people through their Legislative Assemblies power to pass upon the question
as to whether or not the Constitution should be amended. At all events, for myself, I
should not hesitate to vote to submit for ratification by the Legislatures of the
several States an amendment to the Constitution although opposed to it if I thought
the demand for it justified such a course.

But I shall vote for the pending joint resolution because I am in favor of the
proposed amendment. I have been for many years convinced that the demand made by
women for the right of suffrage is just, and that of all the distinctions which have
been made between citizens in the laws which confer or regulate suffrage the
distinction of sex is the least defensible.

I am not going to discuss the question at length at this time. The arguments for
and against woman suffrage have been often stated in this Chamber, and are pretty
fully set forth in the majority and minority reports of the Senate committee upon the
pending joint resolution. The arguments in its favor were fully stated by the senior
Senator from New Hampshire in his able speech upon the question before alluded to,
and now the objections to it have been forcibly and elaborately presented by the
senior Senator from Georgia [Mr. BROWN]. I could not expect by anything I could say
to change a single vote in this body, and the public is already fully informed upon
the question, as the arguments in favor of woman suffrage have been voiced in every
hamlet in the land with great ability. No question in this country has been more ably
discussed than this has been by the women themselves.

I do not think a single objection which is made to woman suffrage is tenable. No
one will contend but that women have sufficient capacity to vote intelligently.

Sir, sacred and profane history is full of the records of great deeds by women.
They have ruled kingdoms, and, my friend from Georgia to the contrary
notwithstanding, they have commanded armies. They have excelled in statecraft, they
have shone in literature, and, rising superior to their environments and breaking the
shackles with which custom and tyranny have bound them, they have stood side by side
with men in the fields of the arts and the sciences.

If it were a fact that woman is intellectually inferior to man, which I do not
admit, still that would be no reason why she should not be permitted to participate
in the formation and control of the Government to which she owes allegiance. If we
are to have as a test for the exercise of the right of suffrage a qualification based
upon intelligence, let it be applied to women and to men alike. If it be admitted
that suffrage is a right, that is the end of controversy; there can no longer be any
argument made against woman suffrage, because, if it is her right, then, if there
were but one poor woman in all the United States demanding the right of suffrage, it
would be tyranny to refuse the demand.

But our friends say that suffrage is not a right; that it is a matter of grace
only; that it is a privilege which is conferred upon or withheld from individual
members of society by society at pleasure. Society as here used means man’s
government, and the proposition assumes the fact that men have a right to institute
and control governments for themselves and for women. I admit that in the governments
of the world, past and present, men as a rule have assumed to be the ruling classes;
that they have instituted governments from participation in which they have excluded
women; that they have made laws for themselves and for women, and as a rule have
themselves administered them; but that the provisions conferring or regulating
suffrage in the constitutions and laws of governments so constituted determined the
question of the right of suffrage can not be maintained.

Let us suppose, if we can, a community separated from all other communities,
having no organized government, owing no allegiance to any existing governments,
without any knowledge of the character of present or past governments, so that when
they come to form a government for themselves they can do so free from the bias or
prejudice of custom or education, composed of an equal number of men and women,
having equal property rights to be defined and to be protected by law. When such
community came to institute a government—and it would have an undoubted right
to institute a government for itself, and the instinct of self-preservation would
soon lead them to do so—will my friend from Georgia tell me by what right,
human or divine, the male portion of that community could exclude the female portion,
although equal in number and having equal property rights with the men, from
participation in the formation of such government and in the enactment of laws for
the government of the community? I understand the Senator, if he should answer, would
say that he believes the Author of our existence, the Ruler of the universe, has
given different spheres to man and woman. Admit that; and still neither in nature nor
in the revealed will of God do I find anything to lead me to believe that the Creator
did not intend that a woman should exercise the right of suffrage.

During the consideration by this body at the last session of the bill to admit
Washington Territory into the Union, referring to the fact that in that Territory
woman had been enfranchised, I briefly submitted my views on this subject, which I
ask the Secretary to read, so that it may be incorporated in my remarks.

The Secretary read as follows:

Mr. President, there is another matter which I consider pertinent to this
discussion, and of too much importance to be left entirely unnoticed on this
occasion. It is something new in our political history. It is full of hope for the
women of this country and of the world, and full of promise for the future of
republican institutions. I refer to the fact that in Washington Territory the right
of suffrage has been extended to women of proper age, and that the delegates to the
constitutional convention to be held under the provisions of this bill, should it
become a law, will, under existing laws of the Territory, be elected by its
citizens without distinction as to sex, and the constitution to be submitted to the
people will be passed upon in like manner.

I do not intend to discuss the question of woman suffrage upon this occasion,
and I refer to it mainly for the purpose of directing attention to the advanced
position which the people of this Territory have taken upon this question. I do not
believe the proposition so often asserted that suffrage is a political privilege
only, and not a natural right. It is regulated by the constitution and laws of a
State I grant, but it needs no argument, it appears to me, to show that a
constitution and laws adopted and enacted by a fragment of the whole body of the
people, but binding alike on all, is a usurpation of the powers of government.

Government is but organized society. Whatever its form, it has its origin in the
necessities of mankind and is indispensable for the maintenance of civilized
society. It is essential to every government that it should represent the supreme
power of the State, and be capable of subjecting the will of its individual
citizens to its authority. Such a government can only derive its just powers from
the consent of the governed, and can be established only under a fundamental law
which is self-imposed. Every citizen of suitable age and discretion who is to be
subject to such a government has, in my judgment, a natural right to participate in
its formation. It is a significant fact that should Congress pass this bill and
authorize the people of Washington Territory to frame a State constitution and
organize a State government, the fundamental law of the State will be made by all
the citizens of the State to be subject to it, and not by one-half of them. And we
shall witness the spectacle of a State government founded in accordance with the
principles of equality, and have a State at last with a truly republican form of
government.

The fathers of the Republic enunciated the doctrine “that all men are created
equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It is strange that
any one in this enlightened age should be found to contend that this declaration is
true only of men, and that a man is endowed by his Creator with inalienable rights
not possessed by a woman. The lamented Lincoln immortalized the expression that
ours is a Government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” and yet it
is far from that. There can be no government by the people where one-half of them
are allowed no voice in its organization and control. I regard the struggle going
on in this country and elsewhere for the enfranchisement of women as but a
continuation of the great struggle for human liberty which has, from the earliest
dawn of authentic history, convulsed nations, rent kingdoms, and drenched
battlefields with human blood. I look upon the victories which have been achieved
in the cause of woman’s enfranchisement in Washington Territory and elsewhere as
the crowning victories of all which have been won in the long-continued,
still-continuing contest between liberty and oppression, and as destined to exert a
greater influence upon the human race than any achieved upon the battlefield in
ancient or modern times.

Mr. DOLPH. Mr. President, the movement for woman suffrage has passed the stage of
ridicule. The pending joint resolution may not pass during this Congress, but the
time is not far distant when in every State of the Union and in every Territory women
will be admitted to an equal voice in the government, and that will be done whether
the Federal Constitution is amended or not. The first convention demanding suffrage
for women was held at Seneca Falls, in the State of New York, in 1848. To-day in
three of the Territories of the Union women enjoy full suffrage, in a large number of
States and Territories they are entitled to vote at school meetings, and in all the
States and Territories there is a growing sentiment in favor of this measure which
will soon compel respectful consideration by the law-making power.

No measure in this country involving such radical changes in our institutions and
fraught with so great consequences to this country and to humanity has made such
progress as the movement for woman suffrage. Denunciation will not much longer answer
for arguments by the opponents of this measure. The portrayal of the evils to flow
from woman suffrage such as we have heard pictured to-day by the Senator from
Georgia, the loss of harmony between husband and wife, and the consequent instability
of the marriage relation, the neglect of husband and children by wives and mothers
for the performance of their political duties, in short the incapacitating of women
for wives and mothers and companions, will not much longer serve to frighten the
timid. Proof is better than theory. The experiment has been tried and the predicted
evils to flow from it have not followed. On the contrary, if we can believe the
almost universal testimony, everywhere where it has been tried it has been followed
by the most beneficial results.

In Washington Territory, since woman was enfranchised, there have been two
elections. At the first there were 8,368 votes cast by women out of a total vote of
34,000 and over. At the second election, which was held in November last, out of
48,000 votes cast in the Territory, 12,000 votes were cast by women. The opponents of
female suffrage are silenced there. The Territorial conventions of both parties have
resolved in favor of woman suffrage, and there is not a proposition, so far as I know
in all that Territory, to repeal the law conferring suffrage upon woman.

I desire also to inform my friend from Georgia that since women were enfranchised
in Washington Territory nature has continued in her wonted courses. The sun rises and
sets; there is seed-time and harvest; seasons come and go. The population has
increased with the usual regularity and rapidity. Marriages have been quite as
frequent, and divorces have been no more so. Women have not lost their influence for
good upon society, but men have been elevated and refined. If we are to believe the
testimony which comes from lawyers, physicians, ministers of the gospel, merchants,
mechanics, farmers, and laboring men, the united testimony of the entire people of
the Territory, the results of woman suffrage there have been all that could be
desired by its friends. Some of the results in that Territory have been seen in
making the polls quiet and orderly, in awaking a new interest in educational
questions and in questions of moral reform, in securing the passage of beneficial
laws and the proper enforcement of them; and, as I have said before, in elevating
men, and that without injury to the women.

Mr. EUSTIS. Will the Senator allow me to ask him a question?

Mr. DOLPH. The Senator can ask me a question, if he chooses.

Mr. EUSTIS. If it be right and proper to confer the right of suffrage on women, I
ask the Senator whether he does not think that women ought to be required to serve on
juries?

Mr. DOLPH. I can answer that very readily. It does not necessarily follow that
because a woman is permitted to vote and thus have a voice in making the laws by
which she is to be governed and by which her property rights are to be determined,
she must perform such duty as service upon a jury. But I will inform the Senator that
in Washington Territory she does serve upon juries, and with great satisfaction to
the judges of the courts and to all parties who desire to see an honest and efficient
administration of law.

Mr. EUSTIS. I was aware of the fact that women are required to serve on juries in
Washington Territory because they are allowed to vote. I understand that under all
State laws those duties are considered correlative. Now, I ask the Senator whether he
thinks it is a decent spectacle to take a mother away from her nursing infant and
lock her up all night to sit on a jury?

Mr. DOLPH. I intended to say before I reached this point of being interrogated
that I not only do not believe that there is a single argument against woman suffrage
that is tenable, and I may be prejudiced in the matter, but that there is not a
single one that is really worthy of any serious consideration. The Senator from
Louisiana is a lawyer, and he knows very well that under such circumstances, a mother
with a nursing infant, that fact being made known to the court would be excused; that
would be a sufficient excuse. He knows himself, and he has seen it done a hundred
times, that for trivial excuses compared to that men have been excused from service
on a jury.

Mr. EUSTIS. I will ask the Senator whether he knows that under the laws of
Washington Territory that is a legal excuse from serving on a jury?

Mr. DOLPH. I am not prepared to state that it is; but there is no question in the
world but that any judge, that fact being made known, would excuse a woman from
attendance upon a jury. No special authority would be required. I will state further
that I have not learned that there has been any serious objection on the part of any
woman summoned for jury service in that Territory to perform that duty. I have not
learned that it has worked to the disadvantage of any family in the Territory; but I
do know that the judges of the courts have taken especial pains to commend the women
who have been called to serve upon juries for the manner in which they have
discharged their duty.

I wish to say further that there is no connection whatever between jury service
and the right of suffrage. The question as to who shall perform jury service, the
question as to who shall perform military service, the question as to who shall
perform civil official duty in a government is certainly a matter to be regulated by
the community itself; but the question of the right to participate in the formation
of a government which controls the life and the property and the destinies of its
citizens, I contend is a question of right that goes back of these mere regulations
for the protection of property and the punishment of offenses under the laws. It is a
matter of right which it is tyranny to refuse to any citizen demanding it.

Now, Mr. President, I shall close by saying: God speed the day when not only in
all the States of the Union and in all the Territories, but everywhere, woman shall
stand before the law freed from the last shackle which has been riveted upon her by
tyranny and the last disability which has been imposed upon her by ignorance, not
only in respect to the right of suffrage, but in every other respect the peer and
equal of her brother, man.

Mr. VEST. Mr. President, any measure of legislation which affects popular
government based on the will of the people as expressed through their suffrage is not
only important but vitally so. If this Government, which is based on the intelligence
of the people, shall ever be destroyed it will be by injudicious, immature, or
corrupt suffrage. If the ship of state launched by our fathers shall ever be
destroyed, it will be by striking the rock of universal, unprepared suffrage.
Suffrage once given can never be taken away. Legislatures and conventions may do
everything else; they never can do that. When any particular class or portion of the
community is once invested with this privilege it is used, accomplished, and
eternal.

The Senator who last spoke on this question refers to the successful experiment in
regard to woman-suffrage in the Territories of Wyoming and Washington. Mr. President,
it is not upon the plains of the sparsely-settled Territories of the West that woman
suffrage can be tested. Suffrage in the rural districts and sparsely settled regions
of this country must from the very nature of things remain pure when corrupt
everywhere else. The danger of corrupt suffrage is in the cities, and those masses of
population to which civilization tends everywhere in all history. Whilst the country
has been pure and patriotic, the cities have been the first cancers to appear upon
the body-politic in all ages of the world.

Wyoming Territory! Washington Territory! Where are their large cities? Where are
the localities in these Territories where the strain upon popular government must
come? The Senator from New Hampshire, who is so conspicuous in this movement,
appalled the country some months since by his ghastly array of illiteracy in the
Southern States. He proposes that $77,000,000 of the people’s money be taken in order
to strike down the great foe to republican government, illiteracy. How was that
illiteracy brought upon this country? It was by giving the suffrage to unprepared
voters. It is not my purpose to go back into the past and make any partisan or
sectional appeal, but it is a fact known to every intelligent man that in one single
act the right of suffrage was given without preparation to hundreds of thousands of
voters who to-day can scarcely read. That Senator proposes now to double, and more
than double, that illiteracy. He proposes to give the negro women of the South this
right of suffrage, utterly unprepared as they are for it.

In a convention some two years and a half ago in the city of Louisville an
intelligent negro from the South said the negro men could not vote the Democratic
ticket because the women would not live with them if they did. The negro men go out
in the hotels and upon the railroad cars. They go to the cities and by attrition they
wear away the prejudice of race; but the women remain at home, and their emotional
natures aggregate and compound the race-prejudice, and when suffrage is given them
what must be the result?

Mr. President, it is not my purpose to speak of the inconveniences, for they are
nothing more, of woman suffrage. I trust that as a gentleman I respect the feelings
of the ladies and their advocates. I am not here to ridicule. My purpose only is to
use legitimate argument as to a movement which commands respectful consideration, if
for no other reason than because it comes from women. But it is impossible to divest
ourselves of a certain degree of sentiment when considering this question.

I pity the man who can consider any question affecting the influence of woman with
the cold, dry logic of business. What man can, without aversion, turn from the
blessed memory of that dear old grandmother, or the gentle words and caressing hand
of that blessed mother gone to the unknown world, to face in its stead the idea of a
female justice of the peace or township constable? For my part I want when I go to my
home—when I turn from the arena where man contends with man for what we call
the prizes of this paltry world—I want to go back, not to be received in the
masculine embrace of some female ward politician, but to the earnest, loving look and
touch of a true woman. I want to go back to the jurisdiction of the wife, the mother;
and instead of a lecture upon finance or the tariff, or upon the construction of the
Constitution, I want those blessed, loving details of domestic life and domestic
love.

I have said I would not speak of the inconveniences to arise from woman
suffrage—I care not—whether the mother is called upon to decide as a
juryman or jury-woman rights of property or rights of life, whilst her baby is
“mewling and puking” in solitary confinement at home. There are other considerations
more important, and one of them to my mind is insuperable. I speak now respecting
women as a sex. I believe that they are better than men, but I do not believe they
are adapted to the political work of this world. I do not believe that the Great
Intelligence ever intended them to invade the sphere of work given to men, tearing
down and destroying all the best influences for which God has intended them.

The great evil in this country to-day is in emotional suffrage. The great danger
to-day is in excitable suffrage. If the voters of this country could think always
coolly, and if they could deliberate, if they could go by judgment and not by
passion, our institutions would survive forever, eternal as the foundations of the
continent itself; but massed together, subject to the excitements of mobs and of
these terrible political contests that come upon us from year to year under the
autonomy of our Government, what would be the result if suffrage were given to the
women of the United States?

Women are essentially emotional. It is no disparagement to them they are so. It is
no more insulting to say that women are emotional than to say that they are
delicately constructed physically and unfitted to become soldiers or workmen under
the sterner, harder pursuits of life.

What we want in this country is to avoid emotional suffrage, and what we need is
to put more logic into public affairs and less feeling. There are spheres in which
feeling should be paramount. There are kingdoms in which the heart should reign
supreme. That kingdom belongs to woman. The realm of sentiment, the realm of love,
the realm of the gentler and the holier and kindlier attributes that make the name of
wife, mother, and sister next to that of God himself.

I would not, and I say it deliberately, degrade woman by giving her the right of
suffrage. I mean the word in its full signification, because I believe that woman as
she is to-day, the queen of home and of hearts, is above the political collisions of
this world, and should always be kept above them.

Sir, if it be said to us that this is a natural right belonging to women, I deny
it. The right of suffrage is one to be determined by expediency and by policy, and
given by the State to whom it pleases. It is not a natural right; it is a right that
comes from the state.

It is claimed that if the suffrage be given to women it is to protect them.
Protect them from whom? The brute that would invade their rights would coerce the
suffrage of his wife, or sister, or mother as he would wring from her the hard
earnings of her toil to gratify his own beastly appetites and passions.

It is said that the suffrage is to be given to enlarge the sphere of woman’s
influence. Mr. President, it would destroy her influence. It would take her down from
that pedestal where she is to-day, influencing as a mother the minds of her
offspring, influencing by her gentle and kindly caress the action of her husband
toward the good and pure.

But I rise not to discuss this question, but to discharge a request. I know that
when a man attacks this claim for woman suffrage he is sneered at and ridiculed as
afraid to meet women in the contests for political honor and supremacy. If so, I
oppose to the request of these ladies the arguments of their own sex; but first, I
ask the Secretary to read a paper which has been sent to me with a request that I
place it before the Senate.

The Chief Clerk read as follows:

To the honorable Senate and House of Representatives:

We, the undersigned, respectfully remonstrate against the further extension of
suffrage to women.

H.P. Kidder.
O.W. Peabody.
R.M. Morse, jr.
Charles A. Welch.
Augustus Lowell.
Francis Parkman, LL.D.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich.
Edmund Dwight.
Charles H. Dalton.
Henry Lee.
W. Endicott, jr.
Samuel Wells.
Hon. John Lowell.
William G. Russell.
John C. Ropes.
Robert D. Smith.
George A. Gardner.
F. Haven, jr.
W. Powell Mason.
B.F. Stevens.
Charles Marsh.
Charles W. Eliot, president, Harvard University.
Prof. C.F. Dunbar.
Prof. J.P. Cook.
Prof. J. Lovering.
Prof. W.W. Goodwin.
Prof. Francis Bowen.
Prof. Wolcott Gibbs.
Prof. F.J. Child.
Prof. John Trowbridge.
Prof. G.I. Goodale.
Prof. J.B. Greenough.
Prof. H.W. Torrey.
Prof. J.H. Thayer.
Prof. E.W. Gurney.
Justin Winsor.
H.W. Paine.
Hon. W.E. Russell.
James C. Fiske.
George Putnam.
C.A. Curtis.
T. Jefferson Coolidge.
T.K. Lothrop.
Augustus P. Loring.
W.F. Draper.
George Draper.
Francis Brooks.
Rev. J.P. Bodfish, chancellor, Cathedral Holy Cross.
Rt. Rev. B.H. Paddock, bishop of Massachusetts.
Rev. Henry M. Dexter.
Rev. H. Brooke Herford.
Rev. O.B. Frothingham.
Rev. Ellis Wendell.
Rev. Geo. F. Staunton.
Rev. A.H. Heath.
Rev. W.H. Dowden.
Rev. J.B. Seabury.
Rev. C. Woodworth.
Rev. Leonard K. Storrs.
Rev. Howard N. Brown.
Rev. Edward J. Young.
Rev. Andrew P. Peabody.
Rev. George Z. Gray.
Rev. William Lawrence.
Rev. E.H. Hall.
Rev. Nicholas Hoppin.
Rev. David G. Haskins.
Rev. L.S. Crawford.
Rev. J.I.T. Coolidge.
Rev. Henry A. Hazen.
Rev. F.H. Hedge.
Rev. H.A. Parker.
Rev. Asa Bullard.
Rev. Alexander McKenzie.
Rev. J.F. Spaulding.
Rev. S.K. Lothrop.
Rev. E. Osborne, S.S.J.E.
Rev. Leighton Parks.
Rev. H.W. Foote.
Rev. Morton Dexter.
Rev. David H. Brewer.
Rev. Judson Smith.
Rev. L.W. Shearman.
Rev. Charles F. Dole.
Rev. George M. Boynton.
Rev. D.W. Waldron.
Rev. John A. Hamilton.
Rev. Isaac P. Langworthy.
Rev. E.K. Alden.
Rev. E.E. Strong.
Rev. M.D. Bisbee.
Rev. Oliver S. Dean.
Henry Parkman.
W.H. Sayward.
Charles A. Cummings.
Hon. S.C. Cobb.
Sidney Bartlett.
John C. Gray.
Louis Brandeis.
Hon. George G. Crocker.
John Bartlett.
John Fiske.
J.T.G. Nichols, M.D.
C.E. Vaughan, M.D.
John Homans, M.D.
Chauncey Smith.
Benj. Vaughan.
Charles F. Walcott.
J.B. Warner.
Walter Dean.
S.H. Kennard.
E. Whitney.
W.P.P. Longfellow.
H.O. Houghton.
J.M. Spelman.
J.C. Dodge.
E.S. Dixwell.
L.S. Jones.
G.W.C. Noble.
Charles Theodore Russell.
Clement L. Smith.
Ezra Farnsworth.
H.H. Edes.
Hon. R.R. Bishop.
H.H. Sprague.
Charles R. Codman.
Darwin E. Ware.
Arthur E. Thayer.
C.F. Choate.
Richard H. Dana.
O.D. Forbes.
Edward L. Geddings.
William V. Hutchings.
John L. Gardner.
L.M. Sargent.
H.L. Hallett.
E.P. Brown.
W.A. Tower.
J. Edwards.
G.H. Campbell.
Samuel Carr, jr.
Edward Brooks.
J. Randolph Coolidge.
J. Eliot Cabot.
Fred. Law Olmstead.
Charles S. Sargent.
C.A. Richardson.
Charles F. Shimmin.
Edward Bangs.
J.G. Freeman.
H.H. Coolidge.
David Hunt.
Alfred D. Hurd.
Edward I. Brown.
W.G. Saltonstall.
Thomas Weston, jr.
Richard M. Hodges, M.D.
Henry J. Bigelow, M.D.
Charles D. Homans, M.D.
George H. Lyman, M.D.
John Dixwell, M.D.
R.M. Pulsifer.
Edward L. Beard.
Solomon Lincoln.
G.B. Haskell.
John Boyle O’Reilly.
Arlo Bates.
Horace P. Chandler.
George O. Shattuck.
Hon. Alex. H. Rice.
Henry Cabot Lodge.
Francis Peabody, jr.
Harcourt Amory.
F.E. Parker.
A.S. Wheeler.
Jacob C. Rogers.
S.G. Snelling.
C.H. Barker.
J.H. Walker.
Forrest E. Barker.
John D. Wasbburn.
Martin Brimmer.
Fred L. Ames.
Hon. A.P. Martin.

Mr. DOLPH. If the Senator from Missouri will permit me, those names sounded very
much like the names of men.

Mr. VEST. They are men’s names. I did not say that the petition was signed by
ladies. I referred to the papers in my hand, which I shall proceed to lay before the
Senate.

I hold in my hand an argument against woman suffrage by a lady very well known in
the United States, and well known to the Senators from Massachusetts, a lady whose
philanthropy, whose exertions in behalf of the oppressed and poor and afflicted have
given her a national reputation. I refer to Mrs. Clara T. Leonard, the wife of a
distinguished lawyer, and whose words of themselves will command the attention of the
public.

The Chief Clerk read as follows:

[Letter from Mrs. Clara T. Leonard.]

The following letter was read by Thornton K. Lothrop, esq., at the hearing
before the Legislative committee on woman suffrage, January 29, 1884:

The principal reasons assigned for giving suffrage to women are these:

That the right to vote is a natural and inherent right of which women are
deprived by the tyranny of men.

That the fact that the majority of women do not wish for the right or privilege
to vote is not a reason for depriving the minority of an inborn right.

That women are taxed but not represented, contrary to the principles of free
government.

That society would gain by the participation of women in government, because
women are purer and more conscientious than men, and especially that the cause of
temperance would be promoted by women’s votes.

Those women who are averse to female suffrage hold differing opinions on all
these points, and are entitled to be heard fairly and without unjust reproach and
contempt on the part of “suffragists,” so called.

The right to vote is not an inherent right, but, like the right to hold land, is
conferred upon individuals by general consent, with certain limitations, and for
the general good of all.

It is as true to say that the earth was made for all its inhabitants, and that
human has a right to appropriate a portion of its surface, as to say that all
persons have a right to participate in government. Many persons can be found to
hold both these opinions. Experience has proved that the general good is promoted
by ownership of the soil, with the resultant inducement to its improvement.

Voting is simply a mathematical test of strength. Uncivilized nations strive for
mastery by physical combat, thus wasting life and resources. Enlightened societies
agree to determine the relative strength of opposing parties by actual count. God
has made women weaker than men, incapable of taking part in battles, indisposed to
make riot and political disturbance.

The vote which, in the hand of a man, is a “possible bayonet,” would not, when
thrown by a woman, represent any physical power to enforce her will. If all the
women in the State voted in one way, and all the men in the opposite one, the
women, even if in the majority, would not carry the day, because the vote would not
be an estimate of material strength and the power to enforce the will of the
majority. When one considers the strong passions and conflicts excited in
elections, it is vain to suppose that the really stronger would yield to the weaker
party.

It is no more unjust to deprive women of the ballot than to deprive minors, who
outnumber those above the age of majority, and who might well claim, many of them,
to be as well able to decide political questions as their elders.

If the majority of women are either not desirous to vote or are strongly opposed
to voting, the minority should yield in this, as they are obliged to do in all
other public matters. In fact, they will be obliged to yield, so long as the
present state of opinion exists among women in general, for legislators will
naturally consult the wishes of the women of their own families and neighborhood,
and be governed by them. There can be no doubt that in this State, where women are
highly respected and have great influence, the ballot would be readily granted to
them by men, if they desired it, or generally approved of woman suffrage. Women are
taxed, it is true; so are minors, without the ballot; it is untrue, to say that
either class is not represented. The thousand ties of relationship and friendship
cause the identity of interest between the sexes. What is good in a community for
men, is good also for their wives and sisters, daughters and friends. The laws of
Massachusetts discriminate much in favor of women, by exempting unmarried women of
small estate from taxation; by allowing women, and not men, to acquire a settlement
without paying a tax; by compelling husbands to support their wives, but exempting
the wife, even when rich, from supporting an indigent husband; by making men liable
for debts of wives, and not vice versa. In the days of the American
Revolution, the first cause of complaint was, that a whole people were taxed but
not represented.

To-day there is not a single interest of woman which is not shared and defended
by men, not a subject in which she takes an intelligent interest in which she
cannot exert an influence in the community proportional to her character and
ability. It is because the men who govern live not in a remote country, with
separate interests, but in the closest relations of family and neighborhood, and
bound by the tenderest ties to the other sex, who are fully and well represented by
relations, friends, and neighbors in every locality. That women are purer and more
conscientious than men, as a sex, is exceedingly doubtful when applied to politics.
The faults of the sexes are different, according to their constitution and habits
of life. Men are more violent and open in their misdeeds, but any person who knows
human nature well and has examined it in its various phases knows that each sex is
open to its peculiar temptation and sin; that the human heart is weak and prone to
evil without distinction of sex.

It seems certain that, were women admitted to vote and to hold political office,
all the intrigue, corruption, and selfishness displayed by men in political life
would also be found among women. In the temperance cause we should gain little or
nothing by admitting women to vote, for two reasons: first, that experience has
proved that the strictest laws can not be enforced if a great number of people
determine to drink liquor; secondly, because among women voters we should find in
our cities thousands of foreign birth who habitually drink beer and spirits daily
without intoxication, and who regard license or prohibitory laws as an infringement
of their liberty. It has been said that municipal suffrage for women in England has
proved a political success. Even if this is true, it offers no parallel to the
condition of things in our own cities. First, because there is in England a
property qualification required to vote, which excludes the more ignorant and
irresponsible classes, and makes women voters few and generally intelligent;
secondly, because England is an old, conservative country, with much emigration and
but little immigration.

Here is a constant influx of foreigners: illiterate, without love of our country
or interest in, or knowledge of, the history of our liberties, to whom, after a
short residence, we give a full share in our government. The result begins to be
alarming—enormous taxation, purchasable votes, demagogism,—all these
alarm the more thoughtful, and we are not yet sure of the end. It is a wise thought
that the possible bayonet or ruder weapon in the hands of our new citizens would be
even worse than the ballot, and our safer course is to give the immigrants a stake
and interest in the government. But when we learn that on an average one thousand
immigrants per week landed at the port of Boston in the past calendar year, is it
not well to consider carefully how we double, and more than double, the popular
vote, with all its dangers and its ingredients of ignorance and irresponsibility.
Last of all, it must be considered that the lives of men and women are essentially
different.

One sex lives in public, in constant conflict with the world; the other sex must
live chiefly in private and domestic life, or the race will be without homes and
gradually die out. If nearly one-half of the male voters of our State forego their
duty or privilege, as is the fact, what proportion of women would exercise the
suffrage? Probably a very small one. The heaviest vote would be in the cities, as
now, and the ignorant and unfit women would be the ready prey of the unscrupulous
demagogue. Women do not hold a position inferior to men. In this land they have the
softer side of life—the best of everything. There are, of course,
exceptions—individuals—whose struggle in life is hard, whose husbands
and fathers are tyrants instead of protectors; so there are bad wives, and men
ruined and disheartened by selfish, idle women.

The best work that a woman can do for the purifying of politics is by her
influence over men, by the wise training of her children, by her intelligent,
unselfish counsel to husband, brother, or friend, by a thorough knowledge and
discussion of the needs of her community. Many laws on the statute-books of our own
and other States have been the work of women. More might be added.

It is the opinion of many of us that woman’s power is greater without the ballot
or possibility of office-holding for gain. When standing outside of politics she
discusses great questions upon their merit. Much has been achieved by women in the
anti-slavery cause, the temperance cause, the improvement of public and private
charities, the reformation of criminals, all by intelligent discussion and
influence upon men. Our legislators have been ready to listen to women and carry
out their plans when well framed.

Women can do much useful public service upon boards of education, school
committees, and public charities, and are beginning to do such work. It is of vital
importance to the integrity of our charitable and educational administration that
it be kept out of politics. Is it not well that we should have one sex who have no
political ends to serve who can fill responsible positions of public trust? Voting
alone can easily be exercised by women without rude contact, but to attain any
political power women must affiliate themselves with men; because women will differ
on public questions, must attend primary meetings and caucuses, will inevitably
hold public office and strive for it; in short, women must enter the political
arena. This result will be repulsive to a large portion of the sex, and would tend
to make women unfeminine and combative, which would be a detriment to society.

It is well that men after the burden and heat of the day should return to homes
where the quiet side of life is presented to them. In these peaceful New England
homes of ours, great and noble men have been raised by wise and pious mothers, who
instructed them, not in politics, but in those general principles of justice,
integrity, and unselfishness which belong to and will insure statesmanship in the
men who are true to them. Here is the stronghold of the sex, weakest in body,
powerful for good or evil over the stronger one, whom women sway and govern, not by
the ballot and by greater numbers but by those gentle influences designed by the
Creator to soften and subdue man’s ruder nature.

CLARA T. LEONARD.

Mr. HOAR. The Senator from Missouri has alluded to me in connection with the name
of this lady. Perhaps he will allow me to make an additional statement to that which
I furnished him, in order that the statement about her may be complete.

All that the Senator from Missouri has said of the character and worth of Mrs.
Leonard is true. I do not know her personally. Her husband is my respected personal
friend, a lawyer of high standing and character. All that the Senator has said of her
ability is proved better than by any other testimony, by the very able and powerful
letter which has just been read. But Mrs. Leonard herself is the strongest refutation
of her own argument.

Politics, the political arena, political influence, political action in this
country consists, I suppose, in two things: one of them the being intrusted with the
administration of public affairs, and second, having the vote counted in determining
who shall be public servants, and what public measures shall prevail in the
commonwealth. Now, this lady was intrusted for years with one of the most important
public functions ever exercised by any human being in the commonwealth of
Massachusetts. We have a board, called the board of lunacy and charity, which
controls the large charities for which Massachusetts is famous and in many of which
she was the first among civilized communities, for the care of the pauper and the
insane and the criminal woman, and the friendless and the poor child. It is one of
the most important things, except the education of youth, which Massachusetts
does.

A little while ago a political campaign in Massachusetts turned upon a charge
which her governor made against the people of the commonwealth in regard to the
conduct of the great hospital at Tewksbury, where she was charged by her chief
executive magistrate with making sale of human bodies, with cruelty to the poor and
defenseless; and not only the whole country, but especially the whole people of
Massachusetts, were stirred to the very depths of their souls by that accusation.
Mrs. Clara T. Leonard, the writer of this letter, came forward and informed the
people that she had been one of the board who had managed that institution for years,
that she knew all about it through and through, that the accusation was false and a
slander; and before her word and her character the charge of that distinguished
governor went down and sunk into merited obscurity and ignominy.

Now, the question is whether the lady who can be intrusted with the charge of one
of the most important departments of government, and whose judgment in regard to its
character or proper administration is to be taken as gospel by the people where her
reputation extends, is not fit to be trusted to have her vote counted when the
question is who is to be the next person who is to be trusted with that
administration. Mrs. Leonard’s mistake is not in misunderstanding the nature either
of woman or of man, which she understands perfectly; it is in misunderstanding the
nature of politics, that is, the political arena; and this lady has been in the
political arena for the last ten years of her life, one of the most important and
potent forces therein.

It is true, as she says, that the wife and the mother educate the child and the
man, and when the great function of the state, as we hold in our State and as is fast
being held everywhere, is also the education of the child and the man, how does it
degrade that wife and mother, whose important function it is to do this thing, to
utter her voice and have her vote counted in regard to the methods and the policies
by which that education shall be conducted?

Why, Mr. President, Mrs. Leonard says in that letter that woman, the wife and the
maiden and the daughter, has no political ends to serve. If political ends be to
desire office for the greed of gain, if political ends be to get an unjust power over
other men, if political ends be to get political office by bribery or by mob violence
or by voting through the shutter of a beer-house, that is true: but the persons who
are in favor of this measure believe that those very things that Mrs. Leonard holds
up as the proper ends in the life of women are political ends and nothing else; that
the education of the child, that the preservation of the purity of the home, that the
care for the insane and the idiot and the blind and the deaf and the ruined and
deserted, are not only political ends but are the chief political ends for which this
political body, the state, is created: and those who desire the help of women in the
administration of the state desire it because of the ability which could write such a
letter as that on the wrong side, and because the qualities of heart and brain which
God has given to understand this class of political ends better than He has given it
to the masculine heart and brain are needed for their administration.

I have no word of disrespect for Mrs. Leonard, but I say that, in spite of herself
and her letter, her life and her character are the most abundant and ample refutation
of the belief which she erroneously thinks she entertains. Nobody invites these
ladies to a contest of bayonets; nobody who believes that government is a matter of
mere physical force asks the co-operation of woman in its administration. It is
because government is a conflict of such arguments as that letter states on the one
side, because the object of government is the object to which this lady’s own life is
devoted, that the friends of woman suffrage and of this amendment ask that it shall
be adopted.

Mr. VEST. Mr. President, my great personal respect for the Senator from
Massachusetts has given me an interval of enforced silence, and I have only to say
that if I should print my desultory remarks I should be compelled to omit his
interruption for fear that the amendment would be larger than the original bill.
[Laughter.]

I fail to see that anything which has fallen from the distinguished Senator has
convicted Mrs. Clara Leonard of inconsistency or has added anything to the argument
upon his side of the question. I have never said or intimated that there were women
who were not credible witnesses. I have never thought or intimated that there were
not women who were competent to administer the affairs of State or even to lead
armies. There have been such women, and I believe there will be to the end of time,
as there have been effeminate men who have been better adapted to the distaff and the
spindle than to the sword or to statesmanship. But these are exceptions in either
sex.

If this lady have, as she unquestionably has, the strength of intellect conceded
to her by the Senator from Massachusetts and evidenced by her own production, her
judgment of woman is worth that of a continent of men. The best judge of any woman is
a woman. The poorest judge of any woman is a man. Let any woman with defect or flaw
go amongst a community of men and she will be a successful impostor. Let her go
amongst a community of women and in one instant the instinct, the atmosphere
circumambient, will tell her story.

Mrs. Leonard gives us the result of her opinion and of her experience as to
whether this right of suffrage should be conferred upon her own sex. The Senator from
Massachusetts speaks of her evidence in a political campaign in Massachusetts and
that her unaided and single evidence crushed down the governor of that great State. I
thank the Senator for that statement. If Mrs. Leonard had been an office-holder and a
voter not a single township would have believed the truth of what she uttered.

Mr. HOAR. She was an office-holder, and the governor tried to put her out.

Mr. VEST. Ah! but what sort of an office-holder? She held the office delegated to
her by God himself, a ministering angel to the sick, the afflicted, and the insane.
What man in his senses would take from woman this sphere? What man would close to her
the charitable institutions and eleemosynary establishments of the country? That is
part of her kingdom; that is part of her undisputed sway and realm. Is that the
office to which woman suffragists of this country ask us now to admit them? Is it to
be the director of a hospital? Is it to the presidency of a board of visitors of an
eleemosynary institution? Oh, no; they want to be Presidents, to be Senators, and
Members of the House of Representatives, and, God save the mark, ministerial and
executive officers, sheriffs, constables, and marshals.

Of course, this lady is found in this board of directors. Where else should a true
woman be found? Where else has she always been found but by the fevered brow, the
palsied hand, the erring intellect, ay, God bless them, from the cradle to the grave
the guide and support of the faltering steps of childhood and the weakening steps of
old age!

Oh, no, Mr. President; this will not do. If we are to tear down all the blessed
traditions, if we are to desolate our homes and firesides, if we are to unsex our
mothers and wives and sisters and turn our blessed temples of domestic peace into
ward political-assembly rooms, pass this joint resolution. But for one I thank God
that I am so old-fashioned that I would not give one memory of my grandmother or my
mother for all the arguments that could be piled, Pelion upon Ossa, in favor of this
political monstrosity.

I now propose to read from a pamphlet sent to me by a lady whom I am not able to
characterize as a resident of any State, although I believe she resides in the State
of Maine. I do not know whether she be wife or mother. She signs this pamphlet as
Adeline D.T. Whitney. I have read it twice, and read it to pure and gentle and
intellectual women. I say to-day it ought to be in every household in this broad
land. It ought to be the domestic gospel of every true, gentle, loving, virtuous
woman upon all this continent. There is not one line or syllable in it that is not
written in letters of gold. I shall not read it, for my strength does not suffice,
nor will the patience of the Senate permit, but from beginning to end it breathes the
womanly sentiment which has made pure and great men and gentle and loving women.

I will venture to say, in my great admiration and respect for this woman, whether
she be married or single, she ought to be a wife, and ought to be a mother. Such a
woman could only have brave and wise men for sons and pure and virtuous women for
daughters. Here is her advice to her sex. I am only sorry that every word of it could
not be read in the Senate, but I have trespassed too long.

Mr. COCKRELL. Let it be printed in your remarks.

Mr. VEST. I shall ask that it be printed. I will undertake, however, to read only
a few sentences, not of exceptional superiority to the rest, because every sentence
is equal to every other. There is not one impure unintellectual aspiration or thought
throughout the whole of it. Would to God that I knew her, that I could thank her on
behalf of the society and politics of the United States for this production.

After all—

She says to her own sex—

After all, men work for women; or, if they think they do not, it would leave them
but sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such existence as they could arrange
without us.

Oh, how true that is; how true!

In blessed homes, or in scattered dissipations of show, amusement, or the worse
which these shows and amusements are but terribly akin to, women give purpose to and
direct the results of all men’s work. If the false standards of living first urge
them, until at length the horrible intoxication of the game itself drives them on
further and deeper, are we less responsible for the last state of those men than for
the first?

Do you say, if good women refused these things and tried for a simpler and truer
living, there are plenty of bad ones who would take them anyhow, and supply the
motive to deeper and more unmitigated evil? Ah, there come both answer and errand
again. Raise the fallen—at least, save the growing womanhood—stop the
destruction that rushes accelerating on, before you challenge new difficulty and
danger with an indiscriminate franchise. Are not these bad women the very “plenty”
that would out-balance you at the polls if you persist in trying the
“patch-and-plaster” remedy of suffrage and legislation.

Recognize the fact, the law, that your power, your high commission, is inward,
vital, formative and causal. Bring all questions of choice or duty to this test; will
it work at the heart of things, among the realities and forces? Try your own life by
this; remember that mere external is falsehood and death. The letter killeth. Give up
all that is only of the appearance, or even chiefly so, in conscious delight and
motive—in person, surrounding, pursuit. Let your self-presentation, your
home-making and adorning, your social effort and interest, your occupation and use of
talent, all shape and issue for the things that are essentially and integrally good,
and that the world needs to have prevail. Until you can do this, and induce such
doing, it is of little use to clamor for mere outward right or to contend that it
would be rightly applied.

This whole pamphlet is a magnificent illustration of that stupendous and vital
truth that the mission and sphere of woman is in the inward life of man; that she
must be the building up and governing power that comes from those better impulses,
those inward secrets of the heart and sentiment that govern men to do all that is
good and pure and holy and keep them from all that is evil.

Mr. President, the emotions of women govern. What would be the result of woman
suffrage if applied to the large cities of this country is a matter of speculation.
What women have done in times of turbulence and excitement in large cities in the
past we know. Open that terrible page of the French Revolution and the days of
terror, when the click of the guillotine and the rush of blood through the streets of
Paris demonstrated to what extremities the ferocity of human nature can be driven by
political passion. Who led those blood-thirsty mobs? Who shrieked loudest in that
hurricane of passion? Woman. Her picture upon the pages of history to-day is
indelible. In the city of Paris in those ferocious mobs the controlling agency, nay,
not agency, but the controlling and principal power, came from those whom God has
intended to be the soft and gentle angels of mercy throughout the world. But I have
said more than I intended. I ask that this pamphlet be printed in my remarks.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. If there be no objection, the pamphlet will be printed in
the RECORD as requested by the Senator from Missouri. The Chair hears no
objection.

The pamphlet is as follows:

THE LAW OF WOMAN-LIFE.

The external arguments on both sides the modern woman question have been pretty
thoroughly presented and well argued. It seems needless to repeat or recombine
them; but in one relation they have scarcely been handled with any direct purpose.
Justice and expediency have been the points insisted on or contested; these have
not gone back far enough; they have not touched the central fact, to set it forth
in its force and finality. The fact is original and inherent, behind and at the
root of the entire matter, with all its complication and circumstance. We have to
ask a question to which it is the answer, and whose answer is that of the whole
doubt and dispute.

What is the law of woman-life?

What was she made woman for, and not man?

Shall we look back to that old third chapter of Genesis?

When mankind had taken the knowledge and power of good and evil into their own
hands through the mere earthly wisdom of the serpent; when the woman had had her
hasty outside way and lead, according to the story, and woe had come of it, what
was the sentence? And was it a penance, or a setting right, or a promise, or all
three?

The serpent was first dealt with. The narrow policy, the keen cunning, the
little, immediate outlook, the expedient motive; all that was impersonated of
temporary shift and outward prudence in mortal affairs, regardless of, or blind to,
the everlasting issues; all, in short, that represented material and temporal
interest as a rule and order—and is not man’s external administration upon
the earth largely forced to be a legislation upon these principles and
economies?—was disposed of with the few words, “I will put enmity between
thee and the woman.”

Was this punishment—as reflected upon the woman—or the power of a
grand retrieval for her? Not to man, who had been led, and who would be led again,
by the woman, was the commission of holy revenge intrusted; but henceforth, “I will
set the woman against thee.” Against the very principle and live prompting of evil,
or of mere earthly purpose and motive. “Between thy seed and her seed.” Your
struggle with her shall be in and for the very life of the race. “It,” her life
brought forth, “shall bruise thy head,” thy whole power, and plan, and insidious
cunning; “and thou shall bruise,” shalt sting, torment, hinder, and trouble in the
way and daily going, “his heel,” his footstep. Thou, the subtle and creeping thing
of the ground, shalt lurk after and threaten with crookedness and poison the ways
of the men-children in their earth-toiling; the woman, the mother, shall turn upon
thee for and in them and shall beat thee

Unto the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception.”
The burden and the glory are set in one. The pain of the world shall be in your
heart; the trouble, the contradiction of it, shall be against your love and
insight. But your pain shall be your power; you shall be the life-bearer; you shall
hold the motive; yours shall be the desire, and your husband’s the dominion.
Therefore shall you bring your aspiration to him, that he may fulfill it for you.
“Your desire shall be unto him, and he shall rule.”

And unto Adam He said, “Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy
wife”—yes, and because thou wilt hearken—”thy sorrow shall be in the
labor of the earth; the ground shall be cursed;” in all material things shall be
cross and trouble, not against you, but “for your sake.” “In your sorrow you shall
eat of it all the days of your life.” Your need and struggle shall be with external
things, and with the ruling of them. “For your sake,” that you may learn your
mastery, inherit your true power, carry out with ease and understanding the desire
and need of the race, which woman represents, discerns afar, and pleads to you.

And Adam bowed before the Lord’s judgment; we are not told that he answered
anything to that; but he turned to his wife, and in that moment “called her name
Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” Then and there was the division
made; and to which, can we say, was the empire given? Both were set in conditions,
hemmed in to divine and special work: man, by the stress and sorrow of the ground;
woman, by the stress and sorrow of her maternity, and of her spiritual conception,
making her truly the “mother of all the living.”

At the beginning of human history, or tradition, then, we get the answer to our
question: the law of woman-life is central, interior, and from the heart of things;
the law of the man’s life is circumferential, enfolding, shaping, bearing on and
around, outwardly; wheel within wheel is the constitution of human power. It will
be an evil day for the world when the nave shall leave its place and contend for
that of the felloe. Iron-rimmed for its busy revolution and outward contact is the
life and strength of man; but the tempered steel is at the heart and within the
soul of the woman, that she may bear the silent pressure of the axle, and quietly
and invisibly originate and support the entire onward movement. “The spirit of the
living creature is in the wheels,” and they can move no otherwise. “When the living
creatures went, the wheels went by them; and when the living creatures were lifted
up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up.” That was what Ezekiel saw in his
vision.

There can he no going forward without a life and presence and impulse at the
center; and in the organization of humanity there is where the place and power of
woman have been put. For good or for evil, for the serpent or for the redeeming
Christ, she must move, must influence, must achieve beforehand, and at the heart;
she must be the mother of the race; she must be the mother of the Messiah. Not
woman in her own person, but “one born of woman,” is the Saviour. For everything
that is formed of the Creator, from the unorganized stone to the thought of
righteousness in the heart of the race, there must be a matrix; in the creation and
in the recreation of His human child God makes woman and the soul of woman His
blessed organ and instrument. When woman clears herself of her own perversions, her
self-imposed limitations, returns to her spiritual power and place, and cries,
“Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy word,” then shall
the spirit descend unto her; then shall come the redemption.

Take this for the starting-point; it is the key.

Within, behind, antecedent to all result in action, are the place and office of
the woman—by the law of woman-life. And all question of her deed and duty
should be brought to this test. Is it of her own, interior, natural relation,
putting her at her true advantage, harmonious with the key to which her life is
set? I think this suffrage question must settle itself precisely upon this
ground-principle, and that all argument should range conclusively around it.
Judging so, we should find, I think, that not at the polls, where the last
utterance of a people’s voice is given—where the results of character, and
conscience, and intelligence are shown—is her best and rightful work: on the
contrary, that it is useless here, unless first done elsewhere. But where little
children learn to think and speak—where men love and listen, and the word is
forming—is the office she has to fill, the errand she has to do. The question
is, can she do both? Is there need that she should do both? Does not the former and
greater include the latter and less?

Hers are indeed the primary meetings: in her nursery, her home, and social
circles; with other women, with young men, upon whose tone and character in her
maturity her womanhood and motherhood join their beautiful and mighty influence;
above all, among young girls—the “little women,” to whom the ensign and
commission are descending—is her undisputed power. Purify politics? Purify
the sewers? But what if, first, the springs, and reservoirs, and conduits could be
watched, guarded, filtered, and then the using be made clean and careful all
through the homes; a better system devised and carried out for separating,
neutralizing, destroying hurtful refuse? Then the poisonous gases might not be
creeping back upon us through our enforced economies, our makeshifts and stop-gaps
of outside legislation. For legislation is, after all, but cut-off, curb, and
patch; an external, troublesome, partial, uncertain application of hindrance and
remedy. What physician will work with lotion and plaster when he can touch, and
control, and heal at the very seat of the disease?

It is the beginning of the fulfillment that women have waked to the
consciousness that they have not as yet filled their full place in human life and
affairs. Only has not the mistake been made of contending with and grappling
results, when causes were in their hands? Have they not let go the mainsprings to
run after and effectually push with pins the refractory cogs upon the
wheel-rims?

Woman always deserts herself when she puts her life and motive and influence in
mere outsides. Outsides of fashion and place, outsides of charm and apparel,
outsides of work and ambition—she must learn that these are not her true
showing; she must go hack and put herself where God has called her to be with
Himself, at the silent, holy inmost; then we shall feel, if not at once, yet surely
soon or some time, a new order beginning. He, the Father of all, gives it to us to
be the motherhood. That is the great solving and upraising word; not limited to
mere parentage, but the law of woman-life. For good or for evil she mothers the
world.

Not all are called to motherhood in the literal sense, but all are called to the
great, true motherhood in some of its manifold trusts and obligations. “Noblesse
oblige;” you can not lay it down. “More are the children of the desolate than
of her who hath a husband.” All the little children that are born must look to
womanhood somewhere for mothering. Do they all get it? All the works and policies
of men look back somewhere for a true “desire” toward and by which only they can
rule. Is the desire of the woman—of the home, the mother-motive of the world
and human living—kept in the integrity and beauty for which it was intrusted
to her, that it might move the power of man to noble ends?

Do you ask the governing of the nation? You have the making of the nation. Would
you choose your statesmen? First make your statesmen.

Indeed the whole cause on trial may be summarily ended by the proving of an
alibi, an elsewhere of demand. Is woman needed at the caucuses, conventions, polls?
She is needed, at the same time, elsewhere. Two years of time and strength, of
thought and love, from some woman, are essential for every little human being, that
he may even begin a life. When you remember that every man is once a little child,
born of a woman, trained—or needing training—at a woman’s hands; that
of the little men, every one of whom takes and shapes his life so, come at length
the hand for the helm, the voice for the law, and the arm to enforce law—what
do you want more for a woman’s opportunity and control?

Which would you choose as a force, an advantage, in settling any question of
public moment, or as touching your own private interest through the general
management—the right to go upon election day and cast one vote, or a hold
beforehand upon the individual ear and attention of each voter now qualified? The
ability to present to him your argument, to show him the real point at issue, to
convince and persuade him of the right and lasting, instead of the weak and briefly
politic way? This initial privilege is in the hands of woman; assuming that she can
be brought to feel and act as a unit, which appears to be what is claimed for her
in the argument for her regeneration of the outer political word.

But already and separately, if every intelligent, conscientious woman can but
reach one man, and influence him from the principle involved—from her
interior perception of it, kept pure on purpose from bias and temptation that
assail him in the outside mix and jostle—will she not have done her work
without the casting of a ballot? And what becomes of “taxation without
representation,” when, from Eden down, Eve can always plead with Adam, can have the
first word instead of the last—if she knows what that first word is, in
herself and thence in its power with him—can beguile him to his good instead
of to his harm, as indeed she only meant to do in that first ignorant experiment?
Would it be any less easy to qualify for and accomplish this than to convince and
outnumber in public gathering not only bodies of men but the mass of women that
will also have to be confronted and convinced or overborne?

Preconceived opinions, minds made up, men not so easily beguiled to the pure
good, you say? Woman quite as apt to make mistakes out of Paradise as in? That only
returns us to the primal need and opportunity. Get the man to listen to you before
his mind is made up—before his manhood is made up; while it is in the making.
That is just the power and place that belong to you, and you must seize and fill.
It is your natural right; God gave it to you. “The seed of the woman shall bruise
the serpent’s head.”

We can not do all in one day, and in such a day of the world as this. We plant
trees for posterity where forests have been laid waste and the beautiful work of
life is to be done over again; we can not expect to see our fruit in souls and in
the nation at less cost of faith and time. Take care, then, of the little children:
the men children, to make men of them; the women children—oh, yes, even above
all—to make ready for future mothering—to snatch from the evil that
works over against pure womanliness. Until you have done this let men fend for
themselves in rough outsides a little longer; except, perhaps, as wise, able women
whom the trying transition time calls forth may find fit way and place for effort
and protest—there is always room for that, and noble work has been and is
being done; but do not rear a new generation of women to expect and desire charges
and responsibilities reversive of their own life-law, through whose perfect
fulfillment alone may the future clean place be made for all to work in.

Is there excess of female population? Can not all expect the direct rule of a
home? Is not this exactly, perhaps, just now, for the more universal remedial
mothering that in this age is the thing immediately needed? Let her who has no
child seek where she can help the burdened mother of many; how she can best reach
with influence, and wisdom, and cherishing, the greatest number—or most
efficiently a few—of these dear, helpless, terrible little souls, who are to
make, in a few years, a new social condition; a better and higher, happier and
safer, or a lower, worse, bitterer, more desperately complicated and distressful
one.

“Desire earnestly the best gifts,” said Saint Paul, after enumerating the gifts
of teaching and prophecy and authority; “and I show you,” he goes on, “a yet more
excellent way.” Charity—not mere alms, or toleration, or general benignity,
out of a safe self-provision; but caritas—nearness, and caring, and
loving,—the very essence of mothering; the way to and hold of the heart of it
all, the heart of the life of humanity. “Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out
of it are the issues of life.” That is the first word; it charges womanhood itself,
which must be set utterly right before it can take hold to right the world. Here
are at once task and mission and rewarding sway.

Woman has got off the track; she must see that first, and replace herself. We
are mothering the world still; but we are mothering it, in a fearfully wide
measure, all wrong.

Sacrifice is the beginning of all redemption. We must give up. We must even give
up the wish and seeming to have a hand in things, that we may work unseen in the
elements, and make them fit and healthful; that daily bread and daily life may be
sweet again in dear, old, homely ways, and plentiful with all truly blessed
opportunities. We are not to organize the world, or to conquer it, or to queen it.
We are just to take it again and mother it. If woman would begin that, search out
the cradles—of life and character—and take care of the whole world of
fifty years hence in taking care of them, calling upon men and the state, when
needful, to authorize her action and furnish outward means for it—I wonder
what might come, as earnest of good, even in this our day, in which we know not our
visitation?

And here again come allowance and exception for what women can always do when
this world-mothering forces an appeal to the strength and authority of man. Women
have never been prevented from doing their real errands in the world, even outside
the domestic boundary. They have defended their husbands’ castles in the old
chivalrous times, when the male chivalry was away at the crusades. They have headed
armies when Heaven called them; only Heaven never called all the women at once; but
when the king was crowned, the mission done, they have turned back with desire to
their sheltered, gentle, unobtrusive life again. There has no business to be a
standing army of women; not even a standing political army. Women have navigated
and brought home ships when commanders have died or been stricken helpless upon the
ocean; they have done true, intelligent, patient work for science, art, religion;
and those have done the most who have never stopped to contend first, whether a
woman, as such, may do it or not.

Look at what Dorothea Dix has done, single-handed, single-mouthed, in asylums
and before legislatures. Women have sat on thrones, and governed kingdoms well,
when that was the station in life to which God called them. If Victoria of England
has been anything, she has been the mother of her land; she has been queen and
protecting genius of its womanhood and homes. And when a woman does these things,
as called of God—not talks of them, as to whether she may make claim to do
them—she carries a weight from the very sanctity out of which she steps, as
woman, that moves men unlike the moving of any other power. Shall she resign the
chance of doing really great things, of meeting grand crises, by making herself
common in ward-rooms and at street-corners, and abolishing the perfect idea of home
by no longer consecrating herself to

If individual woman, as has been said, may gain and influence individual man,
and so the man-power in affairs—a body of women, purely as such, with cause,
and plea, and reason, can always have the ear and attention of bodies of men; but
to do this they must come straight from their home sanctities, as representing
them—as able to represent them otherwise than men, because of their
hearth-priestesshood; not as politicians, bred and hardened in the public
arenas.

That the family is the heart of the state, and that the state is but the widened
family, is the fact which the old vestal consecration, power, and honor set forth
and kept in mind.

The voice which has of late been so generally conceded to women in town,
decisions as regarding public schools, is an instance of the fittingness of
relegating to them certain interests of which they should know more than men,
because—applying the key-test with which we have started—it has direct
relation to and springs from their motherhood. But can one help suggesting that if
the movement had been to place women, merely and directly, upon the committees, by
votes of men who saw that this work might be in great part best done by them; if
women had asked and offered for the place without the jostle of the town-meeting,
or putting in that wedge for the ballot—the thing might have been as readily
done, and the objection, or political precedent, avoided.

It is not the real opportunity, when that arises or shows itself in the line of
her life-law, that is to be refused for woman. It is the taking from internal power
to add to external complication of machinery and to the friction of strife. Let us
just touch upon some of the current arguments concerning these external impositions
which one set is demanding and the other entreating against.

If voting is to be the chief power in woman’s hands, or even a power of half the
moment that is contended for it, it will grow to be the motive and end, the
all-absorbing object, with women that it is with men.

The gubernatorial canvass, the presidential year, these will interrupt and clog
all home business, suspend decisions, paralyze plans, as they do with men, or else
we shall not be much, as thorough politicians, after all. And if we talk of mending
all that, of putting politics in their right place, and governing by pure principle
instead of party trick, and stumping and electioneering, we go back in effect to
the acknowledgment that only in the interior work, and behind politics, can women
do better things at all; which, precisely, was to be demonstrated.

Think, simply, of election day for women.

Would it be so invariably easy a thing for a home-keeper to do, at the one
opportunity of the year, or the four years, on a particular day, her duty in this
matter? It is easy to say that it takes no more time than a hundred other things
that some do; but setting apart all the argument that previous time and strength
must have been spent in properly qualifying, how many of the hundred other things
are done now without interruption, postponement, hindrance, through domestic
contingencies? or are there a hundred other things done when the home contingencies
are really met by a woman? A woman’s life is not like a man’s. That a man’s life
may be—that he may transact his out-door business; keep his hours and
appointments; may cast his vote on election day; may represent wife and children in
all wherein the community cares for, or might injure him and them—the woman,
some woman, must be at the home post, that the home order may go on, from which he
derives that command of time, and freedom from hindering necessities, which leave
him to his work. And so, as the old proverb says, while man’s work is from sun to
sun—made definite, a matter to which he can go forth, and from which he can
come in—a woman’s work, of keeping the place of the forthgoing and incoming,
is never done, from the very nature and ceaseless importance of it.

Must she go to the polls, sick or well, baby or no baby, servant or no servant,
strength or no strength, desire or no desire? If she have cook and housemaid they
are to go also, and number her two to one, anyway; probably on election day, which
they would make a holiday, they would—as at other crises, of birth, sickness,
death, house-cleaning, which should occur in no first-class families—come
down upon her with their appropriate coup d’état, and “leave;” making
the State-stroke, in this instance, of scoring three votes, two dropped and one
lost, for the irrepressible side.

How will it be when Norah, and Maggie, and Katie have not only their mass and
confession, their Fourth-of-July and Christmas, their mission-weeks, their social
engagements and family plans, and their appointments with their dress-makers, to
curtail your claims upon their bargained time and service, but their share in the
primary meetings and caucuses, committees, and torch-light processions, and mass
meetings? For what shall prevent the excitements, the pleasurings, the runnings
hither and thither, that men delight in from following in the train of politics and
parties with the common woman? Perhaps it may even be discovered, to the still
further detriment of our already painfully hampered and perplexed domestic system,
that the pursuit of fun, votes, offices, is more remunerative, as well as
gentlewomanly—as Micawber might express it—than the cleansing of pots
and pans, the weekly wash, or the watching of the roast. Perhaps in that
enfranchised day there will be no Katies and Maggies’ and the Norahs will know
their place no more. Then the enlightened womanhood may have to begin at the
foundation and glorify the kitchen again. And good enough for her, in the wide as
well as primitive sense of the phrase, and a grand turn in the history that repeats
itself toward the old, forgotten, peaceful side of the cycle it may be!

But the argument does not rest upon any such points as these. It rests upon the
inside nature of a woman’s work; upon the need there is to begin again to-day at
the heart of things and make that right; upon the evident fact that this can be
done none too soon or earnestly, if the community and the country are not to keep
on in the broad way to a threatened destruction; and upon the certainty that it can
never be done unless it is done by woman, and with all of woman’s might. Not by
struggles for new and different place, but by the better, more loving, more
intelligent, deep-seeing, and deep-feeling filling of her own place, that none will
dispute and none can take from her. We are not where woman was in the old brutal
days that are so often quoted; and we shall not, need not, return to that.
Christianity has disposed of that sort of argument. We are on a vantage ground for
the doing of our real, essential work better than it has been done ever before in
the history of the world; and we are madly leaving our work and our vantage
together.

The great step made by woman was in the generation preceding this one of
restlessness—the restlessness that has come through the first feeling of
great power. It was made in the time when women learned physiology, that they might
rear and nurse their families and help their neighborhoods understandingly;
science, that they might teach and answer little children, and share the joy of
knowledge that was spreading swiftly in the earth; political history and economy,
that they might listen and talk to their brothers and husbands and sons, and leaven
the life of the age as the bread in the mixing; business figures, rules, and
principles, that they might sympathize, counsel, help, and prudentially work with
and honestly strengthen the bread-winners. The good work was begun in the schools
where girls were first told, as George B. Emerson used to tell us Boston girls,
that we were learning everything he could teach us, in order to be women: wives,
mothers, friends, social influencers, in the best and largest way possible. Women
grew strong and capable under such instruction and motive. Are their daughters and
grand-daughters about to leap the fence, leave their own realm little cared
for—or doomed to be—undertake the whole scheme of outside creation, or
contest it with the men? Then God help the men! God save the Commonwealth!

We are past the point already where homes are suffering, or liable to suffer,
neglect or injury; they are already left unmade. Shall this go on? Between
frivolities and ambitions, between social vanities, and shows, and public
meddling’s and mixings—for where one woman is needed and doing really brave,
true work, there are a hundred rushing forth for the mere sake of rushing—is
the primitive home, the power of heaven upon earth to slip away from among us? Let
us not build outsides which have no insides, let us not put a face upon things
which has no reality behind it. Beware lest we make the confusion that we need the
suffrage to help us unmake; lest we tear to pieces that we may patch again. Crazy
patchwork that would be, indeed!

Are women’s votes required because men will not legislate away evils that they
do not heartily wish away? Is government corrupted because men desire shield and
opportunity for dishonest speculation; authority and countenance for nefarious
combinations? The more need to go to work at the beginning rather than to plunge
into the pitch and be defiled; more need to make haste and educate a better
generation of men, if it be so we can not, except vi et armis, influence the
generation that is. But do you think that if women are in earnest—enough in
earnest to give up, as they seem to be to demand—they might not bring their
real power to bear even upon these evil things, in their root and inception, and
even now? Suppose women would not live in houses, or wear jewels and gowns, that
are bought for them out of wicked millions made upon the stock exchange?

Suppose they would stop decorating their dwellings to an agony, crowding them
hurriedly with this and that of the last and newest, just because it is last and
new, making a show and rivalry of what is not a true-grown beauty of a home at all,
but a mere meretriciousness; suppose they would so set to work and change society
that displays and feastings, which use up at every separate one a year’s
comfortable support for a quiet, modest family, should be given up as vulgarities;
that people should care for, and be ready for, a true interchange of life and
thought, and simple, uncrowded opportunities for these; suppose women would say,
“No; I will not blaze at Newport, or run through Europe dropping American eagles or
English sovereigns after me like the trail of a comet, or the crumbs that
Hop-‘o-my-thumb let fall from his pocket that the people at home might track the
way he had gone; because if I have money, there is better work to be done with it;
and I will not have the money that is made by gambling manipulations and
cheats.”

Do you think this would have no influence? More than that, and further back, and
lowlier down, suppose they should say, every one, “I will not have the new,
convenient house, the fresh carpetings, the pretty curtains, or even the least,
most fitting freshness, until I know the means are earned for me with honest
service to the world, and by no lucky turn of even a small speculation.” Further
back yet, suppose them to declare, “I will not have the home at all, nor my own
happiness, unless it can be based and builded on the kind of life-work that helps
to make a real prosperity; that really goes to the building and safe-keeping of a
whole nation of such homes.” Would there be no power in that? Would it not be a
kind of woman-suffrage to settle the very initials of all that ever bears upon the
public question? And to bring that sort of woman on the stage, and to the front, is
there not enough work to do, and enough “higher education” to insist on and
secure?

After all, men work for women; or, if they think they do not, it would leave
them but sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such existence as they could arrange
without us. In blessed homes, or in scattered dissipations of show, amusement, or
the worse which these shows and amusements are but terribly akin to, women give
purpose to and direct the results of all men’s work. If the false standards of
living first urge them, until at length the horrible intoxication of the game
itself drives them on further and deeper, are we less responsible for the last
state of those men than for the first?

Do you say, if good women refused these things and tried for a simpler and truer
living, there are plenty of bad ones who would take them anyhow, and supply the
motive to deeper and more unmitigated evil? Ah, there come both answer and errand
again. Raise the fallen—at least save the growing womanhood—stop the
destruction that rushes accelerating on, before you challenge new difficulty and
danger with an indiscriminate franchise. Are not these bad women the very “plenty”
that would out-balance you at the polls, if you persist in trying the
“patch-and-plaster” remedy of suffrage and legislation?

Recognize the fact, the law, that your power, your high commission, is
inward—vital—formative, and casual. Bring all questions of choice or
duty to this test, will it work at the heart of things, among the realities and
forces? Try your own life by this; remember that mere external is falsehood and
death. The letter killeth. Give up all that is only of the appearance—or even
chiefly so, in conscious delight and motive—in person, surrounding pursuit.
Let your self-presentation, your home-making and adorning, your social effort and
interest, your occupation and use of talent, all shape and issue for the things
that are essentially and integrally good, and that the world needs to have prevail.
Until you can do this, and induce such doing, it is of little use to clamor for
mere outward right, or to contend that it would be rightly applied.

Work as you will, and widely as you can, for schools, in associations, in
everything whose end is to teach, enlighten, enlarge women, and so the world. Help
and protect the industries of women; but keep those industries within the guiding
law of woman-life. Do not throw down barriers that take down safeguards with them;
that make threatening breaches in the very social structure. If women must serve in
shops, demand and care for it that it shall be in a less mixed, a more shielded way
than now. The great caravansaries of trade are perilous by their throng, publicity,
and weariness. There used to be women’s shops; choice places, where a woman’s care
and taste had ruled before the counters were spread; where women could quietly
purchase things that were sure to be beautiful or of good service; there were not
the tumult and ransacking that kill both shop-girl and shopper now.

This is one instance, and but one, of the rescuing that ought to be attempted.
There ought at least to be distinct women’s departments, presided over by women of
good, motherly tone and character, in the places of business which women so
frequent, and where the thoughtful are aware of much that makes them tremble. And
surely a great many of the girls and women who choose shop-work, because they like
its excitement, ought rather to be in homes, rendering womanly service, and
preparing to serve in homes of their own—leaving their present places to
young men who might perhaps begin so to earn the homes to offer them. Will not this
apply all the way up, into the arts and the professions even? There must needs be
exceptional women perhaps; there are, and will be, time and errand and place for
them; but Heaven forbid that they should all become exceptional.

Once more, work for these things that are behind, and underlie; believing that
woman’s place is behind and within, not of repression, but of power; and that if
she do not fill this place it will be empty; there will be no main spring.
Meanwhile she will get her rights as she rises to them, and her defenses where she
needs them; everything that helps, defends, uplifts the woman uplifts man and the
whole fabric, and man has begun to find it out. If he “will give the suffrage if
women want it,” as is said, why shall he not as well give them the things that they
want suffrage for and that they are capable of representing? Believe me, this work,
and the representation which grows out of it, can no longer be done if we attempt
the handling of political machinery—the making of platforms, the judging of
candidates, the measuring and disputation of party plans and issues, and all the
tortuous following up of public and personal political history.

Do you say, men have their individual work in the world, and all this beside and
of it, and that therefore we may? Exactly here comes in again the law of the
interior. Their work is “of it”—falls in the way. They rub against it as they
go along. Men meet each other in the business thoroughfares, at the offices and the
street corners; we are in the dear depths of home. We are with the little ones, of
whom is not this kingdom, but the kingdom of heaven, which we, through them, may
help to come. This is just where we must abandon our work, if we attempt the doing
of theirs. And here is where our prestige will desert us, whenever great cause
calls us to speak from out our seclusions, and show men, from our insights and our
place, the occasion and desire that look unto their rule. They will not listen
then; they will remand us to the ballot-box.

“Inside politics” is a good word. That is just where woman ought to be, as she
ought to be inside everything, insisting upon and implanting the truth and right
that are to conquer. And she can not be inside and outside both. She can not do the
mothering and the home-making, the watching and ministry, the earning and
maintaining hold and privilege and motive influence behind and through the acts of
men—and all the world-wide execution of act beside. Therefore, we say, do not
give up the substance which you might seize, for the shadow which you could not
hold fast if you were to seem to grasp it. Work on at the foundations. Insist on
truth and right; put them into all your own life, taking all the beam out of your
own eye before demanding—well, we will say the mote, for generosity’s sake,
and for the holy authority of the word—out of the brother’s eyes.

Establish pure, honest, lovely things—things of good report—in the
nurseries, the schools, the social circles where you reign, and the outside world
and issue will take form and heed for themselves. The nation, of which the family
is the root, will be made, and built, and saved accordingly. Every seed hath its
own body. The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent-head of evil, and shall
rise triumphant to become the ennobled, recreated commonwealth. Then shall pour
forth the double paean that thrills through the glorious final chorus of Schumann’s
Faust—men and women answering in antiphons—

Then shall Mary—the fulfilled, ennobled womanhood—sing her
Magnificat; standing to receive from the Lord, and to give the living word to the
nations:

The coming new version of the Old Testament gives us, we are told, among other
more perfect renderings, this one, which fitly utters charge and promise:

ADELINE D.T. WHITNEY.

Mr. BLAIR. Mr. President, before the vote is taken I desire to say but a word.
Early in the session I had the opportunity of addressing the Senate upon the general
merits of the question. I said then all that I cared to say; but I wish to remind the
Senate before the vote is taken that the question to be decided is not whether upon
the whole the suffrage should be extended to women, but whether in the proper arena
for the amendment of the Constitution ordained by the Constitution itself one-third
of the American people shall have the opportunity to be heard in the discussion of
such a proposed amendment—whether they shall have the opportunity of the
exercise of the first right of republican government and of the American and of any
free citizen, the submission to the popular tribunal, which has alone the power to
decide the question whether on the whole, upon a comparison of the arguments pro and
con bearing one way and the other upon this great subject, the American people will
extend the suffrage to those who are now deprived of it.

That is the real question for the Senate to consider. It is not whether the Senate
would, itself, extend the suffrage to women, but whether those men who believe that
women should have the suffrage shall be heard, so that there may be a decision and an
end made of this great subject, which has now been under discussion more than a
quarter of a century, and to-day for the first time even in the legislative body
which is to submit the proposition to the country for consideration has there been a
prospect of reaching a vote.

I appeal to Senators not to decide this question upon the arguments which have
been offered here to-day for or against the merits of the proposition. I appeal to
them to decide this question upon that other principle to which I have adverted,
whether one-third of the American people shall be permitted to go into the arena of
public discussion of the States, among the people of the States, and before the
Legislatures of the States, and be heard upon the issue, shall the general
Constitution be so amended as to extend this right of suffrage? If, with this
opportunity, those who believe in woman suffrage fail, they must be content; for I
agree with the Senators upon the opposite side of the Chamber and with all who hold
that if the suffrage is to be extended at all, it must be extended by the operation
of existing law. I believe it to be an innate right; yet an innate right must be
exercised only by the consent of the controling forces of the State. That is all that
woman asks. That is all that any one asks who believes in this right belonging to her
sex.

As bearing simply upon the question whether there is a demand by a respectable
number of people to be heard on this issue, I desire to read one or two documents in
my possession. I offer in this connection, in addition to the innumerable petitions
which have been placed before the Senate and before the other House, the petition of
the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. I take it that no Senator will raise the
question whether this organization be or be not composed of the very
élite of the women of America. At least two hundred thousand of the
Christian women of this country are represented in this organization. It is national
in its character and scope; it is international, and it exists in every State and in
every Territory of the Union. By their officers, Miss Frances E. Willard, the
president; Mrs. Caroline B. Buell, corresponding secretary; Mrs. Mary A. Woodbridge,
recording secretary; Mrs. L.M.N. Stevens, assistant recording secretary; Miss Esther
Pugh, treasurer; Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, superintendent of department of franchise,
and Mrs. Henrietta B. Wall, secretary of department of franchise, they bring this
petition to the Senate. It has been indorsed by the action of the body at large. They
say:

Believing that governments can be just only when deriving their powers from the
consent of the governed, and that in a government professing to be a government of
the people, all the people of a mature age should have a voice, and that all
class-legislation and unjust discrimination against the rights and privileges of
any citizen is fraught with danger to the republic, and inasmuch as the ballot in
popular governments is a most potent element in all moral and social reforms:

We, therefore, on behalf of the hundreds of thousands of Christian women engaged
in philanthropic effort, pray you to use your influence, and vote for the passage
of a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, prohibiting the
disfranchisement of any citizen on the ground of sex.

I have also just received, in addition to other matter before the Senate, the
petition of the Indianapolis Suffrage Association, or of that department of the
Women’s Christian Temperance Union which has the control of the discussion and
management of the operations of the union with reference to the suffrage. I shall not
take the time of the Senate to read it. The letter transmitting the petition is as
follows:

INDIANAPOLIS, IND., January 12, 1886.

DEAR SIR: I have sent the inclosed petitions and arguments to every member on
the Committee on Woman Suffrage, hoping if they are read they may have some
influence in securing a favorable report for the passage of a sixteenth amendment,
giving the ballot to women.

Will you urge upon the members of the committee the importance of their
perusal?

Respectfully,

MRS. Z.G. WALLACE, Sup’t Dep’t for Franchise of N.W.C.T.U.

Hon. H.W. BLAIR.

I will add in this connection a letter lately received by myself, written by a
lady who may not be so distinguished in the annals of the country, yet, at the same
time, she has attained to such a position in the society where she lives that she
holds the office of postmaster by the sanction of the Government, and has held it for
many years. She seems, as other ladies have seemed, to possess the capacity to
perform the duties of this governmental office, so far as I know, to universal
satisfaction. At all events, it is the truth that no woman, so far as I have ever
heard, holding the office of postmaster, and no woman who has ever held the position
of clerk under the Government, or who has ever discharged in State or in Nation any
executive or administrative function, has as yet been a defaulter, or been guilty of
any misconduct or malversation in office, or contributed anything by her own conduct
to the disgrace of the appointing or creating official power. This woman says:

NEW LONDON, WIS., January 18, 1887.

Hon. H.W. BLAIR, Washington, D.C.:

DEAR SIR: Thank you for the address you sent; also for your kindness in
remembering us poor mortals who can scarcely get a hearing in such an august body
as the Senate of these United States, though I have reason to believe we furnished
the men to fill those seats.

There is something supremely ridiculous in the attitude of a man who tells you
women are angelic in their nature; that it is his veneration for the high and lofty
position they occupy which hopes to keep them forever from the dirty vortex of
politics, and then to see him glower at her because she wishes politics were not so
dirty, and believes the mother element, by all that makes humanity to her doubly
sacred, is just what is needed for its purification.

We have become tired of hearing and reiterating the same old theories and are
pleased that you branched out in a new direction, and your argument contains so
much which is new and fresh.

We do care for this inestimable boon which one-half the people of this Republic
have seized, and are claiming that God gave it to them and are working very
zealously to help God keep it for them. (We will remember the Joshua who leads us
out of bondage.)

I used to think the Prohibition party would be our Moses, but that has only gone
so far as to say, “You boost us upon a high and mighty pedestal, and when we see
our way clear to pull you after us we will venture to do so; but you can not expect
it while we run any risk of becoming unpopular thereby.”

Liberty stands a goddess upon the very dome of our Capitol, Liberty’s lamp
shines far out into the darkness, a beacon to the oppressed, a dazzling ray of hope
to serf and bondsmen of other climes, yet here a sword unforbidden is piercing the
heart of the mother whose son believes God has made us to differ so that he can go
astray and return. But, alas, he does not return.

Help us to stand upon the same political footing with our brother; this will
open both his and our eyes and compel him to stand upon the same moral footing with
us. Only this can usher in millenium’s dawn.

This letter is signed, by Hannah E. Patchin, postmaster at New London, Wis.

As bearing upon the extent of this agitation, I have many other letters of the
same character and numerous arguments by women upon this subject, but I can not ask
the attention of the Senate to them, for what I most of all want is a vote. I desire
a record upon this question. However, I ought to read this letter, which is dated
Salina, Kans., December 13, 1886. The writer is Mrs. Laura M. Johns. She is connected
with the suffrage movement in that State, and as bearing upon the extent of this
movement and as illustrative not only of the condition of the question in Kansas, but
very largely throughout the country, perhaps, especially throughout the northern part
of the country, I read this and leave others of like character, as they are, because
we have not the time:

I am deeply interested in the fate of the now pending resolution proposing an
amendment to the Constitution of the United States, conferring upon women the
exercise of the suffrage. The right is theirs now.

I see, in speaking to that resolution on December 8 in the Senate, that you
refer to Miss Anthony’s experiences in the October campaign in Kansas as evidence
in part of the growth of interest in this movement, and of sentiment favorable to
it, and I am writing now just to tell you about it.

When I planned and arranged for those eleven conventions in eleven fine cities
of this State, I thought I knew that the people of Kansas felt a strong interest in
the question of woman suffrage; but when with Miss Anthony and others I saw immense
audiences of Kansas people receive the gospel of equal suffrage with enthusiasm,
saw them sitting uncomfortably crowded, or standing to listen for hours to
arguments in favor of suffrage for women: saw the organization of strong and ably
officered local, county, and district associations of the best and “brainiest” men
and women in our first cities for the perpetuation of woman suffrage teachings; saw
people of the highest social, professional, and business position give time, money
and influence, to this cause; saw Miss Anthony’s life work honored and her
fêted and most highly commended, I concluded that I had before known but half
of the interest and favorable sentiment in Kansas on this question. These meetings
were very largely attended, and by all classes, and by people of all shades of
religious and political belief. The representative people of the labor party were
there, ministers, lawyers, all professions, and all trades.

No audiences could have been more thoroughly representative of the people; and
as we held one (and more) convention in each Congressional district in the State,
we certainly had, from the votes of those audiences in eleven cities, a truthful
expression of the feeling of the people of the State of Kansas on this question.
Many of the friends of the cause here are very willing to risk our fate to the
popular vote.

In our conventions Miss Anthony was in the habit of putting the following
questions to vote:

“Are you in favor of equal suffrage for women?”

“Do you desire that your Senators, INGALLS and PLUMB, and your seven Congressmen
shall vote for the sixteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution?” and

“Do you desire your Legislature to extend municipal suffrage to women?”

In response there always came a rousing “yes,” except when the vote was a rising
one, and then the house rose in a solid body. Miss Anthony’s call for the negative
vote was answered by silence.

Petitions for municipal suffrage in Kansas are rolling up enormously. People
sign them now who refused to do so last year. I tell you it is catching. Many
people here are disgusted with our asking for such a modicum as municipal suffrage,
and say they would rather sign a petition asking for the submission of an amendment
to our State constitution giving us State suffrage. We have speakers now at work
all over the State, their audiences and reception are enthusiastic, and their most
radical utterances in favor of woman are the most kindly received and gain them the
most applause.

And further to the same effect. I shall offer nothing more of that kind, but I
have come in possession of some data bearing upon the question of the intellect of
woman. The real objection seems to me to he that she does not know enough to vote;
that it is the ignorant ballot that is dangerous; but that is a subject which of
course I have no time to go into. However, I have some data collected very recently,
and at my request, by a most intelligent gentleman of the State of Maine. Either of
the Senators from that State will bear witness as to the high character of this
gentleman, Mr. Jordan. He sent the data to me a few days ago. They show the relative
standing of the two sexes in the high schools in the State of Maine where they are
being educated together, and in one of the colleges of that State:

High school No. 1.—Average rank on scale of 100.—1882: boys
88.7, girls 91; 1883: boys 88.2, girls 91.3; 1884: boys 88.8, girls 91.9 (of the
graduating class 7 girls and 1 boy were the eight highest in rank for the four
years’ course); 1885: boys 88.6, girls 91.4 (eight highest in rank for four years’
course, 4 boys and 4 girls); 1886: boys 88.2, girls 91 (eight highest in rank for
four years’ course, 7 girls and I boy).

High school No. 2.—Average rank on scale of 100.—1886: boys
90, girls 98 (six highest in rank for four years’ course, 6 girls).

College.—Average rank for fall term of the junior year on the scale
of 40.—1882: boys 37.75, girls 37.93; 1883: boys 38.03, girls 38.70; 1884:
boys 38.18, girls 88.59; 1885; boys 38.33, girls 38.13.

With only this last exception the average of the girls and young ladies in the
high schools and at this institution of liberal training is substantially higher than
that of the boys. I simply give that fact in passing, and there leave the matter.

I desire in closing simply to call for the reading of the joint resolution. I
could say nothing to quicken the sense of the Senate on the importance of the
question about to be taken. It concerns one-half of our countrymen, one-half of the
citizens of the United States, but it is more than that, Mr. President. This question
is radical, and it concerns the condition of the whole human race. I believe that in
the agitation of this question lies the fate of republican government, and in that of
republican government lies the fate of mankind. I ask for the reading of the joint
resolution.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution is before the Senate as in Committee
of the Whole. It has been read. Does the Senator desire to have it read again?

Mr. BLAIR. Has it been read this afternoon?

The PRESIDING OFFICER. It has been.

Mr. BLAIR. That is all then. Now, I wish to have printed in the RECORD, by reason
of the printed matter that has gone into the RECORD upon the other side, the
arguments of Miss Anthony and her associates before the Senate committee, which is
out of print as a document. These arguments are very terse and brief. I think it only
just that woman, who is most interested, should be heard, at least under the
circumstances when she has herself been heard on the other side through printed
matter. It will not be burdensome to the RECORD, and I ask that this be done.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair hears no objection to the suggestion. The
document will be printed in the RECORD.

The document is as follows:

ARGUMENTS BEFORE THE SELECT COMMITTEE ON WOMAN SUFFRAGE, UNITED STATES SENATE,
MARCH 7, 1884.

By a committee of the Sixteenth Annual Washington Convention of the National
Woman Suffrage Association, in favor of a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution
of the United States, that shall protect the right of women citizens to vote in the
several States of the Union.

Order of proceeding.

The CHAIRMAN (Senator COCKRELL). We have allotted the time to be divided as the
speakers may desire among themselves. We are now ready to hear the ladies.

Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the select committee: This
is the sixteenth time that we have come before Congress in person, and the
nineteenth annually by petitions. Ever since the war, from the winter of 1865-’66,
we have regularly sent up petitions asking for the national protection of the
citizen’s right to vote when the citizen happens to be a woman. We are here again
for the same purpose. I do not propose to speak now, but to introduce the other
speakers, and at the close perhaps will state to the committee the reasons why we
come to Congress. The other speakers will give their thought from the standpoint of
their respective States. I will first introduce to the committee Mrs. Harriet R.
Shattuck, of Boston, Mass.

REMARKS BY MRS. HARRIET R. SHATTUCK.

Mrs. SHATTUCK. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: It seems as if it were almost
unnecessary for us to come here at this meeting, because I feel that all we have to
say and all we have to claim is known to you, and we can not add anything to what
has been said in the past sixteen years.

But I should like to say one thing, and that is, that in my work it has seemed
that if we could convince everybody of the motives of the suffragists we would go
far toward removing prejudices. I know that those motives are very much
misunderstood. Persons think of us as ambitious women, who are desirous for fame,
and who merely come forward to make speeches and get before the public, or else
they think that we are unfortunate beings with no homes, or unhappy wives, who are
getting our livelihood in this sort of way. If we could convince every man who has
a vote in this Republic that this is not the case, I believe we could go far toward
removing the prejudice against us. If we could make them see that we are working
here merely because we know that the cause is right, and we feel that we must work
for it, that there is a power outside of ourselves which impels us onward, which
says to us: go forward and speak to the people and try to bring them up to a sense
of their duty and of our right. This is the belief that I have in regard to our
position on this question. It is a matter of duty with us, and that is all.

In Massachusetts I represent a very much larger number of women than is
supposed. It has always been said that very few women wish to vote. Believing that
this objection, although it has nothing to do with the rights of the cause, ought
to be met, the association of which I am president inaugurated last year a sort of
canvass, which I believe never had been attempted before, whereby we obtained the
proportion of women in favor and opposed to suffrage in different localities of our
State. We took four localities in the city of Boston, two in smaller cities, and
two in the country districts, and one also of school teachers in nine schools of
one town. Those school teachers were unanimously in favor of suffrage, and in the
nine localities we found that the proportion of women in favor was very large as
against those opposed. The total of women canvassed was 814. Those in favor were
405; those opposed, 44; indifferent, 166; refused to sign, 160; not seen, 39. This,
you see, is a very large proportion in favor. Those indifferent, and those who were
not seen, were not included, because we claim that nobody can yet say that they are
opposed or in favor until they declare themselves; but the 405 in favor against the
44 opposed were as 9 to 1. These canvasses were made by women who were of perfect
respectability and responsibility, and they swore before a justice of the peace as
to the truth of their statements.

So we have in Massachusetts this reliable canvass of the number of women in
favor as to those opposed, and we find that it is 9 to 1.

These women, then, are the class whom I represent here, and they are women who
can not come here themselves. Very few women in the country can come here and do
this work, or do the work in their States, because they are in their homes
attending to their duties, but none the less are they believers in this cause. We
would not any more than any man in the country ask a woman to leave her home duties
to go into this work, but a few of us are so situated that we can do it, and we
come here and we go to the State Legislatures representing all the women of the
country in this work.

What we ask is, not that we may have the ballot to obtain any particular thing,
although we know that better things will come about from it, but merely because it
is our right, and as a matter of justice we claim it as human beings and as
citizens, and as moral, responsible, and spiritual beings, whose voice ought to be
heard in the Government, and who ought to take hand with men and help the world to
become better.

Gentlemen, you have kept women just a little step below you. It is only a short
step. You shower down favors upon us it is true, still we remain below you, the
recipients of favors without the right to take what is our own. We ask that this
shall be changed; that you shall take us by the hand and lift us up to the same
political level with you, where we shall have rights with you, and stand equal with
you before the law.

REMARKS BY MRS. MAY WRIGHT SEWALL.

Miss ANTHONY. I will now introduce to the committee Mrs. May Wright Sewall, of
Indianapolis, who is the chairman of our executive committee.

Mrs. SEWALL. Gentlemen of the committee: Gentlemen, I believe, differ somewhat
in their political opinions. It will not then be surprising, I suppose, that I
should differ somewhat from my friend in regard to the knowledge that you probably
possess upon our question. I do not believe that you know all that we know about
the women of this country, for I believe that if you did know even all that I know,
and my knowledge is much more limited than that of many of my sisters, long ago the
sixteenth amendment, for which we ask, would have been passed through your
influence.

I remember that when I was here two years ago and had the honor of appearing
before the committee, who granted us, on that occasion, what you are so kind and
courteous to grant on this occasion, an opportunity to speak before you, I told you
that I represented at least seventy thousand women who had asked for the ballot in
my State, and I tried then to remind the members of the committee that had seventy
thousand Indiana men asked for any measure from the Congress that then occupied
this Capitol, that measure would have secured the most deliberate consideration
from their hands, and, in all probability, its passage by the Congress. Of that
there can be no doubt.

I do not wish to exaggerate my constituency, but during the last two years, and
since I had the honor of addressing the committee, the work of woman suffrage has
progressed very rapidly in my State. The number of women who have found themselves
in circumstances to work openly, and whose spirit has been drawn into it, has
largely increased, and as the workers have multiplied the results have increased.
While we have not taken the careful canvass that has been so wisely and judiciously
taken in Massachusetts, so that I can present to you the exact number of women who
would to-day appeal for suffrage, I know that I can, far within the bounds of
possible truth, state that while I represented seventy thousand women in my State
two years ago, who desired the adoption of the sixteenth amendment, I represent
to-day twice that number.

Should any one come up from Indiana, pivotal State as it has been long called in
national elections, saying that he represented the wish of one hundred and forty
thousand Indiana men, gentlemen, would you scorn his appeal? Would you treat it
lightly? Not at all. You know that it would receive the most candid consideration.
You know that it would receive not merely respectful consideration, but immediate
and prompt and just action upon your part.

I have been told since I have reached Washington that of all women in the
country Indiana women have the least to complain of, and the least reason for
coming to the United States Capitol with their petitions and the statement of their
needs, because we have received from our own Legislature such amendments and
amelioration of the old unjust laws. In one sense it is true that we are the
recipients in our own State of many civil rights and of a very large degree of
civil equality. It is true that as respects property rights, and as respects
industrial rights, the women of my own State may perhaps be the envy of all other
women in the land, but, gentlemen, you have always told men that the greater their
rights and the more numerous their privileges the greater their responsibilities.
That is equally true of woman, and simply because our property rights are enlarged,
because our industrial field is enlarged, because we have more women who are
producers in the industrial world, recognized as such, who own property in their
own names, and consequently pay taxes upon that property, and thereby have greater
financial and larger social, as well as industrial and business interests at stake
in our own commonwealth, and in the manner in which the administration of national
affairs is conducted—because of all these privileges we the more need the
power which shall emphasize our influence upon political action.

You know that industrial and property rights are in the hands of the law-makers
and the executors of the laws. Therefore, because of our advanced position in that
matter, we the more need the recognition of our political equality. I say the
recognition of our political equality, because I believe the equality already
exists. I believe it waits simply for your recognition; that were the Constitution
now justly construed, and the word “citizens,” as used in your Constitution, justly
applied it would include us, the women of this country. So I ask for the
recognition of an equality that we already possess.

Further, because of what we have we ask for more. Because of the duties that we
are commanded to do, we ask for more. My friend has said, and it is true in some
respects, that men have always kept us just a little below them where they could
shower upon us favors, and they have always done that generously. So they have,
but, gentlemen, has your sex been more generous in its favors to women than women
have been generous toward your sex in their favors? Neither one can do without the
other: neither can dispense with the service of the other; neither can dispense
with the reverence of the other, with the aid of the other in domestic life, in
social life. The men of this nation are rapidly finding that they can not dispense
with the service of women in business life. I know that they are also feeling the
need of what they call the moral support of women in their public life, and in
their political life.

I always feel that it is not for women alone that I appeal. As men have long
represented me, or assumed to do so, and as the men of my own family always have
done so justly and most chivalrously, I feel that in my appeal for political
recognition I represent them; that I represent my husband and my brother and the
interest of the sex to which they belong, for you, gentlemen, by lifting the women
of the nation into political equality would simply place us where we could lift you
where you never yet have stood, upon a moral equality with us. Gentlemen, that is
true. You know it as well as I. I do not speak to you as individuals; I speak to
you as the representatives of your sex, as I stand here the representative of mine;
and never until we are your equals politically will the moral standard for men be
what it now is for women, and it is none too high. Let it grow the more elevated by
our growth in spirituality, by every aspiration which we receive from the God
whence we draw our life and whence we draw our impulses of life. Let our standard
remain where it is and be more elevated. Yours must come up to match it, and never
will it until we are your equals politically. So it is for men, as well as for
women, that I make my appeal.

I know that there are some gentlemen upon this committee who, when we were here
two years ago, had something to say about the rights of the States and of their
disinclination to interfere with the rights of the States in this matter. I have
great sympathy with the gentlemen from the South, who, I hope, do not forget that
they are representing the women of the South in their work here at the national
capital. Already some Northern States are making rapid strides towards the
enfranchisement of their women. The men of some of the Northern States see that
they can no longer accomplish the purposes politically which they desire to
accomplish without the aid of the women of their respective States. Washington is
the third Territory that has added women to its voting force, and consequently to
its political power at the national capital as well as its own capital. Oregon will
undoubtedly, as her representative will tell you to-day, soon add its women to its
voting force. The men who believe, that each State must be left to do this for
itself will soon find that the balance of power between the North and South is
destroyed, unless the women of the South are brought forward to add to the
political force of the South as the women of the North are being brought forward to
add to the political force of the North.

This should not be acted upon as a partisan measure. We do not appeal to you as
Republicans or as Democrats. We have among us Republicans and Democrats; we have
our party affiliations. We, of course, were reared with our brothers under the
political belief and faith of our fathers, and probably as much influenced by that
rearing as our brothers were. We shall go to strengthen both the political parties,
neither one nor the other the more, probably. So that it is not as a partisan
measure; it is as a just measure, which is our due, not because of what we are,
gentlemen, but because of what you are, and because of what we are through you, of
what you shall be through us; of what we, men and women, both are by virtue of our
heritage and our one Father, our one mother eternal, the spirit created and
progressive, that has thus far sustained us, and that will carry us and you forward
to the action which we demand of you to take, and to the results which we
anticipate will attend upon that action.

REMARKS BY MRS. HELEN M. GOUGAR.

Miss Anthony. I think I will call upon the other representative of the State of
Indiana to speak now, Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, of Lafayette, Ind.

Mrs. Gougar. Gentlemen, we are here on behalf of the women citizens of this
Republic, asking for political freedom. I maintain that there is no political
question paramount to that of woman suffrage before the people of America to-day.
Political parties would fain have us believe that tariff is the great question of
the hour. Political parties know better. It is an insult to the intelligence of the
present hour to say that when one-half of the citizens of this Republic are denied
a direct voice in making the laws under which they shall live, that tariff, or that
the civil rights of the negro, or any other question that can be brought up, is
equal to the one of giving political freedom to women. So I come to ask you, as
representative men, making laws to govern the women the same as the men of this
country (and there is not a law that you make in the United States Congress in
which woman has not an equal interest with man), to take the word “male” out of the
constitutions of the United States and the several States, as you have taken the
word “white” out, and give to us women a voice in the laws under which we live.

You ask me why I am inclined to be practical in my view of this question. In the
first place, speaking from my own standpoint, I ask you to let me have a voice in
the laws under which I shall live because the older empires of the earth are
sending in upon our American shores a population drawing very largely from the
asylums, yes, from the penitentiaries, the jails, and the poor-houses of the Old
World. They are emptying those men upon our shores, and within a few months they
are intrusted with the ballot, the law-making power in this Republic, and they and
their representatives are seated in official and legislative positions. I, as an
American-born woman, to-day enter my protest at being compelled to live under laws
made by this class of men very largely, and myself being rendered utterly incapable
of the protection that can only come from the ballot. While I would not have you
take this right or privilege from those men whom we invite to our shores, I do ask
you, in the face of this immense foreign immigration, to enfranchise the
tax-paying, intelligent, moral, native-born women of America.

Miss Anthony. And foreign women, too.

Mrs. Gougar. Miss Anthony suggests an amendment, and I indorse it most heartily,
and foreign women too, because if we let a foreign man vote I say let the foreign
woman vote. I am in favor of universal suffrage.

Gentlemen, I ask this as a matter of justice; I ask it because it is an insult
to the intelligence of the present to draw the sex line upon any right whatever. I
know there are many objections urged, and I am sure that you have considered this
question; but I only make the demand from the standpoint, not of sex, but of
humanity.

As a Northern woman, as a woman from Indiana, I know that we have the
intelligent, thinking, cultured, pure, patriotic men and women with us. We have the
women who are engaged in philanthropic enterprises. We have in our own State the
signatures of over 5,000 of the school teachers asking for woman’s ballot. I ask
you if the United States Government does not need the voice of those 5,000 educated
school teachers as much as it needs the voice of the 240 male criminals who are, on
an average, sent out of the penitentiary of Indiana every year, who go to the
ballot-box upon every question whatever, and make laws under which those school
teachers must live, and under which the mothers of our State must keep their homes
and rear their children?

On behalf of the mothers of this country I demand that their hands shall be
loosened before the ballot-box, and that they shall have the privilege of throwing
the mother heart into the laws that shall follow their sons not only to the age of
majority that only has been made legal, but is never recognized, and so I ask you
to let the mothers carry their influence in protecting laws around the footsteps of
those boys, even after their hair has turned gray and they have seats in the United
States Congress. I ask you to give them the power to throw protecting laws around
those boys to the very confines of eternity. This can be done in no indirect way;
it can not be done by the silent influence; it can not be done by prayer. While I
do not underestimate the power of prayer, I say give me my ballot on election day
that shall send pure men, good men, intelligent men, statesmen, instead of the
modern politician, into our legislative halls. I would rather have that ballot on
election day than the prayers of all the disfranchised women in the universe.

So I ask you to loosen our hands. I ask you to let us join with you in
developing this science of human government. What is politics after all but the
science of government? We are interested in these questions, and we are
investigating them already. We have our opinions. Recently an able man has said
that we have been grandly developed physically and mentally, but as a nation we are
a political infant. So we are, gentlemen; we are to-day in America politically
simply an infant. Why is it? It is because we have not recognized God’s family plan
in government—man and woman together. He created the male and female, and
gave them dominion together. We have dominion in every other interest in society,
and why shall we not stand shoulder to shoulder and have dominion, in the science
in government, in making the laws under which we shall live?

We are taxed to support this Government—this immense Capitol building is
built largely from the industries of the tax-paying women of this country—and
yet we are denied the slightest voice in distributing our taxes. Our foreparents
did not object to taxation, but they did object to taxation without representation,
and we, as thinking, industrious, active American women, object to taxation without
representation. We are willing to contribute our share to the support of this
Government, as we always have done, but we have a right to ask for our little yes
and no in the form of the ballot so that we shall have a direct influence in
distributing the taxes.

Gentlemen, I am amenable to the gallows and the penitentiary, and it is no more
than right that I shall have a voice in framing the laws under which I shall he
rewarded or punished. Am I asking too much of you as representative men of this
great Government when I ask you to let me have a voice in making the laws under
which I shall be rewarded or punished? It is written in the law of every State in
this Union that a person in the courts shall have a jury of his peers, yet so long
as the word “male” stands as it does in the Constitutions of the United States and
the States no woman in any State of this Union can have a jury of her peers, I
protest in the name of justice against going into the court-room and being
compelled to run the gauntlet of the gutter and of the saloon—yes, even of
the police court and of the jail—as we are compelled to do to select a male
jury to try the interests of women, whether relating to life, property, or
reputation. So long as the word “male” is in our constitutions just so long we can
not have a jury of our peers in any State in the Union.

I ask that the women shall have the right of the ballot that they may go into
our legislative halls and there provide for the prevention rather than the cure of
crime. I ask you on behalf of the twelve hundred children under twelve years of age
who are in the poor-houses of Indiana, of the sixteen hundred in the poor-houses of
Illinois, and on that average in every State in the Union, that you shall take the
word “male” out of the constitutions and allow the women of this country to sit in
legislative halls and provide homes for and look after the little waifs of society.
There are hundreds of moral questions to-day requiring the assistance of the moral
element of womanhood to help make the laws under which we shall live.

Gentlemen, the political party that lives in the future must fight the moral
battles of humanity. The day of blood is passed; the day of brain and heart is upon
us; and I ask you to let the moral constituency that resides in woman’s nature be
represented. Let me say right here that I do not believe that there is morality in
sex, but the social customs have been such that woman has been held to a higher
standard. May the day hasten when the social custom shall hold man to as high a
moral standard as it to-day holds woman.

This is the condition of things. The political party that presumes to fight the
moral battles of the future must have the women in its ranks. We are non-partisan,
as has been well said by my friend from Indiana [Mrs. Sewall.] We come Democrats,
Republicans, and Greenbackers, and I expect if there were a half dozen other
political parties some of us would belong to them. We ask this beneficent action
upon your part because we believe that the intelligence and the justice of the hour
is demanding it. We do not want a political party action. We want you to keep this
question out of the canvass. We ask you in the name of justice and humanity alone,
and not on the part of party.

I hold in my hand a petition sent from one district in the State of Illinois
with the request that I bear it to you. Out of three hundred electors the names of
two hundred stand in this petition that I shall leave in your hands. In this list
stand not the wife-whippers, not the drunkards, not the dissolute, but every
minister in that town, every editor in that town, every professional man in that
town, every banker, and every prominent business man in that town of three hundred
electors. I believe that petitions could be rolled up in this way in every town in
the Northern and in many of the Southern States. I leave this petition with you for
your consideration.

Upon no question whatever has such a large number of petitions been sent as upon
this demand for woman suffrage. You have the petitions in your hands, and I ask you
in the name of justice and humanity not to let this Congress adjourn without
action.

You ask us if we are impatient. Yes; we are impatient. Some of us may die, and I
want our grand old standard-bearer, Susan B. Anthony, whose name will go down to
history beside that of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Wendell
Phillips—I want that woman to go to heaven a free angel from this Republic.
The power lies in your hands to make us all free. May the blessing of God be upon
the hearts of every one of you, gentlemen; may the scales of prejudice fall from
your eyes, and may you, representing the Senate of the United States, have the
grand honor of telegraphing to us, to the millions of waiting women from one end of
this country to the other, that the sixteenth amendment has been submitted to the
ratification of the several legislatures of our States striking the word “male” out
of the constitutions; and that this shall be, as we promise it to be, a government
of the people, for the people, and by the people.

REMARKS BY MRS. ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY.

Miss Anthony. I now, gentlemen of the committee, introduce to you Mrs. Abigail
Scott Duniway, from the extreme Northwest; and before she speaks I wish to say that
she has been the one canvasser in the great State of Oregon and Washington
Territory, and that it is to Mrs. Duniway that the women of Washington Territory
are more indebted than to all other influences for their enfranchisement.

Mrs. Duniway. Gentlemen of the committee, do you think it possible that an
agitation like this can go on and on forever without a victory? Do you not see that
the golden moment has come for this grand committee to achieve immortality upon the
grandest idea that has ever stirred the heart-beats of American citizens, and will
you not in the magnanimity of noble purposes rise to meet the situation and, accede
to our demand, which in your hearts you must know is just?

I do not come before you, gentlemen, with the expectation to instruct you in
regard to the laws of our country. The women around us are law-abiding women. They
are the mothers, many of them, of true and noble men, the wives, many of them, of
grand, free husbands, who are listening, watching, waiting eagerly for successful
tidings of this great experiment.

There never was a grander theory of government than that of these United States.
Never were grander principles enunciated upon any platform, never so grand before
and never can be grander again, than the declaration that “all men,” including of
course all women, since women are amenable to the laws, “are created equal; that
they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights * * * that to
secure these rights governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed.”

Gentlemen, are we allowed the opportunity of consent? These women who are here
from Maine to Oregon, from the Straits of Fuca to the reefs of Florida, who in
their representative capacity have come up here so often, augmented in their
numbers year by year, looking with eyes of hope and hearts of faith, but oftentimes
with hopes deferred, upon the final solution of this great problem, which it is so
much in your hands to hasten in its solution—these women are in earnest. My
State is far away beyond the confines of the Rocky Mountains, away over beside the
singing Pacific sea, but the spirit of liberty is among us there, and the public
heart has been stirred. The hearts of our men have been moved to listen to our
demands, and in Washington Territory, as one speaker has informed you, women to-day
are endowed with full and free enfranchisement, and the rejoicing throughout that
Territory is universal.

In Oregon men have also listened to our demand, and the Legislature has in two
successive sessions agreed upon a proposition to amend our State constitution, a
proposition which will be submitted for ratification to our voters at the coming
June election. It is simply a proposition declaring that the right of suffrage
shall not hereafter be prohibited in the State of Oregon on account of sex. Your
action in the Senate of the United States will greatly determine the action of the
voters of Oregon on our, or rather on their, election day, for we stand before the
public in the anomaly of petitioners upon a great question in which we, in its
final decision, are allowed no voice, and we can only stand with expectant hearts
and almost bated breath awaiting the action of men who are to make this
decision.

We have great hope for our victory, because the men of the broad, free West are
grand, and chivalrous, and free. They have gone across the mighty continent with
free steps; they have raised the standard of a new Pacific empire; they have
imbibed the spirit of liberty with their very breath, and they have listened to us
far in advance of many of the men of the older States who have not had their
opportunity among the grand free wilds of nature for expansion.

So all of our leaders are with us to-day. You may go to either member of the
Senate of the United States from Oregon, and while I can not speak so positively
for the senior member, as he came over here some years ago before the public were
so well educated as now, I can and do proudly vouch for the late Senator-elect
DOLPH, who now has a seat upon the floor of the Senate, who is heart and soul and
hand and purse in sympathy with this great movement for the enfranchisement of the
women of Oregon. I would also be unjust to our worthy representative in the lower
house, Hon. M.C. George, did I not proudly speak his name in this great connection.
Men of this class are with us, and without regard to party affiliations we know
that they are upon our side. Our governor, our associate supreme judge for the
district of the Pacific, all of these men, are leading in the grand free way that
characterizes the men of the West in assisting in this work. But we
have—alas, that I should be compelled to say it—a great many men who
pay no heed whatever to this question. Men will be entitled to a voice in this
decision who are not, like members of Congress, the picked men of the nation or the
State, but men, many of whom can not read, who will have an opportunity to decide
this question as far as their ballots can go. These are they to whom the
enlightened, educated motherhood of the State of Oregon must look largely for the
decision.

This brings me to the grand point of our coming to Congress. Some of you say to
us, “Why not leave this matter for settlement in the different States?” When we
leave it for settlement in the different States we leave it just as I have told
you, because of the constitutional provisions of our organic law we can not do
otherwise; but if the question were to be settled by the Legislature of Oregon
alone it would be settled now; and I, as a representative of that State only, would
have no need of coming here; it would be settled just as it has been settled in
Washington Territory; but when we come here to Congress it is the great nation
asking you to take such legislative action in submitting an amendment to the
Constitution of the United States as shall recognize the equality of these women
who are here; these women who have come here from all parts of the country, whose
constituents are looking on while we are here before you. As we reflect that our
feeblest words uttered before this committee will go to the confines of this nation
and be cabled across the great Atlantic and around the globe, we realize that more
and more prominently our cause is growing into public favor, and the time is just
upon us when some decision must be made.

Gentlemen of the committee, will you not recognize the importance of the
movement? Who among you will be our standard-bearer? Who among you will achieve
immortality by standing up in these halls in which we are forbidden to speak, and
in the magnanimity of your own free wills and noble hearts champion the woman’s
cause and make us before the law, as we of right ought now to be, free and
independent?

REMARKS BY MRS. CAROLINE GILKEY ROGERS.

Miss ANTHONY. I now call upon Mrs. Caroline Gilkey Rogers, of Lansingburg, N.Y.,
to address the committee.

Mrs. ROGERS. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in our efforts to
secure the right of citizenship we appeal only to your sense of justice and love of
fair dealing.

We ask for the ballot because it is the symbol of equality. There is no other
recognized symbol of equality in this country. We ask for the ballot that we may be
equal to man before the law. We urge a twofold right—our right to the
Republic, the Republic’s right to us. We believe the interests of the country are
identical with the interests of all its citizens, including women, and that the
Government can no longer afford to shut women out from the affairs of the State and
nation, and wise men are beginning to know that they are needed in the Government;
that they are needed where our laws are made as well as where they are
violated.

Many admit the justice of our claim, but will say, Is it safe? Is it expedient?
It is always safe to do right; is always expedient to be just. Justice can never
bring evil in its train.

The question is asked how and what would the women do in the State and nation?
We do not pledge ourselves to anything. I claim that we can not have a better
government than that of the people. The present Government is of only a part of the
people. We have not yet entered upon the system of higher arbitration, because the
Government is of man only. If we had been marching along with you all this time I
trust we should have reached a higher plane of civilization.

We believe that all the virtue of the world can take care of all the evil, and
all the intelligence can take care of all the ignorance. Let us have all the virtue
confront all the vice.

There is no need to do battle in this matter. In all kindness and gentleness we
urge our claims. There is no need to declare war upon men, for the best of men in
this country are with us heart and soul.

It is a common remark that unless some new element is infused into our political
life our nation is doomed to destruction. What more fitting element than the noble
type of American womanhood, who have taught our Presidents, Senators, and
Congressmen the rudiments of all they know.

Think of all the foreigners and all our own native-born ignorant men who can not
write their own names or read the Declaration of Independence making laws for such
women as Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony. Think of jurors drawn from
these ranks to watch and try young girls for crimes often committed against them
when the male criminal goes free. Think of a single one of these votes on election
day outweighing all the women in the country. Is it not humiliating for me to sit,
a political cipher, and see the colored man in my employ, to whom I have taught the
alphabet, go out on election day and say by his vote what shall be done with my tax
money. How would you like it?

When we think of the wives trampled on by husbands whom the law has taught them
to regard as inferior beings, and of the mothers whose children are torn from their
arms by the direct behest of the law at the bidding of a dead or living father,
when we think of these things, our hearts ache with pity and indignation.

If mothers could only realize how the laws which they have no voice in making
and no power to change affect them at every point, how they enter every door,
whether palace or hovel, touch, limit, and bind, every article and inmate from the
smallest child up, no woman, however shrinking and delicate, can escape it, they
would get beyond the meaningless cry, “I have all the rights I want.” Do these
women know that in most States in the Union the shameful fact that no woman has any
legal rights to her own child, except it is born out of wedlock! In these States
there is not a line of positive law to protect the mother; the father is the legal
protector and guardian of the children.

Under the laws of most of the States to-day a husband may by his last will
bequeath his child away from its mother, so that she might, if the guardian chose,
never see it again.

The husband may have been a very bad man, and in a moment of anger made the
will. The guardian he has appointed may turn out a malicious man, and take pleasure
in tormenting the mother, or he may bring up the children in a way that the mother
thinks ruinous to them, and she has no redress in law. Why do not all the fortunate
mothers in the land cry out against such a law? Why do not all women say, “Inasmuch
as the law has done this wrong unto the least of these my sisters it has done it
unto me.” It is true that men are almost always better than their laws, but while a
bad law remains on the statute-books it gives to an unscrupulous man a right to be
as bad as the law.

It is often said to us when all the women ask for the ballot it will be granted.
Did all the married women petition the Legislatures of their States to secure to
them the right to hold in their own name the property that belonged to them? To
secure to the poor forsaken wife the right to her earnings?

All the women did not ask for these rights, but all accepted them with joy and
gladness when they were obtained, and so it will be with the franchise. But woman’s
right to self-government does not depend upon the numbers that demand it, but upon
precisely the same principles that man claims it for himself.

Where did man get the authority that he now claims to govern one-half of
humanity, from what power the right to place woman, his helpmeet in life, in an
inferior position? Came it from nature? Nature made woman his superior when she
made her his mother—his equal when she fitted her to hold the sacred position
of wife. Did women meet in council and voluntarily give up all their claim to be
their own law-makers?

The power of the strong over the weak makes man the master. Yes, then, and then
only, does he gain the authority.

It is all very well to say “convert the women.” While we most heartily wish they
could all feel as we do, yet when it comes to the decision of this great question
they are mere ciphers, for if this question is settled by the States it will be
left to the voters, not to the women to decide. Or if suffrage comes to women
through a sixteenth amendment of the national Constitution, it will be decided by
Legislatures elected by men. In neither case will women have an opportunity of
passing; upon the question. So reason tells us we must devote our best efforts to
converting those to whom we must look for the removal of our disabilities, which
now prevent our exercising the right of suffrage.

The arguments in favor of the enfranchisement of women are truths strong and
unanswerable, and as old as the free institutions of our Government. The principle
of “taxation without representation is tyranny” applies to women as well as men,
and is as true to-day as it was a hundred years ago.

Our demand for the ballot is the great onward step of the century, and not, as
some claim, the idiosyncracies of a few unbalanced minds.

Every argument that has been urged against this question of woman’s suffrage has
been urged against every reform. Yet the reforms have fought their way onward and
become a part of the glorious history of humanity.

So it will be with suffrage. “You can stop the crowing of the cock, but you can
not stop the dawn of the morning.” And now, gentlemen, you are responsible, not for
the laws you find on the statute books, but for those you leave there.

REMARKS BY MRS. MARY SEYMOUR HOWELL.

Miss ANTHONY. I now introduce to the committee Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell, the
president of the Albany, N.Y., State society.

Mrs. HOWELL. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: Miss Anthony gives me
five minutes. I shall have to talk very rapidly. I ask you for the ballot because
of the very first principle that is often repeated to you, that “taxation without
representation is tyranny.” I come from the city of Albany, where many of my
sisters are taxed for millions of dollars. There are three or four women in the
city of Albany who are worth their millions, and yet they have no voice in the laws
that govern and control them. One of our great State senators has said that you can
not argue five minutes against woman suffrage without repudiating every principle
that this great Republic is founded upon.

I ask you also for the ballot for the large class of women who are not taxed.
They need it more than the women who are taxed, I have found in every work that I
have conducted that because I am a woman I am not paid for that work as a man is
paid for similar work.

You have heard, and perhaps some of you are thinking—I hope not—that
women should be at home. I wish to say to you that there are millions of women in
the United States who have no homes. There are millions of women who are trying to
earn their bread and hold their purity sacred. For that class of women I appeal to
you. In the city of Albany there are hundreds of women in our factories making the
shirts that you can buy for $1.50 and $2, and all those women are paid for making
the shirts is 4 cents apiece. There are in the State of New York 18,000 teachers.
When I was a teacher and taught with gentlemen in our academies, I received about
one-fourth of the pay because I happened to be a woman. I consider it an insult
that forever burns in my soul, that I am to be handed a mere pittance in comparison
with what man receives for same quality of work. When I was sent out by our
superintendent of public instruction to hold conventions of teachers, as I have
often done in our State of New York, and when I did one-third more work than the
men teachers so sent out, but because I was a woman and had not the ballot, I was
only paid about half as much as the man; and saying that once to our superintendent
of public instruction in Albany, he said, “Mrs. Howell, just as soon as you get the
ballot and have a political influence in the work you will have the same pay as a
man.”

We ask for the ballot for that great army of fallen women who walk our streets
and who break up our homes and ruin our husbands and our dear boys. We ask it for
those women. The ballot will lift them up. Hundreds and thousands of women give up
their purity for the sake of starving children and families. There is many a woman
who goes to a life of degradation and pollution shedding burning tears over her
4-cent shirts.

We ask for the ballot for the good of the race, Huxley says, “admitting for the
sake of argument that woman is the weaker, mentally and physically, for that reason
she should have the ballot and should have every help that the world can give her.”
When you debar from your councils and legislative halls the purity, the
spirituality, and the love of woman then those legislative halls and those councils
are apt to become coarse and brutal, God gave us to you to help you in this little
journey to a better land, and by our love and our intellect to help to make our
country pure and noble, and if you would have statesmen you must have states we men
to bear them.

I ask you also for the ballot that I may decide what I am. I stand before you,
but I do not know to-day whether I am legally a “person” according to the law. It
has been decided in some States that we are not “persons.” In the State of New
York, in one village, it was decided that women are not inhabitants. So I should
like to know whether I am a person, whether I am an inhabitant, and above all I ask
you for the ballot that I may become a citizen of this great Republic.

Gentlemen, you see before you this great convention of women from the Atlantic
slopes to the Pacific Ocean, from the North to the South. We are in dead earnest. A
reform never goes backward. This is a question that is before the American nation.
Will you do your duty and give us our liberty, or will you leave it for braver
hearts to do what must be done? For, like our forefathers, we will ask until we
have gained it. Ever the world goes round and round; Ever the truth comes
uppermost; and ever is justice done.

REMARKS BY MRS. LILLIE DEVEREUX BLAKE.

Miss ANTHONY. I now have the pleasure of introducing to the committee Mrs.
Lillie Devereux Blake, of New York. New York is a great State, and therefore it has
three representatives here to-day.

Mrs. BLAKE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee: A recent writer in an
English magazine, in speaking of the great advantage which to-day flows to the
laboring classes of that nation from having received the right of suffrage, made
the statement that disfranchised classes are oppressed, not because there is any
desire whatever to do injustice to them, but because they are forgotten. We have
year after year and session after session of our legislatures and of our Congresses
proved the correctness of this statement. While we have nothing to complain of in
the courtesy which we receive in private life, still when we see masses of men
assembled together for political action, whether it be of the nation or of the
State, we find that the women are totally forgotten.

In the limited time that is mine I cannot go into any lengthy exposition upon
this point. I will simply call your attention to the total forgetfulness of the
Congress of the United States to the debt owed to the women of this nation during
the war. You have passed a pension bill upon which there has been much comment
throughout the nation, and yet, when an old army nurse applies for a pension, a
woman who is broken down by her devotion to the nation in hospitals and upon the
battle-field, she is met at the door of the Pension Bureau by this statement, “the
Government has made no appropriation for the services of women in the war.” One of
these women is an old nurse whom some of you may remember, Mother Bickerdyke, who
went out onto many a battle-field when she was in the prime of life, twenty years
ago, and at the risk of her life lifted men, who were wounded, in her arms, and
carried them to a place of safety. She is an old woman now, and where is she? What
reward the nation bestowed to her faithful services? The nation has a pension for
every man who has served this nation, even down to the boy recruit who was out but
three months; but Mother Bickerdyke, though her health has never been good since
her service then, is earning her living at the wash-tub, a monument to the
ingratitude of a Republic as great as was that when Belisarius begged in the
streets of Rome.

I bring up this illustration alone out of innumerable others that are possible,
to try to impress upon your minds that we are forgotten. It is not from any
unkindness on your part. Who would think for one moment, looking upon the kindly
faces of this committee, that any man on it would do an injustice to women,
especially if she were old and feeble? But because we have no right to vote, as I
said, our interests are overlooked and forgotten.

It is often said that we have too many voters; that the aggregate of vice and
ignorance among us should not be increased by giving women the right of suffrage. I
wish to remind you of the fact that in the enormous immigration that pours to our
shores every year, numbering somewhere in the neighborhood of half a million, there
come, twice as many men as women. The figures for the last year were two hundred
and twenty-three thousand men, and one hundred and thirteen thousand women.

What does this mean? It means a steady influx of this foreign element; it means
a constant preponderance of the masculine over the feminine; and it means also, of
course, a preponderance of the voting power of the foreigner as compared to the
native born. To those who fear that our American institutions are threatened by
this gigantic inroad of foreigners I commend the reflection that the best safeguard
against any such preponderance of foreign nations or of foreign influence is to put
the ballot in the hands of the American-born women, And of all other women also, so
that if the foreign-born man overbalances us in numbers we shall be always in a
preponderance on the side of the liberty which is secured by our institutions.

It is because, as many of my predecessors have said, of the different elements
represented by the two sexes, that we are asking for this liberty. When I was
recently in the capitol of my own State of New York, I was reminded there of the
difference of temperament between the sexes by seeing how children act when coming
to the doors of the capitol, which have been constructed so that they are very hard
to open. Whether that is because they want to keep us women out or not I am not
able to say; but for some reason the doors are so constructed that it is nearly
impossible to open them. I saw a number of little girls coming in through those
doors—every child held the door for those who were to follow. A number of
little boys followed just after, and every boy rushed through and let the door shut
in the face of the one who was coming behind him. That is a good illustration of
the different qualities of the sexes. Those boys were not unkind, they simply
represented that onward push which is one of the grandest characteristics of your
sex; and the little girls, on the other hand, represented that gentleness and
thoughtfulness of others which is eminently a characteristic of women.

This woman element is needed in every branch of the Government. Look at the
wholesale destruction of the forests throughout our nation, which has gone on until
it brings direct destruction to the land on the lines of the great rivers of the
West, and threatens us even in New York with destroying at once the beauty and
usefulness of our far-famed Hudson. If women were in the Government do you not
think they would protect the economic interests of the nation? They are the born
and trained economists of the world, and when you call them to your assistance you
will find an element that has not heretofore been felt with the weight which it
deserves.

As we walk through the Capitol we are struck with the significance of the
symbolism on every side; we view the adornments in the beautiful room, and we find
here everywhere emblematically woman’s figure. Here is woman representing even war,
and there are women representing grace and loveliness and the fullness of the
harvest; and, above all, they are extending their protecting arms over the little
children. Gentlemen, I leave you under this symbolism, hoping that you will see in
it the type of a coming day when we shall have women and men united together in the
national councils in this great building.

REMARKS BY DR. CLEMENCE S. LOZIER.

Miss ANTHONY. I meant to have said, as I introduced Mrs. Blake, that sitting on
the sofa is Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, who declines to speak, but I want her to stand
up, because she represents New York city.

Dr. LOZIER. I thank you, I am very happy to be here, but I am not a fluent
speaker. I feel in my heart that I know what justice means; that I know what mercy
means, and in all my rounds of duty in my profession I am happy to extend not only
food but shelter to many poor ones. The need of the ballot for working-girls and
those who pay no taxes is not understood. The Saviour said, seeing the poor widow
cast her two mites, which make a farthing, into the public treasury, “This poor
widow hath cast more in than all they which have cast into the treasury.” I see
this among the poor working-girls of the city of New York; sick, in a little garret
bedroom, perhaps, and although needing medical care and needing food, they will say
to me, “above all things else, if I could only pay the rent.” The rent of their
little rooms goes into the coffers of their landlords and pays taxes. The poor
women of the city of New York and everywhere are the grandest upholders of this
Government. I believe they pay indirectly more taxes than the monopoly kings of our
country. It is for them that I want the ballot.

REMARKS BY MRS. ELIZABETH BOYNTON HARBERT.

Miss ANTHONY. I now introduce to the committee Mrs. Elizabeth Boynton Harbert,
of Illinois, and before Mrs. Harbert speaks I wish to say that for the last six
years she has edited a department of the Chicago Inter-Ocean called the “Women’s
Kingdom.”

Mrs. HARBERT. Mr. Chairman and honorable gentlemen of the committee, after the
eloquent rhetoric to which you have listened I merely come in these five minutes
with a plain statement of facts. Some friends have said, “Here is the same company
of women that year after year besiege you with their petitions.” We are here to-day
in a representative capacity. From the great State of Illinois I come, representing
200,000 men and women of that State who have recorded their written petitions for
woman’s ballot, 90,000 of these being citizens under the law—male voters;
those 90,000 having signed petitions for the right of women to vote on the
temperance question; 90,000 women also signed those petitions; 50,000 men and women
signed the petitions for the school vote, and nearly 60,000 more have signed
petitions that the right of suffrage might be accorded to woman.

This growth of public sentiment has been occasioned by the needs of the children
and the working-women of that great State. I come here to ask you to make a niche
in the statesmanship and legislation of the nation for the domestic interests of
the people. You recognize that the masculine thought is more often turned to the
material and political interests of the nation. I claim that the mother thought,
the woman element needed, is to supplement the concurrent statesmanship of American
men on political and industrial affairs with the domestic legislation of the
nation.

There are good men and women who believe that women should use their influence
merely through their social sphere. I believe both of the great parties are
represented by us. You remember that a few weeks ago when there came across the
country the news of the decision of the Supreme Court as regards the negro race the
politicians sprang to the platform, and our editors hastened to their sanctums, to
proclaim to the people that that did not interfere with the civil rights of the
negro; that only their social rights were affected, and that the civil rights of
man, those rights worth dying for, were not affected. Gentlemen, we who are trying
to help the men in our municipal governments, who are trying to save the children
from our poor-houses, begin to realize that whatever is good and essential for the
liberty of the black man is good for the white woman and for all women. We are here
to claim that whatever liberty has done for you it should be allowed to do for us.
Take a single glance through the past; recognize the position of American manhood
before the world to-day, and whatever liberty has done for you, liberty will surely
do for the mothers of the race.

MRS. SARAH E. WALL.

Miss ANTHONY. Gentlemen of the committee, here is another woman I wish to show
you, Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass., who, for the last twenty-five years, has
resisted the tax gatherer when he came around. I want you to look at her. She looks
very harmless, but she will not pay a dollar of tax. She says when the Commonwealth
of Massachusetts will give her the right of representation she will pay her taxes.
I do not know exactly how it is now, but the assessor has left her name off the
tax-list, and passed her by rather than have a lawsuit with her.

REMARKS BY MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

Miss ANTHONY. I wish I could state the avocations and professions of the various
women who have spoken in our convention during the last three days. I do not wish
to speak disparagingly in regard to the men in Congress, but I doubt if a man on
the floor of either House could have made a better speech than some of those which
have been made by women during this convention. Twenty-six States and Territories
are represented with live women, traveling all the way from Kansas, Arkansas,
Oregon, and Washington Territory. It does seem to me that after all these years of
coming up to this Capitol an impression should be made upon the minds of
legislators that we are never to be silenced until we gain the demand. We have
never had in the whole thirty years of our agitation so many States represented in
any convention as we had this year.

This fact shows the growth of public sentiment. Mrs. Duniway is here all the way
from Oregon, and you say, when Mrs. Duniway is doing so well up there, and is so
hopeful of carrying the State of Oregon, why do not you all rest satisfied with
that plan of gaining the suffrage? My answer is that I do not wish to see the women
of the thirty-eight States of this Union compelled to leave their homes and canvass
each State, school district by school district. It is asking too much of a
moneyless class of people, disfranchised by the constitution of every State in the
Union. The joint earnings of the marriage copartnership in all the States belong
legally to the husband. If the wife goes outside the home to work, the law in most
of the States permits her to own and control the money thus earned. We have not a
single State in the Union where the wife’s earnings inside the marriage
copartnership are owned by her. Therefore, to ask the vast majority of women who
are thus situated, without an independent dollar of their own, to make a canvass of
the States is asking to much.

Mrs. GOUGAR. Why did they not ask the negro to do that?

Miss ANTHONY. Of course the negro was not asked to go begging the white man from
school district to school district to get his ballot. If it was known that we could
be driven to the ballot-box: like a flock of sheep, and all vote for one party,
there would be a bid made for us; but that is not done, because we can not promise
you any such thing; because we stand before you and honestly tell you that the
women of this nation are educated equally with the men, and that they, too, have
political opinions. There is not a woman on our platform, there is scarcely a woman
in this city of Washington, whether the wife of a Senator or a Congressman—I
do not believe you can find a score of women in the whole nation—who have not
opinions on the pending Presidential election. We all have opinions; we all have
parties. Some of us like one party and one candidate and some another.

Therefore we can not promise you that women will vote as a unit when they are
enfranchised. Suppose the Democrats shall put a woman suffrage plank in their
platform in their Presidential convention, and nominate an open and avowed friend
of woman suffrage to stand upon that platform; we can not pledge you that all the
women of this nation will work for the success of that party, nor can I pledge you
that they will all vote for the Republican party if it should be the one to take
the lead in their enfranchisement. Our women will not toe a mark anywhere; they
will think and act for themselves, and when they are enfranchised they will divide
upon all political questions, as do intelligent, educated men.

I have tried the experiment of canvassing four States prior to Oregon, and in
each State with the best canvass that it was possible for us to make we obtained a
vote of one-third. One man out of every three men voted for the enfranchisement of
the women of their households, while two voted against it. But we are proud to say
that our splendid minority is always composed of the very best men of the State,
and I think Senator PALMER will agree with me that the forty thousand men of
Michigan who voted for the enfranchisement of the women of his State were really
the picked men in intelligence, in culture, in morals, in standing, and in every
direction.

It is too much to say that the majority of the voters in any State are superior,
educated, and capable, or that they investigate every question thoroughly, and cast
the ballot thereon intelligently. We all know that the majority of the voters of
any State are not of that stamp. The vast masses of the people, the laboring
classes, have all they can do in their struggle to get food and shelter for their
families. They have very little time or opportunity to study great questions of
constitutional law.

Because of this impossibility for women to canvass the States over and over to
educate the rank and file of the voters we come to you to ask you to make it
possible for the Legislatures of the thirty-eight States to settle the question,
where we shall have a few representative men assembled before whom we can make our
appeals and arguments.

This method of settling the question by the Legislatures is just as much in the
line of States’ rights as is that of the popular vote. The one question before you
is, will you insist that a majority of the individual voters of every State must be
converted before its women shall have the right to vote, or will you allow the
matter to be settled by the representative men in the Legislatures of the several
States? You need not fear that we shall get suffrage too quickly if Congress shall
submit the proposition, for even then we shall have a hard time in going from
Legislature to Legislature to secure the two-thirds votes of three-fourths of the
States necessary to ratify the amendment. It may take twenty years after Congress
has taken the initiative step to make action by the State Legislatures
possible.

I pray you, gentlemen, that you will make your report to the Senate speedily. I
know you are ready to make a favorable one. Some of our speakers may not have known
this as well as I. I ask you to make a report and to bring it to a discussion and a
vote on the floor of the Senate.

You ask me if we want to press this question to a vote provided there is not a
majority to carry it. I say yes, because we want the reflex influence of the
discussion and of the opinions of Senators to go back into the States to help us to
educate the people of the States.

Senator LAPHAM. It would require a two-thirds vote in both, the House and the
Senate to submit the amendment to the State Legislatures for ratification.

Miss ANTHONY. I know that it requires a two-thirds vote of both Houses. But
still, I repeat, even if you can not get the two-thirds vote, we ask you to report
the bill and bring it to a discussion and a vote at the earliest day possible. We
feel that this question should be brought before Congress at every session. We ask
this little attention from Congressmen whose salaries are paid from the taxes;
women do their share for the support of this great Government, We think we are
entitled to two or three days of each session of Congress in both the Senate and
House. Therefore I ask of you to help us to a discussion in the Senate this
session. There is no reason why the Senate, composed of seventy-six of the most
intelligent and liberty-loving men of the nation, shall not pass the resolution by
a two-thirds vote, I really believe it will do so if the friends on this committee
and on the floor of the Senate will champion the measure as earnestly as if it were
to benefit themselves instead of their mothers and sisters. Gentlemen, I thank you
for this hearing granted, and I hope the telegraph wires will soon tell us that
your report is presented, and that a discussion is inaugurated on the floor of the
Senate.

ARGUMENTS OF THE WOMAN-SUFFRAGE DELEGATES BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
OF THE UNITED STATES SENATE, JANUARY 23, 1880.

THE COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, UNITED STATES SENATE, Friday, January 23,
1880.

The committee assembled at half-past 10 o’clock a.m.

Present: Mr. Thurman, chairman; Mr. McDonald, Mr. Bayard, Mr. Davis, of
Illinois; Mr. Edmunds.

Also Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace, of Indiana; Mrs. Elizabeth L. Saxon, of Louisiana;
Mrs. Mary A. Stewart, of Delaware; Mrs. Lucinda B. Chandler, of Pennsylvania; Mrs.
Julia Smith Parker, of Glastonbury, Conn.; Mrs. Nancy R. Allen, of Iowa; Miss Susan
B. Anthony, of New York; Mrs. Sara A. Spencer, of the city of Washington, and
others, delegates to the twelfth Washington convention of the National
Woman-Suffrage Association, held January 2l and 22, 1880.

The CHAIRMAN. Several members of the committee are unable to be here. Mr. Lamar
is detained at his home in Mississippi by sickness; Mr. Carpenter is confined to
his room by sickness; Mr. Conkling has been unwell; I do not know how he is this
morning; and Mr. Garland is chairman of the Committee on Territories, which has a
meeting this morning that he could not omit to attend. I do not think we are likely
to have any more members of the committee than are here now, and we will hear you,
ladies.

REMARKS BY MRS. ZERELDA G. WALLACE, OF INDIANA.

Mrs. WALLACE. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, it is scarcely
necessary to recite that there is not an effect without a cause. Therefore it would
be well for the statesmen of this nation to ask themselves the question, what has
brought the women from all parts of this nation to the capital at this time: the
wives and mothers, and sisters; the home-loving, law-abiding women? What has been
the strong motive that has taken us away from the quiet and comfort of our own
homes and brought us before you to-day? As an answer partly to that question, I
will read an extract from a speech made by one of Indiana’s statesmen, and probably
if I tell you his name his sentiments may have some weight with you. He found out
by experience and gave us the benefit of his experience, and it is what we are
rapidly learning:

“You can go to meetings; you can vote resolutions; you can attend great
demonstrations on the street; but, after all, the only occasion where the American
citizen expresses his acts, his opinion, and his power is at the ballot-box; and
that little ballot that he drops in there is the written sentiment of the times,
and it is the power that he has as a citizen of this great Republic.”

That is the reason why we are here; that is the reason why we want to vote. We
are no seditious women, clamoring for any peculiar rights, but we are patient
women. It is not the woman question that brings us before you to-day; it is the
human question that underlies this movement among the women of this nation; it is
for God, and home, and native land. We love and appreciate our country; we value
the institutions of our country. We realize that we owe great obligations to the
men of this nation for what they have done. We realize that to their strength we
owe the subjugation of all the material forces of the universe which give us
comfort and luxury in our homes. We realize that to their brains we owe the
machinery that gives us leisure for intellectual culture and achievement. We
realize that it is to their education we owe the opening of our colleges and the
establishment of our public schools, which give us these great and glorious
privileges.

This movement is the legitimate result of this development, of this
enlightenment, and of the suffering that woman has undergone in the ages past. We
find ourselves hedged in at every effort we make as mothers for the amelioration of
society, as philanthropists, as Christians.

A short time ago I went before the Legislature of Indiana with a petition signed
by 25,000 women, the best women in the State. I appeal to the memory of Judge
McDonald to substantiate the truth of what I say. Judge McDonald knows that I am a
home-loving, law-abiding, tax-paying woman of Indiana, and have been for 50 years.
When I went before our Legislature and found that 100 of the vilest men in our
State, merely by the possession of the ballot, had more influence with the
law-makers of our land than the wives and mothers of the nation, it was a
revelation that was perfectly startling.

You must admit that in popular government the ballot is the most potent means of
all moral and social reforms. As members of society, as those who are deeply
interested in the promotion of good morals, of virtue, and of the proper protection
of men from the consequences of their own vices, and of the protection of women,
too, we are deeply interested in all the social problems with which you have
grappled so long unsuccessfully. We do not intend to depreciate your efforts, but
you have attempted to do an impossible thing. You have attempted to represent the
whole by one-half; and we come to you to day for a recognition of the fact that
humanity is not a unit; that it is a unity; and because we are one-half that go to
make up that grand unity we come before you to-day and ask you to recognize our
rights as citizens of this Republic.

We know that many of us lay ourselves liable to contumely and ridicule. We have
to meet sneers; but we are determined that in the defense of right we will ignore
everything but what we feel to be our duty.

We do not come here as agitators, or aimless, dissatisfied, unhappy women by any
means; but we come as human beings, recognizing our responsibility to God for the
advantages that have come to us in the development of the ages. We wish to
discharge that responsibility faithfully, effectually, and conscientiously, and we
can not do it under our form of government, hedged in as we are by the lack of a
power which is such a mighty engine in our form of government for every means of
work.

I say to you, then, we come as one-half of the great whole. There is an
essential difference in the sexes. Mr. Parkman labored very hard to prove what no
one would deny—that there is an essential difference in the sexes, and it is
because of that very differentiation, the union of which in home, the recognition
of which in society, brings the greatest happiness, the recognition of which in the
church brings the greatest power and influence for good, and the recognition of
which in the Government would enable us finally, as near as it is possible for
humanity, to perfect our form of government. Probably we can never have a perfect
form of government, but the nearer we approximate to the divine the nearer will we
attain to perfection; and the divine government recognizes neither caste, class,
sex, nor nationality. The nearer we approach to that divine ideal the nearer we
will come to realizing our hopes of finally securing at least the most perfect form
of human government that it is possible for us to secure.

I do not wish to trespass upon your time, but I have felt that this movement is
not understood by a great majority of people. They think that we are unhappy, that
we are dissatisfied, that we are restive. That is not the case. When we look over
the statistics of our State and find that 60 per cent. of all the crime is the
result of drunkenness; when we find that 60 per cent. of the orphan children that
fill our pauper homes are the children of drunken parents; when we find that after
a certain age the daughters of those fathers who were made paupers and drunkards by
the approbation and sanction and under the seal of the Government, go to supply our
houses of prostitution, and when we find that the sons of these fathers go to fill
up our jails and our penitentiaries, and that the sober, law-abiding men, the
pains-taking, economical, and many of them widowed wives of this nation have to pay
taxes and bear the expenses incurred by such legislation, do you wonder, gentlemen,
that we at least want to try our hand and see what we can do?

We may not be able to bring about that Utopian form of government which we all
desire, but we can at least make an effort. Under our form of government the ballot
is our right; it is just and proper. When you debate about the expediency of any
matter you have no right to say that it is inexpedient to do right. Do right and
leave the result to God. You will have to decide between one of two things: either
you have no claim under our form of Constitution for the privileges which you
enjoy, or you will have to say that we are neither citizens nor persons.

Realizing this fact, and the deep interest that we take in the successful issue
of this experiment that humanity is making for self-government, and realizing the
fact that the ballot never can be given to us under more favorable circumstances,
and believing that here on this continent is to be wrought out the great problem of
man’s ability to govern himself—and when I say man I use the word in the
generic sense—that humanity here is to work out the great problems of
self-government and development, and recognizing, as I said a few minutes ago, that
we are one-half of the great whole, we feel that we ought to be heard when we come
before you and make the plea that we make to-day.

REMARKS BY MRS. JULIA SMITH PARKER, OF GLASTONBURY, CONN.

Mrs. PARKER. Gentlemen: You may be surprised, and not so much surprised as I am,
to see a woman of over four-score years of age appear before you at this time. She
came into the world and reached years of maturity and discretion before any person
in this room was born. She now comes before you to plead that she can vote and have
all the privileges that men have. She has suffered so much individually that she
thought when she was young she had no right to speak before the men; but still she
had courage to get an education equal to that of any man at the college, and she
had to suffer a great deal on that account. She went to New Haven to school, and it
was noised that she had studied the languages. It was such an astonishing thing for
girls at that time to have the advantages of education that I had absolutely to go
to cotillon parties to let people see that I had common sense. [Laughter.]

She has suffered; she had to pay money. She has had to pay $200 a year in taxes
without the least privilege of knowing what becomes of it. She does not know but
that it goes to support grog-shops. She knows nothing about it. She has had to
suffer her cows to be sold at the sign-post six times. She suffered her meadow land
to be sold, worth $2,000, for a tax of less than $50. If she could vote as the men
do she would not have suffered this insult; and so much would not have been said
against her as has been said if men did not have the whole power. I was told that
they had the power to take any thing that I owned if I would not exert myself to
pay the money. I felt that fought to have some little voice in determining what
should be done with what I paid. I felt that I ought to own my own property; that
it ought not to be in these men’s hands; and I now come to plead that I may have
the same privileges before the law that men have. I have seen what a difference
there is, when I have had my cows sold, by having a voter to take my part.

I have come from an obscure town (I can not say that it is obscure exactly) on
the banks of the Connecticut, where I was born. I was brought up on a farm. I never
had an idea that it could be possible that I should ever come all the way to
Washington to speak before those who had not come into existence when I was born.
Now, I plead that there may be a sixteenth amendment, and that women may be allowed
the privilege of owning their own property. That is what I have taken pains to
accomplish. I have suffered so much myself that I felt it might have some effect to
plead before this honorable committee. I thank you, gentlemen, for hearing me so
kindly.

REMARKS BY MRS. ELIZABETH L. SAXON, OF LOUISIANA,

Mrs. SAXON. Gentleman, I almost feel that after Mrs. Wallace’s plea there is
scarcely a necessity for me to say anything; she echoed my own feelings so
entirely. I come from the extreme South, she from the West. In this delegation, and
in the convention which has just been held in this city, women have come together
who never met before. People have asked me why I came.

I care nothing for suffrage so far as to stand beside men, or rush to the polls,
or take any privilege outside of my home, only, as Mrs. Wallace says, for humanity.
Years ago, when a little child, I lost my mother, and I was brought up by a man. If
I have not a man’s brain I had at least a man’s instruction. He taught me that to
work in the cause of reform for women was just as great as to work in the cause of
reform for men. But in every effort I made in the cause of reform I was combated in
one direction or another. I never took part with the suffragists. I never realized
the importance of their cause until we were beaten back on every aide in the work
of reform. If we attempted to put women in charge of prisons, believing that
wherever woman sins and suffers women should be there to teach, help, and guide,
every place was in the hands of men. If we made an effort to get women on the
school boards we were combated and could do nothing. Everyplace seemed to be
changed, when there were good men in those places, by changes of politics; and the
mothers of the land, having had to prostrate themselves as beggars, if not in fact,
really in sentiment and feeling, have become at last almost desperate.

In the State of Texas I had a niece living whose father was an inmate of a
lunatic asylum. She exerted as wide an influence in the State of Texas as any woman
there. I allude to Miss Mollie Moore, who was the ward of Mr. Gushing. I give this
illustration as a reason why Southern women are taking part in this movement, Mr.
Wallace had charge of that lunatic asylum for years. He was a good, honorable, able
man. Every one was endeared to him; every one appreciated him; the State
appreciated him as superintendent of this asylum.

When a political change was made and Governor Robinson came in, Dr. Wallace was
ousted for political purposes. It almost broke the hearts of some of the women who
had sons, daughters, or husbands there. They determined at once to try to seek some
redress and have him reinstated. It was impossible. He was out, and what could we
do? I do not know that we could reach a case like that; but such cases have stirred
the women of the whole land, for the reason that when they try to do good, or want
to help in the cause of humanity, they are combated so bitterly and
persistently.

I leave it to older and abler women, who have labored in this cause so long, to
prove whether it is or is not constitutional to give the ballot to women.

A gentleman said to me a few days ago, “These women want to marry.” I am
married; I am a mother; and in our home the sons and brothers are all standing like
a wall of steel at my back. I have cast aside every prejudice of the past. They lie
like rotted hulks behind me.

After the fever of 1878, when our constitutional convention was going to
convene, broke the agony and grief of my own heart, for one of my children died,
and took part in the suffrage movement in Louisiana, with the wife of Chief-Justice
Merrick, Mrs. Sarah A. Dorsey, and Mrs. Harriet Keatinge, of New York, the niece of
Mr. Lozier. These three ladies aided me faithfully and ably. When they found we
would be received, I went before the convention. I went to Lieutenant-Governor
Wiltz, and asked him if he would present or consider a petition which I wished to
bring before the convention. He read the petition. One clause of our State law is
that no woman can sign a will. We will have that question decided before the
meeting of the next Legislature. Some ladies donated property to an asylum. They
wrote the will and signed it themselves, and it was null and void, because the
signers were women. They not knowing the law, believed that they were human beings,
and signed it. That clause, perhaps, will be wiped out. Many gentlemen signed the
petition on that account. I took the paper around myself. Governor Wiltz, then
lieutenant-governor, told me he would present the petition. He was elected
president of the convention. I presented my first petition, signed by the best
names in the city of New Orleans and in the State.

I had the names of seven of the most prominent physicians there, leading with
the name of Dr. Logan, and many men, seeing the name of Dr. Samuel Logan, also
signed it. I went to all the different physicians and ministers. Three prominent
ministers signed it for moral purposes alone. When Mrs. Horsey was on her dying bed
the last time she ever signed her name was to a letter to go before that
convention. No one believed she would die. Mrs. Merrick and myself went before the
convention. I was invited before the committee on the judiciary. I made an
impression favorable enough there to be invited before the convention with these
ladies. I addressed the convention. We made the petition then that we make here;
that we, the mothers of the land, are barred on every side in the cause of reform.
I have strived hard in the work of reform for women. I pledged my father on his
dying bed that I would never cease that work until woman stood with man equal
before the law, so far as my efforts could accomplish it. Finding myself baffled in
that work, I could only take the course which we have adopted, and urge the
proposition of the sixteenth amendment.

I beg of you, gentlemen, to consider this question apart from the manner in
which it was formerly considered. We, as the women of the nation, as the mothers,
as the wives, have a right to be heard, it seems to me, before the nation. We
represent precisely the position of the colonies when they plead, and, in the words
of Patrick Henry, they were “spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne.” We
have been jeered and laughed at and ridiculed; but this question has passed out of
the region of ridicule.

The moral force inheres in woman and in man alike, and unless we use all the
moral power of the Government we certainly can not exist as a Government.

We talk of centralization, we talk of division; we have the seeds of decay in
our Government, and unless right soon we use the moral force and bring it forward
in all its strength and bearing, we certainly cannot exist as a happy nation. We do
not exist as a happy nation now. This clamor for woman’s suffrage, for woman’s
rights, for equal representation, is extending all over the land.

I plead because my work has been combatted in the cause of reform everywhere
that I have tried to accomplish anything. The children that fill the houses of
prostitution are not of foreign blood and race. They come from sweet American
homes, and for every woman that went down some mother’s heart broke. I plead by the
power of the ballot to be allowed to help reform women and benefit mankind.

REMARKS OF MRS. MARY A. STEWART, OF DELAWARE.

Mrs. STEWART. I come from a small State, but one that is represented in this
Congress, I consider, by some of the ablest men in the land. Our State, though
small, has heretofore possessed and to-day possesses brains. Our sons have no more
right to brains than our daughters, yet we are tied down by every chain that could
bind the Georgian slave before the war. Aye, we are worse slaves, because the
Georgian slave could go to the sale block and there be sold. The woman of Delaware
must submit to her chains, as there is no sale for her; she is of no account.

Woman from all time has occupied the highest positions in the world. She is just
as competent to-day as she was hundreds of years ago. We are taxed without
representation; there is no mistake about that. The colonies screamed that to
England; Parliament screamed back, “Be still; long live the king, and we will help
you.” Did the colonies submit? They did not. Will the women of this country submit?
They will not. Mark me, we are the sisters of those fighting Revolutionary men; we
are the daughters of the fathers who sang back to England that they would not
submit. Then, if the same blood courses in our veins that courses in yours, dare
you expect us to submit?

The white men of this country have thrown out upon us, the women, a race
inferior, you must admit, to your daughters, and yet that race has the ballot, and
why? He has a right to it; he earned and paid for it with his blood. Whose blood
paid for yours? Not your blood; it was the blood of your forefathers; and were they
not our forefathers? Does a man earn a hundred thousand dollars and lie down and
die, saying, “It is all my boys’?” Not a bit of it. He dies saying, “Let my
children, be they cripples, be they idiots, be they boys, or be they girls, inherit
all my property alike.” Then let us inherit the sweet boon of the ballot alike.

When our fathers were driving the great ship of state we were willing to ride as
deck or cabin passengers, just as we felt disposed; we had nothing to say; but
to-day the boys are about to run the ship aground, and it is high time that the
mothers should be asking, “What do you mean to do?” It is high time that the
mothers should be demanding what they should long since have had.

In our own little State the laws have been very much modified in regard to
women. My father was the first man to blot out the old English law allowing the
eldest son the right of inheritance to the real estate. He took the first step, and
like all those who take first steps in improvement and reform he received a
mountain of curses from the oldest male heirs; but it did not matter to him.

Since 1868 I have, by my own individual efforts, by the use of hard-earned
money, gone to our Legislature time after time and have had this law and that law
passed for the benefit of the women; and the same little ship of state has sailed
on. To-day our men are just as well satisfied with the laws of our State for the
benefit of women in force as they were years ago. In our State a woman has a right
to make a will. In our State she can hold bonds and mortgages as her own. In our
State she has a right to her own property. She can not sell it, though, if it is
real estate, simply because the moment she marries her husband has a life-time
right. The woman does not grumble at that; but still when he dies owning real
estate, she gets only the rental value of one-third, which is called the widow’s
dower. Now I think the man ought to have the rental value of one-third of the
woman’s maiden property or real estate, and it ought to be called the widower’s
dower. It would be just as fair for one as for the other. All that I want is
equality.

The women of our State, as I said before, are taxed without representation. The
tax-gatherer comes every year and demands taxes. For twenty years have I paid tax
under protest, and if I live twenty years longer I shall pay it under protest every
time. The tax-gatherer came to my place not long since. “Well,” said I, “good
morning, sir.” Said he, “Good morning.” He smiled and said, “I have come bothering
you.” Said I, “I know your face well. You have come to get a right nice little
woman’s tongue-lashing.” Said he, “I suppose so, but if you will just pay your tax
I will leave.” I paid the tax, “But,” said I, “remember I pay it under protest, and
if I ever pay another tax I intend to have the protest written and make the
tax-gatherer sign it before I pay the tax, and if he will not sign that protest
then I shall not pay the tax, and there will be a fight at once.” Said he, “Why do
you keep all the time protesting against paying this small tax?” Said I, “Why do
you pay your tax?” “Well,” said he, “I would not pay it if I did not vote.” Said I,
“That is the very reason why I do not want to pay it. I can not vote and I do not
want to pay it.” Now the women have no right when election day comes around. Who
stay at home from the election? The women and the black and white men who have been
to the whipping-post. Nice company to put your wives and daughters in.

It is said that the women do not want to vote. Here is an array of women. Every
woman sitting here wants to vote, and must we be debarred the privilege of voting
because some luxurious woman, rolling around in her carriage and pair in her little
downy nest that some good, benevolent man has provided for her, does not want to
vote?

There was a society that existed up in the State of New York called the
Covenanters that never voted. A man who belonged to that sect or society, a man
whiter-haired than any of you, said to me, “I never voted. I never intended to
vote, I never felt that I could conscientiously support a Government that had its
Constitution blotted and blackened with the word ‘slave,’ and I never did vote
until after the abolition of slavery.” Now, were all you men disfranchised because
that class or sect up in New York would not vote? Did you all pay your taxes and
stay at home and refrain from voting because the Covenanters did not vote? Not a
bit of it. You went to the election and told them to stay at home if they wanted
to, but that you, as citizens, were going to take care of yourselves. That was
right. We, as citizens, want to take care of ourselves.

One more thought and I will be through. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments
give the right of suffrage to women, so far as I know, although you learned men
perhaps see a little differently. I see through the glass dimly; you may see
through it after it is polished up. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, in my
opinion, and in the opinion of a great many smart men in the country, and smart
women, too, give the right to women to vote without, any “ifs” or “ands” about it,
and the United States protects us in it; but there are a few who construe the law
to suit themselves, and say that those amendments do not mean that, because the
Congress that passed the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments did not mean to do
that. Well, the Congress that passed them were mean enough for anything if they did
not mean to do that. Let the wise Congress of to-day take the eighth chapter and
the fourth verse of the Psalms, which says, “What is man, that Thou art mindful of
him?” and amend it by adding, “What is woman, that they never thought of her?”

REMARKS BY MRS. LUCINDA B. CHANDLER, OF PENNSYLVANIA.

Mrs. CHANDLER. Gentlemen, it will be conceded that the progress of civilization,
all that lifts humanity above a groveling, sensual, depraved state, is marked by
the position, intelligence, and culture of women. Perhaps you think that American
women have no rightful claim to present; but American women and mothers do claim
that they should have the power to protect their children, not only at the
hearthstone, but to supervise their education. It is neither presuming nor
unwomanly for the mothers and women of the land to claim that they are competent
and best fitted, and that it rightfully belongs to them to take part in the
management and control of the schools, and the instruction, both intellectual and
moral, of their children, and that in penal, eleemosynary, or reformatory
institutions women should have positions as inspectors of prisons, physicians,
directors, and superintendents.

I have here a brief report from an association which sent me as a delegate to
the National Woman Suffrage Convention, in which it is stated that women in
Pennsylvania can be elected as directors on school boards or superintendents of
schools, but can not help to elect those officers. It must very readily occur to
your minds that when women take such interest in the schools as mothers must needs
take they must feel many a wish to control the election of the officers,
superintendents, and managers of the schools. The ladies here from New York city
could, if they had time, give you much testimony in regard to the management of
schools in New York city, and the need there of woman’s love and woman’s power in
the schools and on the school boards. I am also authorized by the association which
sent me here to report that the woman-suffragists and some other woman
organizations of the city of Philadelphia, have condemned in resolution the action
of the governor a year ago, I think, in vetoing a bill which passed largely both
houses of the Legislature to appoint women inspectors of prisons. On such questions
woman feels the need of the ballot.

The mothers of this land, having breathed the air of freedom and received the
benefits of education, have come to see the necessity of better conditions to
fulfill their divinely appointed and universally recognized office. The mothers of
this land claim that they have a right to assist in making the laws which control
the social relations. We are under the laws inherited from barbarism. They are not
the conditions suited to the best exercise of the office of woman, and the women
desire the ballot to purge society of the vices that are sure to disintegrate the
home, the State, the nation.

I shall not occupy your time further this morning. I only present briefly the
mother’s claim, as it is so universally conceded. We now have in our schools a very
large majority of women teachers, and it seems to me no one can but recognize the
fact that mothers, through their experience in the family, mothers who are at all
competent and fit to fulfill their position as mothers in the family, are best
fitted to understand the needs and at least should have an equal voice in directing
the management of the schools, and also the management of penal and reformatory
institutions.

I was in hopes that Mrs. Wallace would give you the testimony she gave us in the
convention of the wonderful, amazing good that was accomplished in a reformatory
institution where an incorrigible woman was taken from the men’s prison and became
not only very tractable, but very helpful in an institution under the influence and
management of women. That reformatory institution is managed wholly by women. There
is not a man, Mrs. Wallace says, in the building, except the engineer who controls
the fire department. Under a management wholly by women, the institution is a very
great success. We feel sure that in many ways the influence and power that the
mothers bring would tend to convert many conditions that are now tending to
destruction through vices, would tend to elevate us morally, purify us, bring us
still higher in the standard of humanity, and make us what we ought to be, a holy
as well as a happy nation.

REMARKS BY MRS. SARA A. SPENCER, OF WASHINGTON. Mrs. SPENCER. Miss Susan B.
Anthony was chosen to present the constitutional argument in our case before the
committee. Unless there is more important business for the individual members of
the committee than the protection of one-half of our population, I trust that the
limit fixed for our hearing will be extended.

The CHAIRMAN. Miss Anthony is entitled to an hour.

Mrs. SPENCER. Good. Miss Anthony is from the United States; the whole United
States claim her.

Mrs. ALLEN. I have made arrangements with Miss Anthony to say all that I feel it
necessary for me to say at this time.

Mrs. SPENCER. I have been so informed.

REMARKS BY MRS. NANCY B. ALLEN, OF IOWA.

Mrs. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee: I am not a
State representative, but I am a representative of a large class of women, citizens
of Iowa, who are heavy tax-payers. That is a subject which we are very seriously
contemplating at this time. There is now a petition being circulated throughout our
State, to be presented to the legislature, praying that women be exempted from
taxation until they have some voice in the management of local affairs of the
State. You may ask, “Do not your husbands protect you? Are not all the men
protecting you?” We answer that our husbands are grand, noble men, who are willing
to do all they can for us, but there are many who have no husbands, and who own a
great deal of property in the State of Iowa. Particularly in great moral reforms
the women there feel the need of the ballot. By presenting long petitions to the
Legislature they have succeeded in having better temperance laws enacted, but the
men have failed to elect officials who will enforce those laws. Consequently they
have become as dead letters upon the statute-books.

I would refer again to taxes. I have a list showing that in my city three women
pay more taxes than all the city officials included. Those women are good
temperance women. Our city council is composed almost entirely of saloon men and
those who visit saloons and brewery men. There are some good men, but the good men
being in the minority, the voices of these women are but little regarded. All these
officials are paid, and we have to help support them. All that we ask is an
equality of rights. As Sumner said, “Equality of rights is the first of rights.” If
we can only be equal with man under the law it is all that we ask. We do not
propose to relinquish our domestic circles; in fact, they are too dear to us for
that; they are dear to us as life itself, but we do ask that we may be permitted to
be represented. Equality of taxation without representation is tyranny.

REMARKS BY MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY, OF NEW YORK.

Miss ANTHONY: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: Mrs. Spencer said that I would make an
argument. I do not propose to do so, because I take it for granted that the members
of this committee understand that we have all the argument on our side, and such an
argument would be simply a series of platitudes and maxims of government. The
theory of this Government from the beginning has been perfect equality to all the
people. That is shown by every one of the fundamental principles, which I need not
stop to repeat. Such being the theory, the application would be, of course, that
all persons not having forfeited their right to representation in the Government
should be possessed of it at the age of twenty-one. But instead of adopting a
practice in conformity with the theory of our Government, we began first by saying
that all men of property were the people of the nation upon whom the Constitution
conferred equality of rights. The next step was that all white men were the people
to whom should be practically applied the fundamental theories. There we halt
to-day and stand at a deadlock, so far as the application of our theory may go. We
women have been standing before the American republic for thirty years, asking the
men to take yet one step further and extend the practical application of the theory
of equality of rights to all the people to the other half of the people—the
women. That is all that I stand here to-day to attempt to demand.

Of course, I take it for granted that the committee are in sympathy at least
with the reports of the Judiciary Committees presented both in the Senate and the
House. I remember that after the adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth
amendments Senator EDMUNDS reported on the petition of the ten thousand
foreign-born citizens of Rhode Island who were denied equality of rights in Rhode
Island simply because of their foreign birth; and in that report held that the
amendments were enacted and attached to the Constitution simply for men of color,
and therefore that their provisions could not be so construed as to bring within
their purview the men of foreign birth in Rhode Island. Then the House Committee on
the Judiciary, with Judge Bingham, of Ohio, at its head, made a similar report upon
our petitions, holding that because those amendments were made essentially with the
black men in view, therefore their provisions could not be extended to the women
citizens of this country or to any class except men citizens of color.

I voted in the State of New York in 1872 under the construction of those
amendments, which we felt to be the true one, that all persons born in the United
States, or any State thereof, and under the jurisdiction of the United States, were
citizens, and entitled to equality of rights, and that no State could deprive them
of their equality of rights. I found three young men, inspectors of election, who
were simple enough to read the Constitution and understand it in accordance with
what was the letter and what should have been its spirit. Then, as you will
remember, I was prosecuted by the officers of the Federal court, And the cause was
carried through the different courts in the State of New York, in the northern
district, and at last I was brought to trial at Canandaigua.

When Mr. Justice Hunt was brought from the supreme bench to sit upon that trial,
he wrested my case from the hands of the jury altogether, after having listened
three days to testimony, and brought in a verdict himself of guilty, denying to my
counsel even the poor privilege of having the jury polled. Through all that trial
when I, as a citizen of the United States, as a citizen of the State of New York
and city of Rochester, as a person who had done something at least that might have
entitled her to a voice in speaking for herself and for her class, in all that
trial I not only was denied my right to testify as to whether I voted or not, but
there was not one single woman’s voice to be heard nor to be considered, except as
witnesses, save when it came to the judge asking, “Has the prisoner any thing to
say why sentence shall not be pronounced?” Neither as judge, nor as attorney, nor
as jury was I allowed any person who could be legitimately called my peer to speak
for me.

Then, as you will remember, Mr. Justice Hunt not only pronounced the verdict of
guilty, but a sentence of $100 fine and costs of prosecution. I said to him, “May
it please your honor, I do not propose to pay it;” and I never have paid it, and I
never shall. I asked your honorable bodies of Congress the next year—in
1874—to pass a resolution to remit that fine. Both Houses refused it; the
committees reported against it; though through Benjamin F. Butler, in the House,
and a member of your committee, and Matthew H. Carpenter, in the Senate, there were
plenty of precedents brought forward to show that in the cases of multitudes of men
fines had been remitted. I state this merely to show the need of woman to speak for
herself, to be as judge, to be as juror.

Mr. Justice Hunt in his opinion stated that suffrage was a fundamental right,
and therefore a right that belonged to the State. It seemed to me that was just as
much of a retroversion of the theory of what is right in our Government as there
could possibly be. Then, after the decision in my case came that of Mrs. Minor, of
Missouri. She prosecuted the officers there for denying her the right to vote. She
carried her case up to your Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court answered her the
same way; that the amendments were made for black men; that their provisions could
not protect women; that the Constitution of the United States has no voters of its
own.

Mrs. SPENCER. And you remember Judge Cartier’s decision in my case.

Miss ANTHONY. Mr. Cartier said that women are citizens and may be qualified,
&c., but that it requires some sort of legislation to give them the right to
vote.

The Congress of the United States notwithstanding, and the Supreme Court of the
United States notwithstanding, with all deference and respect, I differ with them
all, and know that I am right and that they are wrong. The Constitution of the
United States as it is protects me. If I could get a practical application of the
Constitution it would protect me and all women in the enjoyment of perfect equality
of rights everywhere under the shadow of the American flag.

I do not come to you to petition for special legislation, or for any more
amendments to the Constitution, because I think they are unnecessary, but because
you say there is not in the Constitution enough to protect me. Therefore I ask that
you, true to your own theory and assertion, should go forward to make more
constitution.

Let me remind you that in the case of all other classes of citizens under the
shadow of our flag you have been true to the theory that taxation and
representation are inseparable. Indians not taxed are not counted in the basis of
representation, and are not allowed to vote; but the minute that your Indians are
counted in the basis of representation and are allowed to vote they are taxed;
never before. In my State of New York, and in nearly all the States, the members of
the State militia, hundreds and thousands of men, are exempted from taxation on
property; in my State to the value of $800, and in most of the States to a value in
that neighborhood. While such a member of the militia lives, receives his salary,
and is able to earn money, he is exempted; but when he dies the assessor puts his
widow’s name down upon the assessor’s list, and the tax-collector never fails to
call upon the widow and make her pay the full tax upon her property. In most of the
States clergymen are exempted. In my State of New York they are exempted on
property to the value of $1,500. As long as the clergyman lives and receives his
fat salary, or his lean one, as the case may be, he is exempted on that amount of
property; but when the breath leaves the body of the clergyman, and the widow is
left without any income, or without any means of support, the State comes in and
taxes the widow.

So it is with regard to all black men. In the State of New York up to the day of
the passage of the fifteenth amendment, black men who were willing to remain
without reporting themselves worth as much as $250, and thereby to remain without
exercising the right to vote, never had their names put on the assessor’s list;
they were passed by, while, if the poorest colored woman owned 50 feet of real
estate, a little cabin anywhere, that colored woman’s name was always on the
assessor’s list, and she was compelled to pay her tax. While Frederick Douglas
lived in my State he was never allowed to vote until he could show himself worth
the requisite $250; and when he did vote in New York, he voted not because he was a
man, not because he was a citizen of the United States, nor yet because he was a
citizen of the State, but simply because he was worth the requisite amount of
money. In Connecticut both black men and black women were exempted from taxation
prior to the adoption of the fifteenth amendment.

The law was amended in 1848, by which black men were thus exempted, and black
women followed the same rule in that State. That, I believe, is the only State
where black women were exempted from taxation under the law. When the fourteenth
and fifteenth amendments were attached to the Constitution they carried to the
black man of Connecticut the boon of the ballot as well as the burden of taxation,
whereas they carried to the black woman of Connecticut the burden of taxation, but
no ballot by which to protect her property. I know a colored woman in New Haven,
Conn., worth $50,000, and she never paid a penny of taxation until the ratification
of the fifteenth amendment. From that day on she is compelled to pay a heavy tax on
that amount of property.

Mrs. SPENCER. Is it because she is a citizen? Please explain.

Miss ANTHONY. Because she is black.

Mrs. SPENCER. Is it because the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments made women
citizens?

Miss ANTHONY. Certainly; because it declared the black people citizens.

Gentlemen, you have before you various propositions of amendment to the Federal
Constitution. One is for the election of President by the vote of the people
direct. Of course women are not people.

Senator EDMUNDS. Angels.

Miss ANTHONY. Yes; angels up in heaven or else devils down there.

Senator EDMUNDS. I have never known any of that kind.

Miss ANTHONY. I wish you, gentlemen, would look down there and see the myriads
that are there. We want to help them and lift them up. That is exactly the trouble
with you, gentlemen; you are forever looking at your own wives, your own mothers,
your own sisters, and your own daughters, and they are well cared for and
protected; but only look down to the struggling masses of women who have no one to
protect them, neither husband, father, brother, son, with no mortal in all the land
to protect them. If you would look down there the question would be solved; but the
difficulty is that you think only of those who are doing well. We are not speaking
for ourselves, but for those who can not speak for themselves. We are speaking for
the doomed as much as you, Senator EDMUNDS, used to speak for the doomed on the
plantations of the South.

Amendments have been proposed to put God in the Constitution and to keep God out
of the Constitution. All sorts of propositions to amend the Constitution have been
made; but I ask that you allow no other amendment to be called the sixteenth but
that which shall put into the hands of one-half of the entire people of the nation
the right to express their opinions as to how the Constitution shall be amended
henceforth. Women have the right to say whether we shall have God in the
Constitution as well as men. Women have a right to say whether we shall have a
national law or an amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the importation or
manufacture of alcoholic liquors. We have a right to have our opinions counted on
every possible question concerning the public welfare.

You ask us why we do not get this right to vote first in the school districts,
and on school questions, or the questions of liquor license. It has been shown very
clearly why we need something more than that. You have good enough laws to-day in
every State in this Union for the suppression of what are termed the social vices;
for the suppression of the grog-shops, the gambling houses, the brothels, the
obscene shows. There is plenty of legislation in every State in this Union for
their suppression if it could be executed. Why is the Government, why are the
States and the cities, unable to execute those laws? Simply because there is a
large balance of power in every city that does not want those laws executed.
Consequently both parties must alike cater to that balance of political power. The
party that puts a plank in its platform that the laws against the grog-shops and
all the other sinks of iniquity must be executed, is the party that will not get
this balance of power to vote for it, and, consequently, the party that can not get
into power.

What we ask of you is that you will make of the women of the cities a balance of
political power, so that when a mayor, a member of the common council, a
supervisory justice of the peace, a district attorney, a judge on the bench even,
shall go before the people of that city as a candidate for the suffrages of the
people he shall not only be compelled to look to the men who frequent the
grog-shops, the brothels, and the gambling houses, who will vote for him if he is
not in favor of executing the law, but that he shall have to look to the mothers,
the sisters, the wives, the daughters of those deluded men to see what they will do
if he does not execute the law.

We want to make of ourselves a balance of political power. What we need is the
power to execute the laws. We have got laws enough. Let me give you one little fact
in regard to my own city of Rochester. You all know how that wonderful whip called
the temperance crusade roused the whisky ring. It caused the whisky force to
concentrate itself more strongly at the ballot-box than ever before, so that when
the report of the elections in the spring of 1874 went over the country the result
was that the whisky ring was triumphant, and that the whisky ticket was elected
more largely than ever before. Senator Thurman will remember how it was in his own
State of Ohio. Everybody knows that if my friends, Mrs. ex-Governor Wallace, Mrs.
Allen, and all the women of the great West could have gone to the ballot-box at
those municipal elections and voted for candidates, no such result would have
occurred; while you refused by the laws of the State to the women the right to have
their opinions counted, every rumseller, every drunkard, every pauper even from the
poor-house, and every criminal outside of the State’s prison came out on election
day to express his opinion and have it counted.

The next result of that political event was that the ring demanded new
legislation to protect the whisky traffic everywhere. In my city the women did not
crusade the streets, but they said they would help the men to execute the law. They
held meetings, sent out committees, and had testimony secured against every man who
had violated the law, and when the board of excise held its meeting those women
assembled, three or four hundred, in the church one morning, and marched in a solid
body to the common council chamber where the board of excise was sitting. As one
rum-seller after another brought in his petition for a renewal of license who had
violated the law, those women presented the testimony against him. The law of the
State of New York is that no man shall have a renewal who has violated the law. But
in not one case did that board refuse to grant a renewal of license because of the
testimony which those women presented, and at the close of the sitting it was found
that twelve hundred more licenses had been granted than ever before in the history
of the State. Then the defeated women said they would have those men punished
according to law.

Again they retained an attorney and appointed committees to investigate all over
the city. They got the proper officer to prosecute every rum-seller. I was at their
meeting. One woman reported that the officer in every city refused to prosecute the
liquor dealer who had violated the law. Why? Because if he should do so he would
lose the votes of all the employés of certain shops on that street, if
another he would lose the votes of the railroad employés, and if another he
would lose the German vote, if another the Irish vote, and so on. I said to those
women what I say to you, and what I know to be true to-day, that if the women of
the city of Rochester had held the power of the ballot in their hands they would
have been a great political balance of power.

The last report was from District Attorney Raines. The women complained of a
certain lager-beer-garden keeper. Said the district attorney, “Ladies, you are
right, this man is violating the law, everybody knows it, but if I should prosecute
him I would lose the entire German vote.” Said I, “Ladies, do you not see that if
the women of the city of Rochester had the right to vote District Attorney Raines
would have been compelled to have stopped and counted, weighed and measured. He
would have said, ‘If I prosecute that lager-beer German I shall lose the 5,000
German votes of this city, but if I fail to prosecute him and execute the laws I
shall lose the votes of 20,000 women.'”

Do you not see, gentlemen, that so long as you put this power of the ballot in
the hands of every possible man, rich, poor, drunk, sober, educated, ignorant,
outside of the State’s prison, to make and unmake, not only every law and
law-maker, but every office holder who has to do with the executing of the law, and
take the power from the hands of the women of the nation, the mothers, you put the
long arm of the lever, as we call it in mechanics, in the hands of the whisky power
and make it utterly impossible for regulation of sobriety to be maintained in our
community? The first step towards social regulation and good society in towns,
cities, and villages is the ballot in the hands of the mothers of those places. I
appeal to you especially in this matter, I do not know what you think about the
proper sphere of women.

It matters little what any of us think about it. We shall each and every
individual find our own proper sphere if we are left to act in freedom; but my
opinion is that when the whole arena of politics and government is thrown open to
women they will endeavor to do very much as they do in their homes; that the men
will look after the greenback theory or the hard-money theory, that you will look
after free-trade or tariff, and the women will do the home housekeeping of the
government, which is to take care of the moral government and the social regulation
of our home department.

It seems to me that we have the power of government outside to shape and control
circumstances, but that the inside power, the government housekeeping, is
powerless, and is compelled to accept whatever conditions or circumstances shall be
granted.

Therefore I do not ask for liquor suffrage alone, nor for school suffrage alone,
because that would amount to nothing. We must be able to have a voice in the
election not only of every law-maker, but of every one who has to do either with
the making or the executing of the laws.

Then you ask why we do not get suffrage by the popular-vote method, State by
State? I answer, because there is no reason why I, for instance, should desire the
women of one State of this nation to vote any more than the women of another State.
I have no more interest as regards the women of New York than I as regards the
women of Indiana, Iowa, or any of the States represented by the women who have come
up here. The reason why I do not wish to get this right by what you call the
popular-vote method, the State vote, is because I believe there is a United States
citizenship. I believe that this is a nation, and to be a citizen of this nation
should be a guaranty to every citizen of the right to a voice in the Government,
and should give to me my right to express my opinion. You deny to me my liberty, my
freedom, if you say that I shall have no voice whatever in making, shaping, or
controlling the conditions of society in which I live. I differ from Judge Hunt,
and I hope I am respectful when I say that I think he made a very funny mistake
when he said that fundamental rights belong to the States and only surface rights
to the National Government. I hope you will agree with me that the fundamental
right of citizenship, the right to voice in the Government, is a national
right.

The National Government may concede to the States the right to decide by a
majority as to what banks they shall have, what laws they shall enact with regard
to insurance, with regard to property, and any other question; but I insist upon it
that the National Government should not leave it a question with the States that a
majority in any State may disfranchise the minority under any circumstances
whatsoever. The franchise to you men is not secure. You hold it to-day, to be sure,
by the common consent of white men, but if at any time, on your principle of
government, the majority of any of the States should choose to amend the State
constitution so as to disfranchise this or that portion of the white men by making
this or that condition, by all the decisions of the Supreme Court and by the
legislation thus far there is nothing to hinder them.

Therefore the women demand a sixteenth amendment to bring to women the right to
vote, or if you please to confer upon women their right to vote, to protect them in
it, and to secure men in their right, because you are not secure.

I would let the States act upon almost every other question by majorities,
except the power to say whether my opinion shall be counted. I insist upon it that
no State shall decide that question.

Then the popular-vote method is an impracticable thing. We tried to get negro
suffrage by the popular vote, as you will remember. Senator Thurman will remember
that in Ohio the Republicans submitted the question in 1867, and with all the
prestige of the national Republican party and of the State party, when every
influence that could be brought by the power and the patronage of the party in
power was brought to bear, yet negro suffrage ran behind the regular Republican
ticket 40,000.

It was tried in Kansas, it was tried in New York, and everywhere that it was
submitted the question was voted down overwhelmingly. Just so we tried to get women
suffrage by the popular-vote method in Kansas in 1867, in Michigan in 1874, in
Colorado in 1877, and in each case the result was precisely the same, the ratio of
the vote standing one-third for women suffrage and two-thirds against women
suffrage. If we were to canvass State after State we should get no better vote than
that. Why? Because the question of the enfranchisement of women is a question of
government, a question of philosophy, of understanding, of great fundamental
principle, and the masses of the hard-working people of this nation, men and women,
do not think upon principles. They can only think on the one eternal struggle
wherewithal to be fed, to be clothed, and to be sheltered. Therefore I ask you not
to compel us to have this question settled by what you term the popular-vote
method.

Let me illustrate by Colorado, the most recent State, in the election of 1877. I
am happy to say to you that I have canvassed three States for this question. If
Senator Chandler were alive, or if Senator Ferry were in this room, they would
remember that I followed in their train in Michigan, with larger audiences than
either of those Senators throughout the whole canvass. I want to say, too, that
although those Senators may have believed in woman suffrage, they did not say much
about it. They did not help us much. The Greenback movement was quite popular in
Michigan at that time. The Republicans and Greenbackers made a most humble bow to
the grangers, but woman suffrage did not get much help. In Colorado, at the close
of the canvass, 6,666 men voted “Yes.” Now I am going to describe the men who voted
“Yes.” They were native-born white men, temperance men, cultivated, broad,
generous, just men, men who think. On the other hand, 16,007 voted “No.”

Now I am going to describe that class of voters. In the southern part of that
State there are Mexicans, who speak the Spanish language. They put their wheat in
circles on the ground with the heads out, and drive a mule around to thrash it. The
vast population of Colorado is made up of that class of people. I was sent out to
speak in a voting precinct having 200 voters; 150 of those voters were Mexican
greasers, 40 of them foreign-born citizens, and just 10 of them were born in this
country; and I was supposed to be competent to convert those men to let me have as
much right in this Government as they had, when, unfortunately, the great majority
of them could not understand a word that I said. Fifty or sixty Mexican greasers
stood against the wall with their hats down over their faces. The Germans put seats
in a lager-beer saloon, and would not attend unless I made a speech there; so I had
a small audience.

MRS. ARCHIBALD. There is one circumstance that I should like to relate. In the
county of Las Animas, a county where there is a large population of Mexicans, and
where they always have a large majority over the native population, they do not
know our language at all. Consequently a number of tickets must be printed for
those people in Spanish. The gentleman in our little town of Trinidad who had the
charge of the printing of those tickets, being adverse to us, had every ticket
printed against woman suffrage. The samples that were sent to us from Denver were
“for” or “against,” but the tickets that were printed only had the word “against”
on them, so that our friends had to scratch their tickets, and all those Mexican
people who could not understand this trick and did not know the facts of the case,
voted against woman suffrage; so that we lost a great many votes. This was man’s
generosity.

MISS ANTHONY. Special legislation for the benefit of woman! I will admit you
that on the floor of the constitutional convention was a representative Mexican,
intelligent, cultivated, chairman of the committee on suffrage, who signed the
petition, and was the first to speak in favor of woman suffrage. Then they have in
Denver about four hundred negroes. Governor Routt said to me, “The four hundred
Denver negroes are going to vote solid for woman suffrage.” I said, “I do not know
much about the Denver negroes, but I know certainly what all negroes were educated
in, and slavery never educated master or negro into a comprehension, of the great
principles of human freedom of our nation; it is not possible, and I do not believe
they are going to vote for us.” Just ten of those Denver negroes voted for woman
suffrage. Then, in all the mines of Colorado the vast majority of the wage
laborers, as you know, are foreigners.

There may be intelligent foreigners in this country, and I know there are, who
are in favor of the enfranchisement of woman, but that one does not happen to be
Carl Schurz, I am ashamed to say. And I want to say to you of Carl Schurz, that
side by side with that man on the battlefield of Germany was Madame Anneke, as
noble a woman as ever trod the American soil. She rode by the side of her husband,
who was an officer, on the battlefield; she slept in battlefield tents, and she
fled from Germany to this country, for her life and property, side by side with
Carl Schurz. Now, what is it for Carl Schurz, stepping up to the very door of the
Presidency and looking back to Madame Anneke, who fought for liberty as well as he,
to say, “You be subject in this Republic; I will be sovereign.” If it is an insult
for Carl Schurz to say that to a foreign-born woman, what is it for him to say it
to Mrs. Ex-Governor Wallace, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott—to the
native-born, educated, tax-paying women of this Republic? I can forgive an ignorant
foreigner; I can forgive an ignorant negro; but I can not forgive Carl Schurz.

Right in the file of the foreigners opposed to woman suffrage, educated under
monarchical governments that do not comprehend our principles, whom I have seen
traveling through the prairies of Iowa or the prairies of Minnesota, are the
Bohemians, Swedes, Norwegians, Germans, Irishmen, Mennonites; I have seen them
riding on those magnificent loads of wheat with those magnificent Saxon horses,
shining like glass on a sunny morning, every one of them going to vote “no” against
woman suffrage. You can not convert them; it is impossible. Now and then there is a
whisky manufacturer, drunkard, inebriate, libertine, and what we call a fast man,
and a colored man, broad and generous enough to be willing to let women vote, to
let his mother have her opinion counted as to whether there shall be license or no
license, but the rank and file of all classes, who wish to enjoy full license in
what are termed the petty vices of men are pitted solid against the enfranchisement
of women.

Then, in addition to all these, there are, as you know, a few religious bigots
left in the world who really believe that somehow or other if women are allowed to
vote St. Paul would feel badly about it. I do not know but that some of the
gentlemen present belong to that class. [Laughter.] So, when you put those best men
of the nation, having religion about everything except on this one question, whose
prejudices control them, with all this vast mass of ignorant, uneducated, degraded
population in this country, you make an overwhelming and insurmountable majority
against the enfranchisement of women.

It is because of this fact that I ask you not to remand us back to the States,
but to submit to the States the proposition of a sixteenth amendment. The
popular-vote method is not only of itself an impossibility, but it is too
humiliating a process to compel the women of this nation to submit to any
longer.

I am going to give you an illustration, not because I have any disrespect for
the person, because on many other questions he was really a good deal better than a
good many other men who had not so bad a name in this nation. When, under the old
régime, John Morrissey, of my State, the king of gamblers, was a
Representative on the floor of Congress, it was humiliating enough for Lucretia
Mott, for Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for all of us to come down here to Washington and
beg at the feet of John Morrissey that he would let intelligent, native-born women
vote, and let us have as much right in this Government and in the government of the
city of New York as he had. When John Morrissey was a member of the New York State
Legislature it would have been humiliating enough for us to go to the New York
State Legislature and pray of John Morrissey to vote to ratify the sixteenth
amendment, giving to us a right to vote; but if instead of a sixteenth amendment
you tell us to go back to the popular-vote method, the old-time method, and go down
into John Morrissey’s seventh Congressional district in the city of New York, and
there, in the sloughs and slums of that great Sodom, in the grog-shops, the
gambling-houses, and the brothels, beg at the feet of each individual fisticuff of
his constituency to give the noble, educated, native-born, tax-paying women of the
State of New York as much right as he has, that would be too bitter a pill for a
native-born woman to swallow any longer.

I beg you, gentlemen, to save us from the mortification and the humiliation of
appealing to the rabble. We already have on our side the vast majority of the
better educated—the best classes of men. You will remember that Senator
Christiancy, of Michigan, two years ago, said on the floor of the Senate that of
the 40,000 men who voted for woman suffrage in Michigan it was said that there was
not a drunkard, not a libertine, not a gambler, not a depraved, low man among them.
Is not that something that tells for us, and for our right? It is the fact, in
every State of the Union, that we have the intelligent lawyers and the most liberal
ministers of all the sects, not excepting the Roman Catholics. A Roman Catholic
priest preached a sermon the other day, in which he said, “God grant that there
were a thousand Susan B. Anthonys in this city to vote and work for temperance.”
When a Catholic priest says that there is a great moral necessity pressing down
upon this nation demanding the enfranchisement of women. I ask you that you shall
not drive us back to beg our rights at the feet of the most ignorant and depraved
men of the nation, but that you, the representative men of the nation, will hold
the question in the hollow of your hands. We ask you to lift this question out of
the hands of the rabble.

You who are here upon the floor of Congress in both Houses are the picked men of
the nation. You may say what you please about John Morrissey, the gambler, &c.;
he was head and shoulders above the rank and file of his constituency. The world
may gabble ever so much about members of Congress being corrupt and being bought
and sold; they are as a rule head and shoulders among the great majority who
compose their State governments. There is no doubt about it. Therefore I ask of
you, as representative men, as men who think, as men who study, as men who
philosophize, as men who know, that you will not drive us back to the States any
more, but that you will carry out this method of procedure which has been practiced
from the beginning of the Government; that is, that you will put a prohibitory
amendment in the Constitution and submit the proposition to the several State
legislatures. The amendment which has been presented before you reads:

ARTICLE XVI.

SECTION 1. The right of suffrage in the United States shall be based on
citizenship, and the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of sex, or
for any reason not equally applicable to all citizens of the United States.

SEC. 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate
legislation.

In this way we would get the right of suffrage just as much by what you call the
consent of the States, or the States’ rights method, as by any other method. The
only point is that it is a decision by the representative men of the States instead
of by the rank and file of the ignorant men of the States. If you would submit this
proposition for a sixteenth amendment, by a two-thirds vote of the two Houses to
the several legislatures, and the several legislatures ratify it, that would be
just as much by the consent of the States as if Tom, Dick, and Harry voted “yes” or
“no.” Is it not, Senator? I want to talk to Democrats as well as Republicans, to
show that it is a State’s rights method.

SENATOR EDMUNDS. Does anybody propose any other, in case it is done at all by
the nation?

MISS ANTHONY. Not by the nation, but they are continually driving us back to get
it from, the States, State by State. That is the point I want to make. We do not
want you to drive us back to the States. We want you men to take the question out
of the hands of the rabble of the State.

THE CHAIRMAN. May I interrupt you?

MISS ANTHONY. Yes, sir; I wish you would.

THE CHAIRMAN. You have reflected on this subject a great deal. You think there
is a majority, as I understand, even in the State of New York, against women
suffrage?

MISS ANTHONY. Yes, sir; overwhelmingly.

THE CHAIRMAN. How, then, would you get Legislatures elected to ratify such a
constitutional amendment?

MISS ANTHONY. That brings me exactly to the point.

THE CHAIRMAN. That is the point I wish to hear you upon.

MISS ANTHONY. Because the members of the State Legislatures are intelligent men
and can vote and enact laws embodying great principles of the government without in
any wise endangering their positions with their constituencies. A constituency
composed of ignorant men would vote solid against us because they have never
thought on the question. Every man or woman who believes in the enfranchisement of
women is educated out of every idea that he or she was born into. We were all born
into the idea that the proper sphere of women is subjection, and it takes education
and thought and culture to lift us out of it. Therefore when men go to the
ballot-box they till vote “no,” unless they have actual argument on it. I will
illustrate. We have six Legislatures in the nation, for instance, that have
extended the right to vote on school questions to the women, and not a single
member of the State Legislature has ever lost his office or forfeited the respect
or confidence of his constituents as a representative because he voted to give
women the right to vote on school questions. It is a question that the unthinking
masses never have thought upon. They do not care about it one way or the other,
only they have an instinctive feeling that because women never did vote therefore
it is wrong that they ever should vote.

MRS. SPENCER. Do make the point that the Congress of the United States leads the
Legislatures of the States and educates them.

MISS ANTHONY. When you, representative men, carry this matter to Legislatures,
State by State, they will ratify it. My point is that you can safely do this.
Senator Thurman, of Ohio, would not lose a single vote in Ohio in voting in favor
of the enfranchisement of women. Senator EDMUNDS would not lose a single Republican
vote in the State of Vermont if he puts himself on our side, which, I think, he
will do. It is not a political question. We are no political power that can make or
break either party to-day. Consequently each man is left independent to express his
own moral and intellectual convictions on the matter without endangering himself
politically.

SENATOR EDMUNDS. I think, Miss Anthony, you ought to put it on rather higher, I
will not say stronger, ground. If you can convince us that it is right we would not
stop to see how it affected us politically.

MISS ANTHONY. I was coming to that, I was going to say to all of you men in
office here to-day that if you can not go forward and carry out either your
Democratic or your Republican or your Greenback theories, for instance, on the
finance, there is no great political power that is going to take you away from
these halls and prevent you from doing all those other things which you want to do,
and you can act out your own moral and intellectual convictions on this without let
or hindrance.

SENATOR EDMUNDS. Without any danger to the public interests, you mean.

MISS ANTHONY. Without any danger to the public interests. I did not mean to make
a bad insinuation. Senator.

I want to give you another reason why we appeal to you. In these three States
where the question has been submitted and voted down we can not get another
Legislature to resubmit it, because they say the people have expressed their
opinion and decided no, and therefore nobody with any political sense would
resubmit the question. It is therefore impossible in any one of those States. We
have tried hard in Kansas for ten years to get the question resubmitted; the vote
of that State seems to be taken as a finality. We ask you to lift the sixteenth
amendment out of the arena of the public mass into the arena of thinking
legislative brains, the brains of the nation, under the law and the Constitution.
Not only do we ask it for that purpose, but when you will have by a two-thirds vote
submitted the proposition to the several Legislatures, you have put the pin down
and it never can go back. No subsequent Congress can revoke that submission of the
proposition; there will be so much gained; it can not slide back. Then we will go
to New York or to Pennsylvania and urge upon the Legislatures the ratification of
that amendment. They may refuse; they may vote it down the first time. Then we will
go to the next Legislature, and the next Legislature, and plead and plead, from
year to year, if it takes ten years. It is an open question to every Legislature
until we can get one that will ratify it, and when that Legislature has once voted
and ratified it no subsequent legislation can revoke their ratification.

Thus, you perceive, Senators, that every step we would gain by this sixteenth
amendment process is fast and not to be done over again. That is why I appeal to
you especially. As I have shown you in the respective States, if we fail to educate
the people of a whole State—and in Michigan it was only six months, and in
Colorado less than six months—the State Legislatures say that is the end of
it. I appeal to you, therefore, to adopt the course that we suggest.

Gentlemen of the committee, if there is a question that you want to ask me
before I make my final appeal, I should like to have you put it now; any question
as to constitutional law or your right to go forward. Of course you do not deny to
us that this amendment will be right in the line of all the amendments heretofore.
The eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth amendments are all in line
prohibiting the States from doing something which they heretofore thought they had
a right to do. Now we ask you to prohibit the States from denying to women their
rights.

I want to show you in closing that of the great acts of justice done during the
war and since the war the first one was a great military necessity. We never got
one inch of headway in putting down the rebellion until the purpose of this great
nation was declared that slavery should he abolished. Then, as if by magic, we went
forward and put down the rebellion. At the close of the rebellion the nation stood
again at a perfect deadlock. The Republican party was trembling in the balance,
because it feared that it could not hold its position, until it should have secured
by legislation to the Government what it had gained at the point of the sword, and
when the nation declared its purpose to enfranchise the negro it was a political
necessity. I do not want to take too much vainglory out of the heads of
Republicans, but nevertheless it is a great national fact that neither of those
great acts of beneficence to the negro race was done because of any high,
overshadowing moral conviction on the part of any considerable minority even of the
people of this nation, but simply because of a military necessity slavery was
abolished, and simply because of a political necessity black men were
enfranchised.

The blackest Republican State you had voted down negro suffrage, and that was
Kansas in 1867; Michigan voted it down in 1867; Ohio voted it down in 1867. Iowa
was the only State that ever voted negro suffrage by a majority of the citizens to
which the question was submitted, and they had not more than seventy-five negroes
in the whole State; so it was not a very practical question. Therefore, it may be
fairly said, I think, that it was a military necessity that compelled one of those
acts of justice, and a political necessity that compelled the other.

It seems to me that from the first word uttered by our dear friend, Mrs.
ex-Governor Wallace, of Indiana, all the way down, we have been presenting to you
the fact that there is a great moral necessity pressing upon this nation to-day,
that you shall go forward and attach a sixteenth amendment to the Federal
Constitution which shall put in the hands of the women of this nation the power to
help make, shape, and control the social conditions of society everywhere. I appeal
to you from that standpoint that you shall submit this proposition.

There is one other point to which I want to call your attention. The Senate
Judiciary Committee, Senator EDMUNDS chairman, reported that the United States
could do nothing to protect women in the right to vote under the amendments. Now I
want to give you a few points where the United States interferes to take away the
right to vote from women where the State has given it to them. In Wyoming, for
instance, by a Democratic legislature, the women were enfranchised. They were not
only allowed to vote but to sit upon juries, the same as men. Those of you who read
the reports giving; the results of that action have not forgotten that the first
result of women sitting upon juries was that wherever there was a violation of the
whisky law they brought in verdicts accordingly for the execution of the law; and
you will remember, too, that the first man who ever had a verdict of guilty for
murder in the first degree in that Territory was tried by a jury made up largely of
women. Always up to that day every jury had brought in a verdict of shot in
self-defense, although the person shot down may have been entirely unarmed. Then,
in cities like Cheyenne and Laramie, persons entered complaints against keepers of
houses of ill-fame.

Women were on the jury, and the result was in every case that before the juries
could bring in a bill of indictment the women had taken the train and left the
town. Why do you hear no more of women sitting on juries in that Territory? Simply
because the United States marshal, who is appointed by the President to go to
Wyoming, refuses to put the names of women into the box from which the jury is
drawn. There the United States Government interferes to take the right away.

A DELEGATE. I should like to state that Governor Hoyt, of Wyoming, who was the
governor who signed the act giving to women this right, informed me that the right
had been restored, and that his sister, who resides there, recently served on a
jury.

MISS ANTHONY. I am glad to hear it. It is two years since I was there, but I was
told that that was the case. In Utah the women were given the right to vote, but a
year and a half ago their Legislative Assembly found that although they had the
right to vote the Territorial law provided that only male voters should hold
office. The Legislative Assembly of Utah passed a bill providing that women should
be eligible to all the offices of the Territory. The school offices,
superintendents of schools, were the offices in particular to which the women
wanted to be elected. Governor Emory, appointed by the President of the United
States, vetoed that bill. Thus the full operations of enfranchisement conferred by
two of the Territories has been stopped by Federal interference.

You ask why I come here instead of going to the State Legislatures. You say that
whenever the Legislatures extend the right of suffrage to us by the constitutions
of their States we can get it. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Minnesota, Colorado,
Kansas, Oregon, all these States, have had the school suffrage extended by
legislative enactment. If the question had been submitted to the rank and file of
the people of Boston, with 66,000 men paying nothing but the poll-tax, they would
have undoubtedly voted against letting women have the right to vote for members of
the school board; but their intelligent representatives on the floor of the
Legislature voted in favor of the extension of the school suffrage to the women.
The first result in Boston has been the election of quite a number of women to the
school board. In Minnesota, in the little town of Rochester, the school board
declared its purpose to cut the women teachers’ wages down. It did not propose to
touch the principal, who was a man, but they proposed to cut all the women down
from $50 to $35. One woman put her bonnet on and went over the entire town and
said, “We have got a right to vote for this school board, and let us do so.” They
all turned out and voted, and not a single $35 man was re-elected, but all those
who were in favor of paying $50.

It seems to be a sort of charity to let a woman teach school. You say here that
if a woman has a father, mother, or brother, or anybody to support her, she can not
have a place in the Departments. In the city of Rochester they cannot let a married
woman teach school because she has got a husband, and it is supposed he ought to
support her. The women are working in the Departments, as everywhere else, for half
price, and the only pretext, you tell us, for keeping women there is because the
Government can economize by employing women for less money. The other day when I
saw a newspaper item stating that the Government proposed to compensate Miss
Josephine Meeker for all her bravery, heroism, and terrible sufferings by giving
her a place in the Interior Department, it made my blood boil to the ends of my
fingers and toes. To give that girl a chance to work in the Department; to do just
as much work as a man, and pay her half as much, was a charity. That was a
beneficence on the part of this grand Government to her. We want the ballot for
bread. When we do equal work we want equal wages.

MRS. SAXON. California, in her recent convention, prohibits the Legislature
hereafter from enacting any law for woman’s suffrage, does it not?

MISS ANTHONY. I do not know. I have not seen the new constitution.

MRS. SAXON. It does. The convention inserted a provision in the constitution
that the Legislature could not act upon the subject at all.

MISS ANTHONY. Everywhere that we have gone, Senators, to ask our right at the
hands of any legislative or political body, we have been the subjects of ridicule.
For instance, I went before the great national Democratic convention in New York,
in 1868, as a delegate from the New York Woman Suffrage Association, to ask that
great party, now that it wanted to come to the front again, to put a genuine
Jeffersonian plank in its platform, pledging the ballot to all citizens, women as
well as men, should it come into power. You may remember how Mr. Seymour ordered my
petition to be read, after looking at it in the most scrutinizing manner, when it
was referred to the committee on resolutions, where it has slept the sleep of death
from that day to this. But before the close of the convention a body of ignorant
workingmen sent in a petition clamoring for greenbacks, and you remember that the
Democratic party bought those men by putting a solid greenback plank in the
platform.

Everybody supposed they would nominate Pendleton, or some other man of
pronounced views, but instead of doing that they nominated Horatio Seymour, who
stood on the fence, politically speaking. My friends, Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott,
and women who have brains and education, women who are tax-payers, went there and
petitioned for the practical application of the fundamental principles of our
Government to one-half of the people. Those most ignorant workingmen, the vast mass
of them foreigners, went there, and petitioned that that great political party
should favor greenbacks. Why did they treat those workingmen with respect, and put
a greenback plank in their platform, and only table us, and ignore us? Simply
because the workingmen represented the power of the ballot. They could make or
unmake the great Democratic party at that election. The women were powerless. We
could be ridiculed and ignored with impunity, and so we were laughed at, and put on
the table.

Then the Republicans went to Chicago, and they did just the same thing. They
said the Government bonds must be paid in precisely the currency specified by the
Congressional enactment, and Talleyrand himself could not have devised how not to
say anything better than the Republicans did at Chicago on that question. Then they
nominated a man who had not any financial opinions whatever, and who was not known,
except for his military record, and they went into the campaign. Both those parties
had this petition from us.

I met a woman in Grand Rapids, Mich., a short time ago. She came to me one
morning and told me about the obscene shows licensed in that city, and said that
she thought of memorializing the Legislature. I said, “Do; you can not do anything
else; you are helpless, but you can petition. Of course they will laugh at you.”
Notwithstanding, I drew up a petition and she circulated it. Twelve hundred of the
best citizens signed that petition, and the lady carried it to the Legislature,
just as Mrs. Wallace took her petition in the Indiana Legislature. They read it,
laughed at it, and laid it on the table; and at the close of the session, by a
unanimous vote, they retired in a solid body to witness the obscene show
themselves. After witnessing it, they not only allowed the license to continue for
that year, but they have licensed it every year from that day to this, against all
the protests of the petitioners. [Laughter.]

SENATOR EDMUNDS. Do not think we are wanting in respect to you and the ladies
here because you say something that makes us laugh.

MISS ANTHONY. You are not laughing at me; you are treating me respectfully,
because you are hearing my argument; you are not asleep, not one of you, and I am
delighted.

Now, I am going to tell you one other fact. Seven thousand of the best citizens
of Illinois petitioned the Legislature of 1877 to give them the poor privilege of
voting on the license question. A gentleman presented their petition; the ladies
were in the lobbies around the room. A gentleman made a motion that the president
of the State association of the Christian Temperance Union be allowed to address
the Legislature regarding the petition of the memorialists, when a gentleman sprang
to his feet, and said it was well enough for the honorable gentleman to present the
petition, and have it received and laid on the table, but “for a gentleman to rise
in his seat and propose that the valuable time of the honorable gentlemen of the
Illinois Legislature should be consumed in discussing the nonsense of those women
is going a little too far. I move that the sergeant-at-arms be ordered to clear the
hall of the house of representatives of the mob;” referring to those Christian
women. Now, they had had the lobbyists of the whisky ring in that Legislature for
years and years, not only around it at respectful distances, but inside the bar,
and nobody ever made a motion to clear the halls of the whisky mob there. It only
takes Christian women to make a mob.

MRS. SAXON. We were treated extremely respectfully in Louisiana. It showed
plainly the temper of the convention when the present governor admitted that woman
suffrage was a fact bound to come. They gave us the privilege of having women on
the school boards, but then the officers are appointed by men who are
politicians.

MISS ANTHONY. I want to read a few words that come from good authority, for
black men at least. I find here a little extract that I copied years ago from the
Anti-Slavery Standard of 1870. As you know, Wendell Phillips was the editor of that
paper at that time:

“A man with the ballot in his hand is the master of the situation. He defines
all his other rights; what is not already given him he takes.”

That is exactly what we want, Senators. The rights you have not already given
us; we want to get in such a position that we can take them.

“The ballot makes every class sovereign over its own fate. Corruption may steal
from a man his independence; capital may starve, and intrigue fetter him, at times;
but against all these, his vote, intelligently and honestly cast, is, in the long
run, his full protection. If, in the struggle, his fort surrenders, it is only
because it is betrayed from within. No power ever permanently wronged a voting
class without its own consent.”

Senators, I want to ask of you that you will, by the law and parliamentary rules
of your committee, allow us to agitate this question by publishing this report and
the report which you shall make upon our petitions, as I hope you will make a
report. If your committee is so pressed with business that it can not possibly
consider and report upon this question, I wish some of you would make a motion on
the floor of the Senate that a special committee be appointed to take the whole
question of the enfranchisement of women into consideration, and that that
committee shall have nothing else to do. This off-year of politics, when there is
nothing to do but to try how not to do it (politically, I mean, I am not speaking
personally), is the best time you can have to consider the question of woman
suffrage, and I ask you to use your influence with the Senate to have it specially
attended to this year. Do not make us come here thirty years longer. It is twelve
years since the first time I came before a Senate committee. I said then to Charles
Sumner, if I could make the honorable Senator from Massachusetts believe that I
feel the degradation and the humiliation of disfranchisement precisely as he would
if his fellows had adjudged him incompetent from any cause whatever from having his
opinion counted at the ballot-box we should have our right to vote in the twinkling
of an eye.

REMARKS BY MRS. SARA A. SPENCER, OF WASHINGTON.

Mrs. SPENCER. Congress printed 10,000 copies of its proceedings concerning the
memorial services of a dead man, Professor Henry. It cost me three months of hard
work to have 3,000 copies of our arguments last year before the Committee on
Privileges and Elections printed for 10,000,000 living women. I ask that the
committee will have printed 10,000 copies of this report.

The CHAIRMAN. The committee have no power to order the printing. That can only
be done by the order of the Senate. A resolution can be offered to that effect in
the Senate. I have only to say, ladies, that you will admit that we have listened
to you with great attention, and I can certainly say with very great interest. What
you have said will be duly and earnestly considered by the committee.

Mrs. WALLACE. I wish to make just one remark in reference to what Senator
Thurman said as to the popular vote being against woman suffrage. The popular vote
is against it, but not the popular voice. Owing to the temperance agitation in the
last six years the growth of the suffrage sentiment among the wives and mothers of
this nation has largely increased.

Mrs. SPENCER. In behalf of the women of the United States, permit me to thank
the Senate Judiciary Committee for their respectful, courteous, and close
attention.

Mr. HOAR. Mr. President, I do not propose to make a speech at this late hour of
the day; it would be cruel to the Senate; and I had not expected that this measure
would be here this afternoon. I was absent on a public duty and came in just at the
close of the speech of my honorable friend from Missouri [Mr. VEST]. I wish, however,
to say one word in regard to what seemed to be the burden of his speech.

He says that the women who ask this change in our political organization are not
simply seeking to be put upon school boards and upon boards of health and charity and
upon all the large number of duties of a political nature for which he must confess
they are fit, but he says they will want to be President of the United States, and
want to be Senators, and want to be marshals and sheriffs, and that seems to him
supremely ridiculous. Now I do not understand that that is the proposition. What they
want to do and to be is to be eligible to such public duty as a majority of their
fellow-citizens may think they are fitted for. The majority of public duties in this
country do not require robust, physical health, or exposure to what is base or
unhealthy; and when those duties are imposed upon anybody they will be imposed only
upon such persons as are fit for them. But they want that if the majority of the
American people think a woman like Queen Victoria, or Queen Elizabeth, or Queen
Isabella of Spain, or Maria Theresa of Hungary (the four most brilliant sovereigns of
any sex in modern history with only two or three exceptions), the fittest person to
be President of the United States, they may be permitted to exercise their choice
accordingly.

Old men are eligible to office, old men are allowed to vote, but we do not send
old men to war, or make constables or watchmen or overseers of State prisons of old
men; and it is utterly idle to suppose that the fitness to vote or the fitness to
hold office has anything to do with the physical strength or with the particular
mental qualities in regard to which the sexes differ from each other.

Mr. President, my honorable friend spoke of the French revolution and the horrors
in which the women of Paris took part, and from that he would argue that American
wives and mothers and sisters are not fit for the calm and temperate management of
our American republican life. His argument would require him by the same logic to
agree that republicanism itself is not fit for human society. The argument is the
argument against popular government whether by man or woman, and the Senator only
applies to this new phase of the claim of equal rights what his predecessors would
argue against the rights we now have applied to us.

But the Senator thought it was unspeakably absurd that a woman with her sentiment
and emotional nature and liability to be moved by passion and feeling should hold the
office of Senator. Why, Mr. President, the Senator’s own speech is a refutation of
its own argument. Everybody knows that my honorable friend from Missouri is one of
the most brilliant men in this country. He is a logician, he is an orator, he is a
man of large experience, he is a lawyer entrusted with large interests; yet when he
was called upon to put forth this great effort of his this afternoon and to argue
this question which he thinks so clear, what did he do? He furnished the gush and the
emotion and the eloquence, but when he came to any argument he had to call upon two
women, Mrs. Leonard and Mrs. Whitney to supply all that. [Laughter.] If Mrs. Leonard
and Mrs. Whitney have to make the argument in the Senate of the United States for the
brilliant and distinguished Senator from Missouri it does not seem to me so
absolutely ridiculous that they should have or that women like them should have seats
here to make arguments of their own. [Manifestations of applause in the
galleries.]

The joint resolution was reported to the Senate without amendment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. If no amendment be proposed the question is, shall the
joint resolution be engrossed for a third reading?

Mr. COCKRELL. Let us have the yeas and nays.

Mr. BLAIR. Why not take the yeas and nays on the passage?

Mr. COCKRELL. Very well.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The call is withdrawn.

The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, and was read
the third time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Shall the joint resolution pass?

Mr. COCKRELL. I call for the yeas and nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Upon this question the yeas and nays will necessarily be
taken.

The Secretary proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. CHACE (when his name was called). I am paired with the Senator from North
Carolina [Mr. RANSOM]. If he were present I should vote “yea.”

Mr. DAWES (when his name was called). I am paired with the Senator from Texas [Mr.
MAXEY]. I regret that I am not able to vote on this question. I should vote “yea” if
he were here.

Mr. COKE. My colleague [Mr. MAXEY], if present, would vote “nay.”

Mr. GRAY (when Mr. GORMAN’S name was called). I am requested by the Senator from
Maryland [Mr. GORMAN] to say that he is paired with the Senator from Maine [Mr.
FRYE].

Mr. STANFORD (when his name was called). I am paired with the Senator from West
Virginia [Mr. CAMDEN]. If he were present I should vote “yea.”

The roll-call was concluded.

Mr. HARRIS. I have a general pair with the Senator from Vermont [Mr. EDMUNDS], who
is necessarily absent from the Chamber, but I see his colleague voted “nay,” and as I
am opposed to the resolution I will record my vote “nay.”

Mr. KENNA. I am paired on all questions with the Senator from New York [Mr.
MILLER].

Mr. JONES, of Arkansas. I have a general pair with the Senator from Indiana [Mr.
HARRISON]. If he were present I should vote “nay” on this question.

Mr. BROWN. I was requested by the Senator from South Carolina [Mr. BUTLER] to
announce his pair with the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. CAMERON], and to say that
if the Senator from South Carolina were present he would vote “nay.” I do not know
how the Senator from Pennsylvania would vote.

Mr. CULLOM. I was requested by the Senator from Maine [Mr. FRYE] to announce his
pair with the Senator from Maryland [Mr. GORMAN].

The result was announced—yeas 16, nays 34; as follows:

YEAS—16.

Blair,
Bowen,
Cheney,
Conger,
Cullom,
Dolph,
Farwell,
Hoar,
Manderson,
Mitchell of Oreg.,
Mitchell of Pa.,
Palmer,
Platt,
Sherman,
Teller,
Wilson of Iowa.

NAYS—34.

Beck,
Berry,
Blackburn,
Brown,
Call,
Cockrell,
Coke,
Colquitt,
Eustis,
Evarts,
George,
Gray,
Hampton,
Harris,
Hawley,
Ingalls,
Jones of Nevada,
McMillan,
McPherson,
Mahone,
Morgan,
Morrill,
Payne,
Pugh,
Saulsbury,
Sawyer,
Sewell,
Spooner,
Vance,
Vest,
Walthall,
Whitthorne,
Williams,
Wilson of Md.

ABSENT—26

Aldrich,
Allison,
Butler,
Camden,
Cameron,
Chace,
Dawes,
Edmunds,
Fair,
Frye,
Gibson,
Gorman,
Hale,
Harrison,
Jones of Arkansas,
Jones of Florida,
Kenna,
Maxey,
Miller,
Plumb,
Ransom,
Riddleberger,
Sabin,
Stanford,
Van Wyck,
Voorhees.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Two-thirds have not voted for the resolution. It is not
passed.

Mr. PLUMB subsequently said: I wish to state that I was unexpectedly called out of
the Senate just before the vote was taken on the constitutional amendment, and to
also state that if I had been here I should have voted for it.