History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II

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Title: History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II
Author: Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 1815-1902 [Editor], Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906 [Editor], Gage, Matilda Joslyn, 1826-1898 [Editor]
Language: English
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HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

Edited by

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, AND MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.

Illustrated with Steel Engravings.

In Three Volumes.

VOL. II.

1861-1876.

[Illustration: Anna Dickinson. "The World belongs to those who take
it. Truly Yours Anna Dickinson"]

ALL PERSONS BORN OR NATURALIZED IN THE UNITED STATES, AND SUBJECT TO
THE JURISDICTION THEREOF, ARE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES.

Susan B. Anthony,
17 Madison St., Rochester, N. Y.

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1881, by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, And
Matilda Joslyn Gage.
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

PREFACE.

In presenting to our readers the second volume of the "History of
Woman Suffrage," we gladly return our thanks to the press for the many
favorable notices we have received from leading journals, both in the
old world and the new. The words of cordial approval from a large
circle of friends, and especially from women well known in periodical
literature, have been to us a constant stimulus during the toilsome
months we have spent in gathering material for these pages. It was our
purpose to have condensed the records of the last twenty years in a
second volume, but so many new questions in regard to Citizenship,
State rights, and National power, indirectly bearing on the political
rights of women, grew out of the civil war, that the arguments and
decisions in Congress and the Supreme Courts have combined to swell
these pages beyond our most liberal calculations, with much valuable
material that can not be condensed nor ignored, making a third volume
inevitable.

By their active labors all through the great conflict, women learned
that they had many interests outside the home. In the camp and
hospital, and the vacant places at their firesides, they saw how
intimately the interests of the State and the home were intertwined;
that as war and all its concomitants were subjects of legislation, it
was only through a voice in the laws that their efforts for peace
could command consideration.

The political significance of the war, and the prolonged discussions
on the vital principles of government involved in the reconstruction,
threw new light on the status of woman in a republic. Under a liberal
interpretation of the XIV. Amendment, women, believing their rights of
citizenship secured, made several attempts to vote in different
States. Those who succeeded were arrested, tried, and convicted. Those
who were denied the right to register their names and deposit their
votes, sued the Inspectors of Election. Others attempting to practice
law, being denied that right in the States, took their cases up to the
Supreme Court of the United States for adjudication. Others invaded
the pulpit, asking to be ordained, which brought the question of
woman's right to preach before ecclesiastical assemblies. These
various attempts to secure her political and civil rights have called
forth endless discussions on woman's true position in the State, the
church, and the world of work.

While gratefully accepting the generous praises of our friends, we
must briefly reply to some strictures by our critics. Some object to
the title of our work; they say you can not write the "History of
Woman Suffrage" until the fact is accomplished. We feel that already
enough has been achieved to make the final victory certain. Women vote
in England, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, and
even India, on certain interests and qualifications; in Wyoming and
Utah on all questions, and on the same basis as male citizens; and in
a dozen States of the Union on school affairs. Moreover, women are
filling many offices, such as Clerks of Courts, Notaries Public,
Masters in Chancery, State Librarians, School Superintendents,
Commissioners of Charity, Post Mistresses, Pension Agents, Engrossing
and Enrolling Clerks in Legislative Assemblies.

After years of persistent effort a resolution was passed in both
Houses, during the present session of Congress (1882), securing "a
select committee on the political Rights and Disabilities of
Woman"--the first time in the history of our Government that a special
committee to look after the interests of woman was ever appointed. A
proposition for a XVI. Amendment to the National Constitution, to
secure to women the right of suffrage, is now pending in Congress.
Some phase of this question is being debated every year in State
Legislatures. Propositions for so amending their constitutions as to
extend the elective franchise to women will be voted upon by the
people in four of the Western States within the coming two years.
These successive steps of progress during forty years are as surely a
part of the History of Woman Suffrage as will be the events of the
closing period in which victory shall at last crown the hard fought
battles of half a century.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER XVI.

WOMAN'S PATRIOTISM IN THE WAR.
PAGE
The first gun on Sumter, April 12, 1861--Woman's military
genius--Anna Ella Carroll--The Sanitary Movement--Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell--The Hospitals--Dorothea Dix--Services on the
battle-field--Clara Barton--The Freedman's Bureau--Josephine
Griffing--Ladies' National Covenant--Political campaigns--Anna
Dickinson--The Woman's Loyal National League--The Mammoth
Petition--Anniversaries--The Thirteenth Amendment 1

CHAPTER XVII.

CONGRESSIONAL ACTION.

First Petitions to Congress December, 1865, against the word "male"
in the 14th Amendment--Joint resolutions before Congress--Messrs.
Jenckes, Schenck, Broomall, and Stevens--Republicans protest in
presenting petitions--The women seek aid of Democrats--James
Brooks in the House of Representatives--Horace Greeley on the
petitions--Caroline Healy Dall on Messrs. Jenckes and Schenck--The
District of Columbia Suffrage Bill--Senator Cowan, of Pennsylvania,
moved to strike out the word "male"--A three days' debate in the
Senate--The final vote nine in favor of Mr. Cowan's amendment, and
thirty-seven against 90

CHAPTER XVIII.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS IN 1866-67.

The first National Woman Suffrage Convention after the
war--Speeches by Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown Blackwell,
Henry Ward Beecher, Frances D. Gage, Theodore Tilton, Wendell
Phillips--Petitions to Congress and the Constitutional
Convention--Mrs. Stanton a candidate to Congress--Anniversary of
the Equal Rights Association 152

CHAPTER XIX.

THE KANSAS CAMPAIGN--1867.

The Battle Ground of Freedom--Campaign of 1867--Liberals did
not Stand by their Principles--Black Men Opposed to Woman
Suffrage--Republican Press and Party Untrue--Democrats in
Opposition--John Stuart Mill's Letters and Speeches Extensively
Circulated--Henry B. Blackwell and Lucy Stone Opened
the Campaign--Rev. Olympia Brown Followed--60,000 Tracts
Distributed--Appeal Signed by Thirty-one Distinguished Men--Letters
from Helen E. Starrett, Susan E. Wattles, Dr. R. S. Tenney,
Lieut.-Governor J. B. Root, Rev. Olympia Brown--The Campaign closed
by ex-Governor Robinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony,
and the Hutchinson Family--Speeches and Songs at the Polls in every
Ward in Leavenworth Election Day--Both Amendments lost--9,070 Votes
for Woman Suffrage, 10,843 for Negro Suffrage 229

CHAPTER XX.

NEW YORK CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

Constitution Amended once in Twenty Years--Mrs. Stanton before the
Legislature Claiming Woman's Right to Vote for Members to the
Convention--An Immense Audience in the Capitol--The Convention
Assembled June 4th, 1867. Twenty Thousand Petitions Presented for
Striking the Word "Male" from the Constitution--"Committee on the
Right of Suffrage, and the Qualifications for Holding Office"
Horace Greeley, Chairman--Mr. Graves, of Herkimer, Leads the
Debate in favor of Woman Suffrage--Horace Greeley's Adverse
Report--Leading Advocates Heard before the Convention--Speech of
George William Curtis on Striking the Word "Man" from Section 1,
Article 11--Final Vote, 19 For, 125 Against--Equal Rights
Anniversary of 1868 269

CHAPTER XXI.

RECONSTRUCTION.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments--Universal Suffrage and
Universal Amnesty the Key-note of Reconstruction--Gerrit Smith and
Wendell Phillips hesitate--A Trying Period in the Woman Suffrage
Movement--Those Opposed to the word "Male" in the Fourteenth
Amendment Voted Down in Conventions--The Negro's Hour--Virginia L.
Minor on Suffrage in the District of Columbia--Women Advised to be
Silent--The Hypocrisy of the Democrats preferable to that of the
Republicans--Senator Pomeroy's Amendment--Protests against a Man's
Government--Negro Suffrage a Political Necessity--Charles Sumner
Opposed to the Fourteenth Amendment, but Voted for it as a Party
Measure--Woman Suffrage for Utah--Discussion in the House as to who
Constitute Electors--Bills for Woman Suffrage presented by the Hon.
George W. Julian and Senators Wilson and Pomeroy--The Fifteenth
Amendment--Anna E. Dickinson's Suggestion--Opinions of Women on the
Fifteenth Amendment--The Sixteenth Amendment--Miss Anthony chosen a
Delegate to the Democratic National Convention July 4, 1868--Her
Address Read by a Unanimous Vote--Horatio Seymour in the
Chair--Comments of the Press--_The Revolution_ 313

CHAPTER XXII.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS--1869.

First Convention in Washington--First hearing before
Congress--Delegates Invited from Every State--Senator Pomeroy, of
Kansas--Debate between Colored Men and Women--Grace Greenwood's
Graphic Description--What the Members of the Convention Saw and
Heard in Washington--Robert Purvis--A Western Trip--Conventions in
Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Springfield, and Madison--Editorial
Correspondence in _The Revolution_--Anniversaries in New York and
Brooklyn--Conventions in Newport and Saratoga 345

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE NEW DEPARTURE--UNDER THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.

Francis Minor's Resolutions--Hearing before Congressional
Committee--Descriptions by Mrs. Fannie Howland and Grace
Greenwood--Washington Convention 1870--Rev. Samuel J. May--Senator
Carpenter--Professor Sprague, of Cornell University--Notes
of Mrs. Hooker--May Anniversary in New York--The Fifth Avenue
Conference--Second Decade Celebration--Washington, 1871--Victoria
Woodhull's Memorial--Judiciary Committee--Majority and Minority
Reports--George W. Julian and A. A. Sargent in the House--May
Anniversary, 1871--Washington in 1872--Senate Judiciary
Committee--Benjamin F. Butler--The Sherman-Dahlgren Protest--Women
in Grant and Wilson Campaign 407

CHAPTER XXIV.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS--1873, '74, '75.

Fifth Washington Convention--Mrs. Gage on Centralization--May
Anniversary in New York--Washington Convention, 1874--Frances
Ellen Burr's Report--Rev. O. B. Frothingham in New York
Convention--Territory of Pembina--Discussion in the
Senate--Conventions in Washington and New York, 1875--Hearings
before Congressional Committees 521

CHAPTER XXV.

TRIALS AND DECISIONS.

Women Voting under the XVI. Amendment--Appeals to the
Courts--Marilla M. Ricker, of New Hampshire, 1870--Nannette
B. Gardner, Michigan--Sara Andrews Spencer, District of
Columbia--Ellen Rand Van Valkenburgh, California--Catherine V.
Waite, Illinois--Carrie S. Burnham, Pennsylvania--Sarah M. T.
Huntingdon, Connecticut--Susan B. Anthony, New York--Virginia
L. Minor, Missouri--Judges McKee, Jameson, Sharswood,
Cartter--Associate Justice Hunt--Chief Justice Waite--Myra
Bradwell--Hon. Matt. H. Carpenter--Supreme Court Decisions 586

CHAPTER XXVI.

AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.

Circular Letter--Cleveland Convention--Association Completed--Henry
Ward Beecher, President--Convention in Steinway Hall, New
York--George William Curtis Speaks--The First Annual Meeting held
in Cleveland--Mrs. Tracy Cutler, President--Mass Meeting in
Steinway Hall, New York, 1870--State Action Recommended--Moses Coit
Tyler Speaks--Mass Meetings in 1871 in Philadelphia, Washington,
Baltimore, Pittsburgh--Memorial to Congress--Letters from William
Lloyd Garrison and others--Hon. G. F. Hoar Advocates Woman
Suffrage--Anniversary celebrated at St. Louis--Dr. Stone, of
Michigan--Thomas Wentworth Higginson, President, 1872--Convention
in Cooper Institute, New York--Two Hundred Young Women march
in--Meeting in Plymouth Church--Letters from Louise May Alcott and
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps--The Annual Meeting in Detroit--Julia Ward
Howe, President--Letter from James T. Field--Mary F. Eastman
Addresses the Convention. Bishop Gilbert Haven President for
1875--Convention in Steinway Hall, New York--Hon. Charles Bradlaugh
Speaks--Centennial Celebration, July 3d--Petition to Congress for a
XVI. Amendment--Conventions in Indianapolis, Cincinnati,
Washington, and Louisville 756

Appendix 863

LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.

Vol. II.

ANNA E. DICKINSON _Frontispiece._
CLARA BARTON page 25
CLEMENCE S. LOZIER, M. D. 153
REV. OLYMPIA BROWN 265
JANE GRAHAM JONES 313
VIRGINIA L. MINOR 409
ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER 489
BELVA A. LOCKWOOD 521
ELLEN CLARK SARGENT 553
MYRA BRADWELL 617
LUCY STONE 761
JULIA WARD HOWE 793

CHAPTER XVI.

WOMAN'S PATRIOTISM IN THE WAR.

The first gun on Sumter, April 12, 1861--Woman's military
genius--Anna Ella Carroll--The Sanitary Movement--Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell--The Hospitals--Dorothea Dix--Services on the
battle-field--Clara Barton--The Freedman's Bureau--Josephine
Griffing--Ladies' National Covenant--Political campaigns--Anna
Dickinson--The Woman's Loyal National League--The Mammoth
Petition--Anniversaries--The Thirteenth Amendment.

Our first volume closed with the period when the American people stood
waiting with apprehension the signal of the coming conflict between
the Northern and Southern States. On April 12, 1861, the first gun was
fired on Sumter, and on the 14th it was surrendered. On the 15th, the
President called out 75,000 militia, and summoned Congress to meet
July 4th, when 400,000 men and $400,000,000 were voted to carry on the
war.

These startling events roused the entire people, and turned the
current of their thoughts in new directions. While the nation's life
hung in the balance, and the dread artillery of war drowned alike the
voices of commerce, politics, religion and reform, all hearts were
filled with anxious forebodings, all hands were busy in solemn
preparations for the awful tragedies to come.

At this eventful hour the patriotism of woman shone forth as fervently
and spontaneously as did that of man; and her self-sacrifice and
devotion were displayed in as many varied fields of action. While he
buckled on his knapsack and marched forth to conquer the enemy, she
planned the campaigns which brought the nation victory; fought in the
ranks when she could do so without detection; inspired the sanitary
commission; gathered needed supplies for the grand army; provided
nurses for the hospitals; comforted the sick; smoothed the pillows of
the dying; inscribed the last messages of love to those far away; and
marked the resting-places where the brave men fell. The labor women
accomplished, the hardships they endured, the time and strength they
sacrificed in the war that summoned three million men to arms, can
never be fully appreciated.

Think of the busy hands from the Atlantic to the Pacific, making
garments, canning fruits and vegetables, packing boxes, preparing lint
and bandages[1] for soldiers at the front; think of the mothers, wives
and daughters on the far-off prairies, gathering in the harvests, that
their fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons might fight the battles of
freedom; of those month after month walking the wards of the hospital;
and those on the battle-field at the midnight hour, ministering to the
wounded and dying, with none but the cold stars to keep them company.

Think of the multitude of delicate, refined women, unused to care and
toil, thrown suddenly on their own resources, to struggle evermore
with poverty and solitude; their hopes and ambitions all freighted in
the brave young men that marched forth from their native hills, with
flying flags and marshal music, to return no more forever. The
untiring labors, the trembling apprehensions, the wrecked hopes, the
dreary solitude of the fatherless, the widowed, the childless in that
great national upheaval, have never been measured or recorded; their
brave deeds never told in story or in song, no monuments built to
their memories, no immortal wreaths to mark their last resting-places.

How much easier it is to march forth with gay companions and marshal
music; with the excitement of the battle, the camp, the ever-shifting
scenes of war, sustained by the hope of victory; the promise of
reward; the ambition for distinction; the fire of patriotism kindling
every thought, and stimulating every nerve and muscle to action! How
much easier is all this, than to wait and watch alone with nothing to
stimulate hope or ambition.

The evils of bad government fall ever most heavily on the mothers of
the race, who, however wise and far-seeing, have no voice in its
administration, no power to protect themselves and their children
against a male dynasty of violence and force.

While the mass of women never philosophize on the principles that
underlie national existence, there were those in our late war who
understood the political significance of the struggle: the
"irrepressible conflict" between freedom and slavery; between national
and State rights. They saw that to provide lint, bandages, and
supplies for the army, while the war was not conducted on a wise
policy, was labor in vain; and while many organizations, active,
vigilant, self-sacrificing, were multiplied to look after the
material wants of the army, these few formed themselves into a
National Loyal League to teach sound principles of government, and to
press on the nation's conscience, that "freedom to the slaves was the
only way to victory." Accustomed as most women had been to works of
charity, to the relief of outward suffering, it was difficult to rouse
their enthusiasm for an idea, to persuade them to labor for a
principle. They clamored for practical work, something for their hands
to do; for fairs, sewing societies to raise money for soldier's
families, for tableaux, readings, theatricals, anything but
conventions to discuss principles and to circulate petitions for
emancipation. They could not see that the best service they could
render the army was to suppress the rebellion, and that the most
effective way to accomplish that was to transform the slaves into
soldiers. This Woman's Loyal League voiced the solemn lessons of the
war: liberty to all; national protection for every citizen under our
flag; universal suffrage, and universal amnesty.

As no national recognition has been accorded the grand women who did
faithful service in the late war; no national honors nor profitable
offices bestowed on them, the noble deeds of a few representative
women should be recorded. The military services of Anna Ella Carroll
in planning the campaign on the Tennessee; the labors of Clara Barton
on the battle-field; of Dorothea Dix in the hospital; of Dr. Elizabeth
Blackwell in the Sanitary; of Josephine S. Griffing in the Freedman's
Bureau; and the political triumphs of Anna Dickinson in the
Presidential campaign, reflecting as they do all honor on their sex in
general, should ever be proudly remembered by their countrywomen.

ANNA ELLA CARROLL.

THE TENNESSEE CAMPAIGN.

Anna Ella Carroll, the daughter of Thomas King Carroll formerly
Governor of Maryland, belongs to one of the oldest and most patriotic
families of that State. Her ancestors founded the city of Baltimore;
Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, one of the signers of the Declaration
of Independence, was of the same family.

At the breaking out of the civil war, Maryland was claimed by the
rebellious States, and for a long time her position seemed uncertain.
Miss Carroll, an intimate friend of Gov. Hicks, and at that time a
member of his family, favored the national cause, and by her powerful
arguments induced the Governor to remain firm in his opposition to the
scheme of secession. Thus, despite the siren wooing of the South, in
its plaint of

"Maryland, my Maryland."

Miss Carroll was the means of preserving her native State to the
Union. Although a slave-owner, and a member of that class which so
largely proved disloyal, Miss Carroll freed her slaves, and devoted
herself throughout the war to the cause of liberty. She replied to the
secession speech of Senator Breckenridge, made during the July session
of Congress 1861, with such lucid and convincing arguments, that the
War Department not only circulated a large edition, but the Government
requested her to prepare other papers upon unsettled points. In
response she wrote a pamphlet entitled "The War Powers of the
Government," published in December, 1861. By the especial request of
President Lincoln she also prepared a paper entitled "The Relation of
Revolted Citizens to the National Government," which was approved by
him, and formed the basis of his subsequent action. In September,
1861, she also prepared a paper on the Constitutional power of the
President to make arrests, and to suspend the writ of _habeas corpus_;
a subject upon which a great conflict of opinion then existed, even
among persons of unquestioned loyalty.

Early in the fall of 1861, Miss Carroll took a trip to St. Louis to
inspect the progress of the war in the West. A gun-boat fleet, under
the special authorization of the President, was then in preparation
for a descent of the Mississippi. An examination of this plan by Miss
Carroll showed its weakness, and the inevitable disaster it would
bring to the National arms. Her astute military genius led her to the
substitution of another plan, upon which she based great hopes of
success, and its results show it to have been one of the profoundest
strategic movements of the ages. Strategy and generalship are two
entirely distinct forms of the art of war. Many a general, good at
following out a plan, is entirely incapable of forming a successful
one. Napoleon stands in the foremost ranks as a strategist, and is
held as the greatest warrior of modern times, yet he led no forces
into battle. So entirely was he convinced that strategy was the whole
art of war, that he was accustomed to speak of himself as the only
general of his army, thus subordinating the mere command and movement
of forces to the art of strategy. Judged by this standard, which is
acknowledged by all military men, Anna Ella Carroll, of Maryland,
holds foremost rank as a military genius. On the 12th of November,
1861, while still in St. Louis, Miss Carroll wrote to Hon. Edward
Bates at Washington (the member of the Cabinet who first suggested the
expedition down the Mississippi), that from information gained by her
she believed this plan would fail, and urged him, instead, to have the
expedition directed up the Tennessee River, as the true line of
attack. She also dispatched a similar letter to Hon. Thomas A. Scott,
at that time Assistant Secretary of War. On the 30th of this month
(November, 1861), Miss Carroll laid the following plan, accompanied by
explanatory maps, before the War Department:

The civil and military authorities seem to me to be laboring
under a great mistake in regard to the true key of the war in the
South-west. It is not the Mississippi, but the Tennessee River.
Now, all the military preparations made in the West indicate that
the Mississippi River is the point to which the authorities are
directing their attention. On that river many battles must be
fought and heavy risks incurred, before any impression can be
made on the enemy, all of which could be avoided by using the
Tennessee River. This river is navigable for medium-class boats
to the foot of Muscle Shoals in Alabama, and is open to
navigation all the year, while the distance is but two hundred
and fifty miles by the river from Paducah on the Ohio. The
Tennessee offers many advantages over the Mississippi. We should
avoid the almost impregnable batteries of the enemy, which can
not be taken without great danger and great risk of life to our
forces, from the fact that our forces, if crippled, would fall a
prey to the enemy by being swept by the current to him, and away
from the relief of our friends. But even should we succeed, still
we have only begun the war, for we shall then have to fight the
country from whence the enemy derives his supplies.

Now an advance up the Tennessee River would avoid this danger;
for, if our boats were crippled, they would drop back with the
current and escape capture. But a still greater advantage would
be its tendency to _cut the enemy's lines in two_, by reaching
the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, threatening Memphis, which
lies one hundred miles due west, and no defensible point between;
also Nashville, only ninety miles north-east, and Florence and
Tuscumbia in North Alabama, forty miles east. A movement in this
direction would do more to relieve our friends in Kentucky, and
inspire the loyal hearts in East Tennessee, than the possession
of the whole of the Mississippi River. If well executed, it would
cause the evacuation of all those formidable fortifications on
which the rebels ground their hopes for success; and in the event
of our fleet attacking Mobile, the presence of our troops in the
northern part of Alabama, would be material aid to the fleet.

Again, the aid our forces would receive from the loyal men in
Tennessee would enable them soon to crush the last traitor in
that region, and the _separation of the two extremes_ would do
more than one hundred battles for the Union cause. The Tennessee
River is crossed by the Memphis and Louisville Railroad, and the
Memphis and Nashville Railroad. At Hamburg the river makes the
big bend on the east, touching the north-east corner of
Mississippi, entering the north-west corner of Alabama, forming
an arc to the south, entering the State of Tennessee at the
north-east corner of Alabama, and if it does not touch the
north-west corner of Georgia, comes very near it. It is but eight
miles from Hamburg to the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, which
goes through Tuscumbia, only two miles from the river, which it
crosses at Decatur thirty miles above, intersecting with the
Nashville and Chattanooga road at Stephenson. The Tennessee never
has less than three feet to Hamburg on the "shoalest" bar, and
during the fall, winter, and spring months, there is always water
for the largest boats that are used on the Mississippi River. It
follows, from the above facts, that in making the Mississippi the
key to the war in the West, or rather in overlooking the
Tennessee River, the subject is not understood by the superiors
in command.

The War Department looked over these papers, and Col. Scott, the
Assistant Secretary, possessing a knowledge of the railroad facilities
and connections of the South, unequaled perhaps by any other man in
the country at that time, at once saw the vital importance of Miss
Carroll's plan. He declared it to be the first clear solution of the
difficult problem, and was soon sent West to assist in carrying it out
in detail. The Mississippi expedition was abandoned, and the Tennessee
made the point of attack. Both land and naval forces were ordered to
mass themselves at this point, and the country soon began to feel the
wisdom of this movement. The capture of Fort Henry, an important
Confederate post on the Tennessee River serving to defend the railroad
communication between Memphis and Bowling Green, was the first result
of Miss Carroll's plan. It fell Feb. 6, 1862, and was rapidly followed
by the capture of Fort Donelson, which, after a gallant defense,
surrendered to the Union forces Feb. 16th, and the name of Ulysses S.
Grant, as the general commanding these forces, for the first time
became known to the American people. By these victories the line of
Confederate fortifications was broken, and the enemy's means of
communication between the East and the West were destroyed.

All the historians of our civil war concede that the strategy which
made the Tennessee River the base of military operations in the
South-west, thus cutting the Confederacy in two by its control of the
Memphis and Charleston Railroad, also made its final destruction
inevitable. At an early day the Government had neither a just
conception of the rebellion, nor of the steps necessary for its
suppression. It was looked upon from a political rather than a
military point of view, and much valuable time was wasted in
suggestions and plans worse than futile. But while the national
Government had been blind to the real situation, the Confederacy had
every hour strengthened its position both at home and abroad, having
so far secured the recognition of France and England as to have been
acknowledged belligerents, while threats of raising the blockade were
also made by the same powers.

In order to a more full understanding of our national affairs at that
time, we will glance at the proceedings of Congress. When this body
met in December, 1861, a "Committee on the Conduct of the War" was at
once created, and spirited debates upon the situation took place in
both the Senate and the House. It was acknowledged that the salvation
of the country depended upon military success. It was declared that
the rebellion must be speedily put down or it would destroy the
resources of the country, as $2,000,000 a day were then required to
maintain the army in the field. Hon. Mr. Dawes compared the country to
a man under an exhausted receiver gasping for breath, and said that
sixty days of the present state of things must bring about an
ignominious peace. Hon. Geo. W. Julian declared that the country was
in imminent danger of a foreign war, and that in the opinion of many
the great model Republic of the world was in the throes of death. The
credit of the nation was then so poor as to render it unable to make
loans of money from foreign countries. The treasury notes issued by
the Government were falling in the market, selling at five and six per
cent. discount. Mr. Morrill, in the Senate, gave it as his opinion
that in six months the nation would be beyond hope of relief.

England was anxiously hoping for our downfall. _The London Post_, Lord
Palmerston's paper, the organ of the English Government, prophesied
our national bankruptcy within a short time. _The London Times_
denounced us in language deemed too offensive to be read before the
Senate. It urged England's direct interference; counseled the pouring
of a fleet of gun-boats through the St. Lawrence into the lakes with
the opening of spring, "to secure, with the mastery of these waters,
the mastery of all," and declared that three months hence the field
would be all England's own. At that time the British Government had
already sent some thirty thousand men into its colonies in North
America, preparatory to an assault upon our north-western frontier.
The nation seemed upon the point of being lost, and the hopes of
millions of oppressed men in other lands destroyed by the
disintegration of the Union. The war had been waged six months, but
with the exception of West Virginia, the battle had been against the
Union. The fact that military success alone could turn the scale,
though now acknowledged, seemed to Congress as far as ever from
consummation. Our military commanders, quite ignorant of both the
geographical and topographical outlines of our vast country, were
unable to formulate the plan necessary for a decisive blow.

Such was the situation at the time Miss Carroll sent her plan of the
Tennessee campaign to the War Department. Fortunately for civilization
this plan was adopted, and with the fall of Fort Henry, the enemy's
center was pierced, the decisive point gained. From that hour the
nation's final success was assured. Its fall opened the Tennessee
River, and its capture was soon followed by the evacuation of Columbus
and Bowling Green. Fort Donelson was given up, its rebel garrison of
14,000 troops marched out as prisoners of war, and hope sprang up in
the hearts of the people. Pittsburg Landing and Corinth soon followed
the fate of the preceding forts. The President declared the victory at
Fort Henry to be of the utmost importance. North and South its
influence was alike felt. Gen. Beauregard was himself conscious that
this campaign sealed the fate of the "Southern Confederacy." The
success of the Tennessee campaign rendered intervention impossible,
and taught those foreign enemies who were anxiously watching for our
country's downfall, the power and stability of a Republic. Missouri
was kept in the Union by its means, Tennessee and Kentucky were
restored, the National armies were enabled to push to the Gulf States
and secure possession of all the great rivers and routes of internal
communication through the heart of the Confederate territory.

On the 10th of April, 1862, the President issued the following
proclamation:

It has pleased Almighty God to vouchsafe signal victories to the
land and naval forces engaged in suppressing an internal
rebellion; and at the same time to avert from our country the
damages of foreign intervention and invasion.

During all this time the author of this plan remained unknown, except
to the President and his Cabinet, who feared to reveal the fact that
the Government was proceeding under the advice and plan of a civilian,
and that civilian _a woman_. Shortly after the capture of Forts Henry
and Donelson a debate as to the author of this campaign took place in
the House of Representatives.[2] The Senate discussed its origin March
13. It was variously ascribed to the President, to the Secretary of
War, and to different naval and land commanders, Halleck, Grant,
Foote, Smith, and Fremont. The historians of the war have also given
adverse opinions as to its authorship. Draper's "History of the Civil
War" ascribes it to Gen. Halleck; Boynton's "History of the Navy" to
Commodore Foote; Lossing's "Civil War" to the combined wisdom of
Grant, Halleck, and Foote; Badeau's "History of the Civil War"
credits it to Gen. C. F. Smith; and Abbott's "Civil War," to Gen.
Fremont.

But abundant testimony exists proving Miss Carroll's authorship of the
plan, in letters from Hon. B. F. Wade,[3] Chairman of the Committee on
the Conduct of the War; from Hon. Thos. A. Scott, Assistant Secretary
of War; from Hon. L. D. Evans, former Chief-Justice of the Supreme
Court of Texas (entrusted by the Government with an important secret
mission during the war); from Hon. Orestes A. Bronson, and many other
well-known public men; from conversations of President Lincoln and
Secretary Stanton; and from reports of the Military Committee of the
XLI., XLII., and XLVI. Congresses.[4] So anxious was the Government to
keep the origin of the Tennessee campaign a secret, that Col. Scott,
in conversation with Judge Evans, a personal friend of Miss Carroll,
pressed upon him the absolute necessity of Miss Carroll's making no
claim to the authorship while the struggle lasted. In the plenitude of
her self-sacrificing patriotism she remained silent, and saw the
honors rightfully belonging to her heaped upon others, although she
knew the country was indebted to her for its salvation.

Previous to 1862 historians reckoned but fifteen decisive battles[5]
in the world's history, battles in which, says Hallam, a contrary
result would have essentially varied the drama of the world in all its
subsequent scenes. Professor Cressy, of the chair of Ancient and
Modern History, University of London, has made these battles the
subject of two grand volumes. The battle of Fort Henry was the
sixteenth, and in its effects may well be deemed the most important of
all.[6] It opened the doors of liberty to the downtrodden and
oppressed among all nations, setting a seal of permanence on the
assertion that self-government is the natural right of every person.

But it was not alone through her plan of the Tennessee campaign that
Miss Carroll exhibited her military genius; throughout the conflict
she continued to send plans and suggestions to the War Department. The
events of history prove the wisdom of those plans, and that had they
been strictly followed, the war would have been brought to a speedy
close,[7] and millions of men and money saved to the country.

Upon the fall of Fort Henry, February, 1862, she again addressed the
War Department, advising an immediate advance upon Mobile or
Vicksburg. In March, 1862, she presented a memorial and maps to
Secretary Stanton in person, in regard to the reduction of Island 10,
which had long been a vain effort by the Union forces, in which she
said:

The failure to take Island 10, which thus far occasions much
disappointment to the country, excites no surprise to me. When I
looked at the gun-boats at St. Louis, and was informed as to
their powers, and that the current of the Mississippi at full
tide runs at the rate of five miles per hour, which is very near
the speed of our gun-boats, I could not resist the conclusion
that they were not well fitted to the taking of batteries on the
Mississippi River, if assisted by gun-boats perhaps equal to our
own. Hence it was that I wrote Col. Scott from there, that the
Tennessee River was our strategic point, and the successes at
Forts Henry and Donelson establish the justice of these
observations. Had our victorious army, after the fall of Fort
Henry, immediately pushed up the Tennessee River and taken
position on the Memphis and Charleston Railroad, between Corinth,
Miss., and Decatur, Ala., which might easily have been done at
that time with a small force, every rebel soldier in Western
Kentucky and Tennessee would have fled from every position south
of that railroad. And had Buell pursued the enemy in his retreat
from Nashville, without delay, into a commanding position in
North Alabama, on the railroad between Chattanooga and Decatur,
the rebel government at Richmond would necessarily have been
obliged to retreat to the cotton States. I am fully satisfied
that the true policy of General Halleck is to strengthen Grant's
column by such a force as will enable him at once to seize the
Memphis and Charleston Railroad, as it is the readiest means of
reducing Island 10, and all the strongholds to Memphis.

In October, 1862, observing the preparations for a naval attack upon
Vicksburg, Miss Carroll again addressed the Secretary of War in the
following memorial:

As I understand an expedition is about to go down the river, for
the purpose of reducing Vicksburg, I have prepared the enclosed
map in order to demonstrate more clearly the obstacles to be
encountered in the contemplated assault. In the first place, it
is impossible to take Vicksburg in the front without too great a
loss of life and material, for the reason that the river is only
about half a mile wide, and our forces would be in point-blank
range of their guns, not only from their water-batteries which
line the shore, but from the batteries that crown the hills,
while the enemy would be protected from the range of our fire.

By examining the map I enclose, you will at once perceive why a
place of so little apparent strength has been enabled to resist
the combined fleets of the Upper and Lower Mississippi. The most
economical plan for the reduction of Vicksburg now, is to push a
column from Memphis or Corinth down the Mississippi Central
Railroad to Jackson, the capital of the State of Mississippi. The
occupation of Jackson, and the command of the railroad to New
Orleans, would compel the immediate evacuation of Vicksburg, as
well as the retreat of the entire rebel army east of that line;
and by another movement of our army from Jackson, Miss., or from
Corinth to Meridan, in the State of Mississippi, on the Ohio and
Mobile Railroad, especially if aided by a movement of our
gun-boats on Mobile, the Confederate forces, with all the
disloyal men and slaves, would be compelled to fly east of the
Tombigbee. Mobile being then in our possession, with 100,000 men
at Meridan, would redeem the entire country from Memphis to the
Tombigbee River. Of course I would have the gun-boats with a
small force at Vicksburg, as auxiliary to this movement. With
regard to the canal, Vicksburg can be rendered useless to the
Confederate army upon the very first rise of the river; but I do
not advise this, because Vicksburg belongs to the United States,
and we desire to hold and fortify it, for the Mississippi River
at Vicksburg and the Vicksburg and Jackson Railroad will become
necessary as a base for our future operations. Vicksburg might
have been reduced eight months ago, as I advised after the fall
of Fort Henry, and with much more ease than it can be done
to-day.

It will be recollected that after a month's attack upon Vicksburg,
commencing June 28, 1862, by the combined Farragut fleet, Porter
mortar flotilla and the gun-boat fleet under Capt. C. H. Davis, the
bombardment of the city was suspended, it being found impossible to
capture and hold it with the forces at command.

In October, 1862, Grant was appointed to the command of the forces
from New Orleans to Vicksburg under the name of the "Department of
Tennessee," and the capture of this "Gibraltar of the Confederacy" was
once more attempted. This was the period of Miss Carroll's memorial
above given, and the results proved the wisdom of her suggestions, as
it was not until the army, by an attack upon its rear, were enabled to
capture this stronghold, July 4, 1863, more than a year after the
first demand of Farragut's fleet for its capitulation. Had it been
attacked immediately after the fall of Fort Henry, according to Miss
Carroll's plan, many lives, costly munitions of war, and much valuable
time would have alike been saved. Miss Carroll's claim before Congress
in connection with the Tennessee campaign of 1862, shows that the
Military Committee of the United States Senate at the third session of
the 41st Congress, reported (document 337), through Senator Howard,
that Miss Carroll "furnished the Government the information which
caused the change of the military expedition which was preparing in
1861 to descend the Mississippi, from that river to the Tennessee
River." The same committee of the 42d Congress, second session
(document 167), reported the evidence in support of this claim. For
the House report of the 46th Congress, third session, see document
386.[8]

No fact in the history of our country is more clearly proved than that
its very existence is due to the military genius of Miss Carroll, and
no more shameful fact in its history exists, than that Congress has
refused all recognition and reward for such patriotic services because
they were rendered by a woman. While in the past twenty years
thousands of men, great and small, have received thanks and rewards
from the country she saved--for work done in accordance with her
plans--Grant, first made known at Donelson, having twice received the
highest office in the gift of the nation--having made the tour of the
world amid universal honors--having received gifts of countless value
at home and abroad--Miss Carroll is still left to struggle for a
recognition of her services from that country which is indebted to her
for its very life.

DOROTHEA DIX,

GOVERNMENT SUPERINTENDENT OF NURSES.

Upon the breaking out of the war, Miss Dix, who for years had been
engaged in philanthropic work, saw here another requirement for her
services and hurried to Washington to offer them to her country. She
found her first work in nursing soldiers who had been wounded by the
Baltimore mob.[9] Upon June 10, 1861, she received from the War
Department, Simon Cameron at that time its head, an appointment as the
Government Superintendent of Women Nurses. Secretary Stanton,
succeeding him, ratified this appointment, thus placing her in an
extraordinary and exceptional position, imposing numerous and onerous
duties, among them that of hospital visitation, distributing supplies,
managing ambulances, adjusting disputes, etc. But while appointed to
this office by the Government, Miss Dix found herself as a member of a
disfranchised class, in a position of authority without the power of
enforcing obedience, and the subject of jealousy among hospital
surgeons, which largely militated against the efficiency of her
work.[10]

ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, M.D.

THE SANITARY COMMISSION.

It has been computed that since the historic period, fourteen thousand
millions of human beings have fallen in the wars which men have waged
against each other. From careful statistics it has also been estimated
that four-fifths of this loss of life has been due to privation,
exposure, and want of care. At an early day the mortality from
sickness was evidently far greater than the above estimate; as late as
the Crimean War, this mortality reached seven-eighths of the whole
number of deaths. Military surgery was formerly but little understood.
The wounded and sick of an army were indebted to the chance aid of
friend or stranger, or were left to perish from neglect. Nothing has
ever been held so cheap as human life, unless, indeed, it were human
rights. But even from times of antiquity we read of women, sometimes
of noble birth, who followed the soldiers to the field, treating the
wounds of friend or lover with healing balms or rude surgical
appliance. To woman is the world indebted for the first systematic
efforts toward relief, through the establishment of hospitals for sick
or wounded soldiers. As early as the fifth century, the Empress Helena
erected hospitals on the routes between Rome and Constantinople, where
soldiers requiring it, received careful nursing.

In the ninth century an order of women, who consecrated themselves to
field work, arose in the Catholic Church. They were called Beguines,
and everywhere ministered to the sick and wounded of the armies of
Continental Europe during its long period of devastating wars.

To Isabella of Spain,[11] she who sold her jewels to fit Columbus for
the discovery of a New World, is modern warfare most indebted for a
mitigation of its horrors, through the establishment of the first
regular Camp Hospitals. During her war with the Moors she caused a
large number of tents to be furnished at her own charge, with the
requisite medicines, appliances, and attendants for the wounded and
sick of her army. These were known as the "Queen's Hospitals," and
formed the inception of all the tender care given in army hospitals by
the most enlightened nations of to-day.

It is but a few years since Christendom was thrilled by the heroism of
a young English girl of high position, Florence Nightingale, who
having passed through the course of training required for hospital
nurses, voluntarily went out to the Crimea at the time when English
soldiers, wounded and sick, were dying by scores and thousands without
medicine or care, broke over the red-tape rules of the army, and with
her corps of women nurses, brought life in place of death, winning the
gratitude and admiration of her country and mankind by her
self-sacrifice and her powers of organization. Rev. Henry Kinglake, in
his "History of the Crimea," says she brought a priceless
reinforcement of brain power to the nation at a time when the brains
of Englishmen had given signs of inanition.

A few years later brought our own civil war, and the wonderful
sanitary commission, more familiarly known as "The Sanitary," the
public records of which are a part of the history of the war; its
sacrifices and its successes have burned themselves deep into the
hearts of thousands upon thousands. Its fairs in New York, New
England, and the Northwest, were the wonders of the world in the
variety and beauty of their exhibits and the vast sums realized from
them. Scarcely a woman in the nation, from the girl of tender
years,[12] to the aged matron of ninety, whose trembling hands scraped
lint or essayed to knit socks and mittens for "the boys in blue," but
knows its work, for of it they were a part. But not a hundred of all
those thousands who toiled with willing hands, and who, at every
battle met anew to prepare or send off stores, knows that to one of
her own sex was the formation of the Great Sanitary due.[13]

Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, returning to this country from England about
the time of the breaking out of the war, fresh from an acquaintance
with Miss Nightingale, and filled with her enthusiasm, at once called
an informal meeting at the New York Infirmary[14] for Women and
Children, where, on April 25th, 1861, the germ of the sanitary, known
as the Ladies' Central Relief,[15] was inaugurated. A public meeting
was held April 26, 1861, at the Cooper Union, its object being to
concentrate scattered efforts by a large and formal organization. The
society then received the name of the "Woman's Central Relief
Association of New York." Miss Louisa Lee Schuyler was chosen its
president. She soon sent out an appeal to women which brought New York
into direct connection with many other portions of the country,
enabling it "to report its monthly disbursements by tens of thousands,
and the sum total of its income by millions." But very soon after its
organization, Miss Schuyler saw the need of more positive connection
with the Government. A united address was sent to the Secretary of War
from the Woman's Central Relief Association, the Advisory Committee of
the Board of Physicians and Surgeons of the hospitals of New York, and
the New York Medical Association for furnishing medical supplies. As
the result of this address, the Sanitary Commission was established
the 9th of June, 1861, under the authority of the Government, and went
into immediate operation. Although acting under Government
authorization, this commission was not sustained at Government
expense, but was supported by the women of the nation. It was
organized under the following general rules:

1. The system of sanitary relief established by army regulations
was to be adopted; the Sanitary Commission was to acquaint itself
fully with those rules, and see that its agents were familiar
with all the plans and methods of the army system.

2. The Commission was to direct its efforts mainly to
strengthening the regular army system, and work to secure the
favor and co-operation of the Medical Bureau.

3. The Commission was to know nothing of religious differences or
State distinctions, distributing without regard to the place
where troops were enlisted, in a purely national spirit.

Under these provisions the Sanitary Commission completed its full
organization. Dr. Blackwell, in the Ladies' Relief Association, acted
as Chairman of the Registration Committee, a position of onerous
duties, requiring accord with the Medical Bureau and War Department,
and visited Washington in behalf of this committee. But the
Association soon lost her services by her own voluntary act of
withdrawal. Professional jealousy of women doctors being offensively
shown by some of those male physicians with whom she was brought in
contact, she chose to resign rather than allow sex-prejudice to
obstruct the carrying on of the great work originated by her. The
Sanitary, with its Auxiliary Aid Societies, at once presented a method
of help to the loyal[16] women of the country, and every city,
village, and hamlet soon poured its resources into the Commission.
Through it $92,000,000 were raised in aid of the sick and wounded of
the army. Nothing connected with the war so astonished foreign nations
as the work of the Sanitary Commission.

Dr. Henry Bellows, its President at the close of the war, declared in
his farewell address, that the army of women at home had been as
patriotic and as self-sacrificing as the army of men in the field, and
had it not been for their aid the war could not have been brought to a
successful termination.[17]

At every important period in the nation's history, woman has stood by
the side of man in duties. Husband, father, son, or brother have not
suffered or sacrificed alone.

"The old Continentals
In their ragged regimentals
Faltered not,"

because back of them stood the patriotic women of the thirteen
Colonies; those of the north-eastern pine-woods, who aided in the
first naval battle of the Revolution; those of Massachusetts,
Daughters of Liberty, who formed anti-tea leagues, proclaimed inherent
rights, and demanded an independency in advance of the men; those of
New York, who tilled the fields, and, removing their hearth-stones,
manufactured saltpetre from the earth beneath, to make powder for the
army; those of New Jersey, who rebuked traitors; those of
Pennsylvania, who saved the army; those of Virginia, who protested
against taxation without representation; those of South Carolina, who
at Charleston established a paper in opposition to the Stamp Act;
those of North Carolina, whose fiery patriotism secured for the
counties of Rowan and Mecklenberg the derisive name of "The Hornet's
Nest of America." The women of the whole thirteen Colonies everywhere
showed their devotion to freedom and their choice of liberty with
privation, rather than oppression with luxury and ease.

The civil war in our own generation was but an added proof of woman's
love for freedom and her worthiness of its possession. The grandest
war poem, "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," was the echo of a woman's
voice,[18] while woman's prescience and power were everywhere
manifested. She saw, before President, Cabinet, generals, or Congress,
that slavery must die before peace could be established in the
country.[19] Months previous to the issue by the President of the
Emancipation Proclamation, women in humble homes were petitioning
Congress for the overthrow of slavery, and agonizing in spirit because
of the dilatoriness of those in power. Were proof of woman's love of
freedom, of her right to freedom needed, the history of our civil war
would alone be sufficient to prove that love, to establish that right.

WOMEN AS SOLDIERS.

Many women fought in the ranks during the war, impelled by the same
patriotic motives which led their fathers, husbands, and brothers into
the contest. Not alone from one State, or in one regiment, but from
various parts of the Union, women were found giving their services and
lives to their country among the rank and file of the army.[20]
Although the nation gladly summoned their aid in camp and hospital,
and on the battle-field with the ambulance corps, it gave them no
recognition as soldiers, even denying them the rights of
chaplaincy,[21] and by "army regulations" entirely refusing them
recognition as part of the fighting forces of the country.

Historians have made no mention of woman's services in the war;
scarcely referring to the vast number commissioned in the army, whose
sex was discovered through some terrible wound, or by their dead
bodies on the battle-field. Even the volumes especially devoted to an
account of woman's work in the war, have mostly ignored her as a
common soldier, although the files of the newspapers of that heroic
period, if carefully examined, would be found to contain many accounts
of women who fought on the field of battle.[22]

Gov. Yates, of Illinois, commissioned the wife of Lieut. Reynolds of
the 17th, as Major, for service in the field, the document being made
out with due formality, having attached to it the great seal of State.
President Lincoln, more liberal than the Secretary of War, himself
promoted the wife of another Illinois officer, named Gates, to a
majorship, for service in the hospital and bravery on the field.

One young girl is referred to who served in seven different regiments,
participated in several engagements, was twice severely wounded; had
been discovered and mustered out of service eight times, but as many
times had re-enlisted, although a Canadian by birth, being determined
to fight for the American Union.

Hundreds of women marched steadily up to the mouth of a hundred cannon
pouring out fire and smoke, shot and shell, mowing down the advancing
hosts like grass; men, horses, and colors going down in confusion,
disappearing in clouds of smoke; the only sound, the screaming of
shells, the crackling of musketry, the thunder of artillery, through
all this women were sustained by the enthusiasm born of love of
country and liberty.

Amid "sighing shot and shrieking shell
And the splintered fire of the shattered hell,
And the great white breaths of the cannon smoke
As the growling guns by the battery spoke.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

Right up to the guns, black-throated and grim,
Right down on the hedges bordered with steel,"

bravely marched hundreds of women.

Nor was the war without its naval heroines. Among the vessels captured
by the pirate cruiser _Retribution_, was the Union brigantine, _J. P.
Ellicott_, of Bucksport, Maine, the wives of the captain and mate
being on board. Her officers and crew were transferred to the pirate
vessel and ironed, while a crew from the latter was put on the
brigantine; the wife of the mate was left on board the brig with the
pirate crew. Having cause to fear bad treatment at the hands of the
prize-master[23] and his mate, this woman formed the bold plan of
capturing the vessel. She succeeded in getting the officers
intoxicated, handcuffed them and took possession of the vessel,
persuading the crew, who were mostly colored men from St. Thomas, to
aid her. Having studied navigation with her husband on the voyage, she
assumed command of the brig, directing its course to St. Thomas, which
she reached in safety, placing the vessel in the hands of the United
States Consul, who transferred the prize-master, mate, and crew to a
United States steamer, as prisoners of war. Her name was not given,
but had this bold feat been accomplished by a man or boy, the country
would have rung with praises of the daring deed, and history would
have borne the echoes down to future generations.

Not alone on the tented field did the war find its patriotic victims.
Many women showed their love of country by sacrifices still greater
than enlistment in the army. Among these, especially notable for her
surroundings and family, was Annie Carter Lee, daughter of Gen. Robert
E. Lee, Commander-in-Chief of the rebel army. Her father and three
brothers fought against the Union which she loved, and to which she
adhered. A young girl, scarcely beyond her teens when the war broke
out, she remained firm in her devotion to the National cause, though
for this adherence she was banished by her father as an outcast from
that elegant home once graced by her presence. She did not live to see
the triumph of the cause she loved so well, dying the third year of
the war, aged twenty-three, at Jones Springs, North Carolina,
homeless, because of her love for the Union, with no relative near
her, dependent for care and consolation in her last hours upon the
kindly services of an old colored woman. In her veins ran pure the
blood of "Light-Horse Harry" and that of her great aunt, Hannah Lee
Corbin, who at the time of the Revolution, protested against the
denial of representation to taxpaying women, and whose name does much
to redeem that of Lee from the infamy, of late so justly adhering to
it. When her father, after the war, visited his ancestral home,[24]
then turned into a vast national cemetery, it would seem as though
the spirit of his Union-loving daughter must have floated over him,
whispering of his wrecked hopes, and piercing his heart with a
thousand daggers of remorse as he recalled his blind infatuation, and
the banishment from her home of that bright young life.

Of the three hundred and twenty-eight thousand Union soldiers who lie
buried in national cemeteries, many thousands with headboards marked
"Unknown," hundreds are those of women obliged by army regulations to
fight in disguise. Official records of the military authorities show
that a large number of women recruits were discovered and compelled to
leave the army. A much greater number escaped detection, some of them
passing entirely through the campaigns, while others were made known
by wounds or on being found lifeless upon the battle-field. The
history of the war--which has never yet been truly written--is full of
heroism in which woman is the central figure.

The social and political condition of women was largely changed by our
civil war. Through the withdrawal of so many men from their accustomed
work, new channels of industry were opened to them, the value and
control of money learned, thought upon political questions compelled,
and a desire for their own personal, individual liberty intensified.
It created a revolution in woman herself, as important in its results
as the changed condition of the former slaves, and this silent
influence is still busy. Its work will not have been accomplished
until the chains of ignorance and selfishness are everywhere broken,
and woman shall stand by man's side his recognized equal in rights as
she is now in duties.

CLARA BARTON.

MINISTERING ON THE FIELD OF BATTLE.

Clara Barton was the youngest child of Capt. Stephen Barton, of
Oxford, Mass., a non-commissioned officer under "Mad Anthony Wayne."
Captain Barton, who was a prosperous farmer and leader in public
affairs, gave his children the best opportunities he could secure for
their improvement. Clara's early education was principally at home
under direction of her brothers and sisters. At sixteen, she commenced
teaching, and followed the occupation for several years, during which
time she assisted her oldest brother, Capt. Stephen Barton, Jr., a man
of fine scholarship and business capacity, in equitably arranging and
increasing the salaries of the large village schools of her native
place, at the same time having clerical oversight of her brother's
counting-house. Subsequently, she finished her school education by a
very thorough course of study at Clinton, N. Y. Miss Barton's
remarkable executive ability was manifested in the fact that she
popularized the Public School System in New Jersey, by opening the
first free school in Bordentown, commencing with six pupils, in an old
tumble-down building, and at the close of the year, leaving six
hundred in the fine edifice at present occupied.

At the close of her work in Bordentown, she went to Washington, D. C.,
to recuperate and indulge herself in congenial literary pursuits.
There she was, without solicitation, appointed by Hon. Charles Mason,
Commissioner of Patents, to the first independent clerkship held by a
woman under our Government. Her thoroughness and faithfulness fitted
her eminently for this position of trust, which she retained until
after the election of President Buchanan, when, being suspected of
Republican sentiments, and Judge Mason having resigned, she was
deposed, and a large part of her salary withheld. She returned to
Massachusetts and spent three years in the study of art,
belles-lettres, and languages. Shortly after the election of Abraham
Lincoln, she was recalled to the Patent Office by the same
administration which had removed her. She returned, as she had left,
without question, and taking up her line of duty, awaited
developments.

When the civil war commenced, she refused to draw her salary from a
treasury already overtaxed, resigned her clerkship and devoted herself
to the assistance of suffering soldiers. Her work commencing before
the organization of Commissions, was continued outside and altogether
independent of them, but always with most cordial sympathy. Miss
Barton never engaged in hospital service. Her chosen labors were on
the battle-field from the beginning, until the wounded and dead were
attended to. Her supplies were her own, and were carried by Government
transportation. Nearly four years she endured the exposures and rigors
of soldier life, in action, always side by side with the field
surgeons, and this on the hardest fought fields; such battles as Cedar
Mountain, second Bull Run, Chantilly, Antietam, Falmouth, and old
Fredericksburg, siege of Charleston, on Morris Island, at Wagner,
Wilderness and Spotsylvania, The Mine, Deep Bottom, through sieges of
Petersburg and Richmond, with Butler and Grant; through summer without
shade, and winter without shelter, often weak, but never so far
disabled as to retire from the field; always under fire in severe
battles; her clothing pierced with bullets and torn by shot, exposed
at all times, but never wounded.

Firm in her integrity to the Union, never swerving from her belief in
the justice of the cause for which the North was fighting, on the
battle-field she knew no North, no South; she made her work one of
humanity alone, bestowing her charities and her care indiscriminately
upon the Blue and the Gray, with an impartiality and Spartan firmness
that astonished the foe and perplexed the friend, often falling under
suspicion, or censure of Union officers unacquainted with her motives
and character for her tender care and firm protection of the wounded
captured in battle. Their home-thrusts were met with the same calm
courage as were the bullets of the enemy, and many a Confederate
soldier lives to bless her for care and life, while no Union man will
ever again doubt her loyalty. All unconsciously to herself she was
carrying out to the letter in practice the grand and beautiful
principles of the Red Cross of Geneva (of which she had never heard),
for the entire _neutrality_ of war relief among the nations of the
earth, that great international step toward a world-wide recognized
humanity, of which she has since become the national advocate and
leader in this country.

[Illustration: Clara Barton. "Very Sincerely Yours Clara Barton."]

At the close of the war she met exchanged prisoners at Annapolis.
Accompanied by Dorrence Atwater, she conducted an expedition, sent at
her request by the United States Government to identify and mark the
graves of the 13,000 soldiers who perished at Andersonville. From
Savannah to that point, as theirs were the first trains which had
passed since the destruction of the railroads by Sherman, they were
obliged to repair the bridges and the embankments, straighten bent
rails, and in some places make new roads. The work was completed in
August, 1865, and her report of the expedition was issued in the
winter of 1866.

The anxiety felt by the whole country for the fate of those whom the
exchange of prisoners and the disbanding of troops failed to reveal,
stimulated her to devise the plan of relief, which, sanctioned by
President Lincoln, resulted in the "search for missing men," which
(except the printing) was carried on entirely at her own expense, to
the extent of several thousand dollars, employing from ten to fifteen
clerks. In the winter of '66, when she was on the point, for want of
further means to carry out her plan, of turning the search over to the
Government, Congress voted $15,000 for reimbursing moneys expended,
and carrying on the work. The search was continued until 1869, and
then a full report made and accepted by Congress. During the winter of
1867-8 Miss Barton was called on to lecture before many lyceums
regarding the incidents of the war.

In 1869, her health failing, she went to Switzerland to rest and
recover, where she was at the breaking out of the Franco-Prussian
war, and immediately tendered her services there, as here, on the
battle-field, under the auspices of the Red Cross of Geneva. Her Royal
Highness the Grand Duchess of Baden, daughter of the Emperor of
Germany, invited Miss Barton to aid her in the establishment of her
noble Badise hospitals, a work which consumed several months. On the
fall of Strasburg she entered the city with the German army, organized
labor for women, conducting the enterprise herself, employing
remuneratively a great number, and clothing over thirty thousand. She
entered Metz with hospital supplies the day of its fall, and Paris the
day after the fall of the Commune. Here she remained two months,
distributing money and clothing which she carried, and afterward met
the poor in every besieged city in France, extending succor to them.

She is a representative of the "International Red Cross of Geneva,"
and President of the American National Association of the Red Cross,
honorary and only woman member of "Comité de Strasbourgeois"; was
decorated with the "Gold Cross of Remembrance" by the Grand Duke and
Duchess of Baden, and with the "Iron Cross of Merit" by the Emperor
and Empress of Germany.

Miss Barton may be said to have given her whole life to humanitarian
affairs, largely national in character. The positions she has
occupied, whether remunerative or not--and she has filled but few paid
positions--have been pioneer ones, in which her efforts and success
have been to raise the standard of woman's work and its recognition
and remuneration. Her time, her property, and her influence have been
held sacred to benevolence of that character that will assist in true
progress. Nevertheless, she is one of the most retiring of women,
never voluntarily coming before the world except at the call of
manifest duty, and shrinking with peculiar sensitiveness from anything
verging on notoriety.

Her summers are passed at her pleasant country residence at Dansville,
New York, where she has regained in a most gratifying degree her
shattered health and war-worn strength, and her winters in Washington
in the interests and charge of the great International movement which
she represents in America.

JOSEPHINE SOPHIE GRIFFING.

_The National Freedman's Relief Association._

BY CATHARINE A. F. STEBBINS.

Josephine Sophie White was born at Hebron, Conn., December, 1816, and
was educated in her native State. She grew to young womanhood in the
pure and religious atmosphere of the New England hills, and developed
a strength of constitution and character which was the basis of her
truly beneficent life-work. Refined, sympathetic, and conscientious,
with the golden rule for her text, her career was ever marked with
deeds of kindness and charity to the oppressed of every class. Taking
an active part in both the "Anti-slavery" and "Woman's Rights"
struggles, she early learned the very alphabet of liberty. With her
the perception of its blessings and its glory was also a rich
inheritance, and the vigilance and courage to conquer and secure it
for others was not less a noble legacy. The love of liberty flowed
down to her through two streams of life. On the mother's side she was
descended from Peter Waldo[25], after whom the Waldenses were named;
and on the father's, from Peregrine White, who was born in
Massachusetts in 1620, the first child of Pilgrim parents. It is not
strange she was by temperament and constitution a reformer, and a
protestant against all despotisms, whether of mind, body, or estate.
In the agitation for human rights of one class after another, in their
historical order, she enlisted with the Abolitionists, with the Woman
Suffragists, with the Loyal League and sanitary workers, and after the
war, in relief of the Freedmen. Her interest in her own sex began
early, and continued to the last.

At the age of twenty-two she married, and about the year 1842 removed
with her family to Ohio, where her home soon became the refuge of the
fugitive slave, and the resting-place of his defenders. In 1849 she
began, with her husband, Chas. S. S. Griffing, her public labors in
connection with the "American" and the "Western Anti-Slavery
Societies," speaking at first to small audiences in school-houses, and
when prejudice and bitterness gave way, to conventions, and
mass-meetings; opposition and curiosity yielding finally to sympathy
and aid. But for years the meetings were often broken up by mobs. The
effort to uproot slavery was pronounced either absurd, treasonable, or
irreligious; that it would incite insurrection of the slaves; or if
successful, bring great responsibility upon the Abolitionists, and
disaster to the whole country.

In 1861, Mrs. Griffing, prompted by the same loyal spirit that moved
all the women of the nation, turned from the ordinary occupations of
life to see what she could do to mitigate the miseries of the war. She
united at once with "The National Woman's Loyal League," lecturing and
organizing societies in the West for the soldiers and freedmen, to
whom large quantities of clothing and other supplies were sent, and
circulating petitions to Congress for the emancipation of slaves as a
war measure.

While thus engaged, her thoughts naturally turned to the large number
of Southern slaves coming with the army into Washington, whose future
she foresaw would be beset with distress and want during the long
period of change from chattelism to the settled habits of freedom.
They were coming by the hundreds and thousands in 1863, with a vague
idea of being cared for by "the Governor," but the Government had as
yet made no provision, separate from that for the soldiers, when Mrs.
Griffing went to Washington and began her labors for them, which were
continued until her death.

She at once counseled with President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton as
to the best methods for immediate relief; proposed plans which they
approved, and received from them every aid possible in their
execution. Her first step was to open three ration-houses, where she
fed at least a thousand of the old and most destitute of the freed
people daily. She visited hundreds in the alleys and old stables, in
attics and cellars, and in almost every place where shelter could be
found, and became acquainted personally with their necessities, and
the best means of supplying them. There were 30,000 in the capital at
this time, and it would be difficult to give an idea to one not there,
of the time and labor it cost to hunt out the old barracks and get
them transformed into shelters for these outcasts. Upon the personal
order of the Secretary of War, she was allowed army blankets and wood,
which she distributed herself, going with the army wagons to see that
those suffering most were first supplied. This "temporary relief" was
necessarily continued for some time, during which Mrs. Griffing was
made the General Agent of "The National Freedman's Relief Association
of the District of Columbia." She opened a correspondence with the Aid
societies of the Northern and New England States, which resulted in
her receiving supplies of clothing and provisions, which were most
acceptable. These were carefully dispensed by herself and two
daughters, who were her assistants. Mrs. Griffing opened three
industrial schools, where the women were taught to sew;[26] a price
was set on their labors, and they were paid in ready-made garments.
The Secretary aided in the purchase of suitable cloth, and with that
sent from the North, such outfits were supplied as could be afforded.

It was soon apparent to Mrs. Griffing that the Government must provide
for the old and the infirm, and that until labor could be found, even
a majority of the strong must be included in the provision--with the
understanding, however, that they must seek employment and exert
themselves to find homes--and that educational and political interests
must be established and encouraged. The stress of the situation can
not be said ever to have relaxed during our friend's life, except as
to numbers--at any rate in the early years; but as soon as some system
grew out of the confusion, and all that could be, were supplied with
bread and shelter, she turned her attention in part to the larger
plan, and urged a bureau under Government; a department for these
freedmen's interests. This plan was favored by Messrs. Sumner, Wade,
Wilson, and a few other Senators and Members of Congress, and in
December, 1863, a bill for a Bureau of Emancipation was introduced in
the House of Representatives by Hon. Mr. Elliot, of Massachusetts. It
received no welcome; few cared to listen to the details of the
necessity, and it was only through Mrs. Griffing's brave and unwearied
efforts that the plan was accepted, and carried through in March,
1865, under the title of "The Freedman's Bureau." The writer has had
testimony to the truth of this from Senators Wade of Ohio, Howard of
Michigan, and others, as well as to the fact that a majority of the
Congressional Committee in charge of the bill, wished that Mrs.
Griffing should be made Commissioner (among whom, and most active in
support of the bill, was Senator Henry Wilson), but it was decided to
place the Bureau in the War Department, with a military man at the
head, Mrs. Griffing being appointed "Assistant Commissioner." She
really held the position but a few weeks--in name, five months--a
second military officer standing ready to take the appointment, as men
have ever done, and as they will always crowd women aside so long as
they are held political inferiors, without the citizen's charter to
sustain their claim. This officer had the title and drew the pay,
while our noble friend went on as before in her arduous and almost
superhuman labors. The Bureau adopted _her_ plan of finding homes in
the North, sending the freedmen at Government charge, and of opening
employment offices in New York City and in Providence, R. I.;
nevertheless it was necessary to supplement Government provision by
private generosity; and moreover, that Congress should provide
temporary relief for the helpless in the District. Appropriations were
made in sums of $25,000, amounting in all to nearly $200,000, for the
purchase of supplies, a very large proportion of which were
distributed by Mrs. Griffing in person from her own residence.[27]
"Shirley Dare," in writing to _The New York World_, after a little
time spent with Mrs. G., said:

"I sat an hour this morning in Mrs. Griffing's office during the
distribution of rations, and a curious scene it was. There was
not a sound creature among the crowd which filled the yard, and
which hangs about all day from nine till four, and which the
neighborhood calls 'Mrs. Griffing's signs.' It reminded me of
another crowd of impotent folk, lame, halt, and blind, which
filled the loveliest space in Jerusalem, and was a _sign_ of joy
and charity in the place. Queer, tender, wistful faces, so
earnest one forgets their grotesque character and ragged, faded
forms, cluster in the porch; such a set as one might once have
seen put up at auction as a 'refuse lot' of plantation negroes.
The men wear old army cloaks, while the women, with dresses in
every stage of decay, are so comic, one struggles between the
ludicrous and the pitiful.... The faith of this class seems to be
fastened nowhere so strongly as upon Mrs. Griffing. Salutations
follow her along the streets, enough to satisfy the proudest
Pharisee, and it provokes one between a smile and a tear, to see
the women waiting timidly, yet eagerly, for a word from her, to
set their faces all aglow. They used to say, persistently, 'We
belongs to you,' and no efforts could induce them to change that
phrase. 'Who has we but the Lord and you?' was the simple
argument which stayed protest from the kind, proud woman who was
their benefactress. A few words from her will draw out histories
simple, funny, and sad beyond question."

Our friend had a strong belief that the able in body could sustain
themselves if labor were provided, which it could not be there, so she
urged them to go to the North, which greatly needed laborers to fill
the places of Northern men in the army. Woman's help, too, was as much
in demand, for in many places large farms were wholly managed by women
in the absence of husbands and sons; but it was learned by Mrs.
Griffing and daughters through repeated testimony, that the life-long
teaching of the slaves had been, that no good could come from
Northern people,[28] and this led the many in their pitiable ignorance
to believe that, somewhere in the North, the monsters surely lived who
were waiting to destroy them, and that the kind few whom they had met
were of a different race; that "the North" was beyond the sea, and
they could never return, nor hear from their friends left behind; so
persistent argument was needed to convince the most ignorant of their
false notions, and many of them never were, until some had gone and
returned with good tidings. The first company prepared to go numbered
sixty persons, for whom Mrs. Griffing procured Government
transportation and a day's rations. She went with them to New York
City, and as they passed from the cars the sight was a new and strange
one. Filing through the streets, the anxious, wondering women dressed
partly in neat garments given them, with others of their own selection
in less good taste; while on the men an occasional damaged silk hat
topped off a coat that would have made Joseph's of old look plain;
with ironclad army shoes; or a half-worn wedding swallow-tail, eked
out by a plantation broad-brim, and boots too much worn for either
comfort or beauty. This motley band, led by a gentle and
spiritual-faced woman, will not soon be forgotten by those who saw it
depart. Leaving a few at one depot, and a few at another, to be met at
the journey's end by their employer, Mrs. Griffing took those
remaining to Providence, near which place homes had been provided.
After these sent messages back to friends, others went more readily,
and during a little more than two years over seven thousand freed
people left Washington under Mrs. Griffing's special supervision and
direction for homes in the North. I wish I could say how many parties
she actually convoyed on the journey, and how many miles she traveled,
but I know that she went as far as New York with a great many; and as
I have seen them start, knew and felt that it was too much for her,
and longed that some stronger person should appear to share her
burdens, and relieve her from these exhausting duties. Perhaps she had
written letters till twelve o'clock the night before; had taken a long
walk beyond the Navy-Yard cars, in the afternoon, to visit her
centenarians; or had received calls, and talked till her voice had
almost given out.

But she had the comfort of knowing that many remained where they had
been sent, some buying homes and planting vines about the roof-tree.
To behold this, she had wrought heroically in the past for
emancipation. She was busy with her hands, busier with her brain, and
her spiritual nature was like a spring of sweet waters, overflowing in
bounteous blessing on all around. Of the great painter Leonardo da
Vinci, his biographer says: "He always saw four things he wanted to do
at once." Our friend always saw many more. Her mind was teeming not
only with ideals as beautiful as those of the great artist, but with
practical plans to educate the ignorant, and lift them to self-support
and self-protection. Her being was instinct with constructive and
spiritual force.

It would be hard to find any sphere of woman's activity in which she
had not been leader. Believing that "the manifest intention of nature
is the perfection of man," she faithfully did her part. In the
laborious and the menial she served the colored poor, while she
neglected no opportunity to open their spiritual vision. She fed,
warmed, and clothed them; ministered to the sick; attended the dying;
procured their coffins; spoke the comforting words, and sung the hymns
at their funerals. She instructed them in their Sunday meetings, and
gained release for those in prison for petty offences, or for those
unjustly accused. Soldiers often appealed to her to assist and aid
them. Her work at the jails was very wearing, for the poor creatures,
not unfrequently the mother of an infant left at home, arrested for an
imaginary offense, or for _stealing_ bread to avert starvation, would
_plead_ so hard for her to get them released, and had such full faith
that she could, that it was a constant tax upon her sympathy and
strength, as was all her work connected with them.

Josephine Griffing had to deal too much with the realities of life and
death to make many records of her work, save those required in the
routine of her office. These were mostly kept by her daughter Emma,
her official assistant. But the substance of what was done in these
years may be found in the archives of the Government. On the calendar
of both Houses of Congress, in the _Congressional Globe_, in the War
Office, in the Freedman's Bureau, in the offices of District
Government and District Courts, and perhaps in the prisons, the future
historian may find abundant records of the patient and humane labors
of this merciful, vigilant, and untiring woman. Whether he finds them
in her name is not so certain!

Mrs. Griffing not only devoted to these people the six days of the
week allotted to labor, but her Sundays were given to public
ministrations as well as private visits to the distant and aged,
unable to come to the Relief rooms during the week. But for a real
picture of the condition of these people, nothing can be more graphic
or full of feeling, than her own account in a letter to Lucretia
Mott,[29] intended as an appeal to the Society of Friends in
Philadelphia. It, with others, had early responded, and with its
contributions in part, she had established the soup-houses before
noted. Her account is also in connection with the Bureau, of
historical interest. During this long struggle her evenings were spent
in writing letters to the North, framing bills, petitions, and appeals
to amend the laws of the District. As she was interested in all the
reforms of the day, she was frequently called upon for active service
in conventions and political gatherings.

Of the public men whom she consulted, two at least, I know, made
everybody and everything yield when she appeared; these were Secretary
Stanton and Chas. Sumner--so interested were they in the objects of
her devotion, and so sure that Mrs. Griffing would not take their time
without sufficient reason. Benj. F. Wade and Henry Wilson would not
yield the palm in their respect to her, and Senator Howard, of
Michigan, was also one of her most friendly helpers. Stevens, Julian,
Dawes, Ashley--all the friends in Congress--could tell of her great
achievements, and their unbounded confidence in her, as the following
letters show:

WASHINGTON, D. C., _March 11, 1865._

_To the Commissioner of the Freedman's Bureau_:

SIR:--I take pleasure in giving my influence to this application
for a place at the head of freedmen's affairs in the District of
Columbia for Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing, believing her to be
eminently qualified to develop the resources of the freed people
in this District, most of whom are women and children--secure the
national interest, and give satisfaction to the country. Mrs.
Griffing has given successful public and private efforts in
behalf of the colored race for many years, and has devoted the
entire time of the last year to an investigation of the condition
and best method of giving relief to the multitudes of freed
people in and around the National Capital. Finding many thousands
of women with families without employment or the means of
self-support, she has conferred with the President and Governors
of the Northwestern States upon the practicability of encouraging
their emigration. To meet the destitution of these people in this
city during the past winter, Mrs. Griffing has disbursed from the
Government about $25,000 in wood and blankets and rations, and
$5,000 in clothing and money from the public charity. I believe
the appointment of Mrs. J. S. Griffing to a chief clerkship or
general agency for the District in this Bureau will be creditable
to the Government and satisfactory to the freed people.

Z. CHANDLER.

I fully concur with my colleague. Mrs. Griffing is both worthy
and capable, and I trust her services will be secured.

J. M. HOWARD.

If I had this appointment to make, I would make Mrs. Griffing
Commissioner.

J. M. ASHLEY.

I know Mrs. Griffing to be capable and humane, and very devoted
to the colored race. I hope that her services may be secured.

CHARLES SUMNER.

I most cheerfully join in this recommendation.

H. WILSON,
J. N. GRIMES.

I fully concur in the above, and hope that Mrs. Griffing will
receive a conspicuous place in the Freedman's Bureau. She is the
best qualified of any person within my knowledge; her whole heart
is in the work.

B. F. WADE, SOLOMON FOOT,
IRA HARRIS, E. D. MORGAN,
W. P. FESSENDEN.

I most fully concur.

J. V. DRIGGS,
T. W. FERRY.

I fully concur in all that is said within in behalf of Mrs.
Griffing, and earnestly commend her to the favor sought.

GEO. W. JULIAN.

WASHINGTON, _July 9, 1869_.

Mrs. Griffing has for several years devoted herself with great
industry, intelligence, and success to the freed people in the
District of Columbia, and in this service she has accomplished
more good than any other one individual within my acquaintance.
When the War Department was in my charge, she rendered very
efficient aid of a humane character to relieve the wants and
sufferings of destitute freed people, and was untiring in her
benevolent exertions. Property for distribution was often placed
in her hands, or under her directions, and she was uniformly
trustworthy and skillful in its management and administration. In
my judgment, she is entitled to the most full confidence and
trust.

EDWIN M. STANTON.

JEFFERSON, OHIO, _Nov. 12, 1869_.

MY DEAR MRS. GRIFFING:--On my return from Washington I found your
kind letter of the 28th, ult. I regret much that I did not meet
with you at Washington. I know your merits. I know that no person
in America has done so much for the cause of humanity for the
last four years as you have. Your disinterested labors have saved
hundreds of poor human beings not only the greatest destitution
and misery, but from actual starvation and death. I also know
that in doing this you have not only devoted your whole time, but
all the property you have. And I know, too, that your labors are
just as necessary now as they ever have been. Others know all
this as well as I do. Secretary Stanton can vouch for it all, and
I can not doubt that Congress will not only pay you for what you
have done, but give you a position where this necessary work may
be done by you effectually. This is the very thing that ought to
be done at once. Since the Bureau has been abolished it will be
impossible to get along with the great influx of imbecility and
destitution which gathers and centers in Washington every
winter, without some one being appointed to see to it, and
certainly everybody knows that there is no one so competent for
this work as yourself. To this end I will do whatever I can, but
you know that I am now out of place, and have no influence at
Court, but whatever I can do to effect so desirable an object
will be done.

Truly yours, B. F. WADE.

SENATE CHAMBER, _April 2_.

DEAR MADAM:--I have your note of the 31st, and am very sorry to
hear that there is so much distress in the city. I shall endeavor
to bring the charter up as soon as I have an opportunity; but
while this trial is pending,[30] it is improbable that any
legislative business will be done. I am as anxious as you are to
secure its adoption.

Yours truly, CHARLES SUMNER.

MRS. J. S. GRIFFING, Washington.

BOSTON, _27th July, 1869_.

DEAR MADAM:--The statement or memorial which you placed in my
hands was never printed. It is, probably, now on the files of the
Senate. I wish I could help your effort with the Secretary of
War. You must persevere. If Gen. Rawlins understands the case, he
will do all that you desire. Accept my best wishes, and believe
me, faithfully yours,

CHARLES SUMNER.

Will Mrs. Griffing let Mr. Sumner know what institution or person
should disburse the money appropriated?

SENATE CHAMBER,
Tuesday.

LETTERS ON THE FREEDMAN'S RELIEF ASSOCIATION.

WASHINGTON, _April 8, '71_.

_To the Mayor and Board of Common Council, City of Washington,
District of Columbia_:

MESSRS.:--I have the honor to state that the aged, sick,
crippled, and blind persons, for whom the National Freedman's
Relief Association of this District partially provides, are at
this time in very great destitution, many of them in extreme
suffering for want of food and fuel. The Association has provided
clothing. It is now twelve weeks since the Government
appropriation for their temporary support for the last year was
exhausted. This Association has by soliciting contributions, up
to this time, relieved the most extreme cases, that otherwise
must have died; but the want of food is so great among at least a
thousand of these, not one of whom is able _to labor_ for a
support, that it is impossible to provide the absolute relief
they must have, by further contributions from the charitable and
the humane.

I would therefore most earnestly appeal in their behalf, that the
Hon. Council and Mayor will appropriate from the market fund for
their temporary relief one thousand dollars, to be disbursed by
the above-named association, which sum will enable these
destitute persons to subsist until, as is hoped and believed,
Congress will make the usual special appropriation for their
partial temporary support. This Association to report the use of
such money to the Mayor and Common Council of the City of
Washington, D. C.

Very respectfully, J. S. GRIFFING,
_General Agent N. F. R. Association, D. C._

TRIBUNE OFFICE, NEW YORK, _Sept. 7, 1870_.

MRS. GRIFFING:--In my judgment you and others who wish to
befriend the blacks crowded into Washington, do them great
injury. Had they been told years ago, "You _must_ find work; go
out and seek it," they would have been spared much misery. They
are an easy, worthless race, taking no thought for the morrow,
and liking to lean on those who befriend them. Your course
aggravates their weaknesses, when you should raise their ambition
and stimulate them to self-reliance. Unless you change your
course speedily and signally, the swarming of blacks to the
District will increase, and the argument that Slavery is their
natural condition will be immeasurably strengthened. So long as
they look to others to calculate and provide for them, they are
not truly free. If there be any woman capable of earning wages
who would rather some one else than herself should pay her
passage to the place where she can have work, then she needs
reconstruction and awakening to a just and honest self-reliance.

Yours, HORACE GREELEY.

MRS. J. S. GRIFFING, Washington, D. C.

_Sept. 12, 1870_.
HORACE GREELEY:

DEAR SIR:--Much as I respect your judgment, and admire your
candor, I must express entire dissent with your views in
reference to those who are laboring to befriend the Freedmen, and
also of your estimate of the character of the black race.

When you condemn my work for the old slaves, who can not labor,
and are "crowded into Washington" by force of events
uncontrollable, as a "great injury," I am at a loss to perceive
your estimate of any and all benevolent action. If, to provide
houses, food, clothing, and other physical comforts, to those
broken-down aged slaves whom we have liberated in their declining
years, when all their strength is gone, and for whom no home,
family friendship, or subsistence is furnished; if this is a
"great injury," in my judgment there is no call for alms-house,
hospital, home, or asylum in human society, and all
appropriations of sympathy and material aid are worse than
useless, and demand your earnest rebuke and discountenance, and
to the unfortunates crowded into these institutions, you should
say, "You must find work, go out and seek it." So far as an
humble individual can be, I am substituting to these a freedman's
(relief) bureau; sanitary commission; church sewing society, to
aid the poor; orphan asylum; old people's home; hospital and
alms-house for the sick and the blind; minister-at-large, to
visit the sick, console the dying, and bury the dead; and wherein
I fail, and perhaps you discriminate, is the want of wealthy,
popular, and what is called honorable associations. Were these at
my command, with the field before me, it would be easy to
illustrate the practical use as well as the divine origin of the
Golden Rule.

If, in your criticism, you refer to my secondary department in
which I have labored to furnish employment to the Freedmen both
in the District and out, is it not a direct reflection upon all
efforts made for the distribution of labor? Is my course more
aggravating to the weakness of destitute unemployed freed people,
than emigrant societies, intelligence offices, benevolent ladies'
societies, and young men's Christian associations, to give work
to the poor of all nations; and lastly the Government Indian
department, that has wisely called to its aid the American
missionary, and the Quaker societies, to farm out the poor
Indians? or, if the measures put forth by these admissible agents
can raise the ambition and stimulate to self-reliance their
beneficiaries, will you be good enough to show wherein the same
means, which I claim to employ, must have the opposite effect
upon the freedmen crowded into Washington.

Is it possible that the swarming of the Irish, Swiss, and German
poor, to the city of New York, is attributable to the
intelligence offices and immigration societies of your city, and
not, as we have supposed, to the want of work and bread at home,
and is there really a danger, that in providing and calculating
for them, we shall strengthen the argument of race, while our
institutions of charity are filled with descendants of the Saxon,
the Norman, the Goth, and the Vandal? I think not.

Respectfully yours, JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.

_From the New National Era._

MRS. JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING THE ORIGINATOR OF THE FREEDMEN's
BUREAU.

This truly excellent and noble woman was fitly spoken of in the
_New National Era_ just after her death, but at that early date
it was not possible to obtain the facts to prove the statement at
the head of this article, which is but simple truth and historic
justice.

Mrs. Griffing was engaged in an arduous work for the Loyal League
in the Northwest in 1862, and foresaw the need of a comprehensive
system of protection, help, and education, for the slaves in the
trying transition of freedom. She sought counsel and aid from fit
persons in Ohio and Michigan, and came here only in 1863 to begin
her work of urging the plan of a Bureau for that purpose. Nothing
daunted by coldness or indifference she nobly persisted, until in
December, 1863, a bill for a Bureau of Emancipation was
introduced in the House of Representatives by Hon T. D. Elliott,
of Massachusetts. After some changes in the bill, and a committee
of conference of the House and Senate, and the valuable aid of
Sumner, Wilson, and other Senators, the bill for the Freedman's
Bureau finally passed in March, 1865, and was signed by President
Lincoln just before his assassination.

The original idea was Mrs. Griffing's; her untiring efforts gave
it life, and it is but just that the colored people, of the South
especially, should bear in grateful remembrance this able and
gentle woman, whose life and strength were spent for their poor
sufferers, and who called into useful existence that great
national charity, the Freedman's Bureau.

The following letter from William Lloyd Garrison to Giles B. Stebbins,
then in Washington, corroborates the above statements:

ROXBURY, MASS., _March 4, 1872_.

MY DEAR FRIEND: ... I was glad to see the well-merited tributes
paid by yourself and others to the memory of Mrs. Josephine S.
Griffing. She was, for a considerable period, actively engaged in
the anti-slavery struggle in Ohio, where by her rare executive
ability and persuasiveness as a public lecturer, she aided
greatly in keeping the abolition flag flying, enlightening and
changing public sentiment, and hastening the year of jubilee.
With what unremitting zeal and energy did she espouse the cause
of the homeless, penniless, benighted, starving freedmen, driven
by stress of circumstances into the national capital in such
overwhelming numbers; and what a multitude were befriended and
saved through her moving appeals in their behalf! How like an
angel of mercy must she have seemed to them all! No doubt the
formation of the Freedman's Bureau was mainly due to her
representations as to its indispensable necessity; and how much
good was done by that instrumentality in giving food, clothing,
and protection to those who were so suddenly brought out of the
house of bondage, as against the ferocity of the rebel element,
it is difficult to compute because of its magnitude. She deserves
to be gratefully remembered among "the honorable women not a
few," who, in their day and generation, have been

"Those starry lights of virtue that diffuse,
Through the dark depths of time their vital flame,"

whose self-abnegation and self-sacrifice in the cause of
suffering humanity having been absolute, and who have nobly
vindicated every claim made by their sex to full equality with
men in all that serves to dignify human nature. Her rightful
place is among "the noble army of martyrs," for her life was
undoubtedly very much shortened by her many cares and heavy
responsibilities and excessive labors in behalf of the pitiable
objects of her sympathy and regard.

Very truly yours, WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

PARKER PILLSBURY, in a letter to Mrs. Stebbins says: "The
anti-slavery conflict could never boast a braver, truer, abler
advocate than Josephine Griffing. It was always an honor and
inspiration to stand by her side, no matter how fierce the
encounter. I have seen her when an infuriated mob assailed our
Conventions, and dashed down doors, windows, seats, stoves,
tables, everything that would yield to their demoniac rage, stand
amid the ruins calm and unmoved, and with her gentle words of
remonstrance shame the intruders, until one by one they shrank
away, glad to get out of her sight.

Her beautiful home hospitalities; her warm welcome ever extended
to the faithful friends of freedom and humanity, were equal to
her unshaken courage and self-control in public assemblies. We
used to call that humble home in Litchfield, 'The Saint's Rest,'
and such it was to many a fugitive slave, as well as soldier in
his cause.

To the first demand for the enfranchisement of women in 1848, Mrs.
Griffing heartily responded, and in this reform she was ever untiring
in effort, wise in counsel, and eminent in public speech. In 1867 she
helped to organize the Universal Franchise Association of the District
of Columbia, of which she was president for years. She was also
Corresponding Secretary of the National Woman Suffrage Association,
and was ever considered the organizing power at Washington. She first
suggested the importance of annual conventions at the capital, in
order to influence Congressional action.

Mrs. Griffing's last appearance in public was at the May Anniversary
of the National Woman Suffrage Association, held in New York in 1871,
and so feeble was her condition that a screen was placed behind her to
enable the audience to hear her voice. At the close of the Convention
she went to the home of her childhood, in Hebron, Conn., hoping that
the bracing air of the New England hills would give her new life and
strength, until she could finish her work. But it was already
finished. She had taxed herself to the uttermost, beyond nature's
power to recuperate. In November she returned to Washington, and
enjoyed the sweet presence and tender care of her daughters until she
passed away on Feb. 18, 1872.

THE LADIES' NATIONAL COVENANT.

After the war was fairly inaugurated, the manufactories of the country
largely turned their attention to the production of material required
by the army, which, combined with the immense number of volunteers
from such avocations, and the rise in prices of all home manufactures,
created an immense import of foreign goods, which, pouring into our
country when gold was at the highest, brought to our doors a danger no
less formidable than that of the Rebellion. It was shown from official
returns, in 1863, that during a period of nine months, the imports, at
the port of New York alone, amounted to $160,000,000 in gold; equal,
including exchange, freight, insurance, etc., to twice that sum, while
our exports amounted to only $120,000,000 in paper.

This ruinous state of our trade brought on us the taunts of foreign
enemies, and roused the attention of the country to devise some method
of meeting the new danger; Congress temporarily raised duties fifty
per cent. in hopes of stemming the tide of importation. The patriotic
women of the nation, ever on the alert for methods of aiding the
country, early in 1864 called a meeting of the loyal women of
Washington, at which time an association, pledging women to the use of
home manufactures, was formed under the name of "The Ladies' National
Covenant," with offices in every State and Territory within the
national lines. Mrs. General Jas. Taylor was elected President; Mrs.
Stephen A. Douglas, Vice-President; Mrs. Rebecca Gillis and Miss
Virginia Smith, Recording Secretaries; with ten Corresponding
Secretaries, of whom Mrs. H. C. Ingersoll was the most active.

This association, formed for the purpose of encouraging domestic
manufactures, was composed at its first meeting of the wives of
members of the Cabinet and of Senators and Representatives, women of
fashion, popular authoresses, mothers who had lost their sons, and
wives who had lost their husbands. An Advisory and Organizing
Committee was appointed, consisting of women from each State and
Territory within the national line. An ADDRESS TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA
was issued, and a constitution consisting of eleven sections, together
with the following pledge, was adopted:

THE PLEDGE.

For three years, or during the war, we pledge ourselves to each
other and the country, to purchase no imported goods where those
of American manufacture can be obtained, such as "dress goods of
velvet, silks, grenadines, India crape, and imported organdies,
India lace and broche shawls, fine wrought laces and
embroideries, watches and precious stones, hair ornaments, fans,
artificial flowers and feathers, carpets, furniture, silks and
velvets, painted china, ormolu, bronze, marble, ornaments, and
mirrors."

The emblem of this Covenant was a black or gilt bee, worn as a pin
fastening the national colors, upon the hair, arm, or bosom, as a
public recognition of membership. In August of the same year the
Secretary stated that orders for the emblem, the badge of the
Covenant, were received by the manufacturer of the pin from all parts
of the Union. A meeting was held in New York, rooms opened in Great
Jones Street, and the Covenant was in a fair way to assume large
proportions. When Lee's capitulation was announced the necessity for
the Covenant ended, and with peace, trade was allowed to drift into
its natural channels.

ANNA ELIZABETH DICKINSON.

Foremost among the women who understood the political significance of
the great conflict, was Miss Dickinson, a young girl of Quaker
ancestry, who possessed remarkable oratorical power, a keen sense of
justice, and an intense earnestness of purpose. In the heated
discussions of Anti-Slavery Conventions, she had acquired a clear
comprehension of the province of laws and constitutions; of the
fundamental principles of governments, and the rights of man. Like a
meteor, she appeared suddenly in the political horizon, as if born for
the eventful times in which she lived, and inspired by the dangers
that threatened the life of the republic.

At the very beginning of the war her radical utterances were heard at
different points in her native State.[31] Her admirable speech on the
higher law, first made at Kennett Square, and the discussion that
followed, in which Miss Dickinson maintained her position with
remarkable clearness and coolness for one of her years, were a
surprise to all who listened. The flattering reports of this meeting
in several of the Philadelphia journals introduced her at once to the
public.

On the evening of February 27, 1861, she addressed eight hundred
people in Concert Hall, Philadelphia. This was her first appearance
before so large an assembly, and the first time she had the sole
responsibility of entertaining an audience for an entire evening. She
spoke two full hours extemporaneously, and the lecture was pronounced
a success, not only by the press, but by the many notables and
professional men present. Although it was considered a marvelous
performance for a young girl, Miss Dickinson herself was mortified, as
she said, with the length of her speech and its lack of point, order,
and arrangement.

Soon after, she entered the United States Mint, to labor from seven
o'clock in the morning to six at night. Although she was ever faithful
to her duties and skillful in everything she undertook, soon becoming
the most rapid adjuster in the Mint, her radical criticisms on the war
and its leaders cost her the loss of the place. At a meeting just
after the battle of Ball's Bluff, in summing up the record, after
exonerating Stone and Baker, she said, "Future history will show that
this battle was lost not through ignorance and incompetence, but
through the treason of the commanding general, George B. McClellan,
and time will vindicate the truth of my assertion." She was hissed all
over the house, though some cried, "Go on!" "Go on!" She repeated this
startling assertion three times, and each time was hissed.

When Gen. McClellan was running against Lincoln in 1864, after she had
achieved a world-wide reputation, she was sent by the Republican
Committee of Pennsylvania to this same town, to speak to the same
people, in the same hall. In again summing up the incidents of the
war, when she came to Ball's Bluff, she said, "I say now, as I said
three years ago, history will record that this battle was lost, not
through ignorance or incompetence, but through the treason of the
commanding general, George B. McClellan." "And time has vindicated
your assertion," was shouted all over the house.

It was the speech made in 1861, that cost her her place in the mint,
for while laboring there daily with her hands, her mind was not
inactive nor indifferent to the momentous events transpiring about
her. She kept a close watch of the progress of the war, and the policy
of the Republican leaders. When ex-Governor Pollock dismissed her, he
admitted that his reason was that Westchester speech, for at that time
McClellan was the idol of the nation.[32]

With remarkable prescience all through the war, and the period of
reconstruction, Miss Dickinson took the advance position. Wendell
Phillips used to say that "she was the young elephant sent forward to
try the bridges to see if they were safe for older ones to cross."
When wily politicians found that her criticisms were applauded by
immense audiences, they gained courage to follow her lead. As popular
thought was centering everywhere on national questions, Miss Dickinson
thought less of the special wrongs of women and negroes and more of
the causes of revolutions and the true basis of government; hence she
spoke chiefly on the political aspects of the war, and thus made
herself available in party politics at once.

In the intervals of public speaking, she made frequent visits to the
Government hospitals, and became a most welcome guest among our
soldiers. In long conversations with them, she learned their
individual histories, experiences, hardships, and sufferings; the
motives that prompted them to go into the army; what they saw there;
what they thought of war in their hours of solitude, away from the
camp and the battle-field. Thus she acquired an insight into the
soldier's life and feelings, and from these narratives drew her
materials for that deeply interesting lecture on hospital life, which
she delivered in many parts of the country.

This lecture, given in Concord, New Hampshire, in the autumn of 1862,
was the turning-point of her fortunes. In this speech she proved
slavery to be the cause of the war, that its continuance would result
in prolonged suffering to our soldiers, defeat to our armies, and the
downfall of the Republic. She related many touching incidents of her
experiences in hospital life, and drew such vivid pictures of the
horrors of both war and slavery, that by her pathos and logic, she
melted her audience to tears, and forced the most prejudiced minds to
accept her conclusions.

It was on this occasion that the Secretary of the State Central
Committee heard her for the first time. He remarked to a friend at the
close of the lecture, "If we can get this girl to make that speech all
through New Hampshire we can carry the Republican ticket in the coming
election." Fully appreciating her magnetic power over an audience, he
resolved at once, that if the State Committee refused to invite her,
he should do so on his own responsibility. But through his influence
she was invited by the Republican Committee, and on the first of March
commenced her regular campaign speeches. During the four weeks before
election she spoke twenty times, everywhere to crowded, enthusiastic
audiences. Her march through the State was a succession of triumphs,
and ended in a Republican victory.

The member in the first district having no faith that a woman could
influence politics, sent word to the Secretary, "Don't send that damn
woman down here to defeat my election." The Secretary replied, "We
have work enough for her to do in other districts without interfering
with you." But when the would-be honorable gentleman saw the furor she
created, he changed his mind, and inundated the Secretary with letters
to have her sent there. But the Secretary replied, "It is too late;
the programme is arranged and published throughout the State; you
would not have her when you could, and now you can not have her when
you will."

It is pleasant to record that this man, who had the moral hardihood to
send a profane adjective over the wires, with the name of this noble
girl, lost his election. While all other districts went strongly
Republican, his was lost by a large majority. When the news came that
the Republicans had carried the State, due credit was awarded to Anna
Dickinson. The Governor-elect made personal acknowledgment that her
eloquent speeches had secured his election. She was serenaded,
feasted, and feted, the recipient of many valuable presents, and
eulogized by the press and the people.

New Hampshire safe, all eyes were now turned to Connecticut. The
contest there was between Seymour and Buckingham. It was generally
conceded that, if Seymour was elected, Connecticut would give no more
money or troops for the war. The Republicans were completely
disheartened. They said nothing could prevent the Democrats from
carrying the State by four thousand, while the Democrats boasted that
they would carry it by ten thousand. Though the issue was one of such
vital importance, there seemed so little hope of success, that the
Republicans were disposed to give it up without making an effort. And
no resistance to this impending calamity was made until Anna Dickinson
went into the State, and galvanized the desponding loyalists to life.
She spent two weeks there, and completely turned the tide of popular
sentiment. Democrats, in spite of the scurrilous attacks made on her
by some of their leaders and editors, received her everywhere with the
warmest welcome, tore off their party badges, substituted her
likeness, and applauded whatever she said. The halls where she spoke
were so densely packed, that Republicans stayed away to make room for
the Democrats, and the women were shut out to give place to those who
could vote. There never was such enthusiasm over an orator in this
country. The period of her advent, the excited condition of the
people, her youth, beauty, and remarkable voice, and wonderful
magnetic power, all heightened the effect of her genius, and helped to
produce this result. Her name was on every lip; ministers preached
about her, prayed for her, as a second Joan of Arc, raised up by God
to save that State to the loyal party, and through it the nation to
freedom and humanity. As the election approached, the excitement was
intense; and when at last it was announced that the State was saved by
a few hundred votes, the joy and gratitude of the crowds knew no
bounds. They shouted and hurrahed for Anna Dickinson, serenaded her
with full bands of music, sent her books, flowers, and ornaments,
manifesting in every way their love and loyalty to this gifted girl,
who through so many years had bravely struggled with poverty to this
proud moment of success in her country's cause. Some leading gentlemen
of the State who had invited her there presented her a gold watch and
chain, a hundred dollars for every night she had spoken, and four
hundred for the last night before election, in Hartford. The comments
of the press, though most flattering, give the reader but a faint idea
of the enthusiasm of the people.[33]

Fresh from the victories in New Hampshire and Connecticut, she was
announced to speak in Cooper Institute, New York. That meeting, in
May, 1862, was the most splendid ovation to a woman's genius since
Fanny Kemble, in all the wealth of her youth, beauty, and wonderful
dramatic power, appeared on the American stage for the first time.
There never was such excitement over any meeting in New York; hundreds
went away unable even to get standing places in the lobbies and outer
halls. The platform was graced with the most distinguished men and
women in the country, and so crowded that the young orator had scarce
room to stand. There were clergymen, generals, admirals, judges,
lawyers, editors, the literati, and leaders of fashion, and all alike
ready to do homage to this simple girl, who moved them alternately to
laughter and tears, to bursts of applause and the most profound
silence.

Henry Ward Beecher, who presided, introduced the speaker in his
happiest manner. For nearly two hours she held that large audience
with intense interest and enthusiasm, and when she finished with a
beautiful peroration, the people seemed to take a long breath, as if
to find relief from the intensity of their emotions. Loud cries
followed for Mr. Beecher; but he arose, and with great feeling and
solemnity, said: "Let no man open his lips here to-night; music is the
only fitting accompaniment to the eloquent utterances we have heard."
The Hutchinsons closed with one of their soul-stirring ballads, and
the audience slowly dispersed, singing the John Brown song with
thrilling effect, as they marched into the street.[34]

After her remarkable success in New York, the Philadelphia Union
League invited her to speak in that city. The invitation, signed by
leading Republicans, she readily accepted. Judge Wm. D. Kelley
presided, and a most appreciative audience greeted her. In this
address, reviewing the incidents of the war, she criticised General
McClellan as usual, with great severity. Some of his personal friends,
filled with indignation, left the house, while a derisive laugh
followed them to the door. The Philadelphia journals vied with each
other in their eulogiums of her grace, beauty, and eloquence. The
marked attention she has always received in her native city has been
most grateful to her, and honorable to her fellow-citizens.

In July, 1862, the first move was made to enlist colored troops in
Pennsylvania. A meeting was called for that purpose in Philadelphia.
Judge Kelley, Frederick Douglass, and Anna Dickinson were there, and
made strong appeals to the people of that State to grant to the
colored man the honor of bearing arms in defence of his country. The
effort was successful. A splendid regiment was raised, and the first
duty they discharged was to serenade the young orator, who had spoken
so eloquently for their race all through the war.

In September a field-day was announced at Camp William Penn. General
Pleasanton reviewed the troops. It was a brilliant and interesting
occasion, as many were about to leave for the seat of war. At the
close of the day when the people began to disperse it was noised round
that Miss Dickinson was there; a cry was heard at once on all sides,
"A speech! a speech!" The moon was just rising, mingling its pale rays
with those of the setting sun, and throwing a soft, mysterious light
over the whole scene. The troops gathered round with bristling
bayonets and flags flying, the band was hushed to silence, and when
all was still, mounted on a gun-wagon, with General Pleasanton and his
staff on one side, General Wagner and his staff on the other, this
brave girl addressed "our boys in blue." She urged that justice and
equality might be secured to every citizen in the republic; that
slavery and war might end forever and peace be restored; that our
country might indeed be the land of the free and the home of the
brave.

As she stood there uttering words of warning and prophecy, it seemed
as if her lips had been touched with a live coal from the altar of
heaven. Her inspired words moved the hearts of our young soldiers to
deeds of daring, and gave fresh courage to those about her to bid
their loved ones go and die if need be for freedom and their country.
The hour, the mysterious light, the stillness, the novel surroundings,
the youth of the speaker, all gave a peculiar power to her words, and
made the scene one of the most thrilling and beautiful on the page of
history.

In January, 1864, she made her first address in Washington. Though she
now felt that her success as an orator was established, yet she
hesitated long before accepting this invitation.[35] To speak before
the President, Chief-Justice, Judges, Senators, Congressmen, Foreign
Diplomats, all the dignitaries and honorables of the Government was
one of the most trying ordeals in her experience. She had one of the
largest and most brilliant audiences ever assembled in the Capitol,
and was fully equal to the occasion. She made a profound impression,
and her speech was the topic of conversation for days afterward. At
the close of her address she was presented to many of the
distinguished ladies and gentlemen, and chief among them the
President. This was one of the grandest occasions of her life. She was
honored as no man ever had been before. The comments of the press[36]
must have been satisfactory to her highest ambition as well as to that
of her admiring countrywomen.

One of the most powerful and impressive appeals she ever made was in
the Convention of Southern Loyalists held in Philadelphia in
September, 1866. In this Convention there was a division of opinion
between the Border and the Gulf States. The latter wanted to
incorporate negro suffrage in their platform, as that was the only
means of success for the Liberal party at the South. The former,
manipulated by Northern politicians, opposed that measure, lest it
should defeat the Republican party in the pending elections at the
North. This stultification of principle, of radical public sentiment,
stirred the soul of Miss Dickinson, and she desired to speak. But a
rule that none but delegates should be allowed that privilege,
prevented her. However, as the Southern men had never heard a woman
speak in public, and felt great curiosity to hear her, they adjourned
the Convention, resolved themselves into a committee of the whole, and
invited her to address them.

An eye-witness[37] thus describes the scene: "As the young maiden
stepped forward to deliver a speech as denunciatory as was ever
listened to against the action of the Border States, on her right sat
Brownlow, on her left John Minor Botts with his lips tightly
compressed, and his face telling plainly that he remained there from
courtesy, and would remain a patient listener to the end. She began;
and for the first time since it met, the Convention was so still that
the faintest whisper could be heard."

She had not spoken long before she declared that Maryland had no
business in the Convention, but should have been with delegates that
came to welcome. There was vehement applause from the Border States.
"This is a direct insult," shouted a delegate from Maryland. She went
on in spite of interruptions, reviewing the conduct of the Border
States with scorn, and an eloquence never equalled in any of her
previous efforts, in favor of an open, manly declaration of the real
opinion of the Convention for justice to the colored Loyalist, not in
the courts only, but at the ballot-box. The speech was in Miss
Dickinson's noblest style throughout--bold, but tender, and often so
pathetic that she brought tears to every eye. Every word came from her
heart, and it went right to the hearts of all. Kentucky and Maryland
now listened as eagerly as Georgia and Alabama; Brownlow's iron
features and Botts' rigid face soon relaxed, and tears stood in the
old Virginian's eyes; while the noble Tennesseean moved his place, and
gazed at the inspired girl with an interest and wonderment which no
other orator had moved before. She had the audience in hand, as easily
as a mother holds her child, and like the child, this audience heard
her heart beat. It was a marvelous speech. Its greatness lay in its
manner and effect, as well as its argument. When she finished, one
after another of the Southern delegates came forward and pinned on her
dress the badges of their States until she wore the gifts of Alabama,
Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and Maryland.

And thus it was from time to time that this remarkable girl uttered
the highest thought in American politics in that crisis of our
nation's history. While in camp and hospital she spoke words of
tenderness and love to the sick and dying, she did not hesitate to
rebuke the incapacity and iniquity of those in high places. She was
among the first to distrust McClellan and Lincoln, and in a lecture,
entitled "My Policy," to unveil his successor, Andrew Johnson, to the
people. She saw the scepter of power grasped by the party of freedom,
and the first gun fired at Sumter in defence of slavery. She saw our
armies go forth to battle, the youth, the promise, the hope of the
nation--two millions strong--and saw them return with their ranks
thinned and broken, their flags tattered and stained, the maimed, the
halt and the blind, the weary and worn; and this, she said, is the
price of liberty. She saw the dawn of the glorious day of emancipation
when four million African slaves were set free, and that night of
gloom when the darkest page in American history was written in the
blood of its chief. Through the nation's agony was this young girl
born into a knowledge of her power; and she drew her inspiration from
the great events of her day.

THE WOMAN'S NATIONAL LOYAL LEAGUE.

MAMMOTH PETITION.

Those who had been specially engaged in the Woman Suffrage movement,
suspended their Conventions during the war and gave their time and
thought wholly to the vital issues of the hour. Seeing the political
significance of the war, they urged the emancipation of the slaves as
the sure, quick way of cutting the gordion knot of the rebellion. To
this end they organized a National League, and rolled up a mammoth
petition, urging Congress to so amend the Constitution as to prohibit
the existence of slavery in the United States.

From their headquarters in Cooper Institute, New York, they sent out
their appeals to the President, Congress, and the people at large;
tracts and forms of petition, franked by members of Congress, were
scattered like snowflakes from Maine to Texas. Meetings were held
every week, in which the policy of the Government was freely
discussed, approved or condemned. Robert Dale Owen, chairman of the
Freedman's Commission, then residing in New York, aided and encouraged
this movement from the beginning, frequently speaking in the public
meetings.

That this League did a timely educational work, is manifested by the
letters received from generals, statesmen, editors, and from women in
most of the Northern States, fully endorsing its action and
principles.[38] The clearness of thinking women on the cause of the
war; the true policy in waging it; their steadfastness in maintaining
the principles of freedom, are worthy of consideration. With this
League, Abolitionists and Republicans heartily co-operated. In a
course of lectures secured for its benefit in Cooper Institute, we
find the names of Horace Greeley, George William Curtis, William D.
Kelly, Wendell Phillips, E. P. Whipple, Frederick Douglass, Theodore
D. Weld, Rev. Dr. Tyng, Dr. Bellows, and Mrs. Frances D. Gage. Many
letters are on its files from Charles Sumner, approving its measures,
and expressing great satisfaction at the large number of emancipation
petitions being rolled into Congress. The Republican press, too, was
highly complimentary. The _New York Tribune_ said: "The women of the
Loyal League have shown great practical wisdom in restricting their
efforts to one object, the most important which any society can aim
at, in this hour, and great courage in undertaking to do what never
has been done in the world before, to obtain one million of names to a
petition."

The leading journals vied with each other in praising the patience and
prudence, the executive ability, the loyalty, the patriotism of the
women of the League, and yet these were the same women, who when
demanding civil and political rights, privileges, and immunities for
themselves, had been uniformly denounced as "unwise," "imprudent,"
"fanatical," "impracticable." During the six years they held their own
claims in abeyance to the slaves of the South, and labored to inspire
the people with enthusiasm for the great measures of the Republican
party, they were highly honored as "wise, loyal, and clear-sighted."
But again when the slaves were emancipated and they asked that women
should be recognized in the reconstruction as citizens of the
Republic, equal before the law, all these transcendent virtues
vanished like dew before the morning sun. And thus it ever is so long
as woman labors to second man's endeavors and exalt _his sex_ above
her own, her virtues pass unquestioned; but when she dares to demand
rights and privileges for herself, her motives, manners, dress,
personal appearance, character, are subjects for ridicule and
detraction.

In March, 1863, an appeal[39] to the women of the Republic, was
published in the _New York Tribune_, and in tract form extensively
circulated with "a call"[40] for a National Convention in New York,
which assembled in Dr. Cheever's church May 14th. An immense audience,
mostly women, representing a large number of the States, crowded the
house at an early hour. Miss Susan B. Anthony called the Convention to
order and nominated Lucy Stone for President; the other officers[41]
of the Convention being chosen, Mrs. Stanton made the opening address,
and stated the objects of the meeting.

Miss Anthony having received large numbers of letters[42] which it
was impossible to read, said that the one word which had come up from
all quarters showed an earnestness of purpose on the part of women to
do everything in their power to aid the Government in the prosecution
of this war to the glorious end of freedom. The President in
introducing Angelina Grimké Weld, said:

This lady, once a South Carolina slaveholder, not only gave
freedom to all her slaves twenty years ago, but has spent the
strength of her younger years in going up and down among the
people, urging the Northern States to make their soil sacred to
freedom, to so amend their laws and constitutions that slavery
can find no protection within their borders.

MRS. WELD said: I came here with no desire and no intention to
speak; but my heart is full, my country is bleeding, my people
are perishing around me. But I feel as a South Carolinian, I am
bound to tell the North, go on! go on! Never falter, never
abandon the principles which you have adopted. I could not say
this if we were now where we stood two years ago. I could not say
thus when it was proclaimed in the Northern States that the Union
was all that we sought. No, my friends, such a Union as we had
then, God be praised that it has perished. Oh, never for one
moment consent that such a Union should be re-established in our
land. There was a time when I looked upon the Fathers of the
Revolution with the deepest sorrow and the keenest reproach. I
said to their shadows in another world, "Why did you leave this
accursed system of slavery for us to suffer and die under? why
did you not, with a stroke of the pen, determine--when you
acquired your own independence--that the principles which you
adopted in the Declaration of Independence should be a shield of
protection to every man, whether he be slave or whether he be
free?" But, my friends, the experience of sixty years has shown
me that the fruit grows slowly. I look back and see that great
Sower of the world, as he traveled the streets of Jerusalem and
dropped the precious seed, "Do unto others as ye would that
others should do unto you." I look at all the contests of
different nations, and see that, whether it were the Patricians
of Rome, England, France, or any part of Europe, every battle
fought gained something to freedom. Our fathers, driven out by
the oppression of England, came to this country and planted that
little seed of liberty upon the soil of New England. When our
Revolution took place, the seed was only in the process of
sprouting. You must recollect that our Declaration of
Independence was the very first National evidence of the great
doctrine of brotherhood and equality. I verily believe that those
who were the true lovers of liberty did all they could at that
time. In their debates in the Convention they denounced
slavery--they protested against the hypocrisy and inconsistency
of a nation declaring such glorious truths, and then trampling
them underfoot by enslaving the poor and oppressed, because he
had a skin not colored like their own; as though a man's skin
should make any difference in the recognition of his rights, any
more than the color of his hair or of his eyes. This little blade
sprouted as it were from the precious seeds that were planted by
Jesus of Nazareth. But, my friends, if it took eighteen hundred
years to bring forth the little blade which was seen in our
Declaration, are we not unreasonable to suppose that more could
have been done than has been done, looking at the imperfections
of human nature, looking at the selfishness of man, looking at
his desire for wealth and his greed for glory?

Had the South yielded at that time to the freemen of the North,
we should have had a free Government; but it was impossible to
overcome the long and strong prejudices of the South in favor of
slavery. I know what the South is. I lived there the best part of
my life. I never could talk against slavery without making my
friends angry--never. When they thought the day was far off, and
there was no danger of emancipation, they were willing to admit
it was an evil; but when God in His providence raised up in this
country an Anti-slavery Society, protesting against the
oppressions of the colored man, they began to feel that truth
which is more powerful than arms--that truth which is the only
banner under which we can successfully fight. They were
comparatively quiet till they found, in the election of Mr.
Lincoln, the scepter had actually departed from them. His
election took place on the ground that slavery was not to be
extended--that it must not pass into the Territories. This was
what alarmed them. They saw that if the National Government
should take one such step, it never would stop there; that this
principle had never before been acknowledged by those who had any
power in the nation.

God be praised. Abolitionists never sought place or power. All
they asked was freedom; all they wanted was that the white man
should take his foot off the negro's neck. The South determined
to resist the election of Mr. Lincoln. They determined if Fremont
was elected, they would rebel. And this rebellion is like their
own Republic, as they call it; it is founded upon slavery. As I
asked one of my friends one day, "What are you rebelling for? The
North never made any laws for you that they have not cheerfully
obeyed themselves. What is the trouble between us?" Slavery,
slavery is the trouble. Slavery is a "divine institution." My
friends, it is a fact that the South has incorporated slavery
into her religion; that is the most fearful thing in this
rebellion. They are fighting, verily believing that they are
doing God service. Most of them have never seen the North. They
understand very little of the working of our institutions; but
their politicians are stung to the quick by the prosperity of the
North. They see that the institution which they have established
can not make them wealthy, can not make them happy, can not make
them respected in the world at large, and their motto is, "Rule
or ruin."

Before I close, I would like, however strange it may seem, to
utter a protest against what Mrs. Stanton said of colonizing the
aristocrats in Liberia. I can not consent to such a thing. Do you
know that Liberia has never let a slave tread her soil?--that
when, from the interior of the country, the slaves came there to
seek shelter, and their heathen masters pursued them, she never
surrendered one? She stands firmly on the platform of freedom to
all. I am deeply interested in this colony of Liberia. I do not
want it to be cursed with the aristocracy of the South, or any
other aristocracy, and far less with the Copperheadism of the
North. (Laughter). If these Southern aristocrats are to be
colonized, Mrs. President, don't you think England is the best
place for them? England is the country which has sympathized most
deeply with them. She has allowed vessels to be built to prey
upon our commerce; she has sent them arms and ammunition, and
everything she could send through the West India Islands. Shall
we send men to Liberia who are ready to tread the black man under
their feet? No. God bless Liberia for what she has done, and what
she is destined to do. (Applause).

I am very glad to say here, that last summer I had the pleasure
of entertaining several times, in our house, a Liberian who was
well educated in England. He had graduated at Oxford College, and
had a high position there. His health broke down, and he went to
Liberia. "When I went to Liberia," said he, "I had a first-rate
education, and I supposed, of course, I would be a very superior
man there; but I soon found that, though I knew a great deal more
Greek and Latin and mathematics than most of the men there, I was
a child to them in the science of government and history. Why,"
said he, "you have no idea of the progress of Liberia. The men
who go there are freemen--citizens; the burdens of society are
upon them; and they feel that they must begin to educate
themselves, and they are self-educated men. The President of
Liberia, Mr. Benson, was a slave about seven years ago on a
plantation in this country. He went to Liberia. He was a man of
uncommon talents. He educated himself to the duties which he
found himself called upon to perform as a citizen. And when Mr.
Benson visited England a year ago, he had a perfect ovation. The
white ladies and gentlemen of England, those who were really
anti-slavery in their feelings--who love liberty--followed him
wherever he went. They opened their houses, they had their
_soirees_, and they welcomed him by every kind of demonstration
of their good wishes for Liberia."

Now, Mrs. President, the great object that I had in view in
rising, was to give you a representative from South Carolina.
(Applause). I mourn exceedingly that she has taken the position
she has. I once had a brother who, had he been there, would have
stood by Judge Pettigrew in his protest against the action of the
South. He, many years ago, during the time of nullification in
1832, was in the Senate of South Carolina, and delivered an able
address, in which he discussed these very points, and showed that
the South had no right of secession; that, in becoming an
integral part of the United States, they had themselves
voluntarily surrendered that right. And he remarked, "If you
persist in this contest, you will be like a girdled tree, which
must perish and die. You can not stand." (Applause).

THE PRESIDENT (Lucy Stone): Mrs. Weld thinks it would be too bad
to send the Southern aristocrats and Northern copperheads to
Liberia: I do not know but it would. I am equally sure that it
would be too bad to send them among the laboring people of
England, who are thoroughly, heartily, and wholly on the side of
the loyal North. They ought not to be sent there. I would
suggest, when they are fairly subdued, that we should send them
to London to make a part of the staff of the London _Times_. I
think they would do better there than anywhere else. (Laughter).

The Hutchinson Family being present, varied the proceedings with their
inspiring songs. Lucy Stone, in introducing them, said Gen. McClellan
was not willing they should sing on the other side of the Potomac, but
we are glad to hear them everywhere. Susan B. Anthony presented a
series of resolutions,[43] and said:

There is great fear expressed on all sides lest this war shall be
made a war for the negro. I am willing that it shall be. It is a
war to found an empire on the negro in slavery, and shame on us
if we do not make it a war to establish the negro in
freedom--against whom the whole nation, North and South, East and
West, in one mighty conspiracy, has combined from the beginning.

Instead of suppressing the real cause of the war, it should have
been proclaimed, not only by the people, but by the President,
Congress, Cabinet, and every military commander. Instead of
President Lincoln's waiting two long years before calling to the
side of the Government the four millions of allies whom we have
had within the territory of rebeldom, it should have been the
first decree he sent forth. Every hour's delay, every life
sacrificed up to the proclamation that called the slave to
freedom and to arms, was nothing less than downright murder by
the Government. For by all the laws of common-sense--to say
nothing of laws military or national--if the President, as
Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, could have devised any
possible means whereby he might hope to suppress the rebellion,
without the sacrifice of the life of one loyal citizen, without
the sacrifice of one dollar of the loyal North, it was clearly
his duty to have done so. Every interest of the insurgents, every
dollar of their property, every institution, however peculiar,
every life in every rebel State, even, if necessary, should have
been sacrificed, before one dollar or one man should have been
drawn from the free States. How much more, then, was it the
President's duty to confer freedom on the four million slaves,
transform them into a peaceful army for the Union, cripple the
rebellion, and establish justice, the only sure foundation of
peace! I therefore hail the day when the Government shall
recognize that it is a war for freedom. We talk about returning
to the old Union--"the Union as it was," and "the Constitution as
it is"--about "restoring our country to peace and prosperity--to
the blessed conditions that existed before the war!" I ask you
what sort of peace, what sort of prosperity, have we had? Since
the first slave-ship sailed up the James River with its human
cargo, and there, on the soil of the _Old_ Dominion, sold it to
the highest bidder, we have had nothing but war. When that pirate
captain landed on the shores of Africa, and there kidnapped the
first stalwart negro, and fastened the first manacle, the
struggle between that captain and that negro was the commencement
of the terrible war in the midst of which we are to-day. Between
the slave and the master there has been war, and war only. This
is only a new form of it. No, no; we ask for no return to the
_old_ conditions. We ask for something better. We want a Union
that is a Union in fact, a Union in spirit, not a sham.
(Applause).

By the Constitution as it is, the North has stood pledged to
protect slavery in the States where it existed. We have been
bound, in case of insurrections, to go to the aid, not of those
struggling for liberty, but of the oppressors. It was politicians
who made this pledge at the beginning, and who have renewed it
from year to year to this day. These same men have had control of
the churches, the Sabbath-schools, and all religious influences;
and the women have been a party in complicity with slavery. They
have made the large majority in all the different religious
organizations throughout the country, and have without protest,
fellowshiped the slave-holder as a Christian; accepted
pro-slavery preaching from their pulpits; suffered the words
"slavery a crime" to be expurgated from all the lessons taught
their children, in defiance of the Golden Rule, "Do unto others
as you would that others should do unto you." They have had no
right to vote in their churches, and, like slaves, have meekly
accepted whatever morals and religion the selfish interest of
politics and trade dictated.

Woman must now assume her God-given responsibilities, and make
herself what she is clearly designed to be, the educator of the
race. Let her no longer be the mere reflector, the echo of the
worldly pride and ambition of man. (Applause). Had the women of
the North studied to know and to teach their sons the law of
justice to the black man, regardless of the frown or the smile of
pro-slavery priest and politician, they would not now be called
upon to offer the loved of their households to the bloody Moloch
of war. And now, women of the North, I ask you to rise up with
earnest, honest purpose, and go forward in the way of right,
fearlessly, as independent human beings, responsible to God alone
for the discharge of every duty, for the faithful use of every
gift, the good Father has given you. Forget conventionalisms;
forget what the world will say, whether you are in your place or
out of your place; think your best thoughts, speak your best
words, do your best works, looking to your own conscience for
approval.

Mrs. HOYT, of Wisconsin: Thus far this meeting has been conducted
in such a way as would lead one to suppose that it was an
anti-slavery convention. There are ladies here who have come
hundreds of miles to attend a business meeting of the Loyal Women
of the North; and good as anti-slavery conventions are, and
anti-slavery speeches are, in their way, I think that here we
should attend to our own business.

Mrs. CHALKSTONE, of California: My speech shall be as brief as
possible and I ask for an excuse for my broken language. Our
field is very small, and God has given us character and abilities
to follow it out. We do not need to stand at the ballot-boxes and
cast our votes, neither to stand and plead as lawyers; but in our
homes we have a great office. I consider women a great deal
superior to men. (Laughter and applause). Men are physically
strong, but women are morally better. I speak of pure women, good
women. It is woman who keeps the world in the balance.

I am from Germany, where my brothers all fought against the
Government and tried to make us free, but were unsuccessful. My
only son, seventeen years old, is in our great and noble army of
the Union. He has fought in many of the battles here, and I only
came from California to see him once more. I have not seen him
yet; though I was down in the camp, I could not get any pass. But
I am willing to lay down all this sacrifice for the cause of
liberty. We foreigners know the preciousness of that great, noble
gift a great deal better than you, because you never were in
slavery, but we are born in it. Germany pines for freedom. In
Germany we sacrificed our wealth and ornaments for it, and the
women in this country ought to do the same. We can not fight in
the battles, but we can do this, and it is all we can do. The
speaker, before me, remarked that Abraham Lincoln was two years
before he emancipated slaves. She thought it wrong. It took
eighteen hundred years in Europe to emancipate the Jews, and they
are not emancipated now. Among great and intelligent peoples like
Germany and France, until 1814 no Jew had the right to go on the
pavement; they had to go in the middle of the street, where the
horses walked! It took more than two years to emancipate the
people of the North from the idea that the negro was not a human
being, and that he had the right to be a free man. A great many
will find fault in the resolution that the negro shall be free
and equal, because our equal not every human being can be; but
free every human being has a right to be. He can only be equal in
his rights. (Applause).

Mrs. ROSE called for the reading of the resolutions, which after
a spirited discussion, all except the fifth, were unanimously
adopted.

Mrs. HOYT, of Wisconsin, said: _Mrs. President_--I object to the
passage of the fifth resolution, not because I object to the
sentiment expressed; but I do not think it is the time to bring
before this meeting, assembled for the purpose of devising the
best ways and means by which women may properly assist the
Government in its struggle against treason, anything which could
in the least prejudice the interest in this cause which is so
dear to us all. We all know that Woman's Rights as an _ism_ has
not been received with entire favor by the women of the country,
and I know that there are thousands of earnest, loyal, and able
women who will not go into any movement of this kind, if this
idea is made prominent. (Applause). I came here from Wisconsin
hoping to meet the earnest women of the country. I hoped that
nothing that would in any way damage the cause so dear to us all
would be brought forward by any of the members. I object to this,
because our object should be to maintain, as women properly may,
the integrity of our Government; to vindicate its authority; to
re-establish it upon a far more enduring basis. We can do this if
we do not involve ourselves in any purely political matter, or
any _ism_ obnoxious to the people. The one idea should be the
maintenance of the authority of the Government as it is, and the
integrity of the Republican idea. For this, women may properly
work, and I hope this resolution will not pass.

SARAH H. HALLECK, of Milton, N. Y.: I would make the suggestion
that those who approve of this resolution can afford to give way,
and allow that part of it which is objectionable to be stricken
out. The negroes have suffered more than the women, and the
women, perhaps, can afford to give them the preference. Let it
stand as regards them, and blot out the word "woman." It may
possibly be woman's place to suffer. At any rate, let her suffer,
if, by that means, _man_kind may suffer less.

A VOICE: You are too self-sacrificing.

ERNESTINE L. ROSE: I always sympathize with those who seem to be
in the minority. I know it requires a great deal of moral courage
to object to anything that appears to have been favorably
received. I know very well from long experience how it feels to
stand in a minority of one; and I am glad that my friend on the
other side (Mrs. Halleck) has already added one to make a
minority of two, though that is by far too small to be
comfortable. I, for one, object to the proposition to throw woman
out of the race for freedom. (Applause). And do you know why?
Because she needs freedom for the freedom of man. (Applause). Our
ancestors made a great mistake in not recognizing woman in the
rights of man. It has been justly stated that the negro at
present suffers more than woman, but it can do him no injury to
place woman in the same category with him. I, for one, object to
having that term stricken out, for it can have no possible
bearing against anything that we want to promote: we desire to
promote human rights and human freedom. It can do no injury, but
must do good, for it is a painful fact that woman under the law
has been in the same category with the slave. Of late years she
has had some small privileges conceded to her. Now, mind, I say
_conceded_; for publicly it has not yet been recognized by the
laws of the land that she has a right to an equality with man. In
that resolution it simply states a fact, that in a republic based
upon freedom, woman, as well as the negro, should be recognized
as an equal with the whole human race. (Applause)

ANGELINE G. WELD: _Mrs. President_--I rejoice exceedingly that
that resolution should combine us with the negro. I feel that we
have been with him; that the iron has entered into our souls.
True, we have not felt the slave-holder's lash; true, we have not
had our hands manacled, but our _hearts_ have been crushed. Was
there a single institution in this country that would throw open
its doors to the acknowledgment of woman's equality with man in
the race for science and the languages, until Oberlin, Antioch,
Lima, and a very few others opened their doors, twenty years ago?
Have I not heard women say--I said thus to my own brother, as I
used to receive from him instruction and reading: "Oh, brother,
that I could go to college with you! that I could have the
instruction you do! but I am crushed! I hear nothing, I know
nothing, except in the fashionable circle." A teacher said to a
young lady, who had been studying for several years, on the day
she finished her course of instruction, "I thought you would be
very glad that you were so soon to go home, so soon to leave your
studies." She looked up, and said, "What was I made for? When I
go home I shall live in a circle of fashion and folly. I was not
made for embroidery and dancing; I was made a woman; but I can
not be a true woman, a full-grown woman, in America."

Now, my friends, I do not want to find fault with the past. I
believe that men did for women the best that they knew how to do.
They did not know their own rights; they did not recognize the
rights of any man who had a black face. We can not wonder that,
in their tenderness for woman, they wanted to shelter and protect
her, and they made those laws from true, human, generous
feelings. Woman was then too undeveloped to demand anything else.
But woman is full-grown to-day, whether man knows it or not,
equal to her rights, and equal to the responsibilities of the
hour. I want to be identified with the negro; until he gets his
rights, we never shall have ours. (Applause).

SUSAN B. ANTHONY: This resolution brings in no question, no
_ism_. It merely makes the assertion that in a true democracy, in
a genuine republic, every citizen who lives under the government
must have the right of representation. You remember the maxim,
"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed." This is the fundamental principle of democracy; and
before our Government can be a true democracy--before our
republic can be placed upon lasting and enduring foundations--the
civil and political rights of every citizen must be practically
established. This is the assertion of the resolution. It is a
philosophical statement. It is not because women suffer, it is
not because slaves suffer, it is not because of any individual
rights or wrongs--it is the simple assertion of the great
fundamental truth of democracy that was proclaimed by our
Revolutionary fathers. I hope the discussion will no longer be
continued as to the comparative rights or wrongs of one class or
another. The question before us is: Is it possible that peace and
union shall be established in this country; is it possible for
this Government to be a true democracy, a genuine republic, while
one-sixth or one-half of the people are disfranchised?

MRS. HOYT: I do not object to the philosophy of these
resolutions. I believe in the advancement of the human race, and
certainly not in a retrograde movement of the Woman's Rights
question; but at the same time I do insist that nothing that has
become obnoxious to a portion of the people of the country shall
be dragged into this meeting. (Applause). The women of the North
were invited here to meet in convention, not to hold a Temperance
meeting, not to hold an Anti-Slavery meeting, not to hold a
Woman's Rights Convention, but to consult as to the best
practical way for the advancement of the loyal cause. To my
certain knowledge there are ladies in this house who have come
hundreds of miles, who will withdraw from this convention, who
will go home disappointed, and be thrown back on their own
resources, and form other plans of organization; whereas they
would much prefer to co-operate with the National Convention if
this matter were not introduced. This movement must be sacred to
the one object of assisting our Government. I would add one more
remark, that though the women of the Revolution did help our
Government in that early struggle, they did not find it necessary
to set forth in any theoretical or clamorous way their right to
equal suffrage or equal political position, though doubtless they
believed, as much as any of us, in the advancement of woman.

A LADY: I want to ask the lady who just spoke if the women of the
Revolution found it necessary to form Loyal Leagues? We are not
bound to do just as the women of the Revolution did. (Applause
and laughter).

LUCY N. COLEMAN, of Rochester, N. Y.: I wish to say, in the first
place, something a little remote from the point, which I have in
my mind just now. A peculiar sensitiveness seems to have come
over some of the ladies here in reference to the anti-slavery
spirit of the resolutions. It seems to me impossible that a
company of women could stand upon this platform without catching
something of the anti-slavery spirit, and without expressing, to
some extent, their sympathy with the advancement of human rights.
It is the Anti-Slavery women and the Woman's Rights women who
called this meeting, and who have most effectually aided in this
movement. Their hearts bleed to the very core that our nation is
to-day suffering to its depths, and they came together to devise
means whereby they could help the country in its great calamity.
I respect the woman who opposed this resolution, for daring to
say so much. She says that it is an Anti-Slavery Convention that
is in session. So it is, and something more. (Applause). She says
it is a Woman's Rights Convention. So it is, and even more than
that; it is a World's Convention. (Applause). Another woman (I
rejoice to hear that lisping, foreign tongue) says that our
sphere is so narrow that we should be careful to keep within it.
All honor to her, that she dared to say even that. I recognize
for myself no narrow sphere. (Applause). Where you may work, my
brother, I may work. I would willingly stand upon the
battle-field, and would be glad to receive the balls in my
person, if in that way I could do more for my country's good than
in any other. I recognize no right of any man or of any woman to
say that I should not stand there. Our sphere is _not_ narrow--it
is broad.

In reference to this resolution, Mrs. Halleck thinks it might be
well to leave out woman. No, no. Do you remember, friends, long,
long ago here in New York, an Anti-Slavery convention broke up in
high dudgeon, because a woman was put upon a committee? But that
Anti-Slavery Society, notwithstanding those persons who felt so
sensitive withdrew from it, has lived thirty years, and to-day it
has the honor of being credited as the cause of this war. Perhaps
if the principle which was then at stake--that a woman had a
right to be on a committee--had been waived, from the very fact
that the principle of right was overruled, that Society would
have failed. I would not yield one iota, one particle, to this
clamor for compromise. Be it understood that it is a Woman's
Rights matter; for the Woman's Rights women have the same right
to dictate to a Loyal League that the Anti-Woman's Rights women
have, and the side that is strongest will carry the resolution,
of course. But do not withdraw it. Do not say, "We will take it
away because it is objectionable."

I want the people to understand that this Loyal League--because
it is a Loyal League--must of necessity bring in Anti-Slavery and
Woman's Rights. (Applause). Is it possible that any of you
believe that there is such a being in this country to-day as a
loyal man or woman who is not anti-slavery to the backbone?
(Applause). Neither is there a loyal man or woman whose intellect
is clear enough to take in a broad, large idea, who is not to the
very core a Woman's Rights man or woman. (Applause).

MRS. HOYT: As I have said before, I am not opposed to
Anti-Slavery. I stand here an Abolitionist from the earliest
childhood, and a stronger anti-slavery woman lives not on the
soil of America. (Applause). I voted Yea on the anti-slavery
resolution, and I would vote it ten times over. But, at the same
time, in the West, which I represent, there is a very strong
objection to Woman's Rights; in fact, this Woman's Rights matter
is odious to some of us from the _manner_ in which it has been
conducted; not that we object to the philosophy--we believe in
the philosophy--but object to this matter being tacked on to a
purely loyal convention.... I will make one more statement which
bears upon the point which I have been trying to make. I have
never before spoken except in private meetings, and therefore
must ask the indulgence of the audience. The women of Madison,
Wisconsin, feeling the necessity and importance of doing
something more than women were doing to assist the Government in
this struggle, organized a Ladies' Union League, which has been
in operation some time, and is very efficient.

A VOICE:--What are they doing? Please state.

MRS. HOYT: In Madison we had a very large and flourishing
"Soldiers' Aid Society." We were the headquarters for that part
of the State. A great many ladies worked in our Aid Society, and
assisted us, who utterly refused to join with the Loyal League,
because, they said, it would damage the Aid Society. We
recognized that fact, and kept it purely distinct as a Ladies'
Loyal League, for the promotion of the loyal sentiment of the
North, and to reach the soldiers in the field by the most direct
and practical means which were in our power. We have a great many
very flourishing Ladies' Loyal Leagues throughout the West, and
we have kept them sacred from Anti-Slavery, Woman's Rights,
Temperance, and everything else, good though they may be. In our
League we have three objects in view. The first is, retrenchment
in household expenses, to the end that the material resources of
the Government may be, so far as possible, applied to the entire
and thorough vindication of its authority. Second, to strengthen
the loyal sentiment of the people at home, and instil a deeper
love of the national flag. The third and most important object
is, to write to the soldiers in the field, thus reaching nearly
every private in the army, to encourage and stimulate him in the
way that ladies know how to do. I state again, it is not an
Anti-Slavery objection. I will vote for every Anti-Slavery
movement in this Convention. I object to the Woman's Rights
resolutions, and nothing else.

ERNESTINE L. ROSE: It is exceedingly amusing to hear persons talk
about throwing out Woman's Rights, when, if it had not been for
Woman's Rights, that lady would not have had the courage to stand
here and say what she did. (Applause). Pray, what means "loyal"?
Loyal means to be true to one's highest conviction. Justice, like
charity, begins at home. It is because we are loyal to truth,
loyal to justice, loyal to right, loyal to humanity, that woman
is included in that resolution. Now, what does this discussion
mean? The lady acknowledges that it is not against Woman's Rights
itself; she is _for_ Woman's Rights. We are here to endeavor to
help the cause of human rights and human freedom. We ought not to
be afraid. You may depend upon it, if there are any of those who
are called copperheads--but I don't like to call names, for even
a copperhead is better than no head at all--(laughter)--if there
are any copperheads here, I am perfectly sure they will object to
this whole Convention; and if we want to consult them, let us
adjourn _sine die_. If we are loyal to our highest convictions,
we need not care how far it may lead. For truth, like water, will
find its own level. No, friends, in the name of consistency let
us not wrangle here simply because we associate the name of woman
with human justice and human rights. Although I always like to
see opposition on any subject, for it elicits truth much better
than any speech, still I think it will be exceedingly
inconsistent if, because some women out in the West are opposed
to the Woman's Rights movement--though at the same time they take
advantage of it--that therefore we shall throw it out of this
resolution.

MRS. SPENCE, of New York: I didn't come to this meeting to
participate--only to listen. I don't claim to be a Northerner or
a Southerner; but I claim to be a human being, and to belong to
the human family (Applause). I belong to no sect or creed of
politics or religion; I stand as an individual, defending the
rights of every one as far as I can see them. It seems to me we
have met here to come to some unity of action. If we attempt to
bring in religious, political, or moral questions, we all must of
necessity differ. We came here hoping to be inspired by each
other to lay some plan by which we can unite in practical action.
I have not heard such a proposition made; but I anticipate that
it will be. (Hear, hear). Then if we are to unite on some
proposition which is to be presented, it seems to me that our
resolutions should be practical and directed to the main
business. Let the object of the meeting be unity of action and
expression in behalf of what we feel to be the highest right, our
highest idea of liberty.

THE PRESIDENT (Lucy Stone): Every good cause can afford to be
just. The lady from Wisconsin, who differs from some of us here,
says she is an Anti-Slavery woman. We ought to believe her. She
accepts the principles of the Woman's Rights movement, but she
does not like the way in which it has been carried on. We ought
to believe her. It is not, then, that she objects to the idea of
the equality of women and negroes, but because she does not wish
to have anything "tacked on" to the Loyal League, that to the
mass of people does not seem to belong there. She seems to me to
stand precisely in the position of those good people just at the
close of the war of the Revolution. The people then, as now, had
their hearts aching with the memory of their buried dead. They
had had years of war from which they had garnered out sorrows as
well as hopes; and when they came to establish a Union, they
found that one black, unmitigated curse of slavery rooted in the
soil. Some men said, "We can have no true Union where there is
not justice to the negro. The black man is a human being, like
us, with the same equal rights." They had given to the world the
Declaration of Independence, grand and brave and beautiful. They
said, "How can we form a true Union?" Some people representing
the class that Mrs. Hoyt represents, answered, "Let us have a
Union. We are weak; we have been beset for seven long years; do
not let us meddle with the negro question. What we are for is a
Union; let us have a Union at all hazards." There were earnest
men, men of talent, who could speak well and earnestly, and they
persuaded the others to silence. So they said nothing about
slavery, and let the wretched monster live.

To-day, over all our land, the unburied bones of our fathers and
sons and brothers tell the sad mistake that those men made when
long ago The babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are
not ours. The few rights that we have, have been wrung from the
Legislature by t they left this one great wrong in the land. They
could not accomplish good by passing over a wrong. If the right
of one single human being is to be disregarded by us, we fail in
our loyalty to the country. All over this land women have no
political existence. Laws pass over our heads that we can not
unmake. Our property is taken from us without our consent. The
babes we bear in anguish and carry in our arms are not ours. The
few rights that we have, have been wrung from the Legislature by
the Woman's Rights movement. We come to-day to say to those who
are administering our Government and fighting our battles, "While
you are going through this valley of humiliation, do not forget
that you must be true alike to the women and the negroes." We can
never be truly "loyal" if we leave them out. Leave them out, and
we take the same backward step that our fathers took when they
left out slavery. If justice to the negro and to woman is right,
it can not hurt our loyalty to the country and the Union. If it
is not right, let it go out of the way; but if it is right, there
is no occasion that we should reject it, or ignore it. We make
the statement that the Government derives its just powers from
the consent of the governed, and that all human beings have equal
rights. This is not an _ism_--it is simply an assertion that we
shall be true to the highest truth.

A MAN IN THE AUDIENCE: The question was asked, as I entered this
house, "Is it right for women to meet here and intermeddle in our
public affairs?" It is the greatest possible absurdity for women
to stand on that platform and talk of loyalty to a Government in
which nine-tenths of the politicians of the land say they have no
right to interfere, and still oppose Woman's Rights. The very act
of standing there is an endorsement of Woman's Rights.

A VOICE: I believe this is a woman's meeting. Men have no right
to speak here.

THE GENTLEMAN CONTINUED: It is on woman more than on man that the
real evils of this war settle. It is not the soldier on the
battle-field that suffers most; it is the wife, the mother, the
daughter. (Applause. Cries of "Question, question").

A VOICE: You are not a woman, sit down.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY: Some of us who sit upon this platform have many
a time been clamored down, and told that we had no right to
speak, and that we were out of our place in public meetings; far
be it from us, when women assemble, and a man has a thought in
his soul, burning for utterance, to retaliate upon him. (Laughter
and applause).

The resolution was then put to vote.

A VOICE: Allow me to inquire if men have a right to vote on this
question?

THE PRESIDENT: I suppose men who are used to business know that
they should _not_ vote here. We give them the privilege of
speaking.

The resolution was carried by a large majority.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY: The resolution recommending the practical work,
has not yet been prepared. We have a grand platform on which to
stand, and I hope we shall be able to present a plan of work
equally grand. But, Mrs. President, if we should fail in doing
this, we shall not fail to enunciate the principles of democracy
and republicanism which underlie the structure of a free
government. When the heads and hearts of the women of the North
are fully imbued with the true idea, their hands will find a way
to secure its accomplishment.

There is evidently very great earnestness on the part of all
present to settle upon some practical work. I therefore ask that
the women from every State of the Union, who are delegates here
from Loyal Leagues and Aid Societies, shall retire, at the close
of this meeting, to the lecture-room of this church, and there we
will endeavor to fix upon the best possible plan we can gather
from the counsels of the many. I hope this enthusiasm may be
directed to good and legitimate ends, and not allowed to
evaporate into thin air. I hope we shall aid greatly in the
establishment of this Government on the everlasting foundation of
justice to all.

BUSINESS MEETING.

The lecture-room was crowded with representatives from the different
States--Susan B. Anthony in the chair. There was a general expression
in favor of forming a Woman's Loyal National League, which ended in
the adoption of the following resolution:

_Resolved_, That we, loyal women of the nation, assembled in
convention in New York, this 14th day of May, 1863, do hereby
pledge ourselves one to another in a Loyal League, to give
support to the Government in so far as it makes the war for
freedom.

This pledge was signed by nearly every woman present. Mrs. Stanton was
elected president unanimously, and Miss Anthony, Secretary. Many women
spoke ably and eloquently; women who had never before heard their own
voices in a public meeting, discussed nice points of law and
constitution in a manner that would have done credit to any
legislative assembly. A deep religious tone of loyalty to God and
Freedom pervaded the entire meeting. It was an occasion not soon to be
forgotten. Women of all ages were assembled there, from the matron of
threescore years and ten to the fair girl whose interest in the war
had brought to her a premature sadness and high resolve. But of all
who mourned the loss of husbands, brothers, sons, and lovers, no word
of fear, regret, or doubt was uttered. All declared themselves ready
for any sacrifice, and expressed an unwavering faith in the glorious
future of a true republic. The interest in the meeting kept up until
so late an hour that it was decided to adjourn, to meet the next
afternoon.

EVENING SESSION.

The evening session was held in Cooper Institute, Mrs. Stanton
presiding. An address to the President was read by Miss Anthony, which
was subsequently adopted and sent to him.

_The Loyal Women of the Country to Abraham Lincoln, President of
the United States._

Having heard many complaints of the want of enthusiasm among
Northern women in the war, we deemed it fitting to call a
National Convention. From every free State, we have received the
most hearty responses of interest in each onward step of the
Government as it approaches the idea of a true republic. From the
letters received, and the numbers assembled here to-day, we can
with confidence address you in the name of the loyal women of the
North.

We come not to criticise or complain. Not for ourselves or our
friends do we ask redress of specific grievances, or posts of
honor or emolument. We speak from no considerations of mere
material gain; but, inspired by true patriotism, in this dark
hour of our nation's destiny, we come to pledge the loyal women
of the Republic to freedom and our country. We come to strengthen
you with earnest words of sympathy and encouragement. We come to
thank you for your proclamation, in which the nineteenth century
seems to echo back the Declaration of Seventy-six. Our fathers
had a vision of the sublime idea of liberty, equality, and
fraternity; but they failed to climb the heights that with
anointed eyes they saw. To us, their children, belongs the work
to build up the living reality of what they conceived and
uttered.

It is not our mission to criticise the past. Nations, like
individuals, must blunder and repent. It is not wise to waste one
energy in vain regret, but from each failure rise up with renewed
conscience and courage for nobler action. The follies and faults
of yesterday we cast aside as the old garments we have outgrown.
Born anew to freedom, slave creeds and codes and constitutions
must now all pass away. "For men do not put new wine into old
bottles, else the bottles break, and the wine runneth out, and
the bottles perish; but they put new wine into new bottles, and
both are preserved."

Our special thanks are due to you, that by your Proclamation two
millions of women are freed from the foulest bondage humanity
ever suffered. Slavery for man is bad enough, but the refinements
of cruelty must ever fall on the mothers of the oppressed race,
defrauded of all the rights of the family relation, and violated
in the most holy instincts of their nature. A mother's life is
bound up in that of her child. There center all her hopes and
ambition. But the slave-mother, in her degradation, rejoices not
in the future promise of her daughter, for she knows by
experience what her sad fate must be. No pen can describe the
unutterable agony of that mother whose past, present, and future
are all wrapped in darkness; who knows the crown of thorns she
wears must press her daughter's brow; who knows that the
wine-press she now treads, unwatched, those tender feet must
tread alone. For, by the law of slavery, "the child follows the
condition of the mother."

By your act, the family, that great conservator of national
virtue and strength, has been restored to millions of humble
homes, around whose altars coming generations shall magnify and
bless the name of Abraham Lincoln. By a mere stroke of the pen
you have emancipated millions from a condition of wholesale
concubinage. We now ask you to finish the work by declaring that
nowhere under our national flag shall the motherhood of any race
plead in vain for justice and protection. So long as one slave
breathes in this Republic, we drag the chain with him. God has so
linked the race, man to man, that all must rise or fall together.
Our history exemplifies this law. It was not enough that we at
the North abolished slavery for ourselves, declared freedom of
speech and the press, built up churches, colleges, and free
schools, studied the science of morals, government, and economy,
dignified labor, amassed wealth, whitened the sea with our
commerce, and commanded the respect and admiration of the nations
of the earth, so long as the South, by the natural proclivities
of slavery, was sapping the very foundations of our national
life....

You are the first President ever borne on the shoulders of
freedom into the position you now fill. Your predecessors owed
their elevation to the slave oligarchy, and in serving slavery
they did but obey their masters. In your election, Northern
freemen threw off the yoke. And with you rests the responsibility
that our necks shall never bow again. At no time in the annals of
the nation has there been a more auspicious moment to retrieve
the one false step of the fathers in their concessions to
slavery. The Constitution has been repudiated, and the compact
broken by the Southern traitors now in arms. The firing of the
first gun on Sumter released the North from all constitutional
obligations to slavery. It left the Government, for the first
time in our history, free to carry out the Declaration of our
Revolutionary fathers, and made us in fact what we have ever
claimed to be, a nation of freemen.

"The Union as it was"--a compromise between barbarism and
civilization--can never be restored, for the opposing principles
of freedom and slavery can not exist together. Liberty is life,
and every form of government yet tried proves that slavery is
death. In obedience to this law, our Republic, divided and
distracted by the collisions of caste and class, is tottering to
its base, and can only be reconstructed on the sure foundations
of impartial freedom to all men. The war in which we are involved
is not the result of party or accident, but a forward step in the
progress of the race never to be retraced. Revolution is no time
for temporizing or diplomacy. In a radical upheaving, the people
demand eternal principles to stand upon.

Northern power and loyalty can never be measured until the
purpose of the war be liberty to man; for a lasting enthusiasm is
ever based on a grand idea, and unity of action demands a
definite end. At this time our greatest need is not in men or
money, valiant generals or brilliant victories, but in a
consistent policy, based on the principle that "all governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." And
the nation waits for you to say that there is no power under our
declaration of rights, nor under any laws, human or divine, by
which _free_ men can be made slaves; and therefore that your
pledge to the slaves is irrevocable, and shall be redeemed.

If it be true, as it is said, that Northern women lack enthusiasm
in this war, the fault rests with those who have confused and
confounded its policy. The page of history glows with incidents
of self-sacrifice by woman in the hour of her country's danger.
Fear not that the daughters of this Republic will count any
sacrifice too great to insure the triumph of freedom. Let the men
who wield the nation's power be wise, brave, and magnanimous, and
its women will be prompt to meet the duties of the hour with
devotion and heroism.

When Fremont on the Western breeze proclaimed a day of jubilee to
the bondmen within our gates, the women of the nation echoed back
a loud Amen. When Hunter freed a million men, and gave them arms
to fight our battles, justice and mercy crowned that act, and
tyrants stood appalled. When Butler, in the chief city of the
Southern despotism, hung a traitor, we felt a glow of pride; for
that one act proved that we had a Government, and one man brave
enough to administer its laws. And when Burnside would banish
Vallandigham to the Dry Tortugas, let the sentence be approved,
and the nation will ring with plaudits. Your Proclamation gives
you immortality. Be just, and share your glory with men like
these who wait to execute your will.

In behalf of the Women's National Loyal League,

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary_.

Rev. ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL: Possibly there maybe nations,
like individuals, that are without definite ideas or purposes.
They sprang into being by accident, and they continue to live by
the sufferance of circumstances. Our American Republic is not of
this type. We were born to the heritage of one great idea; we
were created by it and for it, and it is mightier than we; it
must annihilate us, or it must establish us a nation as lasting
as the ages.

Our ante-revolutionary statesmen were dissatisfied with an
inadequate, partial, unjust representation. The thought grew in
them till it developed the broad principle of self-government by
the people. They perceived and asserted that truth; they fought
for it, and died or lived for it, as the case might be. So they
constructed this great Republic, grounding it firmly upon a deep
and wide democracy. Its frame-work was essentially democratic,
but there were a few great beams and joists, and plenty of paint
and mortar used, which were as purely aristocratic.

We, here at the North, have been accustomed to look at the
strength of the foundations, and of the consistent massive
frame-work; they, at the South, admired the incongruous ornaments
and decorations, and they did not forget any of the exceptional
timbers. We were shocked when the great structure seemed ready to
tumble about our ears; they expected it all the time, and were
working for it, ready to perish in the general downfall, if that
were inevitable. I have seen a drop of water spread over a small
orifice in a layer of melting ice, which was brilliant red in
color to me, but it was the intensest blue to my friend, who was
standing at my side. The moral vision is quite as largely
dependent upon the angle at which it receives its rays of
reflected light. North and South represent the extremes of the
moral spectrum. The equalizing of labor and capital, which is a
beautiful violet to us, is a very angry red to them; and the
soft-toned hues of their system of servitude are crimson with
blood-guiltiness to ourselves. If we stood where the perfect and
undivided sunbeams could fall upon us, we should see all men
under the common radiance of that pure white light, of which
Providence has an unlimited supply.

No more unanimity of sentiment or principle existed among our own
people in the war of the Revolution, than in this. Democracy,
asserting its rights, brought on the conflict then, though
aristocracy, goaded by the instinct of self-preservation and
self-interest, joined hands and aided it to its consummation.
Patriotism grew in the hearts of each, and held us together as a
nation for about eighty years; but the subordinate antagonism,
tortured by its unnatural alliance during all those years, now in
turn strikes also for independence. Predominance, precedence,
pre-eminence, might have satisfied it for a time; but, from the
nature of our institutions, that was impossible. It encroached at
every point, and was generally rewarded for its self-assertion;
but it was inherently and constitutionally subordinate, and must
have remained so forever in the federation of the United States.
It struck for independence, and it did well! It did all it could
do, if it would not die inanely. One must always admire that
instinct of the grub which leads it to weave its own
winding-sheet, and lie down fearlessly in its sepulcher,
preparatory to its resurrection as a butterfly; but immeasurably
more to be admired is the calculating courage of men who are
ready to stake their all upon any issue--even upon one so
mistaken, so false, so partial to one class and so unjust to
another, as the cause of the slave-holders. Every earnest purpose
must have its own baptism of blessings.

We, the inheritors of a sublime truth, have been grievously
wanting in faith in our heritage!--wanting in aim and purpose to
maintain its integrity! No wonder the land is still washed with
tears of the widowed and fatherless, and that stricken mothers
refuse to be comforted. Give us a living principle to die for.
"Make this a war for emancipation!" cries anti-slavery England,
"and our sympathies will be with you!" They demand much; but,
that demand granted, it yet falls infinitely below the real point
at issue. It is immeasurably short of the great conflict which we
are actually waging. It is one phase of it,--the most acute
phase, undoubtedly; but not, therefore, the broadest and most
momentous one. Slavery was the peculiar institution of the South;
but we, as a nation, have an incomparably greater peculiar
institution of our own. The one is only peculiarly exceptional to
our general policy; the other is essentially and organically at
war with it. It is the only thing which pointedly distinguishes
us from a dozen other nations. The consent of the governed is the
sole, legitimate authority of any government! This is the
essential, peculiar creed of our republic. That principle is on
one side of this war; and the old doctrine of might makes right,
the necessary ground-work of all monarchies, is on the other. It
is a life-and-death conflict between all those grand, universal,
man-respecting principles, which we call by the comprehensive
term democracy, and all those partial, person-respecting,
class-favoring elements which we group together under that
silver-slippered word aristocracy. If this war does not mean
that, it means nothing.

Slavery is malignantly aristocratic, and seems therefore to
absorb all other manifestations of the principle into itself. It
is Pharaoh's lean kine, which devour all the others of their
species, and yet are no better favored than before. But if
slavery were dead to-day, aristocracy might still grind our
republic to powder. Men may cease to be slaves, and yet not be
enfranchised. Although they are no longer bondmen, yet they may
be governed without their own consent. But when you deny the
universal enfranchisement of our people, you deny the one
distinctive principle of our Government, and the only essential,
fore-ordained fact in the future of our national institutions. We
do not at all comprehend this.

There was one who builded wiser than he knew, Emerson says, and I
think that result is not uncommon. The little Indian boy in the
pleasant fable, who ran on eagerly in advance of his migrating
tribe, to plant his single, three-cornered beech-nut in the
center of a great prairie, scarcely foresaw the many acres of
heavy timber which was to confront the white pioneer hundreds of
years afterward, as the outgrowth of his childish deed. Many
soldiers are fighting our battles upon a basis broader than they
know. There are men who believe that they are solely engaged in
putting down the rebellion; others are maintaining the disputed
courage and honor of the "mudsills"; some are fighting to uphold
our present Northern civilization and its institutions; and a
handful have set out definitely to carry these into the South, to
give them to the slave, and to the master also, in spite of
himself. All love the Union, and are ready to fight, perhaps to
die, for it. Aye! but what does that mean? Something as
antagonistic in the interpretation thereof as the decisions
touching an ancient oracle, a disputed biblical text, or a knotty
passage from our own venerated Constitution.

If victory should come just as she is summoned by each class of
our patriotic and brave Union volunteers, would she most favor
the rebels or the Government? Look at some of her conflicting
purposed achievements:

1. To preserve slavery unharmed, without so much as the smell of
fire upon its garments, when it shall emerge from the ordeal of
war.

2. To gratuitously establish slavery forever, by solemn and
unchanging guarantees.

3. To leave slavery to perish slowly and ingloriously, as it must
when unprotected.

4. To cripple and destroy slavery by a long guerrilla warfare
against its special manifestations.

5. To kill slavery at a blow, by right of an imperious and
undoubted military necessity.

6. To exterminate slavery without compromise or weighing of
consequences, because it is a gross moral wrong.

These are a few of the many platforms upon which husbands,
brothers and sons are fighting to-day. No two opposing armies
ever wearied heaven with asking more impossible cross-purposes
than does this fraternal, Union army of ours. The bread and fish
of these, are stones and scorpions to those. We are a practical
people, but we are fighting for practical paradoxes. Do we expect
any massive concentration of results? Our wavering, anaconda
system of warfare is typical of our moral status as a people. It
is the spontaneous and legitimate exponent of our aims and
motives. Many or decisive victories I despair of, till we are
better educated in the early lesson of the fathers. But from the
President--God bless him that he seems to be more teachable than
many others--down to the youngest drummer-boy of the army, the
severe discipline of this war is schooling us into a better
appreciation of our heritage as a peculiar people.

All governments, said the fathers, are subordinate to the people,
not the people to their governments. The distinct enunciation of
that principle was the net result of the war of the Revolution.
Born of the long-suffering and anguish of bleeding nations, its
worth is yet incomparably greater than the cost, for it is the
sublimest principle which has ever entered into the governmental
relations of men. It must turn and overturn till, as rightful
sovereign it is placed securely upon the throne of all nations,
for, from the inherent nature of things, it is destined to become
the mightiest revolutionist of the ages. The reinstating of that
principle in the chair of our Republic will be the net result of
this war of the Rebellion!

When the statesmen of '76 sought to embody this principle in the
complicated machinery of a vast government, there they partially
failed--there they designedly failed. The minority seceded from
it in that day as in this, and then they compromised. The
antagonism which they engrafted on the young Republic assuming,
as it does, that power, not humanity, is statute-maker, could not
be more diametrically opposed to the axiom which asserts, that
humanity, not power, is lawful arbiter of its own rights. The
man, unwashed, unmended, unlearned, is yet a safer judge of his
own interests, than is all the rank, the wealth, or the wisdom of
men or angels. Thomas Simms is a better witness as to his own
need of freedom than the combined wisdom of all the Boston
lawyers, judges, and statesmen. We can keep ice and fire upon
the same planet, but it never does to bring them too near
together. A nation proclaiming to the astonished world that
governments derive all just powers solely from the consent of the
governed, yet in the very face of this assertion enslaving the
black man, and disfranchising half its white citizens, besides
minor things of like import and consistency--do you wonder that
eighty years of such policy culminated in rebellion?

Do we expect the whole-hearted sympathy of any monarchy? Cannot
they see, also, that two entire opposing civilizations are
mustered into the conflict? They may hate slavery, and since we
have found the courage to point our cannon more directly against
the heart of that, they may rejoice so far; but do they desire to
establish the subordination of any government to the rights of
the very meanest of its subjects? Are they in love with our
plebeian heresy, that all the magnificent civil machinery of
nations is but so much base clay in the hands of the multitude of
royal potters? We are now testing the practical possibilities of
democratic theories; and there are those who would a thousand
times rather see these shattered into hopeless fragments than any
other result which could possibly transpire in the national
affairs of all Christendom. Let our democracy prove shallow,
weak, inefficient, unfitted for emergencies, and incapable of
sustaining itself under the test of determined opposition, to
them it is enough. Our great national axiom, is, _per se_, the
eternal foe of all monarchies, aristocracies, oligarchies, of all
possible despotism, because it is the fulcrum of a mighty lever
which must one day overturn them all, if it be not itself jostled
from its resting-place.

What are we to do with our conquered provinces of the South? Give
them all the franchises which we hold ourselves, assuredly--as
many personal rights and as many State rights--provided always
that they cease to encroach upon our liberties, and are no longer
rebels against the common Government. Now that the issue is
forced upon us, let us apply our principles unsparingly to all,
and conclude by making the slaves, men and women too, as free and
equal in all civil and political functions as their male masters.
Secretary Chase has seized the occasion of our heavy financial
troubles to give us a general national banking system; so out of
the nettle Danger to our liberal institutions let us pluck the
flower Safety to the interest of the feeblest subject. It is thus
that the darkest evil is often made nurse to the brightest good.
The black mud at its roots nourishes the pure white water-lily.
When the Southern people, white and black, male and female, are
all voters together, by simple virtue of their human needs and
rights, then, but not till then, will I consent to their freely
voting themselves into an independent nation, if they are so
disposed. Even then, democracy requires that the question shall
be decided by the suffrage of the whole country, North as well as
South. A republic can never be dismembered except by the consent
of a majority of all its citizens....

ERNESTINE L. ROSE, a native of Poland, was next introduced; she
said: Louis Kossuth told us it is not well to look back for
regret, but only for instruction. I therefore intend slightly to
cast my mind's eye back for the purpose of enabling us, as far
as possible, to contemplate the present and foresee the future.
It is unnecessary to point out the cause of this war. It is
written on every object we behold. It is but too well understood
that the primary cause is Slavery; and it is well to keep that in
mind, for the purpose of gaining the knowledge how ultimately to
be able to crush that terrible rebellion which now desolates the
land. Slavery being the cause of the war, we must look to its
utter extinction for the remedy. (Applause).

We have listened this evening to an exceedingly instructive, kind
and gentle address, particularly that part of it which tells how
to deal with the South after we have brought them back. But I
think it would be well, at first, to consider how to bring them
back!

Abraham Lincoln has issued a Proclamation. He has emancipated all
the slaves of the rebel States with his pen, but that is all. To
set them really and thoroughly free, we will have to use some
other instrument than the pen. (Applause). The slave is not
emancipated; he is not free. A gentleman once found himself of a
sudden, without, so far as he knew, any cause, taken into prison.
He sent for his lawyer, and told him, "They have taken me to
prison." "What have you done?" said the lawyer. "I have done
nothing," he replied. "Then, my friend, they can not put you in
prison." "But I am in prison." "Well, that may be; but I tell
you, my dear friend, they can not put you in prison." "Well,"
said he, "I want you to come and take me out, for I tell you, in
spite of all your lawyer logic, I am in prison, and I shall be
until you take me out." (Great laughter). Now the poor slave has
to say, "Abraham Lincoln, you have pronounced me free; still I am
a slave, bought and sold as such, and I shall remain a slave till
I am taken out of this horrible condition." Then the question is,
_How?_ Have not already two long years passed over more than a
quarter of a million of the graves of the noblest and bravest of
the nation? Is that not enough? No; it has proved not to be
enough. Let us look back for a moment. Had the Proclamation of
John C. Fremont been allowed to have its effect; had the edict of
Hunter been allowed to have its effect, the war would have been
over. (Applause). Had the people and the Government, from the
very commencement of the struggle, said to the South, "You have
openly thrown down the gauntlet to fight for Slavery; we will
accept it, and fight for Freedom," the rebellion would long
before now have been crushed. (Applause). You may blame Europe as
much as you please, but the heart of Europe beats for freedom.
Had they seen us here accept the terrible alternative of war for
the sake of freedom, the whole heart of Europe would have been
with us. But such has not been the case. Hence the destruction of
over a quarter of a million of lives and ten millions of broken
hearts that have already paid the penalty; and we know not how
many more it needs to wipe out the stain of that recreancy that
did not at once proclaim this war a war for freedom and humanity.

And now we have got here all around us Loyal Leagues. Loyal to
what? What does it mean? I have read that term in the papers. A
great many times I have heard that expression to-day. I know not
what others mean by it, but I will give you my interpretation of
what I am loyal to. I speak for myself. I do not wish any one
else to be responsible for my opinions. I am loyal only to
justice and humanity. Let the Administration give evidence that
they too are for justice to all, without exception, without
distinction, and I, for one, had I ten thousand lives, would
gladly lay them down to secure this boon of freedom to humanity.
(Applause). But without this certainty, I am not unconditionally
loyal to the Administration. We women need not be, for the law
has never yet recognized us. (Laughter). Then I say to Abraham
Lincoln, "Give us security for the future, for really when I look
at the past, without a guarantee, I can hardly trust you." And
then I would say to him, "Let nothing stand in your way; let no
man obstruct your path."

Much is said in the papers and in political speeches about the
Constitution. Now, a good constitution is a very good thing; but
even the best of constitutions need sometimes to be amended and
improved, for after all there is but one constitution which is
infallible, but one constitution that ought to be held sacred,
and that is the human constitution. (Laughter). Therefore, if
written constitutions are in the way of human freedom, suspend
them till they can be improved. If generals are in the way of
freedom, suspend them too; and more than that, suspend their
money. We have got here a whole army of generals who have been
actually dismissed from the service, but not from pay. Now, I say
to Abraham Lincoln, if these generals are good for anything, if
they are fit to take the lead, put them at the head of armies,
and let them go South and free the slaves you have announced
free. If they are good for nothing, dispose of them as of
anything else that is useless. At all events, cut them loose from
the pay. (Applause). Why, my friends, from July, 1861, to
October, 1862--for sixteen long months--we have been electrified
with the name of our great little Napoleon! And what has the
great little Napoleon done? (Laughter). Why, he has done just
enough to prevent anybody else from doing anything. (Great
applause). But I have no quarrel with him. I don't know him. I
presume none of you do. But I ask Abraham Lincoln--I like to go
to headquarters, for where the greatest power is assumed, there
the greatest responsibility rests, and in accordance with that
principle I have nothing to do with menials, even though they are
styled Napoleons--but I ask the President why McClellan was kept
in the army so long after it was known--for there never was a
time when anything else was known--that he was both incapable and
unwilling to do anything? I refer to this for the purpose of
coming, by and by, to the question, "What ought to be done?" He
was kept at the head of the army on the Potomac just long enough
to prevent Burnside from doing anything, and not much has been
done since that time. Now, McClellan may be a very nice young
man--I haven't the slightest doubt of it--but I have read a
little anecdote of him. Somebody asked the president of a Western
railroad company, in which McClellan was an engineer, what he
thought about his abilities. "Well," said the president, "he is a
first-rate man to build bridges; he is very exact, very
mathematical in measurement, very precise in adjusting the
timber; he is the best man in the world to build a good, strong,
sound bridge, but after he has finished it, he never wishes
anybody to cross over it." (Great laughter). Well, we have
disposed of him partially, but we PAY him yet, and you and I are
taxed for it. But if we are to have a new general in his place,
we may ask, what has become of Sigel? Why does that
disinterested, noble-minded, freedom-loving man in vain ask of
the Administration to give him an army to lead into the field?

A VOICE: Ask Halleck.

Halleck! If Halleck is in the way, dispose of him. (Applause). Do
you point me to the Cabinet? If the Cabinet is in the way of
freedom, dispose of the Cabinet--(applause) some of them, at
least. The magnitude of this war has never yet been fully felt or
acknowledged by the Cabinet. The man at its head--I mean
Seward--has hardly yet woke up to the reality that we have a war.
He was going to crush the rebellion in sixty days. It was a mere
_bagatelle_! Why, he could do it after dinner, any day, as easy
as taking a bottle of wine! If Seward is in the way of crushing
the rebellion and establishing freedom, dispose of him. From the
cause of the war, learn the remedy, decide the policy, and place
it in the hands of men capable and willing to carry it out. I am
not unconditionally loyal, until we know to what principle we are
to be loyal. Promise justice and freedom, and all the rest will
follow. Do you know, my friends, what will take place if
something decisive is not soon done? It is high time to consider
it. I am not one of those who look on the darkest side of things,
but yet my reason and reflection forbid me to hope against hope.
It is only eighteen months more before another Presidential
election--only one year before another President will be
nominated. Let the present administration remain as indolent, as
inactive, and, apparently, as indifferent as they have done; let
them keep generals that are inferior to many of their private
soldiers; let them keep the best generals there are in the
country--Sigel and Fremont--unoccupied--(applause); let them keep
the country in the same condition in which it has been the last
two years, and is now, and what would be the result, if, at the
next election, the Democrats succeed--I mean the sham Democrats?
I am a democrat, and it is because I am a democrat that I go for
human freedom. Human freedom and true democracy are identical.
Let the Democrats, as they are now called, get into office, and
what would be the consequence? Why, under this hue-and-cry for
Union, _Union_, UNION, which is like a bait held out to the mass
of the people to lure them on, they will grant to the South the
meanest and the most contemptible compromises that the worst
slaveholders in the South can require. And if they really accept
them and come back--my only hope is that they will not--but if
the South should accept these compromises, and come back, slavery
will be fastened, not only in the South, but it will be
nationally fastened on the North. Now, a good Union, like a good
Constitution, is a most invaluable thing; but a false Union is
infinitely more despicable than no Union at all; and for myself,
I would vastly prefer to have the South remain independent, than
to bring them back with that eternal curse nationalized in the
country. It is not enough for Abraham Lincoln to proclaim the
slaves in the South free, nor even to continue the war until they
shall be really free. There is something to be done at home; for
justice, like charity, must begin at home. It is a mockery to say
that we emancipate the slaves we can not reach and pass by those
we can reach. First, free the slaves that are under the flag of
the Union. If that flag is the symbol of freedom, let it wave
over free men only. The slaves must be freed in the Border
States. Consistency is a great power. What are you afraid of?
That the Border States will join with the now crippled rebel
States? We have our army there, and the North can swell its
armies. But we can not afford to fight without an object. We can
not afford to bring the South back with slavery. We can not
compromise with principle. What has brought on this war? Slavery,
undoubtedly. Slavery was the primary cause of it. But the great
secondary cause was the fact that the North, for the sake of the
Union, has constantly compromised. Every demand that the South
made of the North was acceded to, until the South came really to
believe that they were the natural and legitimate masters, not
only of the slaves, but of the North too.

Now, it is time to reverse all these things. This rebellion and
this war have cost too dear. The money spent, the vast stores
destroyed, the tears shed, the lives sacrificed the hearts broken
are too high a price to be paid for the mere _name_ of Union. I
never believed we had a Union. A true Union is based upon
principles of mutual interest, of mutual respect and reciprocity,
none of which ever existed between the North and South. They
based their institutions on slavery; the North on freedom.

I care not by what measure you end the war, if you allow one
single germ, one single seed of slavery to remain in the soil of
America, whatever may be your object, depend upon it, as true as
effect follows cause, that germ will spring up, that noxious weed
will thrive, and again stifle the growth, wither the leaves,
blast the flowers, and poison the fair fruits of freedom. Slavery
and freedom can not exist together. Seward proclaimed a truism,
but he did not appreciate its import. There is an irrepressible
conflict between freedom and slavery. You might as well say that
light and darkness can exist together as freedom and slavery. We,
therefore, must urge the Government to do something, and that
speedily, to secure the boon of freedom, while they yet can, not
only in the rebel States, but in our own States too, and in the
Border States. It is just as wrong for us to keep slaves in the
Union States as it ever was in the South. Slavery is as great a
curse to the slaveholder as it is a wrong to the slaves; and yet
while we free the rebel slaveholder from the curse, we allow it
to continue with our Union-loving men in the Border States. Free
the slaves in the Border States, in Western Virginia, in
Maryland, and wherever the Union flag floats, and then there will
be a consistency in our actions that will enable us to go to work
earnestly with heart and hand united, as we move forward to free
all others and crush the rebellion. We have had no energy yet in
the war, for we have fought only for the purpose of reuniting,
what has never been united, restoring the old Union--or rather
the shadow as it was. A small republic, a small nation, based
upon the eternal principle of freedom, is great and powerful. A
large empire based upon slavery, is weak and without foundation.
The moment the light of freedom shines upon it, it discloses its
defects, and unmasks its hideous deformities. As I said before, I
would rather have a small republic without the taint and without
the stain of slavery in it, than to have the South brought back
by compromise. To avert such calamity, we must work. And our work
must mainly be to watch and criticise and urge the Administration
to do its whole duty to freedom and humanity. (Applause).

THE PRESIDENT then said: I suppose all the loyal women will agree
with me that we owe to the President and the Government in these
hours of trial, whether they make mistakes or whether they do
not, words of cheer and encouragement; and, as events occur one
after another, our criticisms should not be harshly made. When we
find willful departure from what is just and true, when we find
treason, we should not hesitate to speak the word of strongest
denunciation against both the treason and the traitor. But where
there is evident intention to be and to do right, where there is
loyalty, there all good men and all good women should give a word
of cheer and encouragement.

Women have their share in the responsibilities of this hour; in
the reconstruction of the Government. The battles now being
fought on Southern soil, will be fought again in the Capitol at
Washington, when we shall need far-seeing statesmen to base the
new Union on justice, liberty, and equality. Ours is the work of
educating the people to make this demand.

The entire year was spent in rolling up the mammoth petition. Many
hands were busy sending out letters and petitions, counting and
assorting the names returned. Each State was rolled up separately in
yellow paper, and tied with the regulation red tape, with the number
of men and women who had signed, endorsed on the outside. Nearly four
hundred thousand were thus sent, and may now be found in the archives
at Washington. The passage of the Thirteenth Amendment made the
continuance of the work unnecessary. The first installment of 100,000
was presented by Charles Sumner, in an appropriate speech, Feb. 9th,
1864.

THE PRAYER OF ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND.

_Speech of Hon. Chas. Sumner on the Presentation of the First
Installment of the Emancipation Petition of the Woman's National
League._

In the Senate of the United States, Tuesday, February 9, 1864.

MR. SUMNER.--Mr. President: I offer a petition which is now lying
on the desk before me. It is too bulky for me to take up. I need
not add that it is too bulky for any of the pages of this body to
carry.

This petition marks a stage of public opinion in the history of
slavery, and also in the suppression of the rebellion. As it is
short I will read it:

"TO THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE UNITED STATES:

"The undersigned, women of the United States above the age of
eighteen years, earnestly pray that your honorable body will pass
at the earliest practicable day an act emancipating all persons
of African descent held to involuntary service or labor in the
United States."

There is also a duplicate of this petition signed by "men above
the age of eighteen years."

It will be perceived that the petition is in rolls. Each roll
represents a State.[44] For instance, here is New York with a
list of seventeen thousand seven hundred and six names; Illinois
with fifteen thousand three hundred and eighty; and Massachusetts
with eleven thousand six hundred and forty-one. These several
petitions are consolidated into one petition, being another
illustration of the motto on our coin--_E pluribus unum_.

This petition is signed by one hundred thousand men and women,
who unite in this unparalleled number to support its prayer. They
are from all parts of the country and from every condition of
life. They are from the sea-board, fanned by the free airs of the
ocean, and from the Mississippi and the prairies of the West,
fanned by the free airs which fertilize that extensive region.
They are from the families of the educated and uneducated, rich
and poor, of every profession, business, and calling in life,
representing every sentiment, thought, hope, passion, activity,
intelligence which inspires, strengthens, and adorns our social
system. Here they are, a mighty army, one hundred thousand
strong, without arms or banners; the advance-guard of a yet
larger army.

But though memorable for their numbers, these petitioners are
more memorable still for the prayer in which they unite. They ask
nothing less than universal emancipation; and this they ask
directly at the hands of Congress. No reason is assigned. The
prayer speaks for itself. It is simple, positive. So far as it
proceeds from the women of the country, it is naturally a
petition, and not an argument. But I need not remind the Senate
that there is no reason so strong as the reason of the heart. Do
not all great thoughts come from the heart?

It is not for me, on presenting this petition, to assign reasons
which the army of petitioners has forborne to assign. But I may
not improperly add that, naturally and obviously, they all feel
in their hearts, what reason and knowledge confirm: not only that
slavery _as a unit_, one and indivisible, is the guilty origin of
the rebellion, but that its influence everywhere, even outside
the rebel States, has been hostile to the Union, always impairing
loyalty, and sometimes openly menacing the national government.
It requires no difficult logic to conclude that such a monster,
wherever it shows its head, is a _national enemy_, to be pursued
and destroyed as such, or at least a nuisance to the national
cause to be abated as such. The petitioners know well that
Congress is the depository of those supreme powers by which the
rebellion, alike in its root and in its distant offshoots, may be
surely crushed, and by which unity and peace may be permanently
secured. They know well that the action of Congress may be with
the co-operation of the slave-masters, or even without the
co-operation, under the overruling law of military necessity, or
the commanding precept of the Constitution "to guarantee to every
State a Republican form of government." Above all, they know well
that to save the country from peril, especially to save the
national life, there is no power, in the ample arsenal of
self-defense, which Congress may not grasp; for to Congress,
under the Constitution, belongs the prerogative of the Roman
Dictator to see that the Republic receives no detriment.
Therefore to Congress these petitioners now appeal. I ask the
reference of the petition to the Select Committee on Slavery and
Freedmen.

It was referred, after earnest discussion, as Mr. Sumner
proposed.

ANNIVERSARY OF THE LOYAL WOMEN'S NATIONAL LEAGUE.

The Anniversary of the Women's National League was held at the Church
of the Puritans, Thursday morning, May 12, 1864. The President,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, called the meeting to order, and requested the
audience to observe a few moments of silence, that each soul might
seek for itself Divine guidance through the deliberations of the
meeting. The Corresponding Secretary, Charlotte B. Wilbour, read the
call for the meeting. The Recording Secretary read the following
report of the Executive Committee:

One year ago we formed ourselves into a League, with the declared
object of EDUCATING THIRTY MILLIONS OF PEOPLE INTO THE TRUE IDEA
OF A CHRISTIAN REPUBLIC, by means of tracts, speeches, appeals,
and petitions for emancipation. Whilst as women, we might not
presume to teach men statesmanship and diplomacy, we felt it our
duty to call the nation back to the a, b, c of human rights. In
looking over the history of the Republic we clearly saw IN
SLAVERY the cause not only of all our political and financial
convulsions, but of the terrible rebellion desolating our country
and our homes. To do this was a work of time and money; and we
were compelled to assume a debt of FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS in
starting--the item of postage alone amounting to _one
thousand_--all of which we are happy to say has been duly paid.

Our thanks are due to Robert Dale Owen, Gerrit Smith, Bradhurst
Schieffelin, Wendell Phillips, Jessie Benton Fremont, Frederick
Douglass, Henry Ward Beecher, and the Hovey Trust Fund Committee
of Boston, for their timely contributions and liberal words of
cheer. But still more are we indebted to the numberless, nameless
thousands of the honest, earnest children of toil, throughout the
country, for their responses to our call, their words of hearty
God-speed, and their "mite" offerings, ranging from five cents to
five dollars; amounting in all to $5,000. From these petitions,
thus widely scattered, we have already sent to Congress the names
of over two hundred thousand men and women, demanding an
amendment of the Constitution and an act of emancipation. And
thousands are still returning to us daily, and we hope to roll up
another hundred thousand before the close of the present session.

Leaving, then, all minor questions of banks and mints and public
improvements for Congressmen to discuss at the rate of $3,000 a
year, we decided the first work to be done was to end slavery,
and ring the death knell of caste and class throughout the land.
To this end, as a means of educating the people, we sent out
twenty thousand emancipation petitions, with tracts and appeals,
into different districts of the free States, and into the slave
States wherever our armies had opened the way.

The Woman's National League now numbers FIVE THOUSAND MEMBERS.
And in the west, where we have employed two lecturing
agents--Josephine S. Griffing, and Hannah Tracy Cutler--a large
number of auxiliary Leagues have been formed.

We have registered on our books the names of TWO THOUSAND men and
women, boys and girls, who have circulated these petitions. We
have on file all the letters received from the thousands with
whom we have been in correspondence, feeling that this canvass of
the nation for freedom will be an important and most interesting
chapter in our future history. These letters, coming from all
classes and all latitudes, breathe one prayer for the downfall of
slavery.

Massachusetts' noble Senator, Charles Sumner, who has so
reverently received, presented, and urged these petitions, has
cheered us with kind messages, magnifying the importance of our
labors. His eloquent speech, made in the Senate on presenting our
first installment--_the prayer of one hundred thousand_--we have
printed in tract form and scattered throughout the country. We
have flooded the nation with letters and appeals, public and
private, and put forth every energy to rouse the people to
earnest, persistent action against slavery, the deadly foe of all
our cherished institutions.

We proposed to ourselves in the first moments of enthusiasm to
secure, at least, _a million_ signatures--one thirtieth part of
our entire population. We thought the troubled warnings of a
century--the insidious aggressions of slavery, with its
violations of the sacred rights of _habeas corpus_, free speech,
and free press, with its riots in our cities, and in the councils
of the nation striking down, alike, black men and brave Senators,
all culminating, at last, in the horrid tragedies of war--must
have roused the dullest moral sense, and prepared the nation's
heart to do justice and love mercy. But we were mistaken. Sunk in
luxury, corruption, and crime--born and bred into the "guilty
phantasy that man could hold property in man," we needed the
clash of arms, the cannon's roar, the shrieks and groans of
fallen heroes, the lamentations of mothers for their first-born,
the angel's trump, the voices of the mighty dead, to wake this
stolid nation from its sleep of death.

In circulating our petition many refused to sign because they
believed slavery a divine institution, and therefore did not wish
to change the status of the slave. Others, who professed to hate
slavery, denied the right of Congress to interfere with it in the
States; and yet others condemned all dictation, or even
suggestion to Congress or the President. They said, "_Let the
people be still_ and trust the affairs of State to the management
of the rulers they, themselves, have chosen." And many of our
"old Abolitionists," believing _their_ work done, that the war
had killed slavery, knocked the bottom out of the tub, not only
declared our work one of supererogation, but told us that
petitioning, as a means of educating the people or influencing
Congress, had become obsolete.

Under all these discouragements, with neither press nor pulpit to
magnify our work, without money or the enthusiasm of numbers, in
simple faith, into the highways and hedges we sent the Gospel of
Freedom, and as of old, the people heard with gladness. A very
large majority of our petitioners are from the unlettered masses.
They who, knowing naught of the machinery of government or the
trickery of politics, believe that, as God reigns, there is
justice on the earth. As yet, none of our large cities have been
thoroughly canvassed; but from the savannahs of the South and the
prairies of the West--from the hills of New England and the
shores of our lakes and gulfs, have we enrolled the soldiers of
freedom; they who, when the rebels shall lay down their arms,
with higher, holier weapons must end the war. Through us, two
hundred thousand[45] people--the labor and virtue of the
Republic--have spoken in our national Capitol, where their voices
were never heard before.

Those unaccustomed to balance influences, who judge of the
importance of movements by their apparent results, may deem our
efforts lost, because the Amendment and Emancipation bills have
not yet passed the House; but _we_ feel that our labors for the
past year, in the circulation of tracts and petitions and
appeals--in our lectures and letters, public and private, have
done as much to kill the rebellion, by educating the people for
the final blow, as any other organization, civil, political,
military, or religious, in the land. Could you but read the many
earnest, thrilling letters we have received from simple men and
women, in their rural homes, you would have fresh hope for the
stability of our Republic; remembering that the life of a nation
depends on the virtue of its people, and not on the dignity of
its rulers.

One poor, infirm woman in Wisconsin, who had lost her husband and
all her sons in the war, traveled on foot over _one hundred
miles_ in gathering _two thousand names_. Her letter was filled
with joy that she, too, had been able to do something for the
cause of liberty. Follow her, in imagination, through sleet and
snow, from house to house; listen to her words--mark the pathos
of her voice, as she debates the question of freedom, or tells
some tale of horror in the land of slavery, or asks her neighbors
one by one, to give their names to end such wrongs. Aside from
all she says, the _fact_ that she comes in storm, on foot, is to
all an argument, that there is something wrong in the republic,
demanding haste and action from every citizen. You who, in
crowded towns, move masses by your eloquence, scorn not the
slower modes. Remember the seeds of enthusiasm you call forth
have been planted by humbler hands--by the fireside, the old
arm-chair in the workshop, at the plow--wherever man communes
alone with God.

Our work for the past year--and what must still be our
work--involves the vital question of the nation's life. For,
until the old Union with slavery be broken, and our Constitution
so amended as to secure the elective franchise to all its
citizens who are taxed, or who bear arms to support the
Government, we have no foundations on which to build a true
Republic. We urge our countrywomen who have shown so much
enthusiasm in the war--in Sanitary and Freedmen's
Associations--now to give themselves to the broader, deeper,
higher work of reconstruction. The new nation demands the highest
type of womanhood. It is a holy mission to minister to suffering
soldiers in camp and hospital, and on the battle-field; to hold
the heads and stanch the wounds of dying heroes; but holier
still, by the magic word of freedom, to speak a dying nation into
life.

Four years ago the _many_ thought all was well in the land of the
free and the home of the brave; but _we_ knew the war was raging
then through all the Southern States. We knew the secrets of that
bastile of horrors; we heard, afar off, the shrieks and groans of
the dying, the lamentations of husbands and wives, parents and
children, sundered forever from each other. _Then_ we fed, and
clothed, and sheltered the fugitives in their weary marches where
the North Star led, and crowned with immortal wreaths the panting
heroes, pursued by the bloodhounds from the everglades of
Florida, who asked but to die in freedom under the shadow of a
monarch's throne.

Yes, the rebellion has been raging near a century on every cotton
field and rice plantation. Every vice, hardship, and abomination,
suffered by our soldiers in the war, has been the daily life in
slavery. Yet no Northern volunteers marched to the black man's
help, though he stood alone against such fearful odds, until John
Brown and his twenty-three men threw themselves into the deadly
breach. What a sublime spectacle! Behold! the black man,
forgetting all our crimes, all his wrongs for generations, now
nobly takes up arms in our defence. Look not to Greece or Rome
for heroes--to Jerusalem or Mecca for saints--but for the highest
virtues of heroism, let us worship the black man at our feet.
Mothers, redeem the past by teaching your children the limits of
human rights, with the same exactness that you now teach the
multiplication table. That "all men are created equal" is a far
more important fact for a child to understand, than that twice
two makes four.

Had we during the past century as fondly guarded the tree of
liberty, with its blessed fruits of equality, as have Southern
mothers the deadly upas of slavery, the blood of our sires and
sons, mingled with the sweat and tears of slaves, would not now
enrich the tyrant's soil, our hearthstones would not all be
desolate, nor we, with shame, behold our Northern statesmen in
the nation's councils overwhelmed with doubt and perplexity on
the simplest question of human rights. A mariner without chart or
compass, ignorant of the starry world above his head, drifting on
a troubled sea, is not more hopeless than a nation, in the throes
of revolution, without faith in the immutability and safety of
truth and justice.

Behold in the long past the endless wreck of nations--Despotisms,
Monarchies, Republics--alike, they all sprang up and
bloomed--then drooped and died, because not planted with the
seeds of life; and on their crumbling ruins the black man now
plants his feet, and as he proudly breaks his chains declares,
"MAN ABOVE ALL HUMAN GOVERNMENT."

WENDELL PHILLIPS was introduced and made an eloquent appeal in
behalf of the object of the League. He congratulated the Society
on the progress it had made, contrasted the past with the
present, referred to his experience at former meetings, and
argued that woman should have a voice and a vote in the affairs
of the nation. He showed the importance of woman's moral power
infused into the politics of the country, and of the independence
of those outside of party lines, who neither vote or hold office,
to criticise the shortcomings of our rulers. He eulogized the
manner in which Anna Dickinson had arraigned both men and
measures before the judgment-seat of the people; deplored the
slavery of party, that puts padlocks on the lips of leading
politicians. While the sons of the Puritans, with bated breath,
see in the violation of the most sacred rights of citizens the
swift-coming destruction of the Republic, and in silence wait the
shock, an inspired girl comes forward, sounds the alarm, raises
the signal of distress, and fearlessly calls the captain, pilot,
crew, and all to duty, for the Ship of State is drifting on a
rock-bound coast. Again and again is this young girl put forward
to tell the people what men in high places dare not say
themselves.

The following resolutions were then read and submitted for
discussion:

1. _Whereas_, The testimony of all history, the teachings of all
sound philosophy, and our national experience for almost a
hundred years, have demonstrated that in the Divine economy there
is an "irrepressible conflict" between slavery and freedom; and

WHEREAS, The present war is but the legitimate fruit of this
unnatural union; therefore

_Resolved_, That any attempt to reconstruct the Government with
any root or branch of the slave system remaining, will surely
prove disastrous, and therefore should be met at the outset with
the stern rebuke of every true patriot and friend of humanity.

2. _Resolved_, That this Government _still_ upholds slavery by
military as well as civil power, and is, therefore, itself, still
in daring rebellion against the GOD OF JUSTICE, before whom
Jefferson "trembled" and whose "exterminating thunders" he warned
us would be our destruction, unless, by "the diffusion of light
and liberality," we were led to exterminate it forever from the
land.

3. _Resolved_, That until the old union with slavery be broken,
and the Constitution so amended as to secure the elective
franchise to all citizens who bear arms, or are taxed to support
the Government, we have no foundations on which to build a TRUE
REPUBLIC.

4. WHEREAS, The _Anti_ or _Pro_-slavery character of the
Constitution has long been a question of dispute among statesmen
and judges, as well as reformers, therefore

_Resolved_, That we demand for the NEW NATION a NEW CONSTITUTION,
in which the guarantee of liberty and equality to every human
being shall be so plainly and clearly written as never again to
be called in question.

5. _Resolved_, That we demand for black men not only the right to
be sailors, soldiers, and laborers under equal pay and protection
with white men, but the right of suffrage, that only safeguard of
civil liberty, without which emancipation is but mockery.

6. _Resolved_, That women now acting as nurses in our hospitals,
who are regular graduates of medicine, should be recognized as
physicians and surgeons, and receive the same remuneration for
their services as men.

7. _Resolved_, That the failure of the Administration to protect
our black troops against such outrages as were long ago
officially threatened, and fearfully perpetrated at Port Hudson,
Milliken's Bend, Olustee, and Fort Pillow, is but added proof of
its _heartless character_ or _utter incapacity_ to conduct the
war.

8. _Resolved_, That when the men of a nation, in a political
party, consecrate themselves to "Freedom and Peace" and declare
their high resolve to found a Republic on the principles of
justice, they have lifted politics into the sphere of morals and
religion, where it is the duty of women to be co-workers with
them in giving immortal life to the NEW nation.

9. _Resolved_, That our special thanks are due to Robert Dale
Owen, who aided us in the inauguration of our work; and to
Charles Sumner, who so earnestly and eloquently presented our
petitions in the Senate of the United States.

10. WHEREAS, From official statistics, it appears that our annual
national expenditures for imported broadcloths, silks, laces,
embroideries, wines, spirits, and cigars, are more than one
hundred million dollars; therefore

_Resolved_, that we recommend the formation of leagues of
patriotic men and women throughout the country, whose object
shall be to discountenance and prevent the indulgence of all
these, and similar useless luxuries during the war; thereby
encouraging habits of economy, stimulating American industry,
diminishing the foreign debt, and increasing our ability to meet
the vast expenditures of the present crisis.

The following letters were read by Miss Anthony:

LETTER FROM EMILE PRETORIUS.

ST. LOUIS, MO., _April 29, 1864_.

MADAM:--Your favor of 23d inst. has come to hand with your call,
which was published and endorsed by our paper, as you will see by
the enclosed slip. Your sentiments are so high and noble that to
doubt a favorable result and response from the West would be like
doubting whether our women had courage enough to follow the
truest instincts, the best impulses of their own pure nature. I,
for one, have no such idea, no such fears; and if I should ever
believe that the Cornelias and Thuseneldas were only to be found
by going back thousands of years in history, and would not and
could not be rivalled by patriotic mothers and heroic wives in
this present crises of ours, I then would renounce at once all
hopes of a national resurrection. Liberty, it is true, is
immortal; but we would be bound to look for her in some other
part of our globe, if we fail on American soil to enlist in our
struggle the full heart of our women.

But there is no such thing as failure in battling for all that is
high and good and sacred, and there is no such thing as failure
in appealing for so good a cause to woman's noble mind and true
heart. They will be with us, every one of them will, and whether
a majority of our people be up to our standard this time or not,
still, in the eyes of our women we would be what our German poet
calls, "the conquering defeated."

Yours for Fremont and Freedom, EMILE PRETORIUS.

LETTER FROM CHARLES SUMNER.

SENATE CHAMBER, _May 6, 1864_.

MADAM:--I can not be with you in New York, according to the
invitation with which you have honored me; for my post of duty is
here. I am grateful to your Association for what you have done to
arouse the country to insist on the extinction of slavery. Now is
the time to strike, and no effort should be spared. And yet there
are many who lap themselves in the luxury of present success, and
hold back. This is a mistake. The good work must be finished; and
to my mind nothing seems to be done while anything remains to be
done. There is one point to which attention must be directed. No
effort should be spared to castigate and blast the whole idea of
_property in man_, which is the corner-stone of the rebel
pretension, and the constant assumption of the partisans of
slavery, or of its lukewarm opponents. Let this idea be trampled
out, and there will be no sympathy with the rebellion; and there
will be no such abomination as _slave-hunting_, which is beyond
question the most execrable feature of slavery itself. Accept my
thanks, and believe me,

Madam, faithfully yours,
MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY. CHARLES SUMNER.

Speeches were then made by George Thompson, Lucretia Mott, and
Ernestine L. Rose; after which, in adjourning the Convention, the
President said:

This is the only organization of women that will have a
legitimate cause for existence beyond the present hour. The
Sanitary, Soldiers' Aid, Hospital, and Freedmen's Societies all
end with the war; but the soldier and negro in peace have yet to
be educated into the duties of citizens in a republic, and our
legislators to be stimulated by a higher law than temporary
policy. This is the only organization formed during the war based
specifically on universal emancipation and enfranchisement.
Knowing that in this great national upheaval women would exert an
influence for good or evil, we felt the importance of
concentrating all their power on the side of liberty. To this end
we have urged them to use with zeal and earnestness their only
political right under the Constitution: the right of petition.
During the past year the petitions for freedom have been quietly
circulating in the most remote school districts of all the free
States and Territories, in the Army, the Navy, and some have
found their way to the far South. And now they are coming back by
the thousands, with the signatures of men and women, black and
white, soldiers and civilians, from every point of the compass,
to be presented in mammoth rolls again in the coming Congress. I
urge every one present to help spread the glad tidings of liberty
to all, by signing and circulating these petitions, remembering
that while man may use the bullet and the ballot to enforce his
will, this is woman's only weapon of defence to-day in this
Republic. The Convention is now adjourned.

The debates throughout these Conventions show how well the leaders of
the Loyal League understood the principles of republican government,
and the fatal policy of some of those in power. They understood the
situation, and clearly made known their sentiments. The character of
the discussions and resolutions in their Conventions was entirely
changed during the war; broader ideas of constitutional law; the
limits of national power and State rights formed the basis of the new
arguments. They viewed the questions involved in the great conflict
from the point of view of statesmen, rather than that of an ostracised
class. Reviewing the varied efforts of the representative women[46]
referred to in this chapter in the political, military, philanthropic,
and sanitary departments of the Government, and the army of faithful
assistants, behind them, all alike self-sacrificing and patriotic;
with a keen insight into the policy of the Government and the
legitimate results of the war; the question naturally suggests itself,
how was it possible that when peace was restored they received no
individual rewards nor general recognition for their services, which,
though acknowledged in private, have been concealed from the people
and ignored by the Government.[47]

Gen. Grant has the credit for the success of plans which were the
outgrowth of the military genius of a woman; Gen. Howard received a
liberal salary as the head of the Freedman's Bureau, while the woman
who inspired and organized that department and carried its burdens on
her shoulders to the day of her death, raised most of the funds by
personal appeal for that herculean work.

Dr. Bellows enjoyed the distinction as President of the Sanitary
Bureau, which originated in the mind of a woman, who, when the
machinery was perfected and in good working order, was forced to
resign her position as official head through the bigotry of the
medical profession.

Though to Anna Dickinson was due the triumph of the Republican party
in several of the doubtful States at a most critical period of the
war, yet that party, twenty years in power, has refused to secure her
in the same civil and political rights enjoyed by the most ignorant
foreigner or slave from the plantations of the South.

The lessons of the war were not lost on the women of this nation;
through varied forms of suffering and humiliation, they learned that
they had an equal interest with man in the administration of the
Government, enjoying or suffering alike its blessings or its miseries.
When in the enfranchisement of the black man they saw another ignorant
class of voters placed above their heads, and with anointed eyes
beheld the danger of a distinctively "male" government, forever
involving the nations of the earth in war and violence; a lesson
taught on every page of history, alike in every century of human
experience; and demanded for the protection of themselves and
children, that woman's voice should be heard, and her opinions in
public affairs be expressed by the ballot, they were coolly told that
the black man had earned the right to vote, that he had fought and
bled and died for his country!

Did the negro's rough services in camp and battle outweigh the
humanitarian labors of woman in all departments of government? Did his
loyalty in the army count for more than her educational work in
teaching the people sound principles of government? Can it be that
statesmen in the nineteenth century believe that they who sacrifice
human lives in bloody wars do more for the sum of human happiness and
development than they who try to save the multitude and teach them how
to live? But if on the battle-field woman must prove her right to
justice and equality, history abundantly sets forth her claims; the
records of her brave deeds mark every page of fact and fiction, of
poetry and prose.

In all the great battles of the past woman as warrior in disguise has
verified her right to fight and die for her country by the side of
man. In camp and hospital as surgeon, physician, nurse, ministering to
the sick and dying, she has shown equal skill and capacity with him.
There is no position woman has not filled, no danger she has not
encountered, no emergency in all life's tangled trials and temptations
she has not shared with man, and with him conquered. If moral power
has any value in the balance with physical force, surely the women of
this republic, by their self-sacrifice and patriotism, their courage
'mid danger, their endurance 'mid suffering, have rightly earned a
voice in the laws they are compelled to obey, in the Government they
are taxed to support; some personal consideration as citizens as well
as the black man in the "Union blue."

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Before one man was slain the lint and bandages were so piled up in
Washington, that the hospital surgeons in self-defence cried out,
enough!

[2] Feb. 24, 1862.

[3] In a conversation with Miss Carroll, in February, 1876, Mr. Wade
said: "I have sometimes reproached myself that I had not made known
the author when they were discussing the resolution in Congress to
find out, _but Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton were_ opposed to its being
known that the armies were moving under the plan of a civilian,
directed by the President as Commander-in-Chief. Mr. Lincoln said it
was that which made him hesitate to inaugurate the movement against
the opinion of the military commanders, and he did not wish to risk
the effect it might have upon the armies if they found out some
outside party had originated the campaign; that he wanted the armies
to believe they were doing the whole business of saving the country."

[4] See Appendix.

[5] The ninth, known to the world as the battle of Orleans, fought in
1439, which brought the hundred years' war between France and England
to an end, securing the independent existence of France, possessed for
its organizer and leader, Joan of Arc, then but eighteen, at which
time she acquired her cognomen, "Maid of Orleans."

[6] It has been well said: "That assumption of man that as feud is the
origin of all laws; that as woman does not fight she shall not vote,
that her rights are to be forever held in abeyance to his wishes, was
forever silenced by the military genius of Anna Ella Carroll in
planning this brilliant campaign. Proving, too, that as right is of no
sex, so genius is of no sex."

[7] Hon. L. D. Evans said: "Nothing is more certain than that the
rebel power was able to resist all the forces of the Union, and keep
her armies from striking their resources and interior lines of
communication, upon any of the plans or lines of operation on which
the Union arms were operating. Geographically considered, there was
but one line which the National armies could take and maintain, and
that was _unthought_ of and _unknown_, and could not have been found
out, in all human probability, in time to have prevented a collapse,
or warded off recognition and intervention, but for Miss Carroll. The
failure to reduce Vicksburg from the water, after a tremendous
sacrifice of life and treasure, and the time it took to take Richmond,
furnish irrefragable proof of the inability of the Union to subdue the
rebellion on the plan of our ablest generals.... England and France
had resolved that duty to their suffering operatives required the
raising of the blockade for the supply of cotton, and nothing
prevented that intervention but the progress of the National arms up
the Tennessee.... This campaign must, therefore, take rank with those
few remarkable strategic movements in the world's history, which have
decided the fate of empires and nations."

[8] See Appendix.

[9] But as early as she was thus engaged, one woman had already
preceded her. When the first blood of the war was shed by the attack
upon the Massachusetts troops passing through Baltimore that memorable
April 19, 1861, but one person in the whole city was found to offer
them shelter and aid. Ann Manley, a woman belonging to what is called
the outcast class, with a pity as divine as that of the woman who
anointed the feet of our Lord and wiped them with the hair of her
head--took the disabled soldiers into her own house, and at the hazard
of her life, bound up their wounds. In making up His jewels at the
last great day, will not the Lord say of her as of one of old, "She
has loved much, and much is forgiven her?"

[10] There was no penalty for disobedience, and persons disaffected,
forgetful, or idle, might refuse or neglect to obey with impunity. It
indeed seems most wonderful--almost miraculous--that under such
circumstances, such a vast amount of good was done. Had she not
accomplished half so much, she still would richly have deserved that
highest of plaudits, "Well done, good and faithful servant!"--_Woman's
Work in the Civil War._

[11] When the Spanish minister, Señor Don Francisco Barca, was
presented to the President, he spoke of America as the "splendid and
fortunate land dreamed of, for the service of God and of human
progress, by the greatest of all Spanish women, before others
conceived of it."

[12] On a pair of socks sent to the Central Association of Relief, was
pinned a paper, saying: "These socks were knit by a little girl five
years old, and she is going to knit some more, for mother said it
would help some poor soldier."

[13] The Christian Commission, an organization of later date, never
succeeded in so fully gaining the affection of the soldiers, who, in
tent or hospital, hailed the approach of medicine or delicacy, with an
affectionate "How are you, Sanitary?"

[14] Organized seven years previously by Dr. Blackwell as an
institution where women might be treated by their own sex, and for
co-ordinate purposes, and out of which the New York Medical College
for Women finally grew.

[15] Women in many other parts of the country were active at as early
a date as those of New York. A Soldiers' Aid Society was formed in
Cleveland, Ohio, April 20, 1861, five days after the President's
proclamation calling for troops. This association, with a slight
change in organization, remained in existence a long time after the
close of the war, actively employed in securing pensions and back pay
to crippled and disabled soldiers. At two points in Massachusetts,
meetings to form aid societies were called immediately upon the
departure of the Sixth Militia of that State for Washington.

[16] Women as loyal as these were to be found in the South, where an
expression of love for the Union was held as a death offence. Among
the affecting incidents of the war, was that of a woman who, standing
upon the Pedee River bank, waved her handkerchief for joy at seeing
her country's flag upon a boat passing up the stream, and who for this
exhibition of patriotism was shot dead by rebels on the shore. During
the bread riots in Mobile a woman was shot. As she was dying she took
a small National flag from her bosom, where she had kept it hidden,
wrapped it outside a cross, kissed it, and fell forward dead.

"Indeed, we may safely say that there is scarcely a loyal woman in the
North who did not do something in aid of the cause--who did not
contribute time, labor, and money, to the comfort of our soldiers and
the success of our arms. The story of the war will never be fully or
fairly written if the achievements of woman in it are left untold.
They do not figure in the official reports; they are not gazetted for
deeds as gallant as ever were done; the names of thousands are unknown
beyond the neighborhood where they live, or the hospitals where they
loved to labor; yet there is no feature in our war more creditable to
us as a nation, none from its positive newness so well worthy of
record."--_Women of the War._

[17] The distinctive features in woman's work in that war, were
magnitude, system, thorough co-operation with the other sex,
distinctness of purpose, business-like thoroughness in details, sturdy
persistency to the close. There was no more general rising among the
men than among the women, and for every assembly where men met for
mutual exertion in the service of the country, there was some
corresponding gathering of women to stir each other's hearts and
fingers in the same sacred cause.... And of the two, the women were
clearer and more united than the men, because their moral feelings and
political instincts were not so much affected by selfishness, or
business, or party considerations.... It is impossible to
over-estimate the amount of consecrated work done by the loyal women
of the North for the army. Hundreds of thousands of women probably
gave all the leisure they could command, and all the money they could
save and spare, to the soldiers for the whole four years and more of
the war.... No words are adequate to describe the systematic,
persistent faithfulness of the women who organized and led the
Branches of the United States Sanitary Commission. Their voluntary
labor had all the regularity of paid service, and a heartiness and
earnestness which no paid service can ever have.... Men were ashamed
to doubt where women trusted, or to murmur where they submitted, or to
do little where they did so much.--_Woman's Work in the Civil War_.
L. P. BRACKETT.

[18] Julia Ward Howe. See Appendix.

[19] See Appendix.

[20] During all periods of the war instances occurred of women being
found in the ranks fighting as common soldiers, their sex remaining
unsuspected.--_Women of the War._

[21] After the close of the war a bill was passed by Congress
authorizing the payment of salary due Mrs. Ella F. Hobart, for
services as chaplain in the Union army. Mrs. Hobart was chaplain in
the First Wisconsin Volunteer Artillery. The Governor of Wisconsin
declined to commission her until the War Department should consent to
recognize the validity of the commission. This Secretary Stanton
refused to do on account of her sex, though her application was
endorsed by President Lincoln, though not by the Government. Mrs.
Hobart continued in her position as religious counselor, Congress at
last making payment for her services.

[22] There are many and interesting records of women who served in
Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, New York,
and Pennsylvania Regiments, in the armies of the Potomac, the
Cumberland, the Tennessee, with the Indian Rangers, in cavalry,
artillery, on foot. A woman was one of the eighteen soldiers sent as a
scout at Lookout Mountain--whose capture was deemed impossible--to
ascertain the position of General Bragg's forces; and a woman
performed one of the most daring naval exploits of the war. It was a
woman of Brooklyn, N. Y., who, inspired with the idea that she was to
be the country's savior, joined the army in spite of parental
opposition, and, during the bloody battle of Lookout Mountain, fell
pierced in the side, a mortal wound, by a minie ball. Elizabeth
Compton served over a year in the 25th Michigan cavalry; was wounded
at the engagement of Greenbrier Bridge, Tennessee, her sex being
discovered upon her removal to the hospital, at Lebanon, Kentucky,
where, upon recovery, she was discharged from the service. Ellen
Goodridge, although not an enlisted soldier, was in every great battle
fought in Virginia, receiving a painful wound in the arm from a minie
ball. Sophia Thompson served three years in the 59th O. V. I. Another
woman soldier, under the name of Joseph Davidson, also served three
years in the same company. Her father was killed fighting by her side
at Chickamauga. A soldier belonging to the 14th Iowa regiment was
discovered, by the Provost-Marshal of Cairo, to be a woman. An
investigation being ordered, "Charlie" placed the muzzle of her
revolver to her head, fired, and fell dead on open parade-ground. No
clue was obtained to her name, home, or family.

Frances Hook, of Illinois, enlisted with her brother in the 65th Home
Guards, assuming the name of "Frank Miller." She served three months,
and was mustered out without her sex being discovered. She then
enlisted in the 90th Illinois, and was taken prisoner in a battle near
Chattanooga. Attempting to escape she was shot through one of her
limbs. The rebels in searching her person for papers, discovered her
sex. They respected her as a woman, giving her a separate room while
she was in prison at Atlanta, Ga. During her captivity, Jeff. Davis
wrote her a letter, offering her a lieutenant's commission if she
would enlist in the rebel army, but she preferred to fight as a
private soldier for the stars and stripes, rather than accept a
commission from the rebels. This young lady was educated in a superior
manner, possessing all the modern accomplishments. After her release
from the rebel prison, she again enlisted in the 2d East Tennessee
Cavalry. She was in the thickest of the fight at Murfreesboro, and was
severely wounded in the shoulder, but fought gallantly and waded the
Stone River into Murfreesboro on that memorable Sunday when the Union
forces were driven back. Her sex was again disclosed upon the dressing
of her wound, and General Rosecrans was informed, who caused her to be
mustered out of the service, notwithstanding her earnest entreaty to
be allowed to serve the cause she loved so well. The General was
favorably impressed with her daring bravery, and himself superintended
the arrangements for her transmission home. She left the army of the
Cumberland, resolved to enlist again in the first regiment she met.
The _Louisville Journal_ gave the following account of her under the
head of

"MUSTERED OUT.--'Frank Miller,' the young lady soldier, now at
Barracks No. 1, will be mustered out of the service in accordance with
the army regulations which prohibit the enlistment of females in the
army, and sent to her parents in Pennsylvania. This will be sad news
to Frances, who has cherished the fond hope that she would be
permitted to serve the Union cause during the war. She has been of
great service as a scout to the army of the Cumberland, and her place
will not be easily filled. She is a true patriot and a gallant
soldier."

"Frank," found the 8th Michigan at Bowling Green, in which she again
enlisted, remaining connected with this company. She said she had
discovered a great many women in the army, one of them holding a
lieutenant's commission, and had at different times assisted in
burying three women soldiers, whose sex was unknown to any but
herself.

The _St. Louis Times_, sometime after the war, referring to a girl
called as a witness before the Police Court of that city, says:

"This lady is a historical character, having served over two years in
the Federal army during the war; fifteen months as a private in the
Illinois cavalry, and over nine months as a teamster in the noted Lead
mine regiment, which was raised in Washburne district from the
counties of Jo Daviess and Carrol. She was at the siege of Corinth,
and was on duty during most of the campaign against Vicksburg. At
Lookout Mountain she formed one of the party of eighteen selected to
make a scout and report the position of General Bragg's forces. She
was an _attache_ of General Blair's seventeenth corps during most of
the campaign of the Tennessee, and did good service in the
reconnoitering operations around the Chattahochie River, at which time
she was connected with General Davis' fourteenth corps. She went
through her army life under the cognomen of 'Soldier Tom.'"

The name of Miss Brownlow, of Tennessee, was familiar during the war
for her daring exploits; also that of Miss Richmond, of Raleigh, North
Carolina, who handled a musket, rifle, or shot-gun with precision and
skill, fully equal to any sharp-shooter, and who was at any time ready
to join the clan of which her father, a devoted Unionist, was leader,
in an expedition against the rebels, or on horseback, alone in the
night, to thread the wild passes of the mountains as a bearer of
information.

Major Pauline Cushman and Dr. Mary Walker were also noted for their
devotion to the Union. No woman suffered more or rendered more service
to the national cause than Major Cushman, who was employed in the
secret service of the Government as scout and spy. She carried letters
between Louisville and Nashville, and was for many months with the
army of the Cumberland, employed by General Rosecrans, rendering the
army invaluable service. She was three times taken prisoner, once by
John Morgan, and advertised to be hung in Nashville as a Federal spy,
but she escaped by singular daring and courage. The third time she was
tried and condemned, but her execution was postponed on account of her
illness. After lying in prison three months, she had an interview with
General Bragg, who assured her that he would make an example of her
and hang her as soon as she got well enough to be hung decently.

While she remained in this condition of suspense, the grand army of
Rosecrans commenced its forward march, and one fine day the rebel town
in which she was imprisoned was surprised and captured by the Union
troops under General Gordon Granger, and she was released. After
hearing an account of the sufferings she had undergone for the Union
cause, General Granger determined to bestow upon her a testimonial of
appreciation for her services, and she was accordingly formally
proclaimed a Major of cavalry. The ladies of Nashville, hearing of
this promotion, prepared a costly riding habit trimmed in military
style, with dainty shoulder-straps, etc., and presented the dress to
Miss Cushman.

Dr. Mary Walker gave her services on the field as surgeon, winning an
acknowledged reputation in the Second corps, army of the Potomac, for
professional superiority. She applied for a commission as assistant
surgeon, but was refused by Surgeon-General Hammond because of her
sex. Dr. Walker suffered imprisonment in Castle Thunder, Richmond,
having been taken prisoner.

The special correspondent of the _N. Y. Tribune_, Headquarters Army of
the Potomac, Sept. 15, 1863, said: "She applied to both
Surgeon-Generals Finlay and Hammond for a commission as assistant
surgeon. Her competence was attested and approved, yet as the Army
Regulations did not authorize the employment of women as surgeons, her
petition was denied. A Senator from New York, with an enlightenment
which did him honor, urged her appointment to the Secretary of War,
but without success."

[23] Gilbert Hay, shortly before released from Fort La Fayette.

[24] LEE AT ARLINGTON.--Visitors to this noted place are so frequent
that his appearance attracted no attention. He walked through the
dreary hall, and looked in on the wide, vacant rooms, and passing to
the front, stood for some time gazing out over the beautiful panorama,
with its one great feature, the new dome of the old capitol,
surmounted by a bronze statue of Liberty armed, and with her back to
him, gazing seaward.

From this he passed to the garden, and looked over the line of the
officers' graves that bound its sides, saw the dying flowers and
wilted borders and leaf strewn walks, and continuing after a slight
pause, he stopped on the edge of the field where the sixteen thousand
Union soldiers lie buried in lines, as if they had lain down after a
review to be interred in their places. Some negroes were at work here
raking up the falling leaves, and one old man stopped suddenly and
stared at the visitor as if struck mute with astonishment. He
continued to gaze in this way until the stranger, walking slowly,
regained his horse and rode away, when he dropped his rake and said to
his companions: "Shuah as de Lord, men, dat was ole Massa Lee!"

One hastens to imagine the thoughts and feelings that must have
agitated this fallen chief as he stood thus, like Marius amid the
ruins of Carthage, on the one spot of all others, to realize the fact
of the Lost Cause and its eventful history. About him were the scenes
of his youth, the home of his honored manhood, the scenery that gave
beauty to the peaceful joys of domestic life. They were nearly all the
same, and yet between then and now, came the fierce war, the huge
campaigns and hundred battles loud with the roar of mouthing cannons
and rattling musketry, and stained into history by the blood of
thousands, the smoke of burning houses, the devastation of wide
States, and the desolation of the households, and all in vain. He
stood there, old before his time, the nationality so fiercely
struggled for, unrecognized; the great confederacy a dream, his home a
grave-yard, and the capitol he sought to destroy grown to
twice its size, with the bronze goddess gazing calmly to the
East.--_Correspondence of the Cincinnati Commercial_, 1866.

[25] Peter Waldo, a merchant of Lyon, of the 12th century, was less
the founder of a sect, than the representative and leader of a
wide-spread struggle against the corruptions of the clergy. The church
would have tolerated him, had he not trenched upon ground dangerous to
the hierarchy. But he had the four Gospels translated and (like
Wicklyffe) maintained that laymen had the right to read them to the
people. He exposed thus the ignorance and the immorality of the
clergy, and brought down their wrath upon himself. His opinions were
condemned by a General Council, and he retired to the valleys of the
Cottian Alps. Long persecutions followed, but his disciples could not
be forced to yield their opinions. The protest of the Waldenses
related to practical questions.--_Encyc._

[26] It was almost as thrilling a sight to me to see these earnest
women together at work with their needles, as it was to see the first
colored soldier in the Union blue. He was from Camp Reed, near Boston.
I met him in the church of Rev. Mr. Grimes, and could not have known
before how much such a vision would stir me. It was with great
satisfaction that I took him by the hand and rejoiced with him in the
progress of the Government toward equality.

[27] Mrs. Briggs ("Olivia") writing to the _Sunday Morning Chronicle_
after Mrs. Griffing had departed this life, said in this connection:
"Altogether $166,000 were given by Congress to the helpless who had
been so long held in bondage, and for the great good accomplished, the
sufferers were more indebted to Mrs. Griffing than to all the women of
the country combined, for the larger proportion of the supplies
purchased with this money, was distributed by her own hands."

[28] This would at first thought seem to conflict with the knowledge
of "the North Star" and "Canada," but, as elsewhere, we must draw the
line between the ignorant and the intelligent.

[29] See Appendix.

[30] The impeachment trial of President Johnson

[31] _Forney's Press_, in reporting a meeting at Kennett Square, said:
"Miss Anna E. Dickinson, of Philadelphia, aged seventeen years,
handsome, of an expressive countenance, plainly dressed, and eloquent
beyond her years, made the speech of the occasion. After the listless,
monotonous harangues of the day, the distinct, earnest tones of this
juvenile Joan of Arc were very sweet and charming. During her
discourse, which was frequently interrupted, Miss Dickinson maintained
her presence of mind, and uttered her radical sentiments with
augmented resolution and plainness. Those who did not sympathize with
her remarks, provocative as they were of numerous unmanly
interruptions, were softened by her simplicity and solemnity. 'We are
told,' said she, 'to maintain constitutions because they are
constitutions, and compromises because they are compromises. But what
are compromises, and what is laid down in those constitutions? Eminent
lawyers have said that certain great fundamental ideas of right are
common to the world, and that all laws of man's making which trample
on these ideas, are null and void--wrong to obey; right to disobey.
The Constitution of the United States recognizes human slavery, and
makes the souls of men articles of purchase and of sale.'"

[32] She has always said that that was the best service the Government
could have rendered her, as it forced her to the decision to labor no
longer with her hands for bread, but open some new path for herself.

[33] The highest compliment that the Union men of this city could pay
Miss Anna E. Dickinson, was to invite her to make the closing and most
important speech in this campaign. They were willing to rest their
case upon her efforts. She may go far and speak much; she will have no
more flattering proof of the popular confidence in her eloquence,
tact, and power, than this. Her business being to obtain votes for the
right side, she addressed herself to that end with singular
adaptation. But when we add to this lawyerlike comprehension of the
necessities of the case, her earnestness, enthusiasm, and personal
magnetism, we account for the effect she produced on that vast
audience Saturday night.

Allyn Hall was packed as it never was before. Every seat was crowded.
The aisles were full of men who stood patiently for more than three
hours; the window-sills had their occupants, every foot of standing
room was taken, and in the rear of the galleries men seemed to hang in
swarms like bees. Such was the view from the stage. The stage itself
and the boxes were filled with ladies, giving the speaker an audience
of hundreds who could not see her face. Hardly a listener left the
hall during her speech. Her power over that audience was marvellous.
She seemed to have that absolute mastery of it which Joan of Arc is
reported to have had of the French troops. They followed her with that
deep attention which is unwilling to lose a word, greeting her ever
and anon with bursts of applause. The speech in itself and its effect
was magnificent. The work of the campaign is done, and it only remains
in the name of all loyal men in this district to express to Miss
Dickinson most heartfelt thanks for her inspiring aid. She has aroused
everywhere respect, enthusiasm, and devotion, not to herself alone,
but to our country also. While such women are possible in the United
States, there is not a spot big enough for her to stand on, that will
not be fought for so long as there is a man left.--_Hartford Courant._

[34] Her profits on this occasion were about a thousand dollars.

[35] CORRESPONDENCE.

TO MISS ANNA E. DICKINSON, _Philadelphia, Pa._:

MISS DICKINSON:--Heartily appreciating the value of your services
in the campaigns in New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and
New York, and the qualities that have combined to give you the
deservedly high reputation you enjoy; and desiring as well to
testify that appreciation, as to secure to ourselves the pleasure
of hearing you, we unite in cordially inviting you to deliver an
address at the capital this winter, at some time suited to your
own convenience.

WASHINGTON, D.C., _Dec. 16, 1863_.

Hannibal Hamlin,
Charles Sumner,
Henry Wilson,
Benjamin F. Wade,
John Sherman,
James Dixon,
H. B. Anthony,
Ira Harris, and sixteen other Senators.
Schuyler Colfax,
Thaddeus Stephens,
William D. Kelley,
Robert C. Schenck,
James A. Garfield,
Henry C. Deming,
R. B. Van Valkenburg,
A. C. Wilder, and seventy other Representatives.

GENTLEMEN:--I thank you sincerely for the great and most
unexpected honor which you have conferred upon me by your kind
invitation to speak in Washington. Accepting it, I would suggest
the 16th of January as the time, desiring the proceeds to be
devoted to the help of the suffering freedmen.

Truly yours, ANNA E. DICKINSON.

1710 LOCUST ST., Phila., _June 7, 1864_.

[36] The _New York Evening Post_ in describing the occasion said:
"Miss Dickinson's lecture in the Hall of the House of Representatives
last night was a gratifying success, and a splendid personal triumph.
She can hardly fail to regard it the most flattering ovation--for such
it was--of her life. At precisely half-past seven Miss Dickinson came
in, escorted by Vice-President Hamlin and Speaker Colfax. A platform
had been built directly over the desk of the official reporters and in
front of the clerk's desk, from which she spoke. She was greeted with
loud cheers as she entered. Mr. Hamlin introduced her in a neat
speech, in which he happily compared her to the Maid of Orleans. The
scene was one to test severely the powers of a most accomplished
orator, for the audience was not composed of the enthusiastic masses
of the people, but rather of loungers, office-holders, orators,
critics, and men of the fashionable world. At eight o'clock Mr. and
Mrs. Lincoln entered, and not even the utterance of a fervid passage
in the lecture could repress the enthusiasm of the audience. Just as
the President entered the hall Miss Dickinson was criticising with
some sharpness his Amnesty Proclamation and the Supreme Court; and the
audience, as if feeling it to be their duty to applaud a just
sentiment, even at the expense of courtesy, sustained the criticism
with a round of deafening cheers. Mr. Lincoln sat meekly through it,
not in the least displeased. Perhaps he knew there were sweets to
come, and they did come, for Miss Dickinson soon alluded to him and
his course as President, and nominated him as his own successor in
1865. The popularity of the President in Washington was duly attested
by volleys of cheers. The proceeds of the lecture--over a thousand
dollars--were appropriated at Miss Dickinson's request to the National
Freedman's Relief Society."

[37] James Redpath.

[38] See Appendix.

[39] When our leading journals, orators, and brave men from the
battle-field, complain that Northern women feel no enthusiasm in the
war, the time has come for us to pledge ourselves loyal to freedom and
our country. Thus far, there has been no united expression from the
women of the North as to the policy of the war. Here and there one has
spoken and written nobly. Many have vied with each other in acts of
generosity and self-sacrifice for the sick and wounded in camp and
hospital. But we have, as yet, no means of judging where the majority
of Northern women stand.

If it be true that at this hour the women of the South are more
devoted to their cause than we are to ours, the fact lies here. They
see and feel the horrors of the war; the foe is at their firesides;
while we, in peace and plenty, live as heretofore. There is an
inspiration, too, in a definite purpose, be it good or bad. The women
of the South know what their sons are fighting for. The women of the
North do not. They appreciate the blessings of slavery; we not the
blessings of liberty. We have never yet realized the glory of those
institutions in whose defence it is the privilege of our sons to bleed
and die. They are aristocrats, with a lower class, servile and
obsequious, intrenched in feudal homes. We are aristocrats under
protest, who must go abroad to indulge our tastes, and enjoy in
foreign despotisms the customs which the genius of a Republic
condemns.

But, from the beginning of the Government, there have been women among
us who, with the mother of the immortal John Quincy Adams, have
lamented the inconsistencies of our theory and practice, and demanded
for ALL the people the exercise of those rights that belong to every
citizen of a republic. The women of a nation mold its morals,
religion, and politics. The Northern treason, now threatening to
betray us to our foes, is hatched at our own firesides, where traitor
snobs, returned from Europe and the South, out of time and tune with
independence and equality, infuse into their sons the love of caste
and class, of fame and family, of wealth and ease, and baptize it all
in the name of Republicanism and Christianity. Let every woman
understand that this war involves the same principles that have
convulsed the nations of the earth from Pharaoh to Lincoln--liberty or
slavery--democracy or aristocracy--equality or caste--and choose, this
day, whether our republican institutions shall be placed on an
enduring basis, and an eternal peace secured to our children, or
whether we shall leap back through generations of light and
experience, and meekly bow again to chains and slavery.

Shall Northern freemen yet stand silent lookers-on when through
Topeka, St. Paul, Chicago, Cleveland, Boston, and New York, men and
women, little boys and girls, chained in gangs, shall march to their
own sad music, beneath a tyrant's lash? On our sacred soil shall we
behold the auction-block--babies sold by the pound, and beautiful
women for the vilest purposes of lust; where parents and children,
husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, shall be torn from each
other, and sent East and West, North and South? Shall our free presses
and free schools, our palace homes, colleges, churches, and stately
capitols all be leveled to the dust? Our household gods be desecrated,
and our proud lips, ever taught to sing peans to liberty, made to
swear allegiance to the god of slavery? Such degradation shall yet be
ours, if we gird not up our giant freemen now to crush this rebellion,
and root out forever the hateful principle of caste and class. Men
who, in the light of the nineteenth century, believed that God made
one race all booted and spurred, and another to be ridden; who would
build up a government with slavery for its corner-stone, can not live
on the same continent with a pure democracy. To counsel grim-visaged
war seems hard to come from women's lips; but better far that the
bones of our sires and sons whiten every Southern plain, that we do
their rough work at home, than that liberty, struck dumb in the
capital of our Republic, should plead no more for man. Every woman who
appreciates the grand problem of national life must say war,
pestilence, famine, anything but an ignoble peace.

We are but co-workers now with the true ones of every age. The history
of the past is but one long struggle upward to equality. All men, born
slaves to ignorance and fear, crept through centuries of discord--now
one race dominant, then another--but in this ceaseless warring, ever
wearing off the chains of their gross material surroundings of a mere
animal existence, until at last the sun of a higher civilization
dawned on the soul of man, and the precious seed of the ages, garnered
up in the _Mayflower_, was carried in the hollow of God's hand across
the mighty waters, and planted deep beneath the snow and ice of
Plymouth Rock with prayers and thanksgivings. And what grew there? Men
and women who loved liberty better than life. Men and women who
believed that not only in person, but in speech should they be free,
and worship the God who had brought them thus far according to the
dictates of their own conscience. Men and women who, like Daniel of
old, defied the royal lion in his den. Men and women who repudiated
the creeds and codes of despots and tyrants, and declared to a waiting
world that all men are created equal. And for rights like these, the
Fathers fought for seven long years, and we have no record that the
women of that Revolution ever once cried, "hold, enough," till the
invading foe was conquered, and our independence recognized by the
nations of the earth.

And here we are, the grandest nation on the globe. By right no
privileged caste or class. Education free to all. The humblest digger
in the ditch has all the civil, social, and religious rights with the
highest in the land. The poorest woman at the wash-tub may be the
mother of a future President. Here all are heirs-apparent to the
throne. The genius of our institutions bids every man to rise, and use
all the powers that God has given him. It can not be, that for
blessings such as these, the women of the North do not stand ready for
any sacrifice.

A sister of Kossuth, with him an exile to this country, in
conversation one day, called my attention to an iron bracelet, the
only ornament she wore. "In the darkest days of Hungary," said she,
"our noble women threw their wealth and jewels into the public
treasury, and clasping iron bands around their wrists, pledged
themselves that these should be the only jewels they would wear till
Hungary was free." If darker hours than these should come to us, the
women of the North will count no sacrifice too great. What are wealth
and jewels, home and ease, sires and sons, to the birthright of
freedom, secured to us by the heroes of the Revolution? Shall a
priceless heritage like this be wrested now from us by Southern
tyrants, and Northern women look on unmoved, or basely bid our freemen
sue for peace? No! No! The vacant places at our firesides, the void in
every heart says No!! Such sacrifices must not be in vain!! The cloud
that hangs o'er all our Northern homes is gilded with the hope that
through these present sufferings the nation shall be redeemed.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

[40] The call for a meeting of the Loyal Women of the Nation:

In this crisis of our country's destiny, it is the duty of every
citizen to consider the peculiar blessings of a republican form of
government, and decide what sacrifices of wealth and life are demanded
for its defence and preservation. The policy of the war, our whole
future life, depends on a clearly-defined idea of the end proposed,
and the immense advantages to be secured to ourselves and all mankind,
by its accomplishment. No mere party or sectional cry, no
technicalities of Constitution or military law, no mottoes of craft or
policy are big enough to touch the great heart of a nation in the
midst of revolution. A grand idea, such as freedom or justice, is
needful to kindle and sustain the fires of a high enthusiasm.

At this hour, the best word and work of every man and woman are
imperatively demanded. To man, by common consent, is assigned the
forum, camp, and field. What is woman's legitimate work, and how she
may best accomplish it, is worthy our earnest counsel one with
another. We have heard many complaints of the lack of enthusiasm among
Northern women; but, when a mother lays her son on the altar of her
country, she asks an object equal to the sacrifice. In nursing the
sick and wounded, knitting socks, scraping lint, and making jellies,
the bravest and best may weary if the thoughts mount not in faith to
something beyond and above it all. Work is worship only when a noble
purpose fills the soul. Woman is equally interested and responsible
with man in the final settlement of this problem of self-government;
therefore let none stand idle spectators now. When every hour is big
with destiny, and each delay but complicates our difficulties, it is
high time for the daughters of the revolution, in solemn council, to
unseal the last will and testament of the Fathers--lay hold of their
birthright of freedom, and keep it a sacred trust for all coming
generations.

To this end we ask the Loyal Women of the Nation to meet in the church
of the Puritans (Dr. Cheever's), New York, on Thursday, the 14th of
May next.

Let the women of every State be largely represented both in person and
by letter.

On behalf of the Woman's Central Committee,
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

[41] _Vice-Presidents._--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, of New York; Angelina
Grimké Weld, of New Jersey; Fannie W. Willard, of Pennsylvania; Mary
H. L. Cabot, of Massachusetts; Mary White, of Connecticut; Mrs. E. O.
Sampson Hoyt, of Wisconsin; Eliza W. Farnham, of California; Mrs. H.
C. Ingersol, of Maine.

_Secretaries._--Martha C. Wright, of New York, and Lucy N. Colman, of
New York.

_Business Committee._--Susan B. Anthony; Ernestine L. Rose, New York;
Rev. Antoinette B. Blackwell, New Jersey; Amy Post, New York; Annie V.
Mumford, Penn.

[42] See Appendix.

[43] _Resolved_, 2. That we heartily approve that part of the
President's Proclamation which decrees freedom to the slaves of rebel
masters, and we earnestly urge him to devise measures for emancipating
all slaves throughout the country.

_Resolved_, 3. That the national pledge to the freedmen must be
redeemed, and the integrity of the Government in making it vindicated,
at whatever cost.

_Resolved_, 4. That while we welcome to legal freedom the recent
slaves, we solemnly remonstrate against all State or National
legislation which may exclude them from any locality, or debar them
from any rights or privileges as free and equal citizens of a common
Republic.

_Resolved_, 5. There never can be a true peace in this Republic until
the civil and political rights of all citizens of African descent and
all women are practically established.

_Resolved_, 7. That the women of the Revolution were not wanting in
heroism and self-sacrifice, and we, their daughters, are ready in this
war to pledge our time, our means, our talents, and our lives, if need
be, to secure the final and complete consecration of America to
freedom.

[44] The following is the abstract:

_State._ _Men._ _Women._ _Total._

New York 6,519 11,187 17,706
Illinois 6,382 8,998 15,380
Massachusetts 4,248 7,392 11,641
Pennsylvania 2,259 6,366 8,625
Ohio 3,676 4,654 8,330
Michigan 1,741 4,441 6,182
Iowa 2,025 4,014 6,039
Maine 1,225 4,362 5,587
Wisconsin 1,639 2,391 4,030
Indiana 1,075 2,591 3,666
New Hampshire 393 2,261 2,654
New Jersey 824 1,709 2,533
Rhode Island 827 1,451 2,278
Vermont 375 1,183 1,558
Connecticut 393 1,162 1,555
Minnesota 396 1,094 1,490
West Virginia 82 100 182
Maryland 115 50 165
Kansas 84 74 158
Delaware 67 70 137
Nebraska 13 20 33
Kentucky 21 21
Louisiana (New Orleans) 14 14
Citizens of the U. S.
living in New Brunswick 19 17 36
------ ------ -------
34,399 65,601 100,000

[45] The exact number of signatures, as ascertained by Senator
Sumner's clerk was 265,314

[46] Behind Clara Barton stood Frances D. Gage and others aiding and
encouraging her in the consummation of her plans; with Dorothea Dix in
the Hospitals, the untiring labors of Abby Hopper Gibbons and Jane G.
Swisshelm must not be forgotten. Three noble daughters, with hand and
heart devoted to the work, made it possible for Josephine S. Griffing
to accomplish what she did in the Freedman's Bureau. With Anna
Dickinson stood hosts of women identified with the Anti-Slavery and
the liberal republican movement; and behind the leaders of the
National Woman's Loyal League stood 300,000 petitioners for freedom
and equality to the black man, and the select body demanding the right
of suffrage for woman, who thoroughly understood the genius of
republican institutions.

[47] The facts that Miss Carroll planned the campaign on the
Tennessee; that Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell originated the Sanitary
movement; and that those Senators most active in carrying the measure
for a Freedman's Bureau through Congress, intended that Mrs. Griffing
should be its official head, are known only to the few behind the
scenes, facts published now on the page of history for the first
time.

CHAPTER XVII.

CONGRESSIONAL ACTION.

First petitions to Congress December, 1865, against the word
"male" in the 14th Amendment--Joint resolutions before
Congress--Messrs. Jenckes, Schenck, Broomall, and
Stevens--Republicans protest in presenting petitions--The women
seek aid of Democrats--James Brooks in the House of
Representatives--Horace Greeley on the petitions--Caroline Healy
Dall on Messrs. Jenckes and Schenck--The District of Columbia
Suffrage bill--Senator Cowan, of Pennsylvania, moved to strike
out the word "male"--A three days' debate in the Senate--The
final vote nine in favor of Mr. Cowan's amendment, and
thirty-seven against.

Liberty victorious over slavery on the battle-field had now more
powerful enemies to encounter at Washington. The slave set free; the
master conquered; the South desolate; the two races standing face to
face, sharing alike the sad results of war, turned with appealing
looks to the General Government, as if to say, "How stand we now?"
"What next?" Questions, our statesmen, beset with dangers, fears for
the nation's life, of party divisions, of personal defeat, were wholly
unprepared to answer. The reconstruction of the South involved the
reconsideration of the fundamental principles of our Government, and
the natural rights of man. The nation's heart was thrilled with
prolonged debates in Congress and State Legislatures, in the pulpits
and public journals, and at every fireside on these vital questions,
which took final shape in three historic amendments.

The first point, his emancipation, settled, the political status of
the negro was next in order; and to this end various propositions were
submitted to Congress. But to demand his enfranchisement on the broad
principle of natural rights, was hedged about with difficulties, as
the logical result of such action must be the enfranchisement of all
ostracised classes; not only the white women of the entire country,
but the slave women of the South. Though our Senators and
Representatives had an honest aversion to any proscriptive
legislation against loyal women, in view of their varied and
self-sacrificing work during the war, yet the only way they could open
the constitutional door just wide enough to let the black _man_ pass
in, was to introduce the word "male" into the national Constitution.
After the generous devotion of such women as Anna Carroll and Anna
Dickinson in sustaining the policy of the Republicans, both in peace
and war, they felt it would come with an ill-grace from that party, to
place new barriers in woman's path to freedom. But how could the
amendment be written without the word "male"? was the question.

Robert Dale Owen, being at Washington and behind the scenes at the
time, sent copies of the various bills to the officers of the Loyal
League in New York, and related to them some of the amusing
discussions. One of the Committee proposed "persons" instead of
"males." "That will never do," said another, "it would enfranchise all
the Southern wenches." "Suffrage for black men will be all the strain
the Republican party can stand," said another. Charles Sumner said,
years afterward, that he wrote over nineteen pages of foolscap to get
rid of the word "male" and yet keep "negro suffrage" as a party
measure intact; but it could not be done.

Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton, ever on the watch-tower for legislation
affecting women, were the first to see the full significance of the
word "male" in the 14th Amendment, and at once sounded the alarm, and
sent out petitions[48] for a constitutional amendment to "prohibit
the States from disfranchising any of their citizens on the ground of
sex."[49]

Miss Anthony, who had spent the year in Kansas, started for New York
the moment she saw the propositions before Congress to put the word
"male" into the National Constitution, and made haste to rouse the
women in the East to the fact that the time had come to begin vigorous
work again for woman's enfranchisement.[50] Mr. Tilton (December 27,
1865) proposed the formation of a National Equal Rights Society,
demanding suffrage for black men and women alike, of which Wendell
Phillips should be President, and the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_
its organ. Mr. Beecher promised to give a lecture (January 30th) for
the benefit of this universal suffrage movement. The _New York
Independent_ (Theodore Tilton, editor) gave the following timely and
just rebuke of the proposed retrogressive legislation:

A LAW AGAINST WOMEN.

The spider-crab walks backward. Borrowing this creature's mossy
legs, two or three gentlemen in Washington are seeking to fix
these upon the Federal Constitution, to make that instrument walk
backward in like style. For instance, the Constitution has never
laid any legal disabilities upon woman. Whatever denials of
rights it formerly made to our slaves, it denied nothing to our
wives and daughters. The legal rights of an American woman--for
instance, her right to her own property, as against a squandering
husband; or her right to her own children, as against a malicious
father--have grown, year by year, into a more generous and just
statement in American laws. This beautiful result is owing in
great measure to the persistent efforts of many noble women who,
for years past, both publicly and privately, both by pen and
speech, have appealed to legislative committees, and to the whole
community, for an enlargement of the legal and civil status of
their fellow-country women. Signal, honorable, and beneficent
have been the works and words of Lucretia Mott, Lydia Maria
Child, Paulina W. Davis, Abby Kelly Foster, Frances D. Gage, Lucy
Stone, Caroline H. Dall, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Susan B.
Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and many others. Not in all the
land lives a poor woman, or a widow, who does not owe some
portion of her present safety under the law to the brave
exertions of these faithful laborers in a good cause.

Now, all forward-looking minds know that, sooner or later, the
chief public question in this country will be woman's claim to
the ballot. The Federal Constitution, as it now stands, leaves
this question an open one for the several States to settle as
they choose. Two bills, however, now lie before Congress
proposing to array the fundamental law of the land against the
multitude of American women by ordaining a denial of the
political rights of a whole sex. To this injustice we object
totally! Such an amendment is a snap judgment before discussion;
it is an obstacle to future progress; it is a gratuitous bruise
inflicted upon the most tender and humane sentiment that has ever
entered into American politics. If the present Congress is not
called to legislate _for_ the rights of women, let it not
legislate _against_ them.

But Americans now live who shall not go down into the grave till
they have left behind them a Republican Government; and no
republic is Republican which denies to half its citizens those
rights which the Declaration of Independence, and which a true
Christian Democracy make equal to all. Meanwhile, let us break
the legs of the spider-crab!

While the 13th Amendment was pending, Senator Sumner wrote many
letters to the officers of the Loyal League, saying, "Send on the
petitions; they give me opportunity for speech." "You are doing a
noble work." "I am grateful to your Association for what you have done
to arouse the country to insist on the extinction of slavery." And
our petitions were sent again and again, 300,000 strong, and months
after the measure was carried, they still rolled in from every quarter
where the tracts and appeals had been scattered. But when the
proposition for the 14th Amendment was pending, and the same women
petitioned for their own civil and political rights, they received no
letters of encouragement from Republicans nor Abolitionists; and now
came some of the severest trials the women demanding the right of
suffrage were ever called on to endure. Though loyal to the Government
and the rights of the colored race, they found themselves in
antagonism with all with whom they had heretofore sympathized. Though
Unionists, Republicans, and Abolitionists, they could not without
protest see themselves robbed of their birth-right as citizens of the
republic by the proposed amendment. Republicans presented their
petitions in a way to destroy their significance, as petitions for
"universal suffrage," which to the public meant "manhood suffrage."
Abolitionists refused to sign them, saying, "This is the negro's
hour."[51] Colored men themselves opposed us, saying, do not block
our chance by lumbering the Republican party with Woman Suffrage.

The Democrats readily saw how completely the Republicans were
stultifying themselves and violating every principle urged in the
debates on the 13th Amendment, and volunteered to help the women fight
their battle. The Republicans had declared again and again that
suffrage was a natural right that belonged to every citizen that paid
taxes and helped to support the State. They had declared that the
ballot was the only weapon by which one class could protect itself
against the aggressions of another. Charles Sumner had rounded out one
of his eloquent periods, by saying, "The ballot is the Columbiad of
our political life, and every citizen who holds it is a full-armed
monitor."

The Democrats had listened to all the glowing debates on these great
principles of freedom until the argument was as familiar as a, b, c,
and continually pressed the Republicans with their own weapons. Then
those loyal women were taunted with having gone over to the Democrats
and the Disunionists. But neither taunts nor persuasions moved them
from their purpose to prevent, if possible, the introduction of the
word "male" into the Federal Constitution, where it never had been
before. They could not see the progress--in purging the Constitution
of all invidious distinctions on the ground of color--while creating
such distinctions for the first time in regard to sex.

In the face of all opposition they scattered their petitions
broadcast, and in one session of Congress they rolled in upwards of
ten thousand. The Democrats treated the petitioners with respect, and
called attention in every way to the question.[52] But even such
Republicans as Charles Sumner presented them, if at all, under
protest. A petition from Massachusetts, with the name of Lydia Maria
Child at the head, was presented by the great Senator under protest
as "most inopportune!" As if there could be a more fitting time for
action than when the bills were pending.

During the morning hour of February 21st, Senator Henderson, of
Missouri, presented a petition from New York.

SUFFRAGE FOR WOMEN.

Mr. HENDERSON: I present the petition of Mrs. Gerrit Smith and
twenty-seven other ladies of the United States, the most of them
from the State of New York, praying that the right of suffrage be
granted to women. Along with the petition I received a note,
stating as follows:

I notice in the debates of to-day that Mr. Yates promises,
at the "proper time" to tell you why the women of Illinois
are not permitted to vote. To give you an opportunity to
press him on this point I send you a petition, signed by
twenty-eight intelligent women of this State, who are
native-born Americans--read, write, and pay taxes, and now
claim representation! I was surprised to-day to find Mr.
Sumner presenting a petition, with an apology, from the
women of the republic. After his definition of a true
republic, and his lofty peans to "equal rights" and the
ballot, one would hardly expect him to ignore the claims of
fifteen million educated tax-payers, now taking their places
by the side of man in art, science, literature, and
government. I trust, sir, you will present this petition in
a manner more creditable to yourself and respectful to those
who desire to speak through you. Remember, the right of
petition is our only right in the Government; and when three
joint resolutions are before the House to introduce the word
"male" into the Federal Constitution, "it is the proper
time" for the women of the nation to be heard, Mr. Sumner to
the contrary notwithstanding.

The right of petition is a sacred right, and whatever may be
thought of giving the ballot to women, the right to ask it of the
Government can not be denied them. I present this petition
without any apology. Indeed, I present it with pleasure. It is
respectful in its terms, and is signed by ladies occupying so
high a place in the moral, social, and intellectual world, that
it challenges at our hands, at least a respectful consideration.
The distinguished Senators from Massachusetts and from Illinois
must make their own defense against the assumed inconsistency of
their position. They are abundantly able to give reasons for
their faith in all things; whether they can give reasons
satisfactory to the ladies in this case, I do not know. The
Senators may possibly argue that if women vote at all, the right
should not be exercised before the age of twenty-one; that they
are generally married at or before that age, and that when
married, they become, or ought to become, merged in their
husbands; that the act of one must be regarded as the act of the
other; that the good of society demands this unity for purposes
of social order; that political differences should not be
permitted to disturb the peace of a relation so sacred. The
honorable Senators will be able to find authority for this
position, not only in the common law, approved as it is by the
wisdom and experience of ages, but in the declaration of the
first man, on the occasion of the first marriage, when he said,
"This is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." It may be
answered, however, that the wife, though one with her husband, at
least constitutes his better half, and if the married man be
entitled to but one vote, the unmarried man should be satisfied
with less than half a vote. [Laughter]. Having some doubts,
myself, whether beyond a certain age, to which I have not yet
arrived, such a man should be entitled to a vote or even half a
vote, I leave the difficulty to be settled by my friend from
Massachusetts and the fair petitioners. The petitioners claim,
that as we are proposing to enfranchise four million emancipated
slaves, equal and impartial justice alike demands the suffrage
for fifteen million women. At first view the proposition can
scarcely be met with denial, yet reasons "thick as blackberries"
and strong as truth itself may be urged in favor of the ballot in
the one case, which can not be urged in the other.

Mr. SAULSBURY: I rise to a point of order. My point of order is,
that a man who has lived an old bachelor as long as the Senator
from Missouri has, has no right to talk about women's rights.
[Laughter].

The PRESIDENT _pro tem._: The chair moves that is not a point of
order; and the Senator from Missouri will proceed.

Mr. HENDERSON: I had no idea that that was a point of order, sir.
Whatever may be said theoretically about the elective franchise
as a natural right, in practice at least, it has always been
denied in the most liberal States to more than half the
population. It is withheld from those whose crimes prove them
devoid of respect for social order, and generally from those
whose ignorance or imbecility unfits them for an intelligent
appreciation of the duties of citizens and the blessings of good
government. To women the suffrage has been denied in almost all
Governments, not for the reasons just stated, but because it is
wholly unnecessary as a means of their protection. In the
government of nature the weaker animals and insects, dependent on
themselves for safety and life, are provided with means of
defense. The bee has its sting and the despised serpent its
deadly poison. So, in the Governments of men, the weak must be
provided with power to inspire fear at least in the strong, if
not to command their respect. Political power was claimed
originally by the people as a means of protecting themselves
against the usurpations of those in power, whose interests or
caprices might lead to their oppression. Hence came the
republican system. But it was never thought the interests or
caprices of men could lead to a denial of the civil rights or
social supremacy of woman. People of one race have always been
unjust to those of another. The ignorant and sordid Jew despised
the Samaritan and scoffed at the idea of his equality. To him the
learned and accomplished Greek was a barbarian, and all rights
were denied him except those simple rights accorded to the most
degraded Gentile. Chinamen, to-day, believe as firmly in the
superiority of the celestial race as Americans do in the
superiority of the Anglo-Saxon. All races of men are unjust to
other races. They are unjust because of pride. That very pride
makes them just to the women of their own race. There may be men
who have prejudice against race; they are less than men who have
prejudice against sex. The social position of woman in the United
States is such that no civil right can be denied her. The women
here have entire charge of the social and moral world. Hence she
must be educated. First impressions are those which bend the mind
to noble or ignoble action, and these impressions are made by
mothers. To have intelligent voters we must have intelligent
mothers. To have free men we must have free women. The voter from
this source receives his moral and intellectual training. Woman
makes the voter, and should not descend from her lofty sphere to
engage in the angry contests of her creatures. She makes
statesmen, and her gentle influence, like the finger of the angel
pointing to the path of duty, would be lost in the controversies
of political strife. She makes the soldier, infuses courage and
patriotism in his youthful heart, and hovers like an invisible
spirit over the field of battle, urging him on to victory or
death in defense of the right. Hence woman takes no musket to the
battle-field. Here, as in politics, her personal presence would
detract from her power. Galileo, Newton, and La Place could not
fitly discuss the laws of planetary motion with ignorant rustics
at a country inn. The learned divine who descends from the
theological seminary to wrangle upon doctrinal points with the
illiterate, stubborn teacher of a small country flock must lose
half his influence for good. Our Government is built as our
Capitol is built. The strong and brawny arms of men, like granite
blocks, support its arches; but woman, lovely woman, the true
goddess of Liberty, crowns its dome.

Mr. YATES: I wish to ask the Senator from Missouri a question. I
understand that he has introduced a resolution to amend the
Constitution of the United States so that there shall be no
distinction on account of color. Will the gentleman accept an
amendment to that resolution that there shall be no distinction
in regard to sex?

Mr. HENDERSON: I have given my views, I think, very distinctly,
as the Senator would have found if he had listened, in the latter
part of what I have just stated in reference to the question of
voting. In reply to what he has said, I will say that I do not
think that on the mere presentation of a petition it is in order
to discuss the merits of the petition. I hope, therefore, that
the Senator will not insist upon entering into a question of that
sort now.

Mr. YATES: I shall not do so. I only wish to say that I am not
proposing to amend the Constitution. I simply desire to give
rights to those who have rights under the Constitution as it has
been amended. When I propose to amend the Constitution then the
question will come up whether I will allow women to vote or not.

Mr. SUMNER: Before this petition passes out of sight I wish to
make one observation, and only one. The Senator from Missouri
began by an allusion to myself and to a remark which fell from me
when I presented the other day a petition from women of the
United States praying for the ballot. I took occasion then to
remark that in my opinion the petition at that time was not
judicious. That was all that I said. I did not undertake to
express my opinion on the great question whether women should
vote or should not vote. I did venture to say that in my opinion
it was not judicious for them at this moment to bring forward
their claims so as to compromise in any way the great question of
equal rights for an enfranchised race now before Congress. The
Senator has quoted a letter suggesting that I did not present the
petition in a creditable way. I have now to felicitate my
excellent friend on the creditable way in which he has performed
his duty. [Laughter].

Mr. YATES: Allow me to say that I think the two gentlemen, one of
whom has arrived at the age of forty-nine and the other
sixty-three, have no right to discuss the question of women's
rights in the Senate. [Laughter].

The PRESIDENT _pro tem._: Will the Senator from Missouri suggest
the disposition he wishes made of this petition?

Mr. HENDERSON: Let it lie on the table.

The PRESIDENT _pro tem._: That order will be made.

The wriggling, the twisting, the squirming of the Republicans at this
crisis under the double fire of the Democrats and the women, would
have been laughable, had not their proposed action been so
outrageously unjust and ungrateful. The tone of the Republican
press[53] was stale, flat, and unprofitable. But while their journals
were thus unsparing in their ridicule and criticism of the loyal women
who had proved themselves so patriotic and self-sacrificing, they
would grant them no space in their columns to reply.[54]

The second session of the Thirty-ninth Congress is memorable for an
able debate in the Senate on the enfranchisement of woman, on the
bill[55] "to regulate the franchise in the District of Columbia,"
which proposed extending the suffrage to the "males" of the colored
race. On Monday, December 10, 1866, Senator Cowan, of Pennsylvania,
moved to amend the amendment by striking out the word "male" before
the word person. This debate in the Senate lasted three entire days,
and during that time the comments of the press were as varied as they
were multitudinous. Even Horace Greeley,[56] who had ever been a true
friend to woman, in favor of all her rights, industrial, educational,
and political, said the time had not yet come for her enfranchisement.

From _The Congressional Globe_ of December 11th, 12th, 13th, 1866, we
give the debates on Mr. Cowan's amendment. In moving to drop the word
"male" from the District of Columbia Suffrage bill, he said:

Mr. PRESIDENT: It is very well known that I have always
heretofore been opposed to any change of the kind contemplated by
this bill; but while opposing that change I have uniformly
asserted that if it became inevitable, if the change was certain,
I should insist upon this change as an accompaniment. It is
agreed--for I suppose when my honorable friend from Rhode Island
[Mr. Anthony] and myself agree to it, it will be taken to be the
universal sentiment of the body--that the right of suffrage is
not a natural right, but a conventional right, and that it may be
limited by the community, the body-politic, in any manner they
see fit and consistent with their sense of propriety and safety.

The proposition now before the Senate is to confer on the colored
people of this District the right of franchise; that is, the
advocates of the bill say that that will be safe and prudent and
proper, and will contribute, of course, to the happiness of the
mass of the inhabitants of the District; and they further say
that no reason can be given why a man of one color should not
vote as well as a man of another color, especially when both are
equally members of the same society, equally subjected to its
burdens, equally to be called upon to defend it in the field, and
all that. I agree to a great portion of that. I do not know and
never did know any very good reason why a black man should not
vote as well as a white man, except simply that all the white men
said, "We do not like it." I do not know of any very good reason
why a black woman should not marry a white man, but I suppose the
white man would give about the same reason, he does not like to
do it. There are certain things in which we do not like to go
into partnership with the people of different races and between
whom and ourselves there are tribal antipathies. It is now
proposed to break down that barrier, so far as political power
may be concerned, and admit both equally to share in this
privilege; and since the barrier is to be broken down, and since
there is to be a change, I desire another change, for which I
think there is quite as good a reason, and a little better,
perhaps, than that offered for this. I propose to extend this
privilege not only to males, but to females as well: and I should
like to hear even the most astute and learned Senator upon this
floor give any better reason for the exclusion of females from
the right of suffrage than there is for the exclusion of negroes.
I want to hear that reason. I should like to know it.

Now, for my part, I very much prefer, if the franchise is to be
widened, if more people are to be admitted to the exercise of it,
to allow females to participate than I would negroes; but
certainly I shall never give my consent to the disfranchisement
of females who live in society, who pay taxes, who are governed
by the laws, and who have a right, I think, even in that respect,
at times to throw their weight in the balance for the purpose of
correcting the corruptions and the viciousness to which the male
portions of the family tend. I think they have a right to throw
their influence into the scale; and I should like to hear any
reason to be offered why this should not be. Taxation and
representation ought to go hand in hand. That we have heard here
until all ears have been wearied with it. If taxation and
representation are to go hand in hand, why should they not go
hand in hand with regard to the female as well as the male? Is
there any reason why Mrs. Smith should be governed by a goat-head
of a mayor any more than John Smith, if he could correct it? He
is paid by taxes levied and assessed on her property just in the
same way as he is paid out of taxes levied on the property of
John. If she commits an offense she is subjected to be tried,
convicted, and punished by the other sex alone; and she has no
protection whatever in any way either as to her property, her
person, or to her liberty very often. There is another thing,
too. A great many reflections have been made upon the white race
keeping the black in slavery. I should like to know whether we
have not partially kept the female sex in a condition of slavery,
particularly that part of them who labor for a living? I do not
know of any reason in the world why a woman should be confined to
two dollars a week when a man gets two dollars a day and does not
do any more work than she does, and does not do that which he
does do quite so well at all times.

Mr. President, if we are to venture upon this wide sea of
universal suffrage, I object to manhood suffrage. I do not know
anything specially about manhood which dedicates it to this
purpose more than exists about womanhood. Womanhood to me is
rather the more exalted of the two. It is purer; it is higher; it
is holier; and it is not purchasable at the same price that the
other is, in my judgment. If you want to widen the franchise so
as to purify your ballot-box, throw the virtue of the country
into it; throw the temperance of the country into it; throw the
purity of the country into it; throw the angel element, if I may
so express myself, into it. [Laughter]. Let there be as little
diabolism as possible, but as much of the divinity as you can
get. Therefore, Mr. President, I put this as a serious question
for the consideration of this body. In the presence of the
tendencies of the age and in recognition of this movement, which
my honorable friend from Massachusetts is always talking about,
and of which he seems to have had premonition long before it came
to any of the rest of us--I say in the face of this movement and
in recognition of it, I earnestly beg all patriots here to think
of this proposition. It is inevitable. How are you to resist when
it is made the demand of fifteen million American females for
this right, which can be granted and which can be as safely
exercised in their hands as it can in the hands of negroes? And I
would ask gentlemen while they are bestowing this ballot which
has such merit in it, which has such a healing efficacy for all
ills, which educates people, and which elevates them above the
common level of mankind, and which, above all, protects them, how
they will go home and look in the face their sewing women, their
laboring women, their single women, their taxed women, their
overburdened women, their women who toil till midnight for the
barest subsistence, and say to them, "We have it not for you; we
could give it to the negro, but we could not give it to you."

How would the honorable Senator from Massachusetts face the
recent meeting of the Equal Rights Society in Philadelphia? How
would he answer the potent arguments which were offered there and
which challenge an answer even from the Senate of the United
States, when made by women of the highest intellect, perhaps, on
the planet, and women who are determined, knowing their rights,
to maintain them and to secure them? I ask honorable Senators of
his faith how they are to answer those ladies there? If this is
refused, how are Senators to answer, especially those who
recognize the onward force of this movement, who are up to the
tendencies of the times, who desire to keep themselves in front
of the great army of humanity which is marching forward just as
certainly to universal suffrage as to universal manhood suffrage.
Therefore, Mr. President, I offer this amendment and ask for the
yeas and nays upon it.

The yeas and nays were ordered.

Mr. ANTHONY: I move that the Senate do now adjourn. ["Oh, no!"]

Mr. WILSON: I hope not.

The PRESIDENT _pro tem._: The motion is not debatable and must be
put unless withdrawn.

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate adjourned.

SUFFRAGE IN THE DISTRICT.
IN SENATE, TUESDAY, _Dec. 11, 1866_.

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: If there be no further morning
business, and no motion is interposed, the chair, although the
morning hour has not expired, will call up the unfinished
business, which is the bill (S, No. 1) to regulate the elective
franchise in the District of Columbia, the pending question being
on the amendment of the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan] to
strike out the word "male" before the word "person" in the second
line of the first section of the amendment, reported by the
Committee on the District of Columbia as a substitute for the
original bill.

Mr. ANTHONY: I suppose the Senator from Pennsylvania introduced
this amendment rather as a satire upon the bill itself, or if he
had any serious intention it was only a mischievous one to injure
the bill; but it will not probably have that effect, for I
suppose nobody will vote for it except the Senator himself, who
can hardly avoid it, and I, who shall vote for it because it
accords with a conclusion to which I have been brought by
considerable study upon the subject of suffrage. I do not contend
for female suffrage on the ground that it is a natural right,
because I believe that suffrage is a right derived from society,
and that society is competent to impose upon the exercise of that
right whatever conditions it chooses. I hold that the suffrage is
a delegated trust--a trust delegated to certain designated
classes of society--and that the whole body-politic has the same
right to withdraw any part of that trust, that we have to
withdraw any part of the powers or the trusts that we have
imposed upon any executive officer, and that it is no more a
punishment to restrict the suffrage, and thereby deprive certain
persons of the exercise of that right who have heretofore
exercised it, than it is a punishment on the Secretary of the
Treasury if we should take from him the appointment of certain
persons whose appointment is now vested in him. The power that
confers in each case has the right to withdraw.

The true basis of suffrage, of course, is intelligence and
virtue; but as we can not define those, as we can not draw the
line that shall mark the amount of intelligence and virtue that
any individual possesses, we come as near as we can to it by
imperfect conditions. It certainly will not be contended that the
feminine part of mankind are so much below the masculine in point
of intelligence as to disqualify them from exercising the right
of suffrage on that account. If it be asserted and conceded that
the feminine intellect is less vigorous, it must also be allowed
that it is more acute; if it is not so strong to strike, it is
quicker to perceive. But at all events, it will not be contended
that there is such a difference in the intellectual capacity of
the sexes as that that alone should be a disqualification from
the exercise of the right of suffrage. Still less will it be
contended that the female part of creation is less virtuous than
the masculine. On the contrary, it will be conceded by every one
that morality and good order, religion, charity, and all good
works appertain rather more to the feminine than to the masculine
race.

The argument that women do not want to vote is no argument at
all, because if the right to vote is conferred upon them they can
exercise it or not, as they choose. It is not a compulsory
exercise of power on their part. But I think that argument is
partly disproved by the Convention to which the Senator from
Pennsylvania referred yesterday, whose arguments he said were
worthy of consideration even in this Chamber. I think they are,
and I think it would be very difficult for any one in this
Chamber to disprove them. Nor is it a fair statement of the case
to say that the man represents the woman in the exercise of
suffrage, because it is an assumption on the part of the man; it
is an involuntary representation so far as the woman is
concerned. Representation implies a certain delegated power, and
a certain responsibility on the part of the representative toward
the party represented. A representation to which the represented
party does not assent is no representation at all, but is adding
insult to injury. When the American Colonies complained that they
ought not to be taxed unless they were represented in the British
Parliament, it would have been rather a singular answer to tell
them that they were represented by Lord North, or even by the
Earl of Chatham. The gentlemen on the other side of the Chamber
who say that the States lately in rebellion are entitled to
immediate representation in this Chamber would hardly be
satisfied if we should tell them that my friend from
Massachusetts represented South Carolina, and my friend from
Michigan represented Alabama. They would hardly be satisfied, I
think, with that kind of representation.

Nor have we any more right to assume that the women are satisfied
with the representation of the men. Where has been the assembly
at which this right of representation was conferred? Where was
the compact made? What were the conditions? It is wholly an
assumption. A woman is a member of a manufacturing corporation;
she is a stockholder in a bank; she is a shareholder in a
railroad company; she attends all those meetings in person or by
proxy, and she votes, and her vote is received. Suppose a woman
offering to vote at a meeting of a railroad corporation should be
told by one of the men "we represent you, you can not vote," it
would be precisely the argument that is now used--that men
represent the women in the exercise of the elective franchise. A
woman pays a large tax, and the man who drives her coach, the man
who waits upon her table, goes to the polls and decides how much
of her property shall go to support the public expenses, and what
shall be done with it. She has no voice in the matter whatever;
she is taxed without representation.

The exercise of political power by women is by no means an
experiment. There is hardly a country in Europe--I do not think
there is any one--that has not at some time of its history been
governed by a woman, and many of them very well governed too.
There have been at least three empresses of Russia since Peter
the Great, and two of them were very wise rulers. Elizabeth
raised England to the very height of greatness, and the reign of
Anne was illustrious in arms and not less illustrious in letters.
A female sovereign supplied to Columbus the means of discovering
this country. He wandered foot-sore and weary from court to
court, from convent to convent, from one potentate to another,
but no man on a throne listened to him, until a female sovereign
pledged her jewels to fit out the expedition which "gave a new
world to the kingdoms of Castile and Leon." Nor need we cite Anne
of Austria, who governed France for ten years, or Marie Theresa,
whose reign was so great and glorious. We have two modern
instances. A woman is now on the throne of Spain, and a woman
sits upon the throne of the mightiest empire in the world. A
woman is the high admiral of the most powerful fleet that rests
upon the seas. Princes and nobles bow to her, not in the mere
homage of gallantry, but as the representative of a sovereignty
which has descended to her from a long line of sovereigns, some
of the most illustrious of them of her own sex. And shall we say
that a woman may properly command an army, and yet can not vote
for a Common Councilman in the city of Washington? I know very
well this discussion is idle and of no effect, and I am not going
to pursue it. I should not have introduced this question, but as
it has been introduced, and I intend to vote for the amendment, I
desire to declare here that I shall vote for it in all
seriousness, because I think it is right. The discussion of this
subject is not confined to visionary enthusiasts. It is now
attracting the attention of some of the best thinkers in the
world, both in this country and in Europe, and one of the very
best of them all, John Stuart Mill, in a most elaborate and able
paper, has declared his conviction of the right and justice of
female suffrage. The time has not come for it, but the time is
coming. It is coming with the progress of civilization and the
general amelioration of the race, and the triumph of truth and
justice and equal rights.

Mr. WILLIAMS: Mr. President, to extend the right of suffrage to
the negroes in this country I think is necessary for their
protection; but to extend the right of suffrage to women, in my
judgment, is not necessary for their protection. For that reason,
as well as for others, I shall vote against the amendment
proposed by the Senator from Pennsylvania, and for the amendment
as it was originally introduced by the Senator from Ohio [Mr.
Wade]. Negroes in the United States have been enslaved since the
formation of the Government. Degradation and ignorance have been
their portion; intelligence has been denied to them; they have
been proscribed on account of their color; there is a bitter and
cruel prejudice against them everywhere, and a large minority of
the people of this country to-day, if they had the power, would
deprive them of all political and civil rights and reduce them to
a state of abject servitude. Women have not been enslaved.
Intelligence has not been denied to them; they have not been
degraded; there is no prejudice against them on account of their
sex; but, on the contrary, if they deserve to be, they are
respected, honored, and loved. Wide as the poles apart are the
conditions of these two classes of persons. Exceptions I know
there are to all rules; but, as a general proposition, it is true
that the sons defend and protect the reputation and rights of
their mothers; husbands defend and protect the reputation and
rights of their wives; brothers defend and protect the reputation
and rights of their sisters; and to honor, cherish, and love the
women of this country is the pride and the glory of its sons.

When women ask Congress to extend to them the right of suffrage
it will be proper to consider their claims. Not one in a thousand
of them at this time wants any such thing, and would not exercise
the power if it were granted to them. Some few who are seeking
notoriety make a feeble clamor for the right of suffrage, but
they do not represent the sex to which they belong, or I am
mistaken as to the modesty and delicacy which constitute the
chief attraction of the sex. Do our intelligent and refined women
desire to plunge into the vortex of political excitement and
agitation? Would that policy in any way conduce to their peace,
their purity, and their happiness? Sir, it has been said that
"the hand that rocks the cradle rules the world"; and there is
truth as well as beauty in that expression. Women in this
country, by their elevated social position, can exercise more
influence upon public affairs than they could coerce by the use
of the ballot. When God married our first parents in the garden,
according to that ordinance they were made "bone of one bone and
flesh of one flesh"; and the whole theory of government and
society proceeds upon the assumption that their interests are
one, that their relations are so intimate and tender that
whatever is for the benefit of the one is for the benefit of the
other; whatever works to the injury of the one works to the
injury of the other. I say, sir, that the more identical and
inseparable these interests and relations can be made, the better
for all concerned; and the woman who undertakes to put her sex in
an antagonistic position to man, who undertakes by the use of
some independent political power to contend and fight against
man, displays a spirit which would, if able, convert all the now
harmonious elements of society into a state of war, and make
every home a hell upon earth. Women do not bear their proportion
and share, they can not bear their proportion and share of the
public burdens. Men represent them in the Army and in the Navy;
men represent them at the polls and in the affairs of the
Government; and though it be true that individual women do own
property that is taxed, yet nine-tenths of the property and the
business from which the revenues of the Government are derived
are in the hands and belong to and are controlled by the men.
Sir, when the women of this country come to be sailors and
soldiers; when they come to navigate the ocean and to follow the
plow; when they love to be jostled and crowded by all sorts of
men in the thoroughfares of trade and business; when they love
the treachery and the turmoil of politics; when they love the
dissoluteness of the camp and the smoke and the thunder and the
blood of battle better than they love the enjoyments of home and
family, then it will be time to talk about making the women
voters; but until that time the question is not fairly before the
country.

Mr. COWAN: Mr. President, I had not intended to say anything on
this subject beyond what I offered to the Senate yesterday
evening, and I should not do so if it were not for the suggestion
of a friend, and I am glad to say a friend who believes as I do,
that it is the general supposition that I am not serious and not
in earnest in the amendment which I have moved; and I only rise
now for the purpose of disabusing the minds of Senators and
others from any impression they may have had of that sort.

I am perfectly free to admit that I have always been opposed to
change. I do not know why it is. Whether I have felt myself old
or not, I have not ranged myself in the category of "old fogies"
as yet. Although I feel an indisposition to exchange the "ills we
suffer" for "those we know not of," and am not desirous to launch
myself away from that which is ascertained and certain, and
adventure myself upon a sea of experiment, at the same time I
feel as much of that strength, that elasticity, that vigor, and
that desire for the advancement of my race, my countrymen, and my
kind as anybody can feel. I yield to no one in that respect. All
I have asked, and all I have desired heretofore, is that we go
surely. I believe with my fathers and my ancestors that to base
suffrage upon the white males of twenty-one years of age and
upward was a great stride in the world's affairs; that it would
be well for the world if its government could progress, could
advance upon that basis, and that all the rest of the world who
did not happen to be white males of the age of twenty-one years
and upward could very well afford to stand back and witness the
effect of our experiment. I was of that opinion, I lived in the
light of it, and I rejoiced in its success; and when I saw this
Rebellion, when I witnessed the differences of opinion which
convulsed this part of the Continent; when I saw the fact that
one-half of the United States was upon the one side and the other
half upon the other side as to the understanding of the true
theory of this Government of ours, simple as it may be to the
lawyer, complex as it may be when examined more thoroughly, I was
more than ever disinclined to widen the suffrage, to intrust the
franchise to a larger number of people. I trembled for the
success of the experiment; I hesitated as to where it would end.
I may say, Mr. President, that I hesitate yet. The question is by
no means settled, the difficulty is by no means ended, the
controversy is by no means yet concluded.

But the first step taken, from the very initiative of that step,
I have announced my ground and my determination. When a bill was
up here before, proposing to enlarge and widen the franchise in
this District, I stated that if negroes were to vote I would
persist in opening the door to females. I said that if the thing
were to be taken away from the feudal realms and from feudal
reasons, which went on the idea that the man who bore arms, and
he alone, was entitled to the exercise of political power, and if
it was to be put upon the ground of logic, and if we were to be
asked to give a reason for it, and if we were to be compelled to
give that reason, I said then, and I say now, "If I have no
reason to offer why a negro man shall not vote, I have no reason
to offer why a white woman shall not vote." If the negro man is
interested in the Government of the country, if he can not trust
to the masses of the people that the Government shall be a fair
and just Government and that it shall do right to him, then the
woman is also interested that this Government shall be fair to
woman and fair to the interests of woman. Why not, Mr. President?
Are not these interests equal to those of the negro and of his
race? I know it has been said that the woman is represented by
her husband, represented by the male; and yet we know how she has
been represented by her husband in bygone times; we know how she
is represented by her barbarian husband; and let him who wants to
know how she is represented by her civilized husband go to her
speeches made in the recent Woman's Rights Convention. We know
how she has been represented by her barbarian husband in the past
and is even at the present. She bears his burdens, she bears his
children, she nurses them, she does his work, she chops his wood,
and she grinds his corn; while he, forsooth, by virtue of this
patent of nobility that he has derived, in consequence of his
masculinity, from Heaven, confines himself to the manly
occupations of hunting and fishing and war.

I should like to hear my honorable friend from Maine [Mr.
Morrill], so apt, so pertinent, so eloquent on all questions,
discourse upon the title which the male derives in consequence of
the fact that he has been a fisher and a hunter and a warrior all
the time; and then I should like to know how he would
discriminate between that fisher and hunter and warrior, and
those Amazons who burnt their right breasts in order that they
might the more readily draw the bow and against whose onset no
troops of that day were able to stand. I should also like to know
from him how it was that the female veterans of the army of
Dahomey recently, within the last three or four years, in the
face of an escarpment that would have made European veterans,
aye, and I might say American veterans tremble, scrambled over
that escarpment and carried the city sword in hand.

Now, Mr. President, it is time that we look at these things; and
that we look them full in the face. I am always glad and willing
to stand upon institutions that have been established in the
past; that have been sanctified by time; that have given to men
liberty and protection with which they were satisfied. But, sir,
when the time comes that we are to make a step forward, then
another and different question arises. I am utterly astonished at
my honorable friend from Rhode Island who doubted my sincerity in
this movement. Why should I not be sincere? Have I not as many
interests at stake as he has?

My honorable friend from Oregon [Mr. Williams] thinks this is
entirely preposterous. I have no doubt he does, and I give him
all credit for honesty and sincerity in the remarks that he has
made; but the trouble with him is, and with a great many
others--perhaps it is with myself upon some subjects--is that he
directs his gaze too long upon a particular point. It is
remarkable that when a man who looks long and steadily upon one
subject to the exclusion of every other, that subject at last
becomes to him the universe itself. I have met
fellow-politicians fellow-Senators, and fellow-coworkers in the
great battle of life, who really had so long contemplated one
subject that it was not within their capacity to see any others.

But it unfortunately happens that in this world there are others
besides the negro who suffer. When you have told of the injuries
and outrages which prevail on the earth in regard to the negro
you have not finished. Another, and in my judgment a much more
important personage, comes upon the scene; she lifts the curtain
and reveals to you a new drama, and she tells you distinctly that
you have not only been tyrannizing over your brother, your sable
brother, your brother at the other end of the national antipodes,
your troublesome antipathic brother; you have not only been
drenching the earth from the East to the far West with the blood
of savages of a different color from yours; you have not only
left your blood-stained marks in Japan, in China, in the East
Indies, everywhere, and in the West, where one of your Christian
bishops boasted that six million Mexicans at one time had been
sacrificed, and what for? To make them Christians; to make the
rest Christians after the six millions had gone. I say this new
personage who makes her appearance upon the drama of human
affairs informs you that you and your religion, under the conduct
of the male, generative, fecundative principle of the sex, have
filled the world with blood from one end to the other of it. What
for? To give her liberty. She complains to-day; she complains in
your most intelligent high places; she complains in your most
refined cities; she complains in your halls decorated with a more
than Grecian beauty of architecture; she complains where all of
past civilization, all of past adornment, and all of past
education comes down to satisfy us that we stand upon the very
acmé of human progress; she complains that you have been tyrant
to her. Mr. President, let me read from the proceedings of the
Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Pennsylvania Anti-Slavery
Society. I propose to read from the remarks of Mrs. Gage, a
woman, a lady, a lady of brain and intellect, of courage and
force; and whether I am in earnest or not, whether I may be
charged with being serious or not, no man dare charge Mrs. Gage
with not being serious. Mrs. Frances D. Gage said: "I have read
speeches and heard a great deal said about the right of suffrage
for the freedmen." So have we all, Mr. President; and the
probability is that we have been even more afflicted if that can
be said to be a punishment, and there is very great difficulty
now to ascertain what is punishment in this world. If that can be
said to be a punishment, I think this Senate can with at least
equal propriety with Mrs. Gage, complain of its extraordinary
infliction upon them without any previous trial and conviction.
[Laughter]. "What does it mean? Does it mean the male freedman
only, or does it mean the freedwoman also? I was glad to hear the
voice of Miss Anthony in behalf of her sex." I am glad, Mr.
President, that we have a male of that name in this body who
emulates the virtues of his more humble sister [laughter], and
stands up equally here for the broad rights of humanity as she
does. "I know it is said that this is bringing in a new issue."
Yes, that is what was said about me yesterday evening. Gentlemen
said it was a new issue; we had not talked about this thing here
before; nobody had thought about it. Why had nobody thought
about it? Because nobody was thinking about the actual, real
sufferings which human beings were subjected to in this world.
Persons thought about such things just in proportion as they
reflected themselves upon their future political career. If it
became necessary, in order to elect a dozen Senators to this body
this winter, that the women should be treated as women ought to
be treated, that they should be put upon an equal footing with
the men in all respects and enjoy equal rights with men, then I
should have great hopes of carrying my amendment, and carrying it
in spite of everybody, because then and in that light it would be
seen by Senators, and they would be thereby guided. "I know it is
said that this is bringing in a new issue. We must bring in new
issues."

Now, I want to know what the honorable Senator from Massachusetts
[Mr. Wilson] will say when he finds me advocating this new issue
that must be brought in while he lags behind. My honorable friend
from Delaware [Mr. Saulsbury] will have immensely more the
advantage of him to-day than he had yesterday if he dares lag,
because I put the question to him now distinctly, and I do not
leave it to his sense of propriety as to whether he shall speak
or not speak on this question; I demand that he do speak. I
demand that that voice which has been so potential, that voice
which has had so much of solemn, I do not say sepulchral wisdom
in it heretofore, shall now be heard on the one side or the other
of this important question, which involves the fate, the destiny,
the liberty of one-half of the people who inhabit this Continent.
I know from the generous upswelling of the bosom, which I almost
perceive from here in my brother, that he will respond to this
sentiment, and make a response of which his State and her
progress, having two negroes in the Legislature now [laughter],
will be proud. I feel assured of it, and I feel that when
suffering humanity in any shape or form, whether it be male or
female, whether it be black or white, red or yellow, appeals to
him, the appeal will not be in vain, but that he will come to the
rescue, and that he will strike the shield of the foremost knight
on the other side and defy him to the combat.

"We must [said Mrs. Gage][57] bring in new issues. I sat in the
Senate Chamber last winter."

And now I beg pardon of my honorable friend from Massachusetts,
the other Senator from Massachusetts [Mr. Sumner], for any
offence that I may do to his modesty; but when I come to consider
the recent change which has taken place in his life and habits, I
am the better assured that he will endure it. At any other time I
should not have dared to introduce this quotation: "I sat in the
Senate Chamber last winter [said Mrs. Gage. Last winter,
remember] "and heard Charles Sumner's grand speech, which the
whole country applauded."

And Mr. President, they did, too, and they did it properly. It
was a great, a grand, and a glorious speech; it was the ultimate
of all speeches in that direction; and I too applauded with the
country, although I too might not have agreed with every part of
the speech. I might not have agreed with the speech in general,
but it was a great, grand, proud, high, and intellectual effort,
at which every American might applaud, and I pardon Mrs. Gage for
the manner in which she speaks of it. She has not excelled me in
the tribute which I offer here to the honorable Senator from
Massachusetts, and which I am glad to lay at his feet: "I sat in
the Senate Chamber last winter, and heard Charles Sumner's grand
speech which the whole country applauded; and I heard him declare
that taxation without representation was tyranny to the
freedman."

That was the ring of that speech; that was its key-note; it was
the same key-note which stirred his forefathers in 1776; it was
the same bugle-blast which called them to the field of Lexington
and Bunker Hill ninety years ago; and it is no wonder that Mrs.
Gage picks that out as being the residuum, that which was left
upon her ear of substance after the music of the honorable
Senator's tones had died away, after the brilliancy of his
metaphors had faded, after the light which always encircles him
upon this subject had gone away. It is no wonder that all that
remained of it was that taxation without representation was
tyranny. Let me commend it to the honorable Senator, with his
keen eye, his good taste, his appreciation of that which is
effective, and that which strikes the American heart to the core;
let me commend it to him who desires to be the idol of that
heart.

"When"--Now, Mr. President, _sic transit gloria mundi_. "When I
afterwards found that he meant only freedom for the male sex, I
learned that Charles Sumner fell far short of the great idea of
liberty."

All this outpouring, all this magnificent burst of eloquence, all
this eclectic combination drawn from all the quarters of the
earth, all the sublime talk about the ballot, was merely meant
for the question of trousers and petticoats? "Tyranny to the male
sex," says Mrs. Gage, and now she goes on, and this right to the
point. The proposition here is to give to the male freedman a
vote and to ignore the female freedwoman, to be tautological: "I
know something of the freedwomen South. Maria--I do not know that
she had any other name--when liberated from slavery at Beaufort
went to work, and before the year was out she had laid up
$1,000."

That is a magnificent Maria, that is a practical Maria. She puts
Sterne's Maria and all other Marias, except Ave Maria, in the
shade. [Laughter].

"I never heard of any southern white making $1,000 in a year down
there. Shall Maria pay a tax and have no voice?" Shall Maria pay
a tax and have no voice where the principle is admitted, where
the principle is thundered forth, where it is axiomatic, where
none dare gainsay it, that taxation without representation is
tyranny? "Shall Maria pay a tax and have no voice?" That is the
question. That, Mr. President, is the question before the Senate.

"Old Betty"--There is not so much of the classic, not so much of
the euphonious, not so much of the _salva rosa_ about Betty as
about Maria--"Old Betty, while under my charge, cleared more than
that amount free from taxation, and I presume is worth $3,000
to-day."

Think of Betty! "Is she to be taxed in South Carolina to support
the aristocracy?" Betty lives in South Carolina, it seems. "Will
you be just, or will you be partial to the end of time!"

The marriage relation was alluded to by Mrs. Gage.

And here is a most important part, to which I would direct the
attention of my brother Senators as fundamental in two
respects--fundamental in the testimony it furnishes of the
character of those you now propose to invest with the right of
suffrage, fundamental in its character as to the use which they
will make of it as to one-half of the people who are in this bill
presumed to be the objects of your especial care. The marriage
relation was alluded to by Mrs. Gage. "When the positive order
was sent to me to compel the marriage of the colored people
living together, the women came to me with tears, and said, 'We
don't want to be married in the church, because when we are
married in the church our husbands treat us just as old massa
used to, and whip us if they think we deserve it; but when we
ain't married in the church they knows if they tyrannize over us
we go and leff 'em.'"

That is the class of male, gentlemen, to whom you propose to give
suffrage. These poor women who have to be whipped if the males
think they deserve it, are the people to whom you deny it. These
are the gentlemen who are to fabricate and make your laws of
marriage, who are to fix the causes of divorce in these several
States. These are the men, in other words, who are to enact, if
it so please them, that upon the marriage the husband becomes
seized of all his wife's property, of the personalty absolute and
the realty as tenant by courtesy; or perhaps they will have no
courtesy about it--and I should not wonder if they had not--and
give it to him in fee.

"And the men"--I beg the Senate to remember that I am reading the
testimony of Mrs. Gage; unexceptionable testimony: "And the men
came to me and said: 'We want you to compel them to be married,
for we can't manage them unless you do.'"

I am not certain whether they can always be managed even after
they are married. [Laughter]. But this is worse a great deal than
before: "'They goes and earns just as much money as we does, and
then they goes and spends it, and never asks no questions. Now we
wants 'em married in the church, 'cause when they's married in
the church we makes em mind.' So in San Domingo establishing the
laws of marriage made tyranny for these redeemed slave women."

Mrs. Gage continues: "I would not say one word against marriage,
God forbid. It is the noblest institution we have in this
country. But let it be a marriage of equality. Let the man and
woman stand as equals before the law. Let the freedwoman of the
South own the money she earns by her own labor, and give her the
right of suffrage; for she knows as much as the freedman. Bring
in these elements, and you will achieve a success. But I will
stand firmly and determinedly against the oppression that puts
the newly emancipated colored woman of South Carolina under
subjection to her husband required by the marriage laws of South
Carolina. I demand equality on behalf of the freedwoman as well
as the freedman."

I might follow Mrs. Gage further; I might detain the Senate here
hour after hour reading extracts from the various speeches and
essays which have been delivered and made upon this subject
within the last few years, and I may again make the challenge
which I made yesterday. Let us have a reason why these are not
potent to influence our action. Let us be told wherein the object
of this argument is defective. Let us be shown why it is, if
these things are rights, natural or conventional, that those who
have interests are not to participate in them.

I listened to the eloquent and ingenious remarks of my honorable
friend from Maine [Mr. Morrill]--old, time-worn, belonging to the
region of paleontology, far behind the carboniferous era. I would
not undertake to go back there and answer them. All I can do with
them is to refer them to the next meeting of the Equal Rights
Society, which more than likely will meet in Albany or Boston the
next time. There they will be attended to, and there they will be
answered in such satisfactory phrase, I have no doubt, as would
pale any poor effort of mine in the attempt. I have also listened
to my honorable friend from Oregon [Mr. Williams], and still
there are the same ancient foot-prints, the same old arguments,
the same things that satisfied men thousands of years ago, and
which never did satisfy any woman that I know of, the same
traveling continually of the tracks of the lion into the cave
along with his victim, and _nulla retrorsum vestigia_, not a step
ever came back. But let me say to my friends that Mrs. Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, Mrs. Frances D. Gage, Miss Susan B. Anthony, are
upon your heels. They have their banner flung out to the winds;
they are after you; and their cry is for justice, and you can not
deny it. To deny is to deny the perpetuity of your race.

Now, Mr. President, in regard to this District and this city,
here is a fair proposition. It proposes to confer upon all
persons above the age of twenty-one years the right to
participate in the city government. Is any one afraid of it? Is
my honorable friend from Maine afraid of it? He says it shall be
confined to the males. He and my friend from Oregon have gone on
to tell you that the white males of this city are in a very bad
condition; indeed, some of them in such a terrible condition that
we are called upon to pass a bill of attainder, or a bill of
pains and penalties, and a little _ex post facto_ law in order to
reach their tergiversations and perverseness. If that be true,
why not incorporate some other element? I do not know much about
the female portion of the negroes of this District except what I
have seen, and I must confess that although there are a great
many respectable persons among the negroes, and many for whom I
have considerable regard, yet as a mass they have not impressed
me as being a very high style of human development.

When I look along the pavements and about the walks and see them
lounging, I am free to say that, without having been previously
enlightened on the subject by so much as we have heard upon it
recently, I should have had great doubts about conferring on them
the right of suffrage. And when I reflect that they have a
Freedmen's Bureau to make their contracts for them and to keep
them in order, and, it is said, to protect them against the
enmity of their white neighbors, even where they have a majority,
or nearly a majority, I am not strengthened in my partiality for
them by that. And when I reflect that just about this time last
year we had great hesitation about adjourning, for fear that the
people represented by these males who are now to be invested with
the franchise were in an actually starving condition in this
District, and that the chief authorities of the District, moved,
I have no doubt, by that humanity which ought to characterize
them everywhere, investigated the matter and reported to us, we
were obliged to appropriate $25,000 to relieve them in their
immediate wants; I do not think that speaks so well for the male
portion of the African population of this city.

I believe if it were to come to the last resort, that the female
Africans of the District of Columbia have more merit, more
industry, more of all that which is calculated to make them good
and virtuous members of society than the males have. Why should
you not throw them in? Why should you throw this batch of males
into the ballot-box without any countervailing element which
would be efficacious to qualify it and make it better?

To me it is perfectly plain. I have reconciled my mind to negro
suffrage, but while I reconcile myself to negro suffrage as
inevitable, I hold it to be my bounden duty to insist upon female
suffrage at the same time. I am happy to say that in this opinion
I am not alone; that while I favor universal suffrage limited by
the age of twenty-one years so far, there are others who have
been led to this same train of thought with myself. I beg,
therefore, to read a letter dated Jefferson, Ohio, November 14,
1866:

"MADAM:--Yours of the 9th instant is received, and I desire
to say in reply that I am now and ever have been the
advocate of equal and impartial suffrage of all citizens of
the United States who have arrived at the age of twenty-one
years, who are of sound mind, and who have not disqualified
themselves by the commission of any offence, without any
distinction on account of race, color, or sex. Every
argument that ever has been or ever can be adduced to prove
that males should have the right to vote, applies with equal
if not greater force to prove that females should possess
the same right; and were I a citizen of your State I should
labor with whatever of ability I possess to ingraft those
principles in its constitution. Yours, very respectfully,

B. F. WADE.

"_To_ SUSAN B. ANTHONY,
_Secretary American Equal Rights Association_."

Now, Mr. President, I ask whether this has not an orthodox
sanction at least. I should like to know who would question, who
would dare to question, the orthodoxy of the honorable Senator
from Ohio, and who dares tell me that this is such a novelty that
it is not to be introduced here as serious, as in earnest? Sir, I
say that I am perfectly in earnest, and I say that if this
amendment be incorporated in this bill I shall vote for it with
all my heart and soul. I beg to be understood that I would not
inaugurate the movement, I would not make the change by my own
mere motion, because I would not venture upon the change
anywhere. That change must rise out of, spring out of, and come
up from society generally. It is that thing which the poet has
called the _vox populi_, and which he likens to the _vox Dei_.
When the community spontaneously demands this call, when the
community spontaneously demands this action, I yield to it. It is
so in this instance. While I yield to the demand for negro
suffrage, I demand at the same time female suffrage; and when I
yield to the question of manhood suffrage, I feel assured I throw
along the antidote to all the poison which I suppose would
accompany the first proposition.

I am not afraid of negro suffrage if you allow female suffrage to
go hand in hand with it. I believe that if there is any one
influence in the country which will break down this tribal
antipathy, which will make the two races one in political harmony
and political action, not in actuality as races by amalgamation,
but which will induce that harmony and that co-operation which
may bring about the highest state, perhaps, of social
civilization and development, it is the fact that woman and not
man must interfere in order to smooth the pathway for these two
races to go along harmoniously together. And it is for that
reason that I insist that when you do make this step, this step
forward which once made can never be retrieved, you must do that
other thing which assures its success after it is made. Let the
negro male vote now, and you open the arena of strife and
contention; let both sexes vote, and then you close that arena of
strife, you bring in that element which subdues all strife, which
has made America what she is, which has made the American
political meeting, which has made the American political
convention, not the scene of strife or angry contention, where
armed men met together to settle political differences, as in the
Polish Diet, but a convention where all were subjected to reason,
influenced, as it might properly be, by eloquence and by that
"feast of reason" which is "the flow of the soul" to those who
enjoy it. And therefore, Mr. President, I beg to assure
everybody, and especially my honorable friend from Rhode Island,
who agrees with me, I know, upon this topic, that I am serious
and in earnest in urging this amendment; in dead earnest, in good
earnest, and why not? I am not so blind as to mistake the signs
of the times.

I might have refused to believe long ago, when my honorable
friend from Ohio [Mr. Wade] predicted that this was coming. I
might have disbelieved when my honorable friend from
Massachusetts [Mr. Wilson] predicted this was coming; when he
blew his bugle-blast and announced what an army was coming behind
to enforce his doctrine and his principles. I might, like Thomas
of old, have doubted; but now I have had my fingers in the very
wounds of which he spoke. I know of a certainty now that this
movement is in progress, and that this movement will go on. I
know of a certainty that black men must vote in the District of
Columbia. Who can doubt it? Those who are in favor of that
measure here are in force sufficient to carry it constitutionally
beyond all question. Well, if it is to be I am reconciled to it,
but at the same time I want to throw about it as many safeguards
as are possible under the circumstances, and among those
safeguards I think that of allowing females suffrage to be not
only the best, but the only one which will be efficacious in this
behalf. Mr. President, I have trespassed a great deal longer upon
the Senate than I intended. I beg to return my thanks for the
indulgence they have exhibited in listening to what I had to say.

Mr. MORRILL: Mr. President, the honorable Senator began by saying
that he was in earnest, and he concludes by affirming the same
thing. Doubtless he had made the impression upon his own mind
that after all he had said, there might be a doubt in the minds
of the Senate on that point. Does any one who has heard the
speech, somewhat extraordinary, of the honorable Senator, suppose
that he is at all in earnest or sincere in a single sentiment he
has uttered on this subject? I do not imagine he believes that
any one here is idle enough for a moment to suppose so. Now, his
attempt at being facetious has not been altogether a failure. I
think he has succeeded in being amusing; he has evidently amused
himself; and if he could afford the sacrifice, I admit he has
amused the galleries and probably the most of us; but that he has
convinced anybody that he was arguing to enlighten the Senate or
the public mind on a question which he says is important, he does
not believe and he does not expect anybody else to believe it. If
it is true, as he intimates, that he is desirous of becoming a
Radical, I am not clear that I should not be willing to accept
his service, although there is a good deal to be repented of
before he can be taken into full confidence. [Laughter].

When a man has seen the error of his ways and confesses it, what
more is there to be done except to receive him seventy and seven
times? Now if this is an indication that the honorable Senator
means to out-radical the Radicals, "Come on, Macduff," nobody
will object provided you can show us you are sincere. That is the
point. If it is mischief you are at, you will have a hard time to
get ahead. While we are radical we mean to be rational. While we
intend to give every male citizen of the United States the rights
common to all, we do not intend to be forced by our enemies into
a position so ridiculous and absurd as to be broken down utterly
on that question, and whoever comes here in the guise of a
Radical and undertakes to practice that, probably will not make
much by the motion. I am not surprised that those of our friends
who went out from us and have been feeding on the husks, desire
to get in ahead; but I am surprised at the indiscretion and the
want of common sense exercised in making so profound a plunge at
once! If these gentlemen desire to be taken into companionship
and restored to good standing, I am the first man to reach out
the hand and say, "Welcome back again, so that you are repentant
and regenerated;" but, sir, I am the last man to allow that you
shall indorse what you call radicalism for the purpose of
breaking down measures which we propose!

So much for the radicalism of my honorable friend. Now, sir, what
is the sincerity of this proposition? What is the motive of my
honorable friend in introducing it? Is it to perfect this bill?
Is it to vindicate a principle in which he believes? Not a bit of
it. It is the old device of the enemy--if you want to defeat a
measure, make it as hateful and odious and absurd as possible and
you have done it. That is the proposition. Does he believe in the
absolute right of women to vote? Not a bit of it, for he has said
here time and again in the beginning, middle, and end of his
discourse that he does not believe a word of it.

Mr. COWAN: And never did.

Mr. MORRILL: He says it is no natural right whatever either to
man or woman, and therefore he does not stand here to vindicate a
right.

Mr. COWAN: I should like to ask the honorable Senator whether he
believes it is a natural right either in man or woman.

Mr. MORRILL: I have said distinctly on a former occasion that I
did not; and therefore I am not to be put in the attitude of so
arguing. The Senator does not believe that; he is not here urging
a principle in which he believes. What is he doing? Trying to do
mischief; trying to make somebody believe he is sincere. That is
labor lost here. It will not succeed, of course. Now, what is his
position? "I do not believe in woman suffrage, and do not believe
in negro suffrage, but if you will insist upon male negro
suffrage I will insist upon woman negro suffrage." That is his
position exactly. "If you insist that the male negro shall vote,
I insist the female shall." That is his attitude, nothing more
nor less. Mr. President, I do not think there is much force in
the position. He has not offered an argument on the subject. He
has read from a paper. He has introduced here the discourse of
some ladies in some section of the country, upon what they esteem
to be their own rights, in illustration; that is all; not as
argument; he does not offer it as an argument, but to illustrate
his theme and to put us in an attitude, as he supposes, of
embarrassment on that subject. He has read papers which are
altogether foreign from his view of this subject, and which he
for a moment will not indorse. He offers these as an illustration
with a view of illustrating his side of the question, and
particularly with a view of embarrassing this measure.

Mr. COWAN: Well, now, Mr. President, I desire to answer a
question of the Senator. He alleges that I am not serious in the
amendment I have moved, that I am not in earnest about it. How
does he know? By what warrant does he undertake to say that a
brother Senator here is not serious, not in earnest. I should
like to know by what warrant he undertakes to do that. He says I
do not look serious. I have not perhaps been trained in the same
vinegar and persimmon school [laughter]; I have not been
doctrinated into the same solemn nasal twang which may
characterize the gentleman, and which may be considered to be the
evidence of seriousness and earnestness. I generally speak as a
man, and as a good-natured man, I think. I hope I entertain no
malice toward anybody. But the honorable gentleman thinks I want
to become a radical. Why, sir, common charity ought to have
taught the honorable Senator better than that. I think no such
imputation, even on the part of the most virulent opponent that I
may have, can with any justice be laid to my door. I have never
yielded to his radicalism; I have never truckled to it. Whether
it be right or wrong, I have never bowed the knee to it. From the
very word "go" I have been a conservative; I have endeavored to
save all in our institutions that I thought worth saving.

I suppose, in the opinion of the gentleman, I have made
sacrifices. I suppose I am in the condition of Dr. Caius: "I have
had losses." Certainly if any man has given evidence of the
sincerity of his doctrines, I have done so; I have lost all of
that, perhaps, which the Senator from Maine may think valuable; I
have lost all the feathers that might have adorned my cap by
opposition to radicalism; and now I stand perfectly free and
independent upon this floor; free, as I supposed, not only from
all imputation of interest, but free from all imputation of
dishonor. I am out of the contest. If I had chosen to play the
radical; if I had chosen to out-Herod Herod, I could have
out-Heroded Herod perhaps as well as the honorable gentleman, and
I could have had quite as stern and vigorous a following as he or
any other man, more than likely without asserting any very large
amount of vanity to myself [Mr. Morrill rose]; but now, when I
stand here, as, I think, free, unquestionably free from all
imputation either of interest or dishonor, to be told this is--If
the Senator wants to say anything I will hear him.

Mr. MORRILL: The honorable Senator will allow me to say that I do
not think this line of argument is open to him, because to-day
once or twice he certainly repeated that this was a race of
radicalism, and he did not intend to be outdone. My remark was
predicated simply on the assumption of the honorable Senator that
he was disposed to enter into the race, and rather in a
disposition to welcome than discourage him.

Mr. COWAN: Mr. President, I agree that if you will allow the
gentleman to put arguments in my mouth, and to furnish me
theories as his fancy paints them, he can demolish them. I will
not agree that he is my master in any particular; but I do agree
that he can take a pair of old pantaloons out in the country and
stuff them, and make a man of straw, and that he can overthrow it
and trample upon it and kick it about with the utmost impunity.
But I do not choose to allow the honorable Senator to make either
my theories or my arguments, nor do I allow him to make
quotations from me unless he does it fairly. I gave utterance to
no such idea as that which he has just attributed to me. I did
not say that in this race of radicalism I was determined to be in
front. I said no such thing. I said that there was an onward
movement, that I yielded to that movement, and that while I
yielded to it against my own better opinion that any change was
impolitic, yet that change was inevitable, I wanted it to be as
perfect as possible, and I wanted it to be made with all the
safeguards possible.

That was my argument. I said so yesterday; I said so to-day; I
say so now; and I appeal to my friends here who have talked about
this onward movement, this progress of things, this inevitable
which was in the future, to stand now upon their theories and
upon their doctrines. That was my ground, ground simply stated,
and for that I am not to be charged here with a desire to
conciliate the honorable gentleman, or his faction, or his party,
or any other party in this country. Mr. President, I am not a
proud man, I hope; not a vain man, I hope; but I would rather be
deprived of the right of suffrage, high punishment as it is, I
would rather suffer all the penalties that would be inflicted
even by the most malignant lawgiver, than to cower or cringe or
yield to anything of mortal mould on this planet, except by
duress and by force. No man dare charge me with that. I have
endeavored to act here as an honest man feeling his own
responsibilities, feeling the responsibilities of the oath upon
him when he took it; obliged to interpret the Constitution as he
himself understands it; feeling that that Constitution was a
restraint upon him, a restraint upon the people, a restraint upon
everybody; that we were sent here for the purpose of standing
upon it even against the rage of the people, even against their
desire to trample it under foot. Feeling all these things, I
have stood here, and appeal to my fellow-Senators to know if any
one of them can say that at any time I have manifested the
smallest disposition to yield in any one particular. I scorn the
imputation; I would rather have the approval of my own
conscience, I would rather walk in the star-light and look up to
them and to the God who made me free and independent, than to
seek the highest station upon the earth by truckling to any man
or to any set of people, or giving up my free opinions.

And yet I propose not to be irrational in this matter. As I said
yesterday, and as I said to-day, I have struggled against change;
but if it is to be made I wish to direct it properly. I made in
my own person, two or three years ago, a motion which passed this
body by, I think, a vote of precisely two to one--I believe it
was 28 to 14--that the voters of the District of Columbia should
be confined to white males; but upon that occasion I stated--and
the debates will bear me out, I think--that if the door of the
franchise was to be opened, if it was thought that the safety of
the country required more people to cast ballots, more people to
enjoy this privilege, I would open it to the women of the country
sooner than I would open it to the negroes. I say so to-day. You
are determined to open it to the negroes. I appeal to you to open
it to the women. You say there is no danger in opening it to the
negroes. I say there is no danger then in opening it to the
women. You say that it is safe in the hands of the negroes. I say
it is equally safe in the hands of our sisters, and more safe in
the hands of our wives and our mothers. I say more to you. I say
you have not demonstrated that it is safe to confer the franchise
upon men just emerged from the barbarism of slavery; I say you
have not demonstrated that it is safe to give the ballot to men
who require a Freedmen's Bureau to take care of them, and who it
is not pretended anywhere have that intelligence which is
necessary to enable them to comprehend the questions which
agitate the people of this nation, and of which the people are
supposed to have an intelligent understanding. I say you have not
demonstrated all that; but you have expressed your determination.
You are determined to do it, and when you are determined to do it
I want to put along with that element, that doubtful element,
that ignorant element, that debased element, that element just
emerged from slavery, I want you to put along with it into the
ballot-box, to neutralize its poison if poison there be, to
correct its dangers if danger there be, the female element of the
country.

That is my position. If you abandon the whole project I have no
objection. I am willing to rest the safety of the country where
it is and has been so far. I am open to conviction, open to
argument, open to reason even upon that subject; but I am willing
to leave this question of suffrage where our fathers left it,
where the world leaves it to-day, where all wise men leave it.
If, however, it is to be opened, if there is to be a new era, if
political power is to be distributed _per capita_ according to a
particular age, then I am for extending it to women as well as
men. Let me tell the honorable Senator I am not alone in this
opinion; the Senator from Ohio with me is not alone; one of the
first intellects of this age, perhaps the first man of the first
country of the earth, is of the same opinion. I allude to John
Stuart Mill, of Great Britain. He is now agitating for this very
thing in England. So that it need not seem surprising that I
should be in earnest in this; and I trust that after the
explanation I have made of my position and my doctrines. I shall
not be charged either with insincerity or with a desire to
ingratiate myself with the majority of this body, with the
majority of the people, or with any one, because, thank God, I am
free from all entanglements of that kind at this present
speaking, and if I retain my senses I think I shall keep free.

Mr. WADE: Mr. President, I did not intend to say a word upon this
subject, because on the first day of the last session of Congress
I introduced the original bill now before the Senate, to which
the Committee have proposed several amendments, and that action
on my part I supposed demonstrated sufficiently to all who might
read the bill what were my views and sentiments upon the question
of suffrage; and, sir, they are of no sudden growth. I have
always been of the opinion that in a republican government the
right of voting ought to be limited only by the years of
discretion. I have always believed that when a person arrived at
the age when by the laws of the country he was remitted to the
rights of citizens, when the laws fixed the age of majority when
the person was supposed to be competent to manage his own
affairs, then he ought to be suffered to participate in the
Government under which he lives. Nor do I believe that any such
rule is unsafe. I imagine that safety is entirely on the other
side, for just in proportion as you limit the franchise, you
create in the same degree an aristocracy, an irresponsible
Government; and gentlemen must be a little tinctured with a fear
of republican sentiment when they fear the extension of the right
of suffrage.

If I believed, as some gentlemen do, that to participate in
Government required intellect of the highest character, the
greatest perspicacity of mind, the greatest discipline derived
from education and experience, I should be convinced that a
republican form of government could not live. It is because I
believe that all that is essential in government for the welfare
of the community is plain, simple, level with the weakest
intellects, that I am satisfied this Government ought to stand
and will stand forever. Who is it that ought to be protected by
these republican governments? Certainly it is the weak and
ignorant, who have no other manner of defending their rights
except through the ballot-box.

The argument for aristocracies and monarchies has ever been that
the masses of the people do not know enough to take care of the
high concerns of government. If they do not, the human race is in
a miserable condition. If, indeed, the great masses of mankind,
who are permitted to transact their own business, are incompetent
to participate in government, then farewell to the republican
system of government; it can not stand a day; it is a wrong
foundation. Our principles of government are radically wrong if
gentlemen's fears on this subject are well grounded. Thank God, I
know they are not. I know that all the defects and evils of our
Government have not come from the ignorant masses; but the frauds
and the devices of the higher intellects and the more cultivated
minds have brought upon our Government all those scars by which
it has been disfigured.

Why, sir, look at the administration of the Southern governments
in the seceded States, where their public men were advocates of
the doctrine that suffrage should be restricted, and generally
that republican governments were wrong. I had a great deal of
private conversation with the gentlemen who were formerly in
these halls representing those governments, and I hardly ever
conversed with a single man of them from that part of the country
who believed that a republican government could or ought to
stand. Some of them used to say, "How can the mechanic, how can
the laboring man understandingly participate in these high and
complicated affairs of Government?" Those men at heart were
aristocrats or monarchists; they did not believe in your
republican Government. I, on the other hand, believe that the
safety of our Government depends on unlimited franchise, or,
rather, I should say, on franchise limited only by that
discretion which fits a man to manage his own concerns. Let a man
arrive at the years of majority, when the Government and the
experience of the world say that he has attained to such an age
and such discretion that it is safe to intrust him with his own
affairs, and then if he can not be permitted to participate in
the Government, I say again, farewell to republican government;
it can not stand.

It was for these reasons that, when I introduced the original
bill, I put it upon the most liberal principles of franchise
except as to females. The question of female suffrage had not
then been much agitated, and I knew the community had not thought
sufficiently upon it to be ready to introduce it as an element in
our political system. While I am aware of that fact, I think it
will puzzle any gentleman to draw a line of demarkation between
the right of the male and the female on this subject. Both are
liable to all the laws you pass; their property, their persons,
and their lives are affected by the laws. Why, then, should not
the females have a right to participate in their construction as
well as the male part of the community? There is no argument that
I can conceive or that I have yet heard, that makes any
discrimination between the two on the question of right.

Why should there be any restriction? Is it because gentlemen
apprehend that the female portion of the community are not as
virtuous, that they are not as well-calculated to consider what
laws and principles of the Government will conduce to their
welfare as men are? The great mass of our educated females
understand all these great concerns of government infinitely
better than that great mass of ignorant population from other
countries which you admit to the polls without hesitation.

But, sir, the right of suffrage, in my judgment, has bearings
altogether beyond any rights of persons or property that are to
be vindicated by it. I lay it down that in any free community, if
any particular class of that community are excluded from this
right they can not maintain their dignity; it is a brand of Cain
upon their foreheads that will sink them into contempt, even in
their own estimation. My judgment is that if this right was
accorded to females, you would find that they would be elevated
in their minds and in their intellects. The best discipline you
can offer them would be to permit and to require them to
participate in these great concerns of Government, so that their
rights and the rights of their children should depend in a manner
upon the way in which they understand these great things.

What would be the effect upon their minds? Would it not be, I ask
you, sir, to lead them from that miserable amusement of reading
frivolous books and novels and romances that consume two-thirds
of their time now, from which they learn nothing, and draw their
attention to matters of more moment, more substance, better
calculated to well-discipline the mind? In my judgment it would.
I believe it would tend to educate them as well as the male part
of the population. Take the negroes, who, it is said, are
ignorant, the moment you confer the franchise on them it will
lead them to struggle to get an understanding of the affairs of
Government, so as to be able to participate intelligently in
them. They will then understand that they are made responsible
for the Government under which they live. In my judgment, this is
the reason why the fact exists, which is acknowledged everywhere,
that the great mass of our population rise immensely higher in
intellect and every quality that should adorn human nature, above
the peasantry and working-classes of the Old World. Why is this?
I think much of it results from the fact that the people of this
country are compelled to serve on juries, to participate in the
government of their own localities in various capacities, and
finally to take part in all the great concerns of Government.
That elevates a man, and makes him feel his own consequence in
the community in which he lives.

It is for these reasons as much as any other, that I wish to see
the franchise extended to every person of mature age and
discretion who has committed no crime. I know very well that
prejudices against female voting have descended legitimately to
us from the Old World; yea, more than anything else, from that
common law which we lawyers have all studied as the first element
in jurisprudence. That system of law really sank the female to
total contempt and insignificance, almost annihilated her from
the face of the earth. It made her responsible for nothing. So
far was she removed from participating in anything or being
responsible for anything, that if she even committed a crime in
the presence of her husband she was not by that old law
answerable for it. He was her guardian; he had the right to
correct her as the master did his slave in the South. Such was
the chivalry of that old common law from which we derive our
judicial education. A vast remnant of that old prejudice is still
lurking in the minds of our community. It is a mere figment of
proscription and nothing else, descended to us, and we have not
overcome it. It is not founded in reason; it is not founded in
common sense; and it is being done away with very fast too.

I know that those women who have taken these things into
consideration, with minds as enlightened and as intelligent as
our own, have done immense good to their sex by agitating these
great subjects against all the ridicule and all the contempt that
has been wielded against them from the time they commenced the
agitation. I know that in my own State we had, a few years ago, a
great many laws on our statute-book depriving females of a great
many rights without the least reason upon earth. Perhaps it was
because the question was not agitated, and because it did not
particularly concern the males, that they did not turn their
attention to it; but when agitated in the Women's Rights
Conventions that have been so abused and ridiculed throughout the
country, man could no longer shut his eyes to the glaring defects
that existed in our system, and our Legislature has corrected
many of those abuses, and placed the rights of the female upon
infinitely higher grounds than they occupied there thirty years
ago; I believe this remark is as applicable to many other States
as it is to Ohio. I tell you the agitation of these subjects has
been salutary and good; and our male population would no more go
back to divest women of the rights they have acquired, than they
would go back now to slavery itself, in the advance we have
lately made.

What do I infer, then, from all this? Seeing that their rights
rest upon the same foundation and are only kept down by
proscription and prejudice, I think I know that the time will
come--not to-day, but the time is approaching--when every female
in the country will be made responsible for the just government
of our country as much as the male; her right to participate in
the Government will be just as unquestioned as that of the male.
I know that my opinions on this subject are a little in advance
of the great mass, probably, of the community in which I live;
but I am advancing a principle. I shall give a vote on this
amendment that will be deemed an unpopular vote, but I am not
frightened by that. I have been accustomed to give such votes all
my life almost, but I believe they have been given in the cause
of human liberty and right and in the way of the advancing
intelligence of our age; and whenever the landmark has been set
up the community have marched up to it. I think I am advocating
now the same kind of a principle, and I have no doubt that sooner
or later it will become a fixed fact, and the community will
think it just as absurd to exclude females from the ballot-box as
males.

I do not believe it will have any unfavorable effect upon the
female character, if women are permitted to come up to the polls
and vote. I believe it would exercise a most humane and
civilizing influence upon the roughness and rudeness with which
men meet on these occasions, if the polished ladies of the land
would come up to the ballot-box clothed with these rights and
participate in the exercise of the franchise. It has not been
found that association with ladies is apt to make men rude and
uncivilized; and I do not think the reflex of it prevents that
lady-like character which we all prize so highly. I do not think
it has that effect. On the other hand, in my judgment, if it was
popular to-day for ladies to go to the polls, no man would regret
their presence there, and the districts where their ballots were
given would be harmonized, civilized, and rendered more
gentlemanly, if I may say so, on the one side and on the other,
and it would prevent the rude collisions that are apt to occur at
these places, while it would reflect back no uncivilizing or
unlady-like influence upon the female part of the community. That
is the way I judge it. Of course, as it has never been tried in
this country, it is more or less of an experiment; but here in
this District is the very place to try your experiment.

I know that the same things were said about the abolition of
slavery. I was here. Gentlemen know very well that there was a
strong desire entertained by many gentlemen on this floor that
emancipation, if it took place, should be very gradual, very
conservative, a little at a time. I was the advocate of striking
off the shackles at one blow, and I said that the moment you
settled on that the community would settle down upon this
principle of righteousness, justice, and liberty, and be
satisfied with it, but just as long as you kept it in a state of
doubt and uncertainty, going only half way, just so long it would
be an irritating element in our proceedings. It is just so now
with this question. Do not understand that I expect that this
amendment will be carried. I do not. I do not know that I would
have agitated it now, although it is as clear to me as the sun at
noonday, that the time is approaching when females will be
admitted to this franchise as much as males, because I can see no
reason for the distinction. I agree, however, that there is not
the same pressing necessity for allowing females as there is for
allowing the colored people to vote, because the ladies of the
land are not under the ban of a hostile race grinding them to
powder. They are in high fellowship with those who do govern,
who, to a great extent, act as their agents, their friends,
promoting their interests in every vote they give, and,
therefore, communities get along very well without conferring
this right upon the female. But when you speak of it as a right,
and as a great educational power in the hands of females, and I
am called on to vote on the subject, I will vote that which I
think under all circumstances is right, just, and proper. I
shrink not from the question because I am told by gentlemen that
it is unpopular. The question with me is, is it right? Show me
that it is wrong, and then I will withhold my vote; but I have
heard no argument that convinces me that the thing is not right.

There has been something said about this right of voting, as to
whether it is a natural or a conventional right. I do not know
that there is much difference between a natural and a
conventional right. Right has its hold upon the conscience in the
inevitable fitness of things, and whether it springs from nature
or from any other cause right is right, and a conventional right
is as sacred as a natural right. I can not distinguish them; I
know of no difference between them. It certainly does not seem to
me that it would be right now if a new community is about to set
up a government, for one-third of them to seize upon that
government and say they will govern, and the rest shall have
nothing to do with it. It seems to me there is a wrong done to
those who are shut out from any participation in the Government,
and that it is a violation of their rights; and what odds does it
make whether you call it a natural, or conventional, or
artificial right? I contend that when you set up a Government you
shall call every man who has arrived at the years of discretion,
who has committed no crime, into your community and ask him to
participate in setting up that Government; and if you shut him
out without any reason, you do him a wrong, one of the greatest
wrongs that you can inflict upon a man. If it is to be done to me
or to my posterity, I say to you take their lives, but do not
deprive them of the right of standing upon the same foothold,
upon the same platform in their political rights with any other
man in the community. I will compromise no such principles. I
contend before God and man ever, always, that they shall stand
upon the same platform in setting up their governments, and in
continuing them after they are set up, and I will brand it as a
wrong and an injustice in any man to deprive any portion of the
population, unless it be for crime or offence, from participating
in the Government to the same extent that he participates
himself. If they are ignorant, so much the greater necessity that
they have this weapon in their hands to guard themselves against
the strong. The weaker, the more ignorant, and the more liable
they are to be imposed upon, the greater the necessity of having
this great weapon of self-defence in their hands.

I know very well that great prejudices have existed against
colored people; but my word for it, the moment they are admitted
to the ballot-box, especially about the second Tuesday of October
in our State, you will find them as genteel a set of men as you
know anywhere; as much consideration will be awarded to them;
they will be men; they will be courted; their rights will be
awarded to them; they will be made to feel, and it will go abroad
that they are not the subjects of utter contempt that can be
treated as men see fit to treat them; but they will rise in the
scale of the community, and finally occupy a platform according
to their merits, which they never can obtain; and you will never
be able to make anything of any portion of the community black or
white, while you exclude them from the ballot-box.

These, sir, are the reasons why I introduce this bill, and to
vindicate them I have spoken. I know I am not able to set forth
anything new on this subject. Every American citizen has
reflected upon it until his mind is made up, and the thing itself
is so universally approved by our community, that the only wonder
is that when we propose to extend this franchise to all the
people alike anybody is found in opposition to it.

Mr. YATES: Mr. President, I propose to occupy the time of the
Senate for but a few moments by way of explanation of my position
on this subject. Honorable Senators seem to think there is some
little embarrassment in the position in which we are placed upon
this question. There is certainly none whatever to my mind. I
must confess, after an examination of this question, that
logically there are no reasons in my mind which would not permit
women to vote as well as men, according to the theory of our
Government--a Government of the people, by the people, and for
the people.

But, sir, that question as to whether ladies shall vote or not is
not an issue now. That was not the question at the last election.
That was not the question that was argued in another part of this
Capitol. That was not embraced in the bill now before us for
consideration. Questions of a different character engross our
attention; and, sir, we have but one straightforward course to
pursue in this matter. While I may and do indorse, I believe,
substantially all that my honorable friend from Ohio has said,
and while I can not state perhaps a good reason why under our
form of government all persona, male and female, should not
exercise the right of suffrage, yet we have another matter on
hand now. We have fought the fight, and our banners blaze
victoriously in the sky. The honorable Senator from Pennsylvania
stands humbled and overcome at his defeat, and he might just as
well bow his head before the wheels of that Juggernaut of which
he spoke, which has crushed him to the earth, and say, let the
_vox populi_, which is the _vox Dei_, be the rule of this land.

I believe that this issue will come, and if the gentleman
proposes to make it in the next elections, I shall be with him
perhaps on the question of universal suffrage; for, sir, I am for
universal suffrage. I am not for qualified suffrage; I am not for
property suffrage; T am not for intelligent suffrage, as it is
termed; but I am for universal suffrage. That is my doctrine.
But, sir, when it is proposed to crush out the will of the
American people by an issue which certainly is not made in
sincerity and truth, then I have no difficulty whatever. While I
do not commit myself against the progress of human civilization,
because I believe that time is coming, in voting "no" on this
amendment I only vote to maintain the position for which I have
fought, and for which my State has fought. My notions are
peculiar on this subject. I confess that I am for universal
suffrage, and when the time comes I am for suffrage by females as
well as males; but that is not the point before us.

Mr. WILSON: The Senator from Pennsylvania demands that I shall
express my concurrence in or my opposition to his amendment. I
tell him, without the least hesitation, I shall vote against it.
I am opposed to connecting together these two questions,
enfranchisement of black men and the enfranchisement of women,
and therefore shall vote against his amendment.

These ladies in the conventions recently held seem to have made a
great impression upon the Senator from Pennsylvania. While I
heard him reading their speeches, I could not but regret that the
Senator had not read the speeches of some of those ladies and the
speeches of some of those gentlemen who attended those recent
meetings, before he came into the Senate. If he had read the
speeches of the ladies and gentlemen who have attended these
conventions during the past few years, their speeches might have
made as great an impression on him at an earlier day as they seem
to have done at this; and if they had done so, the Senator might
have made a record for liberty, justice, and humanity he would
have been proud of after he leaves the Senate. I have, sir, quite
the advantage of the honorable Senator. I have been accustomed to
attend the meetings of some of these ladies and gentlemen for
many years, and read their speeches too. I read these speeches
for the freedom of all, and for the enfranchisement of all, woman
included. Before I came to the Senate of the United States, I
entertained the conviction that it would be better for this
country, that our legislation would be more humane, more for
liberty, more for a high civilization, if the women of the
country were permitted to vote, and every year of my life has
confirmed that conviction. I have been more than ever convinced
of it since I have read the opinions of one of the foremost men
of this or any other age--John Stuart Mill.

But I say to the Senator from Pennsylvania that while these are
my opinions, while I will vote now or at any time for woman
suffrage, if he or any other Senator will offer it as a distinct,
separate measure, I am unalterably opposed to connecting that
question with the pending question of negro suffrage. The
question of negro suffrage is now an imperative necessity; a
necessity that the negro should possess it for his own
protection; a necessity that he should possess it that the nation
may preserve its power, its strength, and its unity. We have
fought that battle, as has been stated by the Senator from
Illinois; we have won negro suffrage for the District of
Columbia, and I say I believe we have won for all the States; and
before the 4th of March, 1869, before this Administration shall
close, I hope that the negro in all the loyal States will be
clothed with the right of suffrage. That they will be in the ten
rebel States I can not doubt, for patriotism, liberty, justice,
and humanity demand it.

This bill, embodying pure manhood suffrage, is destined to become
the law in spite of all opposition and all lamentations. I am
opposed, therefore, to associating with this achieved measure the
question of suffrage for women. That question has been discussed
for many years by ladies of high intelligence and of stainless
character--ladies who have given years of their lives to the
cause of liberty, to the cause of the bondman, to the cause of
justice and humanity, to the improvement of all and the elevation
of all. No one could have heard them or have read their speeches
years ago, without feeling that they were in earnest. They have
made progress; these women have instructed the country; women,
and men too, have been instructed; progress is making in that
direction; but the public judgment is not so pronounced in any
one State to-day in favor of woman suffrage, as to create any
large and general movement for it. Time is required to instruct
the public mind and to carry forward and to concentrate the
public judgment in favor of woman suffrage. All public men are
not in its favor as is the Senator from Ohio, as has already been
proved in this debate. I am, therefore, sir, for keeping these
questions apart. I am for securing the needed suffrage for the
colored race. I am for enfranchising the black man, and then if
this other question shall come up in due time, and I have a vote
to give, I shall be ready to give my vote for it. But to vote for
it now is to couple it with the great measure now pressing upon
us, to weaken that measure and to endanger its immediate triumph,
and therefore I shall vote against the amendment proposed by the
Senator from Pennsylvania, made, it is too apparent, not for the
enfranchisement of woman, but against the enfranchisement of the
black man.

Mr. JOHNSON: The immediate question before the Senate, I
understand, is upon the amendment offered by the honorable member
from Pennsylvania, which, if I am correctly informed, is to
strike out the word "male," so as to give to all persons,
independent of sex, the right of voting. It is, therefore, a
proposition to admit to the right of suffrage all the females in
the District of Columbia who may have the required residence and
are of the required age. I am not aware that the right is given
to that class anywhere in the United States. I believe for a very
short time--my friend from New Jersey will inform me if I am
correct--it was more or less extended to the women of New Jersey;
but, if that be an exception, it is, as far as I am informed, the
only exception; and there are a variety of reasons why, as I
suppose, the right has never been extended as now proposed.

Ladies have duties peculiar to themselves which can not be
discharged by anybody else; the nurture and education of their
children, the demands upon them consequent upon the preservation
of their household; and they are supposed to be more or less in
their proper vocation when they are attending to those particular
duties. But independent of that, I think if it was submitted to
the ladies--I mean the ladies in the true acceptation of the
term--of the United States, the privilege would not only not be
asked for, but would be rejected. I do not think the ladies of
the United States would agree to enter into a canvass, and to
undergo what is often the degradation of seeking to vote,
particularly in the cities, getting up to the polls, crowded out
and crowded in. I rather think they would feel it, instead of a
privilege, a dishonor. There is another reason why the right
should not be extended to them, unless it is the purpose of the
honorable member and of the Senate to go a step further. The
reason why the males are accorded the privilege, and why it was
almost universal in the United States with reference to those of
a certain age, is that they may be called upon to defend the
country in time of war or in time of insurrection. I do not
suppose it is pretended that the ladies should be included in the
militia organization or be compelled to take up arms to defend
the country. That must be done by the male sex, I hope.

But I rose not so much for the purpose of expressing my own
opinion, or reasoning rather upon the opinion, as to refer to a
sentence or two in a letter written many years ago, by the elder
Adams, to a correspondent in Massachusetts. It was proposed at
that time in Massachusetts to alter the suffrage. It was then
limited in that State. That limitation, it was suggested, should
be taken away in whole or in part, and the correspondent to whom
this letter was addressed seems to have been in favor of that
change. Mr. Adams, under date of the 26th of May, 1776, writes to
his correspondent, Mr. James Sullivan, a name famous in the
annals of Massachusetts, and well known to the United States, a
long letter, of which I shall read only a sentence or two. It is
to be found in the ninth volume of the works of John Adams,
beginning at page 375. In that letter Mr. Adams, among other
things, says: "But let us first suppose that the whole community,
of every age, rank, sex, and condition, has a right to vote. This
community is assembled. A motion is made and carried by a
majority of one voice. The minority will not agree to this.
Whence arises the right of the majority to govern and the
obligation of the minority to obey?

"From necessity, you will say, because there can be no other
rule. But why exclude women?

"You will say, because their delicacy renders them unfit for
practice and experience in the great businesses of life and the
hardy enterprises of war, as well as the arduous cares of state.
Besides, their attention is so much engaged with the necessary
nurture of their children, that nature has made them fittest for
domestic cares. And children have not judgment or will of their
own. True."

And he closes the letter by saying: "Society can be governed only
by general rules. Government can not accommodate itself to every
particular case as it happens, nor to the circumstances of
particular persons. It must establish general comprehensive
regulations for cases and persons. The only question is, which
general rule will accommodate most cases and most persons. Depend
upon it, sir, it is dangerous to open so fruitful a source of
controversy and altercation as would be opened by attempting to
alter the qualifications of voters; there will be no end of it.
New claims will arise; women will demand a vote; lads from twelve
to twenty-one will think their rights not enough attended to; and
every man who has not a farthing will demand an equal voice with
any other in all acts of state. It tends to confound and destroy
all distinctions, and prostrate all ranks to one common level."

The honorable member from Ohio seems to suppose that the right
should be given as a means, if I understood him, of protecting
themselves and as a means of elevating them intellectually. I had
supposed the theory was that the woman was protected by the man.
If she is insulted she is not expected to knock the man who
insults her down, or during the days of the duello to send him a
challenge. She goes to her male friend, her husband or brother or
acquaintance. Nature has not made her for the rough and tumble,
so to speak, of life. She is intended to be delicate. She is
intended to soften the asperities and roughness of the male sex.
She is intended to comfort him in the days of his trial, not to
participate herself actively in the contest either in the forum,
in the council chamber, or on the battle-field. As to her not
being protected, what lady has ever said that her rights were not
protected because she had not the right of suffrage? There are
women, respectable I have no doubt in point of character, moral
and virtuous women no doubt, but they are called, and properly
called, the "strong-minded"; they are in the public estimation
contradistinguished from the delicate; they are men in women's
garb, ready, I have no doubt, such people would be--and I deem it
no disparagement to them; I have no doubt they are
conscientious--to go upon the battle-field. Such things have
happened. They are willing to take an insult, and horse-whip and
chastise the man who has extended the rudeness to them; but they
are exceptions to the softness which is the charm of the female
character. I appeal to my friend from New York [Mr. Morgan]--I
can speak for Baltimore--and to the member from Pennsylvania
[Mr. Cowan] who I suppose can speak for Philadelphia, would they
have their wives and their daughters seeking to get up to the
poll on a hotly-contested election, driven with indignation at
times from it, insulted, violence used to them, as is often the
case, rudeness of speech sure to be indulged in----

Mr. WADE: I should like to know if that is the character of your
city?

Mr. JOHNSON: Yes.

Mr. WADE: Then it is very different from the community in which I
live.

Mr. JOHNSON: I rather think you might make Cincinnati an
exception from what I have heard. I am not speaking for the
country, though I have seen it pretty rough in the country; and
they have been rough occasionally in Ohio. If they were all of
the same temper with my honorable friend who interrupts me of
course it would be different, and all could have their rights
accorded them.

Mr. COWAN: I should like to ask whether the presence of ladies on
an occasion of that kind would not tend to suppress everything of
that sort? Would it not turn the blackguard into a gentleman, so
that we should have nothing but good conduct?

Mr. JOHNSON: No, sir; you can not turn a blackguard into a
gentleman.

Mr. COWAN: Except by a lady.

Mr. JOHNSON: No, sir; by no means known to human power. There may
be some revulsion that will cause him to cease to be a blackguard
for the moment, but as to a lady making a gentleman of a man who
insults her it has not happened that I know of anywhere. He may
be made somewhat of a gentleman by being cowhided. But the
question I put I put in all seriousness. I have seen the
elections in Baltimore, where they are just as orderly as they
are in other cities; but we all know that in times of high party
excitement it is impossible to preserve that order which would be
sufficient to protect a delicate female from insult, and no lady
would venture to run the hazard of being subjected to the insults
that she would be almost certain to receive.

They do not want this privilege. As to protecting themselves, as
to taking a part in the Government in order to protect
themselves, if they govern those who govern, is not that
protection enough? And who does not know that they govern us?
Thank God they do. But what more right has a woman, as a mere
matter of right independent of all delicacy, to the suffrage than
a boy who is just one day short of twenty-one? You put him in
your military service when he is eighteen; you may put him in it
at a younger age if you think proper; but you will not let him
vote. Why? Only upon moral grounds; that is all; not because that
boy may not be able to exercise the right, but because, in the
language of Mr. Adams, there must be some general rule, which
must be observed, because in the absence of such general rule, if
you permit excepted cases you might as well abolish all rules,
and then where are we, as he properly asks.

I like to learn wisdom from the men of 1776. I know we have had
the advantage of living in an age which they did not witness. I
have lived a good many years and watched the public men of the
day, and I do not think, and I have never been able with all my
disposition to think that we are any better than were the men of
1776 and our predecessors on this floor, the men who participated
in the deliberations of the Convention which led to the adoption
of the Constitution of the United States, the men who were the
authors of the State papers which were issued during that period,
and which filled the world with admiration and amazement.

From the days of colonization down to the present hour no such
proposition as this has received, so far as I am aware, any
support, unless it was for a short time in the State of New
Jersey. It has nothing to do with the right of negroes to vote.
That is perfectly independent. If I desired because I am opposed
to that to defeat the bill, I might perhaps, as a mere party
scheme, as a measure known to party tactics which govern
occasionally some--I do not say that they have not governed me
heretofore--vote for this amendment with a view to defeat the
bill: but I have lived to be too old and have become too well
satisfied of what I think is my duty to the country to give any
vote which I do not believe, if it should be supported by the
votes of a sufficient number to carry the measure into operation,
would redound to the interests and safety and honor of the
country.

Mr. WADE: The gentleman seems to suppose that the only reason
females should have the right to vote is that they might defend
themselves with a cowhide against those who insult them. I do not
suppose that giving them the right to vote will add anything to
their physical strength or courage. That is the argument of the
Senator, and the whole of his argument: but I did not propose
that they should vote on such hypothesis or with any view that it
should have any such effect. But I do know that as the law stood
until very recently in many of the States a husband was not the
best guardian for his wife in many cases, and frequently the
greatest hardships that I have ever known in the community have
arisen from the fact that a good-for-nothing, drunken, miserable
man had married a respectable lady with property, and your law
turned the whole of it right over to him and left her a pauper at
his will. While I was at the bar I was more conversant with the
manner in which these domestic affairs were transacted than I am
now; and I knew instances of the greatest hardship arising from
the fact that the law permitted such things to be done. I have
known a drunken, miserable wretch of a husband take possession of
a large property of a virtuous, excellent woman, who had a family
of small children depending upon her, and turn her out to support
her family by sewing and by manual labor; and it is not an
uncommon case. The legislators, the males having the law-making
power in their hands, especially were not very prompt to correct
these evils; they were very slow in doing so. They continued from
the old common law, when the memory of man did not run to the
contrary, down to a time that is within the recollection of us
all; and I do not know but that in some of the States this absurd
rule prevails even now. It would not have prevailed if ladies had
been permitted to vote for their legislators. They would have
instructed them, and would have withheld their votes from every
one who would not correct these most glaring evils.

The Senator tells us that the community in which he lives is so
barbarous and rude that a lady could not go to the polls to
perform a duty which the law permitted without insult and
rudeness. That is a state of things that I did not believe
existed anywhere. I do not believe that it exists in Baltimore
to-day. I do not believe if the ladies of Baltimore should go up
to the polls clothed with the legal right to select their own
legislators that there is anybody in Baltimore who would insult
them on their way in performing that duty. I do not believe that
our communities have got to that degree of depravity yet that
such kind of rascally prudence is necessary to be exercised in
making laws. On the other hand, I have always found wherever I
have gone that the rude and the rough in their conduct were
civilized and ameliorated by the presence of females; for I do
believe, as much as I believe anything else, that, take the world
as it is, the female part of it are really more virtuous than the
males. I think so; and I think if we were to permit them to have
this right, it would tend to a universal reform instead of the
reverse; and I do not believe any lady would be insulted in any
community that I know anything about while on her way to perform
this duty.

As I can see no good reason to the contrary, I shall vote for
this proposition. I shall vote as I have often voted, as the
Senator from Massachusetts has often voted, what he believed to
be right; not because he believed a majority were with him, but
because he believed the proposition which he was called upon to
vote for was right, just, and proper. It is because I can not see
that this is not so that I vote for it. It comes from a Senator
who does not generally vote with us; it is a proposition unlooked
for from his general course of action in this body, being, as he
says, on the conservative list, and generally for holding things
just as they are. Well, sir, I am for holding them just as they
are, when I think they are right, and when I think they are not,
I am for changing them and making them right. I do not think it
is right to exclude females from the right of suffrage. As I said
before, I do not expect that public opinion will be so correct at
this time that my vote will be effective; but nevertheless it
would be no excuse for me that I did not do my part toward
effecting a reform that I think the community requires, because I
did not see that the whole world was going with me. I do not wait
for that. I am frequently in minorities. I would as lief be there
as anywhere else, provided I see that I am right; and I do not
wait for the majority to go with me when I think a proposition is
right. Therefore I shall vote for this amendment if nobody else
votes for it, trusting that if I am right the world will finally
see it and come up to the mark where I am; if I am wrong, on
further investigation and further thought I shall be left in the
lurch. Believing that I am right, and believing that the world
will come up to this standard finally, I am ambitious to make my
mark upon it right here.

Mr. FRELINGHUYSEN: Mr. President, the Senator from Maryland has
made an inquiry as to the law of New Jersey in reference to women
voting. There was a period in New Jersey when, in reference to
some local matters, and those only, women voted; but that period
has long since passed away; and I think I am authorized in saying
that the women of New Jersey to-day do not desire to vote. Sir, I
confess a little surprise at the remark which has been so
frequently made in the Senate, that there is no difference
between granting suffrage to colored citizens and extending it to
the women of America. The difference, to my mind, is as wide as
the earth. As I understand it, we legislate for classes, and the
women of America as a class do vote now, though there are
exceptions from the peculiar circumstances of individuals. Do not
the American people vote in this Senate to-day on this question?
Do they not vote in the House of Representatives? So the women of
America vote by their faithful and true representatives, their
husbands, their brothers, their sons; and no true man will go to
the polls and deposit his ballot without remembering that true
and loving constituency that he has at home. More than that, sir,
ninety-nine out of a hundred, I believe nine hundred and
ninety-nine out of a thousand, of the women in America do not
want the privilege of voting in any other manner than that which
I have stated. In both these regards there is a vast difference
between the situation of the colored citizen and the women of
America.

But Mr. President, besides that, the women of America are not
called upon to serve the Government as the men of America are.
They do not bear the bayonet, and have not that reason why they
should be entitled to the ballot; and it seems to me as if the
God of our race has stamped upon them a milder, gentler nature,
which not only makes them shrink from, but disqualifies them for
the turmoil and battle of public life. They have a higher and a
holier mission. It is in retirement, to make the character of the
coming men. Their mission is at home, by their blandishments and
their love to assuage the passions of men as they come in from
the battle of life, and not themselves by joining in the contest
to add fuel to the very flames. The learned and eloquent Senator
from Pennsylvania said, yesterday, with great beauty, that he
wanted to cast the angel element into the suffrage system of
America. Sir, it seems to me that it would be ruthlessly tearing
the angel element from the homes of America, for the homes of the
people of America are infinitely more valuable than any suffrage
system. It will be a sorry day for this country when those vestal
fires of piety and love are put out. Mr. President, it seems to
me that the Christian religion, which has elevated woman to her
true position as a peer by the side of man from which she was
taken; that religion which is a part of the common law of this
land, in its very spirit and declarations recognizes man as the
representative of woman. The very structure of that religion
which for centuries has been being built recognizes that
principle, and it is written on its very door-posts. The woman,
it is true, was first tempted; but it was in Adam that we all
died. The angel, it is true, appeared to Mary; but it is in the
God-man that we are all made alive. I do not see that there is
any parity of reasoning between the case of the women of America,
entitling them or making it desirable that they should have
suffrage, and that of the colored citizens of the United States.

Mr. CONNESS: It does not appear that we can come to a vote
to-night upon this proposition, and I therefore rise to propose
an adjournment.

Mr. MORRILL: Perhaps we can get a vote on this simple amendment.

Mr. BROWN and others: Oh, no; let us adjourn.

Mr. MORRILL: I doubt whether there is any inclination to talk
further on this amendment, and I should be glad to get a vote on
it before we adjourn.

Mr. CONNESS: If the Senate will come to a vote, I will not move
an adjournment.

Mr. BROWN: Mr. President----

Mr. DOOLITTLE: If the honorable Senator from Missouri will give
way, I will renew the motion to adjourn.

Mr. BROWN: I do not care particularly to detain the Senate. I
have but a very few remarks to make.

Several SENATORS: Let us adjourn.

Mr. DOOLITTLE: If the honorable Senator will give way, I will
renew the motion to adjourn.

The PRESIDENT _pro tem._: Does the Chair understand the Senator
from Missouri as yielding the floor?

Mr. BROWN: Yes, sir.

Mr. DOOLITTLE: I move that the Senate do now adjourn.

The motion was agreed to; and the Senate adjourned.

In SENATE, WEDNESDAY, _December 12, 1866_.

Prayer by the Chaplain, Rev. E. H. Gray.

The Journal of yesterday was read and approved.

PETITIONS AND MEMORIALS.

The PRESIDENT _pro tem._: The Chair has received, and takes this
opportunity to lay before the Senate, the memorial of William
Boyd, of Washington City, District of Columbia, the substance of
which, stated in his own words, is:

I humbly ask your Honorable Body that you make no
distinctions in regard to either color or sex if you should
think proper to extend the elective franchise in this
District, which I beg of your Honorable Body to do
immediately; so that hereafter there shall be no distinction
of race or sex. I am among those who believe that slavery
will never die, until all laws are so constructed as to hold
all mankind as equal before the law.

SUFFRAGE IN THE DISTRICT.

The PRESIDENT _pro tem._: The unfinished business is the bill (S.
No. 1) to regulate the elective franchise in the District of
Columbia which is now before the Senate as in Committee of the
Whole. The pending question is on the motion of the Senator from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan], to amend the amendment reported by the
Committee on the District of Columbia, by striking out in the
second line of its first section the word "male" before "person."
Upon this question the Senator from Missouri is entitled to the
floor.

Mr. BROWN: Mr. President, I do not believe that the pending
amendment to the bill extending the franchise to women in the
District of Columbia, offered by the Senator from Pennsylvania,
was designed to be carried out into practical legislation at this
time or in this connection. I think it was rather intended to
elicit an expression of opinion from members of the Senate upon
the general proposition involved. If it were to go into practical
effect, I am one of those who believe that it would be necessary
to accompany it by a good deal of other legislation to prevent it
from degenerating into abuse, and perhaps corrupting many of
those it designs to advance in position and influence. But
accepting the matter in the light which I have stated, for one I
am willing to express an opinion very freely on the subject. I
have to say then, sir, here on the floor of the American Senate,
I stand for universal suffrage, and as a matter of fundamental
principle do not recognize the right of society to limit it on
any ground of race, color, or sex. I will go further and say that
I recognize the right of franchise as being intrinsically a
natural right; and I do not believe that society is authorized to
impose any limitation upon it that does not spring out of the
necessities of the social state itself. These may seem, Mr.
President, extreme views, but they conform to the rigid logic of
the question, and I defy any Senator here who abides that logic
to escape that conclusion. Sir, I have been shocked, yes,
shocked, during the course of this debate at expressions which I
have heard so often fall from distinguished Senators, and
apparently with so little consideration of what the heresy
irresistibly leads to, saying in substance that they recognize in
this right of franchise only a conventional or political
arrangement that may be abrogated at will and taken from any;
that it is simply a privilege yielded to you and me and others by
society or the Government which represents society; that it is
only a gracious boon from some abstract place and abstract body
for which we should be proud and thankful; in other words, that
it is not a right in any sense, but only a concession. Mr.
President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On the
contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that doctrine,
whenever you crystalize that idea in the public mind of this
country, you ring the death-knell of American liberties. You take
from each, what is perhaps the highest safeguard of all, the
conviction that there are rights of men embracing their liberty
in society, and substitute a skepticism on all matters of
personal freedom and popular liberties which will lay them open
to be overthrown whenever society shall become sufficiently
corrupted by partyism or whenever constitutional majorities shall
become sufficiently exasperated by opposition.

Mr. President, so important, yea, so crucial, so to speak, do I
deem this position, that I trust I may be pardoned by the Senate
if I refer to the abstract grounds, the invincible agreement upon
which I deem it to rest. I do this the more readily because in my
belief the metaphysical always controls ultimately the practical
in all the affairs of life. Now, what are abstract rights? And
are there any intrinsic necessary conditions that go to
constitute liberty in society? I believe that there are, and that
those conditions are as determinable as the liberties they
protect. The foundation upon which all free government rests, and
out of which all natural rights flow as from a common center, has
been well stated by Mr. Herbert Spencer in a late work on "Social
Statics," to be "the liberty of each limited by the like liberty
of all." As the fundamental truth originating and yet
circumscribing the validity of laws and constitutions, it can not
be stated in a simpler form. As the rule in conformity with which
society must be organized, and which distinguishes where the
rightful subordination terminates, and where tyranny, whether of
majorities or minorities, begins, it can not be too much
commended. "Every man has freedom to do all that he wills,
provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man," is
stated as the law of just social relationships, and in it the
rights of individual liberty of thought, of speech, of action,
find their complete expression. It will be observed that equality
is the essence of it all. In fact, any recognition of an
inequality of rights is fatal to liberty.

Observe, furthermore, that those rights inhere in the individual,
are part of his existence, and not the gift of any man or
aggregation of men. If they were, equality under a despotism
might find its justification in the postulate just as well as
equality under a republic. Cæsarean Democracy could claim like
paternity with American Democracy. The assumption, then, that
freedom in any of its forms is a privilege conceded by society is
utterly unwarrantable, because society itself is a concession
from the individual--the liberty of each limited by the like
liberty of all--and such limitation is what society or Government
represents. And it is in this sense, and flowing from this axiom,
that the rights of franchise originally appertain to all alike;
for franchise is in itself nothing more than a mode of
participating in the common Government, and represents only the
interest each has therein. That limitations may attach thereto,
just as they attach to freedom of speech or freedom of action, is
perfectly true; but they must be equal limitations, applicable to
all alike, growing out of the social relation, and not leveled at
the inherent right of any individual or class. Thus the exclusion
of criminals from the franchise, the designation of terms of
minority as connected with the exercise of political duties, the
regulation of the admission to citizenship of persons coming from
foreign countries, find their justification in a principle which,
so far from recognizing in Government or society a purely
arbitrary control of the rights and exercise of self-government
or personal liberty, brings it down within rigid and narrow
limits of equality and necessity.

There are those, and I am sorry some such have arisen in the
Senate to-day, who seek to escape this conclusion, and put the
blush upon all free government by affirming, as I have said, that
the right of franchise is a purely political right, neither
inherent nor inalienable, and may be divested by the citizen or
the State at will. The consideration mentioned, that the right of
franchise is neither more nor less than the right of
self-government as exercised through a participation in the
common government of all, shows, however, that if it be not a
natural right it will be difficult to say in what a natural right
consists. Indeed, it is perhaps the most natural of any of our
rights, inasmuch as its denial is the denial of all right to
personal liberty, for how can such latter right exist when the
right to maintain it among men and the societies of men is
denied? Again, if the right to share in the joint government is
not inherent, from whence does it come? Who can give the right to
govern another? and how can any give what he has not got? Society
is but the aggregate of individuals, and in its authority
represents only the conceded limitations on all, not any
reservoir of human rights, otherwise human rights would vary with
every changing association. Still again, if the right of a man as
regards Government can be divested either by himself or
Government at will, then Government has no limit to its rightful
tyranny--it may divest not only one man, but a hundred or a
thousand; indeed, why not all but the chosen few or the imperial
one, thus arriving logically at oligarchic or despotic rule. And
if a man may divest himself of this right, what right is sacred
from his renunciation? That a man may refuse to exercise any
right is true, and that in changing his abode he may sever his
political and social relations is equally true; but these facts
only prove that his natural rights inhere in his person, go with
him in his movement, subject always to be exercised under the
conditions and limitations before recited. After all, to
demonstrate the utter falsity and pernicious consequence of the
idea that the right to share in the common Government (which is
only a synonym for the right of franchise) is a privilege to be
farmed out by Government at discretion and to whom it chooses, it
is only necessary to ask, if that be so, whence comes the right
to representation? Wherein is the foundation for any democratic
society, predicated on the rights of individuals? That various
mixed Governments do undertake to limit the franchise to the few
as a privilege coming from the body-corporate, has nothing to do
with the question, for I am discussing now rights, not practices;
republics, not aristocracies.

Such I believe, Mr. President, to be the principles on which our
personal rights, our liberties in society repose. It is true the
argument carries us very far, but not farther, I apprehend, than
republican government must go whenever it undertakes to conform
its practice to its logic. And having examined the general
reasoning that controls the whole question of franchise, let me
now advert more particularly to the bearing of that argument upon
the proposition submitted by the Senator from Pennsylvania. I
know that many affirm that the results to which such reasoning as
that I have adduced would lead are themselves conclusive against
its force. But that is scarcely a fair mode of judging of the
strength and invincibility of any argument, far less one touching
interests so momentous in character. To give the objection its
greatest force it may be said, "If suffrage be the right of all
men, why is it not also the right of all women, of all children?"
"Are they not equally interested in good government, and are they
not equally capable of expressing through a vote their wish in
relation to public affairs?" "Do they not come within the
category, the equal liberty of each limited by the like liberty
of all, and if so, can the infringement of their liberty by
disfranchisement be justified!" To such questions, and, in fact,
to the whole inquiry, it may be replied that as freedom finds the
expression of its limits in the social relation itself, so long
as the marital and paternal state remain as they are now,
essential parts to that social relation, so long will there be
more or less of constraint involved in their expression through
governmental forms. And it may be added also that in so far as
marriage and paternity establish an identity of interest between
husband and wife, or parent and child, so far the participation
of the one in the Government is virtually the participation of
both, the franchise of one the franchise of both. Such identity
is not always true or equable, but it nevertheless approximates
truth, and is therefore the more readily accepted as such in
practical affairs.

That the rights of women, however, are intrinsically the same
with those of men, may not be consistently denied; and that all
the advance of modern civilization has been toward according them
greater equality of condition is attested by the current history
of every nation within its pale. Rights of married women and
minors are constantly finding new expression in our laws and new
force in our public opinion, which is only law in process of
formation. While it will not be necessary, therefore, to go into
those deeper and anterior questions of social life involving the
substitution of voluntary for compulsory modes which are
agitating so profoundly the intellect of this age, it is
important to note that of the three great departments of control
in human affairs, namely, morals or conscience, manners or
society, governments or laws, the two former have been
unreservedly conceded to the full and equal participation of
women. And furthermore, I venture to affirm with all confidence,
that although the social relation, as it embraces a recognition
of family dependence, may present obstacles to an equal influence
under present forms of government and to the full exercise of
citizen rights on the part of women, yet that the purity, the
refinement, the instinctive reading of character, the elegant
culture of the women of our land, if brought to bear upon the
conduct of political affairs, would do much to elevate them in
all their aims, and conform them to higher standards of justice.

Mr. President, I have listened in vain for the argument on which
is predicated the assertion that sex alone affords a rightful
ground for exclusion from the rights of franchise. I do not find
anything to justify that view, even in the position of those who
contend that franchise is a mere political privilege and not
founded in any right, for that would apply to men equally as to
women, and does not touch the question of relative rights. The
position would still remain to be established why the franchise
should be given to the one and not to the other. It would remain
still to present grounds of principle on which that right as such
may be denied to her and not denied to him. I have heard reasons
of policy, reasons of sentiment, reasons of precedent advanced to
justify this exclusion; but in all frankness, and with no
disrespect intended, I must say that those which have been
presented during this debate seem to me trivial, illogical, and
contradictory of one another.

First, it has been said that if women are entitled to the rights
of franchise they would correspondingly come under the obligation
to bear arms. But, sir, I do not know that there is any necessary
connection between the right of franchise and the requirement of
service in your army. On the contrary, I do know that all
Governments which have existed among men do now recognize the
fact that there is no necessary connection between the two; and I
do know that no Government has more distinctly recognized this
position than the Government of the United States. Are there not
large classes even among men in this country who are exempt from
service in our armies for physical incapacity and for other
reasons? And if exemptions which appertain to males may be
recognized as valid, why not similar exemptions for like reason
when applied to females? Does it not prove that there is nothing
in the argument so far as it involves the question of right?
There are Quakers and other religious sects; there are ministers
of the gospel--persons having conscientious scruples; indeed, all
men over a certain age who under the laws of many of the States
are released from service of that character. Indeed, it is the
boast of the republic that ours is a volunteer military
establishment. Hence I say there is nothing in the position that
because she may not be physically qualified for service in your
army, therefore you have the right to deny her the franchise on
the score of sex. It might be an inquiry of very great interest
and worthy of being pursued much further than I have the time or
the ability to pursue it just now, how far, if the ballot should
be extended to all the women in this land, it would go to modify
existing opinion and action and relationship among States so as
to obliterate in a great degree the very necessity for your army
and navy. I believe, sir, that a very large majority of the wars
that have been waged in this world have been wars that were
condemned by the moral sense of the nations on both sides; wars
that would have been terminated forthwith if that moral sense
could have had its rightful influence in controlling the affairs
of Government; and I say it is a question that is worthy of
consideration how far such an element introduced into your
political control would go to obviate these barbarous resorts to
force which you now deem essential and which we all deplore, but
which it is a folly, if not a crime, to say constitute a reason
woman should be denied any right to which she would be otherwise
entitled.

Mr. President, a second objection has been taken to any extension
of the franchise in this direction, and it is one that perhaps
has more seeming force in it than the other. It has been said
with a great deal of pathos by the Senator from New Jersey: what,
would you have your wives and your daughters mingle in the scenes
at the election-booths, go into the riotous demonstrations that
attend upon the exercise of the ballot, and become participants
in the angry and turbulent strifes that are so characteristic of
our political modes. I say with frankness that I would not have
wife or daughter mingle in any such scene; I would be loth to
have their purity and their virtue exposed to such demoralized
surroundings, surroundings that are only too apt to corrupt even
the males that mingle in the political arena. But, sir, I contend
that that is an argument against the ballot and the hustings and
the polling-booths, and not against the rights of woman. It is an
argument against those corruptions that you have permitted to
grow and fasten upon your political methods and appliances, and
not an argument against her rights as contrasted with the rights
of man. What! usurp an exclusive control--then degrade the modes
of exercising power, and after that say the degradation is reason
why the usurpation should continue unchallenged. What profanation
of the very powers of thought is that! On the contrary, I am
prepared to say that I see no reason, I never have seen any
reason, why there might not be changes introduced in your modes
of taking the sense of the community, of ascertaining public
opinion upon public measures, of making selection even of its
individuals for important offices, that would conform them far
more to those refinements and those elevations which should
characterize and control them, purifications that must render
them appropriate for participation in by the most refined of the
land, whether male or female. I see no reason why it should not
be done. The change has been constant already from the very
rudest forms to the forms which we now have, and which I am sorry
to say, are sufficiently rude to disgrace the civilization of the
age. Why not further amelioration and adaptation? Are we to have
no progress in the modes of government among men? Are we and
future generations to be ever imprisoned in the uncouth
alternative of monarchical or democratic forms as they now
obtain? I can not believe it. For five years past we have had
revolution enough among us to satisfy even the most conservative
that the present is no ultimatum, either of form or substance in
political or social affairs. I will go further and venture to
say, that there are now seething underneath all the forms of this
Government, revolutions still more striking than any one of us
have yet witnessed. Beneath all these methods and appliances of
administrations and controls among men, I believe there is under
our very feet a heaving, unsteady ocean of aroused questioning in
which many modes now practiced will sink to rise no more, and out
of which other adaptations will emerge that will render far more
perfect the reflection of the will of the people; that will
perhaps represent minorities as well as majorities; that will
disarm corruptions by dispensing with party organizations. It is
the very witching hour of change.

And, sir, I do not dread change. Why should we? Is not change the
primal condition on which all life is permitted to exist? Change
is the very essence of all things pure, the sign and token of the
divinity that is within us, and conservatism _per se_ is
infidelity against the ordination of God. When, therefore, we see
such change in all things that are around us, in fashions and
customs and laws and recognitions and intellectualities, even to
the supremest generalizations of science, in all things save the
elemental principles of our being and by consequence of our
rights, why shall we say that these forms into which we have cast
administration and government, shall not obey the great law of
development and take upon themselves ameliorations better suited
to the changing society of mankind, to the wants of a more
truthful representation, to the participation by all in the
Government that is over all. Mr. President, I am of those who
believe that they will. When I look around on the incongruities
and corruptions that surround our present system, when I see what
politics and government and administration actually are, if I
believed there was to be no progress in that direction I should
be bereft of all hope and desolate of faith. On the contrary,
methinks I can see in the adown vista of the future the golden
apples hanging on the tree of promise. It seems to me that the
light of the morning is already streaming in upon us that shall
illuminate further advancements in the science of government. And
why should not even Republican government take to itself other
modes of administration without infraction of its fundamental
liberties? Why should not large reductions transpire in those
opportunities that invite the most sinister combination for
offices and spoils? Is there any reason why the emoluments of
place should more than repay the labor it calls for? Is there any
reason why large abolitions of executive patronage may not
transpire; why Government may not generate through examining
commissioners, best agencies of its own for the functional work
it is called to perform, leaving appeals to the community to pass
rather upon controlling measures and general policies and
legislative functionaries? Is there any reason why that should
not take place? Sir, already, if I mistake not, in the large
cities of this land, which are the local points of your domestic
political system, the necessity for such a change is being felt
and acted upon, and large branches of executive work and
supervision are being necessarily put in commission. Mr.
President, I think what I have said sufficiently shows that the
argument which is advanced, that the present surroundings are
such that woman could not properly participate in your elections,
is an argument that does not go to the right of the woman, but
does go to the wrong of the man. It is a criticism, perhaps a
satire upon the civilization of your political system, not a
justification for any exclusions practiced under it.

There is one other line of remark that has been indulged in, and
only one other so far as I have heard, which calls for any
special rejoinder, and that affirms the precedents of the past to
be all against any such proposition as that now submitted. It is
said that there is no precedent, that it is not customary in any
of our governments, that it is not one of the recognitions of our
society, that it has never been signified as such in the past. I
do not know that such an argument amounts to anything at best,
but I do know that the allegation itself has no foundation in
fact. I know that in many cases and on many occasions this
impassable barrier that is now set forth as dividing the natural
rights of man and woman has been broken down and trampled upon,
and that, too, without any injury to the society from so doing.
Perhaps I can best illustrate this point by what an accomplished
lady, who has given much thought and research to the subject, has
presented. I read from a contribution she has made to one of our
leading public prints. She says:

So long as political power was of an absolute and hereditary
character women shared it whenever they happened, by birth,
to hold the position to which it was attached. In Hungary,
in some of the German States, and in the French Provinces to
this day, certain women, holding an inherited right, confer
the franchise upon their husbands, and in widowhood empower
some relative or accredited agent to be the legislative
protector of their property. In 1858, the authorities of the
old university town of Upsal granted the right of suffrage
to fifty women owning real estate, and to thirty-one doing
business on their own account. The representative that their
votes elected was to sit in the House of Burgesses. In
Scotland, it is less than a century since, for election
purposes, parties were unblushingly married in cases where
women conveyed a political franchise, and parted after the
election. In Ireland, the court of Queen's Bench, Dublin,
restored to women, in January, 1864, the old right of voting
for town commissioners. The Justice, Fitzgerald, desired to
state that ladies were also entitled to sit as town
commissioners, as well as to vote for them, and the
chief-justice took pains to make it clear that there was
nothing in the act of voting repugnant to their habits.

In November, 1864, the Government of Moravia decided that
all women who were tax-payers had the right to vote. In the
Government of Pitcairn's Island, women over sixteen have
voted ever since its settlement. In Canada, in 1850, a
distinct electoral privilege was conferred on women, in the
hope that thereby the Protestant might balance the Roman
Catholic power in the school system. I lived where I saw
this right exercised by female property holders for four
years. I never heard the most cultivated man, not even that
noble gentleman, the late Lord Elgin, object to its results.
In New Jersey, the Constitution adopted in 1776, gave the
right of suffrage to all inhabitants, of either sex, who
possessed fifty dollars in proclamation money. In 1790, to
make it clearer, the Assembly inserted the words "he or
she." Women voted there till 1838, when, the votes of some
colored women having decided an election, the prejudice
against the negro came to the aid of lordly supremacy, and
an act was passed limiting the right of suffrage to "free
white male citizens." In 1852, the Kentucky Legislature
conferred the right on widows with children in matters
relating to the school system. The same right was conferred
in Michigan; and full suffrage was given to women in the
State constitution submitted to Kansas in 1860.

I think that is a list of illustrations sufficient to dispose of
any argument that may arise on such a score. And now, Mr.
President, permit me to say, in concluding the remarks I have
felt called upon to make here, that I have spoken rather as
indicating my assent to the principle than as expecting any
present practical results from the motion in question. In the
earliest part of my political life, when first called upon to
represent a constituency in the General Assembly of Missouri, in
looking around, after my arrival at the seat of Government at
those matters that seemed to me of most importance in
legislation, I was struck with two great classes of injustices,
two great departments in which it seemed to me the laws and the
constitutions of my State had done signal wrong. Those were one
as respects the rights of colored persons; the other as respects
the rights of married women, minors, and females; and I there and
then determined that whenever and wherever it should be in my
power to aid in relieving them of those inequalities and those
injustices, I would do so to the extent of my humble ability.
Since then I have labored zealously in those two reforms as far
and as fast as a public opinion could be created or elicited to
enforce them, and I can say from my own observation that each
step of advance taken has been fruitful of all good and
productive of no evil. Emancipation of the colored race in
Missouri has been achieved in a most thorough manner,
substantially achieved even before the war; and to-day the
community is ripe for the declaration that all are created equal,
and that there is no reason to exclude from any right, civil or
political, on the ground of race or color. I feel proud to say
likewise that Missouri has gone further, and wiped from her
statute-book large portions of that unjust and unfair and
illiberal legislation which had been leveled at the rights and
the property of the women of the State. Believing that that cause
which embraces and embodies the cause of civil liberty will go
forward still triumphing and to triumph, I will never, so help me
God, cast any vote that may be construed as throwing myself in
the face of that progress. Even though I recognize, therefore,
the impolicy of coupling these two measures in this manner and at
this time, I shall yet record my vote in the affirmative as an
earnest indication of my belief in the principle and my faith in
the future.

Mr. DAVIS: Mr. President, our entire population, like that of all
other countries, is divided into two great classes, the male and
the female. By the census of 1860 the white female population of
the United States exceeded thirteen millions, and the aggregate
negro population, of both sexes, was below four and a half
millions. That great white population, and all its female
predecessors, have never had the right of suffrage, or, to use
that cant phrase of the day, have never been enfranchised; and
such has also been the condition of the negro population. That
about one negro in ten thousand in four or five States have been
allowed to vote, is too insignificant to be dignified with any
consideration as an exception. But now a frenzied party is
clamoring to have suffrage given to the negro, while they not
only raise no voice for female suffrage, but frown upon and repel
every movement and utterance in its favor. Who of the advocates
of negro suffrage, in Congress or out of it, dare to stand forth
and proclaim to the manhood of America, that the free negroes are
fitter and more competent to exercise transcendent political
power, the right of suffrage, than their mothers, their wives,
their sisters, and their daughters? The great God who created all
the races and in every race gave to man woman, never intended
that woman should take part in national government among any
people, or that the negro, the lowest, should ever have
co-ordinate and equal power with the highest, the white race, in
any government, national or domestic. To woman in every race He
gave correlative, and as high, as necessary, and as essential,
but different faculties and attributes, intellectual and moral,
as He gave to man in the same race; and to both, those adapted to
the equally important but different parts which they were to play
in the dramatic destinies of their people. The instincts, the
teachings of the distinct and differing, but harmonious organism
of each, led man and woman in every race and people and nation
and tribe, savage and civilized, in all countries and ages of the
world, to choose their natural, appropriate, and peculiar field
of labor and effort. Man assumed the direction of government and
war, woman of the domestic and family affairs and the care and
the training of the child; and each have always acquiesced in
this partition and choice. It has been so from the beginning,
throughout the whole history of man, and it will continue to be
so to the end, because it is in conformity to nature and its
laws, and is sustained and confirmed by the experience and reason
of six thousand years.

I therefore, Mr. President, am decidedly and earnestly opposed to
the amendment moved by my friend from Pennsylvania. There is no
man more deeply impressed with or more highly appreciates the
important offices which woman exercises over the destiny of race
than I do. I concede that woman, by her teachings and influence,
is the source of the large mass of the morality and virtue of man
and of the world. The benignant and humanizing and important
influence which she exercises upon the whole race of man in the
proper discharge of her functions and duties can not be
overestimated; but that woman should properly perform these great
duties, this inappreciably valuable task, it is necessary that
she should be kept pure. The domestic altar is a sacred fane
where woman is the high and officiating priestess. This priestess
should be virtuous, she should be intelligent, she should be
competent to the performance of all her high duties. To keep her
in that condition of purity, it is necessary that she should be
separated from the exercise of suffrage and from all those stern
and contaminating and demoralizing duties that devolves upon the
hardier sex--man.

What is the proposition now before the Senate? To make pure,
cultivated, noble woman a partisan, a political hack, to lead her
among the rabble that surround and control by blackguardism and
brute force so many of the hustings of the United States. Mr.
President, if one greater evil or curse could befall the American
people than any other, in my judgment it would be to confer upon
the women of America the right of suffrage. It would be a great
step in the line of mischief and evil, and it would lead to other
and equally fatal steps--in the same direction. Sir, if ever in
the depths and silence of night I send up my secret orisons to my
Maker, one of the most fervent of my prayers would be that the
women of my country should be saved and sheltered by man from
this great contamination. It is not necessary to the proper
influence and to the legitimate power of woman. A cultivated,
enlightened, delicate, refined, and virtuous woman at the family
altar is the persuasive and at the same time plastic power that
sways and fashions the principles and character of her children,
and thus makes her impress upon the future men of America, the
Phocians, the Timoleons, the Washingtons, who are the honor of
the race, and whose destiny it is to elevate and ennoble it. Mr.
President, in proportion as man becomes civilized so increases
the power and the influence of woman. In the tribes and nations
of the lowest ignorance and barbarism this influence is least--it
is most potent where there is the greatest intellectual and moral
cultivation of man. I want this gentle and holy influence to
continue pure and uncontaminated by keeping it within the
domestic fane and afar from party politics. But, sir, it has
become the fashion, the philosophy, the frenzy of the day to coin
catch-words that carry a seemingly attractive principle, but at
the same time alluring and mischievous, and among them is this
cry for woman's rights and also for negro suffrage and manhood
suffrage and universal suffrage. It is all nothing but slang and
demagoguery, and is fraught with naught but evil, mischief, and
degradation, individually and nationally. For these reasons, sir,
one of the last propositions, or if gentlemen choose, principles
which have been or may be propounded to the people of America, or
as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to
which I shall ever give my acceptance, is female suffrage.

I do not deny that our national family properly and wisely
comprehends all of the nationalities of Europe who may come here,
according to the terms of our naturalization laws, and their
posterity; but I assert that negroes, Indians, Mongolians,
Chinese, and Tartars ought not and can not safely be admitted to
the powers and privileges of citizenship.

I have no doubt that my honorable friend from Pennsylvania
desires that the right of suffrage should be given to women; and
if he had the power to transfer all the women of the conservative
States into and to become residents of the radical States, who
imagines that if that were done the Radicals of this House and of
the nation would shout in favor of giving to women the right of
suffrage? If the Radicals in Congress and out of Congress knew
with the certainty of truth that every vote which they will
enfranchise by conferring the right of suffrage on the negro,
would be cast against that party, in favor of their late southern
masters, in favor of the Democracy, in hostility to the schemes
of ambition and spoils which are now animating the heart and mind
of the great radical organization, who doubts that this party and
every mother's son of them would shout for withholding suffrage
from the negro?

Mr. SPRAGUE: I know the Senate is impatient for a vote. I know
they are determined to vote favorably. When it is necessary that
women shall vote for the support of liberty and equality I shall
be ready to cast my vote in their favor. The black man's vote is
necessary to this at this time....

Mr. BUCKALEW: I desire to say before the vote is taken on this
amendment that I shall vote in favor of it because of the
particular position which it occupies. A vote given for this
amendment is not a final one. I understand it to pronounce an
opinion upon the two propositions which have been undergoing
consideration in the Senate, in a comparative manner, if I may
use the expression. In voting for this proposition I affirm
simply that the principles and the reasonings upon which the bill
itself, as reported by the committee, is based, would apply with
equal, if not increased force, to the particular proposition
contained in the amendment. If that be affirmed, then recurs the
question whether it is proper, whether it is expedient at this
time to increase, and very extensively increase, suffrage in this
country. I do not understand that the general argument on that
question is involved in the present motion. I do not understand
that it comes up of necessity in considering the proposition
covered by the amendment of my colleague which stands simply in
contrast with that contained in the bill. I presume there are
several gentlemen, members of this body, who will vote with
reference to this consideration and who will reserve their
opinion, either openly or in their own consciousness, upon the
general or indirect question of the extension of suffrage to the
females of the United States.

But the occasion invites some remarks beyond the mere statement
of this point. The debates which have been going on for three
days in this Chamber will go out to the country. They will
constitute an element in the popular discussions of the times and
awaken a large amount of public attention. This is not the last
we shall hear of this subject. It will come to us again; and I am
persuaded that one reason why it will come again is that the
arguments against the proposed extension of suffrage have not
been sufficient; they have been inadequate; they have been placed
upon grounds which will not endure debate. Those who are in favor
of the extension of suffrage to females can answer what has been
said in this Chamber, and they can answer it triumphantly; and
you will eventually be obliged to take other grounds than those
which have been here stated. From the beginning of this debate
there has been either an open or an implied concession of the
principle upon which the extension of suffrage is asked; and that
is, that there is some natural right or propriety in extending it
further than it was extended by those who formed our State and
Federal Constitutions; that there is some principle of right or
of propriety involved which now appeals powerfully to us in favor
of extended and liberal action in behalf of those large classes
who have been hitherto disfranchised; upon whom the right of
suffrage has not been heretofore conferred.

Having made this concession upon the fundamental ground of the
inquiry, or at all events intimated it, the opponents of an
extended franchise pass on to particular arguments of
inconvenience or inexpediency as constituting the grounds of
their opposition.

Now, sir, I venture to say that those who resist the extension of
suffrage in this country will be unsuccessful in their
opposition; they will be overborne, unless they assume grounds of
a more commanding character than those which they have here
maintained. This subject of the extension of suffrage must be put
upon practical grounds and extricated from the sophisms of
theoretical reasoning. Gentlemen must get out of the domain of
theory. They must come back again to those principles of action
upon which our fathers proceeded in framing our constitutional
system. They lodged suffrage in this country simply in those whom
they thought most worthy and most fit to exercise it. They did
not proceed upon those humanitarian theories which have since
obtained and which now seem to have taken a considerable hold on
the public mind. They were practical men, and acted with
reference to the history and experience of mankind. They were no
metaphysicians; they were not reformers in the modern sense of
the term; they were men who based their political action upon the
experience of mankind, and upon those practical reflections with
reference to men and things in which they had indulged in active
life. They placed suffrage then upon the broad common-sense
principle that it should be lodged in and exercised by those who
could use it most wisely and most safely and most efficiently to
serve the great ends for which Government was instituted. They
had no other ground than this, and their work shows that they
proceeded upon it, and not upon any abstract or transcendental
notion of human rights which ignored the existing facts of social
life.

Now, sir, the objection which I have to a large extension of
suffrage in this country, whether by Federal or State power, is
this: that thereby you will corrupt and degrade elections, and
probably lead to their complete abrogation hereafter. By pouring
into the ballot-boxes of the country a large mass of ignorant
votes, and votes subjected to pecuniary or social influence, you
will corrupt and degrade your elections and lay the foundation
for their ultimate destruction. That is a conviction of mine, and
it is upon that ground that I resist both negro suffrage and
female suffrage, and any other proposed form of suffrage which
takes humanity in an unduly broad or enlarged sense as the
foundation of an arrangement of political power.

Mr. President, I proposed before the debate concluded, before
this subject should be submitted to the Senate for its final
decision, to protest against some of the reasoning by which this
amendment was resisted. I intended to protest against particular
arguments which were submitted; but I was glad this morning that
that duty which I had proposed to myself was discharged, and well
discharged by the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Brown]. For
instance, the argument that the right of suffrage ought not to be
conferred upon this particular class because they did not or
could not bear arms--a consideration totally foreign and
irrelevant, in my opinion, to the question which we are
discussing.

But, sir, passing this by, I desire to add a few words before I
conclude upon another point which was stated or suggested by the
Senator from Missouri, and that is the question of reform or
improvement in our election system; I mean in the machinery by
which or plans upon which those elections proceed. After due
reflection given to this subject, my opinion is that our
electoral systems in this country are exceedingly defective, and
that they require thorough revision, that to them the hand of
reform must be strongly applied if republican institutions are to
be ultimately successful with us.

I would see much less objection to your extension of the right of
suffrage very largely to classes now excluded if you had a
different mode of voting, if you did take or could take the sense
of these added classes in a different manner from that which now
obtains in popular voting. You proceed at present upon the
principle or rule that a mere majority of the electoral community
shall possess the whole mass of political power; and what are the
inevitable results? First, that the community is divided into
parties, and into parties not very unequal in their aggregate
numbers. What next? That the balance of power between parties is
held by a very small number of voters; and in practical action
what is the fact? That the struggle is constantly for that
balance of power, and in order to obtain it, all the arts and all
the evil influences of elections are called into action. It is
this struggle for that balance of power that breeds most of the
evils of your system of popular elections. Now, is it not
possible to have republican institutions and to eliminate or
decrease largely this element of evil? Why, sir, take the State
of Pennsylvania, whose voice, perhaps, in this Government is to
give direction to its legislation at a given time and take a
pecuniary interest in the country largely interested in your
laws, looking forward upon the eve of a hotly contested election
to some particular measures of Government which shall favor it,
with what ease can that interest throw into the State a pecuniary
contribution competent to turn the voice of that powerful State
and change or determine the policy of your Government. And why
so? It is only necessary that this corrupt influence should be
exerted very slightly indeed within that State from abroad in
order to turn the scale, because you are only to exert your
pernicious power upon a small number of persons who hold the
balance of power between parties therein. Sir, that organization
of our system which allows such a state of things to occur must
be inherently vicious. Instead of this being a Government of the
whole people, which is our fundamental principle, which is our
original idea, it is a Government, in the first place, of a
majority only of the people; and in the next place, it is in some
sort a Government of that small number of persons who give
preponderance to one party over another, and who may be
influenced by fanaticism, corruption, or passion.

This being our political state at present with reference to
electoral action, what do you propose? We have a great evil.
Electoral corruption is the great danger in our path. It is the
evil in our system against which we must constantly struggle.
Every patriot and every honest man here and in his own State is
bound to lift his voice and to strike boldly against it in all
its forms, and it requires for its repression all the efforts and
all the exertion we can put forth. Now what is proposed by the
reformers of the present time? We have our majority rule--it is
not a principle; it is an abuse of all terms to call it a
principle--we have our majority rule in full action, presenting
an invitation to corrupt, base, and sinister influences to attach
themselves to our system; we have great difficulties with which
we now struggle arising from imperfect arrangements, and what do
you propose? To reform existing evils and abuses? To correct your
system? To study it as patriots, as men of reflection and good
sense? No, sir. You propose to introduce into our electoral
bodies new elements of enormous magnitude. You propose to take
the base of society, excluded now, and build upon it, and upon
it alone or mainly, because the introduction of the enormous mass
of voters proposed by the reformers will wholly change the
foundations upon which you build.

Will not these new electors you propose to introduce be more
approachable than men who now vote to all corrupt influences?
Will they not be more passionate, and therefore more easily
influenced by the demagogue? Will they not be more easily caught
and enraptured by superficial declamation, because more incapable
of profound reflection? Will not their weakness render them
subservient to the strong and their ignorance to the artful?

I shall not, however, detain you with an elaborate argument upon
this question of suffrage. I only feel myself called upon to say
enough to indicate the general direction of my reflections upon
the questions before us; to show why it is that I am immovably
opposed at this time to extending our system of suffrage in the
District of Columbia or elsewhere so as to include large classes
of persons who are now excluded; and to state my opinion that
reform or change should be concerned with the correction of the
existing evils of our electoral system, instead of with the
enlargement of its boundaries.

Mr. DOOLITTLE: I move that the Senate do now adjourn.

Several SENATORS: Oh, no; let us have a vote.

The motion was not agreed to.

Mr. DOOLITTLE: Mr. President, this amendment, in my judgment,
opens a very grave question; a question graver than it appears at
the blush; a question upon which the ablest minds are divided
here and elsewhere; a question, however, on which we are called
upon to vote, and therefore one upon which I desire very briefly
to state the views which control my judgment when I say that I
shall vote against the amendment which is now offered.

For myself, sir, after giving some considerable reflection to the
subject of suffrage, I have arrived at the conclusion that the
true base or foundation upon which to rest suffrage in any
republican community is upon the family, the head of the family;
because in civilized society the family is the unit, not the
individual. What is meant by "man" is man in that relation where
he is placed according to nature, reason, and religion. If it
were a new question and it were left to me to determine what
should be the true qualification of a person to exercise the
right of suffrage, I would fix it upon that basis that the head
of a family, capable of supporting that family, and who had
supported the family, should be permitted to vote, and no other.

While I know that the question is not a new one; while it is
impossible for me to treat it as a new question because suffrage
everywhere has been extended beyond the heads of families, yet
the reason, in my judgment, upon which it has been extended is
simply this: if certain men have been permitted to vote who were
not the heads of families it was because they were the exceptions
to the general rule, and because it was to be presumed that if
they were not at the time heads of families they ought to be, and
probably would be. I say that according to reason, nature, and
religion, the family is the unit of every society. So far as the
ballot is concerned, in my judgment, it represents this
fundamental element of civilized society, the family. It
therefore should be cast by the head of the family, and according
to reason, nature, and religion man is the head of the family. In
that relation, while every man is king, every woman is queen; but
upon him devolves the responsibility of controlling the external
relations of this family, and those external relations are
controlled by the ballot; for that ballot or vote which he
exercises goes to choose the legislators who are to make the laws
which are to govern society. Within the family man is supreme; he
governs by the law of the family, by the law of reason, nature,
religion. Therefore it is that I am not in favor of conferring
the right of suffrage upon woman....

Mr. President, I have stated very briefly that I shall not be
able to vote for the proposition of my honorable friend from
Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan]. I shall not be able to vote for this
bill if it be a bill to give universal suffrage to the colored
men in this District without any restriction or qualification. I
have been informed that some other Senator intends before this
bill shall have passed in the Senate to propose an amendment
which will attach a qualification, and perhaps, should that meet
the views of the Senate, I might give my support to the bill. I
shall not detain the Senate further now on this subject.

Mr. POMEROY: I desire to say in just a brief word that I shall
vote against the amendment of the Senator from Pennsylvania,
simply because I am in favor of this measure, and I do not want
to weigh it down with anything else. There are other measures
that I would be glad to support in their proper place and time;
but this is a great measure of itself. Since I have been a member
of the Senate, there was a law in this District authorizing the
selling of colored men. To have traveled in six years from the
auction-block to the ballot with these people is an immense
stride, and if we can carry this measure alone of itself we
should be contented for the present. I am for this measure
religiously and earnestly, and I would vote down and vote against
everything that I thought weakened or that I thought was opposed
to it. It is simply with this view, without expressing any
opinion in regard to the merits of the amendment, that I shall
vote against it and all other amendments.

The PRESIDENT _pro tem._: The question is on the amendment of the
Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan], to strike out the word
"male" before the word "person," in the second line of the first
section of the amendment reported by the Committee on the
District of Columbia as a substitute for the whole bill, and on
that question the yeas and nays have been ordered. Yeas, 9. Nays,
37.[58]

In the House, January 28, 1867, Mr. Noell, of Missouri,
introduced a bill to amend the suffrage act of the District of
Columbia, which, after the second reading, he moved should be
referred to a select committee of five, and on that motion
demanded the previous question, and called for the yeas and nays,
which resulted in 49 yeas,[59] 74 nays--68 not voting.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] FORM OF PETITION.--_To the Senate and House of
Representatives_:--The undersigned women of the United States,
respectfully ask an amendment of the Constitution that shall prohibit
the several States from disfranchising any of their citizens on the
ground of sex.

In making our demand for Suffrage, we would call your attention to the
fact that we represent fifteen million people--one-half the entire
population of the country--intelligent, virtuous, native-born American
citizens; and yet stand outside the pale of political recognition. The
Constitution classes us as "free people," and counts us _whole_
persons in the basis of representation; and yet are we governed
without our consent, compelled to pay taxes without appeal, and
punished for violations of law without choice of judge or juror. The
experience of all ages, the Declarations of the Fathers, the Statute
Laws of our own day, and the fearful revolution through which we have
just passed, all prove the uncertain tenure of life, liberty, and
property so long as the ballot--the only weapon of self-protection--is
not in the hand of every citizen.

Therefore, as you are now amending the Constitution, and, in harmony
with advancing civilization, placing new safeguards round the
individual rights of four millions of emancipated slaves, we ask that
you extend the right of Suffrage to Woman--the only remaining class of
disfranchised citizens--and thus fulfill your constitutional
obligation "to guarantee to every State in the Union a Republican form
of Government." As all partial application of Republican principles
must ever breed a complicated legislation as well as a discontented
people, we would pray your Honorable Body, in order to simplify the
machinery of Government and ensure domestic tranquillity, that you
legislate hereafter for persons, citizens, tax-payers, and not for
class or caste. For justice and equality your petitioners will ever
pray.

[49] JOINT RESOLUTIONS BEFORE CONGRESS AFFECTING WOMEN.

_To the Editor of the Standard_--_Sir_:--Mr. Broomall, of
Pennsylvania; Mr. Schenck, of Ohio; Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island; Mr.
Stevens, of Pennsylvania, have each a resolution before Congress to
amend the Constitution.

Article 1st, Section 2d, reads thus: "Representatives and direct taxes
shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included
within this Union according to their respective number."

Mr. Broomall proposes to amend by saying "male electors," Mr. Schenck
"male citizens," Mr. Jenckes "male citizens," Mr. Stevens "legal
voters." There is no objection to the amendment proposed by Mr.
Stevens, as in process of time women may be made "legal voters" in the
several States, and would then meet that requirement of the
Constitution. But those urged by the other gentlemen, neither time,
effort, nor State Constitutions could enable us to meet, unless, by a
liberal interpretation of the amendment, a coat of mail to be worn at
the polls might be judged all-sufficient. Mr. Jenckes and Mr. Schenck,
in their bills, have the grace not to say a word about taxes,
remembering perhaps that "taxation without representation is tyranny."
But Mr. Broomall, though unwilling to share with us the honors of
Government, would fain secure us a place in its burdens; for while he
apportions representatives to "male electors" only, he admits "_all
the inhabitants_" into the rights, privileges, and immunities of
taxation. Magnanimous M. C.!

I would call the attention of the women of the nation to the fact that
under the Federal Constitution, as it now exists, there is not one
word that limits the right of suffrage to any privileged class. This
attempt to turn the wheels of civilization backward, on the part of
Republicans claiming to be _the_ Liberal party, should rouse every
woman in the nation to a prompt exercise of the only right she has in
the Government, the right of petition. To this end a committee in New
York have sent out thousands of petitions, which should be circulated
in every district and sent to its Representative at Washington as soon
as possible.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

NEW YORK, _January 2, 1866_.

[50] Leaving Rochester October 11th, she called on Martha Wright,
Auburn; Phebe Jones and Lydia Mott, Albany; Mrs. Rose, Gibbons, Davis,
Stanton, New York; Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, New
Jersey; Stephen and Abby Foster, Worcester; Mrs. Severance, Dall,
Nowell, Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Dr. Zakzyewska, Mr. Phillips and
Garrison, in Boston, urging them to join in sending protests to
Washington against the pending legislation. Mr. Phillips at once
consented to vote $500 from the "Jackson Fund" to commence the work.
Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton spent all their "Christmas holidays" in
writing letters and addressing appeals and petitions to every part of
the country, and before the close of the session of 1865-66 ten
thousand signatures were poured into Congress.

[51] "THIS IS THE NEGRO'S HOUR."

_To the Editor of the Standard_--_Sir_:--By an amendment of the
Constitution, ratified by three-fourths of the loyal States, the black
man is declared free. The largest and most influential political party
is demanding suffrage for him throughout the Union, which right in
many of the States is already conceded. Although this may remain a
question for politicians to wrangle over for five or ten years, the
black man is still, in a political point of view, far above the
educated women of the country. The representative women of the nation
have done their uttermost for the last thirty years to secure freedom
for the negro, and so long as he was lowest in the scale of being we
were willing to press _his_ claims; but now, as the celestial gate to
civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it becomes a serious
question whether we had better stand aside and see "Sambo" walk into
the kingdom first. As self-preservation is the first law of nature,
would it not be wiser to keep our lamps trimmed and burning, and when
the constitutional door is open, avail ourselves of the strong arm and
blue uniform of the black soldier to walk in by his side, and thus
make the gap so wide that no privileged class could ever again close
it against the humblest citizen of the republic?

"This is the negro's hour." Are we sure that he, once entrenched in
all his inalienable rights, may not be an added power to hold us at
bay? Have not "black male citizens" been heard to say they doubted the
wisdom of extending the right of suffrage to women? Why should the
African prove more just and generous than his Saxon compeers? If the
two millions of Southern black women are not to be secured in their
rights of person, property, wages, and children, their emancipation is
but another form of slavery. In fact, it is better to be the slave of
an educated white man, than of a degraded, ignorant black one. We who
know what absolute power the statute laws of most of the States give
man, in all his civil, political, and social relations, demand that in
changing the status of the four millions of Africans, the women as
well as the men shall be secured in all the rights, privileges, and
immunities of citizens.

It is all very well for the privileged order to look down complacently
and tell us, "This is the negro's hour; do not clog his way; do not
embarrass the Republican party with any new issue; be generous and
magnanimous; the negro once safe, the woman comes next." Now, if our
prayer involved a new set of measures, or a new train of thought, it
would be cruel to tax "white male citizens" with even two simple
questions at a time; but the disfranchised all make the same demand,
and the same logic and justice that secures suffrage to one class
gives it to all. The struggle of the last thirty years has not been
merely on the black man as such, but on the broader ground of his
humanity. Our Fathers, at the end of the first revolution, in their
desire for a speedy readjustment of all their difficulties, and in
order to present to Great Britain, their common enemy, an united
front, accepted the compromise urged on them by South Carolina, and a
century of wrong, ending in another revolution, has been the result of
their action. This is our opportunity to retrieve the errors of the
past and mould anew the elements of Democracy. The nation is ready for
a long step in the right direction; party lines are obliterated, and
all men are thinking for themselves. If our rulers have the justice to
give the black man suffrage, woman should avail herself of that
new-born virtue to secure her rights; if not, she should begin with
renewed earnestness to educate the people into the idea of universal
suffrage.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

NEW YORK, _December 26, 1865_.

[52] From the _New York Evening Express_.

SCENES IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.--_Negroes are to Vote--Why not
Coolies in California--Indians everywhere, and First of all, Fifteen
Millions of our Countrywomen._

The following occurred in the House, Tuesday, upon Thaddeus Stevens'
resolution, from the Reconstruction Committee, to deprive the South of
representation, unless the South lets the negroes vote there....

Mr. CHANDLER, of New York, having the floor for an hour, said: Before
proceeding with my remarks, I will yield the floor for ten minutes to
my colleague [Mr. Brooks].

Mr. BROOKS: Mr. Speaker, I do not rise, of course, to debate this
resolution, in the few minutes allowed me by my colleague, nor, in my
judgment, does the resolution need any discussion unless it may be for
the mere purpose of agitation. I do not suppose that there is an
honorable gentleman upon the floor of this House who believes for a
moment that any movement of this character is likely to become the
fundamental law of the land, and these propositions are, therefore,
introduced only for the purpose of agitation. If the honorable
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] had been quite confident of
adopting this amendment, he would at the start have named what are
States of this Union. The opinion of the honorable gentleman himself,
that there are no States in this Union but those that are now
represented upon this floor, I know full well, but he knows as well
that the President of the United States recognizes thirty-six States
of this Union, and that it is necessary to obtain the consent of
three-fourths of those thirty-six States, which number it is not
possible to obtain. He knows very well that if his amendment should be
adopted by the Legislatures of States enough, in his judgment, to
carry it, before it could pass the tribunal of the Executive Chamber
it would be obliged to receive the assent of twenty-seven States in
order to become an amendment to the Constitution. The whole
resolution, therefore, is for the purpose of mere agitation. It is an
appeal from this House to the outside constituencies that we know by
the name of buncombe. Here it was born, and here, after its agitation
in the States, it will die. Hence, I asked the gentleman from
Pennsylvania this morning to be consistent in his proposition. In one
thing he is consistent, and that is in admitting the whole of the
Asiatic immigration, which, by the connection of our steamers with
China and Japan and the East Indies, is about to pour forth in mighty
masses upon the Pacific coast to the overwhelming even of the white
population there.

Mr. STEVENS: I wish to correct the gentleman. I said it excluded
Chinese.

Mr. BROOKS: How exclude them, when Chinese are to be included in the
basis of representation?

Mr. STEVENS: I say it excludes them.

Mr. BROOKS: How exclude them?

Mr. STEVENS: They are not included in the basis of representation.

Mr. BROOKS: Yes, if the States exclude them from the elective
franchise; and the States of California and Oregon and Nevada are to
be deprived of representation according to their population upon the
floor of this House by this amendment. I asked him, also, if the
Indian was not a man and a brother, and I obtained no satisfactory
answer from the honorable gentleman. I speak now, in order to make his
resolution consistent, for no one hundred thousand coolies or wild
savages, but I raise my voice here in behalf of fifteen million of our
countrywomen, the fairest, brightest portion of creation, and I ask
why they are not permitted to vote for Representatives under this
resolution? Why, in organizing a system of liberality and justice, not
recognize in the case of free women as well as free negroes the right
of representation?

Mr. STEVENS: The gentleman will allow me to say that this bill does
not exclude women. It does not say who shall vote.

Mr. BROOKS: I comprehend all that; but the whole object of this
amendment is to obtain votes for the negroes. That is its purport,
tendency, and meaning; and it punishes those who will not give a vote
to the negroes in the Southern States of our Union. That is the object
of the resolution, and the ground upon which it is presented to this
House and to the country. This is a new era; this is an age of
progress. Indians are not only Indians, but men and brothers; and why
not, in a resolution like this, include the fair sex too, and give
them the right to representation? Will it be said that this sex does
not claim a right to representation? Many members here have petitions
from these fifteen millions of women, or a large portion of them, for
representation, and for the right to vote on equal terms with the
stronger sex, who they say are now depriving them of it. To show that
such is their wish and desire, I will send to the Clerk's desk to be
read certain documents, to which I ask the attention of the honorable
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens], for in one of them he will
find he is somewhat interested.

The Clerk read as follows:

STANDARD OFFICE, 48 Beekman Street, New York, _Jan. 20, 1866_.

_Dear Sir_:--I send you the inclosed copy of petition and
signatures sent to Thaddeus Stevens last week. I then urged Mr.
Stevens, if their committee of fifteen could not report favorably
on our petitions, they would, at least, not interpose any new
barrier against woman's right to the ballot.

Mrs. Stanton has sent you a petition--I trust you will present
that at your earliest convenience. The Democrats are now in
minority. May they drive the Republicans to do good works--not
merely to hold the rebel States in check until negro men shall be
guaranteed their right to a voice in their governments, but to
hold the party to a logical consistency that shall give every
responsible citizen in every State equal right to the ballot.
Will you, sir, please send me whatever is said or done with our
petitions? Will you also give me the names of members whom you
think would present petitions for us?

Hon. JAMES BROOKS. Respectfully yours, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

A PETITION FOR UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:--[The petition here
presented has been already in _The Express_. The following are the
signatures to the petition sent to Mr. Stevens]: Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, New York; Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N.Y.; Antoinette Brown
Blackwell, New York; Lucy Stone, Newark, N.J.; Ernestine L. Rose, New
York; Joanna S. Morse, 48 Livingston St., Brooklyn; Elizabeth R.
Tilton, 48 Livingston St., Brooklyn; Ellen Hoxie Squier, 34 St. Felix
St., Brooklyn; Mary Fowler Gilbert, 294 West 19th St., New York; Mary
E. Gilbert, 294 West 19th St., New York; Mattie Griffith, New York.

The SPEAKER: The ten minutes of the gentleman from New York [Mr.
Brooks] have expired.

Mr. BROOKS: I will only say that at the proper time I will move to
amend--or if I do not I would suggest to some gentleman on the other
side to move it--this proposed amendment by inserting the words "or
sex" after the word "color," so that it will read:

_Provided_, That whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or
abridged in any State on account of race or color or sex, all persons
of such race or color or sex shall be excluded from the basis of
representation.

Mr. STEVENS: Is the gentleman from N.Y. [Mr. Brooks] in favor of that
amendment?

Mr. BROOKS: I am if negroes are permitted to vote.

Mr. STEVENS: That does not answer my question. Is the gentleman in
favor of the amendment he has indicated?

Mr. BROOKS: I suggested that I would move it at a convenient time.

Mr. STEVENS: Is the gentleman in favor of his own amendment?

Mr. BROOKS: I am in favor of my own color in preference to any other
color, and I prefer the white women of my country to the negro.
[Applause on the floor and in the galleries promptly checked by the
Speaker]. The Speaker said he saw a number of persons clapping in the
galleries. He would endeavor, to the best of his ability, whether
supported by the House or not, to preserve order. Applause was just as
much out of order as manifestations of disapproval, and hisses not
more than clapping of hands. Instead of general applause on the floor,
gentlemen on the floor should set a good example.

[53] WOMEN POLITICIANS.--Mr. Lane, of Kansas, it is reported, has
presented to the Senate the petition of "one hundred and twenty-four
beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished ladies of Lawrence," praying
for a constitutional amendment that shall prohibit States from
disfranchising citizens on account of sex. That trick will not do. We
wager a big apple that the ladies referred to are not "beautiful" or
accomplished. Nine of every ten of them are undoubtedly _passe_. They
have hook-billed noses, crow's-feet under their sunken eyes, and a
mellow tinting of the hair. They are connoisseurs in the matter of
snuff. They discard hoops, waterfalls, and bandeaux. They hold hen
conventions, to discuss and decide, with vociferous expression, the
orthodoxy of the minister, the regularity of the doctor, and the
morals of the lawyer. They read the _Tribune_ with spectacles, and
have files of _The Liberator_ and Wendell Phillips' orations, bound in
sheepskin. Heaven forbid that we should think of any of the number as
a married woman, without a fervent aspiration of pity for the weaker
vessel who officiates as her spouse. As to rearing children, that is
not to be thought of in the connection. Show us a woman who wants to
mingle in the exciting and unpurified squabble of politics, and we
will show you one who has failed to reach and enjoy that true relation
of sovereignty which is held by her "meek and lowly" sisters; who,
though destitute of such panting aspirations, hold the scepter of true
authority in those high and holy virtues which fascinate while they
command in their undisputed empire--the social circle. What iconoclast
shall break our idol, by putting the ballot in woman's hand?--_Albany
Evening Journal._

A CRY FROM THE FEMALES.--Mr. Sumner yesterday presented a petition to
the Senate from a large number of the women of New England, praying
that they may not be debarred from the right of suffrage on account of
sex. Our heart warms with pity toward these unfortunate creatures. We
fancy that we can see them, deserted of men, and bereft of those rich
enjoyments and exalted privileges which belong to women, languishing
their unhappy lives away in a mournful singleness, from which they can
escape by no art in the construction of waterfalls or the employment
of cotton-padding. Talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an
accessory of power, when she rules the world by a glance of her eye.
There was sound philosophy in the remark of an Eastern monarch, that
his wife was sovereign of the Empire, because she ruled his little
ones, and his little ones ruled him. The sure panacea for such ills as
the Massachusetts petitioners complain of, is a wicker-work cradle and
a dimple-cheeked baby.--_The New York Tribune._

[54] WOMAN SUFFRAGE.--_Editor Commonwealth_:--Enclosed is a letter I
sent to the editor of _The Nation_. As I consider his allusion to it
insufficient, will you have the kindness to print it, no paper but
yours, that I know of, being now open to the subject. All that the
editor of _The Nation_ has a right to say is, that he has not
investigated the statistics. Most of the women who have signed the
petitions are women who have not a male relative in the world
interested in the matter. Very truly yours,

BOSTON, _Jan. 20, 1866_. CAROLINE H. DALL.

70 WARREN AVENUE, BOSTON, _Jan. 6, 1866_.

_To the Editor of The Nation_:--I saw with surprise in _The Nation_,
received to-day, a paragraph on "Universal Suffrage," which contained
the following lines:

"We think the women of the United States ought to have the franchise
if they desire it, and we think they ought to desire it. But until
they do desire it, and show that they do, by a _general_ expression of
opinion, we are opposed to their being saddled with it on grounds of
theoretical fitness, etc."

Surely, it is difficult to explain such a sentence in a professedly
far-seeing and deep-thinking journal! That argument will serve as well
for the lately enfranchised blacks as for women, for no one will
pretend that of the millions set free, a bare majority would of
themselves contend for the franchise. That argument might have refused
them freedom itself, for a large majority of Southern slaves knew too
little of it to desire it, however they may have longed to be rid of a
taskmaster and the pangs which slavery brought. During the last four
years women have been silent about their "rights" in the several
States, because pressed by severe duties. Desirous to establish a
reputation for discretion, we have refrained from complicating the
perplexities of any Senator; but now that a constitutional amendment
is pending we must be careful, even if we gain no franchise, to lose
no _opportunity_.

Hitherto the Constitution of the United States has contained no word
that would shut women out from future suffrage. Mr. Schenck, of Ohio,
and Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island, propose to limit a right to "male
citizens" which should rest, as it now does, simply on "legal voters."
This would oblige women to move to amend the Constitution of the
United States after each separate State was carried. We have no
inclination for this unnecessary work, and here, in Boston, we are
preparing a petition basing the necessity of our present interference
on this fact alone. How much women desire the suffrage, Mr. Editor,
you ought to perceive from the conduct of the women of Australia.
Carelessly enough, her male legislators omitted the significant
adjective from their constitutional amendment, and, without a word of
warning, on election day, every woman, properly qualified, was found
at the polls. There was no just reason for refusing them the
privilege, and _The London Times_ says the precedent is to stand.

A very absurd article in _The Evening Post_ has lately given us an
idea that New York contains some remarkable women. Women born to be
looked at!--women who do their whole duty if they blossom like the
roses, and like the roses die. Let us hope they fulfill the functions
of this type by as short a sojourn on this earth as may be, lingering,
as Malherbe would have it, only for "the space of a morning." It may
be among them that you find the women who "look persistently to
married life as a means of livelihood." Here, in Massachusetts, we do
not acknowledge any such. Fashion has her danglers among men and
women, but we pity those whose lot has thrown them into intimate
relations with such women as you describe. They are not of our sort.
We think that if the writer in _The Evening Post_ were tested, he
would be forced to admire most the hands which could do the best work.
It would be small comfort to him, when Bridget and John had
simultaneously departed, when the baby was crying and the fire out,
that his wife sat lonely, in one corner of the apartment, with serene
eyes and unstained hands. Men who talk such nonsense in America, must
remember that neither wealth nor gentle blood can _here_ protect them
from such a dilemma. As to suffrage, we are not now talking of
granting it to a distinct race; if we were, they might manifest a
"general" desire for it. Women, who love their husbands and brothers,
can not _all_ submit to bear the reproach which clings to their demand
for justice. A few of us must suffer sharply for the sake of that
great future which God shows us to be possible, when goodness shall
join hands with power. But we do not like our pain. We would gladly be
sheltered, and comforted, and cheered, and we warn you, by what passes
in our own hearts, that women will never express a "general" desire
for suffrage until men have ceased to ridicule and despise them for
it; until the representatives of men have been taught to treat their
petitions with respect. There would be no difficulty in obtaining this
right of suffrage If it depended on a property qualification. It is
consistent democracy which bars our way.

CAROLINE HEALEY DALL.

[55] _Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States of America in Congress assembled_: That, from and after
the passage of this act, each and every male person, excepting paupers
and persons under guardianship, of the age of twenty-one years and
upward, who has not been convicted of any infamous crime or offence,
and who is a citizen of the United States, and who shall have resided
in the said District for the period of six months previous to any
election therein, shall be entitled to the elective franchise, and
shall be deemed an elector and entitled to vote at any election in
said District, without any distinction on account of color or race.

[56] _The New York Tribune_, Dec. 12, 1866, contains the following
editorial comments: The Senate devoted yesterday to a discussion of
the right of women to vote--a side question, which Mr. Cowan, of
Pennsylvania, interjected into the debate on suffrage for the District
of Columbia. Mr. Cowan chooses to represent himself as an ardent
champion of the claim of woman to the elective franchise. It is not
necessary to question his sincerity, but the occasion which he selects
for the exhibition of his new-born zeal, subjects him to the suspicion
of being considerably more anxious to embarrass the bill for
enfranchising the blacks, than to amend it by conferring upon women
the enjoyment of the same right. Mr. Cowan was once a Republican. He
abandoned his party, has been repudiated by his State, and may well be
casting about for some new issue by which to divert attention from his
faithlessness on the old. We have heard that Mr. Cowan affects the
classics; we are sure, therefore, that he will thank us for reminding
him of that familiar story out of Plutarch respecting Alcibiades. When
the dissolute Athenian had cut off the tail of his dog, which was the
dog's principal ornament, and all Athens cried out against him for the
act, Alcibiades laughed, and said: "Just what I wanted has happened. I
wished the Athenians to talk about this that they might not say
something worse of me."

We are not to be suspected of indifference to the question whether
woman shall vote. At a proper time we mean to urge her claim, but we
object to allowing a measure of urgent necessity, and on which the
public has made up its mind, to be retarded and imperilled. Nor do we
think the Radical majority in the Senate need be beholden to the
enemy's camp for suggestions as to their policy. We want to see the
ballot put in the hands of the black without one day's delay added to
the long postponement of his just claim. When that is done, we shall
be ready to take up the next question.

[57] Mrs. Frances Dana Gage, of Ohio.

[58] YEAS--Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Buckalew, Cowan, Foster, Nesmith,
Patterson, Riddle, Wade--9. NAYS--Messrs. Cattell, Chandler, Conness,
Creswell, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Edmunds, Fessenden, Fogg,
Frelinghuysen, Grimes, Harris, Henderson, Hendricks, Howard, Howe,
Kirkwood, Lane, Morgan, Morrill, Norton, Poland, Pomeroy, Ramsey,
Ross, Saulsbury, Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Trumbull, Van
Winkle, Willey, Williams, Wilson, Yates--37.

[59] YEAS--Ancona, Baker, Barker, Baxter, Benjamin, Boyer, Broomall,
Bundy, Campbell, Cooper, Defrees, Denison, Eldridge, Farnsworth,
Ferry, Finck, Garfield, Hale, Hawkins, Hise, Chester D. Hubbard, Edwin
N. Hubbell, Humphrey, Julian, Kasson, Kelley, Kelso, Le Blond, Coan,
McClurg, McKee, Miller, Newell, Niblock, Noell, Orth, Ritter, Rogers,
Ross, Sitgreaves, Starr, Stevens, Strouse, Taber, Nathaniel G. Taylor,
Trimble, Andrew H. Ward, Henry D. Washburn, Winfield--49.

CHAPTER XVIII.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS IN 1866-67.

The first Woman's Rights Convention[60] after the war was held in the
Church of the Puritans, New York, May 10th, 1866.

As the same persons were identified with the Anti-slavery and Woman's
Rights Societies, and as by the "Proclamation of Emancipation" the
colored man was now a freeman, and a citizen; and as bills were
pending in Congress to secure him in the right of suffrage, the same
right women were demanding, it was proposed to merge the societies
into one, under the name of "The American Equal Rights Association,"
that the same conventions, appeals, and petitions, might include both
classes of disfranchised citizens. The proposition was approved by the
majority of those present, and the new organization completed at an
adjourned session. Though Mr. Garrison, with many other abolitionists,
feeling that the Anti-slavery work was finished, had retired, and thus
partly disorganized that Society, yet, in its executive session,
Wendell Phillips, President, refused to entertain the proposition, on
the ground that such action required an amendment to the constitution,
which could not be made without three months previous notice.
Nevertheless there was a marked division of opinion among the
anti-slavery friends present.

[Illustration: Clemence Sophia Lozier. "Yours Sincerely Clemence Sophia
Lozier, M.D."]

At an early hour Dr. Cheever's church was well filled with an audience
chiefly of ladies, who received the officers and speakers[61] of the
Convention with hearty applause. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President of
the "National Woman's Rights Committee," called the Convention to
order, and said:

We have assembled to-day to discuss the right and duty of women
to claim and use the ballot. Now in the reconstruction is the
opportunity, perhaps for the century, to base our government on
the broad principle of equal rights to all. The representative
women of the nation feel that they have an interest and duty
equal with man in the struggles and triumphs of this hour.

It may not be known to all of you that, during the past year,
thousands of petitions, asking the ballot for woman, have been
circulated through the Northern States and sent to Congress. Our
thanks are due to the Hon. James Brooks for his kindness in
franking our petitions, and his skill in calling to them the
attention of the nation. As we have lost this champion in the
House, I trust his more fortunate successor will not _dodge_ his
responsibilities to his countrywomen who are taxed but not
represented. This should be a year of great activity among the
women of this State. As New York is to have a constitutional
convention in '67, it behooves us now to make an earnest demand,
by appeals and petitions, to have the word "male" as well as
"white" stricken from our Constitution.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, presented several resolutions for consideration.

5. _Resolved_, That disfranchisement _in a republic_ is as
great an anomaly, if not cruelty, as slavery itself. It is,
therefore, the solemn duty of Congress, in "_guaranteeing a
republican form of government to every State of this
Union_," to see that there be no abridgment of suffrage
among persons responsible to law, on account of color or
sex.

6. _Resolved_, That the Joint Resolutions and report of the
"Committee of Fifteen," now before Congress, to introduce
the word "_male_" into the Federal Constitution, are a
desecration of the last will and testament of the Fathers, a
violation of the spirit of republicanism, and cruel
injustice to the women of the nation.

7. _Resolved_, That while we return our thanks to those
members of Congress who, recognizing the sacred right of
petition, gave our prayer for the ballot a respectful
consideration, we also remind those who, with scornful
silence laid them on the table, or with flippant
sentimentality pretended to exalt us to the clouds, above
man, the ballot and the work of life, that we consider no
position more dignified and womanly than on an even platform
with man worthy to lay the corner-stone of a republic in
equality and justice.

8. _Resolved_, That we recommend to the women of the several
States to petition their Legislatures to take the necessary
steps to so amend their constitutions as to secure the right
of suffrage to every citizen, without distinction of race,
color or sex; and especially in those States that are soon
to hold their constitutional conventions.

THEODORE TILTON said: According to the programme, it is now my
friend Mr. Beecher's turn to speak, but I observe that this
gentleman, like some of the rest of the President's friends,
occupies a back seat. [Laughter]. While, therefore, he is sitting
under the gallery, I will occupy your attention just long enough
to give that modest man a chance to muster nerve enough to make
his appearance in public. [Laughter]. First of all, I have an
account to settle with Mrs. Stanton. In her speech on taking the
chair, she said that editors are not good housekeepers--a remark
which no editor would think of retorting upon herself.
[Laughter]. But, however dingy my editorial office may sometimes
be, it is always a cheerful place when Mrs. Stanton visits it.
[Applause]. Moreover, I think the place she invited me _out of_
is no darker than this place which she invited me _into_!
[Laughter]. In fact, I think the press has generally as much
illumination as the church. [Applause].

Mrs. President, this convention is called to consider the most
beautiful and humane idea which has ever entered into American
politics--the right of woman to that ballot which belongs equally
to all citizens. What is the chief glory of our democratic
institutions? It is, that they appeal equally to the common
interest of all classes--to high and low, to rich and poor, to
white and black, to male and female. And never, until the
political equality of all these classes is fully recognized by
our laws, shall we have a government truly democratic. The
practical instrument of this equality is the ballot. Now what is
the ballot? Mr. Frothingham gave us one definition; Mr. Phillips
gave us another. But the ballot is so large a thing that it
admits of many definitions. The ballot is what the citizen thinks
of the government. The government looks to the ballot to know the
popular will. I do not mean to say that the little piece of white
paper which we hold in our hand on election day is the only means
whereby we can utter an opinion that shall be heard in
Washington. We can speak by the pen; we can speak by the voice. A
wise government will give heed to the public press, and to the
popular voice. But there is no spoken voice, there is no written
word, which the government is legally bound to heed except the
ballot. When they see the ballot, they know they are served with
official notice. When you _talk_ to a government, you talk as to
a tree; but when you _vote_ at it, you scratch your name on the
bark. Now, I want to see Rosalind's name cut into the bark of the
government. [Applause]. Who ought to possess the ballot? Our
President is right--I mean _this_ President. [Applause]. She does
not claim the ballot for women as women, but for women as
citizens. That is the true ground. The ballot belongs not to the
white man, not to the black man, not to the woman, but to the
citizen. Shall the minister vote? No. Shall the lawyer? No. Shall
the merchant? No. Shall the rich man? No. Shall the poor man? No.
None of these shall vote. There is only one person who shall
vote, and that is the citizen. [Applause]. Now I trust the day is
not far distant when our institutions shall practically recognize
this idea--when civil prerogative shall be limited not only by no
distinction of color, but by no distinction of sex.

Are women politically oppressed that they need the ballot for
their protection? I leave that question to be answered by women
themselves. I demand the ballot for woman, not for woman's sake,
but for man's. _She_ may demand it for her own sake; but to-day,
_I_ demand it for _my_ sake. We shall never have a government
thoroughly permeated with humanity, thoroughly humane, thoroughly
noble, thoroughly trustworthy, until both men and women shall
unite in forming the public sentiment, and in administering that
sentiment through the government. [Applause]. The church needs
woman, society needs woman, literature needs woman, science needs
woman, the arts need woman, politics need woman. [Applause]. A
Frenchman once wrote an essay to prove woman's right to the
alphabet. She took the alphabet, entered literature, and drove
out Dean Swift. When she takes the ballot, and enters politics,
she will drive out Fernando Wood. [Applause]. But, shall we have
a woman for President? I would thank God if to-day we had a _man_
for President. [Laughter]. Shall women govern the country? Queens
have ruled nations from the beginning of time, and woman has
governed man from the foundation of the world! [Laughter]. I know
that Plato didn't have a good opinion of women; but probably they
were not as amiable in his day as in ours. They undoubtedly have
wrought their full share of mischief in the world. The chief bone
of contention among mankind, from the earliest ages down, has
been that rib of Adam out of which God made Eve. [Laughter]. And
I believe in holding women to as great a moral accountability as
men. [Laughter]. I believe, also, in holding them to the same
intellectual accountability. Twenty years ago, when Macaulay sat
down to review Lucy Rushton's--no, I mean Lucy Aiken's (laughter)
"Life of Addison," he was forced to allude to what was a patent
fact, that a woman's book was then to be treated with more
critical leniency than a man's. But criticism nowadays never
thinks of asking whether a book be a woman's or a man's, as a
preliminary to administering praise or blame. In the Academy of
Design, the critic deals as severely with a picture painted by a
woman as with one painted by a man. This is right. Would you have
it otherwise? Not at all! We are to stand upon a common level.

The signs of the times indicate the progress of woman's cause.
Every year helps it forward visibly. The political status of
woman was never so seriously pondered as it is now pondered by
thoughtful minds in this country. By and by, the principles of
Christian democracy will cover the continent--nay, will cover the
world, as the equator belts it with summer heat! [Applause].
Until which time, we are called to diligent and earnest work.
"Learn to labor and to wait," saith the poet. There will be need
of much laboring and of long waiting. Sir William Jones tells us
that the Hindoo laws declared that women should have no political
independence--and there is many a backward Yankee who don't know
any better than to agree with the Hindoos. Salatri, the Italian,
drew a design of Patience--a woman chained to a rock by her
ankles, while a fountain threw a thin stream of water, drop by
drop, upon the iron chain, until the link should be worn away,
and the wistful prisoner be set free. In like manner the
Christian women of this country are chained to the rock of
Burmese prejudice; but God is giving the morning and the evening
dew, the early and the latter rain, until the ancient fetters
shall be worn away, and a disfranchised sex shall leap at last
into political liberty. [Applause]. And now for Mr. Beecher.

MR. BEECHER, on rising, was received with hearty applause,[62] and
spoke for an hour, in a strain of great animation, as follows:

It may be asked why, at such a time as this, when the attention
of the whole nation is concentrated upon the reconstruction of
our States, we should intrude a new and advanced question. I have
been asked "Why not wait for the settlement of the one that now
fills the minds of men? Why divert and distract their thoughts?"
I answer, because the questions are one and the same. We are not
now discussing merely the right of suffrage for the African, or
his status as a new-born citizen. Claiming his rights compels us
to discuss the whole underlying question of government. This is
the case in court. But when the judge shall have given his
decision, that decision will cover the whole question of civil
society, and the relations of every individual in it as a factor,
an agent, an actor....

All over the world, the question to-day is, Who has a right to
construct and administer law? Russia--gelid, frigid Russia--can
not escape the question. Yea, he that sits on the Russian throne
has proved himself a better democrat than any of us all, and is
giving to-day more evidence of a genuine love of God, and of its
partner emotion, love to man, in emancipating thirty million
serfs, than many a proud democrat of America has ever given.
(Applause.) And the question of emancipation in Russia is only
the preface to the next question, which doubtless he as clearly
as any of us foresees--namely, the question of citizenship, and
of the rights and functions of citizenship. In Italy, the
question of who may partake of government has arisen, and there
has been an immense widening of popular liberty there. Germany,
that freezes at night and thaws out by day only enough to freeze
up again at night, has also experienced as much agitation on this
subject as the nature of the case will allow. And when all
France, all Italy, all Russia, and all Great Britain shall have
rounded out into perfect democratic liberty, it is to be hoped
that, on the North side of the fence where it freezes first and
the ice thaws out last, Germany will herself be thawed out in her
turn, and come into the great circle of democratic nations.
Strange, that the mother of modern democracy should herself be
stricken with such a palsy and with such lethargy! Strange, that
in a nation in which was born and in which has inhered all the
indomitableness of individualism should be so long unable to
understand the secret of personal liberty! But all Europe to-day
is being filled and agitated with this great question of the
right of every man to citizenship; of the right of every man to
make the laws that are to control him; and of the right of every
man to administer the laws that are applicable to him. This is
the question to-day in Great Britain. The question that is being
agitated from the throne down to the Birmingham shop, from the
Atlantic to the North Sea, to-day, is this: Shall more than one
man in six in Great Britain be allowed to vote? There is only one
in six of the full-grown men in that nation that can vote to-day.
And everywhere we are moving toward that sound, solid, final
ground--namely, that it inheres in the radical notion of manhood
that every man has a right which is not given to him by potentate
nor by legislator, nor by the consent of the community, but which
belongs to his structural idea, and is a divine right, to make
the laws that control him, and to elect the magistrates that are
to administer those laws. It is universal.

And now, this being the world-tide and tendency, what is there in
history, what is there in physiology, what is there in
experience, that shall say to this tendency, marking the line of
sex, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?" I roll the
argument off from my shoulders, and I challenge the man that
stands with me, beholding that the world-thought to-day is the
emancipation of the citizen's power and the preparation by
education of the citizen for that power, and objects to
extending the right of citizenship to every human being, to give
me the reasons why. (Applause). To-day this nation is exercising
its conscience on the subject of suffrage for the African. I have
all the time favored that: not because he was an African, but
because he was a man; because this right of voting, which is the
symbol of everything else in civil power, inheres in every human
being. But I ask you, to-day, "Is it safe to bring in a million
black men to vote, and not safe to bring in your mother, your
wife, and your sister to vote?" (Applause). This ought ye to have
done, and to have done quickly, and not to have left the other
undone. (Renewed applause).

To-day politicians of every party, especially on the eve of an
election, are in favor of the briefest and most expeditious
citizenizing of the Irishmen. I have great respect for
Irishmen--when they do not attempt to carry on war! (Laughter).
The Irish Fenian movement is a ludicrous phenomenon past all
laughing at. Bombarding England from the shore of America! (Great
laughter). Paper pugnation! Oratorical destroying! But when
wind-work is the order of the day, commend me to Irishmen!
(Renewed laughter). And yet I am in favor of Irishmen voting.
Just so soon as they give pledge that they come to America, in
good faith, to abide here as citizens, and forswear the old
allegiance, and take on the new, I am in favor of their voting.
Why? Because they have learned our Constitution? No; but because
voting teaches. The vote is a schoolmaster. They will learn our
laws, and learn our Constitution, and learn our customs ten times
quicker when the responsibility of knowing these things is laid
upon them, than when they are permitted to live in carelessness
respecting them. And this nation is so strong that it can stand
the incidental mischiefs of thus teaching the wild rabble that
emigration throws on our shores for our good and upbuilding. We
are wise enough, and we have educational force enough, to carry
these ignorant foreigners along with us. We have attractions that
will draw them a thousand times more toward us than they can draw
us toward them. And yet, while I take this broad ground, that no
man, even of the Democratic party (I make the distinction because
a man may be a democrat and be ashamed of the party, and a man
may be of the party and not know a single principle of
democracy), should be debarred from voting, I ask, is an Irishman
just landed, unwashed and uncombed, more fit to vote than a woman
educated in our common schools? Think of the mothers and
daughters of this land, among whom are teachers, writers,
artists, and speakers! What a throng could we gather if we
should, from all the West, call our women that as educators are
carrying civilization there! Thousands upon thousands there are
of women that have gone forth from the educational institutions
of New England to carry light and knowledge to other parts of our
land. Now, place this great army of refined and cultivated women
on the one side, and on the other side the rising cloud of
emancipated Africans, and in front of them the great emigrant
band of the Emerald Isle, and is there force enough in our
government to make it safe to give to the African and the
Irishman the franchise? There is. We shall give it to them.
(Applause). And will our force all fail, having done that? And
shall we take the fairest and best part of our society; those to
whom we owe it that we ourselves are civilized: our teachers; our
companions; those to whom we go for counsel in trouble more than
to any others; those to whom we trust everything that is dear to
ourselves--our children's welfare, our household, our property,
our name and reputation, and that which is deeper, our inward
life itself, that no man may mention to more than one--shall we
take them and say, "They are not, after all, fit to vote where
the Irishman votes, and where the African votes?" I am
scandalized when I hear men talk in the way that men do talk--men
that do not think.

If therefore, you refer to the initial sentence, and ask me why I
introduce this subject to-day, when we are already engaged on the
subject of suffrage, I say, This is the greatest development of
the suffrage question. _It is more important that woman should
vote than that the black man should vote._ It is important that
he should vote, that the principle may be vindicated, and that
humanity may be defended; but it is important that woman should
vote, not for her sake. She will derive benefit from voting; but
it is not on a selfish ground that I claim the right of suffrage
for her. It is God's growing and least disclosed idea of a true
human society that man and woman should not be divorced in
political affairs any more than they are in religious and social
affairs. I claim that women should vote because society will
never know its last estate and true glory until you accept God's
edict and God's command--long raked over and covered in the
dust--until you bring it out, and lift it up, and read this one
of God's Ten Commandments, written, if not on stone, yet in the
very heart and structure of mankind, _Let those that God joined
together not be put asunder_. (Applause.)

When men converse with me on the subject of suffrage, or the
vote, it seems to me that the terminology withdraws their minds
from the depth and breadth of the case to the mere instruments.
Many of the objections that are urged against woman's voting are
objections against the mechanical and physical act of suffrage.
It is true that all the forces of society, in their final
political deliverance, must needs be born through the vote, in
our structure of government. In England it is not so. It was one
of the things to be learned there that the unvoting population on
any question in which they are interested and united are more
powerful than all the voting population or legislation. The
English Parliament, if they believed to-day that every working
man in Great Britain staked his life on the issues of universal
suffrage, would not dare a month to deny it. For when a nation's
foundations are on a class of men that do not vote, and its
throne stands on forces that are coiled up and liable at any time
to break forth to its overthrow, it is a question whether it is
safe to provoke the exertion of those forces or not. With us,
where all men vote, government is safe; because, if a thing is
once settled by a fair vote, we will go to war rather than give
it up. As when Lincoln was elected, if an election is valid, it
must stand. In such a nation as this, an election is equivalent
to a divine decree, and irreversible. But in Great Britain an
election means, not the will of the people, but the will of
rulers and a favored class, and there is always under them a
great wronged class, that, if they get stirred up by the thought
that they are wronged, will burst out with an explosion that not
the throne, nor parliament, nor the army, nor the exchequer can
withstand the shock. And they wisely give way to the popular will
when they can no longer resist it without running too great a
risk. They oppose it as far as it is safe to do so, and then jump
on and ride it. And you will see them astride of the vote, if the
common people want it. But in America it is not so. The vote with
us is so general that there is no danger of insurrection, and
there is no danger that the government will be ruined by a
wronged class that lies coiled up beneath it. When we speak of
the vote here, it is not the representative of a class, as it is
in England, worn like a star, or garter, saying, "I have the
king's favor or the government's promise of honor." Voting with
us is like breathing. It belongs to us as a common blessing. He
that does not vote is not a citizen, with us.

It is not the vote that I am arguing, except that that is the
outlet. What I am arguing, when I urge that woman should vote, is
that she should do all things back of that which the vote means
and enforces. She should be a nursing mother to human society. It
is a plea that I make, that woman should feel herself called to
be interested not alone in the household, not alone in the
church, not alone in just that neighborhood in which she resides,
but in the sum total of that society to which she belongs; and
that she should feel that her duties are not discharged until
they are commensurate with the definition which our Saviour gave
in the parable of the good Samaritan. I argue, not a woman's
right to vote: I argue woman's _duty to discharge citizenship_.
(Applause.) I say that more and more the great interests of human
society in America are such as need the peculiar genius that God
has given to woman. The questions that are to fill up our days
are not forever to be mere money questions. Those will always
constitute a large part of politics; but not so large a portion
as hitherto. We are coming to a period when it is not merely to
be a scramble of fierce and belluine passions in the strife for
power and ambition. Human society is yet to discuss questions of
work and the workman. Down below privilege lie the masses of men.
More men, a thousand times, feel every night the ground, which is
their mother, than feel the stars and the moon far up in the
atmosphere of favor. As when Christ came the great mass carpeted
the earth, instead of lifting themselves up like trees of
Lebanon, so now and here the great mass of men are men that have
nothing but their hands, their heads, and their good stalwart
hearts, as their capital. The millions that come from abroad come
that they may have light and power, and lift their children up
out of ignorance, to where they themselves could not reach with
the tips of their fingers. And the great question of to-day is,
How shall work find leisure, and in leisure knowledge and
refinement? And this question is knocking at the door of
legislation. And is there a man who does not know, that when
questions of justice and humanity are blended, woman's instinct
is better than man's judgment? From the moment a woman takes the
child into her arms, God makes her the love-magistrate of the
family; and her instincts and moral nature fit her to adjudicate
questions of weakness and want. And when society is on the eve of
adjudicating such questions as these, it is a monstrous fatuity
to exclude from them the very ones that, by nature, and training,
and instinct, are best fitted to legislate and to judge.

For the sake, then, of such questions as these, that have come to
their birth, I feel it to be woman's _duty_ to act in public
affairs. I do not stand here to plead for your _rights_. Rights
compared with duties, are insignificant--are mere baubles--are as
the bow on your bonnet. It seems to me that the voice of God's
providence to you to-day is, "Oh messenger of mine, where are the
words that I sent you to speak? Whose dull, dead ear has been
raised to life by that vocalization of heaven, that was given to
you more than to any other one?" Man is sub-base. A thirty-two
feet six-inch pipe is he. But what is an organ played with the
feet, if all the upper part is left unused? The flute, the
hautboy, the finer trumpet stops, all those stops that minister
to the intellect, the imagination, and the higher feelings--these
must be drawn, and the whole organ played from top to bottom!
(Applause.)

More than that, there are now coming up for adjudication public
questions of education. And who, by common consent, is the
educator of the world? Who has been? Schools are to be of more
importance than railroads--not to undervalue railroads. Books and
newspapers are to be more vital and powerful than exchequers and
banks--not to undervalue exchequers and banks. In other words, as
society ripens, it has to ripen in its three departments, in the
following order: First, in the animal; second, in the social; and
third, in the spiritual and moral. We are entering the last
period, in which the questions of politics are to be more and
more moral questions. And I invoke those whom God made to be
peculiarly conservators of things moral and spiritual to come
forward and help us in that work, in which we shall falter and
fail without woman. We shall never perfect human society without
her offices and her ministration. We shall never round out the
government, or public administration, or public policies, or
politics itself, until you have mixed the elements that God gave
to us in society--namely, the powers of both men and women.
(Applause.) I, therefore, charge my countrywomen with this _duty_
of taking part in public affairs in the era in which justice, and
humanity, and education, and taste, and virtue are to be more and
more a part and parcel of public procedure. * * * *

In such a state of society, then, as the present, I stand, as I
have said, on far higher ground in arguing this question than the
right of woman. That I believe in; but that is down in the
justice's court. I go to the supreme bench and argue it, and
argue it on the ground that the nation needs woman, and that
woman needs the nation, and that woman can never become what she
should be, and the nation can never become what it should be,
until there is no distinction made between the sexes as regards
the rights and duties of citizenship--until we come to the 28th
verse of the third chapter of Galatians. What is it? [turning to
Mr. Tilton, who said, "I don't know!"] Don't know? If it was Lucy
Rushton, you would! (Great laughter).

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor
free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one
in Christ Jesus.

And when that day comes; when the heavenly kingdom is ushered in
with its myriad blessed influences; when the sun of righteousness
shall fill the world with its beams, as the natural sun coming
from the far South fills the earth with glorious colors and
beauty, then it will come to pass that there shall be no
nationality, no difference of classes, and no difference of
sexes. Then all shall be one in Christ Jesus. Hold that a minute,
please [handing Mr. Tilton a pocket Testament from which he had
read the foregoing passage of Scripture]. Theodore was a most
excellent young man when he used to go to my church; but he has
escaped from my care lately, and now I don't know what he does.
(Laughter).

I urge, then, that woman should perform the duty of a citizen in
voting. You may, perhaps, ask me, before I go any further, "What
is the use of preaching to us that we _ought_ to do it, when we
are not permitted to do it?" That day in which the intelligent,
cultivated women of America say, "We have a right to the ballot"
will be the day in which they will have it. (Voices--"Yes." "That
is so"). There is no power on earth that can keep it from them.
[Applause]. The reason you have not voted is because you have not
wanted to. [Applause]. It is because you have not felt that it
was your duty to vote. You have felt yourselves to be secure and
happy enough in your privileges and prerogatives, and have left
the great mass of your sisters, that shed tears and bore burdens,
to shirk for themselves. You have felt that you had rights more
than you wanted now. O yes, it is as if a beauty in Fifth Avenue,
hearing one plead that bread might be sent to the hungry and
famishing, should say, "What is this talk about bread for? I have
as much bread as I want, and plenty of sweetmeats, and I do not
want your loaves." Shall one that is glutted with abundance
despise the wants of the starving, who are so far below them that
they do not hear their cries, not one of which escapes the ear of
Almighty God? Because you have wealth and knowledge and loving
parents, or a faithful husband, or kind brothers, and you feel no
pressure of need, do you feel no inward pressure of humanity for
others? Is there no part of God's great work in providence that
should lead you to be discontented with your ease and privileges
until you are enfranchised? You ought to vote; and when your
understanding and intellect are convinced that you ought to do
it, you will have the power to do it; and you never will till
then.

I. Woman has more interest than man in the promotion of virtue
and purity and humanity. Half, shall I say?--Half does not half
measure the proportion of those sorrows that come upon woman by
reason of her want of influence and power. All the young men
that, breaking down, break fathers' and mothers' hearts; all
those that struggle near to the grave, weeping piteous tears of
blood, it might almost be said, and that at last, under paroxysms
of despair, sin against nature, and are swept out of misery into
damnation; the spectacles that fill our cities, and afflict and
torment villages--what are these but reasons that summon woman to
have a part in that regenerating of thought and that regenerating
of legislation which shall make vice a crime, and vice-makers
criminals? Do you suppose that, if it were to turn on the votes
of women to-day whether rum should be sold in every shop in this
city, there would be one moment's delay in settling the
question? What to the oak lightning is that marks it and descends
swiftly upon it, that woman's vote would be to miscreant vices in
these great cities. [Applause]. Ah, I speak that which I do know.
As a physician speaks from that which he sees in the hospital
where he ministers, so I speak from that which I behold in my
professional position and place, where I see the undercurrent of
life. I hear groans that come from smiling faces. I witness tears
that when others look upon the face are all swept away, as the
rain is when one comes after a storm. Not most vocal are our
deepest sorrows. Oh, the sufferings of wives for husbands untrue!
Oh, the sufferings of mothers for sons led astray! Oh, the
sufferings of sisters for sisters gone! Oh, the sufferings of
companions for companion-women desecrated! And I hold it to be a
shame that they, who have the instinct of purity and of divine
remedial mercy more than any other, should withhold their hand
from that public legislation by which society may be scoured, and
its pests cleared away. And I declare that woman has more
interest in legislation than man, because she is the sufferer and
the home-staying, ruined victim.

II. The household, about which we hear so much said as being
woman's sphere, is safe only as the community around about it is
safe. Now and then there may be a Lot that can live in Sodom; but
when Lot was called to emigrate, he could not get all his
children to go with him. They had been intermarried and
corrupted. A Christian woman is said to have all that she needs
for her understanding and to task her powers if she will stay at
home and mend her husband's clothes, if she has a husband, and
take care of her children, if she has children. The welfare of
the family, it is said, ought to occupy her time and thoughts.
And some ministers, in descanting upon the sphere of woman, are
wont to magnify the glory and beauty of a mother teaching some
future chief-justice, or some president of the United States. Not
one whit of glory would I withdraw from such a canvas as that;
but I aver that the power to teach these children largely depends
upon the influences that surround the household. So that she that
would take the best care of the house must take care of that
atmosphere which is around the house as well. And every true and
wise Christian woman is bound to have a thought for the village,
for the county, for the State, and for the nation. [Applause].
That was not the kind of woman that brought me up--a woman that
never thought of anything outside of her own door-yard. My
mother's house was as wide as Christ's house; and she taught me
to understand the words of Him that said, "The field is the
world; and whoever needs is your brother." A woman that is
content to wash stockings, and make Johnny-cake, and to look
after and bring up her boys faultless to a button, and that never
thinks beyond the meal-tub, and whose morality is so small as to
be confined to a single house, is an under-grown woman, and will
spend the first thousand years after death in coming to that
state in which she ought to have been before she died.
[Laughter]. Tell me that a woman is fit to give an ideal life to
an American citizen, to enlarge his sympathies, to make him wise
in judgment, and to establish him in patriotic regard, who has no
thought above what to eat and drink, and wherewithal to be
clothed. The best housekeepers are they that are the most widely
beneficent. "Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness,
and all these things shall be added unto you." God will take care
of the stockings, if you take care of the heads! [Laughter and
applause]. Universal beneficence never hinders anybody's
usefulness in any particular field of duty. Therefore, woman's
sphere should not be limited to the household. The public welfare
requires that she should have a thought of affairs outside of the
household, and in the whole community.

III. Woman brings to public affairs peculiar qualities,
aspirations, and affections which society needs. I have had
persons say to me, "Would you, now, take your daughter and your
wife, and walk down to the polls with them?" If I were to take my
daughter and my wife, and walk down to the polls with them, and
there was a squirming crowd of bloated, loud-mouthed, blattering
men, wrangling like so many maggots on cheese, what would take
place, but that, at the moment I appeared with my wife and
daughter walking by my side with conscious dignity and veiled
modesty, the lane would open, and I should pass through the red
sea unharmed? [Great applause]. Where is there a mob such that
the announcement that a woman is present does not bring down the
loudest of them? Nothing but the sorcery of rum prevents a man
from paying unconscious, instant respect to the presence of a
woman....

IV. The history of woman's co-operative labors thus far justifies
the most sanguine anticipations, such as I have alluded to.
Allusion has been made to the purification of literature. The
influence of women has been a part of the cause of this,
unquestionably; but I would not ascribe such a result to any one
cause. God is a great workman, and has a chest full of tools, and
never uses one tool, but always many; and in the purification of
literature, the elevation of thought, the advancement of the
public sentiment of the world in humanity, God has employed more
than that which has been wrought in their departments. And that
which the family has long ago achieved--that, in more eminence
and more wondrous and surprising beauty, the world will achieve
for itself in public affairs, when man and woman co-operate
there, as now they are co-operating in all other spheres of
taste, intellection, and morality....

It is said, a "woman's place is at home." Well, now, since
compromises are coming into vogue again, will you compromise with
me, and agree that until a woman has a home she may vote?
[Laughter]. That is only fair. It is said, "She ought to stay at
home, and attend to home duty, and minister to the wants of
father, or husband, or brothers." Well, may all orphan women, and
unmarried women, and women that have no abiding place of
residence vote? If not, where is the argument? But, to look at it
seriously, what is the defect of this statement? It is the
impression that staying at home is incompatible with going
abroad. Never was there a more monstrous fallacy. I light my
candle, and it gives me all the light I want, and it gives all
the light you want to you, and to you, and to you, and to every
other one in the room; and there is not one single ray that you
get there which cheats me here; and a woman that is doing her
duty right in the family sheds a beneficent influence out upon
the village in which she dwells, without taking a moment's more
time. My cherry-trees are joyful in all their blossoms, and
thousands go by them and see them in their beauty day by day; but
I never mourn the happiness that they bestow on passers-by as
having been taken from me. I am not cheated by the perfume that
goes from my flowers into my neighbor's yard. And the character
of a true woman is such that it may shine everywhere without
making her any poorer. She is richer in proportion as she gives
away.... And it is just because woman is woman that she is
fitted, while she takes care of the household, to take care of
the village and the community around about her.

But it is said, "She ought to act through her father, or husband,
or brother, or son." Why ought she? Did you ever frame an
argument to show why the girl should use her father to vote for
her, and the boy who is younger, and not half so witty, should
vote for himself? It does not admit of an argument. If the
grandmother, the mother, the wife, and the eldest daughter, are
to be voted for by the father, the husband, and the eldest
brother, then why are not the children to be voted for in
complete family relation by the patriarchal head? Why not go back
to the tribal custom of the desert, and let the patriarch do all
the voting? To be sure, it would change the whole form of our
government; but, if it is good for the family, it is just as good
for classes.

In a frontier settlement is a log-cabin, and it is in a region
which is infested by wolves. There are in the family a
broken-down patient of a man, a mother, and three daughters. The
house is surrounded by a pack of these voracious animals, and the
inmates feel that their safety requires that the intruders should
be driven away. There are three or four rifles in the house. The
man creeps to one of the windows, and to the mother and daughters
it is said, "You load the rifles, and hand them to me, and let me
fire them." But they can load all the four rifles, and he can not
fire half as fast as they can load; and I say to the mother, "Can
you shoot?" She says, "Let me try;" and she takes a gun, and
points it at the wolves, and pulls the trigger, and I see one of
them throw his feet up in the air. "Ah!" I say, "I see you can
shoot! You keep the rifle, and fire it yourself." And I say to
the oldest daughter, "Can you shoot?" "I guess I can," she says.
"Well, dare you?" "I dare do anything to save father and the
family." And she takes one of the rifles, and pops over another
of the pack. And I tell you, if the wolves knew that all the
women were firing, they would flee from that cabin instanter.
(Laughter). I do not object to a woman loading a man's rifle and
letting him shoot; but I say that, if there are two rifles, she
ought to load one of them, and shoot herself. And I do not see
any use of a woman's influencing a man and loading him with a
vote, and letting him go and fire it off at the ballot-box.
(Laughter and applause).

It is said, again, "Woman is a creature of such an excitable
nature that, if she were to mingle with men in public affairs, it
would introduce a kind of vindictive acrimony, and politics would
become intolerable." Oh, if I really thought so; if I thought
that the purity of politics would be sullied, I would not say
another word! (Laughter). I do not want to take anything from the
celestial graces of politics! (Renewed laughter). I will admit
that woman is an excitable creature, and I will admit that
politics needs no more excitement; but sometimes, you know,
things are homoeopathic. A woman's excitement is apt to put out a
man's; and if she should bring her excitability into politics, it
is likely that it would neutralize the excitement that is already
there, and that there would be a grand peace! (Laughter). But,
not to trifle with it, woman is excitable. Woman is yet to be
educated. Woman is yet to experience the reactionary influence of
being a public legislator and thinker. And let her sphere be
extended beyond the family and the school, so that she should be
interested in, and actively engaged in, promoting the welfare of
the whole community, and in the course of three generations the
reaction on her would be such that the excitement that she would
bring into public affairs would be almost purely moral
inspiration. It would be the excitement of purity and
disinterested benevolence.

It is said, furthermore, "Woman might vote for herself, and take
office." Why not? A woman makes as good a postmistress as a man
does a postmaster. Woman has been tried in every office from the
throne to the position of the humblest servant; and where has she
been found remiss? I believe that multitudes of the offices that
are held by men are mere excuses for leading an effeminate life;
and that with their superior physical strength it behooves them
better to be actors out of doors, where the severity of climate
and the elements is to be encountered, and leave indoor offices
to women, to whom they more properly belong. But, women, you are
not educated for these offices. I hear bad reports of you. It is
told me that the trouble in giving places to women is that they
will not do their work well; that they do not feel the sense of
conscience. They have been flattered so long, they have been
called "women" so long, they have had compliments instead of
rights so long, that they are spoiled; but when a generation of
young women shall have been educated to a stern sense of right
and duty, and shall take no compliments at the expense of right,
we shall have no such complaints as these. And when a generation
of women, working with the love of God and true patriotism in
their souls, shall have begun to hold office, meriting it, and
being elected to it by those that would rather have a woman than
a man in office, then you may depend upon it that education has
qualified them for the trusts which are committed to them. We
have tried "old women" in office, and I am convinced that it
would be better to have _real_ women than virile old women in
public stations. (Laughter and applause). For my own sake, give
me a just, considerate, true, straight-forward, honest-minded,
noble-hearted woman, who has been able, in the fear of God, to
bring up six boys in the way they should go, and settle them in
life. If there is anything harder in this nation than that, tell
me what it is. A woman that can bring up a family of
strong-brained children, and make good citizens of them, can be
President without any difficulty. (Applause).

Let me now close with one single thought in connection with this
objection. I protest in the name of my countrywomen against the
aspersion which is cast upon them by those who say that woman is
not fit to hold office or discharge public trusts. The name of
what potentate to-day, if you go round the world, would
probably, in every nation on the earth, bring down most
enthusiasm and public approbation? If I now, here in your midst,
shall mention the name of Queen Victoria, your cheers will be a
testimony to your admiration of this noble woman. (Great
applause). Though it be in a political meeting, or any other
public gathering, no man can mention her name without eliciting
enthusiasm and tokens of respect. It is a controversy to-day
between woman aristocratic and woman democratic (applause); and I
claim that what it is right for an aristocratic woman to do--what
it is right for a duchess, or a queen, or an empress to do--it is
right for the simplest and plainest of my countrywomen to do,
that has no title, and no credentials, except the fact that God
made her a woman. All that I claim for the proudest aristocrat I
claim for all other women. (Applause). I do not object to a
woman's being a queen, or a president, if she has the
qualifications which fit her to be one. And I claim that, where
there is a woman that has the requisite qualifications for
holding any office in the family, in the church, or in the state,
there is no reason why she should not be allowed to hold it. And
we shall have a perfect crystal idea of the state, with all its
contents, only when man understands the injunction, "What God
hath joined together let no man put asunder."[63] (Great
applause).

SUSAN B. ANTHONY read the following appeal to the Congress of the
United States for the enfranchisement of woman:

ADDRESS TO CONGRESS.

Adopted by the Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention,
held in New York City, Thursday, May 10, 1866.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives_:

We have already appeared many times during the present session
before your honorable body, in petitions, asking the
enfranchisement of woman; and now, from this National Convention
we again make our appeal, and urge you to lay no hand on that
"pyramid of rights," the Constitution of the Fathers," unless to
add glory to its height and strength to its foundation.

We will not rehearse the oft-repeated arguments on the natural
rights of every citizen, pressed as they have been on the
nation's conscience for the last thirty years in securing freedom
for the black man, and so grandly echoed on the floor of Congress
during the past winter. We can not add one line or precept to the
inexhaustible speech recently made by Charles Sumner in the
Senate, to prove that "no just government can be formed without
the consent of the governed;" to prove the dignity, the
education, the power, the necessity, the salvation of the ballot
in the hand of every man and woman; to prove that a just
government and a true church rest alike on the sacred rights of
the individual.

As you are familiar with that speech of the session on "EQUAL
RIGHTS TO ALL," so convincing in facts, so clear in philosophy,
and so elaborate in quotations from the great minds of the past,
without reproducing the chain of argument, permit us to call your
attention to a few of its unanswerable assertions on the ballot:

I plead now for the ballot, as the great guarantee; and _the
only sufficient guarantee_--being in itself peacemaker,
reconciler, schoolmaster and protector--to which we are
bound by every necessity and every reason; and I speak also
for the good of the States lately in rebellion, as well as
for the glory and safety of the Republic, that it may be an
example to mankind.

Ay, sir, the ballot is the Columbiad of our political life,
and every citizen who has it is a full-armed Monitor.

The ballot is _schoolmaster_. Reading and writing are of
inestimable value, but the ballot teaches what these can not
teach.

Plutarch records that the wise men of Athens charmed the
people by saying that _Equality causes no war_, and "both
the rich and the poor repeated it."

The ballot is like charity, which never faileth, and without
which man is only as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.
The ballot is the one thing needful, without which rights of
testimony and all other rights will be no better than
cobwebs, which the master will break through with impunity.
To him who has the ballot all other things shall be
given--protection, opportunity, education, a homestead. The
ballot is like the Horn of Abundance, out of which overflow
rights of every kind, with corn, cotton, rice, and all the
fruits of the earth. Or, better still, it is like the hand
of the body, without which man, who is now only a little
lower than the angels, must have continued only a little
above the brutes. They are fearfully and wonderfully made;
but as is the hand in the work of civilization, so is the
ballot in the work of government. "Give me the ballot, and I
can move the world."

Do you wish to see harmony truly prevail, so that industry,
society, government, civilization, may all prosper, and the
Republic may wear a crown of true greatness? Then do not
neglect the ballot.

Lamartine said, "Universal Suffrage is the first truth and
only basis of every national republic."

In regard to "Taxation without representation," Mr. Sumner quotes
from Lord Coke:

The Supreme Power cannot take from any man any part of his
property _without consent in person, or by representation_.

Taxes are not to be laid on the people, but by their consent
in person, or by representation.

I can see no reason to doubt but that the imposition of
taxes, whether on trade, or on land, or houses, or ships, or
real or personal, fixed or floating, property in the
colonies, is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of
the colonies, as British subjects, _and as men_. I say men,
for in a state of nature no man can take any property from
me without my consent. _If he does, he deprives me of my
liberty and makes me a slave._ The very act of taxing,
exercised over those who are not represented, appears to me
to deprive them of one of their most essential rights as
freemen, and if continued seems to be in effect an entire
disfranchisement of every civil right. For what one civil
right is worth a rush, after a man's property is subject to
be taken from him at pleasure without his consent?

In demanding suffrage for the black man you recognize the fact
that as a freedman he is no longer a "part of the family," and
that, therefore, his master is no longer his representative;
hence, as he will now be liable to taxation, he must also have
representation. Woman, on the contrary, has never been such a
"part of the family" as to escape taxation. Although there has
been no formal proclamation giving her an individual existence,
she has always had the right to property and wages, the right to
make contracts and do business in her own name. And even married
women, by recent legislation, have been secured in these civil
rights. Woman now holds a vast amount of the property in the
country, and pays her full proportion of taxes, revenue included.
On what principle, then, do you deny her representation? By what
process of reasoning Charles Sumner was able to stand up in the
Senate, a few days after these sublime utterances, and rebuke
15,000,000 disfranchised tax-payers for the exercise of their
right of petition merely, is past understanding. If he felt that
this was not the time for woman to even mention her right to
representation, why did he not take breath in some of his
splendid periods, and propose to release the poor shirtmakers,
milliners and dressmakers, and all women of property, from the
tyranny of taxation?

We propose no new theories. We simply ask that you secure to ALL
the practical application of the immutable principles of our
government, without distinction of race, color or sex. And we
urge our demand _now_, because you have the opportunity and the
power to take this onward step in legislation. The nations of the
earth stand watching and waiting to see if our Revolutionary
idea, "all men are created equal," can be realized in government.
Crush not, we pray you, the million hopes that hang on our
success. Peril not another bloody war. Men and parties must pass
away, but justice is eternal. And they only who work in harmony
with its laws are immortal. All who have carefully noted the
proceedings of this Congress, and contrasted your speeches with
those made under the old _régime_ of slavery, must have seen the
added power and eloquence that greater freedom gives. But still
you propose no action on your grand ideas. Your Joint
Resolutions, your Reconstruction Reports, do not reflect your
highest thought. The constitution, in basing representation on
"respective numbers," covers a broader ground than any you have
yet proposed. Is not the only amendment needed to Article 1st,
Section 3d, to strike out the exceptions which follow "respective
numbers?" And is it not your duty, by securing a republican form
of government to every State, to see that these "respective
numbers" are made up of enfranchised citizens? Thus bringing your
legislation up to the Constitution--not the Constitution down to
your party possibilities!! The only tenable ground of
representation is UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, as it is only through
Universal Suffrage that the principle of "Equal Rights to All"
can be realized. All prohibitions based on race, color, sex,
property, or education, are violations of the republican idea;
and the various qualifications now proposed are but so many
plausible pretexts to debar new classes from the ballot-box. The
limitations of property and intelligence, though unfair, can be
met; as with freedom must come the repeal of statute-laws that
deny schools and wages to the negro. So time makes him a voter.
But color and sex! Neither time nor statutes can make black
white, or woman man! You assume to be the representatives of
15,000,000 women--American citizens--who already possess every
_attainable_ qualification for the ballot. Women read and write,
hold many offices under government, pay taxes, and the penalties
of crime, and yet are allowed to exercise but the one right of
petition.

For twenty years we have labored to bring the statute laws of the
several States into harmony with the broad principles of the
Constitution, and have been so far successful that in many,
little remains to be done but to secure the right of suffrage.
Hence, our prompt protest against the propositions before
Congress to introduce the word "male" into the Federal
Constitution, which, if successful, would block all State action
in giving the ballot to woman. As the only way disfranchised
citizens can appear before you, we availed ourselves of the
sacred right of petition. And, as our representatives, it was
your duty to give those petitions a respectful reading and a
serious consideration. How well a Republican Senate performed
that duty, is already inscribed on the page of history. Some tell
us it is not judicious to press the claims of women _now_; that
this is not the time. Time? When you propose legislation so fatal
to the best interests of woman and the nation, shall we be silent
till the deed is done? No! As we love republican ideas, we must
resist tyranny. As we honor the position of American Senator, we
must appeal from the politician to the man.

With man, woman shared the dangers of the Mayflower on a stormy
sea, the dreary landing on Plymouth Rock, the rigors of a New
England winter, and the privations of a seven years' war. With
him she bravely threw off the British yoke, felt every pulsation
of his heart for freedom, and inspired the glowing eloquence that
maintained it through the century. With you, we have just passed
through the agony and death, the resurrection and triumph, of
another revolution, doing all in our power to mitigate its
horrors and gild its glories. And now, think you we have no souls
to fire, no brains to weigh your arguments; that, after
education such as this, we can stand silent witnesses while you
sell our birthright of liberty, to save from a timely death an
effete political organization? No, as we respect womanhood, we
must protest against this desecration of the magna charta of
American liberties; and with an importunity not to be repelled,
our demand must ever be: "No compromise of human rights"--"No
admission in the Constitution of inequality of rights, or
disfranchisement on account of color or sex."

In the oft-repeated experiments of class and caste, who can
number the nations that have risen but to fall? Do not imagine
you come one line nearer the demand of justice by enfranchising
but another shade of _man_hood; for, in denying representation to
woman you still cling to the same principle on which all the
governments of the past have been wrecked. The right way, the
safe way, is so clear, the path of duty is so straight and
simple, that we who are equally interested with yourselves in the
result, conjure you to act not for the passing hour, not with
reference to transient benefits, but to do now the one grand deed
that shall mark the progress of the century--proclaim EQUAL
RIGHTS TO ALL. We press our demand for the ballot at this time in
no narrow, captious or selfish spirit; from no contempt of the
black man's claims, nor antagonism with you, who in the progress
of civilization are now the privileged order; but from the purest
patriotism, for the highest good of every citizen, for the safety
of the Republic, and as a spotless example to the nations of the
earth.

Mr. Beecher was followed by Wendell Phillips, Frances Dana Gage,
Frances Watkins Harper; the Financial Committee[64] meantime passed
through the audience for the material aid to carry forward the work.
Miss Anthony presented the following resolution, and moved its
adoption, which was seconded by Martha C. Wright:

_Whereas_, By the act of Emancipation and the Civil Rights
bill, the negro and woman now hold the same civil and
political _status_, alike needing only the ballot; and
whereas the same arguments apply equally to both classes,
proving all partial legislation fatal to republican
institutions, therefore,

_Resolved_, That the time has come for an organization that
shall demand UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE, and that hereafter we shall
be known as the "AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION."

Miss ANTHONY said: Our friend Mrs. Mott desires me to explain the
object of this change, which she would gladly do but for a severe
cold, which prevents her from making herself heard. For twenty
years we have pressed the claims of woman to the right of
representation in the government. The first National Woman's
Rights Convention was held in Worcester, Mass., in 1850, and each
successive year conventions were held in different cities of the
Free States--Worcester, Syracuse, Cleveland, Philadelphia,
Cincinnati, and New York--until the rebellion. Since then, till
now, we have held no conventions. Up to this hour, we have looked
to State action only for the recognition of our rights; but now,
by the results of the war, the whole question of suffrage
reverts back to Congress and the U. S. Constitution. The duty of
Congress at this moment is to declare what shall be the basis of
representation in a republican form of government. There is,
there can be, but one true basis; and that is that taxation must
give representation; hence our demand must now go beyond
woman--it must extend to the farthest bound of the principle of
the "consent of the governed," as the only authorized or just
government. We, therefore, wish to broaden our Woman's Rights
platform, and make it in _name_--what it ever has been in
_spirit_--a Human Rights platform. It has already been stated
that we have petitioned Congress the past winter to so amend the
Constitution as to prohibit disfranchisement on account of sex.
We were roused to this work by the several propositions to
prohibit negro disfranchisement in the rebel States, which at the
same time put up a new bar against the enfranchisement of women.
As women we can no longer _seem_ to claim for ourselves what we
do not for others--nor can we work in two separate movements to
get the ballot for the two disfranchised classes--the negro and
woman--since to do so must be at double cost of time, energy, and
money.

New York is to hold a Constitutional Convention the coming year.
We want to make a thorough canvass of the entire State, with
lectures, tracts, and petitions, and, if possible, create a
public sentiment that shall send genuine Democrats and
Republicans to that Convention who shall strike out from our
Constitution the two adjectives "_white male_," giving to every
citizen, over twenty-one, the right to vote, and thus make the
Empire State the first example of a true republican form of
government. And what we propose to do in New York, the coming
eighteen months, we hope to do in every other State so soon as we
can get the men, and the women, and the money, to go forward with
the work. Therefore, that we may henceforth concentrate all our
forces for the practical application of our one grand,
distinctive, national idea--UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE--I hope we will
unanimously adopt the resolution before us, thus resolving this
Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention into the "AMERICAN
EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION."

The Resolution was unanimously adopted.

STEPHEN S. FOSTER said: I wish to suggest that it will be
necessary, first, to adopt a form of Constitution, and that it is
a very important question. Upon it will depend much of the
success of our movement. We have been deeply thrilled by the
eloquence of our friend, Mr. Beecher. We have all felt that his
utterances were the essential truth of God; and the bright
picture he drew before us is a possibility, if we do our duty.
But this state of things will never be realized by us, unless it
is from a united, persevering effort, giving a new impetus to the
Woman's Rights movement. I think it necessary that we should have
a more perfect organization than we can prepare this morning, at
this late hour, and I therefore move that we adjourn to meet in
the vestry this afternoon at four o'clock, to perfect an
organization, and take such further measures for the prosecution
of our cause as may then and there be deemed expedient. (The
motion was carried.)

A large audience assembled in the Lecture-room, at four o'clock. Susan
B. Anthony took the Chair and said, the first thing, in order to
complete the new organization, would be to fix upon a form of
Constitution. Parker Pillsbury, from the Business Committee, reported
one which was considered article by article, and adopted. There was an
interesting discussion relative to the necessity of a preamble, in
which the majority sympathized with LUCRETIA MOTT, who expressed
herself specially desirous that there should be one, and that it
should state the fact that this new organization was the outgrowth of
the Woman's Rights movement. Mrs. Stanton gave her idea of what the
preamble should be; and Mrs. Mott moved that Mrs. Stanton write out
her thought, and that it be accepted as the preamble of the
Constitution.[65] The motion was adopted. Miss Anthony proposed a
list of names as officers[66] of the Association. Mrs. Stanton thanked
the Convention for the honor proposed, to make her President, but said
she should prefer to see Lucretia Mott in that office; that thus that
office might ever be held sacred in the memory that it had first been
filled by one so loved and honored by all. "I shall be happy as
Vice-President to relieve my dear friend of the arduous duties of her
office, if she will but give us the blessing of her name as
President." Mrs. Stanton then moved that Mrs. Mott be the President,
which was seconded by many voices, and carried by a unanimous vote.

Mrs. Mott, escorted to the Chair by Stephen S. Foster, remarked that
her age and feebleness unfitted her for any public duties, but she
rejoiced in the inauguration of a movement broad enough to cover
class, color, and sex, and would be happy to give her name and
influence, if thus she might encourage the young and strong to carry
on the good work. On motion of Theodore Tilton, Mrs. Stanton was made
first Vice-President. The rest of the names were approved.

Mrs. STANTON said, It had been the desire of her heart to see the
Anti-Slavery and Woman's Rights organizations merged into an
Equal Rights Association, as the two questions were now one. With
emancipation, all that the black man asks is the right of
suffrage. With the special legislation of the last twenty years,
all that woman asks is the right of suffrage. Hence it seems an
unnecessary expenditure of force and substance for the same men
and women to meet in convention on Tuesday to discuss the right
of one class to the ballot, and on Thursday to discuss the right
of another class to the same. Has not the time come, Mrs.
President, to bury the black man and the woman in the citizen,
and our two organizations in the broader work of reconstruction?
They who have been trained in the school of anti-slavery; they
who, for the last thirty years, have discussed the whole question
of human rights, which involves every other question of trade,
commerce, finance, political economy, jurisprudence, morals and
religion, are the true statesmen for the new republic--the best
enunciators of our future policy of justice and equality. Any
work short of this is narrow and partial and fails to meet the
requirements of the hour. What is so plain to me, may, I trust,
be so to all before the lapse of many months, that all who have
worked together thus far, may still stand side by side in this
crisis of our nation's history.

JAMES MOTT said, he rejoiced that the women had seen fit to
re-organize their movement into one for equal rights to all,
that he felt the time had come to broaden our work. He felt the
highest good of the nation demanded the recognition of woman as a
citizen. We could have no true government until all the people
gave their consent to the laws that govern them.

STEPHEN S. FOSTER said, Many seemed to think that the one
question for this hour was negro suffrage. The question for every
man and woman, he thought, was the true basis of the
reconstruction of our government, not the rights of woman, or the
negro, but the rights of all men and women. Suffrage for woman
was even a more vital question than for the negro; for in giving
the ballot to the black man, we bring no new element into the
national life--simply another class of men. And for one, he could
not ask woman to go up and down the length and breadth of the
land demanding the political recognition of any class of
disfranchised citizens, while her own rights are ignored. Thank
God, the human family are so linked together, that no one man can
ever enjoy life, liberty, or happiness, so long as the humblest
being is crippled in a single right. I have demanded the freedom
of the slave the last thirty years, because he was a human being,
and I now demand suffrage for the negro because he is a human
being, and for the same reason I demand the ballot for woman.
Therefore, our demand for this hour is equal suffrage to all
disfranchised classes, for the one and the same reason--they are
all human beings.

MARTHA C. WRIGHT said: Some one had remarked that we wished to
merge ourselves into an Equal Rights Association to get rid of
the odious name of Woman's Rights. This she repudiated as
unworthy and untrue. Every good cause had been odious some time,
even the name Christian has had its odium in all nations. We
desire the change, because we feel that at this hour our highest
claims are as citizens, and not as women. I for one have always
gloried in the name of Woman's Rights, and pitied those of my sex
who ignobly declared they had all the rights they wanted. We take
the new name for the broader work because we see it is no longer
woman's province to be merely a humble petitioner for redress of
grievances, but that she must now enter into the fullness of her
mission, that of helping to make the laws, and administer
justice.

Aaron M. Powell presented the following resolution:

_Resolved_, That in view of the Constitutional Convention to be
held in the State of New York the coming year, it is the duty of
this Association to demand such an amendment of the Constitution
as shall secure equal rights to all citizens, without distinction
of color, sex, or race.

Miss Anthony seconded the resolution, and urged the importance of
making a thorough canvass of the State with lectures, tracts, and
petitions.[67] Mr. Powell, Mrs. Gage, and others, advocated the
concentration of all the energies of the Association for the coming
year on the State of New York; after which the resolution was adopted.

PARKER PILLSBURY: Perhaps we ourselves do not appreciate the
magnitude of the enterprise we are here to inaugurate. If
successful, we close to-day one epoch in human history, and enter
on another of results more millennial than have been seen before.
We give now a new definition to the word Liberty. We clothe our
divinity with new honors. The ancients worshiped in her temple,
but to them all, even the devoutest, she was ever an "Unknown
God." In all ages, men sing her praises, but know not her law.
Our revolutionary fathers were blind as others--blinder than many
others. They declared all men free and equal. They fought long
and valiantly for their evangel, baptizing it in the blood of
many battles, came home triumphant, and then constructed a
despotism which their own immortal Jefferson declared was fraught
with more woes in one hour, to myriads of its citizens, than
would be endured in whole ages of the worst they themselves had
ever known! That government they named a Republic. Under it we
held millions of slaves, and were providing to hold many millions
more, when God sent a thunderbolt and dashed it in pieces before
our eyes and gave our slaves their freedom. Now our wise men and
counselors, our statesmen and sages, are seeking how the
government and Union may be reconstructed. But they are laying
again false foundations. Of three immense classes, they proscribe
two and provide for one; and that one perhaps a minority of the
whole. Half our people are degraded for their sex; one-sixth for
the color of their skin. And this is the republican and
democratic definition of freedom. The ruling class boasts two
qualities, in virtue of which it claims the right to rule all
others. It is male, not female--white, not colored. For neither
of these surely is it responsible. For being women and colored,
the proscribed classes are no more responsible. A more cruel,
unrighteous, unjust distinction was never made under heaven. By
it we are driven into this new revolution; a revolution which is
to eclipse all that have gone before, as far as the glories of
Calvary outshone the shadows and terrors of Sinai. Even the
Anti-Slavery Society can only demand equality for the _male_ half
of mankind. And the Woman's Rights movement contemplated only
_woman_ in its demand. But with us liberty means freedom,
equality, and fraternity, irrespective of sex or complexion. It
is a gospel that was unknown to the ancients; hidden even from
the wise and prudent among our revolutionary fathers.
Revolutionary _mothers_ we seem never to have had. As in Eden,
"Adam was first found, then Eve," so in our revolution; but Eve
has come to-day, demanding her portion of the equal inheritance,
a mystery, a wonder, a "_new thing under the sun_," the
declaration of King Solomon to the contrary notwithstanding. And
here and to-day we lay new foundations. For the first time, law
and liberty are to be founded in nature and the government of the
moral universe. For the first time is it demanded that JUSTICE be
made our chief corner-stone. The ancient republics, not thus
underpinned, fell. Our old foundations, too, are fallen. In God's
wisdom, not in man's foolishness, let us henceforth build. And
the work of our hands, feeble as we seem to-day, shall survive
all the present kingdoms and dominions of the world.

Miss ANTHONY remarked that Theodore Tilton was in the house, and
had not yet spoken. She would like to hear his opinion.

Mr. TILTON replied that of course Miss Anthony was speaking in
pleasantry when she thus ingeniously pretended not to know his
opinion. This pretense was only a piece of strategy to compel him
to make a speech. Both she and he had lately been co-workers in a
local association for just such a purpose as to-day's enterprise
meditated--"The New York Equal Rights Association," of which he
had had the honor to be president, and Miss Anthony to be
secretary--an association which both its secretary and its
president were only too glad to see superseded by a larger and
more general movement. The apple tree bears more blossoms which
fall off than come to fruit. Our local association was the
necessary first blossom which had to be blown away by the wind.
No--he would rather say it was a blossom which had ripened to-day
into golden fruit. And now, said he, in this consecrated house,
at this sunset hour, amid these falling shadows, with a president
in the chair whose well-spent life has been crowned with every
virtue, let us make a covenant with each other such as was made
by the original members of the American Anti-Slavery Society--a
mutual pledge of diligent and earnest labor, not for the
abolition of chattel slavery, but for the political rights of all
classes, without regard to color or sex. Are we only a handful?
We are more than formed the Anti-Slavery Society--which grew into
a force that shook the nation. Who knows but that to-night we are
laying the corner-stone of an equally grand movement? Let us,
therefore, catch at this moment the cheering pretoken of the
prophecy that declares, "At evening time there shall be light!"

A motion was made to adjourn, when the President, Lucretia Mott, made
a few closing remarks, showing that all great achievements in the
progress of the race must be slow, and were ever wrought out by the
few, in isolation and ridicule--but, said she, let us remember in our
trials and discouragements, that if our lives are true, we walk with
angels--the great and good who have gone before us, and God is our
Father. As she uttered her few parting words of benediction, the
fading sunlight through the stained windows, fell upon her pure face,
a celestial glory seemed about her, and a sweet and peaceful influence
pervaded every heart. And all responded to Theodore Tilton when he
said, "this closing meeting of the Convention was one of the most
beautiful, delightful, and memorable which any of its participants
ever enjoyed."

The Convention adjourned to meet in Boston May 31, 1866, where a
large, enthusiastic meeting was held, of which we find the following
report by Charles K. Whipple.

_From the National Anti-Slavery Standard of June 9, 1866._

The meeting next in interest as in time, among the crowded
assemblies of Anniversary week, was that of the Equal Rights
Association, called and managed by those intelligent and
excellent women who have for years labored in behalf of Woman's
Rights. A large portion of the community have been accustomed to
sneer at these ladies as self-seeking and fanatical. The new
position they have taken shows, on the contrary, the largeness of
their views, the breadth of their sympathy, and the practical
good sense which govern their operations. Their proceedings show
their full appreciation of the fact that the rights of men and
the rights of women must stand or fall together.

Mrs. Dall called the meeting to order, and introduced as its
president, Martha C. Wright, of Auburn, N. Y., in the absence of
Lucretia Mott, the president of the Association. Mrs. Wright made
some well-chosen introductory remarks; Miss Susan B. Anthony read
letters of friendly greeting from Frederick Douglass and William
Lloyd Garrison, and then a very admirable report was read by Mrs.
Dall, summing up the advance made in the woman's cause the past
year.... The freedom of the platform was an admirable feature of
this Convention. Early in the proceedings it was announced that
any member of the audience, male or female, was entitled to speak
on the topics under debate, and would be made welcome. Among
those who addressed the Convention were Parker Pillsbury, Henry
C. Wright, Aaron M. Powell, Dr. Sarah Young, Rev. Olympia Brown
(minister of a church at Weymouth), Susan B. Anthony, Stephen S.
Foster, Mr. Tooker, Ira Stewart, Charles C. Burleigh, Wendell
Phillips, Frances Ellen Harper, Anna E. Dickinson. The mention of
these names is enough to indicate that there was abundance of
good speaking. No time was lost, and the hours of three sessions
were pleasantly and profitably filled.

Mr. Pillsbury said the word "male," as a restriction upon the
action of women, is unknown to the Federal Constitution, as well
as the word "black," and that its introduction into that document
should be resisted in the most strenuous manner, since we can
never have a true democracy while the work of government is
monopolized by a privileged class.... Wendell Phillips, admitting
that the suffrage is the great question of the hour, thought,
nevertheless, that in view of the peculiar circumstances of the
negro's position, his claim to this right might fairly be
considered to have precedence.... This hour, then, is
preëminently the property of the negro. Nevertheless, said Mr.
Phillips, I willingly stand here to plead the woman's cause,
because the Republican party are seeking to carry their purpose
by newly introducing the word "male" into the Constitution. To
prevent such a corruption of the National Constitution, as well
as for the general welfare of the community, male and female, I
wish to excite interest everywhere in the maintenance of woman's
right to vote. This woman's meeting was well conducted, and met
with success in every way.....

FRANCES D. GAGE, in a letter to the _National Anti-Slavery
Standard_, May 26, 1866, speaking of her attendance of the
anniversary meetings in New York, said: "If the Anti-Slavery work
has fallen somewhat behind our hope, that of the Woman's Rights
movement has far outstripped our most sanguine expectations. When
the war-cry was heard in 1861, the advance-guard of the Woman's
Rights party cried 'halt!' And for five years we have stood
waiting while the grand drama of the Rebellion was passing. Not
as idle spectators, but as the busiest and most unwearied actors
on the boards. We have, as our manly men assert, fought half the
battle, and helped to win the victory.

"Wendell Phillips said, 'Women made this war!' By the same
process of reasoning women may claim that 'they made the peace,'
that 'they broke the chains of the slave, and redeemed the land
from its most direful curse.' Be this true or otherwise, one fact
is patent to every mind--woman to-day is an acknowledged power!
And when we met at the Church of the Puritans last week, we found
Woman's Rights filling its halls and galleries as never before;
with a Beecher and a Tilton to defend our cause, but not one
sneerer or opposer to open his or her lips. Who now will dare
call us 'infidels,' since Bishop Simpson, Henry Ward Beecher, and
Dr. Tyng champion our cause, and proclaim it 'woman's _duty_ to
vote for the good of humanity'? Who will now dare sneer while the
leading minds of Europe--among them Ruskin, John Stuart Mill,
Mazzini, Victor Hugo--must share the odium with those hitherto
called 'strong-minded?'

"It was with pain that I heard Wendell Phillips say on our
platform, 'Albany can not help you; your throne is the world of
fashion!'--meaning women. If we are given over to fashion,
frivolity, and vice, does it follow that rights and privileges,
duties and responsibilities will not help us? If just governments
derive their powers from the consent of the governed, and
taxation without representation is tyranny, then Albany can help
us in just so much as a good and just government will help the
people who live under its rules and laws. No one would at this
day, if a friend to the negro, say to him, 'A vote can not help
you!' Then why say it to women?

"Our Woman's Rights Convention has now taken the broad platform
of 'Equal Rights,' and upon that will work in time to come. And
our meeting in New York seemed proof--if proof was wanting--that
all we need now is to ask and receive. Our worst enemy, our
greatest hindrance, is woman herself; and her indifference is the
legitimate result of long-denied privileges and responsibilities
of which she has not learned the necessity. If, as Mr. Beecher
asserted, 'to vote is a duty,' then it is the duty of every man
and woman to work to secure that right to every human being of
adult years.

"Since our meeting, the House of Representatives at Washington
has passed, by more than three to one, the amendment of the
Reconstruction Committee. If the Senate concurs, then, to save
the four million negroes of the South, or rather to save the
Republican party (the people agreeing), seventeen millions of
women, governed without their own consent, are proclaimed a
disfranchised class by the Constitution of the United States,
hitherto unpolluted by any such legislation. Let us, then, work
for this, too, that seventeen million women shall not be left
without the power considered so necessary to the negro for his
preservation and protection; the power to help govern himself.
Let us never forget his claim, but strengthen it, by not
neglecting our own."

At the November election of this year, Mrs. Stanton offered herself as
a candidate for Congress; in order to test the constitutional right of
a woman to run for office. This aroused some discussion on this phase
of the question, and many were surprised to learn that while women
could not vote, they could hold any office in which their constituents
might see fit to place them. Theodore Tilton gives the following
graphic description of this event in "The Eminent Women":

In a cabinet of curiosities I have laid away as an interesting
relic, a little white ballot, two inches square, and inscribed:

+-------------------------------------+
| _For Representative to Congress_, |
| ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. |
+-------------------------------------+

Mrs. Stanton is the only woman in the United States who, as yet,
has been a candidate for Congress. In conformity with a practice
prevalent in some parts of this country, and very prevalent in
England, she nominated herself. The public letter in which she
proclaimed herself a candidate was as follows:

_To the Electors of the Eighth Congressional District_:

Although, by the Constitution of the State of New York woman is
denied the elective franchise, yet she is eligible to office;
therefore, I present myself to you as a candidate for
Representative to Congress. Belonging to a disfranchised class, I
have no political antecedents to recommend me to your
support,--but my creed is _free speech_, _free press_, _free
men_, and _free trade_,--the cardinal points of democracy.
Viewing all questions from the stand-point of principle rather
than expediency, there is a fixed uniform law, as yet
unrecognized by either of the leading parties, governing alike
the social and political life of men and nations. The Republican
party has occasionally a clear vision of personal rights, though
in its protective policy it seems wholly blind to the rights of
property and interests of commerce; while it recognizes the duty
of benevolence between man and man, it teaches the narrowest
selfishness in trade between nations. The Democrats, on the
contrary, while holding sound and liberal principles on trade and
commerce, have ever in their political affiliations maintained
the idea of class and caste among men--an idea wholly at variance
with the genius of our free institutions and fatal to high
civilization. One party fails at one point and one at another.

In asking your suffrages--believing alike in free men and free
trade--I could not represent either party as now constituted.
Nevertheless, as an Independent Candidate, I desire an election
at this time, as a rebuke to the dominant party for its
retrogressive legislation in so amending the National
Constitution as to make invidious distinctions on the ground of
sex. That instrument recognizes as persons all citizens who obey
the laws and support the State, and if the Constitutions of the
several States were brought into harmony with the broad
principles of the Federal Constitution, the women of the Nation
would no longer be taxed without representation, or governed
without their consent. Not one word should be added to that great
charter of rights to the insult or injury of the humblest of our
citizens. I would gladly have a voice and vote in the Fortieth
Congress to demand _universal_ suffrage, that thus a republican
form of government might be secured to every State in the Union.

If the party now in the ascendency makes its demand for "Negro
Suffrage" in good faith, on the ground of natural right, and
because the highest good of the State demands that the republican
idea be vindicated, on no principle of justice or safety can the
women of the nation be ignored. In view of the fact that the
Freedmen of the South and the millions of foreigners now crowding
our shores, most of whom represent neither property, education,
nor civilization, are all in the progress of events to be
enfranchised, the best interests of the nation demand that we
outweigh this incoming pauperism, ignorance, and degradation,
with the wealth, education, and refinement of the women of the
republic. On the high ground of safety to the Nation, and justice
to citizens, I ask your support in the coming election.

New York, _Oct. 10, 1866_. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

The New York _Herald_, though, of course, with no sincerity,
since that journal is never sincere in anything--warmly advocated
Mrs. Stanton's election. "A lady of fine presence and
accomplishments in the House of Representatives," it said (and
said truly), "would wield a wholesome influence over the rough
and disorderly elements of that body." The _Anti-Slavery
Standard_, with genuine commendation, said: "The electors of the
Eighth District would honor themselves and do well by the country
in giving her a triumphant election." The other candidates in the
same district were Mr. James Brooks, Democrat, and Mr. Le Grand
B. Cannon, Republican. The result of the election was as follows:
Mr. Brooks received 13,816 votes, Mr. Cannon 8,210, and Mrs.
Stanton 24. It will be seen that the number of sensible people in
the district was limited! The excellent lady, in looking back
upon her successful defeat, regrets only that she did not, before
it became too late, procure the photographs of her two dozen
unknown friends.[68]

The years of 1866 and '67 were marked by unusual activity among the
friends of this movement in both England and America. John Stuart
Mill, a member of Parliament, proposed an amendment to the "Household
Suffrage Bill," by striking out the word "man," sustained by many able
speeches, which finally carried the measure triumphantly there. New
York held a Constitutional Convention, Michigan a Commission, and
Kansas submitted the proposition of woman suffrage to a vote of her
people. Twenty thousand petitions were rolled up and presented in the
Constitutional Convention, asking that the word "male" be stricken
from Article II, sec. 1, and as many more were poured into Congress
and the Legislatures of several of the States. A series of
conventions, commencing in Albany, were held in all the chief cities
of New York.[69]

THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION.

The labors of this year are well rounded out with a grand National
Convention,[70] during Anniversary week, in New York, which assembled
at the Church of the Puritans, May 9th, 1867, at 10 o'clock A.M.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton called the meeting to order and said: "In the
absence of our venerable President (Lucretia Mott), Robert Purvis, one
of the Vice-Presidents, will take the chair."

Mr. PURVIS said: I regret the absence of Mrs. Mott. It is
needless to say that no one has higher claims upon the nation's
gratitude for what has been accomplished in the glorious work of
Anti-Slavery, and for what is now being accomplished in the still
greater, because more comprehensive work for freedom contemplated
by this Society, than our honored and beloved President, Lucretia
Mott. (Applause). It is with no ordinary feelings that I
congratulate the friends of this Association on the healthful,
hopeful, animating, inspiring signs of the times. Our simple yet
imperative demand, founded upon a just conception of the true
idea of our republican government, is equality of rights for all,
without regard to color, sex, or race; and, inseparable from the
citizen, the possession of that power, that protection, that
primal element of republican freedom--the ballot.

Lucretia Mott here entered the hall, and, at the request of Mr.
Purvis, took the chair, and called for the Secretary's Report.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY said: It is my duty to present to you at this
time a written Report of all that has been done during the past
year; but those of us who have been active in this movement, have
been so occupied in doing the work, that no one has found time to
chronicle the progress of events. With but half a dozen live men
and women, to canvass the State of New York, to besiege the
Legislature and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention
with tracts and petitions, to write letters and send documents to
every State Legislature that has moved on this question, to urge
Congress to its highest duty in the reconstruction, by both
public and private appeals, has been a work that has taxed every
energy and dollar at our command. Money being the vital power of
all movements--the wood and water of the engine--and, as our work
through the past winter has been limited only by the want of it,
there is no difficulty in reporting on finance. The receipts of
our Association, during the year, have amounted to $4,096.78; the
expenditures, for lectures and conventions, for printing and
circulating tracts and documents, to $4,714.11--leaving us in
debt $617.33.

The Secretary then rapidly rehearsed the signs of progress. She
spoke of the discussion in the United States Senate on the
Suffrage bill, through three entire days, resulting in a vote of
nine Senators in favor of extending suffrage to the women as
well as black men of the District of Columbia; of the action of
the Legislatures of Kansas and Wisconsin to strike the words
"white male" from their constitutions; of the discussions and
minority votes in the Legislatures of Maine, Massachusetts, New
York, Ohio, and Missouri; of the addresses of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton and Lucy Stone before the Judiciary Committees of the New
York and New Jersey Legislatures; of the demand for household
suffrage by the women of England, earnestly maintained by John
Stuart Mill in the British Parliament--all showing that the
public mind everywhere is awake on this question of equal rights
to all. Every mail brings urgent requests from the West for
articles for their papers, for lectures and tracts on the
question of suffrage. In Kansas they are planning mass
conventions, to be held throughout the State through September
and October; and they urge us to send out at least a dozen able
men and women, with 100,000 tracts, to help them educate the
people into the grand idea of universal suffrage, that they may
carry the State at the November election.

Two of our agents, Lucy Stone and Henry B. Blackwell, are already
in Kansas, speaking in all her towns and cities--in churches,
school-houses, barns, and the open air; traveling night and day,
by railroad, stage, and ox-cart; scaling the rocky divides, and
fording the swollen rivers--their hearts all aglow with
enthusiasm, greeted everywhere by crowded audiences, brave men
and women, ready to work for the same principles for which they
have suffered in the past, that Kansas, the young and beautiful
hero of the West, may be the first State in the Union to realize
a genuine Republic. The earnest, loyal people of Kansas have
resolved to teach the nation to-day the true principle of
reconstruction, as they taught the nation, twelve years ago, the
one and only way in which to escape from the chains of slavery.
They ask us to help them. So do Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan,
and New York. But for this vast work, as I have already shown
you, we have an empty treasury. We ask you to replenish it. If
you will but give your money generously--if you will but oil the
machinery--this Association will gladly do the work that shall
establish universal suffrage, equal rights to all, in every State
in the Union.

The PRESIDENT (Mrs. Mott) said: The report which we have had,
although not written, is most interesting. A great deal of it is
new to me. There are so many actively engaged in the cause, that
it is fitting that some of us older ones should give place to
them. That is the natural order, and every natural order is
divine and beautiful. Therefore, I feel glad of the
privilege--although my filling the office of President has been a
mere nominal thing--to withdraw from the chair and to yield the
place to our friend Robert Purvis, one of our Vice-Presidents.
The cause is dear to my heart, and has been from my earliest
days. Being a native of the island of Nantucket, where women were
thought something of, and had some connection with the business
arrangements of life, as well as with their homes, I grew up so
thoroughly imbued with woman's rights that it was the most
important question of my life from a very early day. I hail this
more public movement for its advocacy, and have been glad that I
had strength enough to co-operate to some extent. I have attended
most of the regular meetings, and I now feel almost ashamed, old
as I am, to be so ignorant of what has happened during the last
year. We need a paper--an organ that shall keep those who can not
mingle actively in our public labors better informed. _The
Standard_ has done much; and I find in many other papers a
disposition to do justice, to a great extent, to our cause. It is
not ridiculed as it was in the beginning. We do not have the
difficulties, the opposition, and the contumely to confront that
we had at an early day. I am very glad to find such an audience
here to-day; and far be it from me to occupy the time so as to
prevent Mr. May, Mr. Burleigh, and others, from having their
proper place.

Mr. PURVIS resumed the chair, and introduced Mrs. Stanton, who
spoke to the following resolutions:

_Resolved_, That government, of all sciences, is the most
exalted and comprehensive, including, as it does, all the
political, commercial, religious, educational, and social
interests of the race.

_Resolved_, That to speak of the ballot as an "article of
merchandise," and of the science of government as the "muddy
pool of politics," is most demoralizing to a nation based on
universal suffrage.

In considering the question of suffrage, there are two starting
points: one, that this right is a gift of society, in which
certain men, having inherited this privilege from some abstract
body and abstract place, have now the right to secure it for
themselves and their privileged order to the end of time. This
principle leads logically to governing races, classes, families;
and, in direct antagonism to our idea of self-government, takes
us back to monarchies and despotisms, to an experiment that has
been tried over and over again, 6,000 years, and uniformly
failed.

Ignoring this point of view as untenable and anti-republican, and
taking the opposite, that suffrage is a natural right--as
necessary to man under government, for the protection of person
and property, as are air and motion to life--we hold the talisman
by which to show the right of all classes to the ballot, to
remove every obstacle, to answer every objection, to point out
the tyranny of every qualification to the free exercise of this
sacred right. To discuss this question of suffrage for women and
negroes, as women and negroes, and not as citizens of a republic,
implies that there are some reasons for demanding this right for
these classes that do not apply to "white males."

The obstinate persistence with which fallacious and absurd
objections are pressed against their enfranchisement--as if they
were anomalous beings, outside all human laws and necessities--is
most humiliating and insulting to every black man and woman who
has one particle of healthy, high-toned self-respect. There are
no special claims to propose for women and negroes, no new
arguments to make in their behalf. The same already made to
extend suffrage to all white men in this country, the same John
Bright makes for the working men of England, the same made for
the emancipation of 22,000,000 Russian serfs, are all we have to
make for black men and women. As the greater includes the less,
an argument for universal suffrage covers the whole question, the
rights of all citizens. In thus relaying the foundations of
government, we settle all these side issues of race, color, and
sex, end class legislation, and remove forever the fruitful cause
of the jealousies, dissensions, and revolutions of the past.
This is the platform of the American Equal Rights Association.
"We are masters of the situation." Here black men and women are
buried in the citizen. As in the war, freedom was the key-note of
victory, so now is universal suffrage the key-note of
reconstruction.

"Negro suffrage" may answer as a party cry for an effete
political organization through another Presidential campaign; but
the people of this country have a broader work on hand to-day
than to save the Republican party, or, with some abolitionists,
to settle the rights of races. The battles of the ages have been
fought for races, classes, parties, over and over again, and
force always carried the day, and will until we settle the
higher, the holier question of individual rights. This is our
American idea, and on a wise settlement of this question rests
the problem whether our nation shall live or perish.

The principle of inequality in government has been thoroughly
tried, and every nation based on that idea that has not already
perished, clearly shows the seeds of death in its dissensions and
decline. Though it has never been tried, we know an experiment on
the basis of equality would be safe; for the laws in the world of
morals are as immutable as in the world of matter. As the
Astronomer Leverrier discovered the planet that bears his name by
a process of reason and calculation through the variations of
other planets from known laws, so can the true statesman, through
the telescope of justice, see the genuine republic of the future
amid the ruins of the mighty nations that have passed away. The
opportunity now given us to make the experiment of
self-government should be regarded by every American citizen as a
solemn and a sacred trust. When we remember that a nation's life
and growth and immortality depend on its legislation, can we
exalt too highly the dignity and responsibility of the ballot,
the science of political economy, the sphere of government?
Statesmanship is, of all sciences, the most exalted and
comprehensive, for it includes all others. Among men we find
those who study the laws of national life more liberal and
enlightened on all subjects than those who confine their
researches in special directions. When we base nations on justice
and equality, we lift government out of the mists of speculation
into the dignity of a fixed science. Everything short of this is
trick, legerdemain, sleight of hand. Magicians may make nations
seem to live, but they do not. The Newtons of our day who should
try to make apples stand in the air or men walk on the wall,
would be no more puerile in their experiments than are they who
build nations outside of law, on the basis of inequality.

What thinking man can talk of _coming down_ into the arena of
politics? If we need purity, honor, self-sacrifice and devotion
anywhere, we need them in those who have in their keeping the
life and prosperity of a nation. In the enfranchisement of woman,
in lifting her up into this broader sphere, we see for her new
honor and dignity, more liberal, exalted and enlightened views of
life, its objects, ends and aims, and an entire revolution in the
new world of interest and action where she is soon to play her
part. And in saying this, I do not claim that woman is better
than man, but that the sexes have a civilizing power on each
other. The distinguished historian, Henry Thomas Buckle, says:
"The turn of thought of women, their habits of mind, their
conversation, invariably extending over the whole surface of
society, and frequently penetrating its intimate structure, have,
more than all other things put together, tended to raise us into
an ideal world, and lift us from the dust into which we are too
prone to grovel." And this will be her influence in exalting and
purifying the world of politics. When woman understands the
momentous interests that depend on the ballot, she will make it
her first duty to educate every American boy and girl into the
idea that to vote is the most sacred act of citizenship--a
religious duty not to be discharged thoughtlessly, selfishly or
corruptly; but conscientiously, remembering that, in a republican
government, to every citizen is entrusted the interests of the
nation. Would you fully estimate the responsibility of the
ballot, think of it as the great regulating power of a continent,
of all our interests, political, commercial, religious,
educational, social and sanitary!

To many minds, this claim for the ballot suggests nothing more
than a rough polling-booth where coarse, drunken men, elbowing
each other, wade knee-deep in mud to drop a little piece of paper
two inches long into a box--simply this and nothing more. The
poet Wordsworth, showing the blank materialism of those who see
only with their outward eyes, says of his Peter Bell:

"A primrose on the river's brim
A yellow primrose was to him,
And it was nothing more."

So our political Peter Bells see the rough polling-booth in this
great right of citizenship, and nothing more. In this act, so
lightly esteemed by the mere materialist, behold the realization
of that great idea struggled for in the ages and proclaimed by
the Fathers, the right of self-government. That little piece of
paper dropped into a box is the symbol of equality, of
citizenship, of wealth, of virtue, education, self-protection,
dignity, independence and power--the mightiest engine yet placed
in the hand of man for the uprooting of ignorance, tyranny,
superstition, the overturning of thrones, altars, kings, popes,
despotisms, monarchies and empires. What phantom can the sons of
the Pilgrims be chasing, when they make merchandise of a power
like this? Judas Iscariot, selling his Master for thirty pieces
of silver, is a fit type of those American citizens who sell
their votes, and thus betray the right of self-government. Talk
not of the "muddy pool of politics," as if such things must need
be. Behold, with the coming of woman into this higher sphere of
influence, the dawn of the new day, when politics, so called, are
to be lifted into the world of morals and religion; when the
polling-booth shall be a beautiful temple, surrounded by
fountains and flowers and triumphal arches, through which young
men and maidens shall go up in joyful procession to ballot for
justice and freedom; and when our election days shall be kept
like the holy feasts of the Jews at Jerusalem. Through the trials
of this second revolution shall not our nation rise up, with new
virtue and strength, to fulfill her mission in leading all the
peoples of the earth to the only solid foundation of government,
"equal rights to all." ...

Our danger lies, not in the direction of despotism, in the
one-man power, in centralization; but in the corruption of the
people....

It is in vain to look for a genuine republic in this country
until the women are baptized into the idea, until they understand
the genius of our institutions, until they study the science of
government, until they hold the ballot in their hands and have a
direct voice in our legislation. What is the reason, with the
argument in favor of the enfranchisement of women all on one
side, without an opponent worthy of consideration--while British
statesmen, even, are discussing this question--the Northern men
are so dumb and dogged, manifesting a studied indifference to
what they can neither answer nor prevent? What is the reason that
even abolitionists who have fearlessly claimed political,
religious and social equality for women for the last twenty
years, should now, with bated breath, give her but a passing word
in their public speeches and editorial comments--as if her rights
constituted but a side issue of this grave question of
reconstruction? All must see that this claim for _male_ suffrage
is but another experiment in class legislation, another violation
of the republican idea. With the black man we have no new element
in government, but with the education and elevation of women we
have a power that is to develop the Saxon race into a higher and
nobler life, and thus, by the law of attraction, to lift all
races to a more even platform than can ever be reached in the
political isolation of the sexes. Why ignore 15,000,000 women in
the reconstruction? The philosophy of this silence is plain
enough. The black man crowned with the rights of citizenship,
there are no political Ishmaelites left but the women. This is
the last stronghold of aristocracy in the country. Sydney Smith
says: "There always has been, and always will be, a class of men
in the world so small that, if women were educated, there would
be nothing left below them."

It is a consolation to the "white male," to the popinjays in all
our seminaries of learning, to the ignorant foreigner, the
boot-black and barber, the idiot--for a "white male" may vote if
he be not more than nine-tenths a fool--to look down on women of
wealth and education, who write books, make speeches, and discuss
principles with the savans of their age. It is a consolation for
these classes to be able to say, "well, if woman can do these
things, they can't vote after all." I heard some boys discoursing
thus not long since. I told them they reminded me of a story I
heard of two Irishmen the first time they saw a locomotive with a
train of cars. As the majestic fire-horse, with all its grace and
polish, moved up to a station, stopped, and snorted, as its
mighty power was curbed, then slowly gathered up its forces again
and moved swiftly on--"be jabers," says Pat, "there's muscle for
you. What are we beside that giant?" They watched it intently
till out of sight, seemingly with real envy, as if oppressed with
a feeling of weakness and poverty before this unknown power; but
rallying at last, one says to the other: "No matter, Pat; let it
snort and dash on--it can't vote, after all."

Poor human nature wants something to look down on. No privileged
order ever did see the wrongs of its own victims, and why expect
the "white male citizen" to enfranchise woman without a
struggle--by a scratch of the pen to place themselves on a dead
level with their lowest order? And what a fall would that be, my
countrymen. In none of the nations of modern Europe is there a
class of women so degraded politically as are the women of these
Northern States. In the Old World, where the government is the
aristocracy, where it is considered a mark of nobility to share
its offices and powers--there women of rank have certain
hereditary rights which raise them above a majority of the men,
certain honors and privileges not granted to serfs or peasants.
In England woman may be Queen, hold office, and vote on some
questions. In the Southern States even the women were not
degraded below their working population, they were not humiliated
in seeing their coachmen, gardeners, and waiters go to the polls
to legislate on their interests; hence there was a pride and
dignity in their bearing not found in the women of the North, and
pluck in the chivalry before which Northern doughfaceism has ever
cowered. But here, where the ruling class, the aristocracy, is
"male," no matter whether washed or unwashed, lettered or
unlettered, rich or poor, black or white, here in this boasted
northern civilization, under the shadow of Bunker Hill and
Faneuil Hall, which Mr. Phillips proposes to cram down the throat
of South Carolina--here women of wealth and education, who pay
taxes and are amenable to law, who may be hung, even though not
permitted to choose the judge, the juror, or the sheriff who does
the dismal deed, women who are your peers in art, science, and
literature--already close upon your heels in the whole world of
thought--are thrust outside the pale of political consideration
with traitors, idiots, minors, with those guilty of bribery,
larceny, and infamous crime. What a category is this in which to
place your mothers, wives, and daughters. I ask you, men of the
Empire State, where on the footstool do you find such a class of
citizens politically so degraded? Now, we ask you, in the coming
Constitutional Convention, to so amend the Second Article of our
State Constitution as to wipe out this record of our disgrace.

"But," say you, "women themselves do not make the demand." Mr.
Phillips said on this platform, a year ago, that "the singularity
of this cause is, that it has to be carried on against the wishes
and purposes of its victims," and he has been echoed by nearly
every man who has spoken, on this subject during the past year.
Suppose the assertion true, is it a peculiarity of this
reform?... Ignorant classes always resist innovations. Women
looked on the sewing-machine as a rival for a long time. Years
ago the laboring classes of England asked bread; but the Cobdens,
the Brights, the Gladstones, the Mills have taught them there is
a power behind bread, and to-day they ask the ballot. But they
were taught its power first, and so must woman be. Again, do not
those far-seeing philosophers who comprehend the wisdom, the
beneficence, the morality of free trade urge this law of nations
against the will and wishes of the victims of tariffs and
protective duties? If you can prove to us that women do not wish
to vote, that is no argument against our demand. There are many
duties in life that ignorant, selfish, unthinking women do not
desire to do, and this may be one of them.

"But," says Rev. O. B. Frothingham, in a recent sermon on this
subject, "they who first assume political responsibilities must
necessarily lose something of the feminine element." In the
education and elevation of woman we are yet to learn the true
manhood and womanhood, the true masculine and feminine elements.
Dio Lewis is rapidly changing our ideas of feminine beauty. In
the large waists and strong arms of the girls under his training,
some dilettante gentleman may mourn a loss of feminine delicacy.
So in the wise, virtuous, self-supporting, common-sense women we
propose as the mothers of the future republic, the reverend
gentleman may see a lack of what he considers the feminine
element. In the development of sufficient moral force to entrench
herself on principle, need a woman necessarily lose any grace,
dignity, or perfection of character? Are not those who have
advocated the rights of women in this country for the last twenty
years as delicate and refined, as moral, high-toned, educated,
just, and generous as any women in the land? I have seen women in
many countries and classes, in public and private; but have found
none more pure and noble than those I meet on this platform. I
have seen our venerable President in converse with the highest of
English nobility, and even the Duchess of Sutherland did not
eclipse her in grace, dignity, and conversational power. Where
are there any women, as wives and mothers, more beautiful in
their home life than Lucretia Mott and Lucy Stone, or Antoinette
Brown Blackwell? Let the freedmen of the South Sea Islands
testify to the faithfulness, the devotion, the patience, and
tender mercy of Frances D. Gage, who watched over their
interests, teaching them to read and work for two long years.
Some on our platform have struggled with hardship and
poverty--been slaves even in "the land of the free and the home
of the brave," and bear the scars of life's battle. But is a
self-made woman less honorable than a self-made man? Answer our
arguments. When the Republic is in danger, no matter for our
manners. When our soldiers came back from the war, wan, weary,
and worn, maimed, halt, blind, wrinkled, and decrepit--their
banners torn, their garments stained with blood--who, with a soul
to feel, thought of anything but the glorious work they had done?
What if their mothers on this platform be angular, old, wrinkled,
and gray? They, too, have fought a good fight for freedom, and
proudly bear the scars of the battle. We alone have struck the
key-note of reconstruction. While man talks of "equal, impartial,
manhood suffrage," we give the certain sound, "universal
suffrage." While he talks of the rights of races, we exalt the
higher, the holier idea proclaimed by the Fathers, and now twice
baptized in blood, "individual rights." To woman it is given to
save the Republic.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, on behalf of the Executive Committee, reported
several resolutions.[71]

Rev. SAMUEL J. MAY said: I wish to give my testimony most
earnestly and solemnly to the conviction, which has continually
increased in my soul since my attention was first called to the
subject, that this is a fundamental question. How can we expect
that our government will be well conducted when one-half, and
that too what we have been accustomed to call the "better half,"
of its constituency is disfranchised, and unable to influence it
as it should? It is now twenty-two years since I delivered my
first public discourse on this subject; and when I have insisted,
as I have done during that time, that women should be allowed to
take part in the government, it has always been thrown in my
teeth that women were governing the nation after all through
their influence over their husbands, brothers, and sons. I was
delighted with the remarks of Mrs. Stanton on this subject. In
the first place, women can not influence their husbands, nor
educate their sons, as they should do, because they are not
properly informed, and have no inducement to become informed.
Were they to feel a responsibility, doubtless the better part of
them would prepare themselves to discharge their duty; but
knowing that they have nothing to do with the government of the
country, you can hardly persuade our young women to study the
subject. Years ago I insisted that the Constitution of the United
States should be introduced into the common schools of the city
where I live, to be studied by girls as well as boys. Yet I
hardly know half a dozen girls there who have taken the least
interest in it. Why? Because, when any allusion is made to
women's participation in the government, it has been met with a
sneer, which so many dread more than they do a bullet; and this
has doubtless deterred them from it.

I was glad, too, to hear the reply so successfully made to the
objection that women do not demand this right. That is no reason
why they should not be required to exercise it. It is their right
because it is their duty. It is their duty because it is their
right. We have the most glorious inheritance that God ever gave
to a nation, the privilege of governing ourselves. Where does
self-government begin? Where does it reside? In the individual.
No individual that can not govern himself can contribute in the
least toward the government of the country in which he lives. He
becomes a burden, if not a curse. Knowing that women have the
same moral powers as men, the same intellectual powers, the same
affections, that they are governed by the same laws, and amenable
to the same government, who can doubt that if they were made
sensible of their responsibilities in the government of the
country, and that they can not contribute in the least to the
well-being of the community unless they can contribute those
virtues and graces which constitute the true government of one's
self; this would have the most inspiring and elevating influence
upon them? Think you they would continue to be the servants of
mere fashion, as too many of them now are? By our refusal to act
in accordance with the eternal principles of righteousness set
forth in the Declaration of Independence and in the preamble of
the Constitution of the country, we have been brought into a
terrible civil war, which has resulted in a disorganized
condition requiring reconstruction. Why should we not see to it
that our country as a whole, and that each individual State of
the country, shall be reconstructed on this true basis, so that,
if possible, nothing may be left to be done hereafter to improve
the foundations on which this nation rests?

Many say, "One thing at a time. You have been struggling for the
abolition of slavery and obtained that; and now claim the
political rights of the colored men, and will undoubtedly get
them. Why can't you be satisfied?" Because that would leave a
tremendous wrong at the foundation of our country. What will be
the consequence, God only knows, should we dare to go on with
such a fatal mistake in the basis of our institutions. It is
presumption to suppose that we can do this without incurring,
sooner or later, awful consequences. We can not predict what they
will be; but that they will be great our past experiences should
teach us. It was thought a very little matter to leave our
Constitution indefinite as to the rights of colored men. Our
fathers in the meetings held to ratify the Constitution, said
they had done all that could be expected, said that the
death-blow was struck at the institution of slavery, that it
would soon die a natural death; and thus they quieted those who
were distrustful because slavery was not explicitly abolished in
the Constitution. The people, engaged in their various pursuits,
ambitious for office, eager for wealth, let this seed of wrong
become a mighty upas tree that covered our republic all over, and
scattered everywhere its poisonous fruits. Shall we dare to go on
for another period of our national existence knowing that at the
foundation of our government there is a tremendous wrong?

What should the government of a nation be? Ought it not to be as
much as possible like the government of a well-ordered family?
Can you think of any model so good as the divine model set before
us in the family? What would the family be with a father and
without a mother? To whom do you owe the most--your father or
your mother? Who controlled the family most effectually? Some
thirty years ago, being chairman of the Board of Education in my
district, I proposed to put a woman into a school where the male
teachers had been set at nought year after year. It stood the
lowest in rank when she took it; but in less than a month its
character was obviously changed, and at the end of the term it
stood number three in point of character as well as in
scholarship. Men are not governed by the fear of punishment. They
are governed by a strong, persistent manifestation of the
consciousness of a right to govern them; and that is pressed upon
them more effectually by the influence of a mother or a sister
than of a father or a brother. Just so it will be in the
government of our country, when women shall educate and prepare
themselves to take part in that government, with their almost
instinctive perception of the right, the true, and the good.

And if our fathers and mothers were what they might and should
be, the children would be so well trained that they would govern
themselves, and there would be very little need of the
instrumentality of a political organization. If women understood
that it was not only their right, but their duty, to educate
themselves to be citizens of the State, we should have, instead
of the trifling topics which now occupy their attention in our
domestic circles, the consideration of great questions; and
doubtless their finer perceptions often would help to settle
great questions aright; and they who should go forth from that
family circle into the various relations of life, would go
prepared to advocate the right, to illustrate the truth, and at
the ballot-box to give their votes for the true and the right. It
is my first conviction respecting the future well-being of our
country, that it is to be measured exactly by our treatment of
the colored man. My second conviction is that the well-being of
our country never will be effectually provided for until the
better half of humanity is educated and instructed, and required
to take part in the enactment of the laws and in their
administration.

Mrs. Mott then introduced the venerable Sojourner Truth, who was
greeted with loud cheers, after which she said:

My friends, I am rejoiced that you are glad, but I don't know how
you will feel when I get through. I come from another field--the
country of the slave. They have got their liberty--so much good
luck to have slavery partly destroyed; not entirely. I want it
root and branch destroyed. Then we will all be free indeed. I
feel that if I have to answer for the deeds done in my body just
as much as a man, I have a right to have just as much as a man.
There is a great stir about colored men getting their rights, but
not a word about the colored women; and if colored men get their
rights, and not colored women theirs, you see the colored men
will be masters over the women, and it will be just as bad as it
was before. So I am for keeping the thing going while things are
stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a
great while to get it going again. White women are a great deal
smarter, and know more than colored women, while colored women do
not know scarcely anything. They go out washing, which is about
as high as a colored woman gets, and their men go about idle,
strutting up and down; and when the women come home, they ask for
their money and take it all, and then scold because there is no
food. I want you to consider on that, chil'n. I call you chil'n;
you are somebody's chil'n, and I am old enough to be mother of
all that is here. I want women to have their rights. In the
courts women have no right, no voice; nobody speaks for them. I
wish woman to have her voice there among the pettifoggers. If it
is not a fit place for women, it is unfit for men to be there.

I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going.
I have been forty years a slave and forty years free, and would
be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. I suppose
I am kept here because something remains for me to do; I suppose
I am yet to help to break the chain. I have done a great deal of
work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to
work in the field and bind grain, keeping up with the cradler;
but men doing no more, got twice as much pay; so with the German
women. They work in the field and do as much work, but do not get
the pay. We do as much, we eat as much, we want as much. I
suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to
speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the
thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked. What we want is a
little money. You men know that you get as much again as women
when you write, or for what you do. When we get our rights we
shall not have to come to you for money, for then we shall have
money enough in our own pockets; and may be you will ask us for
money. But help us now until we get it. It is a good consolation
to know that when we have got this battle once fought we shall
not be coming to you any more. You have been having our rights so
long, that you think, like a slave-holder, that you own us. I
know that it is hard for one who has held the reins for so long
to give up; it cuts like a knife. It will feel all the better
when it closes up again. I have been in Washington about three
years, seeing about these colored people. Now colored men have
the right to vote. There ought to be equal rights now more than
ever, since colored people have got their freedom. I am going to
talk several times while I am here; so now I will do a little
singing. I have not heard any singing since I came here.

Accordingly, suiting the action to the word, Sojourner sang, "We
are going home." "There, children," said she, "in heaven we shall
rest from all our labors; first do all we have to do here. There
I am determined to go, not to stop short of that beautiful place,
and I do not mean to stop till I get there, and meet you there,
too."

CHARLES C. BURLEIGH said: I consider it among the good omens with
which the Society enters upon its new year of labor, that its
workers have been so busy, as appears from the informal report of
the Secretary this morning, that really they have not had time to
let the left hand know what the right hand was doing. It shows an
earnestness, a determination, a vigor, an industry, which can not
co-exist with a cause of righteousness like the one before us
without hopeful results. There is no narrow question here. We are
not contending for Woman's Suffrage or Negro Suffrage, but for a
broad principle of right applicable to the whole race. Those in
opposition to us have really nothing to stand upon. While we may
fairly assume that the burden of proof lies upon those who urge
objections, that ours is the affirmative case, and all that we
are bound to do is to answer objections; yet in this reform, as
in others which have preceded it, its enemies not being willing
to take the burden of proof, we have undertaken to do their work
as well as our own. We are willing, therefore, for the sake of
meeting every cavil, for the sake of fighting every shadow of
objection, to take the laboring oar which the other side should
take, and to prove the objections unfounded which they have not
yet attempted to prove well-founded.

We are told sometimes that women ought not to share with men in
the rights we claim for humanity, because of the difference of
sex; that there is a sex of soul as well as of body. This is an
objection practically cutting its own throat; because if it is
true that there is a diversity of sex in soul which ought to be
recognized in political institutions as well as in social
arrangements, how can you rightly determine woman's proper place
in society by the standard of a man's intellect? How can man's
intellect determine what kind of legislation suits the condition
of woman? The very fact, then, of the diversity of the masculine
understanding and masculine spirit, proves the necessity of
assigning to woman a share in the work which is to be done
affecting woman. Manifestly one of these two things must be true:
Either there is no such essential difference worthy to be taken
into account, in which case woman has the same rights as man, and
there is no necessity for making a distinction; or there is an
essential difference, in which case man is not competent to do
the work of legislating for the whole of society without the aid
of woman. We might just as well let one effigy stand in the
tailor's shop, as the standard of measurement of every garment
the tailor is to make, and also of every garment the dressmaker
is to make as to found the legislation for all upon one standard.
If you recognize a difference, let your legislation proceed from
both elements of the body politic which your legislation is to
affect.

It is said also, that if you allow women to vote, the logic of
your argument will go further and require that women shall be
voted for and they may chance to receive votes enough for
election; and they may even go to the State Legislature or to
Congress. Suppose such a thing should happen, would a city which
is represented in the Congress of the United States by John
Morrissey and Fernando Wood, have reason to blush if by some
singular good fortune she should chance to be represented by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton? (Applause.) Would the halls of Congress
suffer any loss of dignity, or any loss of efficiency, even if
John Morrissey's place should be vacated to make room for Mrs.
Stanton, or if some Pennsylvania Democrat should be allowed to
remain at home while Lucretia Mott occupied his chair?
(Applause.) Is it so terrible that women who can utter sentiments
as noble and elevating as those to which you have listened, who
can sustain them by logic as clear, and who can expose with such
delicate wit the ridiculous absurdity of the opposite side,
should have a voice in the counsels of the nation? Somebody says
that "the child is father to the man." You know who govern the
children. Who governed you when you were children? Is it not as
safe that woman should govern in the halls of national
legislation as in the family and in the school? You will find in
hundreds of schools, governed a few years ago by men, only women
for teachers to-day. I remember that in a building which
contained some three hundred pupils, the last man employed as a
teacher was an assistant teacher under the supervision of a woman
as principal; a woman who has vindicated her right to the place
by her admirable administration, and her admirable adaptation to
the business of teaching, so that she has become, as it were, a
fixture in that schoolhouse. And that is only one case among
many. And if woman excels in government in those spheres in which
she has had an opportunity to prove her ability, it is at least
safe to try the experiment further.

We have just seen one folly, one absurdity refuted by the simple
process of trying an experiment. The time was when it was deemed
altogether unwomanly, and repugnant to female delicacy and
refinement, for a woman to ink the ends of her fingers in
handling a pen; for a woman to be what was derisively called a
"blue-stocking," or a literary woman. It was thought that nothing
but pedantry, nothing but slatternly habits and neglected
housekeeping, could come of it. But who would be willing to
banish from the literary world to-day such names as Browning,
Hemans, Stowe, and Gage? And if I were to fill out the catalogue
of names, I might close my speech at the end of it, having tired
you all with the length of the recital. So it was said that women
should not appear on the public platform. But who now would
banish the women who have delighted such vast congregations, and
who have drawn such applause from all classes and conditions of
men? Who, to-day, considers it improper for Lucy Stone, Anna
Dickinson, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, to appear upon a public
platform? Who is willing to shut the pulpit against Mrs. Mott,
when she has filled it with such acceptance, in so many places,
and on so many occasions? Step by step, woman has advanced toward
her right position. Step by step, as she advanced, she has proved
her right, to the satisfaction of caviling skepticism itself....

She would now go a step further. She demands the rights, not of
womanhood, but of humanity. And I feel just as confident that
what she demands will be conceded, in reference to her political
rights, as that it has been conceded with regard to these other
rights, which are now settled in the estimation of thinking and
reasoning people. The tide sets that way, clearly and strongly.
Kansas is not to go alone, in granting this right to woman. The
agitation is to go on; and the more you resist the current of
events, the more earnestly will the agitation be continued until
reason shall be convinced; until prejudice shall be overcome by
the power of conviction; until men are constrained, from very
shame, to withdraw from a position which no argument, no
experience can justify, which no consideration of decency will
palliate.

One objection to our claim is, that the right of voting should
not belong to human beings as individuals, but rather to
households of human beings. This is not a denial of equality in
all respects, but an allegation that the right belongs neither to
the man nor to the woman, but to the household; and that for the
household, as its representative, the man casts the ballot.
Suppose I concede that, what then? Why should the head of the
household, or rather the _hand_ of the household, be masculine
rather than feminine? We have heard the argument over and over
again that woman should leave to man the counting-house, the
work-bench, and all the duties supposed peculiarly to appertain
to masculine humanity, and should attend to "household" matters.
If, then, suffrage is a household matter, why should not woman
attend to it, in her feminine capacity, as peculiarly within her
domestic province, and relieve man from the interruption of his
appropriate duties?

Rev. Mr. RAY inquired what was the basis for the right of
suffrage, if suffrage was not, as Mr. Burleigh had said yesterday
in another place, a natural right. If it does not belong to the
individual whence does it come? The Sultan of Turkey may claim
that the right belongs to him, and that he may delegate that
right to whomsoever he will to assist him in the government of
the people. But in a Republic the right must be in the
individual; and if so, it belongs to woman as well as to man, to
black as well as to white persons. If the right of suffrage is
not a natural right, why has not the Constitutional Convention
about to meet the right to limit the suffrage, if they think it
will secure the best interest of the State?

FRANCES D. GAGE said: I have but little to say because it is
almost two o'clock, and hungry and weary people are not good
listeners to speeches. I shall confine my remarks therefore to
one special point brought up this morning and not fully
discussed. Sojourner Truth gave us the whole truth in about
fifteen words: "If I am responsible for the deeds done in my
body, the same as the white male citizen is, I have a right to
all the rights he has to help him through the world." I shall
speak for the slave woman at the South. I have always lifted my
voice for her when I have spoken at all. I will not give up the
slave woman into the hands of man, to do with her as he pleases
hereafter. I know the plea that was made to me in South Carolina,
and down in the Mississippi valley. They said, "You give us a
nominal freedom, but you leave us under the heel of our husbands,
who are tyrants almost equal to our masters." The former slave
man of the South has learned his lesson of oppression and wrong
of his old master; and they think the wife has no right to her
earnings. I was often asked, "Why don't the Government pay my
wife's earnings to me?" When acting for the Freedman's Aid
Society, the orders came to us to compel marriage, or to separate
families. I issued the order as I was bound to do, as General
Superintendent of the Fourth Division under General Saxton. The
men came to me and wanted to be married, because they said if
they were married in the church, they could manage the women, and
take care of their money, but if they were not married in the
church the women took their own wages and did just as they had a
mind to. But the women came to me and said, "We don't want to be
married in the church, because if we are our husbands will whip
the children and whip us if they want to; they are no better than
old masters." The biggest quarrel I had with the colored people
down there, was with a plantation man because I would not furnish
a nurse for his child. "No, Nero," said I, "I can not hire a
nurse for your child while Nancy works in the cotton field." "But
what is we to do? I'se a poor miserable man and can't work half
the time, and Nancy is a good strong hand; and we must have a
nurse." He went away in utter disgust, and declared to the people
outside that I had got the miserablest notion he had ever heard,
to spoil a good field hand like his Nancy to nurse her own baby.

We were told the other day by Wendell Phillips, upon the
Anti-Slavery platform, that it takes people forty years to
outgrow an old idea. The slave population of the South is not yet
removed a hundred years from the barbarism of Africa, where women
have no rights, no privileges, but are trampled under foot in all
the savageism of the past. And the slave man has looked on to see
his master will everything as he willed, and he has learned the
lesson from his master. Mr. Higginson told us that the
slave-master never understood the slave. I know that to be the
fact. Neither does man understand woman to-day, because she has
always been held subservient to him. Now it is proposed to give
manhood the suffrage in all these Southern States, and to leave
the poor slave woman bound under the ban of the direst curse of
slavery to him who is the father of her children. It is decreed
upon all the statute books of slavery, that the child shall
follow the condition of the mother. That has been the decree from
the beginning of this awful slave system; that the whitest woman,
the child of a slave mother, whose hair curled down to her waist,
and whose blue eyes of beauty were a lure to the statesmen of the
South, should be a slave, though the Governor of the State were
her father. Are you to leave her there yet, and desecrate
marriage, by making it such a bond of slavery that the woman
shall say, "I do not want to be married, to suffer oppression!"
Are you to force prostitution and wrong upon those people by
these unjust laws? Are you to compel wickedness and crime? Are
you going to let it stand upon the statute books of the Southern
States that the only woman free to work for her own child shall
be the mother of illegitimate children? That is the consequence
of what you are doing to the people who in all time past, since
they have lived upon this continent, have been denied the right
of sacred marriage; and who must have, as Wendell Phillips tells
us, forty years to outgrow the past, or to educate them.

We are told by Mr. Phillips to flood the South with
spelling-books. Who is to carry them there? Who, to-day, is
teaching the Southern people;--for I am talking now in behalf of
the colored woman of the South, forgetting my own degradation.
Who have carried the spelling-book to the South? The women of the
North, gathering up their strength, have been sent down by all
these great societies to teach. The colored men of the South are
to vote, while they deny the ballot to their teacher! It is said
that women do not want to vote in this country. I tell you, it is
a libel upon womanhood. I care not who says it. I am in earnest.
They do want to vote. Fifty-two thousand pulpits in this country
have been teaching women the lesson that has been taught them for
centuries, that they must not think about voting. But when 52,000
pulpits, or 52,000 politicians, at the beginning of this war,
lifted up their voices and asked of women, "Come out and help
us," did they stand back? In every hamlet, in every village, in
every cabin, and every palace, in every home in the whole United
States, they rose up and went to work. They worked for the
Government; they worked for the nation; they worked for their
sons, their husbands, their fathers, their brothers, their
friends. They worked night and day. Who found women to stand back
when this great public opinion that had been crushing them so
long and forbidding them to work, at last lifted itself up and
said, "You may work"? (Applause).

I have been traveling all winter long, with a few intervals of
rest, talking not upon Equal Rights, but upon the subject of
Temperance; and whenever I said to my crowded audiences that we
must give to woman the right to vote that she may purify the
nation of this great sin, there went up shouts and clapping of
hands of men and women. They are ready for this work. What we
want is to crystallize the public opinion of all ranks of society
in its favor. There is great fear that if woman is allowed to
vote, she will lose something of her high and excellent
character. If it is right for woman to have the suffrage, it is
not right to talk of expediency. If giving woman the ballot will
cause her to lose her prestige, it is because she ought to lose
it. If she gains physical strength and loses that effeminate
delicacy that provides for nothing and cares for nothing but its
own selfish, quiet enjoyment, I shall rejoice with joy
unspeakable. My strong hands have tilled the fields; and in my
early childhood have harnessed the horse, and brought the wood to
the door; have led him to the blacksmith's shop to be shod. These
are things I do not often tell in public. I have braved public
opinion; I have tilled my garden; I have brought myself up from
fainting weakness occasioned by accident and broken bones. I have
taken care of myself, supported myself, and asked nothing from
the world; I find my womanhood not one bit degraded. (Applause).
A thousand times in the last years, in this struggle for bread,
have I been asked, "Why don't you let your sons support you?" My
answer is, "My six sons have their own duties. My six boys have
their own labors. God gives me strength to earn my own bread, and
I will do it as long as I can." (Applause). That is what I want
to teach the womanhood of the country. I did not mean to talk so
long; but I assure you I talk in earnest. If I sometimes, by a
slip of the tongue, make some little mistake--for I have not been
educated in the schools, (a log cabin schoolhouse in the
wilderness gave me all I have)--you will excuse me, for I mean no
injustice to any one. And if to-night it will not crowd some
better woman or man from the platform, I shall be glad to speak
to you again.

Mrs. MOTT.--The argument that has been made that women do not
want to vote is like that which we had to meet in the early days
of the Anti-Slavery enterprise, that the slaves did not want to
be free. I remember that in one of our earliest Woman's Rights
Conventions, in Syracuse, a resolution was offered to the effect
that as the assertion that the slave did not want his freedom,
and would not take it if offered to him, only proved the depth of
his degradation, so the assertion that woman had all the rights
she wanted only gave evidence how far the influence of the law
and customs, and the perverted application of the Scriptures, had
encircled and crushed her. This was fifteen or twenty years ago.
Times are altered since. In the temperance reformation, and in
the great reformatory movements of our age, woman's powers have
been called into action. They are beginning to see that another
state of things is possible for them, and they are beginning to
demand their rights. Why should this church be granted for such a
meeting as this, but for the progress of the cause? Why are so
many women present, ready to respond to the most ultra and most
radical sentiments here, but that woman has grown and is able to
assume her rights?

In many of the States the laws have been so modified that the
wife now stands in a very different position as regards the right
of property and other rights, from that which she occupied
fifteen or twenty years ago. You see the same advance in the
literary world. I remember when Maria Edgeworth and her sister
first published their works, that they were afraid to publish
their own name, and borrowed the name of their father. So Frances
Power Cobbe was not able to write over her own name, and she
issued her "Intuitive Morals" without a name; and her father was
so much pleased with the work, without knowing it was his
daughter's, that it led to an acknowledgment after a while.

STEPHEN S. FOSTER: Will you give us the evidence that the
statement that the women of this country do not want the ballot
is not true? I should be glad to believe that; but in my
experience the worst opposition to the progress of Woman's Rights
has come from woman herself. The greatest indifference to the
cause is to be found among women, and not among men. I wish it
were not so. I hope I am mistaken. But I believe nine out of
every ten of our public speakers will tell you that they find
more help, more sympathy from men than from women.

Rev. S. J. MAY: I should like to have that question settled, so
far as the women present are concerned. Will as many of you as
_will vote_ when the right is awarded to you, please to manifest
it by rising.

Nearly the whole of the ladies present immediately arose. Indeed,
those on the platform, could not see a single woman who retained her
seat.

Mrs. GAGE: During the last fifteen years, with the utmost
industry I could use in ascertaining the public opinion in this
country, I have never found one solitary instance of a woman,
whom I could meet alone by her fireside, where there was no fear
of public opinion, or the minister, or the law-maker, or her
father, or her husband, who did not tell me she would like to
vote. [Applause]. I never found a slave in my life, who, removed
from the eye of the people about him, would not tell me he wanted
liberty--never one. I have been in the slave States for years. I
have been in the slave-pens, and upon the plantations, and have
stood beside the slave as he worked in the sugar cane and the
cotton-field; and I never found one who dared in the presence of
white men to say he wanted freedom. When women and young girls
are asked if they want to vote, they are almost always in just
that situation where they are afraid to speak what they think;
and no wonder they so often say they do not want to vote.

EVENING SESSION.

The meeting was called to order by the President, Mrs. Mott, who
introduced as the first speaker Col. Charles E. Moss, of Missouri.

Mr. MOSS said: This is a subject upon which I have thought for a
number of years; and I have become fully convinced that no reason
can be assigned for extending the right of suffrage to any of the
male sex, that does not equally apply to the female.

When our fathers formed the national Constitution, they made it
their duty to secure to every State a republican form of
government. No government can be republican in form, unless it is
so in substance and in fact; based upon the consent of the
governed. After the troublesome war we have just passed through,
we are called upon not only to reconstruct the ten unrepresented
States of the nation, but to purify the republicanism of our
government in the Northern States and make it more consistent
with our professions. It is a fit time, then, to take up the
subject of suffrage, and to base it upon a well-established
principle. Some say that the right of suffrage is a privilege, to
be given or withheld at pleasure. That does not seem to me a very
safe foundation for so important a right. It is either a
privilege or a natural right. If we recognize it as a natural
right we have a peaceable, safe, legal mode of resistance against
the disfranchisement of the people. If we admit it to be a
privilege to be granted or withheld, no man and no woman has any
legal right to interpose any objection to his own
disfranchisement. But I see that our friend has come in who was
expected first to address you, and I will not take up more of
your time.

PARKER PILLSBURY was next introduced and said: The resolutions
just read refer to the comparative longevity of nations and of
individual men, and of their respective performance, while
existence lasts.

Among nations have arisen Franklins and Washingtons, Humboldts
and Howards; but what individual nation of any period has been
the Plato or Pythagoras, the Howard or the Humboldt of all the
rest? or has achieved proportionally, so long a life? or expired
at last in sunsets of serenity and glory, and been embalmed and
enshrined in the tears and gratitude of mankind? It is often said
that the life of a nation is as the life of an individual; with
beginning, progress, decay, and dissolution. But the resemblance
holds only in part. Consciousness comes to an individual, and
self-respect; and from that hour growth and greatness (it may be)
begin. But with nations it is not so. The world has not made the
same demand of nations as of individuals, and so nothing is
expected of them. Nations, hitherto, were badly brought up. In
the light of a thousand years hence, the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries will be "darker ages" than the eighth and
ninth are to-day. Accepting three-score and ten as the common
life of an individual, a degree at least of honorable manhood is
often achieved, both in personal virtues, and in noble
performance.

The canticles of the Almanac used to run:

At ten, a child; at twenty, wild;
At thirty, strong, if ever;
At forty, wise; at fifty, rich;
At sixty, good, or never.

But at what age has any nation of any period or place become
wise, rich, or even strong; to say nothing of good?

The Roman Catholic Church is older than any civilized government
on the globe. Lord Macaulay says:

It is the only institution left standing which carries the
mind back to the time when the smoke of sacrifice rose from
the Pantheon, and when tigers and camel leopards bounded in
the Flavian Amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but
of yesterday, compared with the line of the supreme
Pontiffs, traced back in unbroken series, from the Pope who
crowned Napoleon in the nineteenth century, to the Pope who
crowned Pepin in the eighth; and far beyond stretches the
august dynasty, until it fades into the twilight of fable!
She saw the commencement of all the governments on the
globe, and of all the ecclesiastical establishments now
existing; and there is no assurance that she is not destined
to see the end of them all!"

The world has an accepted chronology of six thousand years. Its
history and experience in government reach back forty centuries.
It would be an interesting inquiry with what results governments
have existed so long, especially in the later periods and among
the most enlightened of the nations. Charles the Fifth boasted
that his empire saw no setting sun. It included Spain and all her
vast American provinces, over large part of which to-day wave our
own Stars and Stripes. The national escutcheon bore two globes;
and the coin, the two Pillars of Hercules, the then acknowledged
boundary of the Eastern world, with the motto "More beyond."
Spain, under Philip Second, dictated law, learning, religion,
especially religion, to unknown millions, not alone in Europe,
but in North and South America, Africa and all the Indies. And
now in the remote south-western corner of Europe is all that
remains of this mighty power of the sixteenth century.

France in the eighth century under Charlemagne, was another
mistress of the globe. And Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope,
"Sovereign of the New Empire of the West." And yet, in less than
fifty years all that mountain of magnificence exploded; and many
rival nations sprang from its lava streams of blood and ashes! A
remnant, too, of France was preserved; and its history for almost
eight hundred years, "may be traced, like the tracks of a wounded
man through a crowd, by the blood;" until it culminated in the
French Revolution ("suicide of the eighteenth century," as
Carlyle calls that terrible phenomenon) and Napoleon Bonaparte!
And he also summoned to his coronation the Roman Pontiff, like
his great predecessor of a thousand years before. And beneath the
solemn arches and arcades of Notre Dame, was crowned by Pope Pius
the Seventh--"_The high and mighty Napoleon, the first Emperor of
the French!_" Plunging remorselessly into the most desolating
wars, he soon astonished the civilized world with his successes.
He made himself master of almost half the globe. The reign of
Napoleon was an earthquake which, for fifteen years, shook the
sea and the land, carrying down innumerable human lives in the
general cataclysm. But he sunk at last! He aspired to the very
heaven of heavens in his ambitions; and his conquests were the
wonder and terror of mankind. But he left France smaller, weaker,
poorer, and more debased and depraved than he found her.

Just eight hundred years ago last September, William the Norman
landed in Britain and commenced its subjugation. Since that
period, the history of Great Britain has not differed materially
from that of other European nations. As the sun is said never to
set on the British domain, so the thunder of its war-guns has
reverberated almost continually in some corner of the globe. To
trace her history, however rapidly, even had we time, could give
no pleasure to this audience, and would add nothing to my present
argument. It is sufficient to say that, with real estate almost
immeasurable, with personal property incalculable, with a wealth
of material resources of every conceivable description,
absolutely unknown and unknowable, she yet contrives to support
her costly establishment by a system of oppressive taxation
almost unparalleled in the annals of the human race. Some of you
must remember the graphic but not exaggerated description of
British taxation given by Sidney Smith in the _Edinburgh Review_.
It was almost fifty years ago; but no less revenue must be raised
in some way, still. He said:

We have taxes upon everything which enters into the mouth,
or covers the back, or is placed under the feet; taxes upon
everything which it is pleasant to see, hear, feel, smell,
or taste; taxes upon warmth, light, and locomotion; taxes on
everything on earth, and in the waters under the earth;
taxes on everything that comes from abroad, or is grown at
home; taxes on the raw material, taxes on every fresh value
added to it by the industry of man; taxes on the sauces
which pamper man's appetite, and the drugs that restore him
to health; taxes on the ermine which decorates the judge,
and on the rope which hangs the criminal; on the poor man's
salt and the rich man's spice; on the ribbons of the bride,
on the shroud of the corpse, and the brass nails of the
coffin. The school-boy whips his taxed top; the beardless
youth rides his taxed horse, with a taxed saddle and bridle,
on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his
medicine, which has paid seven per cent., into a spoon that
has paid fifteen per cent., flings himself back upon his
chintz-bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent., and expires
in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of a
hundred pounds for the privilege of putting him to death.
His whole property is then taxed from two to ten per cent.
Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him
in the chancel. His virtues are then handed down to
posterity on taxed marble, and he is gathered to his
fathers, to be taxed no more!

And we are told, what is doubtless true, that the enormous debt
of Great Britain is the chain that binds its many parts together,
and preserves its nationality. No nation, then, ever maintained a
more precarious existence. Chartism in Scotland, Repeal in
Ireland, Trades Strikes everywhere, East India Wars, Irish
Famines, Fenianism, Reform Leagues, Reform Riots, Bread
Riots--all these attest how volcanic is its under stratum, and
what dangers impend above. In some of the gloomy gorges of the
Alps, there are seasons of the year when no traveler passes but
at the expense of life, on account of the terrible "_thunderbolts
of snow_" that hang suspended on the sides or summits of the
mountains. None can know their hour; but descend they must, by
all the laws of gravitation, with resistless energy, sweeping all
before them. At such times, all who pass creep along with
trembling caution. They move in single file, at a distance from
each other, hurrying fast as possible, with velvet step, avoiding
all noise, even whispers--the guides meanwhile muffling the bells
of the mules, lest the slightest vibration communicated to the
air should untie the tremulous mass overhead and entomb them
forever. Great Britain, with her frightful debt, her terrible
taxation, her dissatisfied, restless, beggared myriads of the
lower working classes, her remorseless aristocracy, her bloated
spirit of caste, her enforced but heartless religion, has hung a
more terrible avalanche over her head than ever leaped down the
heights of the Tyrol.

Such are examples of success or failure in attempts at
government, among the proudest and most prosperous nations of the
Old World, in modern and what are called enlightened times. If
seventy years be the life of a man, what should be the life of a
nation? Half the children born die under five years old. But
proportionably a greater mortality prevails among nations and
governments. Not one nation has ever yet attained an honorable
manhood. There is something rotten in the state of every Denmark.

Will you tell me Democracy, Republicanism, consecrated by
Christianity, is the remedy for all these ills? Let us look,
then, at the best example. Our own nation is not yet a hundred
years old, but it had behind it in the beginning, the chronicles
of forty or sixty centuries, written mostly in tears and blood.
At the end of an eight years' revolutionary war, our new
governmental columns were reared, not, like some pagan temples,
on human skulls, but on the imbruted bodies and extinguished
souls of five hundred thousand chattel slaves. We had our
Declaration of Independence, our war of Revolution, and a new
Constitution and code of laws. We had a Washington for our first
President, a John Jay for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and
a constellation of senators, statesmen, and sages who challenged
the respect and admiration of mankind. We closed that
dispensation with James Buchanan as Chief Magistrate, and Roger
B. Taney as Chief-Justice, with his diabolical Dred Scott
Decision, and with a war of Treason and Rebellion which deluged
the land in the blood of more than half a million of men. We had
multiplied our slaves to four millions, with new cruelties and
horrors added to the system, and at least ten generations of them
were lost in unknown graves. The new Republican President pledged
his official word and honor to the rebels already in arms, that,
would they but return to their allegiance, he would favor
amendments to the Constitution that should not only render slave
property more secure than ever before, but also make all its old
guarantees and safeguards, _Fugitive Slave law and all_, forever
"_irrevocable_" by any act or decree of Congress! So were we
endeavoring to bulwark and balustrade our slave-system about, in
the name of a Christian Republicanism, when it was struck by the
lightnings of a righteous retribution, and the world is rid of it
forever. And our old nationality went down in the ruin. Now we
are divided, distracted, deranged in currency, commerce,
diplomacy, with State and Federal liabilities resting on the
people, amounting to not less than six thousand millions of
dollars, not to speak of current expenditures which are also
appalling; with a President whose weakness finds no parallel but
in his wickedness, with a Secretary of State who has become his
full counterpart in both, and a Senate too cowardly, or too
corrupt, to impeach the one or to seek the removal of the other!

For more than two years we have been attempting to restore the
fragments of our once boasted Union. With the history and
experience of forty centuries shining back upon us, so far we
have failed. And under any existing or proposed policy we shall
fail. By all the claims of justice and righteousness, we deserve
to fail; for we are still defying those claims. The son of Priam,
a priest of Apollo, was commissioned to offer a sacrifice to
propitiate the god of the sea. But the offering not being
acceptable, there came up two enormous serpents from the deep and
attacked the priest and his two sons who stood with him at the
altar. The father attempted to defend his sons; but the serpents
falling upon him, enfolded him and them in their complicated
coils, and strangled them to a terrible death. Let this
government beware. The very union proposed will only bind and
hold us together as in the deadly folds of a serpent more fearful
than all the fabled monsters of the past! And so, hitherto,
republics are no exception to the general law. Rickets in
infancy, convulsions in childhood, or premature rheumatisms, have
brought the nations of history to untimely deaths. Material
interests may flourish, and nations grow great and powerful, make
wars and conquests, and rule the world. The ancients did all
this, but where are those haughty omnipotences now? Charlemagne
did but little less, and in half a century his magnificence was
brought to nought. Spain survived a little longer in its glory
and grandeur; but now the scanty blood-splash on the map
describes it well. The United States, young among the nations,
the mother earth six thousand years old at their birth,
wet-nursed by forty centuries of history, and schooled by all the
experience of the ages, with almost half a globe for their
inheritance, with Christianity faith and Republicanism their
form of government, they survived a precocious childhood and then
fell a victim to their own vices and crimes. To-day they are in
the hands of many physicians, though of doubtful reputation, who
seem far less desirous to cure the patient than to divide and
share the estate.

My main point is this--we have had enough of the past in
government. It is time to change. Literally almost, more than
metaphorically, the "times are rotten ripe." We come to-day to
demand--first an extension of the right of suffrage to every
American citizen, of whatever race, complexion or sex. Manhood or
_male_-hood suffrage is not a remedy for evils such as we wish
removed. The Anti-Slavery Society demands that; and so, too, do
large numbers of both the political parties. Even Andrew Johnson
at first recommended it, in the reconstruction of the rebel
States, for three classes of colored men. The New York _Herald_,
in the exuberance of its religious zeal, demanded that "members
of Christian Churches" be added as a fourth estate to the three
designated by the President. The Woman's Rights Society
contemplated suffrage only for woman. But we, as an EQUAL RIGHTS
Association, recognize no distinctions based on sex, complexion
or race. The Ten Commandments know nothing of any such
distinctions. No more do we. The right of suffrage is as old, as
sacred and as universal as the right to life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness. It is indeed the complement and safeguard
of these and all civil and political rights to every citizen. The
right to life would be nothing without the right to acquire and
possess the means of its support. So it were mockery to talk of
liberty and the pursuit of happiness, until the ballot in the
hand of every citizen seals and secures it. The right of the
black man to a voice in the government was not earned at Olustee
or Port Hudson. It was his when life began, not when life was
paid for it under the battle-axe of war. It was his with
Washington and Jefferson, James Buchanan and Abraham Lincoln. Not
one of them could ever produce a higher, holier claim. Nor can
any of us. We are prating about _giving_ the right of suffrage to
black _male_ citizens, as complacently as we once gave our
compassion and corn to famishing Ireland. But this famine of
freedom and justice exists because we have produced it. Had our
fleets and armies robbed Ireland of its last loaf, and left its
myriads of inhabitants lean, ghastly skeletons, our charity would
not have been more a mockery when we sent them bread to preserve
them alive, than it is now when we talk of _giving_ the ballot to
those whom God created free and equal with ourselves.

And in the plenitude of our generosity, we even propose to extend
the _gift_ to woman also. It is proposed to make educated,
cultivated, refined, loyal, tax-paying, government-obeying woman
equal to the servants who groom her horses, and scour the pots
and pans of her kitchen. Our Maria Mitchells, our Harriet
Hosmers, Harriet Beecher Stowes, Lydia Maria Childs, and Lucretia
Motts, with millions of the mothers and matrons of quiet homes,
where they preside with queenly dignity and grace, are begging of
besotted, debauched white male citizens, legal voters, soaked in
whisky, simmered in tobacco, and parboiled in every shameless
vice and sin, to recognize them also as human, and graciously
accord to them the rights of intelligent beings!

And, singularly enough, in some of the States, it is proposed to
grant the prayer. But the wisest and best men have no idea that
they are only restoring what they have so long held by force,
based on fraud and falsehood. They only propose to _give_ woman
the boon which they claim was theirs by heavenly inheritance. But
they are too late with their sublime generosity. For God gave
that when he gave life and breath, passions, emotions,
conscience, and will. Give gold, give lands, give honors, give
office, give title of nobility, if you must: but talk not of
giving natural, inalienable and heaven-derived endowments. God
alone bestows these. He alone has them to give. Our trade in the
right of suffrage is contraband. It is bold buccaneering on the
commerce of the moral universe. If we have our neighbor's right
of suffrage and citizenship in our keeping, no matter of what
color, or race, or sex, then we have stolen goods in our
possession--and God's search-warrant will pursue us forever, if
those goods be not restored. And then we impudently assert that
"all just governments derive their powers, from the consent of
the governed." But when was the consent of woman ever asked to
one single act on all the statute books? We talk of "trial by
jury of our peers!" In this country of ours, women have been
fined, imprisoned, scourged, branded with red hot irons and hung;
but when, or where, or for what crime or offense, was ever woman
tried by a jury of her peers?

Suffrage was never in the hands of tyrants or of governments, but
by usurpation. It was never given by them to any of us. We
brought it; not bought it; nor conquered it; nor begged it; nor
earned it; nor inherited it. It was man's inalienable,
irrepealable, inextinguishable right from the beginning. It is so
still; the same yesterday, to-day, and while earthly governments
last. It came with the right to see and hear; to breathe and
speak; to think and feel; to love and hate; to choose and refuse;
or it did not come at all. The right to see came with the eye and
the light: did it not? and the right to breathe, with the lungs
and the air; and all these from the same infinite source. And has
not also the moral and spiritual nature its inalienable rights?
Have the mere bodily organs, which are but the larder of worms,
born of the dust, and dust their destiny--have they power and
prerogative that are denied to the reason, the understanding, the
conscience, the will, those attributes which constitute
responsibility, accountability, and immortality? Or shall God
give the power to choose, or refuse obedience to his law and
reign, leaving the human will free as his own; and must mortal
man, the mushroom of yesterday and perished to-morrow, usurp a
higher and more dreadful prerogative, and compel support of and
submission to laws in which the subject has no voice in making,
executing, or even consenting, on pain of perpetual imprisonment,
banishment, or death?

Must a brave soldier fight and bleed for the government, and,
pruned of limbs, plucked of eyes, and scarred all over with the
lead and iron hail of war--must he now hobble on his crutches up
to a Republican, Democratic, yea, and a Christian throne, and beg
the boon of a ballot in that government, in defense of which he
periled all, and lost all but bare life and breath, only because
an African instead of a more indulgent sun looked upon him or his
ancestors in their allotment of life? And then, when the claim of
immortal manhood is superadded, the inalienable rights of the
soul, in and of themselves, the rights of the reason, the
understanding, the conscience, the will--what desperation is that
which treads down all these claims, and rushes into seats of
higher authority than were ever claimed by the eternal God, and
denies him that right altogether! No white male citizen was ever
born with three ballots in his hand, one his own by birthright,
and to be used without restraint, the others to be granted, given
to women and to colored men at his pleasure or convenience! Such
an idea should never have outraged our common humanity. And any
bill or proposal for what is called "manhood suffrage," while it
ignores womanhood suffrage, whether coming from the President or
the Republican party and sanctioned by the Anti-Slavery Society,
should be repudiated as at war with the whole spirit and genius
of a true Democracy, and a deadly stab into the very heart of
justice itself.

I have referred to the age of the Roman Catholic Church. Lord
Macaulay, in accounting for her astonishing longevity as compared
with other institutions, turns with felicitous insight to female
influence as one of the principal causes. In her system, he says,
she assigns to devout women spiritual functions, dignities, and
even magistracies. In England, if a pious and devout woman enter
the cells of a prison to pray with the most unhappy and degraded
of her sex, she does so without any authority from the Church.
Indeed, the Protestant Church places the ban of its reprobation
on any such irregularity. "At Rome, the Countess of Huntingdon
would have a place in the calendar as St. Selina, and Mrs. Fry
would be Foundress and First Superior of the Blessed Order of
Sisters of the Jails." But even Macaulay overlooks another
element of power and permanence in the economy of the Catholic
Church. God, as Father, and as Son, and as Holy Ghost, might
inspire reverence and dread only in hearts that, at the shrine of
the ever blessed Mary, Mother of God, would kindle into humble,
holy and lasting love. Frances Power Cobbe, though deprecating
the doctrine of "Mariolatry," as she terms the worship of the
Virgin, yet says of it, "The Catholic world has found a great
truth, that love, motherly tenderness and pity is a divine and
holy thing, worthy of adoration.... What does this wide-spread
sentiment regarding this new divinity indicate? It can surely
only point to the fact that there was something lacking in the
elder creed, which, as time went on, became a more and more
sensible deficiency, till at last the instinct of the multitude
filled it up in this amazing manner." When Theodore Parker, in
his morning prayer on a beautiful summer Sunday, addressed the
All-loving as "Our Father and our Mother," he struck a chord
which will one day vibrate through the heart of universal
humanity. It was a thought worth infinitely more than all the
creeds of Christendom.

What if woman should even abuse the use of the ballot at first?
Man has been known to fail at first in a new pursuit. A maker of
microscopes told me that, in a new attempt on a different kind of
object-glass, he failed forty-nine times, but the fiftieth was a
complete success. The poet of Scotland intimates that even
Creative Nature herself improved at a second trial;

"Her 'prentice hand she tried on man;
And then she made the lasses, o!"

Must we be told that woman herself does not ask the ballot? Then
I submit to such, if such there be, the question is not one of
privilege, but of duty--of solemn responsibility. If woman does
not desire the ballot, demand it, take it, she sins against her
own nature and all the holiest instincts of humanity, and can not
too soon repent. After all, the question of suffrage is one of
justice and right. Unless human government be in itself an
unnatural and impious usurpation, whoever renders it support and
submission has a natural right to an equal voice in enacting and
executing the laws. Nor can one man, or millions on millions of
men acquire or possess the power to withhold that right from the
humblest human being of sane mind, but by usurpation, and by
rebellion against the constitution of the moral universe. It
would be robbery, though the giving of the right should induce
all the predicted and dreaded evils of tyrants, cowards and white
male citizens. Be justice done though the heavens fall and the
hells arise! Nay, it is only justice, reared as a lightning-rod,
that can shield any governmental fabric when the very heavens are
falling in righteous retribution.

The past mortality must last among nations, so long as they set
at nought the Divine economy and purpose in their formation. The
human body may yield to decay and die, though the soul be
imperishable and eternal. But nations, like souls, need not die.
Streams of new life flow into them, like rivers into the sea; and
why should not the sea and the nations on its shores, roll on
together with the ages? When governments shall learn to lay their
foundations in righteousness, with eternal justice the chief
corner-stone; when equal and impartial liberty shall be the
acknowledged birthright of all, then will national life begin to
be prolonged; and the death of a nation, were it possible, should
be as though more than a Pleiad had expired. No more would nation
then lift up sword against nation; and the New Jerusalem would
indeed descend from God out of heaven and dwell among men.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY made an appeal for contributions to the funds of
the Association, to enable it to carry on its work, especially in
Kansas.

Mrs ROSE said: After all, we come down to the root of all
evil--to money. It is rather humiliating, after the discourse
that we have just heard, that told us of the rise, and progress,
and destruction of nations, of empires, and of republics, that we
have to come down to dollars and cents. We live in an entirely
practical age. I can show you in a few words that if we only had
sufficient of that root of all evil in our hands, there would be
no need of holding these meetings. We could obtain the elective
franchise without making a single speech. Give us $1,000,000, and
we will have the elective franchise at the very next session of
our Legislature. (Laughter and applause). But as we have not the
$1,000,000 we want 1,000,000 voices. There are always two ways of
obtaining an object. If we had had the money, we could have
bought the Legislature and the elective franchise long before
now. But as we have not, we must create a public opinion, and for
that we must have voices.

I have always thought I was convinced not only of the necessity
but of the great importance of obtaining the elective franchise
for woman; but recently I have become satisfied that I never felt
sufficiently that importance until now. Just read your public
papers and see how our Senators and our members of the House are
running round through the Southern States to hold meetings, and
to deliver public addresses. To whom? To the freedmen. And why
now, and why not ten, fifteen, or twenty years ago? Why do they
get up meetings for the colored men, and call them fellow-men,
brothers, and gentlemen? Because the freedman has that talisman
in his hands which the politician is looking after? Don't you
perceive, then, the importance of the elective franchise? Perhaps
when we have the elective franchise in our hands, these great
senators will condescend to inform us too of the importance of
obtaining our rights.

You need not be afraid that when woman has the franchise, men
will ever disturb her. I presume there are present, as there
always are such people, those of timid minds, chicken-hearted,
who so admire and respect woman that they are dreadfully afraid
lest, when she comes to the ballot-box, rude, uncouth, and vulgar
men will say something to disturb her. You may set your hearts
all at rest. If we once have the elective franchise, upon the
first indication that any man will endeavor to disturb a woman in
her duty at the polls, Congress will enact another Freedman's
Bureau--I beg pardon, a Freedwoman's Bureau--to protect women
against men, and to guard the purity of the ballot-box at the
same time. I have sometimes been asked, even by sensible men, "If
woman had the elective franchise, would she go to the polls to
mix with rude men?" Well, would I go to the church to mix with
rude men? And should not the ballot-box be as respectable, and as
respected, and as sacred as the church? Aye, infinitely more so,
because it is of greater importance. Men can pray in secret, but
must vote in public. (Applause). Hence the ballot-box, of the
two, ought to be the most respected; and it would be if women
were once there; but it never will be until they are there.

Our rights are as old as humanity itself. Yet we are obliged to
ask man to give us the ballot, because he has it in his own hand.
It is ours, and at the same time we ask for it; and have sent our
petitions to Congress. We have been told that the Republic is not
destroyed; it has been destroyed root and branch, because, if it
were not, there would be no need to reconstruct it. And we have
asked Congress, in the reconstruction, to place it upon a sound
foundation. Why have all former republics vanished out of
existence? Simply because they were built upon the sand. In the
erection of a building, in proportion to the height of the walls
must be the depth and soundness of the foundation. If the
foundation is shallow or unsound, the higher you raise your
superstructure the surer its downfall. That is the reason a
republic has not existed as long as a monarchy, because it
embraced principles of human rights in its superstructure which
it denied in its foundation. Hence, before this Republic could
count a hundred years, it has had one of the mightiest
revolutions that ever occurred in any country or in any period of
human existence. Its foundation was laid wrong. It made a
republic for white men alone. It discriminated against color; it
discriminated against sex; and at the same time it pronounced
that all men are created free and equal, and endowed with certain
inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness. It raised its superstructure to the clouds;
and it has fallen as low as any empire could fall. It is divided.
A house divided against itself can not stand. A wrong always
operates against itself and falls back on the wrong-doer. We have
proclaimed to the world universal suffrage; but it is universal
suffrage excluding the negro and the woman, who are by far the
largest number in this country. It is not the majority that rules
here, but the minority. White men are in the minority in this
nation. White women, black men, and black women compose the large
majority of the nation. Yet in spite of this fact, in spite of
common sense, in spite of justice, while our members of Congress
can prate so long about justice, and human rights, and the
rights of the negro, they have not the moral courage to say
anything for the rights of woman.

In proportion to power is responsibility. Our Republican senators
and members of Congress have taken upon themselves great power.
They have made great professions. There is a very good maxim, "Of
him to whom much is given, much shall be required." In proportion
to their claims to be friends of human freedom, lovers of human
rights, do we demand of them our rights and justice.

It is a shame to talk about licensing a social evil. It is a
shame to this Republic. It is a violation of woman's nature. It
is an insult to womanhood; and if woman has one drop of pure
blood stirring in her heart, she must revolt against it. At the
same time, I say to the Legislature that, if you enact laws
against social evils, whatever those laws are, let them be alike
for man and for woman. (Applause.) If you want to derive a
revenue from the corruption of the community, let it be drawn
alike from both sexes. The social evil belongs to both; the
social remedy must belong to both. Do not degrade woman any more
than she is already degraded. Perchance she is driven, through
your injustice, to that step to maintain her wretched existence,
because every office of emolument is barred against her. Let
woman have the franchise; let all the avenues of society be
thrown open before her, according to her powers and her
capacities, and there will be no need to talk about social evils.

Major JAMES HAGGERTY said: It is no new thing for me to be found
among Anti-Slavery people. I believe it was among Anti-Slavery
people that I received my American culture. I see the old faces
here upon this platform and in this house--some that I first met
when I landed in this country, in 1856--Parker Pillsbury, as
remorseless as ever; Mrs. Stanton, as bold and strong for the
truth as ever. I see the same uncompromising people here, and I
feel that I have been as uncompromising as any of them; for,
although I have been and am identified with the Republican party
in politics, no man ever heard me, on any platform, compromise
the rights of another. Woman's Rights is an idea against which my
prejudices array themselves, but my logic says, if you would be a
true man, you must raise your voice for equal rights. (Applause.)
I have seen the effect of the suffrage. In the District of
Columbia, during the election, I saw men who had been called
doughfaces walk up to the black man and profess to be so much
more Anti-Slavery than the best Anti-Slavery men, that I have got
the idea that it will not be five years before the northern
Democrat will be swearing to the black men that he has negro
blood in his veins: (Laughter.) ...

I come upon this platform to-night to identify myself with this
new effort. I hope you may prosper; and so far as a dollar of
mine, or my voice may go, you shall have it. I confess candidly
that it is logic that drives me here, in spite of my prejudices.
It is the discourses of Mrs. Stanton, of Mrs. Mott, of others
that have spoken and written; and it is coming in contact with
strong womanly mind. If we accept the convictions that come to
us, we shall be all right; and I will do as the lady who has just
spoken said that she would do--not be governed by mere party, but
by the moral bearings of the questions that arise, and vote upon
the side of God and justice. (Applause.)

FRANCES D. GAGE said: _Mrs. President_--It seems to be my fate to
come in at the eleventh hour. We have been talking about the
right to the ballot. Why do we want it? What does it confer? We
closed our argument at three o'clock to-day by a discussion
whether the women of this country and the colored men of this
country wanted the ballot. I said it was a libel on woman to say
she did not want it; and I repeat that assertion.... Last evening
I attended the meeting of the National Temperance Association at
Cooper Institute. A great audience was assembled there to listen
to the arguments against the most gigantic evil that now pervades
the American Republic. Men took the position that only a
prohibitory law could put an end to the great evil of
intemperance. New York has its two hundred millions of invested
capital to sell death and destruction to the men of this country
who are weak enough to purchase. There are eight thousand
licensed liquor establishments in this city, to drag down
humanity. It was asserted there by Wendell Phillips that
intemperance had its root in our Saxon blood, that demanded a
stimulus; and he argued from that standpoint. If intemperance has
its root in the Saxon blood, that demands a stimulus, why is it
that the womanhood of this nation is not at the grog-shops
to-day? Are women not Saxons? It was asserted, both by Mr.
Phillips and President Hopkins, of Union College, that the liquor
traffic must be regulated by law. A man may do what he likes in
his own house, said they; he may burn his furniture; he may take
poison; he may light his cigar with his greenbacks; but if he
carries his evil outside of his own house, if he increases my
taxes, if he makes it dangerous for me or for my children to walk
the streets, then it may be prohibited by law. I was at
Harrisburgh, a few days ago, at the State Temperance Convention.
Horace Greeley asserted that there was progress upon the subject
of temperance; and he went back to the time when ardent spirits
were drank in the household, when every table had its decanter,
and the wife, children, and husband drank together. Now, said he,
it is a rare thing to find the dram-bottle in the home. It has
been put out. But what put the dram-bottle out of the home? It
was put out because the education and refinement and power of
woman became so strong in the home, that she said, "It must go
out; we can't have it here." (Applause.) Then the voters of the
United States, the white male citizens, went to work and licensed
these nuisances that could not be in the home, at all the corners
of the streets. I demand the ballot for woman to-day, that she
may vote down these nuisances, the dram-shops, there also, as she
drove them out of the home. (Applause.)

What privilege does the vote give to the "white male citizen" of
the United States? Did you ever analyze a voter--hold him up and
see what he was? Shall I give you a picture of him? Not as my
friend Parker Pillsbury has drawn the picture to-night will I
draw it. What is the "white male citizen"--the voter in the
Republic of the United States? More than any potentate or any
king in all Europe. Louis Napoleon dares not walk the streets of
his own city without his body-guard around him with their
bayonets. The Czar of Russia is afraid for his own life among his
people. Kings and potentates are always afraid; but the "free
white male citizen" of the United States, with the ballot in his
hand, goes where he lists, does what he pleases. He owns himself,
his earnings, his genius, his talent, his eloquence, his power,
all there is of him. All that God has given him is his, to do
with as he pleases, subject to no power but such laws as have an
equal bearing upon every other man in like circumstances, and
responsible to no power but his own conscience and his God. He
builds colleges; he lifts up humanity or he casts it down. He is
the lawgiver, the maker as it were of the nation. His single vote
may turn the destiny of the whole Republic for good or ill. There
is no link in the chain of human possibilities that can add one
single power to the "white male citizen" of America.

Now we ask that you shall put into the hands of every human being
this same power to go forward and do good works wherever it can.
The country has rung within the last few days because one colored
girl, with a little black blood in her veins, has been cast out
of the Pittsburgh Methodist College. It ought to ring until such
a thing shall be impossible. But when Cambridge and Yale and
Union and all the other institutions of the country, West Point
included, aided by national patronage, shut out every woman in
the land, who has anything to say? There is not a single college
instituted by the original government patronage of lands to
public schools and colleges, that allows a woman to set her foot
inside of its walls as a student. Is this no injustice? Is it no
wrong? When men stand upon the public platform and deliver
elaborate essays on women and their right of suffrage, they talk
about their weakness, their devotion to fashion and idleness.
What else have they given women to do? Almost every profession in
the land is filled by men; every college sends forth the men to
fill the highest places. When the law said that no married woman
should do business in her own name, sue or be sued, own property,
own herself or her earnings, what had she to do? That laid the
foundation for precisely the state of things you see to-day. But
I deny that, as a class, the women of America, black or white,
are idle. We are always busy. What have we done? Look over this
audience, go out upon your streets, go through the world where
you will, and every human soul you meet is the work of woman. She
has given it life; she has educated it, whether for good or evil,
because God gave her the holiest mission ever laid upon the heart
of a human soul--the mission of the mother.

We are told that home is woman's sphere. So it is, and man's
sphere, too, for I tell you that that is a poor home which has
not in it a man to feel that it is the most sacred place he
knows. If duty requires him to go out into the world and fight
its battles, who blames him, or puts a ban upon him? Men complain
that woman does not love home now; that she is not satisfied with
her mission. I answer that this discontent arises out of the one
fact, that you have attempted to mould seventeen millions of
human souls in one shape, and make them all do one thing. Take
away your restrictions, open all doors, leave women at liberty to
go where they will. The caged bird forgets how to build its nest.
The wing of the eagle is as strong to soar to the sun as that of
her mate, who never says to her, "back, feeble one, to your nest,
and there brood in dull inactivity until I give you permission to
leave!" But when her duties called her there, who ever found her
unfaithful to her trust? The foot of the wild roe is as strong
and swift in the race as that of her antlered companion. She goes
by his side, she feeds in the same pasture, drinks from the same
running brook, but is ever true also to her maternal duties and
cares. If we are a nation of imbeciles, if womanhood is weak, it
is the laws and customs of society which have made us what we
are. If you want health, strength, energy, force, temperance,
purity, honesty, deal justly with the mothers of this country:
then they will give you nobler and stronger men than higgling
politicians, or the grog-shop emissaries that buy up the votes of
your manhood. It has been charged upon woman that she does
nothing well. What have you given us to do well? What freedom
have you given us to act independently and earnestly? When I was
in San Domingo, I found a little colony of American colored
people that went over there in 1825. They retained their American
customs, and especially their little American church, outside of
the Catholic, which overspread the whole country. In an obscure
room in an old ruin they sung the old hymns, and lived the old
life of the United States. I asked how this thing was, and they
answered that among those that went over so long ago were a few
from Chester County, Pennsylvania, who were brought up among the
Quakers, and had learned to read. Wherever a mother had learned
to read, she had educated all her children so that they could
read; but wherever there was a mother that could not read, that
family had lapsed off from the old customs of the past....

A friend of mine, writing from Charleston the other day, just
after the ballot went down there, says that he was told by a
colored man, "I met my old master, and he bowed so low to me I
didn't hardly know which was the negro and which was the white
man." When we hold the ballot, we shall stand just there. Men
will forget to tell us that politics are degrading. They will bow
low, and actually respect the women to whom they now talk
platitudes, and silly flatteries; sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks,
pearly teeth, ruby lips, the soft and delicate hands of
refinement and beauty, will not be the burden of their song; but
the strength, the power, the energy, the force, the intellect,
and the nerve, which the womanhood of this country will bring to
bear, and which will infuse itself through all the ranks of
society, must make all its men and women wiser and better.
[Applause].

The Association then adjourned until Friday morning, 10-1/2 o'clock.

SECOND DAY.

FRIDAY MORNING, _May 10, 1867_.

The meeting was called to order by the President, and the Secretary
read some additional resolutions.[72]

CHARLES L. REMOND objected to the last of the resolution, and
desired that the word "colored" might be stricken out. It might
be that colored men would obtain their rights before women; but
if so, he was confident they would heartily acquiesce in
admitting women also to the right of suffrage.

The PRESIDENT (Mrs. Mott) said that woman had a right to be a
little jealous of the addition of so large a number of men to the
voting class, for the colored men would naturally throw all their
strength upon the side of those opposed to woman's
enfranchisement.

GEORGE T. DOWNING wished to know whether he had rightly
understood that Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Mott were opposed to the
enfranchisement of the colored man, unless the ballot should also
be accorded to woman at the same time.

Mrs. STANTON said: All history proves that despotisms, whether of
one man or millions, can not stand, and there is no use of
wasting centuries of men and means in trying that experiment
again. Hence I have no faith or interest in any reconstruction on
that old basis. To say that politicians always do one thing at a
time is no reason why philosophers should not enunciate the broad
principles that underlie that one thing and a dozen others. We do
not take the right step for this hour in demanding suffrage for
any class; as a matter of principle I claim it for all. But in a
narrow view of the question as a matter of feeling between
classes, when Mr. Downing puts the question to me, are you
willing to have the colored man enfranchised before the woman, I
say, no; I would not trust him with all my rights; degraded,
oppressed himself, he would be more despotic with the governing
power than even our Saxon rulers are. I desire that we go into
the kingdom together, for individual and national safety demand
that not another man be enfranchised without the woman by his
side.

STEPHEN S. FOSTER, basing the demand for the ballot upon the
natural right of the citizen, felt bound to aid in conferring it
upon any citizen deprived of it irrespective of its being granted
or denied to others. Even, therefore, if the enfranchisement of
the colored man would probably retard the enfranchisement of
woman, we had no right for that reason to deprive him of his
right. The right of each should be accorded at the earliest
possible moment, neither being denied for any supposed benefit to
the other.

CHARLES L. REMOND said that if he were to lose sight of
expediency, he must side with Mrs. Stanton, although to do so was
extremely trying; for he could not conceive of a more unhappy
position than that occupied by millions of American men bearing
the name of freedmen while the rights and privileges _free_ men
are still denied them.

Mrs. STANTON said: That is equaled only by the condition of the
women by their side. There is a depth of degradation known to the
slave women that man can never feel. To give the ballot to the
black man is no security to the woman. Saxon men have the ballot,
yet look at their women, crowded into a few half-paid
employments. Look at the starving, degraded class in our 10,000
dens of infamy and vice if you would know how wisely and
generously man legislates for woman.

Rev. SAMUEL J. MAY, in reply to Mr. Remond's objection to the
resolution, said that the word "colored" was necessary to convey
the meaning, since there is no demand now made for the
enfranchisement of men, as a class. His amendment would take all
the color out of the resolution. No man in this country had made
such sacrifices for the cause of liberty as Wendell Phillips; and
if just at this moment, when the great question for which he has
struggled thirty years seemed about to be settled, he was
unwilling that anything should be added to it which might in any
way prejudice the success about to crown his efforts, it was not
to be wondered at. He was himself of the opinion, on the
contrary, that by asking for the rights of all, we should be much
more likely to obtain the rights of the colored man, than by
making that a special question. He would rejoice at the
enfranchisement of colored men, and believed that Mrs. Stanton
would, though that were all we could get at the time. Yet, if we
rest there, and allow the reconstruction to be completed, leaving
out the better half of humanity, we must expect further trouble;
and it might be a more awful and sanguinary civil war than that
which we have just experienced.

GEORGE T. DOWNING desired that the Convention should express its
opinion upon the point he had raised; and, therefore, offered the
following resolution:

_Resolved_, That while we regret that the right sentiment,
which would secure to women the ballot, is not as general as
we would have it, nevertheless we wish it distinctly
understood that we rejoice at the increasing sentiment which
favors the enfranchisement of the colored man.

Mr. DOWNING understood Mrs. Stanton to refuse to rejoice at a
_part_ of the good results to be accomplished, if she could not
achieve the whole, and he wished to ask if she was unwilling the
colored man should have the vote until the women could have it
also? He said we had no right to refuse an act of justice upon
the assumption that it would be followed by an act of injustice.

Mrs. STANTON replied she demanded the ballot for all. She asked
for reconstruction on the basis of self-government; but if we are
to have further class legislation, she thought the wisest order
of enfranchisement was to take the educated classes first. If
women are still to be represented by men, then I say let only the
highest type of manhood stand at the helm of State. But if all
men are to vote, black and white, lettered and unlettered, washed
and unwashed, the safety of the nation as well as the interests
of woman demand that we outweigh this incoming tide of
ignorance, poverty, and vice, with the virtue, wealth, and
education of the women of the country. With the black man you
have no new force in government--it is manhood still; but with
the enfranchisement of woman, you have a new and essential
element of life and power. Would Horace Greeley, Wendell
Phillips, Gerrit Smith, or Theodore Tilton be willing to stand
aside and trust their individual interests, and the whole welfare
of the nation, to the lowest strata of manhood? If not, why ask
educated women, who love their country, who desire to mould its
institutions on the highest idea of justice and equality, who
feel that their enfranchisement is of vital importance to this
end, why ask them to stand aside while 2,000,000 ignorant men are
ushered into the halls of legislation?

EDWARD M. DAVIS asked what had been done with Mr. Burleigh's
amendment.

The CHAIR--No action was taken upon it, as no one seconded it.

ABBY KELLY FOSTER said: I am in New York for medical treatment,
not for speech-making; yet I must say a few words in relation to
a remark recently made on this platform--that "The negro should
not enter the kingdom of politics before woman, because he would
be an additional weight against her enfranchisement." Were the
negro and woman in the same civil, social, and religious status
to-day, I should respond aye, with all my heart, to this
sentiment. What are the facts? You say the negro has the civil
rights bill, also the military reconstruction bill granting him
suffrage. It has been well said, "he has the title deed to
liberty, but is not yet in the possession of liberty." He is
treated as a slave to-day in the several districts of the South.
Without wages, without family rights, whipped and beaten by
thousands, given up to the most horrible outrages, without that
protection which his value as property formerly gave him. Again,
he is liable without farther guarantees, to be plunged into
peonage, serfdom or even into chattel slavery. Have we any true
sense of justice, are we not dead to the sentiment of humanity if
we shall wish to postpone his security against present woes and
future enslavement till woman shall obtain political rights?

Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER said: It seems that my modesty in not
lending my name has been a matter of some grief. I will try
hereafter to be less modest. When I get my growth I hope to
overcome that. I certainly should not have been present to-day,
except that a friend said to me that some who were expected had
not come. When a cause is well launched and is prospering, I
never feel specially called to help it. When a cause that I
believe to be just is in the minority, and is struggling for a
hearing, then I should always be glad to be counted among those
who were laboring for it in the days when it lacked friends. I
come to bear testimony, not as if I had not already done it, but
again, as confirmed by all that I have read, whether of things
written in England or spoken in America, in the belief that this
movement is not the mere progeny of a fitful and feverish
_ism_--that it is not a mere frothing eddy whose spirit is but
the chafing of the water upon the rock--but that it is a part of
that great tide which follows the drawing of heaven itself. I
believe it to be so. I trust that it will not be invidious if I
say, therefore, I hope the friends of this cause will not fall
out by the way. If the division of opinion amounts merely to
this, that you have two blades, and therefore can cut, I have no
objection to it; but if there is such a division of opinion in
respect to mere details, how important those details are, among
friends that are one at the bottom where principles are, that
there is to be a falling out there, I shall exceedingly regret
it; I shall regret that our strength is weakened, when we need it
to be augmented most, or concentrated.

All my lifetime the great trouble has been that in merely
speculative things theologians have been such furious logicians,
have picked up their premises, and rushed with them with
race-horse speed to such remote conclusions, that in the region
of ideas our logical minds have become accustomed to draw results
as remote as the very eternities from any premises given. My
difficulty on the other hand, has been that in practical matters,
owing to the existence of this great mephitic swamp of slavery,
men have been utterly unwilling to draw conclusions at all; and
that the most familiar principles of political economy or
politics have been enunciated, and then always docked off short.
Men would not allow them to go to their natural results, in the
class of questions in society. We have had raised up before us
the necessity of maintaining the Union by denying conclusions.
The most dear and sacred and animating principles of religion
have been restrained, because they would have such a bearing upon
slavery, and men felt bound to hold their peace. Our most
profound and broadly acknowledged principles of liberty have been
enunciated and passed over, without carrying them out and
applying them to society, because it would interrupt the peace of
the nation. That time is passed away; and as the result of it has
come in a joy and a perfect appetite on the part of the public.

I have been a careful observer for more than thirty-five years,
for I came into public life, I believe, about the same time with
the lady who has just sat down (Mrs. Foster), although I am not
so much worn by my labors as she seems to have been. For
thirty-five years I have observed in society its impetus checked,
and a kind of lethargy and deadness in practical ethics, arising
from fear of this prejudicial effect upon public economy. I have
noticed that in the last five years there has been a revolution
as perfect as if it had been God's resurrection in the graveyard.
The dead men are living, and the live men are thrice alive. I can
scarcely express my sense of the leap the public mind and the
public moral sense have taken within this time. The barrier is
out of the way. That which made the American mind untrue
logically to itself is smitten down by the hand of God; and there
is just at this time an immense tendency in the public mind to
carry out all principles to their legitimate conclusions, go
where they will. There never was a time when men were so
practical, and so ready to learn. I am not a farmer, but I know
that the spring comes but once in the year. When the furrow is
open is the time to put in your seed, if you would gather a
harvest in its season. Now, when the red-hot plowshare of war has
opened a furrow in this nation, is the time to put in the seed.
If any man says to me, "Why will you agitate the woman's
question, when it is the hour for the black man?" I answer, it is
the hour for every man, black or white. (Applause.) The bees go
out in the morning to gather the honey from the morning-glories.
They take it when they are open, for by ten o'clock they are
shut, and they never open again until the next crop comes. When
the public mind is open, if you have anything to say, say it. If
you have any radical principles to urge, any organizing wisdom
to make known, don't wait until quiet times come. Don't wait
until the public mind shuts up altogether.

War has opened the way for impulse to extend itself. But progress
goes by periods, by jumps and spurts. We are in the favored hour;
and if you have great principles to make known, this is the time
to advance those principles. If you can organize them into
institutions, this is the time to organize them. I therefore say,
whatever truth is to be known for the next fifty years in this
nation let it be spoken now--let it be enforced now. The truth
that I have to urge is not that women have the right of
suffrage--not that Chinamen or Irishmen have the right of
suffrage--not that native born Yankees have the right of
suffrage--but that suffrage is the inherent right of mankind. I
say that man has the right of suffrage as I say that man has the
right to himself. For although it may not be true under the
Russian government, where the government does not rest on the
people, and although under our own government a man has not a
right to himself, except in accordance with the spirit and action
of our own institutions, yet our institutions make the government
depend on the people, and make the people depend on the
government; and no man is a full citizen, or fully competent to
take care of himself, or to defend himself, who has not all those
rights that belong to his fellows. I therefore advocate no
sectional rights, no class rights, no sex rights, but the most
universal form of right for all that live and breathe on the
continent. I do not put back the black man's emancipation; nor do
I put back for a single day or for an hour his admission. I ask
not that he should wait. I demand that this work shall be done,
not upon the ground that it is politically expedient now to
enfranchise black men; but I propose that you take expediency out
of the way, and that you put a principle that is more enduring
than expediency in the place of it--manhood and womanhood
suffrage for all. That is the question. You may just as well meet
it now as at any other time. You never will have so favorable an
occasion, so sympathetic a heart, never a public reason so
willing to be convinced as to-day. If anything is to be done for
the black man, or the black woman, or for the disfranchised
classes among the whites, let it be done, in the name of God,
while his Providence says, "Come; come all, and come welcome."

But I take wisdom from some with whom I have not always trained.
If you would get ten steps, has been the practical philosophy of
some who are not here to-day, demand twenty, and then you will
get ten. Now, even if I were to confine--as I by no means do--my
expectation to gaining the vote for the black man, I think we
should be much more likely to gain that by demanding the vote for
everybody. I remember that when I was a boy Dr. Spurzheim came to
this country to advocate phrenology, but everybody held up both
hands--"Phrenology! You must be running mad to have the idea that
phrenology can be true!" It was not long after that, mesmerism
came along; and then the people said, "Mesmerism! We can go
phrenology; there is some sense in that; but as for mesmerism--!"
Very soon spiritualism made its appearance, and then the same
people began to say, "Spiritualism! Why it is nothing but
mesmerism; we can believe in that; but as for spiritualism--!"
(Laughter.) The way to get a man to take a position is to take
one in advance of it, and then he will drop into the one you want
him to take. So that if, being crafty, I desire to catch men with
guile, and desire them to adopt suffrage for colored men, as good
a trap as I know of is to claim it for women also. Bait your trap
with the white woman, and I think you will catch the black man.
(Laughter.) I would not, certainly, have it understood that we
are standing here to advocate this universal application of the
principle merely to secure the enfranchisement of the colored
citizen. We do it in good faith. I believe it is just as easy to
carry the enfranchisement of all as the enfranchisement of any
class, and easier to carry it than carry the enfranchisement of
class after class--class after class. (Applause.)

I make this demand because I have the deepest sense of what is
before us. We have entered upon an era such as never before has
come to any nation. We are at a point in the history of the world
where we need a prophet, and have none to describe to us those
events rising in the horizon thick and fast. Sometimes it seems
to me that that Latter Day glory which the prophets dimly saw,
and which saints have ever since, with faintness of heart, longed
for and prayed for with wavering faith, is just before us. I see
the fountains of the great deep broken up. I think we are to have
a nation born in a day among us, greater in power of thought,
greater in power of conscience, greater therefore in
self-government, greater still in the power of material
development. Such thrift, such skill, such enterprise, such power
of self-sustentation I think is about to be developed, to say
nothing of the advance already made before the nations, as will
surprise even the most sanguine and far-sighted. Nevertheless,
while so much is promised, there are all the attendant evils. It
is a serious thing to bring unwashed, uncombed, untutored men,
scarcely redeemed from savagery, to the ballot-box. It is a
dangerous thing to bring the foreigner, whose whole secular
education was under the throne of the tyrant, and put his hand
upon the helm of affairs in this free nation. It is a dangerous
thing to bring men without property, or the expectation of it,
into the legislative halls to legislate upon property. It is a
dangerous thing to bring woman, unaccustomed to and undrilled in
the art of government, suddenly into the field to vote. These are
dangerous things; I admit it. But I think God says to us, "By
that danger I put every man of you under the solemn
responsibility of preparing these persons effectually for their
citizenship." Are you a rich man, afraid of your money? By that
fear you are called to educate the men who you are afraid will
vote against you. We are in a time of danger. I say to the top of
society, just as sure as you despise the bottom, you shall be
left like the oak tree that rebelled against its own
roots--better that it be struck with lightning. Take a man from
the top of society or the bottom, and if you will but give
himself to himself, give him his reason, his moral nature, and
his affections; take him with all his passions and his appetites,
and develop him, and you will find he has the same instinct for
self-government that you have. God made a man just as much to
govern himself as a pyramid to stand on its own bottom.
Self-government is a boon intended for all. This is shown in the
very organization of the human mind, with its counterbalances and
checks.... We are underpinning and undergirding society. Let us
put under it no political expediency, but the great principle of
manhood and womanhood, not merely cheating ourselves by a partial
measure, but carrying the nation forward to its great and
illustrious future, in which it will enjoy more safety, more
dignity, more sublime proportions, and a health that will know no
death. (Applause.)

HENRY C. WRIGHT said that circumstances had made Wendell Phillips
and others, leaders in the Anti-Slavery movement, as they had
made Mrs. Stanton and others leaders in this; and while they all
desired the enfranchisement of both classes, it was no more than
right that each should devote his energies to his own movement.
There need not be, and should not be any antagonism between the
two.

Miss ANTHONY said--The question is not, is this or that person
right, but what are the principles under discussion. As I
understand the difference between Abolitionists, some think this
is harvest time for the black man, and seed-sowing time for
woman. Others, with whom I agree, think we have been sowing the
seed of individual rights, the foundation idea of a republic for
the last century, and that this is the harvest time for all
citizens who pay taxes, obey the laws and are loyal to the
government. (Applause.)

Mr. REMOND said: In an hour like this I repudiate the idea of
expediency. All I ask for myself I claim for my wife and sister.
Let our action be based upon the rock of everlasting principle.
No class of citizens in this country can be deprived of the
ballot without injuring every other class. I see how equality of
suffrage in the State of New York is necessary to maintain
emancipation in South Carolina. Do not moral principles, like
water, seek a common level? Slavery in the Southern States
crushed the right of free speech in Massachusetts and made slaves
of Saxon men and women, just as the $250 qualification in the
Constitution of this State degrades and enslaves black men all
over the Union.

Mr. PILLSBURY protested against the use of the few last moments
of this meeting in these discussions. We should be now only "a
committee of ways and means," and future work should be the
business in hand. Mr. Downing presented an unnecessary issue.
Government will never ask us which should enter into citizenship
first, the woman or the colored man, or whether we prefer one to
the other. Indeed government has given the colored man the ballot
already. We are demanding suffrage equally, not unequally. Mrs.
Stanton's private opinion, be it what it may, has nothing to do
with the general question. The white voters are mostly opposed to
woman's suffrage. So will the colored men be, probably; at least
so she believes, as Mrs. Mott also suggested very strongly, and a
million or more of them added to the present opposition and
indifference, are not a slight consideration. Mrs. Stanton does
not believe in loving her neighbor _better_ than herself. Justice
to one class does not mean injustice to another. Woman has as
good a right to the ballot as the black man--no better. Were I a
colored man, and had reason to believe that should woman obtain
her rights she would use them to the prejudice of mine, how could
I labor very zealously in her behalf? It should be enough for Mr.
Downing and all who stand with him that Mrs. Stanton does not
demand one thing for herself as to rights, or time of obtaining
them, which she does not cheerfully, earnestly demand for all
others, regardless of color or sex.

Miss ANTHONY read the following telegram from Lucy Stone:

"ATCHISON, KANSAS, May 10, 1867.

"Impartial Suffrage, _without regard to color or sex_, will
succeed by overwhelming majorities. Kansas leads the world!
LUCY STONE."

Miss ANTHONY also read a hopeful and interesting letter from Hon.
S. N. Wood, of Kansas, showing his plans for the canvass of that
State.

JOSEPHINE GRIFFING said: I am well satisfied that this Convention
ought not to adjourn until a similar plan is laid out for all the
States in the Union, and especially for the District of Columbia.
This being a national convention, it seems peculiarly appropriate
that it should begin its work at the District of Columbia. The
proposition has already been made there, and the parties have
discussed its merits. The question of the franchise arose from
the great fact that at the South there were four millions of
people unrepresented. The fact of woman's being also
unrepresented is now becoming slowly understood. It is easier now
to talk and act upon that subject in the District of Columbia
than ever before, or than it will be again. Even the President
has said that if woman in the District of Columbia shall
intelligently ask for the right of franchise, he shall by no
means veto it. To my mind the enfranchisement of woman is a
settled fact. We can not reconstruct this government until the
franchise shall be given not merely to the four millions but to
the fifteen millions. We can not successfully reconstruct our
government unless we go to the foundation. Let us apply all the
force we can to the lever, for we have a great body to lift. No
matter how ready the public is, we can accomplish nothing unless
we have some plan, and unless we have workers. I presume none of
us are aware how many laws there are upon the statute books
disabling our rights. When the Judges in the District of Columbia
were to decide who were to vote and who were not to vote, the
question arose who could be appointed officers of the city; and
it was found that there was a law that no one could be appointed
a judge of elections who had not paid a tax upon real estate in
the District of Columbia, a law which almost defeats all the work
which has been done during the canvass of the last eight weeks in
that District. There is work yet to be done there, and so we
shall find it at every step. I am thankful with all my heart and
soul that the people have at last consented to the
enfranchisement of two millions of black men. I recognize that,
as the load is raised one inch, we must work by degrees,
accepting every inch, every hair's breadth gained toward the
right. I welcome the enfranchisement of the negro as a step
toward the enfranchisement of woman.

Miss ANTHONY said we seem to be blessed with telegrams, with
cheering news from Kansas, and read the following from S. N.
Wood:

ATCHISON, KANSAS, May 10, 1867.

"With the help of God and Lucy Stone, we shall carry Kansas!
The world moves! SAM WOOD."

These telegrams were received with much applause. The resolutions
were then put to vote, and unanimously carried, and officers were
elected for the ensuing year.[73]

SOJOURNER TRUTH was called for and said: I am glad to see that
men are getting their rights, but I want women to get theirs, and
while the water is stirring I will step into the pool. Now that
there is a great stir about colored men's getting their rights is
the time for women to step in and have theirs. I am sometimes
told that "Women aint fit to vote. Why, don't you know that a
woman had seven devils in her: and do you suppose a woman is fit
to rule the nation?" Seven devils aint no account; a man had a
legion in him. [Great laughter]. The devils didn't know where to
go; and so they asked that they might go into the swine. They
thought that was as good a place as they came out from. [Renewed
laughter]. They didn't ask to go into sheep--no, into the hog;
that was the selfishest beast; and man is so selfish that he has
got women's rights and his own too, and yet he won't give women
their rights. He keeps them all to himself. If a woman did have
seven devils, see how lovely she was when they were cast out, how
much she loved Jesus, how she followed Him. When the devils were
gone out of the man, he wanted to follow Jesus, too, but Jesus
told him to go home, and didn't seem to want to have him round.
And when the men went to look for Jesus at the sepulchre they
didn't stop long enough to find out whether he was there or not;
but Mary stood there and waited, and said to Him, thinking it was
the gardener, "Tell me where they have laid Him and I will carry
Him away." See what a spirit there is. Just so let women be true
to this object, and the truth will reign triumphant.

ALFRED H. LOVE (President of the Universal Peace Society) said:
Your President paid the Universal Peace Society two visits; and
some of us, in turn, are here to reciprocate. The Universal Peace
Society, knowing that we must have purity before we can have
peace, knowing that we need our mothers, wives, and daughters
with us, knowing that we need the morality, the courage, and the
patience of the colored man with us, adopted as our first
resolution that the ballot is a peacemaker, and that with
equality there can be no war; and in another resolution we have
said that women and colored men are entitled to the ballot.
Therefore, you have us upon the same platform, working for you in
the best way we can. We mean no cowardly peace; we mean such a
peace as demands justice and equality, and world-wide
philanthropy. I put the ballot of to-day under my foot, and say I
can not use it until the mother that reared me can have the same
privilege; until the colored man, who is my equal, can have it.

E. H. HEYWOOD of Boston, said he could hardly see what business
men had upon this platform, considering how largely responsible
they are for the conditions against which women struggle, except
to confess their sins. Men had usurped the government, and shut
up women in the kitchen. It was a sad fact that woman did not
speak for herself. It was because she was crowded so low that
she could not speak. Woman wanted not merely the right to vote,
but the right to labor. The average life of the factory girl in
Lowell was only four years, as shown by a legislative
investigation. New avenues for labor must be opened. It is said
that the women on this platform are coquetting with the
Democrats. Why shouldn't they? The Democrats say, "Talk of negro
suffrage, and then refuse women the right to vote. All I have to
say is, when the negroes of Connecticut go to the polls, my wife
and daughter will go, too."

EVENING SESSION.

The meeting was called to order by Mrs. Stanton.

Miss Anthony read another letter from Hon. S. N. Wood, of Kansas,
received since the Morning Session.

FRANCES D. GAGE was then introduced: It is not to-day as it was
before the war. It is not to-day as it was before woman took her
destiny in her hand and went out upon the battle-fields, and into
the camp, and endured hunger and cold for the sake of her
country. The whole country has been vitalized by this war. What
if woman did not carry the bayonet on the battle-field? She
carried that which gave more strength and energy. Traveling
through Illinois, I saw the women bind the sheaf, bring in the
harvest and plow the fields, that men might fight the battles.
When such women come up now and ask for the right of suffrage,
who will deny their request? In the winter of 1860, the law was
passed in New York giving to married women the right to their own
earnings. It was said frequently then that women did not want the
right to their own earnings. We were asked if we wanted to create
separation in families. But did any revolution or any special
trouble grow out of this recognition of woman's right? You see
women everywhere to-day earnestly striving to find a place to
earn their bread. Madame Demorest has become a leader of fashion,
teaching women to make up what Stewart imports; and she has a
branch establishment in every large city in the Union clear to
Montana. I do not know but some of those ladies cutting out
garments, and setting the fashions of the day, might aspire to
the Presidential chair; and perhaps they would be quite as
capable as the present incumbent--a tailor. [Applause].

Three years ago I found myself without the means of life. I
wanted a home. I had read about the beauties of a home, and
woman's appropriate sphere; and so I got a little home, and went
into it, and tried to get work. My old eyes would not see to sew
nicely, I was too feeble to wash, and so I tended the garden.
After a year had gone by I found that staying in this beautiful
home, and placing myself in woman's sphere had not brought me a
dollar to pay my bills. So setting all these theories at
defiance, I said I will go and lecture; and I went out into the
lecturing field. I have money to pay my bills to-day; but I could
not have it were I to cling to the sphere of home. If a woman is
doing the work of a good man's home, she is doing her part, and
she will not desire to go out from it for any ordinary cause. But
if she can make two dollars to his one, allowing him to carry out
his part of the appointments of life, why should not she do it?
When we can be allowed to do the thousand things that womanly
hands can do as well as those of men, we shall make our lives
useful. But take my word for it, as an old mother, with her
grandchildren gathered about her, you will not find woman
deserting the highest instincts of her nature, or leaving the
home of her husband and children.

Why do you scold us, poor weak women, for being fashionable and
dressy, when snares are set at every corner to tempt us? What
would become of your dry-goods merchants and your commerce if we
did not wear handsome dresses--if the women of this country were
to become thus sensible to-day? Your great stores on Broadway
would be closed, and your stalwart six-feet men would have to
find something else to do besides measuring tapes and ribbons.
The whole country would undergo a transformation. But it would be
better for the country. It would not take five years to pay the
national debt, interest and all, if you will apply the money
spent by men for tobacco and whisky--if men will learn to be
decent. I think it is a great deal better to wear a pretty flower
or ribbon than to smoke cigars. It is a great deal better, and
less damaging to the conscience, to wear a handsome silk dress,
than for a man to put "an enemy into his mouth to steal away his
brains."

I honestly and conscientiously believe that we ought to make the
rights of humanity equal for all classes of the community of
adult years and of sound mind. I do not ask that the girl should
vote at eighteen, but at twenty-one--the same age with the boy;
and having raised both boys and girls, I think I have a right to
say that. Give us freedom from these miserable prejudices, these
restrictions and tyrannies of society, and let us judge for
ourselves. If it is true, as science asserts, that girls inherit
more of the character of their father, while the boys follow in a
more direct line their mother, then how is it possible that women
should not have the same aspirations as men? I was born a
mechanic, and made a barrel before I was ten years old. The
cooper told my father, "Fanny made that barrel, and has done it
quicker and better than any boy I have had after six months'
training." My father looked at it and said, "What a pity that you
were not born a boy, so that you could be good for something. Run
into the house, child, and go to knitting." So I went and knit
stockings, and my father hired an apprentice boy, and paid him
two dollars a week for making barrels. Now, I was born to make
barrels, but they would not let me. Thousands of girls are born
with mechanical fingers. Thousands of girls have a muscular
development that could do the work of the world as well as men;
and there are thousands of men born to effeminacy and weakness.

Mrs. STANTON then addressed the meeting. As her line of argument
was a summary of that recently made before the Judiciary
Committee of the Legislature, and already published, it need not
here be repeated.

Miss ANTHONY announced that they would have another opportunity
to hear Sojourner Truth, and, for the information of those who
did not know, she would say that Sojourner was for forty years a
slave in this State. She is not a product of the barbarism of
South Carolina, but of the barbarism of New York, and one of her
fingers was chopped off by her cruel master in a moment of anger.

SOJOURNER TRUTH said: I have lived on through all that has taken
place these forty years in the anti-slavery cause, and I have
plead with all the force I had that the day might come that the
colored people might own their soul and body. Well, the day has
come, although it came through blood. It makes no difference how
it came--it did come. (Applause). I am sorry it came in that way.
We are now trying for liberty that requires no blood--that women
shall have their rights--not rights from you. Give them what
belongs to them; they ask it kindly too. (Laughter). I ask it
kindly. Now I want it done very quick. It can be done in a few
years. How good it would be. I would like to go up to the polls
myself. (Laughter). I own a little house in Battle Creek,
Michigan. Well, every year I got a tax to pay. Taxes, you see, be
taxes. Well, a road tax sounds large. Road tax, school tax, and
all these things. Well, there was women there that had a house as
well as I. They taxed them to build a road, and they went on the
road and worked. It took 'em a good while to get a stump up.
(Laughter). Now, that shows that women can work. If they can dig
up stumps they can vote. (Laughter). It is easier to vote than
dig stumps. (Laughter). It doesn't seem hard work to vote, though
I have seen some men that had a hard time of it. (Laughter). But
I believe that when women can vote there won't be so many men
that have a rough time gettin' to the polls. (Great laughter).
There is danger of their life sometimes. I guess many have seen
it in this city. I lived fourteen years in this city. I don't
want to take up time, but I calculate to live. Now, if you want
me to get out of the world, you had better get the women votin'
soon. (Laughter). I shan't go till I can do that.

CHARLES LENOX REMOND said: It requires a rash man to rise at this
stage of the meeting, with the hope of detaining the audience
even for a few moments. But in response to your call I rise to
add my humble word to the many eloquent words already uttered in
favor of universal suffrage. The present moment is one of no
ordinary interest. Since this platform is the only place in this
country where the whole question of human rights may now be
considered, it seemed to me fitting that the right of the colored
man to a vote should have a place at the close of the meeting;
and especially in this State, since the men who are to compose
the Convention called for the amendment of the Constitution of
this State, will, within a few short weeks, pass either favorably
or unfavorably upon that subject. I remember that Henry B.
Stanton once said at a foreign Court, "Let it be understood that
I come from a country where every man is a sovereign." At that
time the language of our friend was but a glittering generality,
for there were very many who could not be styled sovereigns in
any sense of the term. But I desire that the remark of Mr.
Stanton shall be verified in the State of New York this very
year. I demand that you so amend your Constitution as to
recognize the equality of the black man at the ballot box, at
least until he shall have proved himself a detriment to the
interests and welfare of our common country. It is no novelty
that two colored men were members of the last Legislature of
Massachusetts; for more than forty years ago a black man was a
member of the Massachusetts Legislature. People seem to have
forgotten our past history. The first blood shed in the
Revolutionary war ran from the veins of a black man; and it is
remarkable that the first blood shed in the recent rebellion also
ran from the veins of a black man. What does it mean, that black
men, first and foremost in the defense of the American nation and
in devotion to the country, are to-day disfranchised in the State
of Alexander Hamilton and John Jay?

These were the last conventions ever held in "the Church of the
Puritans," as it soon passed into other hands, and not one stone was
left upon another; not even an odor of sanctity about the old familiar
corner where so much grand work had been done for humanity. The
building is gone, the congregation scattered, but the name of George
B. Cheever, so long the honored pastor, will not soon be
forgotten.[74]

At the close of the Convention a memorial[75] to Congress was
prepared, and signed by the officers of the Convention.

In a letter to the _National Anti-Slavery Standard_, dated Concord,
April 20, 1867, Parker Pillsbury, under the title, "The Face of the
Sky," says:

I have just read in the papers of last week what follows:

Mr. Phillips, in the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ says: "All our duty
is to press constantly on the nation the absolute need of three
things. 1st. The exercise of the whole police power of the
government while the seeds of republicanism get planted. 2d. The
Constitutional Amendment securing universal suffrage in spite of
all State Legislation. 3d. A Constitutional Amendment authorizing
Congress to establish common schools, etc. To these necessaries,"
Mr. Phillips adds, "we must educate the public mind."

Mr. Greeley in the _Tribune_ says: "We are most anxious that our
present State Constitution shall be so amended as to secure
prompt justice through the courts, preclude legislative and
municipal corruption, and secure responsibility by concentrating
executive power." Through the approaching Constitutional
Convention, he says the people "can secure justice through
reformed courts, fix responsibility for abuses of executive
power;--in short, they can increase the value of property and the
reward of honest labor."

Mr. Tilton, in _The Independent_, in allusion to the recent
Republican defeat in Connecticut, concludes; "the policy of negro
suffrage is clearly seen to be the only policy for the National
welfare." ... "What then, is the next step," he asks, "in the
progress of reconstruction?" In italics he answered, "We must
make Impartial Suffrage the rule and practice of the Northern as
well as the Southern States." He proposes a new amendment to the
Federal Constitution which will secure to every American citizen,
black and white, North and South, the American citizen's
franchise. What is meant in this article of the _Independent_ by
impartial suffrage is understood by these words in another part
of it. "The Republican party in Connecticut was abundantly strong
enough to secure Impartial Suffrage. But it chose, instead, to
insult its black-faced brethren, and refused their alliance." Mr.
Raymond, in the New York _Times_, speaks without a stammer on the
suffrage question. It declares, "In New York suffrage is now
absolutely universal for all citizens except the colored people;
and upon them it is only restricted by a slight property
qualification."

A correspondent of the Boston _Congregationalist_, in a letter
from New York, tells us, "A Constitutional Convention is to be
held shortly in this State, and we expect to see universal
suffrage adopted.... The Strong-Minded Women aim to secure female
voting, but they will fail, as they should." The
_Congregationalist_ has also an editorial article headed, "The
steps to Reconstruction," in which it speaks excellently of "a
millennium of Republican governments," and of Impartial Suffrage
in them, as near at hand. But it too speaks only of freedmen to
be clothed with the rights of citizenship in the millennial,
latter-day glory so soon to be. Over the black male citizen this
editor shouts, "chattel, contraband, soldier, citizen, voter,
counselor, magistrate, representative, senator,--these all shall
be the successive steps of his wonderful progress!!"

I have produced these as the best representatives of the
different styles or types of the radical or progressive movement
in the work of reconstructing the government. That the _Standard_
and _Independent_ believe fully in the right of women to Equal
Suffrage and citizenship is known to every attentive reader of
those journals. But at an hour like this, it is painful to
witness anything like agreement even, with the language of the
others I have cited.... To rob the freed slave of citizenship
to-day is as much a crime as was slavery before the war on
Sumter; and to withhold the divinely conferred gift from woman is
every way as oppressive, cruel, and unjust as if she were a black
man....

FOOTNOTES:

[60] CALL FOR THE ELEVENTH NATIONAL WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTION.--The
Convention will be held in the City of New York, at the Church of the
Puritans, Union Square, on Thursday, the 10th of May, 1866, at 10
o'clock. Addresses will be delivered by ERNESTINE L. ROSE, FRANCES D.
GAGE, WENDELL PHILLIPS, THEODORE TILTON, ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, and
(probably) LUCRETIA MOTT and ANNA E. DICKINSON.

Those who tell us the republican idea is a failure, do not see the
deep gulf between our broad theory and partial legislation; do not see
that our Government for the last century has been but the repetition
of the old experiments of class and caste. Hence, the failure is not
in the principle, but in the lack of virtue on our part to apply it.
The question now is, have we the wisdom and conscience, from the
present upheavings of our political system, to reconstruct a
government on the one enduring basis that has never yet been
tried--"EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL."

From the proposed class legislation in Congress, it is evident we have
not yet learned wisdom from the experience of the past; for, while our
representatives at Washington are discussing the right of suffrage for
the black man, as the only protection to life, liberty and happiness,
they deny that "necessity of citizenship" to woman; by proposing to
introduce the word "male" into the Federal Constitution. In securing
suffrage but to another shade of _man_hood, while we disfranchise
fifteen million tax-payers, we come not one line nearer the republican
idea. Can a ballot in the hand of woman, and dignity on her brow, more
unsex her than do a scepter and a crown? Shall an American Congress
pay less honor to the daughter of a President than a British
Parliament to the daughter of a King? Should not our petitions command
as respectful a hearing in a republican Senate as a speech of Victoria
in the House of Lords? Do we not claim that here all men and women are
nobles--all heirs apparent to the throne? The fact that this backward
legislation has roused so little thought or protest from the women of
the country, but proves what some of our ablest thinkers have already
declared, that the greatest barrier to a government of equality was
the aristocracy of its women. For, while woman holds an ideal position
above man and the work of life, poorly imitating the pomp, heraldry,
and distinction of an effete European civilization, we as a nation can
never realize the divine idea of equality.

To build a true republic, the church and the home must undergo the
same upheavings we now see in the State;--for, while our egotism,
selfishness, luxury and ease are baptized in the name of Him whose
life was a sacrifice,--while at the family altar we are taught to
worship wealth, power and position, rather than humanity, it is vain
to talk of a republican government:--The fair fruits of liberty,
equality and fraternity must be blighted in the bud, till cherished in
the heart of woman. At this hour the nation needs the highest thought
and inspiration of a true womanhood infused into every vein and artery
of its life; and woman needs a broader, deeper education, such as a
pure religion and lofty patriotism alone can give. From the baptism of
this second revolution should she not rise up with new strength and
dignity, clothed in all those "rights, privileges and immunities" that
shall best enable her to fulfill her highest duties to Humanity, her
Country, her Family and Herself?

On behalf of the National Woman's Rights Central Committee,

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, President.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Secretary.
New York (48 Beekman street), March 31, 1866.

[61] Ernestine L. Rose, Wendell Phillips, John T. Sargeant, O. B.
Frothingham, Frances D. Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B.
Anthony, Theodore Tilton, Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Stephen S.
and Abbey Kelley Foster, Margaret Winchester and Parker Pillsbury.

[62] As this was the first time Mr. Beecher had honored the platform,
we give copious extracts from his speech in preference to those who
were so often reported in the first volume. This speech is published
in full in tract form, and can be obtained from the Secretary of the
National Woman's Suffrage Association.

[63] A COLLOQUY.

When Mr. BEECHER took his seat, Mr. TILTON rose and said:

Mrs. PRESIDENT: In the midst of the general hilarity produced
throughout the house by my friend's speech, I myself have been greatly
solemnized by being made (as you have witnessed) the public custodian
of his New Testament. (Laughter). At first I shared in your
gratification at seeing that he carried so much of the Scripture with
him. (Laughter). But I found, on looking at the fly-leaf, that the
book after all, was not his own, but the property of a lady--I will
not mention her name. (Laughter). I have, therefore, no right to
accept my friend's gift of what is not his own. Now I remember that
when he came home from England, he told me a story of a company of ten
ministers who sat down to dine together. A dispute arose among them as
to the meaning of a certain passage of Scripture--for aught I know the
very passage in Galatians which he just now tried to quote, but
couldn't. (Laughter). Some one said, "Who has a New Testament?" It was
found that no one had a copy. Pretty soon, however, when the dinner
reached the point of champagne, some one exclaimed, "Who has a
corkscrew?" And it was found that the whole ten had, every man, a
corkscrew in his pocket! (Laughter). Now, as there is no telling where
a Brooklyn minister who made a temperance speech at Cooper Institute
last night is likely to take his dinner to-day, I charitably return
the New Testament into my friend's own hands. (Great merriment).

Mr. BEECHER--Now I know enough about champagne to know that it don't
need any corkscrew. (Laughter).

Mr. TILTON--How is it that you know so much more about corkscrews than
about Galatians? (Laughter).

Mr. BEECHER, after making some playful allusions to the story of the
ten ministers, remarked that he gave it as it was given to him, but
that he could not vouch for its truthfulness, as he was not present on
the occasion.

[64] Susan B. Anthony, Frances E. W. Harper, Sarah H. Hallock, Edwin
A. Studwell, Dr. C. S. Lozier, Margaret E. Winchester, Mary F.
Gilbert, Dr. Laura A. Ward, Edward M. Davis, Mrs. Calhoun.

[65] CONSTITUTION OF THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION.

PREAMBLE.--Whereas, by the war, society is once more resolved into its
original elements, and in the reconstruction of our government we
again stand face to face with the broad question of natural rights,
all associations based on special claims for special classes are too
narrow and partial for the hour; Therefore, from the baptism of this
second revolution--purified and exalted through suffering--seeing with
a holier vision that the peace, prosperity, and perpetuity of the
Republic rest on EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL, we, to-day, assembled in our
Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention, bury the woman in the
citizen, and our organization in that of the American Equal Rights
Association.

ARTICLE I.--This organization shall be known as The American Equal
Rights Association.

ART. II.--The object of this Association shall be to secure Equal
Rights to all American citizens, especially the right of suffrage,
irrespective of race, color, or sex.

ART. III.--Any person who consents to the principles of this
Association and contributes to its treasury, may be a member, and be
entitled to speak and vote in its meetings.

ART. IV.--The Officers of this Association shall be, a President,
Vice-Presidents, Corresponding Secretaries, a Recording Secretary, a
Treasurer, and an Executive Committee of not less than seven, nor more
than fifteen members.

ART. V.--The Executive Committee shall have power to enact their
by-laws, fill any vacancy in their body and in the offices of
Secretary and Treasurer; employ agents, determine what compensation
shall be paid to agents, and to the Corresponding Secretaries, direct
the Treasurer in the application of all moneys, and call special
meetings of the Society. They shall make arrangements for all meetings
of the Society, make an annual written report of their doings, the
expenditures and funds of the Society, and shall hold stated meetings,
and adopt the most energetic measures in their power to advance the
objects of the Society.

ART. VI.--The Annual Meeting of the Association shall be held each
year at such time and place as the Executive Committee may direct,
when the accounts of the Treasurer shall be presented, the annual
report read, appropriate addresses delivered, the officers chosen, and
such other business transacted as shall be deemed expedient.

ART. VII.--Any Equal Rights Association, founded on the same
principles, may become auxiliary to this Association. The officers of
each auxiliary shall be _ex officio_ members of the Parent
Association, and shall be entitled to deliberate and vote in the
transactions of its concerns.

ART. VIII.--This constitution may be amended, at any regular meeting
of the Society, by a vote of two-thirds of the members present,
provided the amendments proposed have been previously submitted in
writing to the Executive Committee, at least one month before the
meeting at which they are to be proposed.

Done in the City of New York on the tenth day of May, in the year
1866.

[66] President, Elizabeth Cady Stanton; Vice-Presidents, Frederick
Douglass, Frances D. Gage, Robert Purvis, Theodore Tilton, Josephine
S. Griffing, Martha C. Wright, Rebecca W. Mott; Corresponding
Secretaries, Susan B. Anthony, Mattie Griffith, Caroline M. Severance;
Recording Secretary, Henry B. Blackwell; Treasurer, Ludlow Patton;
Executive Committee, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone, Edwin A.
Studwell, Margaret E. Winchester, Aaron M. Powell, Susan B. Anthony,
Parker Pillsbury, Elizabeth Gay, Mary F. Gilbert, Stephen S. Foster,
Lydia Mott, Antoinette B. Blackwell, Wendell Phillips Garrison.

[67] Miss Anthony reported from the Finance Committee the receipt of
$255.50, as follows: Jessie Benton Fremont, $50; Abby Hutchinson
Patton, $50; Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, $20; Gerrit Smith, $10; Mrs. Dr.
Densmore, $10; James and Lucretia Mott, $10 Martha C. Wright, $8:
Elizabeth S. Miller, $5; Eliza W. Osborn, $5; Margaret E. Winchester,
$5; and the balance in sums of $1 each, from as many different
persons, whose names were enrolled as members of the Equal Rights
Association. Miss A. further stated that the proceedings would be
published in pamphlet form at the earliest possible day, and that
announcement of their place of sale would be made through the
_Tribune_, _Anti-Slavery Standard_, and other papers.

[68] At a reception one evening in Washington at the residence of Hon.
Schuyler Colfax, he rallied Mrs. Stanton on her defeat, regretting
that as Speaker of the House he had never had the pleasure of
introducing "the Lady from New York." Hon. William D. Kelly, standing
near, remarked by way of consolation, "There is still hope for Mrs.
Stanton; she received the same number of votes I did the first time I
ran for Congress (2,400), the only difference is, her ciphers were on
the wrong side (0024).

[69] The speakers were Rev. Olympia Brown, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Frederick Douglass, Henry B. Blackwell,
Sarah P. Remond, Parker Pillsbury, Jane Elizabeth Jones, Charles Lenox
Remond, Bessie Bisbee, and Louise Jacobs.

[70] THE CALL.

The first Annual Meeting of the AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION will
be held in the City of New York, at the Church of the Puritans, on
Thursday and Friday, the 9th and 10th of May, 1867, commencing on
Thursday morning, at 10 o'clock.

The object of this Association is to "secure Equal Rights to all
American citizens, especially the Right of Suffrage, irrespective of
race, color, or sex." American Democracy has interpreted the
Declaration of Independence in the interest of slavery, restricting
suffrage and citizenship to a _white male minority_.

The black man is still denied the crowning right of citizenship, even
in the nominally free States, though the fires of civil war have
melted the chains of chattelism, and a hundred battle fields attest
his courage and patriotism. Half our population are disfranchised on
the ground of sex; and though compelled to obey the laws and taxed to
support the government, they have no voice in the legislation of the
country.

This Association, then, has a mission to perform, the magnitude and
importance of which can not be over-estimated. The recent war has
unsettled all our governmental foundations. Let us see that in their
restoration, all these unjust proscriptions are avoided. Let Democracy
be defined anew, as _the government of the people_, AND THE WHOLE
PEOPLE.

Let the gathering, then, at this anniversary be, in numbers and
character, worthy, in some degree, the demands of the hour. The black
man, even the black soldier, is yet but half emancipated, nor will he
be, until full suffrage and citizenship _are secured to him in the
Federal Constitution_. Still more deplorable is the condition of the
black woman; and legally, that of the white woman is no better! Shall
the sun of the nineteenth century go down on wrongs like these, in
this nation, consecrated in its infancy to justice and freedom? Rather
let our meeting be pledge as well as prophecy to the world of mankind,
that the redemption of at least one great nation is near at hand.

There will be four sessions--Thursday, May 9th, at 10 o'clock A.M.,
and 8 o'clock P. M.; Friday, May 13th, at 10 A.M., and 8 P.M. The
speakers will be Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Gen. Rufus Saxton, Frances D.
Gage, Parker Pillsbury, Robert Purvis, Mary Grew, Ernestine L. Rose,
Charles Lenox Remond, Frederick Douglass, Lucy Stone, Henry B.
Blackwell, Rev. Olympia Brown, Sojourner Truth (Mrs. Stowe's "Lybian
Sybil"), Rev. Samuel J. May, and others.

On behalf of the American Equal Rights Association,

LUCRETIA MOTT, President.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Cor. Secretary.
HENRY B. BLACKWELL, Rec. Secretary.

New York, 12th March, 1867.

[71] _Resolved_, That as republican institutions are based on
individual rights, and not on the rights of races or sexes, the first
question for the American people to settle in the reconstruction of
the government, is the RIGHTS OF INDIVIDUALS.

_Resolved_, That the present claim for "manhood suffrage," marked with
the words "equal," "impartial," "universal," is a cruel abandonment of
the slave women of the South, a fraud on the tax-paying women of the
North, and an insult to the civilization of the nineteenth century.

_Resolved_, That the proposal to reconstruct our government on the
basis of manhood suffrage, which emanated from the Republican party
and has received the recent sanction of the American Anti-Slavery
Society, is but a continuation of the old system of class and caste
legislation, always cruel and prescriptive in itself, and ending in
all ages in national degradation and revolution.

On motion of Miss Anthony, a Finance Committee was appointed,
consisting of Harriet Purvis, Mary F. Gilbert, Charles Lenox Remond,
and Anna Rice Powell.

On motion of Charles C. Burleigh, a Business Committee was appointed,
consisting of Ernestine L. Rose, Susan B. Anthony, Parker Pillsbury,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frances D. Gage, and Samuel J. May.

[72] _Resolved_, That the ballot alike to women and men means bread,
education, self-protection, self-reliance, and self-respect; to the
wife it means the control of her own person, property, and earnings;
to the mother it means the equal guardianship of her children; to the
daughter it means diversified employment and a fair day's wages for a
fair day's work; to all it means free access to skilled labor, to
colleges and professions, and to every avenue of advantage and
preferment.

_Resolved_, That Henry Ward Beecher, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and
Frederick Douglass, be invited to represent the Equal Rights
Association in the Constitutional Convention to be held in this State
in the month of June next.

_Resolved_, That while we are grateful to Wendell Phillips, Theodore
Tilton, and Horace Greeley, for the respectful mention of woman's
right to the ballot in the journals through which they speak, we ask
them now, when we are reconstructing both our State and National
Governments, to demand that the right of suffrage be secured to all
citizens--to women as well as black men, for, until this is done, the
government stands on the unsafe basis of class legislation.

_Resolved_, That on this our first anniversary we congratulate each
other and the country on the unexampled progress of our cause, as
seen: 1. In the action of Congress extending the right of suffrage to
the colored men of the States lately in rebellion, and in the very
long and able discussion of woman's equal right to the ballot in the
United States Senate, and the vote upon it. 2. In the action of the
Legislatures of Kansas and Wisconsin, submitting to the people a
proposition to extend the ballot to woman. 3. In the agitation upon
the same measure in the Legislatures of several other States. 4. In
the friendly tone of so large a portion of the press, both political
and religious; and finally, in the general awaking to the importance
of human elevation and enfranchisement, abroad as well as at home;
particularly in Great Britain, Russia, and Brazil; and encouraged by
past successes and the present prospect, we pledge ourselves to
renewed and untiring exertions, until equal suffrage and citizenship
are acknowledged throughout our entire country, irrespective of sex or
color.

[73] President, Lucretia Mott; Vice-presidents, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, N. Y., Frederick Douglass, N. Y., Henry Ward Beecher, N. Y.,
Charles Lenox Remond, Mass., Elizabeth B. Chace, R. I., C. Prince,
Conn., Frances D. Gage, N. J., Robert Purvis, Penn., Josephine S.
Griffing, D. C., Thomas Garret, Del., Stephen H. Camp, Ohio, Euphemia
Cochrane, Mich., Mary A. Livermore, Ill., Mrs. Isaac H. Sturgeon, Mo.,
Amelia Bloomer, Iowa, Sam N. Wood, Kansas, Virginia Penny, Kentucky;
Recording Secretaries, Henry B. Blackwell, Hattie Purvis;
Corresponding Secretaries, Susan B. Anthony, Mattie Griffith, Caroline
M. Severance; Treasurer, John F. Merritt; Executive Committee,
Ernestine L. Rose, Edwin A. Studwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Martha
C. Wright, Lucy Stone, Parker Pillsbury, Elizabeth Gay, Theodore
Tilton, Mary F. Gilbert, Edward S. Bunker, Antoinette Brown Blackwell,
Susan B. Anthony, Margaret E. Winchester, Aaron M. Powell, James
Haggarty, George T. Downing.

[74] The night before Dr. Cheever was to preach his farewell sermon to
his people in the Church of the Puritans, Miss Anthony and Mrs.
Stanton, walking slowly up Broadway arm in arm, cogitating, as usual,
where a good word could be said for woman, bethought themselves of the
Doctor's forthcoming sermon. As he had fought a grand battle for
anti-slavery in his church, they felt that it would be peculiarly
fitting for him, in his last sermon, to make some mention of the
rights of women.

Accordingly they turned into University Place, and soon found
themselves in his parlor, where they were heartily welcomed by Mrs.
Cheever. Miss Anthony, who was generally the spokesman on all
audacious errands, said, "We want to see the Doctor just five minutes;
we know that it is Saturday evening, that he is busy with his sermon,
and sees no one at this time, but our errand is one of momentous
importance, and what we have in our minds must be said now or never.
While we were explaining to Mrs. Cheever, the folding doors quietly
rolled back, and there stood the Doctor. He laughed heartily when we
made known our mission, and said, "I have the start of you this time;
what you ask is already written in my sermon; come into my library and
you shall hear it. We listened with great satisfaction, expressed our
thanks and started, when Miss A. suddenly turned and said, "That is
excellent, Doctor, now pray do not forget to give it with unction
to-morrow."

Many wondered that Dr. Cheever, a rigid blue Presbyterian, should
express such radical sentiments on so unpopular a reform. But his
conversion was due, no doubt, to the fact that the women of his church
had nobly sustained him all through his anti-slavery battle while the
wealth and conservatism of the congregation forbade the discussion of
that subject in the pulpit. The votes of the women, year after year,
secured his position, until his failing health ended the contest, and
the sale of the edifice changed the Church of the Puritans into
Tiffany's brilliant jewelry establishment.

[75] MEMORIAL OF THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION TO THE CONGRESS
OF THE UNITED STATES.

The undersigned, Officers and Representatives of the American Equal
Rights Association, respectfully but earnestly protest against any
change in the Constitution of the United States, or legislation by
Congress, which shall longer violate the principle of Republican
Government, by proscriptive distinctions in rights of suffrage or
citizenship, on account of color or sex. Your Memorialists would
respectfully represent, that neither the colored man's loyalty,
bravery on the battle field and general good conduct, nor woman's
heroic devotion to liberty and her country, in peace and war, have yet
availed to admit them to equal citizenship, even in this enlightened
and republican nation.

We believe that humanity is one in all those intellectual, moral and
spiritual attributes, out of which grow human responsibilities. The
Scripture declaration is, "so God created man in his own image: male
and female created he them." And all divine legislation throughout the
realm of nature recognizes the perfect equality of the two conditions.
For male and female are but different conditions. Neither color nor
sex is ever discharged from obedience to law, natural or moral;
written or unwritten. The commands, thou shalt not steal, nor kill,
nor commit adultery, know nothing of sex in their demands; nothing in
their penalty. And hence we believe that all _human_ legislation which
is at variance with the divine code, is essentially unrighteous and
unjust. Woman and the colored man are taxed to support many literary
and humane institutions, into which they never come, except in the
poorly paid capacity of menial servants. Woman has been fined,
whipped, branded with red-hot irons, imprisoned and hung; but when was
woman ever tried by a jury of her peers?

Though the nation declared from the beginning that "all just
governments derive their power from the consent of the governed," the
consent of woman was never asked to a single statute, however nearly
it affected her dearest womanly interests or happiness. In the
despotisms of the old world, of ancient and modern times, woman,
profligate, prostitute, weak, cruel, tyrannical, or otherwise, from
Semiramis and Messalina, to Catherine of Russia and Margaret of Anjou,
have swayed, unchallenged, imperial scepters; while in this republican
and Christian land in the nineteenth century, woman, intelligent,
refined in every ennobling gift and grace, may not even vote on the
appropriation of her own property, or the disposal and destiny of her
own children. Literally she has no _rights_ which man is bound to
respect; and her civil privileges she holds only by sufferance. For
the power that gave, can take away, and of that power she is no part.
In most of the States, these unjust distinctions apply to woman, and
to the colored man alike. Your Memorialists fully believe that the
time has come when such injustice should cease.

Woman and the colored man are loyal, patriotic, property-holding,
tax-paying, liberty-loving citizens; and we can not believe that sex
or complexion should be any ground for civil or political degradation.
In our government, one-half the citizens are disfranchised by their
sex, and about one-eighth by the color of their skin; and thus a large
majority have no voice in enacting or executing the laws they are
taxed to support and compelled to obey, with the same fidelity as the
more favored class, whose usurped prerogative it is to rule. Against
such outrages on the very name of republican freedom, your
memorialists do and must ever protest. And is not our protest
pre-eminently as just against the tyranny of "_taxation without
representation_," as was that thundered from Bunker Hill, when our
revolutionary fathers fired the shot that shook the world?

And your Memorialists especially remember, at this time, that our
country is still reeling under the shock of a terrible civil war, the
legitimate result and righteous retribution of the vilest slave system
ever suffered among men. And in restoring the foundations of our
nationality, your memorialists most respectfully and earnestly pray
that all discriminations on account of sex or race may be removed; and
that our Government may be republican in _fact_ as well as _form_; A
GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE, AND THE WHOLE PEOPLE; FOR THE PEOPLE, AND
THE WHOLE PEOPLE.

In behalf of the American Equal Rights Association,

THEODORE TILTON, }
FREDERICK DOUGLAS, } Vice-Presidents.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, }

LUCRETIA MOTT, President.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, Secretary.

CHAPTER XIX.

THE KANSAS CAMPAIGN--1867.

The Battle Ground of Freedom--Campaign of 1867--Liberals did not
Stand by their Principles--Black Men Opposed to Woman
Suffrage--Republican Press and Party Untrue--Democrats in
Opposition--John Stuart Mill's Letters and Speeches Extensively
Circulated--Henry B. Blackwell and Lucy Stone Opened the
Campaign--Rev. Olympia Brown Followed--60,000 Tracts
Distributed--Appeal Signed by Thirty-one Distinguished
Men--Letters from Helen E. Starrett, Susan E. Wattles, Dr. R. S.
Tenney, Lieut. Governor J. P. Root, Rev. Olympia Brown--The
Campaign closed by ex-Governor Robinson, Elizabeth Cady Stanton,
Susan B. Anthony, and the Hutchinson Family--Speeches and Songs
at the Polls in every Ward in Leavenworth Election Day--Both
Amendments lost--9,070 Votes for Woman Suffrage, 10,843 for Negro
Suffrage.

As Kansas was the historic ground where Liberty fought her first
victorious battles with Slavery, and consecrated that soil forever to
the freedom of the black race, so was it the first State where the
battle for woman's enfranchisement was waged and lost for a
generation. There never was a more hopeful interest concentrated on
the legislation of any single State, than when Kansas submitted the
two propositions to her people to take the words "white" and "male"
from her Constitution.

Those awake to the dignity and power of the ballot in the hands of all
classes, to the inspiring thought of self-government, were stirred as
never before, both in Great Britain and America, upon this question.
Letters from John Stuart Mill and other friends, with warm words of
encouragement, were read to thousands of audiences, and published in
journals throughout the State. Eastern women who went there to speak
started with the full belief that their hopes so long deferred were at
last to be realized. Some even made arrangements for future homes on
that green spot where at last the sons and daughters of earth were to
stand equal before the law. With no greater faith did the crusaders of
old seize their shields and start on their perilous journey to wrest
from the infidel the Holy Sepulcher, than did these defenders of a
sacred principle enter Kansas, and with hope sublime consecrate
themselves to labor for woman's freedom; to roll off of her soul the
mountains of sorrow and superstition that had held her in bondage to
false creeds, and codes, and customs for centuries. There was a solemn
earnestness in the speeches of all who labored in that campaign. Each
heart was thrilled with the thought that the youngest civilization in
the world was about to establish a government based on the divine
idea--the equality of all mankind--proclaimed by Jesus of Nazareth,
and echoed by the patriots who watched the dawn of the natal day of
our Republic. Here at last the mothers of the race, the most important
actors in the grand drama of human progress were for the first time to
stand the peers of men.

These women firmly believed that Republicans and Abolitionists who had
advocated their cause for years would aid them in all possible efforts
to carry the Constitutional Amendment that was to enfranchise the
women of the State. They looked confidently for encouragement, and
inspiring editorials in certain Eastern journals. With Horace Greeley
at the head of the _New York Tribune_, Theodore Tilton of the
_Independent_, and Wendell Phillips of the _Anti-Slavery Standard_,
they felt they had a strong force in the press of the East to rouse
the men of Kansas to their duty. But, alas! they all preserved a
stolid silence, and the Liberals of the State were in a measure
paralyzed by their example. Though the amendment to take the word
"male" from the Constitution was a Republican measure, signed by a
Republican Governor, and advocated by leading men of that party
throughout the campaign, yet the Republican party, as such, the
Abolitionists and black men were all hostile to the proposition,
because they said to agitate the woman's amendment would defeat negro
suffrage.

Eastern politicians warned the Republicans of Kansas that "negro
suffrage" was a party measure in national politics, and that they must
not entangle themselves with the "woman question." On all sides came
up the cry, this is "the negro's hour." Though the Republican State
Central Committee adopted a resolution leaving all their party
speakers free to express their individual sentiments, yet they
selected men to canvass the State, who were known to be unscrupulous
and disreputable, and violently opposed to woman suffrage.[76] The
Democratic party[77] was opposed to both amendments and to the new law
on temperance, which it was supposed the women would actively support.

The Germans in their Conventions passed a resolution[78] against the
new law that required the liquor dealers to get the signatures of
one-half the women, as well as the men, to their petitions before the
authorities could grant them license. In suffrage for women they saw
rigid Sunday laws and the suppression of their beer gardens. The
liquor dealers throughout the State were bitter and hostile to the
woman's amendment. Though the temperance party had passed a favorable
resolution[79] in their State Convention, yet some of their members
were averse to all affiliations with the dreaded question, as to them,
what the people might drink seemed a subject of greater importance
than a fundamental principle of human rights. Intelligent black men,
believing the sophistical statements of politicians, that their rights
were imperiled by the agitation of woman suffrage, joined the
opposition. Thus the campaign in Kansas was as protracted as many
sided.

From April until November, the women of Kansas, and those who came to
help them, worked with indomitable energy and perseverance. Besides
undergoing every physical hardship, traveling night and day in
carriages, open wagons, over miles and miles of the unfrequented
prairies, climbing divides, and through deep ravines, speaking in
depots, unfinished barns, mills, churches, school-houses, and the open
air, on the very borders of civilization, where-ever two or three
dozen voters could be assembled.

Henry B. Blackwell and Lucy Stone opened the campaign in April. The
following letters show how hopeful they were of success, and how
enthusiastically they labored to that end. Even the New York _Tribune_
prophesied victory.[80]

AT GOV. ROBINSON'S HOUSE, FOUR MILES NORTH OF
LAWRENCE, KANSAS, _April, 5, 1867_.

DEAR MRS. STANTON:--We report good news! After half a day's
earnest debate, the Convention at Topeka, by an almost unanimous
vote, refused to separate "the two questions" male and white. A
delegation from Lawrence came up specially to get the woman
dropped. The good God upset a similar delegation from Leavenworth
bent on the same object, and prevented them from reaching Topeka
at all. Gov. Robinson, Gov. Root, Col. Wood, Gen. Larimer, Col.
Ritchie, and "the old guard" generally were on hand. Our coming
out did good. Lucy spoke with all her old force and fire. Mrs.
Nichols was there--a strong list of permanent officers was
nominated--and a State Impartial Suffrage Association was
organized. The right men were put upon the committees, and I do
not believe that the Negro Suffrage men can well bolt or back out
now.

The effect is wonderful. Papers which have been ridiculing woman
suffrage and sneering at "Sam Wood's Convention" are now on our
side. We have made the present Gov. Crawford President of the
Association, Lieut.-Gov. Green Vice-President. Have appointed a
leading man in every judicial district member of the Executive
Committee, and have some of the leading Congregational, Old
School, and New School Presbyterian ministers committed for both
questions; have already secured a majority of the newspapers of
the State, and if Lucy and I succeed in "getting up steam" as we
hope in Lawrence, Wyandotte, Leavenworth, and Atchison, the woman
and the negro will rise or fall together, and shrewd politicians
say that with proper effort we shall carry both next fall.

During the Convention Lucy got a dispatch from Lawrence as
follows: "Will you lecture for the Library Association? State
terms, time, and subject." Lucy replied: "Will lecture Saturday
evening; subject, 'Impartial Suffrage'; terms, one hundred
dollars, payable to Kansas State Impartial Suffrage Association."
The prompt reply was: "We accept your terms." Gen. Larimer, of
Leavenworth, went down next day to try to arrange a similar
lyceum meeting there. In the afternoon came a dispatch from D. R.
Anthony, saying: "Meeting arranged for Tuesday night." This is
especially good, because we were informed that he had somewhat
favored dropping the woman, but whether this was so or not, he
will now be all right as befits the brother of Susan B. Anthony.

We are announced to speak every night but Sundays from April 7 to
May 5 inclusive. We shall have to travel from twenty to forty
miles per day. If our voices and health hold out, Col. Wood says
the State is safe. We had a rousing convention--three
sessions--at Topeka, and a crowded meeting the night following.
We find a very strong feeling against Col. S. N. Wood among
politicians, but they all respect and dread him. He has warmer
friends and bitterer enemies than almost any man in the State.
But he is true as steel. My judgment of men is rarely deceived,
and I pronounce S. N. Wood a great man and a political genius.
Gov. Robinson is a masterly tactician, cool, wary, cautious,
decided, and brave as a lion. These two men alone would suffice
to save Kansas. But when you add the other good and true men who
are already pledged, and the influences which have been combined,
I think you will see next fall an avalanche vote--"the caving in
of that mighty sandbank" your husband once predicted on a similar
occasion.

Now, Mrs. Stanton, you and Susan and Fred. Douglass must come to
this State early next September; you must come prepared to make
_sixty speeches_ each. You must leave your notes _behind you_.
These people won't have written sermons. And you don't want
notes. You are a natural orator, and these people will give you
inspiration! Everything has conspired to help us in this State.
Gov. Robinson and Sam. Wood have quietly set a ball in motion
which nobody in Kansas is now strong enough to stop. Politicians'
hair here is fairly on end. But the fire is in the prairie behind
them, and they are getting out their matches in self-defense to
fire their foreground. This is a glorious country, Mrs. S., and a
glorious people. If we succeed here, it will be the State of the
Future.

With kind regards, HENRY B. BLACKWELL.

P. S.--So you see we have the State Convention committed to the
right side, and I do believe we shall carry it. All the old
settlers are for it. It is only the later comers who say, "If I
were a black man I should not want the woman question hitched to
me." These men tell what their wives have done, and then ask,
shall such women be left without a vote? L. S.

D. R. ANTHONY'S HOUSE, LEAVENWORTH, }
_April 10, 1867_. }

DEAR MRS. STANTON:--We came here just in the nick of time. The
papers were laughing at "Sam Wood's Convention," the call for
which was in the papers with the names of Beecher, Tilton, Ben
Wade, Gratz Brown, E. C. Stanton, Anna Dickinson, Lucy Stone,
etc., as persons expected or invited to be at the convention. The
papers said: "This is one of Sam's shabbiest tricks. Not one of
these persons will be present, and he knows it," etc., etc. Our
arrival set a buzz going, and when I announced you and Susan and
Aunt Fanny for the fall, they began to say "they guessed the
thing would carry." Gov. Robinson said he could not go to the
Topeka Convention, for he had a lawsuit involving $1,000 that was
to come off that very day, but we talked the matter over with
him, showed him what a glorious hour it was for Kansas, etc.,
etc., and he soon concluded to get the suit put off and go to the
convention. Ex-Gov. Root, of Wyandotte, joined with him and us,
though he had not intended to go. We went to Topeka; and the day
and evening before the convention, pulled every wire and set
every honest trap. Gov. Robinson has a long head, and he arranged
the "platform" so shrewdly, carefully using the term "impartial,"
which he said meant right, and we must make them use it, so that
there would be no occasion for any other State Association. In
this previous meeting, the most prominent men of the State were
made officers of the permanent organization. When the platform
was read, with the names of the officers, and the morning's
discussion was over, everybody then felt that the ball was set
right. But in the P.M. came a Methodist minister and a lawyer
from Lawrence as delegates, "instructed" to use the word
"impartial," "as it had been used for the last two years," to
make but one issue, and to drop the woman. The lawyer said, "If I
was a negro, I would not want the woman hitched on to my skirts,"
etc. He made a mean speech. Mrs. Nichols and I came down upon
him, and the whole convention, except the Methodist, was against
him. The vote was taken whether to drop the woman, and only the
little lawyer from Lawrence, with a hole in his coat and only one
shoe on, voted against the woman. After that it was all one way.
The papers all came out right, I mean the Topeka papers. One
editor called on us, said we need not mention that he had called,
but he wanted to assure us that he had always been right on this
question. That the mean articles in his paper had been written by
a subordinate in his office in his absence, etc. That the paper
was fully committed, etc., etc. That is a fair specimen of the
way all the others have done, till we got to this place. Here the
Republicans had decided to drop the woman, Anthony with the
others, and I think they are only waiting to see the result of
our meetings, to announce their decision. But the Democrats all
over the State are preparing to take us up. They are a small
minority, with nothing to lose, and utterly unscrupulous, while
all who will work with Sam Wood will work with anybody. I fully
expect we shall carry the State. But it will be necessary to have
a good force here in the fall, and you will have to come. Our
meetings are everywhere crowded to overflowing, and in every case
the papers speak well of them. We have meetings for every night
till the 4th of May. By that time we shall be well tired out. But
we shall see the country, and I hope have done some good. There
is no such love of principle here as I expected to find. Each
man goes for himself, and "the devil take the hindmost." The
women here are grand, and it will be a shame past all expression
if they don't get the right to vote. One woman in Wyandotte said
she carried petitions all through the town for female suffrage,
and not one woman in ten refused to sign. Another in Lawrence
said they sent up two large petitions from there. So they have
been at the Legislature, like the heroes they really are, and it
is not possible for the husbands of such women to back out,
though they have sad lack of principle and a terrible desire for
office.

Yours, L. S.

JUNCTION CITY, KANSAS, _April 20_.

DEAR MRS. STANTON:

We have had one letter from you, and have written you twice.
To-day I inclose an article by Col. Wood, which is so capital
that it ought to be printed. I wish you would take it to Tilton
(not Oliver), and if he says he will publish it, let him have it;
but if he hesitates, send it at once to the _Chicago Republic_,
and ask them to mark the article in some of their exchanges.
Perhaps the _Northern Methodist_, _The Banner of Light_, and the
_Liberal Christian_ would insert it. I shall not be back to the
May meeting; indeed, it would be better if we could stay till
June 1st, and go all along the Northern tier of counties. I think
this State will be right at the fall election. The _Independent_
is taken in many families here, and they are getting right on the
question of impartial suffrage. But there will have to be a great
deal of work to carry the State. We have large, good meetings
everywhere. If the _Independent_ would take up this question, and
every week write for it, as it does for the negro, that paper
alone could save this State; and with this, all the others.

What a pity it does not see the path that would leave it with
more than Revolutionary honors! I am thankful beyond expression
for what it does, but I am pained for what it _might do_. With
its 75,000 subscribers, and five times that number of readers,
what can the poor little _Standard_ do for us, compared with
that? I shall try and write a letter to the convention. May
strike the true note! I hope not a man will be asked to speak at
the convention. If they volunteer very well, but I have been for
the last time on my knees to Phillips or Higginson, or any of
them. If they help now, they should ask us, and not we them. Is
Susan with you?

L. S.

JUNCTION CITY, KANSAS, _April 21, 1867_.

DEAR FRIENDS, E. C. STANTON AND SUSAN B. ANTHONY:

You will be glad to know that Lucy and I are going over the
length and breadth of this State speaking every day, and
sometimes twice, journeying from twenty-five to forty miles
daily, sometimes in a carriage and sometimes in an open wagon,
with or without springs. We climb hills and dash down ravines,
ford creeks, and ferry over rivers, rattle across limestone
ledges, struggle through muddy bottoms, fight the high winds on
the high rolling upland prairies, and address the most
astonishing (and astonished) audiences in the most extraordinary
places. To-night it may be a log school house, to-morrow a stone
church; next day a store with planks for seats, and in one place,
if it had not rained, we should have held forth in an unfinished
court house, with only four stone walls but no roof whatever.

The people are a queer mixture of roughness and intelligence,
recklessness, and conservatism. One swears at women who want to
wear the breeches; another wonders whether we ever heard of a
fellow named Paul; a third is not going to put women on an
equality with niggers. One woman told Lucy that no decent woman
would be running over the country talking nigger and woman. Her
brother told Lucy that "he had had a woman who was under the sod,
but that if she had ever said she wanted to vote he would have
pounded her to death!"

The fact is, however, that we have on our side all the shrewdest
politicians and all the best class of men and women in this
State. Our meetings are doing much towards organizing and
concentrating public sentiment in our favor, and the papers are
beginning to show front in our favor. We fought and won a pitched
battle at Topeka in the convention, and have possession of the
machine. By the time we get through with the proposed series of
meetings, it will be about the 20th of May, if Lucy's voice and
strength hold out. The scenery of this State is lovely. In summer
it must be very fine indeed, especially in this Western section
the valleys are beautiful, and the bluffs quite bold and
romantic.

I think we shall probably succeed in Kansas next fall if the
State is thoroughly canvassed, not else. We are fortunate in
having Col. Sam N. Wood as an organizer and worker. We owe
everything to Wood, and he is really a thoroughly noble, good
fellow, and a hero. He is a short, rather thick set, somewhat
awkward, and "slouchy" man, extremely careless in his dress,
blunt and abrupt in his manner, with a queer inexpressive face,
little blue eyes which can look dull or flash fire or twinkle
with the wickedest fun. He is so witty, sarcastic, and cutting,
that he is a terrible foe, and will put the laugh even on his
best friends. The son of a Quaker mother, he held the baby while
his wife acted as one of the officers, and his mother another, in
a Woman's Rights Convention seventeen years ago. Wood has helped
off more runaway slaves than any man in Kansas. He has always
been _true_ both to the negro and the woman. But the negroes
dislike and distrust him because he has never allowed the word
white to be struck out, unless the word male should be struck out
also. He takes exactly Mrs. Stanton's ground, that the colored
men and women shall enter the kingdom _together_, if at all. So,
while he advocates both, he fully realizes the wider scope and
far greater grandeur of the battle for _woman_. Lucy and I like
Wood very much. We have seen a good deal of him, first at Topeka,
again at Cottonwood Falls, his home, and on the journey thence to
Council Grove and to this place. Our arrangements for conveyances
failed, and Wood with characteristic energy and at great personal
inconvenience brought us through himself. It is worth a journey
to Kansas to know him for he is an original and a genius. If he
should die next month I should consider the election lost. But if
he live, and we all in the East drop other work and spend
September and October in Kansas, we shall succeed. I am glad to
say that our friend D. R. Anthony is out for both propositions in
the _Leavenworth Bulletin_. But his sympathies are so especially
with the negro question that we must have Susan out here to
strengthen his hands. We must have Mrs. Stanton, Susan, Mrs.
Gage, and Anna Dickinson, this fall. Also Ben Wade and Carl
Schurz, if possible. We must also try to get 10,000 each of Mrs.
Stanton's address, of Lucy Stone's address, and of Mrs. Mills
article on the Enfranchisement of Women, printed for us by the
Hovey Fund.

Kansas is to be _the battle ground_ for 1867. _It must not be
allowed to fail._

The politicians here, except Wood and Robinson, are generally "on
the fence." But they dare not oppose us openly. And the
Democratic leaders are quite disposed to take us up. If the
Republicans come out against us the Democrats will take us up. Do
not let anything prevent your being here September 1 _for the
campaign_, which will end in November. There will be a big fight
and a great excitement. After the fight is over Mrs. Stanton will
never have _use_ for _notes_ or _written_ speeches any more.

Yours truly, HENRY B. BLACKWELL.

FORT SCOTT, _May 1, 1867_.

DEAR SUSAN:

I have just this moment read your letter, and received the
tracts; the "testimonies" I mean. We took 250 pounds of tracts
with us, and we have sowed them thick; and Susan, the crop will
be impartial suffrage in the fall. It will carry, beyond a doubt,
in this State. Now, as I can not be in New York next week, I want
you to see Aunt Fanny and Anna Dickinson, and get them pledged to
come here in the fall. We will raise the pay somehow. You and
Mrs. Stanton will come, of course. I wish Mrs. Harper to come. I
don't know if she is in New York; please tell her I got her
letter, and will either see or correspond with her when I get
home. There is no time to write here. We ride all day, and
lecture every night, and sometimes at noon too. So there is time
for nothing else. I am sorry there is no one to help you, Susan,
in New York. I always thought that when this hour of our bitter
need come--this darkest hour before the dawn--Mr. Higginson would
bring his beautiful soul and his fine, clear intellect to draw
all women to his side; but if it is possible for him to be
satisfied at _such_ an hour with writing the best literary
essays, it is because the power to help us has gone from him. The
old lark moves her nest only when the farmer prepares to cut his
grass himself. This will be the way with us; as to the
_Standard_, I don't count upon it at all. Even if you get it, the
circulation is so limited that it amounts almost to nothing. I
have not seen a copy in all Kansas. But the _Tribune_ and
_Independent_ alone could, if they would urge _universal_
suffrage, as they do negro suffrage, carry this whole nation upon
the only just plane of equal human rights. What a power to hold,
and not use! I could not sleep the other night, just for thinking
of it; and if I had got up and written the thought that burned my
very soul, I do believe that Greeley and Tilton would have echoed
the cry of the old crusaders, "God wills it;" and rushing to our
half-sustained standard, would plant it high and firm on
immutable principles. _They_ MUST take it up. I shall see them
the very first thing when I go home. At your meeting next Monday
evening, I think you should insist that all of the Hovey fund
used for the _Standard_ and Anti-Slavery purposes, since slavery
is abolished, must be returned with interest to the three causes
which by the express terms of the will were to receive _all_ of
the fund when slavery was abolished. You will have a good
meeting, I am sure, and I hope you will not fail to rebuke the
cowardly use of the terms "universal," and "impartial," and
"equal," applied to hide a dark skin, and an unpopular client.
All this talk about the infamous thirteen who voted against
"negro suffrage" in New Jersey, is unutterably contemptible from
the lips or pen of those whose words, acts, and votes are not
against ignorant and degraded negroes, but against every man's
mother, wife, and daughter. We have crowded meetings everywhere.
I speak as well as ever, thank God! The audiences move to tears
or laughter, just as in the old time. Harry makes capital
speeches, and gets a louder cheer always than I do, though I
believe I move a deeper feeling. The papers all over the State
are discussing pro and con. The whole thing is working just
right. If Beecher is chosen delegate at large to your
Constitutional Convention, I think the word male will go out
before his vigorous cudgel. I do not want to stay here after the
4th, but Wood and Harry have arranged other meetings up to the
18th or 20th of May, so that we shan't be back even for the
Boston meetings.

Very truly, LUCY STONE.

In a letter dated Atchison, May 9, 1867, Lucy Stone says: I
should be so glad to be with you to-morrow, and to know this
minute whether Phillips has consented to take the high ground
which sound policy as well as justice and statesmanship require.
I can not send you a telegraphic dispatch as you wish, for just
now there is a plot to get the Republican party to drop the word
"male," and also to agree to canvass _only_ for the word "white."
There is a call, signed by the Chairman of the State Central
Republican Committee; to meet at Topeka on the 15th, to pledge
the party to the canvass on that single issue. As soon as we saw
the call and the change of tone of some of the papers, we sent
letters to all those whom we had found true to principle, urging
them to be at Topeka and vote for both words. This effort of ours
the Central Committee know nothing of, and we hope they will be
defeated, as they will be sure to be surprised. So, till this
action of the Republicans is settled, we can affirm nothing.
Everywhere we go we have the largest and most enthusiastic
meetings, and any one of our audiences would give a majority for
woman suffrage. But the negroes are all against us. There has
just now left us an ignorant black preacher named Twine, who is
very confident that women ought not to vote. These men _ought not
to be allowed to vote before we do_, because they will be just so
much more dead weight to lift.

Mr. Frothingham's course of lectures, happily, is over. Were you
ever so cruelly hurt by any course of lectures before? "If it had
been an enemy I could have borne it." But for this man, wise,
educated, and good, who thinks he is our friend, to do just the
things that our worst enemies will be glad of, is the unkindest
cut of all. Ninety-nine pulpits out of every hundred have taught
that women should not meddle in politics; as large a proportion
of papers have done the same; and by every hearthstone the lesson
is repeated to the little girl; and when she has learned it, and
grows up, and does not throw away the teaching of a life time,
Mr. Frothingham accepts this _effect_ for a _cause_, and blames
the unhappy victim, when he should stand by her side, and with
all his power of persuasion win her away from her false teaching,
to accept the truth and the nobler life that comes with it. But,
thank God, the popular pulse is setting in the right direction.

We must see Wade, and Garfield, and Julian, and when Sumner
proposes, as he says he shall, to make negro suffrage universal,
_they_ must _insist_ upon _our_ claim; urged not for our sake
merely, but that the government may be based upon the consent of
the governed. There is safety in no other way. We shall leave for
home on the 20th. We had the largest meeting we have yet had in
the State at Leavenworth night before last. Your brother and his
wife called upon us at Col. Coffin's. They are well. But Dan
don't want the Republicans to take us up. Love to Mrs. Stanton.

LUCY STONE.

P. S.--The papers here are coming down on us, and every prominent
reformer, and charging us with being Free Lovers. I have to-day
written a letter to the editor, saying that it has not the shadow
of a foundation.

Rev. Olympia Brown arrived in the State in July, where her untiring
labors, for four months were never equaled by man or woman. Mrs.
Stanton, Miss Anthony, and the Hutchinson family followed her early in
September. What these speakers could not do with reason and appeal,
the Hutchinsons, by stirring the hearts of the people with their sweet
ballads, readily accomplished. Before leaving New York Miss Anthony
published 60,000 tracts, which were distributed in Kansas with a
liberal hand under the frank of Senators Ross and Pomeroy. Thus the
thinking and unthinking in every school district were abundantly
supplied with woman suffrage literature, such as Mrs. Mill's splendid
article in the _Westminster Review_, the best speeches of John Stuart
Mill, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, George William Curtis,
Elizabeth Cady Stanton's argument before the Constitutional
Convention, Parker Pillsbury's "Mortality of Nations," Thomas
Wentworth Higginson's "Woman and her Wishes," Henry Ward Beecher's
"Woman's Duty to Vote," and Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols' "Responsibility of
Woman." There was scarcely a log cabin in the State that could not
boast one or more of these documents, which the liberality of a few
eastern friends[81] enabled the "Equal Rights Association" to print
and circulate.

The opposition were often challenged to debate this question in
public, but uniformly refused, knowing full well, since their powder
in this battle consisted of vulgar abuse and ridicule, that they had
no arguments to advance. But it chanced that on one occasion by
mistake, a meeting was appointed for the opposing forces at the same
time and place where Olympia Brown was advertised to speak. This gave
her an opportunity of testing her readiness in debate with Judge
Sears. Of this occasion a correspondent says:

DISCUSSION AT OSKALOOSA.--_To the Editor of the Kansas State
Journal_: For the first time during the canvass for Universal
Suffrage, the opponents of the two wrongs, "Manhood Suffrage" and
"Woman Suffrage," met in open debate at this place last evening.
The largest church in the place was crowded to its utmost, every
inch of space being occupied. Judge Gilchrist was called to the
chair, and first introduced Judge Sears, who made the following
points in favor of Manhood Suffrage:

1st. That in the early days of the Republic no discrimination was
made against negroes on account of color.

He proved from the constitutions and charters of the original
thirteen States, that all of them, with the exception of South
Carolina, allowed the colored freeman the ballot, upon the same
basis and conditions as the white man. That we were not
conferring a right, but restoring one which the fathers in their
wisdom had never deprived the colored man of. He showed how the
word white had been forced into the State constitutions, and
advocated that it should be stricken out, it being the last relic
of the "slave power."

2d. That the negro needed the ballot for his protection and
elevation.

3d. That he deserved the ballot. He fought with our fathers side
by side in the war of the revolution. He did the same thing in
the war of 1812, and in the war of the rebellion. He fought for
us because he was loyal and loved the old flag. If any class of
men had ever earned the enjoyment of franchise the negro had.

4th. The Republican party owed it to him.

5th. The enfranchisement of the negro was indispensable to
reconstruction of the late rebellious States upon a basis that
should secure to the loyal men of the South the control of the
government in those States. Congress had declared it was
necessary, and the most eminent men of the nation had failed to
discover any other means by which the South could be restored to
the Union, that should secure safety, prosperity, and happiness.
There was not loyalty enough in the South among the whites to
elect a loyal man to an inferior office.

Upon each one of these points the Judge elaborated at length, and
made really a fine speech, but his evident disconcertion showed
that he knew what was to follow. It was expected that when Miss
Brown was introduced many would leave, owing to the strange
feeling against Female Suffrage in and about Oscaloosa; but not
one left, the crowd grew more dense. A more eloquent speech never
was uttered in this town than Miss Brown delivered; for an hour
and three-quarters the audience was spell-bound as she advanced
from point to point. She had been longing for such an
opportunity, and had become weary of striking off into open air;
and she proved how thoroughly acquainted she was with her subject
as she took up each point advanced by her opponent, not denying
their truth, but showing by unanswerable logic that if it were
good under certain reasons for the negro to vote, it was ten
times better for the same reasons for the women to vote.

The argument that the right to vote is not a natural right, but
acquired as corporate bodies acquire their rights, and that the
ballot meant "protection," was answered and explained fully. She
said the ballot meant protection; it meant much more; it means
education, progress, advancement, elevation for the oppressed
classes, drawing a glowing comparison between the working classes
of England and those of the United States. She scorned the idea
of an aristocracy based upon two accidents of the body. She paid
an eloquent tribute to Kansas, the pioneer in all reforms, and
said that it would be the best advertisement that Kansas could
have to give the ballot to women, for thousands now waiting and
uncertain, would flock to our State, and a vast tide of
emigration would continually roll toward Kansas until her broad
and fertile prairies would be peopled. It is useless to attempt
to report her address, as she could hardly find a place to stop.
When she had done, her opponent had nothing to say, he had been
beaten on his own ground, and retired with his feathers drooping.
After Miss Brown had closed, some one in the audience called for
a vote on the female proposition. The vote was put, and nearly
every man and woman in the house rose simultaneously, men that
had fought the proposition from the first arose, even Judge
Sears himself looked as though he would like to rise, but his
principles, much tempted, forbade. After the first vote, Judge
Sears called for a vote on his, the negro proposition, when about
one-half the house arose. Verily there was a great turning to the
Lord that day, and many would have been baptized, but there was
no water. When Mrs. Stanton has passed through Oscaloosa, her
fame having gone before her, we can count on a good majority for
Female Suffrage....
* * * *

OSCALOOSA, October 11, 1867.

SALINA, KANSAS, Sept. 12, 1867.

DEAR FRIEND:--We are getting along splendidly. Just the frame of
a Methodist church with sidings and roof, and rough cotton-wood
boards for seats, was our meeting place last night here; and a
perfect jam it was, with men crowded outside at all the windows.
Two very brave young Kentuckian sprigs of the law had the courage
to argue or present sophistry on the other side. The meeting
continued until eleven o'clock. To-day we go to Ellsworth, the
very last trading post on the frontier. A car load of wounded
soldiers went East on the train this morning; but the fight was a
few miles West of Ellsworth. No Indians venture to that point.

Our tracts gave out at Solomon, and the Topeka people failed to
fill my telegraphic order to send package here. It is enough to
exhaust the patience of any "Job" that men are so wanting in
promptness. Our tracts do more than half the battle; reading
matter is so very scarce that everybody clutches at a book of any
kind. If only reformers would supply this demand with the right
and the true--come in and occupy the field at the beginning--they
might mould these new settlements. But instead they wait until
everything is fixed, and the comforts and luxuries obtainable,
and then come to find the ground preoccupied.

Send 2,000 of Curtis' speeches, 2,000 of Phillips', 2,000 of
Beecher's, and 1,000 of each of the others, and then fill the
boxes with the reports of our last convention; they are the best
in the main because they have everybody's speeches together.

S. B. A.

HOME OF EX-GOV. ROBINSON,
LAWRENCE, KANSAS, Sept. 15, 1867.

I rejoice greatly in the $100 from the Drapers.[82] That makes
$250 paid toward the tracts. I am very sorry Mr. J. can not get
off Curtis and Beecher. There is a perfect greed for our tracts.
All that great trunk full were sold and given away at our first
fourteen meetings, and we in return received $110, which a little
more than paid our railroad fare--_eight cents per mile_--and
hotel bills. Our collections thus far fully equal those at the
East. I have been delightfully disappointed, for everybody said I
couldn't raise money in Kansas meetings. I wish you were here to
make the tour of this beautiful State, in which to live fifty
years hence will be charming; but now, alas, the women especially
see hard times; to come actually in contact with all their
discomforts and privations spoils the poetry of pioneer life.
The opposition, the "Anti-Female Suffragists," are making a bold
push now; but all prophesy a short run for them. They held a
meeting here the day after ours, and the friends say, did vastly
more to make us converts than we ourselves did. The fact is
nearly every man of the movers is like Kalloch, notoriously
wanting in right action toward woman. Their opposition is low and
scurrilous, as it used to be fifteen and twenty years ago at the
East. Hurry on the tracts.

As ever, S. B. A.

Seeing that the republican vote must be largely against the woman's
amendment, the question arose what can be done to capture enough
democratic votes to outweigh the recalcitrant republicans. At this
auspicious moment George Francis Train appeared in the State as an
advocate of woman suffrage. He appealed most effectively to the
chivalry of the intelligent Irishmen, and the prejudices of the
ignorant; conjuring them not to take the word "white" out of their
constitution unless they did the word "male" also; not to lift the
negroes above the heads of their own mothers, wives, sisters, and
daughters. The result was a respectable democratic vote in favor of
woman suffrage.

In a discussion with General Blunt at a meeting in Ottawa, Mr. Train
said:

You say, General, that women in politics would lower the
standard. Are politicians so pure, politics so exalted, the polls
so immaculate, men so moral, that woman would pollute the ballot
and contaminate the voters? Would revolvers, bowie-knives, whisky
barrels, profane oaths, brutal rowdyism, be the feature of
elections if women were present? Woman's presence purifies the
atmosphere. Enter any Western hotel and what do you see, General?
Sitting around the stove you will see dirty, unwashed-looking
men, with hats on, and feet on the chairs; huge cuds of tobacco
on the floor, spittle in pools all about; filth and dirt,
condensed tobacco smoke, and a stench of whisky from the bar and
the breath (applause, and "that's so,") on every side. This,
General, is the manhood picture. Now turn to the womanhood
picture; she, whom you think will debase and lower the morals of
the elections. Just opposite this sitting room of the King, or on
the next floor, is the sitting room of the Queen, covered chairs,
clean curtains, nice carpets, books on the table, canary birds at
the window, everything tidy, neat and beautiful, and according to
your programme the occupants of this room will so demoralize the
occupants of the other as to completely undermine all society.

Did man put woman in the parlor? Did woman put man in that bar
room? Are the instincts of woman so low that unless man puts up a
bar, she will immediately fall into man's obscene conversation
and disreputable habits? No, General, women are better than men,
purer, nobler, hence more exalted, and so far from falling to
man's estate, give her power and she will elevate man to her
level.

One other point, General, in reply to your argument. You say
woman's sphere is at home with her children, and paint her as the
sovereign of her own household. Let me paint the picture of the
mother at the washtub, just recovering from the birth of her last
child as the Empress. Six little children, half starved and
shivering with cold, are watching and hoping that the Emperor
will arrive with a loaf of bread, he having taken the wash money
to the baker's. They wait and starve and cry, the poor emaciated
Empress works and prays, when lo! the bugle sounds. It is the
Emperor staggering into the yard. The little famished princesses'
mouths all open are waiting for their expected food. Your friend,
General, the Emperor, however, was absent minded, and while away
at the polls voting for the license for his landlord, left the
wash money on deposit with the bar-keeper (laughter) who wouldn't
give it back again, and the little Queen birds must starve
another day, till the wash-tub earns them a mouthful of something
to eat. Give that woman a vote and she will keep the money she
earns to clothe and feed her children, instead of its being spent
in drunkenness and debauchery by her lord and master....

You say, General, that you intend to vote for _negro suffrage_
and against _woman suffrage_. In other words, not satisfied with
having your mother, your wife, your sisters, your daughters, the
equals _politically_ of the negro--by giving him a vote and
refusing it to woman, you wish to place your family politically
still lower in the scale of citizenship and humanity. This
particular twist, General, is working in the minds of the people,
and the democrats, having got you where Tommy had the wedge,
intend to hold you there. Again you say that Mrs. Cady Stanton
was three days in advance of you in the border towns, calling you
the Sir John Falstaff of the campaign. I am under the impression,
General, that these strong minded woman's rights women _are more
than three days in advance of you_. (Loud cheers.) Falstaff was a
jolly old brick, chivalrous and full of gallantry, and were he
stumping Kansas with his ragged regiment, he would do it as the
champion of woman instead of against her. (Loud cheers.) Hence
Mrs. Stanton owes an apology to Falstaff, not to General Blunt.
(Laughter and cheers.)

One more point, General. You have made a terrific personal attack
on Senator Wood, calling him everything that is vile. I do not
know Mr. Wood. Miss Anthony has made all my arrangements; but
perhaps you will allow me to ask you if Mr. Wood is a democrat?
(Laughter and applause from the democrats.) Gen. Blunt--No, he is
a republican, (laughter) and chairman of the woman suffrage
committee. Mr. Train--Good. I understand you and your argument
against Wood is so forcible, (and Mr. Train said this with the
most biting sarcasm, every point taking with the audience.) I
believe with you that Wood is a bad man, (laughter) a man of no
principle whatever. (Laughter.) A man who has committed all the
crimes in the calendar, (loud laughter) who, if he has done what
you have said, ought to be taken out on the square and hung, and
_well hung_ too. (Laughter and cheers.) Having admitted that I am
converted to the fact of Wood's villainy, (laughter) and you
having admitted that he is not a democrat, but a republican,
(laughter) I think it is time the honest democratic and
republican voters should rise up in their might and wipe off all
those corrupt republican leaders from the Kansas State committee.
(Loud cheers.) Democrats do your duty on the fifth of November
and vote for woman suffrage. (Applause.) The effect of turning
the General's own words back upon his party was perfectly
electric, and when the vote was put for woman's suffrage it was
almost unanimous. Mr. Train saying amid shouts of laughter, that
he supposed that a few henpecked men would say "No" here, because
they didn't dare to say their souls were their own at home....

Mr. TRAIN continued: Twelve o'clock at night is a late hour to
take up all your points, General; but the audience will have me
talk. Miss Anthony gave you, General, a very sarcastic retort to
your assertion that every woman ought to be married. (Laughter.)
She told you that to marry, it was essential to find some decent
man, and that could not be found among the Kansas politicians who
had so gallantly forsaken the woman's cause. (Loud laughter.) She
said, as society was organized there was not one man in a
thousand worthy of marriage--marrying a man and marrying a whisky
barrel were two distinct ideas. (Laughter and applause.) Miss
Anthony tells me that your friend Kalloch said at Lawrence that
_of all the infernal humbugs of this humbugging Woman's Rights
question, the most absurd was that woman should assume to be
entitled to the same wages for the same amount of labor
performed, as man_. Do you mean to say that the school mistress,
who so ably does her duty, should only receive three hundred
dollars, while the school master, who performs the same duty,
gets fifteen hundred? (Shame.) All the avenues of employment are
blocked against women. Embroidering, tapestry, knitting-needle,
sewing needle have all been displaced by machinery; and women
speakers, women doctors, and women clerks, are ridiculed and
insulted till every modest woman fairly cowers before her Emperor
Husband, her King, her Lord, for fear of being called "strong
minded." (Laughter and applause.) Why should not the landlady of
that hotel over the way share the profits of their joint labors
with the landlord? _She_ works as hard--yet _he_ keeps all the
money, and she goes to him, instead of being an independent
woman, for her share of the profits, as a _beggar_ asking for ten
dollars to buy a bonnet or a dress. (Applause from the ladies.)
Nothing is more contemptible than this slavery to the husband on
the question of money. (Loud applause.) Give the sex votes and
men will have more respect for women than to treat them as
children or as dolls. (Applause.) The ten-year old boy will say
to his women relatives, "Oh you don't know anything, you are only
a woman," and when man wishes to insult his fellow man, he calls
him a woman--and if the insult is intended to be more severe, he
will speak of a cabinet statesman even as an "old woman." The
General and Mr. Kalloch are afraid that women will be corrupted
by going to the polls, yet they as lawyers have no hesitation in
bringing a young and beautiful girl into court where a curiosity
seeking audience are staring at her; where the judge makes her
unveil her face, and the jury watch every feature, turning an
honest blush into guilt. (Applause.)

Woman first, and negro last, is my programme; yet I am willing
that intelligence should be the test, although some men have more
brains in their hands than others in their heads. (Laughter.)
Emmert's Resolution, introduced into your Legislature last year,
disfranchising, after July 4, 1870, all of age who can not read
the American Constitution, the State Constitution, and the Bible,
in the language in which he was educated, (applause) expresses my
views.

Again you alluded to the Foreign Emissary--who had no interest in
Kansas. Do you mean me, General? General Blunt--No, sir. Thank
you. The other four Foreign Emissaries are women, noble,
self-sacrificing women, bold, never-tiring, unblemished
reputation; women who have left their pleasant Eastern homes for
a grand idea, (loud applause,) and to them and them alone is due
the credit of carrying Kansas for woman suffrage. General
Blunt--It won't carry. Train--Were I a betting man I would wager
ten thousand dollars that Kansas will give 5,000 majority for
women. (Loud cheers from Blunt's own audience of anti-women men.)
As an advertisement to this beautiful State, it is worth untold
millions.

Kansas will win the world's applause,
As the sole champion of woman's cause.
So light the bonfires! Have the flags unfurled,
To the Banner State of all the World!
(Loud cheers.)

No, General, these women are no foreign emissaries. They came
expecting support. They thought the republicans honest. They
forgot that the democrats alone were their friends. (Applause.)
They forgot that it was the Republican party that publicly
insulted them in Congress. That it was Charles Sumner who wished
to insert the word "male" in the amendment of the Federal
Constitution two years ago, when the old Constitution, by having
neither male nor female, had left it an open question. No, Mrs.
Cady Stanton, Miss Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Lucy Stone, and Miss
Olympia Brown are the "foreign emissaries" that will alone have
the credit of emancipating women in Kansas. Your trimming
politicians left them in the lurch. Not one of you was honest.
(Applause.) Even those who assumed to be their friends by saying
nothing on the woman, and everything on the negro, are worse than
you and Kalloch. (Applause.) Mr. Kalloch and Leggett and Sears
have helped the woman's cause by opposing it, (cheers,) while the
milk-and-water republican committee and speakers and press have
damaged woman by their sneaking, cowardly way of advocacy.
(That's so.)

Mr. TRAIN at Leavenworth, the day before the election: "A great
empire, and little minds go ill together," said Lord Bacon. "The
sober second thought of the people," said Van Buren, "is never
wrong, and always efficient." To-morrow it will be shown by
voting for our mother and our sister. (Loud applause.) Never
before were so many rats fleeing from a sinking ship. (Laughter.)
A few staunch men will receive their reward. Falsehood passes
away. Truth is eternal. (Applause.) The woman suffrage
association wants a few thousand dollars to pay off this
expensive canvass. Miss Anthony has distributed two thousand
pounds weight of tracts and pamphlets. (Applause.) Mrs. Stanton,
Miss Olympia Brown and Mrs. Lucy Stone, have been for months in
all parts of the State. Kansas has furnished no part of the fund
which makes her to-morrow the envy of the world. (Cheers.) For
the benefit of the Association I have promised on my return from
Omaha to make seven speeches in the largest cities; the entire
proceeds to be given to this grand cause--I paying my own
expenses as in this campaign. (Loud cheers for Train.) We
commence at St. Louis about the 20th, thence to Chicago,
Cleveland, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Boston and New York.
(Cheers.) The burden of my thought will be the future of America;
my mission, with the aid of women, to reconstruct the country
and save the nation. (Cheers.) To-morrow our amendment will pass
with a startling majority. The other two will be lost.
(Applause.) The negro can wait and go to school. And as all are
now loyal, the war over, and no rebels exist, no American in this
land must be marked by the stain of attainder or impeachment.
(Cheers.) No so-called rebel must be disfranchised. I represent
the people, and they speak to-morrow in Kansas, emancipating
woman, (loud cheers), and declaring that no Hungary, no Poland,
no Venice, no Ireland--crushed and disheartened--shall exist in
New America. (Loud cheers.)

But Kansas being republican by a large majority, there was no chance
of victory. For although the women were supported by some of the best
men in the State, such as Gov. Crawford, Ex-Gov. Robinson, United
States Senators Pomeroy and Ross, and a few of the ablest editors, the
opposition was too strong to be conquered. With both parties, the
press, the pulpit and faithless liberals as opponents, the hopes of
the advocates of woman suffrage began to falter before the election.

The action of the Michigan Commission, in refusing to submit a similar
amendment to her people, and the adverse report of Mr. Greeley in the
Constitutional Convention of New York, had also their depressing
influence. Nevertheless, when election day came, the vote was nearly
equal for both propositions. With all the enginery of the controlling
party negro suffrage had a little over 10,000 votes, while woman
suffrage without press or party, friends or politicians, had 9,000 and
some over. And this vote for woman's enfranchisement represented the
best elements in the State, men of character and conscience, who
believed in social order and good government.

When Eastern Republicans learned that the action of their party in
Kansas was doing more damage than the question of woman to the negro,
since the pioneers, who knew how bravely the women had stood by their
side amid all dangers, were saying, "if our women can not vote, the
negro shall not;" they began to take in the situation, and a month
before the election issued the following appeal, signed by some of the
most influential men of the nation. It was published in the New York
_Tribune_ October 1st, and copied by most of the papers throughout the
State of Kansas:

_To the Voters of the United States_:

In this hour of national reconstruction we appeal to good men of
all parties, to Conventions for amending State Constitutions, to
the Legislature of every State, and to the Congress of the United
States, to apply the principles of the Declaration of
Independence to women; "Governments derive their just powers from
the consent of the governed." The only form of consent
recognized under a Republic is suffrage. Mere tacit acquiescence
is not consent; if it were, every despotism might claim that its
power is justly held. Suffrage is the right of every adult
citizen, irrespective of sex or color. Women are governed,
therefore they are rightly entitled to vote.

The problem of American statesmanship is how to incorporate in
our institutions a guarantee of the rights of every individual.
The solution is easy. Base government on the consent of the
governed, and each class will protect itself.[83]

But the appeal was too late, the mischief done was irreparable. The
action of the Republican party had created a hostile feeling between
the women and the colored people. The men of Kansas in their speeches
would say, "What would be to us the comparative advantage of the
amendments? If negro suffrage passes, we will be flooded with
ignorant, impoverished blacks from every State of the Union. If woman
suffrage passes, we invite to our borders people of character and
position, of wealth and education, the very element Kansas needs
to-day. Who can hesitate to decide, when the question lies between
educated women and ignorant negroes?" Such appeals as these were made
by men of Kansas to hundreds of audiences. On this appeal the New York
_Tribune_ said editorially:

KANSAS--WOMAN AS A VOTER.--We publish herewith an appeal, most
influentially signed, to the voters of Kansas, urging them to
support the pending Constitutional Amendment whereby the Right of
Suffrage is extended to Women under like conditions with men. The
gravity combined with the comparative novelty of the proposition
should secure it the most candid and thoughtful consideration.

We hold fast to the cardinal doctrine of our fathers' Declaration
of Independence--that "governments derive their just powers from
the consent of the governed." If, therefore, the women of Kansas,
or of any other State, desire, as a class, to be invested with
the Right of Suffrage, we hold it their clear right to be. We do
not hold, and can not admit, that a small minority of the sex,
however earnest and able, have any such right.

It is plain that the experiment of Female Suffrage is to be
tried; and, while we regard it with distrust, we are quite
willing to see it pioneered by Kansas. She is a young State, and
has a memorable history, wherein her women have borne an
honorable part. She is preponderantly agricultural, with but one
city of any size, and very few of her women are other than pure
and intelligent. They have already been authorized to vote on the
question of liquor license, and in the choice of school
officers, and, we are assured, with decidedly good results. If,
then, a majority of them really desire to vote, we, if we lived
in Kansas, should vote to give them the opportunity.

Upon a full and fair trial, we believe they would conclude that
the right of suffrage for woman was, on the whole, rather a
plague than a profit, and vote to resign it into the hands of
their husbands and fathers. We think so, because we now so seldom
find women plowing, or teaming, or mowing (with machines), though
there is no other obstacle to their so doing than their own sense
of fitness, and though some women, under peculiar circumstances,
laudably do all these things. We decidedly object to having ten
women in every hundred compel the other ninety to vote, or allow
the ten to carry elections against the judgment of the ninety;
but, if the great body of the women of Kansas wish to vote, we
counsel the men to accord them the opportunity. Should the
experiment work as we apprehend, they will soon be glad to give
it up.

Whereupon, the Atchison _Daily Champion_, John A. Martin, editor,
retorted:

TAKE IT YOURSELVES.--Thirty-one gentlemen, all but six of whom
live in States that have utterly refused to have anything to do
with the issue of "female suffrage," unite in an address, to
apply, as they say, the "principles of the Declaration of
Independence to women;" and make a specious, flimsy, and
ridiculous little argument in favor of their appeal.

It is a pity that comments in the main so sensible, should be
marred by a few statements as ridiculous as is the trashy address
to which the article refers. It is the old cry that "female
suffrage," a novel proposition, although justly regarded with
distrust and suspicion by all right-thinking people; although not
demanded by even a considerable minority of the women themselves;
and although an "experiment" which may rudely disturb the best
elements of our society and civilization, may be tried in Kansas!
"We regard it with distrust," says the _Tribune_, "but are quite
willing to see it tried in Kansas." "Upon a full and fair trial,"
it continues, "we believe they (the women) would conclude that
the right of suffrage for women was, on the whole, rather a
plague than a profit, and vote to resign it into the hands of
their husbands and fathers." But it "decidedly objects to having
ten women in every hundred compel the other ninety to vote, or to
allow the ten to carry elections against the judgment of ninety."
These expressions of grave doubt as to the expediency of "female
suffrage," together with the fact that the editor of the
_Tribune_, in his report as chairman of the Suffrage Committee in
the New York Constitutional Convention, declared this new hobby
"an innovation revolutionary and sweeping, openly at war with a
distribution of duties and functions between the sexes as
venerable and pervading as government itself," make the
_Tribune's_ recommendation that we shall "try the experiment in
Kansas" rather amusing as well as impudent.

There is not a man nor a woman endowed with ordinary common sense
who does not know that Kansas is the last State that should be
asked to try this dangerous and doubtful experiment. Our society
is just forming, our institutions are crude. Ever since the
organization of the Territory, we have lived a life of wild
excitement, plunging from one trouble into another so fast that
we have never had a breathing-spell, and we need, more than any
other people on the globe, immunity from disturbing experiments
on novel questions of doubtful expediency. We can not afford to
risk our future prosperity and happiness in making an innovation
so questionable. We want peace, and must have it. Let
Massachusetts or New York, or some older State, therefore, try
this nauseating dose. If it does not kill them, or if it proves
healthful and beneficial, we guarantee that Kansas will not be
long in swallowing it. But the stomach of our State, if we may be
permitted to use the expression, is, as yet, too tender and
febrific to allow such a fearful deglutition.

* * * * *

REMINISCENCES BY HELEN EKIN STARRETT.

After the first Constitutional Convention in which Mrs. C. I. H.
Nichols did such valuable service for the cause of woman, the
question of woman suffrage in some shape or other was introduced
into every succeeding Legislature. In January, 1867, the
Legislature met at Topeka. Immediately upon the organization of
the Senate on the 9th, Hon. B. F. Simpson of Miami Co.,
introduced an amendment to strike the word "white" from the
suffrage clause of the State Constitution. Hon. S. N. Wood,
Senator from Chase Co., within five minutes introduced a
resolution to strike the word "male" from the same clause. This
resolution was made the special order for Thursday the 10th, when
it passed the Senate by a vote of nineteen to five. Of the five
noes, four were Republicans, the other a Democrat. Thus Mr. Wood,
although he started second, got ahead in the passing of his
resolution. The resolution of Hon. B. F. Simpson was referred to
the committee of the whole. When it came up Hon. S. N. Wood moved
to amend by also striking out the word "male," and in this shape
it passed.

The House amended by striking out the amendment of Mr. Wood. The
Senate, however, insisted on its re-instatement; the Democrats
and a majority of the Republicans standing by Mr. Wood. The fight
continued for over a month. The question came up in all stages
and shapes from the House; but Mr. Wood was always ready for them
with his woman suffrage amendment, and the Senate stood by him.
The friends of negro suffrage tried hard to get him to yield and
let their resolution through, but he was firm in his refusal,
saying he advocated both, "but if we can have but one, let the
negro wait." On the 12th day of February Hon. W. W. Updegraff, a
member of the House and an ardent supporter of both woman and
negro suffrage, went to Mr. Wood and urged a compromise. After a
long discussion two separate resolutions were prepared by Mr.
Wood, one for woman suffrage, the other for negro suffrage, and
these Mr. Updegraff introduced into the House the same day. The
next day the vote on the woman suffrage resolution came up and
stood fifty-two to twenty-five. Not being a two-thirds vote, the
resolution was lost.

On the 14th the negro suffrage resolution came up and passed by a
vote of sixty-one to fourteen. The vote on woman suffrage was
then re-considered, and after an assurance from Mr. Updegraff
that negro suffrage could be secured in no other way, it passed
by a vote of sixty-two to nineteen, getting one more vote than
negro suffrage. These resolutions were promptly reported to the
Senate, and on motion of S. N. Wood, the woman suffrage
resolution was passed by over a two-thirds vote. The negro
suffrage resolution was amended, and after a bitter fight was
passed. Thus these separate resolutions were both submitted to a
vote of the people. The Legislature adjourned about the 12th of
March. Hon. S. N. Wood immediately prepared a notice of a meeting
to be held in Topeka on the 2d of April to organize a canvass for
impartial suffrage without regard to sex or color. This was
published in the _State Record_ with the statement that it was by
the request of Hon. S. N. Wood; it was copied by all the papers
of the State. Mr. Wood, ex-Governor Robinson, and others, wrote
to many prominent advocates East asking them to be present at the
Topeka meeting. It was soon known that Lucy Stone and Henry B.
Blackwell would be there, and a very great and general interest
was aroused on the question.

April 2d at length arrived, and although it was a season of
terrible mud and rain, and there were no railroads, a very large
audience assembled. Hon. S. N. Wood rode eighty miles on
horseback to attend the meeting. Lucy Stone and Mr. Blackwell
were present. A permanent organization was effected, with
Governor S. J. Crawford as President; Lieutenant-Governor Green,
Vice-President; Rev. Lewis Bodwell and Miss Mary Paty, Recording
Secretaries; and S. N. Wood, Corresponding Secretary. A letter
was at once prepared and addressed to all the prominent men in
the State, asking them to aid in the canvass. Letters in reply
poured in from the gentlemen addressed, giving assurance of
sympathy and declaring themselves in favor of the movement. A
thorough canvass of the State was at once inaugurated. Lucy Stone
was invited and lectured in Lawrence, Leavenworth, Topeka, and
Atchison, to crowded houses, giving the proceeds to the cause.

Hon. S. N. Wood gave his whole time to the canvass, speaking with
Lucy Stone and Mr. Blackwell in nearly all the towns in the
western and northern part of the State. Mrs. Stone and Mr.
Blackwell visited nearly every organized county. As we have said
before, there were no railroads, and it was at an immense expense
of bodily fatigue that they accomplished their journeys, often in
the rudest conveyances and exposed to the raw, blustering winds
of a Kansas spring. Their meetings, however, were "ovations." Men
and women everywhere were completely won by the gentle,
persuasive, earnest addresses of Lucy Stone, while their newly
aroused interest was informed and strengthened by the logical
arguments and irresistible facts of Mr. Blackwell.

The religious denominations in Kansas from the first gave their
countenance to the movement, and clergymen of all denominations
were found speaking in its favor. At Olathe, the Old School
Presbytery was in session at the time of Lucy Stone's meeting
there. It was an unheard-of occurrence that the body adjourned
its evening session to allow her to occupy the church. All the
members of the Presbytery who heard her were enthusiastic in her
praise. We remember a meeting in Topeka at which the Rev. Dr.
Ekin,[84] then pastor of the Old School Presbyterian church, very
effectively summed up in a public address all the arguments of
the opposition by relating the story of the Canadian Indian who,
when told of the greatness of England, and also that it was
governed by a queen, a woman, turned away with an incredulous
expression of contempt, exclaiming, "Ugh! Squaw!" The effect upon
the audience was tremendous. At the same time letters of cheer
and encouragement were pouring in from prominent workers all over
the country. John Stuart Mill, of England, wrote to Hon. S. N.
Wood full of hope and interest for the success of the movement:

BLACKHEATH PARK, KENT, ENGLAND, _June 2, 1867_.

DEAR SIR: Being one who takes as deep and as continuous an
interest in the political, moral, and social progress of the
United States as if he were himself an American citizen, I hope I
shall not be intrusive if I express to you as the executive organ
of the Impartial Suffrage Association, the deep joy I felt on
learning that both branches of the Legislature of Kansas had, by
large majorities, proposed for the approval of your citizens an
amendment to your constitution, abolishing the unjust political
privileges of sex at one and the same stroke with the kindred
privilege of color. We are accustomed to see Kansas foremost in
the struggle for the equal claims of all human beings to freedom
and citizenship. I shall never forget with what profound interest
I and others who felt with me watched every incident of the
preliminary civil war in which your noble State, then only a
Territory, preceded the great nation of which it is a part, in
shedding its blood to arrest the extension of slavery.

Kansas was the herald and protagonist of the memorable contest,
which at the cost of so many heroic lives, has admitted the
African race to the blessings of freedom and education, and she
is now taking the same advanced position in the peaceful but
equally important contest which, by relieving half the human race
from artificial disabilities belonging to the ideas of a past
age, will give a new impulse and improved character to the career
of social and moral progress now opening for mankind. If your
citizens, next November, give effect to the enlightened views of
your Legislature, history will remember that one of the youngest
States in the civilized world has been the first to adopt a
measure of liberation destined to extend all over the earth, and
to be looked back to (as is my fixed conviction) as one of the
most fertile in beneficial consequences of all the improvements
yet effected in human affairs. I am, sir, with the warmest wishes
for the prosperity of Kansas,

Yours very truly, J. STUART MILL.

To S. N. Wood, Topeka, Kansas, U. S. A.

Rev. Olympia Brown came to Kansas the 1st of July, and made an
effective and extensive canvass of the State, often holding three
meetings a day. Other speakers, both from home and abroad, were
vigorously engaged in the work, and the friends of the movement
believed, not without cause, that Kansas would be the first State
to grant suffrage to women. Had the election been held in May
while the tide of public opinion ran so high in their favor,
there is little doubt that both resolutions would have been
carried unanimously. To explain the causes that led to the defeat
of both propositions, I quote from a letter of Hon. S. N. Wood,
in reply to questions addressed him as to certain facts of the
campaign. He writes: "About May 2d, C. V. Eskridge of Emporia
wrote a very scurrilous article against woman suffrage. It filled
three columns of _The News_. In it he denounced the lady
speakers in the most abusive manner, ridiculing them with
insulting epithets. About the middle of May F. H. Drenning,
Chairman of the Republican State Committee, called a meeting of
that committee to make arrangements to canvass the State for
negro suffrage. The committee met and published an address in
favor of manhood suffrage, and said nothing as to woman suffrage.
Shortly afterwards the same committee summoned C. V. Eskridge, T.
C. Sears, P. B. Plumb, I. D. Snoddy, B. F. Simpson, J. B. Scott,
H. N. Bent, Jas. G. Blunt, A. Akin, and G. W. Crawford--all
opposed to woman suffrage--to make a canvass for negro suffrage.
They were instructed that "they would be allowed to express their
own sentiments on other questions." This meant that these men
would favor negro suffrage, but would oppose woman suffrage. This
at once antagonized the two questions, and we all felt that the
death blow had been struck at both."

Early in September, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony
came to the State to assist in the canvass; and certainly if
indefatigable labor and eloquent addresses could have repaired
the mischief done by the State Republican Committee, the cause
would yet have triumphed. At all places where they spoke they had
crowded houses, and everywhere made the warmest friends by their
truly admirable personal qualities.[85] The amount of work
performed by these two ladies was immense. Mrs. Stanton, escorted
by Ex-Gov. Robinson spoke in nearly every county of the State.
Miss Anthony remained at Lawrence working indefatigably in
planning and advertising meetings, distributing tracts, sending
posters to different places, and attending to all the minutiæ and
drudgery of an extensive campaign. Often have I regarded with
admiration the self-sacrificing spirit with which she arranged
matters for others, did the hard and disagreeable work, and then
saw others carry off the honor and glory, without once seeming to
think of her services or the recognition due them.[86]

In a letter, summing up the campaign, Hon. S. N. Wood said, "On
the 25th of September, an address was published signed by over
forty men, the most prominent in the State; such men as Senator
Pomeroy, Senator Ross, Gov. Crawford, Lt. Gov. Green, Ex-Gov.
Robinson, and others, in favor of woman suffrage, but the cause
of both began to lag. Sears, Eskridge, Kalloch, Plumb, Simpson,
Scott, Bent, and others, made a very bitter campaign against
woman suffrage. About the middle of October George Francis Train
commenced a canvass of the State for woman suffrage and the
questions became more and more antagonized. The last few days a
regular Kilkenny fight was carried on." I will here take occasion
to record that several of the gentlemen who then canvassed the
State against woman suffrage have since announced a
reconsideration of their views; some of them have even stated
that were the question to come up again they would publicly
advocate it.

An address was prepared by the Woman's Impartial Suffrage
Association of Lawrence[87] which was widely circulated and
copied even in England. This address was signed by a large number
of the prominent ladies of Lawrence. Miss Anthony often said that
Lawrence was the headquarters of the movement. Every clergyman,
every judge, both the papers and a large proportion of the
prominent citizens were in favor of it. And with our State
University located here with over three hundred students, one
half of whom are ladies, we still claim Lawrence as the
headquarters of the friends of woman suffrage.

The work of George Francis Train has been much and variously
commented upon. Certainly when he was in Kansas he was at the
height of his prosperity and popularity, and in appearance,
manners and conversation, was a perfect, though somewhat unique
specimen of a courtly, elegant gentleman. He was full of
enthusiasm and confident he would be the next President. He drew
immense and enthusiastic audiences everywhere, and was a special
favorite with the laboring classes on account of the reforms he
promised to bring about when he should be President. Well do I
remember one poor woman, a frantic advocate of woman suffrage,
who button-holed everybody who spoke a word against Train to beg
them to desist; assuring them "that he was the special instrument
of Providence to gain for us the Irish vote."

Both propositions got about 10,000 votes, and both were defeated.
After the canvass the excitement died away and the Suffrage
Associations fell through, but the seed sown has silently taken
root and sprung up everywhere. Or rather, the truths then spoken,
and the arguments presented, sinking into the minds and hearts of
the men and women who heard them, have been like leaven, slowly
but surely operating until it seems to many that nearly the whole
public sentiment of Kansas is therewith leavened. A most liberal
sentiment prevails everywhere toward women. Many are engaged in
lucrative occupations. In several counties ladies have been
elected superintendents of public schools. In Coffey County, the
election of Mary P. Wright, was contested on the ground that by
the Constitution a woman was ineligible to the office. The case
was decided by the Supreme Court in her favor. By our laws women
vote on all school questions and avail themselves very
extensively of the privilege. Our property laws are conceded to
be the most just to women of any State in the Union. It is
believed by many that were the question of woman suffrage again
submitted to the people it would be carried by an overwhelming
majority.

The following letter from Susan E. Wattles, the widow of the pioneer,
Augustus Wattles, shows woman's interest in the great struggle to make
Kansas the banner State of universal freedom and franchise.

MOUND CITY, _December 30, 1881_.

MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Here, as in New York, the first in the
woman suffrage cause were those who had been the most earnest
workers for freedom. They had come to Kansas to prevent its being
made a slave State. The most the women could do was to bear their
privations patiently, such as living in a tent in a log cabin,
without any floor all winter, or in a cabin ten feet square, and
cooking out of doors by the side of a log, giving up their beds
to the sick, and being ready, night or day, to feed the men who
were running for their lives. Then there was the ever present
fear that their husbands would be shot. The most obnoxious had a
price set upon their heads. A few years ago a man said: "I could
have got $1,000 once for shooting Wattles, and I wish now I had
done it." When in Ohio, our house was often the temporary home of
the hunted slave; but in Kansas it was the _white_ man who ran
from our door to the woods because he saw strangers coming.

After the question of a free State seemed settled, we who had
thought and talked on woman's rights before we came to Kansas,
concluded that now was the woman's hour. We determined to strive
to obtain Constitutional rights, as they would be more secure
than Legislative enactments. On the 13th of February, 1858, we
organized the Moneka Woman's Rights Society. There were only
twelve of us, but we went to work circulating petitions and
writing to every one in the Territory whom we thought would aid
us. Our number was afterwards increased to forty; fourteen of
them were men. We sent petitions to Territorial Legislatures,
Constitutional Conventions, State Legislatures, and Congress.
Many of the leading men were advocates of women's rights.
Governor Robinson, S. N. Wood, and Erastus Heath, with their
wives, were constant and efficient workers. Mrs. Robinson wrote a
book on "Life in Kansas." "Allibone's Dictionary of Authors"
says: "Mrs. Robinson is an accomplished lady, the wife of
Governor Robinson. She possessed the knowledge of events and
literary skill necessary to produce an interesting and
trustworthy book, and one which will continue to have a permanent
value. The women of Kansas suffered more than the men, and were
not less heroic. Their names are not known; they were not elected
to office; they had none of the exciting delights of an active
out-door life on these attractive prairies; they endured in
silence; they took care of the home, of the sick. If 'home they
brought her warrior dead, she nor swooned nor uttered sigh.' It
is fortunate that a few of these truest heroes have left a
printed record of pioneer life in Kansas."

The last vigorous effort we made in circulating petitions was
when Congress was about extending to the colored men the right to
vote. Many signed then for the first time. One woman said, "I
know my husband does not believe in women voting, but he hates
the negroes, and would not want them placed over me." I saw in
_The Liberator_ that a bequest to the woman's rights cause had
been made by a gentleman in Boston, and I asked Wendell Phillips
if we could have some of it in Kansas. He directed me to Susan B.
Anthony, and you gave us $100. This small sum we divided between
two lecturers, and paying for tracts. John O. Wattles lectured
and distributed tracts in Southern Kansas. We were greatly
rejoiced when we found, by corresponding with Mrs. Nichols, that
she intended to work for our cause whether she had any
compensation or not. Kansas women can never be half thankful
enough for what she did for them. There has never been a time
since, when the same amount of effort would have accomplished as
much; and the little money we gave her could scarcely have paid
her stage fare.

When the question was submitted in 1867, and the men were to
decide whether women should be allowed to vote, we felt very
anxious about the result. We strongly desired to make Kansas the
banner State for Freedom. We did all we could to secure it, and
some of the best speakers from the East came to our aid. Their
speeches were excellent, and were listened to by large audiences,
who seemed to believe what they heard; but when voting day came,
they voted according to their prejudices, and our cause was
defeated. My work has been very limited. I have only been able to
talk and circulate tracts and papers. I took _The Una_, _The
Lily_, _The Sybil_, _The Pittsburg Visitor_, _The Revolution_,
_Woman's Journal_, _Ballot Box_, and _National Citizen_; got all
the subscribers I could, and scattered them far and near. When I
gave away _The Revolution_, my husband said, "Wife, that is a
very talented paper; I should think you would preserve that." I
replied: "They will continue to come until our cause is won, and
I must make them do all the good they can." I am delighted with
the "Suffrage History." I do not think you can find material to
make the second volume as interesting. I knew of most of the
incidents as they transpired, yet they are full of interest and
significance to me now. My book is now lent where I think it will
be highly appreciated.

Mrs. R. S. Tenney, M.D., one of the most earnest and efficient women
of Lawrence, adds another testimony to the spirit of that historic
canvass:

INDEPENDENCE, KANSAS, _Nov. 23, 1881_.

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--So you and Mrs. Stanton are about to burn at
the stake the injustice of the men and measures of Kansas in
1867, and would like me to help pile on the fagots, which I will
most gladly do, believing it right that the wrong and wickedness
of every clime and nation should be stabbed or burned till they
are entirely dead. While the opponents of woman suffrage in 1867
thought they had achieved a great victory, it was only an
overwhelming defeat for a future day, a day when Col. John A.
Martin, Judge T. C. Sears, Col. D. W. Houston, G. H. Hoyt, then
Attorney-General, Col. J. D. Snoddy, Benj. F. Simpson, Hon. P. B.
Plumb, Jacob Stottler, Rev. S. E. McBurney, of the Methodist
church, and Rev. I. S. Kalloch, of the Baptist, and a host of
others I might mention, will be ashamed of the position which
they occupied, and the doctrines they advocated.

Although the question of woman suffrage was submitted to the
people by a Republican Legislature, prominent Republicans refused
to recognize it as a party measure, and the consideration the
Legislature bestowed upon the intelligent wives and mothers of
the young commonwealth, was evidenced by associating them in a
bill with ex-slaves and traitors. Rev. Richard Cordley said that
"if the women had waited till the negroes were enfranchised, he
would have worked for their cause most heartily." As though women
were the arbiters of their own fate; had convened in legislative
assembly and submitted their own case to the people. Revs.
McBurney and Kalloch, C. V. Eskridge and Judge Sears were in the
field working with might and main against woman suffrage; while
Gov. Crawford was President of the Impartial Suffrage Association
of the State, and Judge Wood, Secretary. Such old time radicals
as Hon. Chas. Robinson, the first Free State Governor of Kansas,
worked hard and well. Prof. John Horner, Senator Ross, Rev. Wm.
Starrett, Mr. J. M. Chase, and many others also did good work.
Hon. Sidney Clark left his post in the House of Representatives
at Washington, and canvassed the State for a re-election, having
it in his power to say many things and do much good for the cause
of woman, but he did it not. He returned to his own city,
Lawrence, to make his last great speech on the eve of election,
to find to his great consternation, that the only hall had been
engaged by the President of the Woman Suffrage Association of the
city for a meeting of their party on that eve. In vain did the
honorable gentleman and his friends strive to get possession of
that hall. It was paid for and booked to R. S. Tenney. Poor
Sidney then sought permission to address their woman suffrage
audience, but being refused, he was obliged to betake himself to
a dry-goods box in the street, where he tried to interest the
rabble, while Col. Horner, Rev. Mr. Starrett, and others, had a
fine, large audience in the hall.

It is to be greatly regretted that the Republican party that had
accomplished such great good when the nation was in its hour of
trouble, should have allowed such discord to enter its ranks and
thereby defeat both woman and negro suffrage. But Kansans have
made great progress since 1867, and many who voted against the
proposition then would to-day vote and work heartily for it, and
doubtless, if submitted again it would be carried by a large
majority. A recent conversation with Ex-Gov. Potter, who voted
against it, confirms this opinion, and Senator Plumb is
softening. A noticeable feature of the meetings of the political
campaign of 1880, was the presence of large numbers of women. On
the eve of the election, at a full meeting in the largest hall in
this place, a woman surprised the people by asking the chairman's
permission to speak, and amid rounds of applause, poured forth
such sentiments as compelled quite a number of prominent
Republican men to declare themselves in favor of woman suffrage,
an issue which was voluntarily recommended by many speakers in
both Democratic and Greenback meetings. Gov. J. P. St. John is
now making himself heard in his temperance speeches in favor of
woman suffrage. The recent passage of the Prohibitory Amendment
is significant that our people are awake and ready to welcome the
greatest good to the greatest number, which means equal rights to
all at an early day.

R. S. TENNEY.

MARCH 14, 1882.

DEAR FRIENDS:--God bless the women that worked for woman's
suffrage in Kansas! Foremost among those who were residents of
the State was Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols, of Wyandotte, and to her,
more than all other Kansas women, was due the influence which
gave woman even the small recognition in the constitution under
which the State was admitted, above what is found in other State
constitutions of the nation; for this Mrs. Nichols labored with
the zeal and heroism born of a great noble heart, whose every
pulsation is for humanity in the elevation of woman to her proper
political as well as social position. It was largely through her
instrumentality that such God-ordained women as Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Olympia Brown, came to
Kansas as eloquent missionaries in the great work of attempting
to give the women of this State the legal right to vote with
their husbands, sons and brothers. And though, through the
opposition of unwise and prejudiced men, the desired majority for
woman's suffrage was not then obtained; the seed sown by these
self-sacrificing angels of humanity will yet bring forth most
glorious results. The efforts of the Hutchinson troupe of sweet
singers in this direction will not be forgotten. John, the
patriarch, with his bright son Henry and beautiful daughter
Viola, made a musical trio whose soul-stirring songs were only
excelled in purity of thought and delightful harmony of
execution, by their intense, whole-hearted desire that the cause
for which they prayed and sang with so much earnestness might be
crowned with success. Mr. Henry B. Blackwell, Lucy Stone's
husband, was indefatigable in his efforts, working early and late
for the good cause. Of the women of the State of Kansas who were
active, a large number of names might be given.[88] But Kansas
best remembers and most honors in the remembrance, those women
who left their comfortable and elegant homes on the Atlantic
slope, and with no hope of reward save the consciousness of
having worked for God and humanity, traveled over the then wild
prairies of Kansas in all sorts of rude vehicles, talking in
groves, school-houses, and cabins, eating and sleeping as
pioneers sleep and eat, for weeks and months, making the
beautiful rolling prairies, filled with fertile valleys and
flowery knolls, vocal with their eloquent, earnest appeals in
behalf of woman's rights and against woman's wrongs; and through
the vote carried for woman's wrongs the fervid, eloquent words
then uttered by woman's tongue, welling up as they did from noble
hearts heated to redness in the furnace of love for human
justice, left an influence which has steadily and surely
increased, and will thus continue until Kansas shall give woman
equal rights and privileges with man.

Sincerely yours, J. P. ROOT.

RACINE, WISCONSIN, _March 16, 1882_.

DEAR SUSAN:--You ask me to write an account of my experiences in
Kansas; with unquestioning obedience I attempt what you require,
although many records and documents are wanting which should have
been kept, had I anticipated your command. But when in Kansas, I
no more thought of appearing in history, than the butterfly
flitting from flower to flower thinks of being dried and put in a
museum.

I have never kept a diary, have never counted the number of miles
I have traveled, the meals eaten, calls made, pages written, or
words spoken. I have tried to do the pressing duty of each hour,
leaving the results and records to take care of themselves. You
will not, therefore, be surprised that I am unable to furnish
even the "round unvarnished tale," but must be content with
glimpses as memory, after the lapse of fourteen years, supplies
them.

I am glad to have an opportunity, through your valuable history,
of paying my respects to the good people whom I met in Kansas,
few of whom I shall ever see again in this life, but whose
earnest words go with me every day, a constant source of
encouragement and of strength. It would be but justice to record
the names of all those who gave generous aid and sympathy in the
woman suffrage campaign of '67; brave pioneers they were, who had
learned loyalty to principle through many bitter experiences;
some of them had been friends and companions of brave old John
Brown, and, trained in the great Anti-Slavery struggle, filled
with the love of liberty, they knew how to stand for the right.
But their names are recorded on high in letters of living light,
and they little need our poor faltering testimony. "Their reward
is with them, and their reward is sure." To-day, looking back
over the years, Kansas is to me a memory of grand, rolling
prairies stretching far away; of fertile fields; of beautiful
osage orange hedges; of hospitable homes; of brave and earnest
women; kind and true men; and of some of the most dishonest
politicians the world has ever seen.

I went to Kansas, through an arrangement made by Lucy Stone with
leaders of the Republican party there, whereby they were to
furnish comfortable conveyance over the State, with a lady as
traveling companion, and also to arrange and preside over all the
meetings; these were to be Republican meetings in which it was
thought best that a woman should present the claims of the woman
suffrage amendment, which had been submitted to the vote of the
men of the State by a strongly Republican Legislature.

The Kansas Republicans so far complied with their part of this
arrangement that on my arrival, the 1st of July, I found
appointments made and thoroughly advertised for the whole of July
and August; two lectures for every week day, and a preaching
service for every Sunday. As it proved, these appointments were
at great distances from each other, often requiring a journey of
twenty, thirty, forty, and even fifty miles across a country
scarcely settled at all, to reach some little village where there
would be a school-house or some public building in which a
meeting could be held. All were eager to hear, and the entire
settlement would attend the lecture, thus giving an astonishingly
large audience in proportion to the size of the place.

The country was then new and public conveyances few, and the
Republicans having failed to furnish the stipulated carriage and
escort, the speaker was dependent almost entirely upon the people
in each little place for the means to pursue the journey. Many a
time some kind man, with a genuine chivalry worthy of the days of
knighthood, has left his half-mown field or his sorghum boiling
in the kettle, to escort the woman suffrage advocate to the next
appointment; and although the road often seemed long and perilous
and many an hour was spent in what appeared a hopeless endeavor
to find our way over the almost trackless prairie, yet somehow we
always came to the right place at last; and I scarcely recollect
an instance of failure to meet an appointment from July 1st to
Nov. 5th.

In those four months I traveled over the greater part of Kansas,
held two meetings every day, and the latter part of the time
three meetings every day, making in all between two and three
hundred speeches, averaging an hour in length; a fact that tends
to show that women can endure talk and travel at least, as well
as men; especially when we recollect how the Hon. Sidney Clark,
then candidate for Congress, canvassed, in the beautiful autumn
weather, a small portion of the State which I had traveled over
amid the burning heat of July and August; he spoke once a day
instead of twice; he rested on Sundays; he had no anxiety about
the means of travel, his conveyance being furnished at hand; he
was supported by a large constituency, and expected to be
rewarded by office and honors; yet with all these advantages, he
broke down in health and was obliged to give up a part of his
appointments, and the Republican papers said: "It was not
strange, as no human being could endure without loss of health
such constant speaking, with such long and tedious journeys as
Mr. Clark had undertaken."

It is deemed, in certain quarters, wicked heresy to complain of
or criticise the Republican party, that has done so much in
freeing the slaves and in bringing the country victoriously
through the war of the rebellion; but if there is to be any truth
in history we must set it down, to stand forever a lasting
disgrace to the party that in 1867, in Kansas, its leaders
selfishly and meanly defeated the woman suffrage amendment.

As the time for the election drew nigh, those political leaders
who had been relied upon as friends of the cause were silent,
others were active in their opposition. The Central Committee
issued a circular for the purpose of preventing loyal Republicans
from voting for woman suffrage; not content with this, the
notorious I. S. Kalloch, and others of the same stripe, were sent
out under the auspices of the Republican party to blackguard and
abuse the advocates of woman's cause while professedly speaking
upon "manhood suffrage." And Charles Langston, the negro orator,
added his mite of bitter words to make the path a little harder
for women, who had spent years in pleading the cause of the
colored man.

And yet, with all the obstacles which the dominant party could
throw in our way; without organization, without money, without
political rewards to offer, without any of the means by which
elections are usually carried, we gained one-third of all the
votes cast! Surely it was a great triumph of principle; and had
the leading Republicans, even one or two of them, stood boldly
for the measure which they themselves had submitted, Kansas might
have indeed been a "free State"; the first to enfranchise women;
the advance guard in the great progressive movements of the time;
and her leading politicians might have gone down in history as
wise, far-seeing statesmen who loved principles better than
office, and who gained the rewards of the world because they
sought "first the kingdom of God and His righteousness." As it
was, their favorite measure, "negro suffrage," was defeated for
that time, and several of those who sold their birthright of
truth and justice for a miserable mess of pottage in the shape of
office and emoluments, lost even the poor reward for which they
had trafficked.

As for us, the advocates of suffrage who labored there in that
first woman's suffrage campaign, we have forgotten, in part, the
bitterness of disappointment and defeat; we think no more of the
long and wearisome journeys under the hot sun of southern Kansas;
the anxiety and uncertainty; the nervous tremor when night has
overtaken us wandering on the prairie, not knowing what terrible
pitfalls might lie before; the mobs which sometimes made the
little log school-house shake with their missiles; the taunts and
jeers of the opposition; all this is passed, but the great
principle of human rights which we advocated remains, commending
itself more and more to the favor of all good men, confirmed by
every year's experience, and destined at no distant day to find
expression in law.

Sincerely Yours, OLYMPIA BROWN.

The day before the election immense meetings were held in all the
chief cities. In Leavenworth Mr. Train spoke for two hours in Laing's
Hall, and then took the evening train for Atchison. Mrs. Stanton
entered the hall just as he left, and made only a short speech,
reserving herself for the evening, when, Daniel R. Anthony in the
chair, she made her final appeal to the voters of the State. She was
followed by several of the leading gentlemen in short speeches, fully
indorsing both amendments. The _Bulletin_, in speaking of the meeting,
said:

Laing's Hall was crowded to overflowing last evening to listen to
a discourse from Mrs. Stanton, on the main issues pending in this
State, and to be decided to-day. The speech of Mrs. Stanton was
mainly in behalf of female suffrage. Speeches were also made by
Col. J. C. Vaughan, Col. Jennison, Col. Moonlight, and Col.
Anthony. The best of feeling prevailed throughout.

Susan B. Anthony spoke to an equally large audience in Atchison, and
Olympia Brown to another in an adjoining town.

The morning of the election two spacious barouches containing the
several members of the Hutchinson family--John, his son Henry and
daughter Viola; with Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Mrs. Daniel R. and
Mrs. J. Merritt Anthony, visited in succession the four polling booths
in Leavenworth and addressed the voters in short, earnest speeches as
to their duty as citizens. Mrs. Stanton made a special appeal to
Irishmen, quoting to them the lofty sentiments of Edmund Burke on
human liberty. She told them of visiting O'Connell in his own house,
and attending one of his great repeal meetings, of his eloquent speech
in the World's Anti-Slavery Convention, and his genial letters to
Lucretia Mott, in favor of woman's right to vote. After three cheers
for O'Connell, they shouted, "Go on, go on." The Hutchinsons then sang
their stirring ballad, "The good time coming." The reception at each
booth was respectful, and at the end of the speech or song there
followed three hearty cheers for "woman suffrage."[89]

The Leavenworth _Commercial_ of Nov. 14, 1867, had the following
editorial:

A CONTRAST.--Miss Susan B. Anthony and Mrs. Elizabeth Cady
Stanton left yesterday afternoon for St. Louis, from whence they
go to Omaha, and from that place, in company with Geo. Francis
Train, start on a general lecturing tour through the principal
cities of the West and East. Their subject, of course, in all the
places at which they will speak, will be, "Woman Suffrage"; and
we believe they will speak with far more than ordinary
encouragement. Kansas, the only State in which the subject was
ever submitted--though under the most adverse of
circumstances--has spoken in a manner which has rather nerved
than dispirited these tried and faithful champions of their own
sex.

The two propositions were submitted, in this State, under
circumstances wholly dissimilar. While negro suffrage was
specially championed and made the principal plank in the
Republican party--made almost a test of membership and of loyalty
to it and the government--female suffrage stood, not simply as an
ignored proposition, but as one against which was arrayed all
party organizations, whether Republican, Democratic or German.
And yet, notwithstanding this ignoring of the question,
notwithstanding the combined and active opposition of these
powerful and controlling organizations, nearly as many votes were
cast for female suffrage as for negro suffrage.

And if we go outside of our State, and take a look at the
influences that were brought to bear upon our citizens, the
result seems still more striking and remarkable. On the side of
negro suffrage stood Congress, and its policy in the South; also
all the leading radical journals in the country, and that branch
of the pulpit to which radicals had been taught to look for
political wisdom as well as orthodox religious sermons. The whole
enginery of the radical party, and of that party's tactics, was
brought to bear upon the State. Party pride, party prejudices,
and religious beliefs were each and all fervidly appealed to on
behalf of negro suffrage. But in respect to woman suffrage,
matters were far different. Even those in the East, whose
eminence and eloquence had served to throw broadcast the ideas
that it was sought to give form and reality to in this State, as
the final testing hour neared, gradually withdrew their aid and
counsel; and in a manner sympathiless and emotionless as marble
statuary, from their calm Eastern retreats watched the unequal
contest. When Stephen A. Douglas said he "didn't care a d----n
whether slavery was voted up or voted down in Kansas," he but
expressed in a forcible and emphatic manner the feelings of many
of the Eastern "friends" of woman suffrage in the recent
campaign. We repeat then, when we consider the many obstacles
thrown in the way of the advocates of this measure, of the
indifference with which the masses look upon anything new in
government, and their indisposition to change, that the degree of
success of these advocates is not only remarkable, but one in
which they have a just right to feel proud and triumphant.

And to these two ladies, to their indomitable wills and courage,
to their eloquence and energies, is due much of the merit of the
work performed in the State. We would not rob others of their
glories, or their triumphs. Yet these two came to us as pioneers.
Through the highways and byways of all the long years of their
past lives we find the tracings of their deep earnestness and
devotion to the principles which first found ways and means of
development in Kansas. We find them giving utterance to these
thoughts in the days of their first inception, and in words of
burning eloquence closing the campaign which gave them over for
decision and arbitrament to the great jury and final arbiter, the
people. But in the recent election, as is well known, these
ladies were not successful to the full extent of their wishes.
They have the proud consciousness of knowing, however, that their
work has been commensurate with the combined efforts of party
organizations. Congressmen, Senators, presses, ministers, etc.,
and that the people of Kansas are not more averse to giving the
franchise to woman than to the negro. With this evidence of the
result of their efforts they can afford to wait, and, in the
spirit of a Lowell, found their faith in the future, as when he
says:--

But humanity sweeps onward! where to-day the martyr stands,
On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands.
Far in front the cross stands ready, and the crackling
fragments burn,
While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return,
To glean up the scattered ashes into history's golden urn.

And again--

Careless seems the great avenger; history's pages but record
One death-struggle in the grapple 'twixt old systems and the
Word.
Truth forever on the scaffold, wrong forever on the throne;
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim
unknown
Standeth God in the darkness keeping watch above His own.

After speaking in all the chief cities from Leavenworth to New
York,[90] Mrs. Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony turned their
attention to the establishment in the city of New York of a woman
suffrage paper, called _The Revolution_.[91] The funds for this
enterprise were provided by two Democrats, David Melliss, the
financial editor of the _World_, and George Francis Train. The editors
were Parker Pillsbury and Elizabeth Cady Stanton; the owner and
publisher, Susan B. Anthony. This affiliation with Mr. Train and other
Democrats, together with the aggressive tone of _The Revolution_,
called down on Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton severe criticism from
some of their friends, while they received sincere praise from others.
In reviewing the situation, they have had no reason to regret their
course, feeling that their determination to push their cause, and
accept help from whatever quarter it was proffered, aroused lukewarm
friends to action, who, though hostile at first to the help of
Democrats, soon came to appreciate the difficulty of carrying on a
movement with the press, pulpit, politicians, and philanthropists all
in the opposition.

Abolitionists were severe in their denunciations against these ladies,
because, while belonging to anti-slavery associations, they affiliated
with the bitter enemies of the negro and all his defamers. To which
they replied: "So long as opposition to slavery is the only test for a
free pass to your platform and membership of your association, and you
do not shut out all persons opposed to woman suffrage, why should we
not accept all in favor of woman suffrage to our platform and
association, even though they be rabid pro-slavery Democrats? Your
test of faithfulness is the negro, ours is the woman; the broadest
platform, to which no party has as yet risen, is humanity." Reformers
can be as bigoted and sectarian and as ready to malign each other, as
the Church in its darkest periods has been to persecute its
dissenters.

So utterly had the women been deserted in the Kansas campaign by those
they had the strongest reason to look to for help, that at times all
effort seemed hopeless. The editors of the New York _Tribune_ and the
_Independent_ can never know how wistfully, from day to day, their
papers were searched for some inspiring editorials on the woman's
amendment, but naught was there; there were no words of hope and
encouragement, no eloquent letters from an Eastern man that could be
read to the people; all were silent. Yet these two papers, extensively
taken all over Kansas, had they been as true to woman as to the negro,
could have revolutionized the State. But with arms folded, Greeley,
Curtis, Tilton, Beecher, Higginson, Phillips, Garrison, Frederick
Douglass, all calmly watched the struggle from afar, and when defeat
came to both propositions, no consoling words were offered for woman's
loss, but the women who spoke in the campaign were reproached for
having "killed negro suffrage."

[Illustration: Olympia Brown.]

We wondered then at the general indifference to that first opportunity
of realizing what all those gentlemen had advocated so long; and, in
looking back over the many intervening years, we still wonder at the
stolid incapacity of all men to understand that woman feels the
invidious distinctions of sex exactly as the black man does those of
color, or the white man the more transient distinctions of wealth,
family, position, place, and power; that she feels as keenly as man
the injustice of disfranchisement. Of the old abolitionists who stood
true to woman's cause in this crisis, Robert Purvis, Parker Pillsbury,
and Rev. Samuel J. May were the only Eastern men. Through all the hot
debates during the period of reconstruction, again and again, Mr.
Purvis arose and declared, that he would rather his son should never
be enfranchised, unless his daughter could be also, that, as she bore
the double curse of sex and color, on every principle of justice she
should first be protected. These were the only men who felt and
understood as women themselves do the degradation of disfranchisement.

Twenty years ago, as now, the Gibraltar of our difficulties was the
impossibility of making the best men feel that woman is aggravated by
the endless petty distinctions because of sex, precisely as the most
cultivated man, black or white, suffers the distinctions of color,
wealth, or position. Take a man of superior endowments, once powerful
and respected, who through unfortunate circumstances is impoverished
and neglected; he sees small men, unscrupulous, hard, grinding men
taking places of trust and influence, making palace homes for
themselves and children, while his family in shabby attire are
ostracised in the circle where by ancestry and intelligence they
belong, made to feel on all occasions the impassable gulf that lies
between riches and poverty. That man feels for himself and doubly for
his children the humiliation. And yet with the ever-turning wheel of
fortune such distinctions are transient; yours to-day, mine
to-morrow. That glorious Scotch poet, Robert Burns, from the depths of
his poverty and despair, might exclaim in an inspired moment on the
divine heights where the human soul can sometimes mount:

"A man's a man for a' that."

But the wail through many of his sad lines shows that he had tasted
the very dregs of the cup of poverty, and hated all distinctions based
on wealth.

When a colored man of education and wealth like Robert Purvis, of
Philadelphia, surrounded with a family of cultivated sons and
daughters, was denied all social communion with his neighbors, equal
freedom and opportunity for himself and children, in public
amusements, churches, schools, and means of travel because of race, he
felt the degradation of color. The poor white man might have said, If
I were Robert Purvis, with a good bank account, and could live in my
own house, ride in my own carriage, and have my children well fed and
clothed, I should not care if we were all as black as the ace of
spades. But he had never tried the humiliation of color, and could not
understand its peculiar aggravations, as he did those of poverty. It
is impossible for one class to appreciate the wrongs of another. The
coarser forms of slavery all can see and deplore, but the subjections
of the spirit, few either comprehend or appreciate. In our day women
carrying heavy burdens on their shoulders while men walk by their side
smoking their pipes, or women harnessed to plows and carts with cows
and dogs while men drive, are sights which need no eloquent appeals to
move American men to pity and indignation. But the subtle humiliations
of women possessed of wealth, education, and genius, men on the same
plane can not see or feel, and yet can any misery be more real than
invidious distinctions on the ground of sex in the laws and
constitution, in the political, religious, and moral position of those
who in nature stand the peers of each other? And not only do such
women suffer these ever-recurring indignities in daily life, but the
literature of the world proclaims their inferiority and divinely
decreed subjection in all history, sacred and profane, in science,
philosophy, poetry, and song.

And here is the secret of the infinite sadness of women of genius; of
their dissatisfaction with life, in exact proportion to their
development. A woman who occupies the same realm of thought with man,
who can explore with him the depths of science, comprehend the steps
of progress through the long past and prophesy those of the momentous
future, must ever be surprised and aggravated with his assumptions of
headship and superiority, a superiority she never concedes, an
authority she utterly repudiates. Words can not describe the
indignation, the humiliation a proud woman feels for her sex in
disfranchisement.

In a republic where all are declared equal an ostracised class of one
half of the people, on the ground of a distinction founded in nature,
is an anomalous position, as harassing to its victims as it is unjust,
and as contradictory as it is unsafe to the fundamental principles of
a free government. When we remember that out of this degraded
political status, spring all the special wrongs that have blocked
woman's success in the world of work, and degraded her labor
everywhere to one half its value; closed to her the college doors and
all opportunities for higher education, forbade her to practice in the
professions, made her a cipher in the church, and her sex, her
motherhood a curse in all religions; her subjection a text for bibles,
a target for the priesthood; seeing all this, we wonder now as then at
the indifference and injustice of our best men when the first
opportunity offered in which the women of any State might have secured
their enfranchisement.

It was not from ignorance of the unequal laws, and false public
sentiment against woman, that our best men stood silent in this Kansas
campaign; it was not from lack of chivalry that they thundered forth
no protests, when they saw noble women, who had been foremost in every
reform, hounded through the State by foul mouthed politicians; it was
not from lack of money and power, of eloquence of pen and tongue, nor
of an intellectual conviction that our cause was just, that they came
not to the rescue, but because in their heart of hearts they did not
grasp the imperative necessity of woman's demand for that protection
which the ballot alone can give; they did not feel for _her_ the
degradation of disfranchisement.

The fact of their silence deeply grieved us, but the philosophy of
their indifference we thoroughly comprehended for the first time and
saw as never before, that only from woman's standpoint could the
battle be successfully fought, and victory secured. "It is wonderful,"
says Swift, "with what patience some folks can endure the sufferings
of others." Our liberal men counseled us to silence during the war,
and we were silent on our own wrongs; they counseled us again to
silence in Kansas and New York, lest we should defeat "negro
suffrage," and threatened if we were not, we might fight the battle
alone. We chose the latter, and were defeated. But standing alone we
learned our power; we repudiated man's counsels forevermore; and
solemnly vowed that there should never be another season of silence
until woman had the same rights everywhere on this green earth, as
man.

While we hold in loving reverence the names of such men as Charles
Sumner, Horace Greeley, William Lloyd Garrison, Gerrit Smith, Wendell
Phillips and Frederick Douglass, and would urge the rising generation
of young men to emulate their virtues, we would warn the young women
of the coming generation against man's advice as to their best
interests, their highest development. We would point for them the
moral of our experiences: that woman must lead the way to her own
enfranchisement, and work out her own salvation with a hopeful courage
and determination that knows no fear nor trembling. She must not put
her trust in man in this transition period, since, while regarded as
his subject, his inferior, his slave, their interests must be
antagonistic.

But when at last woman stands on an even platform with man, his
acknowledged equal everywhere, with the same freedom to express
herself in the religion and government of the country, then, and not
till then, can she safely take counsel with him in regard to her most
sacred rights, privileges, and immunities; for not till then will he
be able to legislate as wisely and generously for her as for himself.

FOOTNOTES:

[76] DISAGREEMENTS IN THE REPUBLICAN STATE CENTRAL COMMITTEE--THE
SUFFRAGE QUESTION.--The Kansas _State Journal_ publishes a letter from
Judge SAMUEL N. WOOD, in which he declares himself unqualifiedly in
favor of impartial suffrage. He says:

"I have not opposed, and shall not oppose negro suffrage. It should be
adopted because they are a part of the governed, and must have a voice
in the Government, just as much as women should. What I have had to do
with is the inconsistency and hypocrisy of those who advocate negro
suffrage and oppose Woman suffrage; the inconsistency and hypocrisy of
those negroes who claim rights for themselves that they are not
willing other human beings with equal intelligence should also enjoy."

The same paper says that at the meeting of the Republican State
Central Committee in Leavenworth, last week, the following resolution
was offered and laid on the table, by a vote of two yeas to one nay:

_Resolved_, That the Republican State Central Committee do not
indorse, but distinctly repudiate, as speakers, in behalf and under
the auspices of the Republican party, such persons as have defamed, or
do hereafter defame, in their public addresses, the women of Kansas,
or those ladies who have been urging upon the people of Kansas the
propriety of enfranchising the women of the State.

Mr. TAYLOR, who offered the resolution, has accordingly published the
following protest:

The undersigned, a member of the Republican State Central Committee of
Kansas, protests against the action of the Committee this day had, so
far as relates to the placing of the names of I. S. KALLOCH, C. V.
ESKRIDGE, and P. B. PLUMB, on the list of speakers to canvass the
State in behalf of Republican principles, for the reason that they
have within the last few weeks, in public addresses published
articles, used ungentlemanly, indecent, and infamously defamatory
language, when alluding to a large and respectable portion of the
women of Kansas, and to women now engaged in canvassing the State in
favor of impartial suffrage.

R. B. TAYLOR.

[77] DEMOCRATIC RESOLUTION.--_Resolved_, That we are opposed to all
the proposed amendments to our State Constitution, and to all unjust,
intolerant, and proscriptive legislation, whereby a portion of our
fellow citizens are deprived of their social rights and religious
privileges.

[78] ACTION OF THE GERMANS.--ST. LOUIS, _Sept. 26._--A special
dispatch to the _Republican_ from Wyandotte, Kansas, says: "The German
Convention, which was held at Topeka on Monday last, adopted
resolutions against Sunday and temperance laws, and declared that they
would not support any man for State, Legislative, or municipal office
who would not give his written pledge to oppose such laws. An
unsuccessful effort was made to commit the Germans to negro suffrage.
The female suffrage question was not touched."

[79] STATE TEMPERANCE CONVENTION.--LAWRENCE, KANSAS, _Sept. 26._--A
mass State Temperance Convention was held here last night, and was
addressed by Senator Pomeroy, ex-Gov. Robinson, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony. Resolutions were passed committing the
Temperance people to female suffrage, and to prevent the repeal of the
Temperance law of last winter, to the abrogation of which the Germans
pledged themselves in their Convention on the 23d.

[80] The New York _Tribune_, May 29, 1867: "Womanhood suffrage is now
a progressive cause beyond fear of cavil. It has won a fair field
where once it was looked upon as an airy nothing, and it has gained
champions and converts without number. The young State of Kansas is
fitly the vanguard of this cause, and the signs of the agitation
therein hardly allow a doubt that the citizenship of women will be ere
long recognized in the law of the State. Fourteen out of twenty
newspapers of Kansas are in favor of making woman a voter. Governor
Crawford, ex-Governors Robinson and Root, Judge Schuyler, Col.
Ritchie, and Lieut.-Gov. Green, are the leaders of the wide-spread
Impartial League, which has among its orators Mistresses Stanton,
Stone, and Susan B. Anthony. The vitality of the Kansas movement is
indisputable, and whether defeated or successful in the present
contest, it will still hold strongly fortified ground." ...

[81] Mrs. Sarah B. Shaw, after having contributed $150 for Kansas,
wrote the following:

NORTH SHORE, September 22, 1867.

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--If I were a rich woman I would inclose a
check of $1,000 instanter. Mr. Gay read your letter and said he
wished he had $500 to give. So you see if the right people only
had the money how the work would be done. Mr. Shaw says: "Tell
Miss Anthony if the women in Kansas vote on the schools and the
dram shops, I think the work is done there." I have not in my
mind one person who could give money who would, so I can not help
you.... I am very sorry to send you only this dry morsel, a stone
when you want bread, but I can only give you my earnest wishes,
though I will not fail to do my best. I have already sent your
letter to a rich friend, who has _reformed_ all her life, but I
do not know at all how she stands on the woman question. Believe
me, dear Miss Anthony,

Sincerely yours, SARAH B. SHAW.

OFFICE OF THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION, }
No. 37 Park Row (Room 17). NEW YORK, _Aug. 23, 1867_. }

DEAR LYDIA:-- ... I am just in from Staten Island, where Mrs. Gay
had $10 from Frank Shaw waiting for me. I went on purpose to go
to Mrs. Shaw, and persevered; the glorious result is $150 more.
Such a splendid woman; worthy the noble boy she gave in the war,
and worthy her noble son-in-law, George William Curtis. Lydia, we
shall go on to triumph in Kansas! The St. Louis _Democrat_
publishes Mr. Curtis' speech in full, with a splendid editorial.
The St. Louis _Journal_ gives the speech and the _Democrat's_
editorial "as a matter of news." I have 60,000 tracts now going
to press; all the old editions were gone, and we have to begin
new with an empty treasury; but I tell them all, "go ahead;" we
must, and will, succeed.

Affectionately yours, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

TEMPLETON, MASS., _Sept. 21, 1867_, }
On way to Green Mountains. }

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Mrs. Severance desires me to inclose to you
this check, $50, and say that it is a contribution by friends at
and about Boston, to aid you in the good work of reconstruction
on the subject of woman's right to the ballot in Kansas.

Yours truly, T. C. SEVERANCE.

AUBURN, _Sept. 17, 1867_.

DEAR MR. PILLSBURY:--You may be very sure I would have answered
Susan's letter sooner if I had been able to inclose any such sum
as she hoped to obtain. All that I can do is to inclose a draft
for $30--ten from our daughter Eliza, ten from William and Ellen,
and ten from myself.... We can only feel grateful for the
self-sacrificing labors of those who have gone to Kansas, and
hopeful that better success may attend the efforts there, than
here or in Michigan.... I was very glad that Mrs. Stanton could
go.... We shall miss Mrs. Frances D. Gage. I always considered
her word as effective as any on our Woman's Rights platform. Her
rest has come.... Our children were in Syracuse on Sunday; they
heard a beautiful valedictory from Samuel J. May, recounting the
varied incidents of his life, lamenting his short-comings, and
advising them to choose a younger man for the duties he was no
longer able to perform alone. He is so well beloved by his
congregation that the probability is they will get an associate
for him.

Your friend, MARTHA C. WRIGHT.

[82] E. D. Draper, Hopedale, Massachusetts.

[83] James W. Nye, Nevada; Charles Robinson, S. N. Wood, Samuel C.
Pomeroy, E. G. Ross, Sidney Clark, S. G. Crawford, Kansas; Wm.
Loughridge, Iowa; Robert Collyer, Illinois; Geo. W. Julian, H. D.
Washburn, Indiana; R. E. Trowbridge, John F. Driggs, Michigan;
Benjamin F. Wade, Ohio; J. W. Broomall, William D. Kelley,
Pennsylvania; Henry Ward Beecher, Gerrit Smith, George William Curtis,
New York; Dudley S. Gregory, George Polk, John G. Foster, James L.
Hayes, Z. H. Pangborn, New Jersey; William Lloyd Garrison, Wendell
Phillips, Samuel E. Sewell, Oakes Ames, Massachusetts; William
Sprague, Thomas W. Higginson, Rhode Island; Calvin E. Stowe,
Connecticut.

[84] Mrs. Starrett's father.

[85] All were prepared beforehand to do Mrs. Stanton homage for her
talents and fame, but many persons who had formed their ideas of Miss
Anthony from the unfriendly remarks of opposition papers in other
States had conceived a prejudice against her. Perhaps I can not better
illustrate how she everywhere overcame and dispelled this prejudice
than by relating my own experience. A convention was called at
Lawrence, and the friends of woman suffrage were called upon to
entertain the strangers who might come from abroad. Ex-Gov. Robinson,
who from the first had given his influence to the movement, was now
giving his whole time to the canvass. He called upon me to know if I
would entertain Mrs. Stanton. In those days houses were small, help
was scarce and inefficient, and in our family were two babies and an
invalid sister. But the pleasure and honor of entertaining Mrs.
Stanton was too great to allow these circumstances to prevent. We
prepared our own room for the guest chamber and had all things in
readiness when I received a note from Ex-Gov. Robinson stating that
Mrs. Stanton had found relatives in town with whom she would stop, but
that Miss Anthony would come instead. I hastily put on bonnet and
shawl saying, "I don't want Miss Anthony, and I won't have her, and I
am going to tell Gov. Robinson so." At the gate I met a dignified,
quaker looking lady with a small satchel and a black and white shawl
on her arm. Offering her hand she said, "I am Miss Anthony, and I have
been sent to you for entertainment during the Convention." I have
often wondered if Miss Anthony remembers my confusion, and the
apologies I stammered out about no help, sickness in the family, no
spare room and how I was just on my way to tell Gov. Robinson that I
could not entertain any one. Half disarmed by her genial manner and
frank, kindly face, I led the way into the house and said I would have
her stay to tea and then we would see what farther arrangements could
be made. While I was looking after tea Miss Anthony won the hearts of
the babies; and seeing the door of my sister's sick room open, she
went in and in a short time had so won the heart and soothed instead
of exciting the nervous sufferer, entertaining her with accounts of
the outside world from which she had been so long shut off, that by
the time tea was over, I was ready to do anything if Miss Anthony
would only stay with us. And stay she did for over six weeks, and we
parted from her as from a beloved and helpful friend. I found
afterwards that in the same way she disarmed prejudice and made the
most ardent friends wherever she became personally known.

H. E. S.

[86] Of course it is nothing new to say that Mrs. Stanton was the
object of admiration and honor everywhere. Miss Anthony looked after
her interests and comfort in the most cheerful and kindly manner,
occasionally complaining good naturedly of Mrs. Stanton's carelessness
in leaving various articles of her wearing apparel scattered over the
State, and of the trouble she had in recovering a gold watch which
Mrs. Stanton had left hanging on the bed post in a little hotel in
Southern Kansas. I remember one evening of the Convention in Lawrence
when the hall was crowded with an eager and expectant audience. Miss
Anthony was there early, looking after everything, seats, lights,
ushers, doorkeepers, etc. Presently Gov. Robinson came to her and
said, "Where's Mrs. Stanton? It's time to commence." "She's at Mrs.
---- waiting for some of you men to go for her with a carriage," was
the reply. The hint was quickly acted upon and Mrs. Stanton, fresh,
smiling and unfatigued, was presented to the audience. H. E. S.

[87] See Appendix.

[88] Mrs. Gov. Charles Robinson, Mrs. Lieut-Gov. J. P. Root, Mrs. R.
B. Taylor, Mrs. Mary T. Gray--whose husbands were also active
workers--Mrs. Lucy B. Armstrong, Mrs. Judge Humphrey, Mrs. Starrett,
Mrs. Archibald, Mrs. Elsie Stewart, "Mother Bickerdike," and many
others.

[89] Nov. 6, 1867.--The associated press item in _The Evening Journal_
said: "Leavenworth, Kansas, Nov. 5th. Out of about 3,500 registered
voters, only 2,600 voted here to-day. Negro suffrage received only
about 700. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony, who have been canvassing the
State, visited the polls in each ward and addressed the voters,
probably the first occurrence of the kind in this country. They were
accompanied by the Hutchinson family, and were received with hearty
cheers for woman suffrage."

[90] This trip cost Mr. Train $2,500, as he paid all the expenses,
advertising largely.

[91] The first number was published January 6, 1868, and ten thousand
copies, under the frank of the Hon. James Brooks, were scattered
throughout the country.

CHAPTER XX.

NEW YORK CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

Constitution Amended once in Twenty Years--Mrs. Stanton Before
the Legislature Claiming Woman's Right to Vote for Members to the
Convention--An Immense Audience in the Capitol--The Convention
Assembled June 4th, 1867. Twenty Thousand Petitions Presented for
Striking the Word "Male" from the Constitution--"Committee on the
Right of Suffrage, and the Qualifications for Holding Office."
Horace Greeley, Chairman--Mr. Graves, of Herkimer, Leads the
Debate in favor of Woman Suffrage--Horace Greeley's Adverse
Report--Leading Advocates Heard before the Convention--Speech of
George William Curtis on Striking the Word "Man" from Section 1,
Article 11--Final Vote, 19 For, 125 Against--Equal Rights
Anniversary of 1868.

This was the first time in the history of the woman suffrage movement
that the Constitution of New York was to be amended, and the general
interest felt by women in the coming convention was intensified by the
fact that such an opportunity for their enfranchisement would not come
again in twenty years. The proposition of the republican party to
strike the word "white" from the Constitution and thus extend the
right of suffrage to all classes of male citizens, placing the men of
the State, black and white, foreign and native, ignorant and educated,
vicious and virtuous, all alike, above woman's head, gave her a keener
sense of her abasement than she had ever felt before. But having
neither press nor pulpit to advocate her cause, and fully believing
this amendment would pass as a party measure, she used every means
within her power to arouse and strengthen the agitation, in the face
of the most determined opposition of friends and foes. Meetings were
held in all the chief towns and cities in the State, and appeals and
petitions scattered in every school district; these were so many
reminders to the women everywhere that they too had some interest in
the Constitution under which they lived, some duties to perform in
deciding the future policy of the Government.

This campaign cost us the friendship of Horace Greeley and the support
of the _New York Tribune_, heretofore our most powerful and faithful
allies. In an earnest conversation with Mrs. Stanton and Miss
Anthony, Mr. Greeley said: "This is a critical period for the
Republican party and the life of the Nation. The word "white" in our
Constitution at this hour has a significance which "male" has not. It
would be wise and magnanimous in you to hold your claims, though just
and imperative, I grant, in abeyance until the negro is safe beyond
peradventure, and your turn will come next. I conjure you to remember
that this is "the negro's hour," and your first duty now is to go
through the State and plead his claims." "Suppose," we replied,
"Horace Greeley, Henry J. Raymond and James Gordon Bennett were
disfranchised; what would be thought of them, if before audiences and
in leading editorials they pressed the claims of Sambo, Patrick, Hans
and Yung Fung to the ballot, to be lifted above their own heads? With
their intelligence, education, knowledge of the science of government,
and keen appreciation of the dangers of the hour, would it not be
treasonable, rather than magnanimous, for them, leaders of the
metropolitan press, to give the ignorant and unskilled a power in
government they did not possess themselves? To do this would be to
place on board the ship of State officers and crew who knew nothing of
chart or compass, of the safe pathway across the sea, and bid those
who understand the laws of navigation to stand aside. No, no, this is
the hour to press woman's claims; we have stood with the black man in
the Constitution over half a century, and it is fitting now that the
constitutional door is open that we should enter with him into the
political kingdom of equality. Through all these years he has been the
only decent compeer we have had. Enfranchise him, and we are left
outside with lunatics, idiots and criminals for another twenty years."
"Well," said Mr. Greeley, "if you persevere in your present plan, you
need depend on no further help from me or the _Tribune_." And he kept
his word. We have seen the negro enfranchised, and twenty long years
pass away since the war, and still woman's turn has not yet come; her
rights as a citizen of the United States are still unrecognized, the
oft-repeated pledges of leading Republicans and Abolitionists have not
been redeemed.

As soon as the Constitutional Convention was called by the Legislature
of New York, Mrs. Stanton appeared before that body asking not only
that the word "male" be stricken from Sec. 1, Art. 2, but that women
be permitted to vote for members to that Convention, giving many
precedents and learned opinions in favor of her demand. In the
Assembly Chamber on the afternoon of Jan. 23, 1867, an immense
audience of judges, lawyers, members of the Legislature, and ladies of
fashion greeted her. On being introduced by the Hon. Chas. J.
Folger,[92] Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, MRS. STANTON
said:

_Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee and Members of the
Legislature_:

I appear before you at this time, to urge on you the justice of
securing to all the people of the State the right to vote for
delegates to the coming Constitutional Convention. The discussion
of this right involves the consideration of the whole question of
suffrage; and especially those sections of your Constitution
which interpose insurmountable qualifications to its exercise. As
representatives of the people, your right to regulate all that
pertains to the coming Constitutional Convention is absolute. It
is for you to say when and where this convention shall be held;
how many delegates shall be chosen, and what classes shall be
represented. This is your right. It is the opinion of many of the
ablest men of the country that, in a revision of a constitution,
the State is, for the time being, resolved into its original
elements, and that all disfranchised classes should have a voice
in such revision and be represented in such convention. To secure
this to the people of the State, is clearly your duty.

Says Judge Beach Lawrence, in a letter to Hon. Charles Sumner: "A
State Constitution must originate with and be assented to by a
majority of the people, including as well those whom it
disfranchises as those whom it invests with the suffrage." And as
there is nothing in the present Constitution of the State of New
York to prevent women, or black men from voting for, or being
elected as delegates to a Constitutional Convention, there is no
reason why the Legislature should not enact that the people elect
their delegates to said Convention irrespective of sex or color.
The Legislatures of 1801 and 1821 furnish you a precedent for
extending to disfranchised classes the right to vote for
delegates to a Constitutional Convention. Though the Constitution
of the State restricted the right of suffrage to every male
inhabitant who possessed a freehold to the value of £20, or
rented a tenement at the yearly value of forty shillings, and had
been rated and actually paid taxes to the State, the Legislatures
of those years passed laws setting aside all property
limitations, and providing that all men--black and white, rich
and poor--should vote for delegates to said Conventions. The act
recommending a convention for the purpose of considering the
parts of the Constitution of this State, respecting the number of
Senators and Members of Assembly--and also for the consideration
of the 23d article of said Constitution, relative to the right of
nomination to office--"but with no other power or authority
whatsoever," passed April 6, 1801. Session Laws 1801, chap. 69,
page 190, sec. 2, says:

And be it further enacted, that the number of delegates
chosen shall be the same as the number of Members of
Assembly from the respective cities and counties of the
State, and that all free male citizens of this State, of the
age of twenty-one years and upward, shall be admitted to
vote for such delegates, and that any person of that
description shall be eligible.

The above law was passed by the Legislature of 1801, which
derived its authority from the first Constitution of the State.

The act recommending a convention of the people of this State,
passed March 13, 1821. Session Laws of 1821, act 90, page 83,
sec. 1. "Persons entitled to vote":

All free male citizens, of the age of twenty-one years or
upward, who shall possess a freehold in this State, or who
shall have been actually rated and paid taxes to this State,
or who shall have been actually enrolled in the militia of
this State, or in a legal, volunteer, or uniform corps, and
shall have served therein either as an officer or private,
or who shall have been or now are, by law, exempt from
taxation or militia duty, or who shall have been assessed to
work on the public roads and highways, and shall have worked
thereon, or shall have paid a commutation therefor according
to law, shall be allowed during the three days of such
election to vote by ballot as aforesaid in the town or ward
in which they shall actually reside.

Extract from Sec. 6th, Act 90:

And be it further enacted, that the number of delegates to
be chosen shall be the same as the number of Members of
Assembly from the respective cities and counties of this
State, and that the same qualification for voters shall be
required on the election for delegates, as is prescribed in
the first section of this act, and none other.... And that
all persons entitled to vote by this law for delegates,
shall be eligible to be elected.

Extracts from the first Constitution of the State of New York,
under and by virtue of which the Legislatures sat, which passed
the acts of 1801 and 1821, from which the extracts above are
taken. Sec. 7. Qualification of electors:

That every male inhabitant of full age, who shall have
personally resided for six months within one of the counties
of this State, immediately preceding the day of election,
shall at such election be entitled to vote for
representatives of the said county in Assembly, if during
the time aforesaid, he shall have been a freeholder
possessing a freehold of the value of £20, within the said
county, or have rented a tenement therein of a yearly value
of forty shillings, and been rated and actually paid taxes
to this State.

SEC. 10. And this Convention doth further, in the name and
by the authority of the good people of this State, ordain,
determine, and declare that the Senate of the State of New
York shall consist of twenty-four freeholders, to be chosen
out of the body of the freeholders, and they be chosen by
the freeholders of this State, possessed of freeholds of the
value of £100 over and above all debts charged thereon.

By section 17, the qualifications for voters for Governor
are made the same as those for Senators.

The laws above quoted show this striking fact: Those men, black
and white, prohibited from voting for members of the Assembly,
were permitted to vote for delegates to said Conventions; and
more than this, on each occasion they were eligible to seats in
the body called to frame the fundamental law--the fundamental law
from which Governors, Senators, and Members derive their
existence.

The Constitutional Convention of Rhode Island, in 1842, affords
another precedent of the power of the Legislature to extend the
suffrage to disfranchised classes.

The disfranchisement of any class of citizens is in express
violation of the spirit of our own Constitution. Art. 1, sec. 1:

No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived
of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen
thereof, unless by the law of the land and the judgment of
his peers.

Now, women, and negroes not worth two hundred and fifty dollars,
however weak and insignificant, are surely "members of the
State." The law of the land is equality. The question of
disfranchisement has never been submitted to the judgment of
their peers. A peer is an equal. The "white male citizen" who so
pompously parades himself in all our Codes and Constitutions,
does not recognize women and negroes as his equals; therefore,
his judgment in their case amounts to nothing. And women and
negroes constituting a majority of the people of the State, do
not recognize a "white male" minority as their rightful rulers.
On our republican theory that the majority governs, women and
negroes should have a voice in the government of the State; and
being taxed, should be represented.

In the recent debate in the Senate of the United States, on the
question of suffrage, Senator Anthony, of Rhode Island, said:

Nor is it a fair statement of the case to say, that the man
represents the woman, because it is an assumption on the
part of the man--it is an involuntary representation on the
part of the woman. Representation implies a certain
delegated power, and a certain responsibility on the part of
the representative toward the party represented. A
representation to which the represented party does not
assent, is no representation at all; but is adding insult to
injury. When the American Colonies complained that they
ought not to be taxed unless they were represented in the
British Parliament, it would have been rather a singular
answer to tell them that they were represented by Lord
North, or even by the Earl of Chatham. The gentlemen on the
other side of the Chamber, who say that the States lately in
rebellion are entitled to immediate representation in this
Chamber, would hardly be satisfied if we should tell them
that my friend from Massachusetts represented South
Carolina, and my friend from Michigan represented Alabama.
They would hardly be satisfied with that kind of
representation. Nor have we any more right to assume that
the women are satisfied with the representation of the men.
Where has been the assembly at which this right of
representation was conferred? Where was the compact made? It
is wholly an assumption.

"White males" are the nobility of this country; they are the
privileged order, who have legislated as unjustly for women and
negroes as have the nobles of England for their disfranchised
classes. The existence of the English House of Commons is a
strong fact to prove that one class can not legislate for
another. Perhaps it may be necessary, in this transition period
of our civilization, to create a Lower House for women and
negroes, lest the dreadful example of Massachusetts, nay, worse,
should be repeated here, and women, as well as black men, take
their places beside our Dutch nobility in the councils of the
State. If the history of England has proved that white men of
different grades can not legislate with justice for one another,
how can you, Honorable Gentlemen, legislate for women and
negroes, who, by your customs, creeds and codes, are placed under
the ban of inferiority? If you dislike this view of the case, and
claim that woman is your superior, and, therefore, you place her
above all troublesome legislation, to shield her by your
protecting care from the rough winds of life, I have simply to
say, your statute books are a sad commentary on that position.
Your laws degrade, rather than exalt woman; your customs cripple,
rather than free; your system of taxation is alike ungenerous and
unjust.

In demanding suffrage for the black man of the South, the
dominant party recognizes the fact that as a freedman he is no
longer a part of the family therefore his master is no longer his
representative, and as he will now be liable to taxation, he
must also have representation. Woman, on the contrary, has never
been such a part of the family as to escape taxation. Although
there has been no formal proclamation giving her an individual
existence, unmarried women have always had the right to property
and wages; to make contracts and do business in their own name.
And even married women, by recent legislation in this State, have
been secured in some civil rights, at least as well secured as
those classes can be who do not hold the ballot in their own
hands. Woman now holds a vast amount of property in the country,
and pays her full proportion of taxes, revenue included; on what
principle, then, do you deny her representation? If you say women
are "virtually represented" by the men of their household, I give
you Senator Sumner's denial, in his great speech on Equal Rights
in the First Session of the 39th Congress. Quoting from James
Otis, he says: "No such phrase as virtual representation was
known in law or constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and
illusion, wholly unfounded and absurd. We must not be cheated by
any such phantom or any other fiction of law or politics, or any
monkish trick of deceit or hypocrisy."

In regard to taxation without representation, Lord Coke says:
"The supreme power can not take from any man any part of his
property without his consent in person or by representation.
Taxes are not to be laid on the people" (are not women and
negroes people?) "without their consent in person or by
representation. The very act of taxing those who are not
represented appears to me to deprive them of one of their most
essential rights as freemen, and if continued, seems to be in
effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right; for what
one civil right is worth a rush, after a man's property is
subject to be taken from him without his consent?" In view of
such opinions, is it too much to ask the men of New York, either
to enfranchise women of wealth and education, or else release
them from taxation? If we can not be represented as individuals,
we should not be taxed as individuals. If the "white male" will
do all the voting, let him pay all the taxes. There is no logic
so powerful in opening the eyes of men to their real interests as
a direct appeal to their pockets. Such a release from taxation
can be supported, too, by your own Constitution. In Art. 2, Sec.
1, you say, "And no person of color shall be subject to direct
taxation, unless he shall be seized and possessed of such real
estate as aforesaid," referring to the $250 qualification. Now, a
poor widow who owns a lot worth a hundred dollars or less, is
taxed. Why this partiality to the black man? He may live in the
quiet possession of $249 worth of property, and not be taxed a
cent. Is it on the ground of color or sex, that the black man
finds greater favor in the eyes of the law than the daughters of
the State? In order fully to understand this partiality, I have
inquired into your practice with regard to women of color. I find
that in Seneca Falls there lives a highly estimable colored
woman, by the name of Abby Gomore, who owns property to the
amount of a thousand dollars, in village lots. She now pays, and
always has paid, from the time she invested her first hundred
dollars, the same taxes as any other citizen--just in proportion
to the value of her property, or as it is assessed. After
excluding women and "men of color" not worth $250, from
representation, your Constitution tells us what other persons are
excluded from the right of suffrage. Art. 2, Sec. 2.

Laws may be passed excluding from the right of suffrage all
persons who have been or may be convicted of bribery, or
larceny, or of any infamous crime, and for depriving every
person who shall make, or become directly or indirectly
interested in any bet or wager depending upon the result of
any election, from the right to vote at such election.

How humiliating! For respectable and law-abiding women and "men
of color," to be thrust outside the pale of political
consideration with those convicted of bribery, larceny, and
infamous crime; and worse than all, with those who bet on
elections--for how lost to all sense of honor must that "white
male citizen" be who publicly violates a wise law to which he has
himself given an intelligent consent. We are ashamed, Honored
Sirs, of our company. The Mohammedan forbids a "fool, a madman,
or a woman" to call the hours for prayers. If it were not for the
invidious classification, we might hope it was tenderness rather
than contempt that moved the Mohammedan to excuse woman from so
severe a duty. But for the ballot, which falls like a flake of
snow upon the sod, we can find no such excuse for New York
legislators. Art. 2, Sec. 3, should be read and considered by the
women of the State, as it gives them a glimpse of the modes of
life and surroundings of some of the privileged classes of "white
male citizens" who may go to the polls:

For the purpose of voting, no person shall be deemed to have
gained or lost a residence by reason of his presence or
absence while employed in the service of the United States;
nor while engaged in navigating the waters of the State, or
of the United States, or of the high seas; nor while a
student of any seminary of learning; nor while kept at any
alms-house or other asylum, at public expense; nor while
confined in any public prison.

What an unspeakable privilege to have that precious jewel--the
human soul--in a setting of _white manhood_, that thus it can
pass through the prison, the asylum, the alms-house, the muddy
waters of the Erie canal, and come forth undimmed to appear at
the ballot-box at the earliest opportunity, there to bury its
crimes, its poverty, its moral and physical deformities, all
beneath the rights, privileges, and immunities of a citizen of
the State. Just imagine the motley crew from the ten thousand
dens of poverty and vice in our large cities, limping, raving,
cringing, staggering up to the polls, while the loyal mothers of
a million soldiers whose bones lay bleaching on every Southern
plain, stand outside sad and silent witnesses of this wholesale
desecration of republican institutions. When you say it would
degrade woman to go to the polls, do you not make a sad
confession of your irreligious mode of observing that most sacred
right of citizenship? The ballot-box, in a republican government,
should be guarded with as much love and care as was the Ark of
the Lord among the Children of Israel. Here, where we have no
heaven-anointed kings or priests, law must be to us a holy thing;
and the ballot-box the holy of holies; for on it depends the
safety and stability of our institutions. I, for one, gentlemen,
am not willing to be thus represented. I claim to understand the
interests of the nation better than yonder pauper in your
alms-house, than the unbalanced graduate from your asylum and
prison, or the popinjay of twenty-one from your seminary of
learning, or the traveler on the tow-path of the Erie canal. No
wonder that with such voters as Art. 2, Sec. 3 welcomes to the
polls, we have these contradictory laws and constitutions. No
wonder that with such voters, sex and color should be exalted
above loyalty, virtue, wealth and education. I warn you,
legislators of the State of New York, that you need the moral
power of wise and thoughtful women in your political councils, to
outweigh the incoming tide of poverty, ignorance, and vice that
threatens our very existence as a nation. Have not the women of
the republic an equal interest with yourselves in the government,
in free institutions, in progressive ideas, and in the success of
the most liberal political measures? Remember, in your last
election, the republican majority in this State was only fourteen
thousand, all told. If you would not see the liberal party
swamped in the next Presidential campaign, treble your majority
by enfranchising those classes who would support it in all just
and merciful legislation....

The extension of suffrage is the political idea of our day,
agitating alike the leading minds of both continents. The
question of debate in the long past has been the rights of races.
This, in our country, was settled by the war, when the black man
was declared free and worthy to bear arms in defense of the
republic, and the last remnants of aristocracy were scattered
before our northern hosts like chaff in the whirlwind. We have
now come to the broader idea of _individual_ rights. An idea
already debated ably in Congress and out, by Republicans,
Democrats and Abolitionists, who, in common with the best writers
and thinkers of the day the world over, base all rights of
society and government on those of the individual. Each one of
you has a right to everything in earth and air, on land and sea,
to the whole world of thought, to all that is needful for soul
and body, and there is no limit to the exercise of your rights,
but in the infringement of the rights of another; and the moment
you pass that limit you are on forbidden ground, you violate the
law of individual life, and breed disorder and confusion in the
whole social system. Where, gentlemen, did you get the right to
deny the ballot to all women and black men not worth $250? If
this right of suffrage is not an individual right, from what
place and body did you get it? Is this right of franchise a
conventional arrangement, a privilege that society or government
may grant or withhold at pleasure? In the Senate of the United
States, in the recent discussion on the "bill to regulate the
elective franchise in the District of Columbia," GRATZ BROWN
said:

Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American
Senate, I stand for universal suffrage; and, as a matter of
fundamental principle, do not recognize the right of society
to limit it on any ground of race or sex. I will go farther
and say, that I recognize the right of franchise as being
intrinsically a natural right. I do not believe that society
is authorized to impose any limitations upon it that do not
spring out of the necessities of the social state itself.
Sir, I have been shocked, in the course of this debate, to
hear Senators declare this right only a conventional and
political arrangement, a privilege yielded to you and me,
and others; not a right in any sense, only a concession! Mr.
President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On
the contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that
doctrine; whenever you crystallize that idea in the public
mind of this country, you ring the death-knell of American
liberties!!

The demand we to-day make, is not the idiosyncrasy of a few
discontented minds, but a universal movement. Woman is everywhere
throwing off the lethargy of ages, and is already close upon you
in the whole realm of thought--in art, science, literature and
government. Everything heralds the dawn of the new era when moral
power is to govern nations. In asking you, Honorable Gentlemen,
to extend suffrage to woman, we do not press on you the risk and
responsibility of a new step, but simply to try a measure that
has already proved wise and safe the world over. So long as
political power was absolute and hereditary, woman shared it with
man by birth. In Hungary and some provinces of France and
Germany, women holding this inherited right confer their right of
franchise on their husbands. In 1858, in the old town of Upsal,
the authorities granted the right of suffrage to fifty women
holding real estate, and to thirty-one doing business in their
own name. The representative their votes elected was to sit in
the House of Burgesses. In Ireland, the Court of Queen's Bench,
Dublin, restored to women, in 1864, the old right of voting for
town commissioners. In 1864, too, the government of Moravia
decided that all women who are tax-payers had the right to vote.
In Canada, in 1850, an electoral privilege was conferred on
women, in the hope that the Protestant might balance the Roman
Catholic power in the school system. "I lived," says a friend of
mine, "where I saw this right exercised for four years by female
property holders, and never heard the most cultivated man, even
Lord Elgin, object to its results." Women vote in Austria,
Australia, Holland and Sweden, on property qualifications. There
is a bill now before the British Parliament, presented by John
Stuart Mill, asking for household suffrage, accompanied by a
petition from eleven thousand of the best educated women in
England.

Would you be willing to admit, gentlemen, that women know less,
have less virtue, less pride and dignity of character under
Republican institutions than in the despotisms and monarchies of
the old world? Your Codes and Constitutions savor of such an
opinion. Fortunately, history furnishes a few saving facts, even
under our Republican institutions. From a recent examination of
the archives of the State of New Jersey we learn that, owing to a
liberal Quaker influence, women and negroes exercised the right
of suffrage in that State thirty-one years--from 1776 to
1807--when "white males" ignored the constitution, and
arbitrarily assumed the reins of government. This act of
injustice is sufficient to account for the moral darkness that
seems to have settled down upon that unhappy State. During the
dynasty of women and negroes, does history record any social
revolution peculiar to that period? Because women voted there,
was the institution of marriage annulled, the sanctity of home
invaded, cradles annihilated, and the stockings, like Governor
Marcy's pantaloons, mended by the State? Did the men of that
period become mere satellites of the dinner-pot, the wash-tub, or
the spinning-wheel? Were they dwarfed and crippled in body and
soul, while their enfranchised wives and mothers became giants in
stature and intellect? Did the children, fully armed and equipped
for the battle of life, spring, Minerva-like, from the brains of
their fathers? Were the laws of nature suspended? Did the sexes
change places? Was everything turned upside down? No, life went
on as smoothly in New Jersey as in any other State in the Union.
And the fact that women did vote there, created so slight a
ripple on the popular wave, and made so ordinary a page in
history, that probably nine-tenths of the people of this country
never heard of its existence, until recent discussions in the
United States Senate brought out the facts of the case. In
Kansas, women vote for school officers and are themselves
eligible to the office of trustee. There is a resolution now
before the Legislature of Ohio to strike the words "white male"
from the Constitution of that State. The Hon. Mr. Noel, of
Missouri, has presented a bill in the House of Representatives to
extend suffrage to the women of the District of Columbia.

I think, Honorable Gentlemen, I have given you facts enough to
show that you need not hesitate to give the ballot to the women
of New York, on the ground that it is a new thing; for, as you
see, the right has long ago been exercised by certain classes of
women in many countries. And if it were a new thing, and had
never been heard of before, that would be no argument against the
experiment. Had the world never done a new thing, Columbus would
not have discovered this country, nor the ocean telegraph brought
our old enemy--Great Britain--within friendly speaking distance.
When it was proposed to end slavery in this country, croakers and
conservatives protested because it was a new thing, and must of
necessity produce a social convulsion. When it was proposed to
give woman her rights of property in this State, the same classes
opposed that on the same ground; but the spirit of the age
carried both measures over their heads and "nobody was hurt."

You Republicans can not oppose our demand on that ground, for
your present party-cry "negro suffrage" is a new thing, and
startling too, in the ears of the Southern States, and a very
inconsistent thing, so long as the $250 qualification remains in
your Constitution. "If you would know your faults," says Cicero,
"ask your enemies." Hear his Excellency Andrew Johnson, in his
veto on the District of Columbia Bill; he says: "It hardly seems
consistent with the principles of right and justice, that
representatives of States where suffrage is either denied the
colored man or granted to him on qualifications requiring
intelligence or property, should compel the people of the
District of Columbia to try an experiment which their
constituents have thus far shown an unwillingness to try for
themselves." Senator Sumner, a leading radical, expresses the
same opinion. In the debate on the admission of Nebraska, he
says: "When we demand equal rights of the Southern States, we
must not be so inconsistent as to admit any new State with a
constitution disfranchising citizens on account of color.
Congress must be itself just, if it would recommend it to others.
Reconstruction must begin at home." Consistency is a jewel. Every
thoughtful person must see that Northern representatives are in
no condition to reconstruct the South until their own State
Constitutions are purged of all invidious distinctions among
their citizens. As the fountain rises no higher than its source,
how can New York press on South Carolina a civilization she has
never tried herself. But say you, we can coerce the South to do
what we have no right to force on a loyal State. Has not each
State a right to amend her own Constitution and establish a
genuine republic within her own boundaries? "Let each man mend
one," says the old proverb, "and the world is mended." Let each
State bring its own Constitution into harmony with the Federal
Constitution, and the Union will be a republic.

We are soon to hold a convention to revise the Constitution of
the State of New York; and it is the duty of the people to insist
that it be so amended as to make all its citizens equal before
the law. Could the Empire State now take the lead in making
herself a genuine republic, all the States would, in time,
follow her example, and the problem of reconstruction be thus
settled to the satisfaction of all. Example is more powerful than
precept in all cases. Were our constitutions free from all class
distinctions, with what power our representatives could now press
their example on the Southern States. Is there anything more
rasping to a proud spirit than to be rebuked for shortcomings by
those who are themselves guilty of the grossest violations of law
and justice? Does the North think it absurd for its women to vote
and hold office, the South thinks the same of its negroes. Does
the North consider its women a part of the family to be
represented by the "white male citizen," so views the South her
negroes. And thus viewing them, the South has never taxed her
slaves; but our chivalry never fails to send its tax-gatherers to
the poorest widow that owns a homestead. Would you press
impartial suffrage on the South, recognize it first at home.
Would you have Congress do its duty in the coming session, let
the action of every State Legislature teach it what that duty is.
The work of this hour is a broader one than the reconstruction of
the Rebel States. It is the lifting of the entire nation into
higher ideas of justice and equality. It is the realization of
what the world has never yet seen, a GENUINE REPUBLIC.

As the ballot is the key to reconstruction, a right knowledge of
its use and power is the first step in the work before us. Hence,
the consideration of the question of suffrage is the duty of
every American citizen.

The legal disabilities to the exercise of suffrage (for persons
of sound mind and body) in the several States, are five--age,
color, sex, property and education. As age depends on a fixed
law, beyond the control of fallible man, viz., the revolution of
the earth around the sun, it must be impartial, for, _nolens
volens_, all men must revolve with their native planet; and as no
Republican or Democratic majority can make the earth stand still,
even for a Presidential campaign, they must in time perform that
journey often enough to become legal voters. As the right to the
ballot is not based on intelligence, it matters not that some
boys of eighteen do know more than some men of thirty. Inasmuch
as boys are not bound by any contract--except marriage--can not
sell a horse, or piece of land, or be sued for debt until they
are twenty-one, this qualification of age seems to be in harmony
with the laws of the land, and based on common sense.

As to color and sex, neither time, money or education can make
black white, or woman man; therefore such insurmountable
qualifications, not to be tolerated in a republican government,
are unworthy our serious consideration. "Qualifications," says
Senator Sumner, "can not be in their nature permanent or
insurmountable. Color can not be a qualification any more than
size, or quality of the hair. A permanent or insurmountable
qualification is equivalent to a deprivation of the suffrage. In
other words, it is the tyranny of taxation without
representation; and this tyranny, I insist, is not intrusted to
any State in the Union."

As to property and education, there are some plausible arguments
in favor of such qualifications, but they are all alike
unsatisfactory, illogical and unjust. A limited suffrage creates
a privileged class, and is based on the false idea that
government is the natural arbiter of its citizens, while in fact
it is the creature of their will. In the old days of the colonies
when the property qualification was five pounds--that being just
the price of a jackass--Benjamin Franklin facetiously asked, "If
a man must own a jackass in order to vote, who does the voting,
the man or the jackass?" If reading and money-making were a sure
gauge of character, if intelligence and virtue were twin sisters,
these qualifications might do; but such is not the case. In our
late war black men were loyal, generous and heroic without the
alphabet or multiplication table, while men of wealth, educated
by the nation, graduates of West Point, were false to their
country and traitors to their flag. There was a time in England's
history, when the House of Lords even, could neither read nor
write. Before the art of printing, were all men fools? Were the
Apostles and martyrs worth $250? The early Christians, the
children of art, science and literature, have in all ages
struggled with poverty, while they blessed the world with their
inspirations. The Hero of Judea had not where to lay His head!!
As capital has ever ground labor to the dust, is it just and
generous to disfranchise the poor and ignorant because they are
so? If a man can not read, give him the ballot, it is
schoolmaster. If he does not own a dollar give him the ballot, it
is the key to wealth and power. Says Lamartine, "universal
suffrage is the first truth and only basis of every national
republic." "The ballot," says Senator Sumner, "is the columbiad
of our political life, and every citizen who has it is a
full-armed monitor."

But while such grand truths are uttered in the ears of the world,
by an infamous amendment of the Federal Constitution, the people
have sanctioned the disfranchisement of a majority of the loyal
citizens of the nation. With sorrow we learn that the Legislature
of New York has ratified this change of the Constitution.

Happily for the cause of freedom, the organization we represent
here to-day, "THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION," has
registered its protest in the archives of the State against this
desecration of the last will and testament of the Fathers. It was
a mistake for you to confirm to-day what Congress proposed a year
ago. Recent debates in the Senate show a hearty repentance for
their past action, and an entire revolution in their opinions on
this whole question. It was gratifying to find in the discussion
of the District Franchise Bill, how unanimously the Senate
favored the extension of suffrage. The thanks of the women of the
Nation are especially due to Senator Cowan for his motion to
strike out the word "male," and to the nine distinguished
Senators who voted for his amendment. It was pleasant to see into
what fraternal relations this question at once brought all
opposing elements. The very able and exhaustive manner in which
both Republicans and Democrats pressed their claims to the
ballot, through two entire sessions of the Senate, is most
encouraging to the advocates of the political rights of women.

In view of this liberal discussion in the Senate, and the recent
action of Congress on the Territories, it is rather singular that
our Republican Governor, in referring to the Constitutional
Convention in his late message, while recommending consideration
of many minor matters, should have failed to call attention to
Art. 2d, Sec. 1, of the Constitution, which denies the
fundamental rights of citizenship. As the executive head of the
party in this State whose political capital is "negro suffrage,"
it would have been highly proper for our worthy Governor to have
given his opinion on that odious $250 clause in the Constitution.
No doubt our judiciary, our criminal legislation, our city
governments need reforming; our railroads, prisons and schools
need attention; but all these are of minor consideration to the
personal and property rights of the man himself. Said Lalor
Shiels, in the House of Commons, "strike the Constitution to the
center and the lawyer sleeps in his closet. But touch the cobwebs
in Westminster Hall and the spiders start from their hiding
places."

I have called your attention, gentlemen, to some of the flaws in
your Constitution that you may see that there is more important
work to be done in the coming Convention than any to which
Governor Fenton has referred in his message. I would also call
your attention to the fact, that while His Excellency suggests
the number of delegates at large to be chosen by the two
political parties, he makes no provision for the representatives
of women and "men of color" not worth $250. I would, therefore,
suggest to your honorable body that you provide for the election
of an equal number of delegates at large from the disfranchised
classes. But a response to our present demand does not
legitimately thrust on you the final consideration of the whole
broad question of suffrage, on which many of you may be
unprepared to give an opinion. The simple point we now press is
this: that in a revision of our Constitution, when the State is,
as it were, resolved into its original elements, ALL THE PEOPLE
should be represented in the Convention which is to enact the
laws by which they are to be governed the next twenty years.
Women and negroes, being seven-twelfths of the people, are a
majority; and according to our republican theory, are the
rightful rulers of the nation. In this view of the case,
honorable gentlemen, is it not a very unpretending demand we
make, that we shall vote once in twenty years in revising and
amending our State Constitution?

But, say you, the majority of women do not make the demand. Grant
it. What then? When you proclaimed emancipation, did you go to
slaveholders and ask if a majority of them were in favor of
freeing their slaves? When you ring the changes on "negro
suffrage" from Maine to California, have you proof positive that
a majority of the freedmen demand the ballot? On the contrary,
knowing that the very existence of republican institutions
depends on the virtue, education and equality of the people, did
you not, as wise statesmen, legislate in all these cases for the
highest good of the individual and the nation? We ask that the
same far-seeing wisdom may guide your decision on the question
now before you. Remember, the gay and fashionable throng who
whisper in the ears of statesmen, judges, lawyers, merchants,
"_We have all the rights we want_," are but the mummies of
civilization, to be brought back to life only by earthquakes and
revolutions. Would you know what is in the soul of woman, ask not
the wives and daughters of merchant princes; but the creators of
wealth--those who earn their bread by honest toil--those who, by
a turn in the wheel of fortune, stand face to face with the stern
realities of life.

"If you would enslave a people," says Cicero, "first, through
ease and luxury, make them effeminate." When you subsidize labor
to your selfish interests, there is ever a healthy resistance.
But, when you exalt weakness and imbecility above your heads,
give it an imaginary realm of power, illimitable, unmeasured,
unrecognized, you have founded a throne for woman on pride,
selfishness and complacency, before which you may well stand
appalled. In banishing Madame De Stael from Paris, the Emperor
Napoleon, even, bowed to the power of that scepter which rules
the world of fashion. The most insidious enemy to our republican
institutions, at this hour, is found in the aristocracy of our
women. The ballot-box, that great leveler among men, is beneath
their dignity. "_They have all the rights they want._" So, in his
spiritual supremacy, has the Pope of Rome! But what of the
multitude outside the Vatican!!!

This speech was published in full by the Metropolitan press and many
of the leading journals[93] of the State, with fair editorial
comments.

On June 4th, 1867, the Constitutional Convention assembled in Albany,
and on the 10th Mr. Graves of Herkimer, moved "that a committee of
five be appointed by the chair to report at an early day whether the
Convention should provide that when a majority of women voted that
they wanted the right of suffrage, they should have it," and on the
19th the President, William A. Wheeler, appointed the committee[94] on
the "right of suffrage, and the qualifications for holding office."

The first petition brought before the committee in favor of suffrage
for women was presented by George William Curtis, of Richmond Co.,
sent by the friends of Human Progress from their Annual meeting at
Waterloo.

Martin I. Townsend next presented a petition from William Johnson,
Chairman of the "Colored Men's State Committee," praying for "equal
manhood suffrage." Similar petitions, without any concert of action
between the parties, were presented simultaneously whenever any
discussion arose on the suffrage question. But in this Convention the
demands made by the women were more pressing and multitudinous.

Mr. GRAVES, June 21st, 1867, moved to take up his resolution,
"That a committee of five be appointed by the chair to report to
the convention at as early a day as possible, whether, in their
opinion, a provision should be incorporated in the Constitution
authorizing the women in this State to exercise the elective
franchise, when they shall ask that right by a majority of all
the votes given by female citizens over twenty-one years of age,
at an election called for that purpose, at which women alone
shall have the right to vote."

Mr. GRAVES said:--Mr. President. I do not desire at this time to
discuss the merits of the resolution; but allow me to suggest
that there are four classes of persons interested in the
questions involved in it. The first class is what is
opprobriously known as "strong-minded women," who claim the right
to vote upon the ground that they are interested and identified
with ourselves in the stability and permanency of our
institutions, and that their property is made liable for the
maintenance of our Government, while they have no right to choose
the law-makers or select the persons who are to assess the value
of their property liable to taxation. They claim that they are
not untaught in the science of government to which the right of
administration is denied to them.

The second class includes both males and females who sympathize
with the first class, and who claim that there is no disparity in
the intellect of men and women, when an equal opportunity is
afforded by education for progress and advancement. They also
claim that our country is diminishing all the time in moral
integrity and virtue, and ask that a new element be introduced
into our governmental affairs by which crime shall be lessened
and the estimate of moral virtue be made higher.

The third class urges that there should be no distinction between
males and females in the exercise of the elective franchise, and
they claim that it is anti-democratic that there should be a
minority in this country to rule its destinies.

There is a fourth class who believe that the right to exercise
the elective franchise is not inherent, but permissive, and that
the people are the Government, and that this power of the
elective franchise is under their immediate control, and they
claim the right to become part and parcel of the Government which
they help to support and maintain.

Now these four classes, differing in opinion upon this great
question, constitute a very large body of worthy, high-minded,
and intelligent men and women of this State who have long sought
to enlarge the elective franchise, and they claim the deliberate
consideration of this body upon the ground of equality, as their
innumerable petitions[95] to this Convention fully show. This
resolution gives to women themselves the power of discussing and
comparing of minds to settle the question whether they will avail
themselves of the desired right to exercise the power of voting.
And as it differs from all other questions which have originated
here with reference to this right of women to vote, I submit it
is a proper resolution to be referred to a select committee to be
appointed for that purpose.

Mr. Graves' resolution was referred to the Committee on Suffrage.

June 27th Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were granted a hearing[96]
before the Convention, and at the close of their addresses were asked
by different members to reply to various objections that readily
suggested themselves. Among others, Mr. Greeley said: "Ladies, you
will please remember that the bullet and ballot go together. If you
vote, are you ready to fight?" "Certainly," was the prompt reply. "We
are ready to fight, sir, just as you fought in the late war, by
sending our substitutes." The colloquy between the members and the
ladies, prolonged until a late hour, was both spicy and
instructive.[97] On the 10th of July a hearing was granted to Lucy
Stone,[98] which called out deep interest and consideration from the
members of that body. Later still, George Francis Train[99] was most
cordially received by the Convention.

C. C. DWIGHT, June 26th, offered a resolution that "The Standing
Committee on the Right of Suffrage be instructed to provide for
women to vote as to whether they wanted the right to vote after
the adoption of the New Constitution.

Mr. MERRITT, July 11th, moved that "The question of Woman
Suffrage be submitted at the election of 1868 or 1869. Referred
to the Committee of the Whole.

Horace Greeley, Chairman of the Committee, in his report, after
recommending universal "manhood suffrage," said:

Having thus briefly set forth the considerations which seem to us
decisive in favor of the few and moderate changes proposed, we
proceed to indicate our controlling reasons for declining to
recommend other and in some respects more important innovations.
Your committee does not recommend an extension of the elective
franchise to women. However defensible in theory, we are
satisfied that public sentiment does not demand and would not
sustain an innovation so revolutionary and sweeping, so openly at
war with a distribution of duties and functions between the sexes
as venerable and pervading as government itself, and involving
transformations so radical in social and domestic life. Should we
prove to be in error on this head, the Convention may overrule us
by changing a few words in the first section of our proposed
article.

Nor have we seen fit to propose the enfranchisement of boys above
the age of eighteen years. The current ideas and usages in our
day, but especially in this country, seem already to set too
strongly in favor of the relaxation, if not total overthrow of
parental authority, especially over half-grown boys. With the
sincerest good-will for the class in question, we submit that
they may spend the hours which they can spare from their labors
and their lessons more usefully and profitably in mastering the
wisdom of the sages and philosophers who have elucidated the
science of government, than in attendance on midnight caucuses,
or in wrangling around the polls.

ALBANY, June 28, 1867.

HORACE GREELEY, _Chairman_, WM. H. MERRILL,
LESLIE W. RUSSELL, GEO. WILLIAMS.

Mr. Cassidy presented a minority report urging a separate submission
of the question of negro suffrage, in which he said:

If the regeneration of political society is to be sought in the
incorporation of this element into the constituency, it must be
done by the direct and explicit vote of the electors. We are
foreclosed from any other course by the repeated action[100] of
the State.... It would be unfair to the people to declare that
whereas they have again and again refused to accept this change,
therefore we will incorporate it into the Constitution, and
compel them either to repeal that instrument, or to accept this
measure.... As to the extension of suffrage to women, the
undersigned reserve, for the present, any expression of opinion.

WILLIAM CASSIDY,
JOHN G. SCHUMAKER.

The petitions[101] for woman suffrage were presented in the Convention
until they reached in round numbers 20,000. The morning Mr. Greeley
gave his report the galleries were crowded with ladies, and every
member present, Democrat as well as Republican, was supplied with a
petition. As it had been rumored about that Mr. Greeley's report would
be against suffrage for women, the Democrats entered with great zest
into the presentation. George William Curtis, at the special
request[102] of the ladies, reserved his for the last, and when he
arose and said: "Mr. President, I hold in my hand a petition from Mrs.
Horace Greeley and three hundred other women citizens of Westchester,
asking that the word 'male' be stricken from the Constitution," the
sensation throughout the house was as profound as unexpected. Mr.
Greeley's chagrin was only equaled by the amusement of the other
members, and of the ladies in the gallery. As he arose to read his
report, it being the next thing in order, he was evidently embarrassed
in view of such a flood of petitions from all parts of the State; from
his own wife, and most of the ladies in his immediate social circle,
by seeming to antagonize the measure.

After Mr. Greeley's report, Mr. Graves made several efforts to get his
resolution adopted in time for the women to vote upon it in the spring
of 1868. Mr. Weed, of Clinton, also desired that the vote for the
measure should consist of the majority of the women of the State. The
great event of the Convention was the speech of George William Curtis
on the report of the "Committee on the right of suffrage and the
qualifications to hold office."

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS offered the following amendment:[103]

"In the first section, strike out the word 'man'; and wherever in
that section the word 'he' occurs, add 'or she'; and wherever the
word 'his' occurs, add 'or her.'"

Mr. CURTIS said: In proposing a change so new to our political
practice, but so harmonious with the spirit and principles of our
Government, it is only just that I should attempt to show that it
is neither repugnant to reason nor hurtful to the State. Yet I
confess some embarrassment; for, while the essential reason of
the proposition seems to me to be clearly defined, the objection
to it is vague and shadowy. From the formal opening of the
general discussion of the question in this country, by the
Convention at Seneca Falls in 1848, down to the present moment,
the opposition to the suggestion, so far as I am acquainted with
it, has been only the repetition of a traditional prejudice, or
the protest of mere sentimentality; and to cope with these is
like wrestling with a malaria, or arguing with the east wind. I
do not know, indeed, why the Committee have changed the phrase
"male inhabitant or citizen," which is uniformly used in a
constitutional clause limiting the elective franchise. Under the
circumstances, the word "man" is obscure, and undoubtedly
includes women as much as the word "mankind." But the intention
of the clause is evident, and the report of the Committee makes
it indisputable. Had they been willing to say directly what they
say indirectly, the eighth line and what follows would read,
"Provided that idiots, lunatics, persons under guardianship,
felons, women, and persons convicted of bribery, etc., shall not
be entitled to vote." In their report, the Committee omit to tell
us why they politically class the women of New York with idiots
and criminals. They assert merely that the general
enfranchisement of women would be a novelty, which is true of
every step of political progress, and is therefore a presumption
in its favor; and they speak of it in a phrase which is intended
to stigmatize it as unwomanly, which is simply an assumption and
a prejudice. I wish to know, sir, and I ask in the name of the
political justice and consistency of this State, why it is that
half of the adult population, as vitally interested in good
government as the other half, who own property, manage estates,
and pay taxes, who discharge all the duties of good citizens, and
are perfectly intelligent and capable, are absolutely deprived of
political power, and classed with lunatics and felons. The boy
will become a man and a voter; the lunatic may emerge from the
cloud and resume his rights; the idiot, plastic under the tender
hand of modern science, may be moulded into the full citizen; the
criminal, whose hand still drips with the blood of his country
and of liberty, may be pardoned and restored; but no age, no
wisdom, no peculiar fitness, no public service, no effort, no
desire, can remove from woman this enormous and extraordinary
disability. Upon what reasonable grounds does it rest? Upon none
whatever. It is contrary to natural justice, to the acknowledged
and traditional principles of the American Government, and to the
most enlightened political philosophy. The absolute exclusion of
women from political power in this State is simply usurpation.
"In every age and country," says the historian Gibbon, nearly a
hundred years ago, "the wiser or at least the stronger of the two
sexes has usurped the powers of the State, and confined the other
to the cares and pleasures of domestic life."

The historical fact is that the usurping class, as Gibbon calls
them, have always regulated the position of women by their own
theories and convenience. The barbaric Persian, for instance,
punished an insult to the woman with death, not because of her
but of himself. She was part of him. And the civilized English
Blackstone only repeats the barbaric Persian when he says that
the wife and husband form but one person--that is the husband.
Sir, it would be extremely amusing, if it were not tragical, to
trace the consequences of this theory on human society and the
unhappy effect upon the progress of civilization of this morbid
estimate of the importance of men. Gibbon gives a curious
instance of it, and an instance which recalls the spirit of the
modern English laws of divorce. There was a temple in Rome to the
goddess who presided over the peace of marriages. "But," says the
historian, "her very name, Viriplaca--the appeaser of
husbands--shows that repentance and submission were always
expected from the wife," as if the offense usually came from her.
In the "Lawe's resolution of Women's Rights," published in the
year 1632, a book which I have not seen, but of which there are
copies in the country, the anonymous and quaint author says, and
with a sly satire: "It is true that man and woman are one person,
but understand in what manner. When a small brooke or little
river incorporateth with Rhodanus, Humber, or the Thames, the
poor rivulet looseth her name; it is carried and recarried with
the new associate--it beareth no sway--it possesseth nothing
during coverture. A woman as soon as she is married is called
_covert_--in Latine, _nupta_--that is, veiled; as it were
overclouded and shadowed; she hath lost her streame. I may more
truly, farre away, say to a married woman, her new self is her
superior; her companion her master.... See here the reason of
that which I touched before--that women have no voice in
Parliament; they make no laws; they consent to none; they
abrogate none. All of them are understood either married or to be
married, and their desires are to their husbands."

From this theory of ancient society, that woman is absorbed in
man; that she is a social inferior and a subordinate part of man;
springs the system of laws in regard to women which in every
civilized country is now in course of such rapid modification,
and it is this theory which so tenaciously lingers as a
traditional prejudice in our political customs. But a State
which, like New York, recognizes the equal individual rights of
all its members, declaring that none of them shall be
disfranchised unless by the law of the land or the judgment of
his peers, and which acknowledges women as property-holders and
taxable, responsible citizens, has wholly renounced the old
Feudal and Pagan theory, and has no right to continue the evil
condition which springs from it. The honorable and eloquent
gentleman from Onondaga said that he favored every enlargement of
the franchise consistent with the safety of the State. Sir, I
heartily agree with him, and it was the duty of the Committee in
proposing to continue the exclusion of women, to show that it is
necessary to the welfare and safety of the State that the whole
sex shall be disfranchised. It is in vain for the Committee to
say that I ask for an enlargement of the franchise and must,
therefore, show the reason. Sir, I show the reason upon which
this franchise itself rests, and which, in its very nature,
forbids arbitrary exclusion; and I urge the enfranchisement of
women on the ground that whatever political rights men have women
have equally.

I have no wish to refine curiously upon the origin of government.
If any one insists, with the honorable gentleman from Broome,
that there are no such things as natural political rights, and
that no man is born a voter, I will not now stop to argue with
him; but as I believe the honorable gentleman from Broome is by
profession a physician and surgeon, I will suggest to him that if
no man is born a voter, so no man is born a man, for every man is
born a baby. But he is born with the right of becoming a man
without hindrance; and I ask the honorable gentleman, as an
American citizen and political philosopher, whether, if every man
is not born a voter, he is not born with the right of becoming a
voter upon equal terms with other men? What else is the meaning
of the phrase which I find in the New York _Tribune_ of Monday,
and have so often found there, "The radical basis of government
is equal rights for all citizens." There are, as I think we shall
all admit, some kinds of natural rights. This summer air that
breathes benignant around our national anniversary, is vocal with
the traditional eloquence with which those rights were asserted
by our fathers. From all the burning words of the time, I quote
those of Alexander Hamilton, of New York, in reply, as my
honorable friend the Chairman of the Committee will remember, to
the Tory farmer of Westchester: "The sacred rights of mankind are
not to be rummaged for among old parchments or dusty records.
They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human
nature by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be
erased or obscured by mortal power." In the next year, Thomas
Jefferson, of Virginia, summed up the political faith of our
fathers in the Great Declaration. Its words vibrate through the
history of those days. As the lyre of Amphion raised the walls of
the city, so they are the music which sing course after course of
the ascending structure of American civilization into its place.
Our fathers stood indeed upon technical and legal grounds when
the contest with Great Britain began, but as tyranny encroached
they rose naturally into the sphere of fundamental truths as into
a purer air. Driven by storms beyond sight of land, the sailor
steers by the stars; and our fathers, compelled to explore the
whole subject of social rights and duties, derived their
government from what they called self-evident truths. Despite the
brilliant and vehement eloquence of Mr. Choate, they did not deal
in glittering generalities, and the Declaration of Independence
was not the passionate manifesto of a revolutionary war, but the
calm and simple statement of a new political philosophy and
practice.

The rights which they declared to be inalienable are indeed what
are usually called natural, as distinguished from political
rights, but they are not limited by sex. A woman has the same
right to her life, liberty and property that a man has, and she
has consequently the same right to an equality of protection that
he has; and this, as I understand it, is what is meant by the
phrase, the right of suffrage. If I have a natural right to that
hand, I have an equal natural right to everything that secures to
me its use, provided it does not harm the equal right of another;
and if I have a natural right to my life and liberty, I have the
same right to everything that protects that life and liberty
which any other man enjoys. I should like my honorable friend,
the Chairman of this Committee, to show me any right which God
gave him, which he also gave to me, for which God gave him a
claim to any defense which He has not given to me. And I ask the
same question for every woman in this State. Have they less
natural right to life, liberty, and property than my honorable
friend the Chairman of the Committee; and is it not, to quote the
words of his report, an extremely "defensible theory" that he can
not justly deprive the least of those women of any protection of
those rights which he claims for himself? No, sir, the natural,
or what we call civil right, and its political defense, go
together. This was the impregnable logic of the Revolution. Lord
Gower sneered in Parliament at the American Colonists a century
ago, as Mr. Robert Lowe sneers at the English Reformers to-day:
"Let the Americans talk about their natural and divine rights....
I am for enforcing these measures." Dr. Johnson bellowed across
the Atlantic, "Taxation, no Tyranny." James Otis spoke for
America, for common sense, and for eternal justice, in saying,
"No good reason, however, can be given in any country, why every
man of a sound mind should not have his vote in the election of a
representative. If a man has but little property to protect and
defend, yet his life and liberty are things of some importance."
And long before James Otis, Lord Somers said to a committee of
the House of Commons, that the possession of the vote is the only
true security which an Englishman has for the possession of his
life and property.

Every person, then, is born with an equal claim to every kind of
protection of his natural rights which any other person enjoys.
The practical question, therefore, is how shall this protection
be best attained? and this is the question of government which,
according to the Declaration, is established for the security of
these rights. The British theory was that they could be better
secured by an intelligent few than by the ignorant and passionate
multitude. Goldsmith expressed it in singing:

"For just experience shows in ever soil,
That those who think must govern those who toil."

But nobody denies that the government of the best is the best
government; the only question is how to find the best, and common
sense replies:

"The good, 'tis true, are heaven's peculiar care;
But who but heaven shall show us who they are?"

Our fathers answered the question of the best and surest
protection of natural right by their famous phrase, "the consent
of the governed." That is to say, since every man is born with
equal natural rights, he is entitled to an equal protection of
them with all other men; and since government is that protection,
right reason and experience alike demand that every person shall
have a voice in the government upon perfectly equal and
practicable terms; that is, upon terms which are not necessarily
and absolutely insurmountable by any part of the people.

Now these terms can not rightfully be arbitrary. But the argument
of the honorable gentleman from Schenectady, whose lucid and
dignified discourse needs no praise of mine, and the arguments of
others who have derived government from society, seemed to assume
that the political people may exclude and include at their
pleasure; that they may establish purely arbitrary tests, such as
height, or weight, or color, or sex. This was substantially the
squatter sovereignty of Mr. Douglas, who held that the male white
majority of the settlers in a territory might deprive a colored
minority of all their rights whatever; and he declared that they
had the right to do it. The same right that this Convention has
to hang me at this moment to that chandelier, but no other right.
Brute force, sir, may do anything; but we are speaking of rights,
and of rights under this Government, and I deny that the people
of the State of New York can rightfully, that is, according to
right reason and the principles of this Government derived from
it, permanently exclude any class of persons or any person
whatever from a voice in the Government, unless it can be clearly
established that their participation in political power would be
dangerous to the State; and, therefore, the honorable gentleman
from Kings was logically correct in opposing the enfranchisement
of the colored population, upon the ground that they were an
inferior race, of limited intelligence, a kind of Chimpanzee at
best. I think, however, sir, the honorable and scholarly
gentleman--even he--will admit, that at Pillow, at Milliken's
Bend, at Fort Wagner, the Chimpanzees did uncommonly well; yes,
sir, as gloriously and immortally as our own fathers at Bunker
Hill and Saratoga. "There ought to be no pariahs," says John
Stuart Mill, "in a full grown and civilized nation; no persons
disqualified except through their own default.... Every one is
degraded, whether aware of it or not, when other people, without
consulting him, take upon themselves unlimited power to regulate
his destiny." "No arrangement of the suffrage, therefore, can be
permanently satisfactory in which any person or class is
peremptorily excluded; in which the electoral privilege is not
open to all persons of full age who desire it." (Rep. G., p.
167.) And Thomas Hare, one of the acutest of living political
thinkers, says that in all cases where a woman fulfills the
qualification which is imposed upon a man, "there is no sound
reason for excluding her from the parliamentary franchise. The
exclusion is probably a remnant of the feudal law, and is not in
harmony with the other civil institutions of the country. There
would be great propriety in celebrating a reign which has been
productive of so much moral benefit by the abolition of an
anomaly which is so entirely without any justifiable foundation."
(Hare, p. 280.)

The Chairman of the Committee asked Miss Anthony, the other
evening, whether, if suffrage was a natural right, it could be
denied to children. Her answer seemed to me perfectly
satisfactory. She said simply, "All that we ask is an equal and
not an arbitrary regulation. If _you_ have the right, _we_ have
it." The honorable Chairman would hardly deny that to regulate
the exercise of a right according to obvious reason and
experience is one thing, to deny it absolutely and forever is
another. And this is the safe practical rule of our government,
as James Madison expressed it, that "it be derived from the great
body of the people, not from an inconsiderable portion or favored
class of it." When Mr. Gladstone, in his famous speech that
startled England, said in effect, that no one could be justly
excluded from the franchise, except upon grounds of personal
unfitness or public danger, he merely echoed the sentiment of
Joseph Warren, which is gradually seen to be the wisest and most
practical political philosophy: "I would have such a government
as should give every man the greatest liberty to do what he
chooses, consistent with restraining him from doing any injury to
another." Is not that the kind of government, sir, which we wish
to propose for this State? And if every person in New York has a
natural right to life, liberty, and property, and a co-existent
claim to a share in the government which defends them, regulated
only by perfectly equitable conditions, what are the practical
grounds upon which it is proposed to continue the absolute and
hopeless disfranchisement of half the adult population?

It is alleged that women are already represented by men? Where
are they so represented? and when was the choice made? If I am
told that they are virtually represented, I reply, with James
Otis, that "no such phrase as virtual representation is known in
law or Constitution. It is altogether a subtlety and illusion,
wholly unfounded and absurd." I repeat, if they are represented,
when was the choice made? Nobody pretends that they have ever
been consulted. It is a mere assumption to the effect that the
interest and affection of men will lead them to just and wise
legislation for women as well as for themselves. But this is
merely the old appeal for the political power of a class. It is
just what the British parliament said to the colonies a hundred
years ago. "We are all under the same government," they said:
"Our interests are identical; we are all Britons; Britannia rules
the wave; God save the King! and down with sedition and the Sons
of Liberty!" The colonies chafed and indignantly protested,
because the assumption that therefore fair laws were made was not
true; because they were discovering for themselves what every
nation has discovered--the truth that shakes England to-day, and
brings Disraeli and the Tory party to their knees, and has
already brought this country to blood--that there is no class of
citizens, and no single citizen, who can safely be intrusted with
the permanent and exclusive possession of political power. "There
is no instance on record," says Buckle, in his history of
civilization in England, "of any class possessing power without
abusing it." It is as true of men as a class as it is of an
hereditary nobility, or of a class of property-holders. Men are
not wise enough, nor generous enough, nor pure enough, to
legislate fairly for women. The laws of the most civilized
nations depress and degrade women. The legislation is in favor of
the legislating class. In the celebrated debate upon the Marriage
Amendment Act in England, Mr. Gladstone said that "when the
gospel came into the world woman was elevated to an equality with
her stronger companion." Yet, at the very time he was speaking,
the English law of divorce, made by men to regulate their
domestic relations with women, was denounced by the law lords
themselves as "disgusting and demoralizing" in its operation,
"barbarous," "indecent," "a disgrace to the country," and
"shocking to the sense of right." Now, if the equality of which
Mr. Gladstone spoke had been political as well as sentimental,
does he or any statesman suppose that the law of divorce would
have been what it then was, or that the law of England to-day
would give all the earnings of a married woman to her husband, or
that of France forbid a woman to receive any gift without her
husband's permission?

We ask women to confide in us, as having the same interests with
them. Did any despot ever say anything else? And, if it be safe
or proper for any intelligent part of the people to relinquish
exclusive political power to any class, I ask the Committee, who
proposed that women should be compelled to do this? To what
class, however rich, or intelligent, or honest, they would
themselves surrender _their_ power? and what they would do if any
class attempted to usurp that power? They know, as we all know,
as our own experience has taught us, that the only security of
natural right is the ballot. They know, and the instinct of the
whole loyal land knows, that, when we had abolished slavery, the
emancipation could be completed and secured only by the ballot in
the hands of the emancipated class. Civil rights were a mere
mocking name until political power gave them substance. A year
ago, Gov. Orr of South Carolina told us that the rights of the
freedmen were safest in the hands of their old masters. "Will you
walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly?" New Orleans,
Memphis, and countless and constant crimes, showed what that
safety was. Then, hesitating no longer, the nation handed the
ballot to the freedmen, and said, "Protect yourselves!" And now
Gov. Orr says that the part of wisdom for South Carolina is to
cut loose from all parties, and make a cordial alliance with the
colored citizens. Gov. Orr knows that a man with civil rights
merely is a blank cartridge. Give him the ballot, and you add a
bullet, and make him effective. In that section of the country,
seething with old hatreds and wounded pride, and a social system
upheaved from the foundation, no other measure could have done
for real pacification in a century what the mere promise of the
ballot has done in a year. The one formidable peril in the whole
subject of reconstruction has been the chance that Congress would
continue in the Southern States the political power in the hands
of a class, as the report of the Committee proposes that we shall
do in New York.

If I am asked what do women want the ballot for, I answer the
question with another, what do men want it for? Why do the
British workmen at this moment so urgently demand it? Look into
the British laws regulating labor, and you will see why. They
want the ballot because the laws affecting labor and capital are
made by the capitalist class alone and are therefore unjust. I do
not forget the progressive legislation of New York in regard to
the rights of women. The Property Bill of 1860, and its
supplement, according to the _New York Tribune_, redeemed five
thousand women from pauperism. In the next year, Illinois put
women in the same position with men, as far as property rights
and remedies are concerned. I mention these facts with pleasure,
as I read that Louis Napoleon will, under certain conditions,
permit the French people to say what they think. But, if such
reforms are desirable, they would certainly have been sooner and
more wisely effected could women have been a positive political
power. Upon this point one honorable gentleman asked Mrs.
Stanton whether the laws both for men and women were not
constantly improving, and whether, therefore, it was not unfair
to attribute the character of the laws about women to the fact
that men made them. The reply is very evident. If women alone
made the laws, legislation for both men and women would
undoubtedly be progressive. Does the honorable gentleman think,
therefore, that women only should make the laws?

It is true, Mr. Chairman, that, in the ordinary and honorable
sense of the words, women are represented. Laws are made for them
by another class, and upon the theories which that class, without
the fear of political opposition, may choose to entertain, and in
direct violation of the principles upon which, in their own case,
they tenaciously insist. I live, sir, in the county of Richmond.
It has a population of some 27,000 persons. They own property,
and manage it. They are taxed, and pay their taxes; and they
fulfill the duties of citizens with average fidelity. But if the
Committee had introduced a clause into the section they propose
to this effect, "Provided that idiots, lunatics, persons under
guardianship, felons, inhabitants of the county of Richmond, and
persons convicted of bribery, shall not be entitled to vote,"
they would not have proposed a more monstrous injustice, nor a
grosser inconsistency with every fundamental right and American
principle, than in the clause they recommend; and in that case,
sir, what do you suppose would have been my reception had I
returned to my friends and neighbors, and had said to them, "The
Convention thinks that you are virtually represented by the
voters of Westchester and Chautauqua"?

Mr. Chairman, I have no superstition about the ballot. I do not
suppose it would immediately right all the wrongs of women, any
more than it has righted all those of men. But what political
agency has righted so many? Here are thousands of miserable men
all around us; but they have every path opened to them. They have
their advocates; they have their votes; they make the laws, and,
at last and at worst, they have their strong right hands for
defense. And here are thousands of miserable women pricking back
death and dishonor with a little needle; and now the sly hand of
science is stealing that little needle away. The ballot does not
make those men happy nor respectable nor rich nor noble; but they
guard it for themselves with sleepless jealousy, because they
know it is the golden gate to every opportunity; and precisely
the _kind_ of advantage it gives to one sex, it would give to the
other. It would arm it with the most powerful weapon known to
political society; it would maintain the natural balance of the
sexes in human affairs, and secure to each fair play within its
sphere.

But, sir, the Committee tell us that the suffrage of women would
be a revolutionary innovation; it would disturb the venerable
traditions. Well, sir, about the year 1790, women were first
recognized as school-teachers in Massachusetts. At that time, the
New England "school-marm" (and I use the word with affectionate
respect) was a revolutionary innovation. She has been abroad ever
since, and has been by no means the least efficient, but always
the most modest and unnoticed, of the great civilizing influences
in this country. Innovation!--why, sir, when Sir Samuel Romilly
proposed to abolish the death-penalty for stealing a
handkerchief, the law officers of the crown said it would
endanger the whole criminal law of England. When the bill
abolishing the slave-trade passed the House of Lords, Lord St.
Vincent rose and stalked out, declaring that he washed his hands
of the ruin of the British empire. When the Greenwich pensioners
saw the first steamer upon the Thames, they protested that they
did not like the steamer, for it was contrary to nature. When, at
the close of the reign of Charles II., London had half a million
of people, there was a fierce opposition to street-lamps,--such
is the hostility of venerable traditions to an increase of light.
When Mr. Jefferson learned that New York had explored the route
of a canal, he benignly regarded it, in the spirit of our
Committee, as, doubtless, "defensible in theory"; for he said
that it was "a very fine project, and might be executed a century
hence." And, fifty-six years ago, Chancellor Livingston wrote
from this city, that the proposition of a railroad, shod with
iron, to move heavy weights four miles an hour, was ingenious,
perhaps "theoretically defensible"; but, upon the whole, the road
would not be so cheap or convenient as a canal. In this country,
sir, the venerable traditions are used to being disturbed.
America was clearly designed to be a disturber of traditions, and
to leave nobler precedents than she found. So, a few months ago,
what the committee call a revolutionary innovation was proposed
by giving the ballot to the freedmen in the District of Columbia.
The awful results of such a revolution were duly set forth in one
of the myriad veto messages of the President of the United
States. But they have voted. If anybody proposed to disturb the
election, it was certainly not the new voters. The election was
perfectly peaceful, and not one of the presidential pangs has
been justified. So with this reform. It _is_ new in the extent
proposed. It is as new as the harvest after the sowing, and it is
as natural. The resumption of rights long denied or withheld
never made a social convulsion: that is produced by refusing
them. The West-Indian slaves received their liberty, praying upon
their knees; and the influence of the enfranchisement of women
will glide into society as noiselessly as the dawn increases into
day.

Or shall I be told that women, if not numerically counted at the
polls, do yet exert an immense influence upon politics, and do
not really need the ballot. If this argument was seriously urged,
I should suffer my eyes to rove through this chamber and they
would show me many honorable gentlemen of reputed political
influence. May they, therefore, be properly and justly
disfranchised? I ask the honorable Chairman of the Committee,
whether he thinks that a citizen should have no vote because he
has influence? What gives influence? Ability, intelligence,
honesty. Are these to be excluded from the polls? Is it only
stupidity, ignorance and rascality which ought to possess
political power?

Or, will it be said that women do not want the ballot and ought
to be asked? And upon what principle ought they to be asked? When
natural rights or their means of defense have been immemorially
denied to a large class, does humanity, or justice, or good sense
require that they should be registered and called to vote upon
their own restoration? Why, Mr. Chairman, it might as well be
said that Jack the Giant Killer ought to have gravely asked the
captives in the ogre's dungeon whether they wished to be
released. It must be assumed that men and women wish to enjoy
their natural rights, as that the eyes wish light or the lungs an
atmosphere. Did we wait for emancipation until the slaves
petitioned to be free? No, sir, all our lives had been passed in
ingenious and ignominious efforts to sophisticate and stultify
ourselves for keeping them chained; and when war gave us a legal
right to snap their bonds, we did not ask them whether they
preferred to remain slaves. We knew that they were men, and that
men by nature walk upright, and if we find them bent and
crawling, we know that the posture is unnatural whether they may
think so or not. In the case of women we acknowledge that they
have the same natural rights as ourselves--we see that they hold
property and pay taxes, and we must of necessity suppose that
they wish to enjoy every security of those rights that we
possess. So when in this State, every year, thousands of boys
come of age, we do not solemnly require them to tell us whether
they wish to vote. We assume, of course, that they do, and we say
to them, "Go, and upon the same terms with the rest of us, vote
as you choose." But gentlemen say that they know a great many
women who do not wish to vote, who think it is not ladylike, or
whatever the proper term may be. Well, sir, I have known many men
who have habitually abstained from politics because they were so
"ungentlemanly," and who thought that no man could touch pitch
without defilement. Now what would the honorable gentlemen who
know women who do not wish to vote, have thought of a proposition
that I should not vote, because my neighbors did not wish to?
There may have been slaves who preferred to remain slaves--was
that an argument against freedom? Suppose that there are a
majority of the women of this State who do not wish to vote--is
that a reason for depriving _one_ woman who is taxed of her equal
representation, or one innocent person of the equal protection of
his life and liberty?

Shall nothing ever be done by statesmen until wrongs are so
intolerable that they take society by the throat? Did it show the
wisdom of British Conservatism that it waited to grant the Reform
bill of 1832 until England hung upon the edge of civil war? When
women and children were worked sixteen hours a day in English
factories, did it show practical good sense to delay a "short
time" bill until hundreds of thousands of starving workmen agreed
to starve yet more, if need be, to relieve the overwork of their
families, and until the most pitiful procession the sun ever
shone upon, that of the factory children, just as they left their
work, marched through the streets of Manchester, that burst into
sobs and tears at the sight? Yet if, in such instances, where
there was so plausible an adverse appeal founded upon vested
interests and upon the very theory of the government, it was
unwise to wait until a general public outcry imperatively
demanded the reform, how wholly needless to delay in this State a
measure which is the natural result of our most cherished
principles, and which threatens to disturb or injure nothing
whatever. The amendment proposes no compulsion like the old New
England law, which fined every voter who did not vote. If there
are citizens of the State who think it unladylike or
ungentlemanlike to take their part in the government, let them
stay at home. But do not, I pray you, give them authority to
detain wiser and better citizens from their duty.

But I shall be told, in the language of the Report of the
Committee, that the proposition is openly at war with the
distribution of functions and duties between the sexes.
Translated into English, Mr. Chairman, this means that it is
unwomanly to vote. Well, sir, I know that at the very mention of
the political rights of women, there arises in many minds a
dreadful vision of a mighty exodus of the whole female world, in
bloomers and spectacles, from the nursery and kitchen to the
polls. It seems to be thought that if women practically took part
in politics, the home would be left a howling wilderness of
cradles, and a chaos of undarned stockings and buttonless shirts.
But how is it with men? Do they desert their workshops, their
plows, and offices, to pass their time at the polls? Is it a
credit to a _man_ to be called a professional politician? The
pursuits of men in the world, to which they are directed by the
natural aptitude of sex, and to which they must devote their
lives, are as foreign from political functions as those of women.
To take an extreme case: there is nothing more incompatible with
political duties in cooking and taking care of children than
there is in digging ditches or making shoes, or in any other
necessary employment, while in every superior interest of society
growing out of the family, the stake of women is not less than
men, and their knowledge is greater. In England, a woman who owns
shares in the East-India Company may vote. In this country she
may vote as a stockholder upon a railroad from one end of the
country to another. But if she sells her stock, and buys a house
with the money, she has no voice in the laying out of the road
before her door, which her house is taxed to keep and pay for.
And why, in the name of good sense, if a responsible human being
may vote upon specific industrial projects, may she not vote upon
the industrial regulation of the State? There is no more reason
that men should assume to decide participation in politics to be
unwomanly than that woman should decide for men that it is
unmanly. It is not our prerogative to keep women feminine. I
think, sir, they may be trusted to defend the delicacy of their
own sex. Our success in managing ours has not been so conspicuous
that we should urgently desire more labor of the same kind.
Nature is quite as wise as we. Whatever their sex incapacitates
women from doing they will not do. Whatever duty is consistent
with their sex and their relation to society, they will properly
demand to do until they are permitted.

The reply to the assertion that participation in political power
is unwomanly, and tends to subvert the family relation, is simple
and unanswerable. It is that we can not know what is womanly
until we see the folly of insisting that the theories of men
settle the question. We know now what the convenience and
feelings of men decide to be womanly. We shall know what _is_
womanly in the same sense that we know what is manly, only when
women have the same equality of development and the same liberty
of choice as men. The amendment I offer is merely a prayer that
you will remove from women a disability, and secure to them the
same freedom of choice that we enjoy. If the instincts of sex, of
maternity, of domesticity, are not persuasive enough to keep them
in the truest sense women, it is the most serious defect yet
discovered in the divine order of nature. When, therefore, the
Committee declare that voting is at war with the distribution of
functions between the sexes, what do they mean? Are not women as
much interested in good government as men? There is fraud in the
Legislature; there is corruption in the courts; there are
hospitals, and tenement-houses, and prisons; there are
gambling-houses, and billiard-rooms, and brothels; there are
grog-shops at every corner, and I know not what enormous
proportion of crime in the State proceeds from them; there are
40,000 drunkards in the State, and their hundreds of thousands
of children--all these things are subjects of legislation, and
under the exclusive legislation of men the crime associated with
all these things becomes vast and complicated. Have the wives,
and mothers, and sisters of New York less vital interest in them,
less practical knowledge of them and their proper treatment, than
the husbands and fathers? No man is so insane as to pretend it.
Is there then any natural incapacity in women to understand
politics? It is not asserted. Are they lacking in the necessary
intelligence? But the moment that you erect a standard of
intelligence which is sufficient to exclude women as a sex, that
moment most of the male sex would be disfranchised. Is it that
they ought not to go to public political meetings? But we
earnestly invite them. Or that they should not go to the polls?
Some polls, I allow, in the larger cities, are dirty and
dangerous places; and those it is the duty of the police to
reform. But no decent man wishes to vote in a grog-shop, nor to
have his head broken while he is doing it, while the mere act of
dropping a ballot in a box is about the simplest, shortest, and
cleanest that can be done. Last winter Senator Frelinghuysen,
repeating, I am sure thoughtlessly, the common rhetoric of the
question, spoke of the high and holy mission of women. But if
people, with a high and holy mission, may innocently sit
bare-necked in hot theatres to be studied through
pocket-telescopes until midnight by any one who chooses, how can
their high and holy mission be harmed by their quietly dropping a
ballot in a box? What is the high and holy mission of any woman
but to be the best and most efficient human being possible? To
enlarge the sphere of duty and the range of responsibility, where
there are adequate power and intelligence, is to heighten, not to
lessen, the holiness of life.

But if women vote, they must sit on juries. Why not? Nothing is
plainer than that thousands of women who are tried every year as
criminals are not tried by their peers. And if a woman is bad
enough to commit a heinous crime, must we absurdly assume that
women are too good to know that there is such a crime? If they
may not sit on juries, certainly they ought not to be witnesses.
A note in Howell's State Trials, to which my attention was drawn
by one of my distinguished colleagues in the convention, quotes
an ancient work, "Probation by Witnesses," by Sir George
Mackenzie, in which he says: "The reason why women are excluded
from witnessing must be either that they are subject to too much
compassion, and so ought not to be more received in criminal
cases than in civil cases; or else the law was unwilling to
trouble them, and thought it might learn them too much
confidence, and make them subject to too much familiarity with
men and strangers, if they were necessitated to vague up and down
at all courts upon all occasions." Hume says this rule was held
as late as the beginning of the eighteenth century. But if too
much familiarity with men be so pernicious, are men so pure that
they alone should make laws for women, and so honorable that they
alone should try women for breaking them? It is within a very few
years at the Liverpool Assizes in a case involving peculiar
evidence, that Mr. Russell said: "The evidence of women is, in
some respects, superior to that of men. Their power of judging of
minute details is better, and when there are more than two facts
and something be wanting, their intuitions supply the
deficiency." "And precisely the qualities which fit them to give
evidence," says Mrs. Dall, to whom we owe this fact, "fit them to
sift and test it."

But, the objectors continue, would you have women hold office? If
they are capable and desirous, why not? They hold office now most
acceptably. In my immediate neighborhood, a postmistress has been
so faithful an officer for seven years, that when there was a
rumor of her removal, it was a matter of public concern. This is
a familiar instance in this country. Scott's "Antiquary" shows
that a similar service was not unknown in Scotland. In "Notes and
Queries," ten years ago (Vol. II., Sec. 2, 1856, pp. 83, 204),
Alexander Andrews says: "It was by no means unusual for females
to serve the office of overseer in small rural parishes," and a
communication in the same publication (First Series, Vol. II., p.
383) speaks of a curious entry in the Harleian Miscellany (MS.
980, fol. 153): "The Countess of Richmond, mother to Henry VII.,
was a Justice of the Peace. Mr. Atturney said if it was so, it
ought to have been by commission, for which he had made many an
hower's search for the record, but could never find it, but he
had seen many arbitriments that were made by her. Justice Joanes
affirmed that he had often heard from his mother of the Lady
Bartlett, mother to the Lord Bartlett, that she was a Justice of
the Peace, and did set usually upon the bench with the other
Justices in Gloucestershire; that she was made so by Queen Mary,
upon her complaint to her of the injuries she sustained by some
of that county, and desiring for redress thereof; that as she
herself, was Chief-Justice of all England, so this lady might be
in her own county, which accordingly the Queen granted. Another
example was alleged of one ---- Rowse, in Suffolk, who usually at
the assizes and sessions there held, set upon the bench among the
Justices _gladio cincta_." The Countess of Pembroke was
hereditary sheriff of Westmoreland, and exercised her office.
Henry the VIIIth granted a commission of inquiry, under the great
seal, to Lady Ann Berkeley, who opened it at Gloucester, and
passed sentence under it. Henry VIII's daughter, Elizabeth Tudor,
was Queen of England, in name and in fact, during the most
illustrious epoch of English history. Was Elizabeth incompetent?
Did Elizabeth unsex herself? Or do you say that she was an
exceptional woman? So she was, but no more an exceptional woman
than Alfred, Marcus Aurelius, or Napoleon were exceptional men.
It was held by some of the old English writers that a woman might
serve in almost any of the great offices of the kingdom. And,
indeed, if Victoria may deliberate in council with her ministers,
why may not any intelligent English woman deliberate in
Parliament, or any such American woman in Congress? I mention
Elizabeth, Maria Theresa, Catherine, and all the famous Empresses
and Queens, not to prove the capacity of women for the most
arduous and responsible office, for that is undeniable, but to
show the hollowness of the assertion that there is an instinctive
objection to the fulfillment of such offices by women. Men who
say so do not really think so. The whole history of the voting
and office-holding of women shows that whenever men's theories of
the relation of property to the political franchise, or of the
lineal succession of the government, require that women shall
vote or hold office, the objection of impropriety and incapacity
wholly disappears. If it be unwomanly for a woman to vote, or to
hold office, it is unwomanly for Victoria to be Queen of England.
Surely if our neighbors had thought they would be better
represented in this convention by certain women, there is no good
reason why they should have been compelled to send us. Why should
I or any person be forbidden to select the agent whom we think
the most competent and truly representative of our will? There is
no talent or training required in the making of laws which is
peculiar to the male sex. What is needed is intelligence and
experience. The rest is routine.

The capacity for making laws is necessarily assumed when women
are permitted to hold and manage property and to submit to
taxation. How often the woman, widowed, or married, or single, is
the guiding genius of the family--educating the children,
directing the estate, originating, counseling, deciding. Is there
anything essentially different in such duties and the powers
necessary to perform them from the functions of legislation? In
New Jersey the Constitution of 1776 admitted to vote all
inhabitants of a certain age, residence, and property. In 1797,
in an act to regulate elections, the ninth section provides:
"Every voter shall openly and in full view deliver his or her
ballot, which shall be a single written ticket, containing the
names of the persons for whom he or she votes." An old citizen of
New Jersey says that "the right was recognized, and very little
said or thought about it in any way." But in 1807 the suffrage
was restricted to white male adult citizens of a certain age,
residence, and property, and in 1844 the property qualification
was abolished. At the hearing before the committee, the other
evening, a gentleman asked whether the change of the
qualification excluding women did not show that their voting was
found to be inconvenient or undesirable. Not at all. It merely
showed that the male property-holders out-voted the female. It
certainly showed nothing as to the right or expediency of the
voting of women. Mr. Douglas, as I said, had a theory that the
white male adult squatters in a territory might decide whether
the colored people in the territory should be enslaved. They
might, indeed, so decide, and with adequate power they might
enforce their decision. But it proved very little as to the
right, the expediency, or the constitutionality of slavery in a
territory. The truth is that men deal with the practical question
of female suffrage to suit their own purposes. About twenty-five
years ago the Canadian government by statute rigorously and in
terms forbade women to vote. But in 1850, to subserve a sectarian
purpose, they were permitted to vote for school trustees. I am
ashamed to argue a point so plain. What public affairs need in
this State is "conscience," and woman is the conscience of the
race. If we in this convention shall make a wise Constitution, if
the Legislatures that follow us in this chamber shall purify the
laws and see that they are honorably executed, it will be just in
the degree that we shall have accustomed ourselves to the
refined, moral, and mental atmosphere in which women habitually
converse.

But would you, seriously, I am asked, would you drag women down
into the mire of politics? No, sir, I would have them lift us out
of it. The duty of this Convention is to devise means for the
improvement of the government of this State. Now, the science of
government is not an ignoble science, and the practice of
politics is not necessarily mean and degrading. If the making and
administering of law has become so corrupt as to justify calling
politics filthy, and a thing in which no clean hands can meddle
without danger, may we not wisely remember, as we begin our work
of purification, that politics have been wholly managed by men?
How can we purify them? Is there no radical method, no force yet
untried, a power not only of skillful checks, which I do not
undervalue, but of controlling character? Mr. Chairman, if we sat
in this chamber with closed windows until the air became thick
and fetid, should we not be fools if we brought in
deodorizers--if we sprinkled chloride of lime and burned
assafoetida, while we disdained the great purifier? If we would
cleanse the foul chamber, let us throw the windows wide open, and
the sweet summer air would sweep all impurity away and fill our
lungs with fresher life. If we would purge politics let us turn
upon them the great stream of the purest human influence we know.

But I hear some one say, if they vote they must do military duty.
Undoubtedly when a nation goes to war it may rightfully claim the
service of all its citizens, men and women. But the question of
fighting is not the blow merely, but its quality and persistence.
The important point is, to make the blow effective. Did any brave
Englishman who rode into the jaws of death at Balaklava serve
England on the field more truly than Florence Nightingale? That
which sustains and serves and repairs the physical force is just
as essential as the force itself. Thus the law, in view of the
moral service they are supposed to render, excuses clergymen from
the field, and in the field it details ten per cent of the army
to serve the rest, and they do not carry muskets nor fight.
Women, as citizens, have always done, and always will do that
work in the public defense for which their sex peculiarly fits
them, and men do no more. The care of the young warriors, the
nameless and innumerable duties of the hospital and home, are
just as essential to the national safety as fighting in the
field. A nation of men alone could not carry on a contest any
longer than a nation of women. Each would be obliged to divide
its forces and delegate half to the duties of the other sex.

But while the physical services of war are equally divided
between the sexes, the moral forces are stronger with women. It
was the women of the South, we are constantly and doubtless very
truly told, who sustained the rebellion, and certainly without
the women of the North the Government had not been saved. From
the first moment to the last, in all the roaring cities, in the
remote valleys, in the deep woods, on the country hill-sides, on
the open prairie, wherever there were wives, mothers, sisters,
lovers, there were the busy fingers which, by day and by night,
for four long years, like the great forces of spring-time and
harvest, never failed. The mother paused only to bless her sons,
eager for the battle; the wife to kiss her children's father, as
he went; the sister smiled upon her brother, and prayed for the
lover who marched away. Out of how many hundreds of thousands of
homes and hearts they went who never returned. But those homes
were both the inspiration and the consolation of the field. They
nerved the arm that struck for them. When the son and husband
fell in the wild storm of battle, the brave woman-heart broke in
silence, but the busy fingers did not falter. When the comely
brother and lover were tortured into idiocy and despair, that
woman-heart of love kept the man's faith steady, and her
unceasing toil repaired his wasted frame. It was not love of the
soldier only, great as that was; it was knowledge of the cause.
It was that supreme moral force operating through innumerable
channels like the sunshine in nature, without which successful
war would have been impossible. There are thousands and thousands
of these women who ask for a voice in the government they have so
defended. Shall we refuse them?

I appeal again to my honorable friend, the Chairman of the
Committee. He has made the land ring with his cry of universal
suffrage and universal amnesty. Suffrage and amnesty to whom? To
those who sought to smother the government in the blood of its
noblest citizens, to those who ruined the happy homes and broke
the faithful hearts of which I spoke. Sir, I am not condemning
his cry. I am not opposing his policy. I have no more thirst for
vengeance than he, and quite as anxiously as my honorable friend
do I wish to see the harvests of peace waving over the
battle-fields. But, sir, here is a New York mother, who trained
her son in fidelity to God and to his country. When that country
called, they answered. Mother and son gave, each after his kind,
their whole service to defend her. By the sad fate of war the boy
is thrown into the ghastly den at Andersonville. Mad with thirst,
he crawls in the pitiless sun toward a muddy pool. He reaches the
dead-line, and is shot by the guard--murdered for fidelity to his
country. "I demand amnesty for that guard, I demand that he shall
vote," cries the honorable Chairman of the Committee. I do not
say that it is an unwise demand. But I ask him, I ask you, sir, I
ask every honorable and patriotic man in this State, upon what
conceivable ground of justice, expediency, or common sense shall
we give the ballot to the New York boy's murderer and refuse it
to his mother?

Mr. Chairman, I have thus stated what I conceive to be the
essential reasonableness of the amendment which I have offered.
It is not good for man to be alone. United with woman in the
creation of human society, their rights and interests in its
government are identical, nor can the highest and truest
development of society be reasonably conceived, so long as one
sex assumes to prescribe limits to the scope and functions of the
other. The test of civilization is the position of women. Where
they are wholly slaves, man is wholly barbarous; and the measure
of progress from barbarism to civilization is the recognition of
their equal right with man to an unconstrained development.
Therefore, when Mr. Mill unrolls his petition in Parliament to
secure the political equality of women, it bears the names of
those English men and women whose thoughts foretell the course of
civilization. The measure which the report of the Committee
declares to be radically revolutionary and perilous to the very
functions of sex, is described by the most sagacious of living
political philosophers as reasonable, conservative, necessary,
and inevitable; and he obtains for it seventy-three votes in the
same House in which out of about the same whole number of voters
Charles James Fox, the idol of the British Whigs, used to be able
to rally only forty votes against the policy of Pitt. The dawn in
England will soon be day here. Before the American principle of
equal rights, barrier after barrier in the path of human progress
falls. If we are still far from its full comprehension and
further from perfect conformity to its law, it is in that only
like the spirit of Christianity, to whose full glory even
Christendom but slowly approaches. From the heat and tumult of
our politics we can still lift our eyes to the eternal light of
that principle; can see that the usurpation of sex is the last
form of caste that lingers in our society; that in America the
most humane thinker is the most practical man, and the organizer
of justice the most sagacious statesman.

Mr. Gould, of Columbia, followed with a long speech in opposition,
and the discussion[104] continued through several days; but Mr.
Curtis's amendment, in the Committee of the Whole, received 24 ayes
against 63 nays; and on the final vote in the Convention, 19 ayes[105]
against 125 nays.

Mr. Greeley, seemingly to atone for the disappointment of the women of
the State in his adverse report, published the following editorial in
_The Tribune_ of July 26th, 1867:

WOMEN IN POLITICS.

The Constitutional Convention of our State, yesterday,
negatived--yeas 19, nays 125--the proposition that women should
share with men the duties and responsibilities of voters at
elections. This decision was preceded by an earnest, protracted
discussion, in which the right and expediency of extending the
elective franchise to women were most eloquently urged by George
William Curtis, and less elaborately by several others. The
judgment pronounced yesterday by the Convention must therefore be
regarded as final.

We do not, however, regard it as a verdict against a
participation in public affairs by women. On the contrary, we
hold that woman's influence not only is, but should be felt in
legislation and government, and must increase in power as the
race becomes more enlightened and humane. We only insist that she
shall speak and be heard distinctly as woman, not mingled and
confused with man. To make women voters at our elections as now
held, and eligible to office in competition with men, would be
far better calculated to corrupt woman than to reform man and
purify politics. To have women mingle freely with men in primary
meetings, caucuses, nominating conventions, investigating
committees, juries, etc., etc., is not in our judgment calculated
to elevate woman more than to reform existing abuses in
legislation and practical politics. We should greatly prefer a
system like this:

Let the women of our State, after due discussion and
consultation, hold a convention composed of delegates from the
several counties, equal in number to the members of Assembly. To
this Convention let none but women be admitted, whether as
officers or spectators. Let this convention, keeping its debates
wholly private, decide what department of legislative government
may be safely assigned and set apart to woman. We would suggest
all that relates to the family; marriage, divorce, separation
from bed and board, the control and maintenance of children,
education, the property rights of married women, inheritance,
dower, etc., etc., as subjects that could wisely and safely be
set apart to be legislated upon by woman alone. And we believe
that if she (not a few women, but the sex) shall ever suggest and
require such an apportionment of legislative powers and duties,
man will cheerfully concede it.

"But would you have woman hold elections like ours"? No! we would
not! We would have her teach us how to take the sense of the
electors far more quietly and cheaply. When a department of
legislation shall be assigned to woman, we would have her collect
through school-district, or kindred organizations, the names of
all female citizens who possess the qualifications, other than of
sex, required from male voters at our elections. These being
duly, lucidly registered, let, then, women in each Assembly
district be designated to collect the votes of its women. Let
them simply advertise the address to which votes should be sent
and appoint a week wherein to collect them. Now, let every female
citizen write her ballot and enclose it, signing her name to the
address indicated; and due time having been allowed for votes to
arrive by mail or otherwise, let the votes be duly canvassed, and
the result ascertained and declared, and certificates of election
issued accordingly.

Under this plan, the invalid, the bed-ridden, the bereaved, and
even the absent, could vote as well as others, and the cost of
holding an election throughout the State need not reach $10,000.
Such are the outlines of our views regarding woman in politics.
They are doubtless susceptible of improvement; but we think not
by effacing in politics the natural and time-honored distinctions
between women and men. A female legislature, a jury of women, we
could abide; a legislature of men and women, a jury promiscuously
drawn from the sexes we do not believe in.

The New York _Independent_ published the following criticism on Mr.
Greeley's report a few days after its publication:

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION.

BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

Your committee does not recommend an extension of the
elective franchise to woman. However defensible in theory,
we are satisfied that public sentiment does not demand, and
would not sustain, an innovation so revolutionary and
sweeping; so openly at war with a distribution of duties and
functions between the sexes as venerable as the Government
itself, and involving transformations so radical in social
and domestic life. Should we prove to be in error on this
head, the Convention may overrule us by changing a few words
in the first section of our proposed article.

In the above extract from the majority report of the Committee on
Suffrage we have substantially four reasons why the committee did
not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to women.

1st. Public sentiment does not demand it.

2d. It would be an innovation revolutionary and sweeping.

3d. It is at war with a distribution of duties and functions
between the sexes.

4th. The enfranchisement of women would disturb relations as
venerable as government itself, and radically change our domestic
life.

Shades of Jeremy Bentham and Sidney Smith forgive! After
publishing to the world that immortal oration of Noodledom, and
refuting for all time such fallacies as the above, how amazing
that Radical Republicans in the capital of the Empire State
should repeat in the ears of the nineteenth century stale
platitudes from the effete civilizations of the Old World--that
to their starving wives and mothers, knocking at the door of the
political citadel, instead of bread and the ballot, they should
give stones and twenty years more of degradation in
disfranchisement. But if it be true that public sentiment is not
prepared for this just and beneficent measure, then it is the
duty of our leaders, instead of stereotyping the ignorant
prejudices of the people into statutes and constitutions, to
educate this public sentiment, by the utterance of sound ideas,
by the example of honest action. When God gives new truths to the
few, it is that they may win the response of the many. There is
no blunder more constantly made by politicians than the
assumption that the people are never ready for an onward step.

The people were ready for emancipation so long before the
Government declared it that, when it did come, the measure called
forth but little enthusiasm. It is not so much the will of the
people that troubles the politician as the safety of the party in
power. This committee denies the ballot to woman, and gives it to
the black man, for the same reason--party success; not because
they think public sentiment is ready for either, for in their
uncertainty they dare not submit the question of the black man
separately to a vote of the people. "But the measure is so
revolutionary and sweeping." When we abjured King George, and
declared all men equal, we inaugurated a very revolutionary
measure, undermined kingdoms and empires, deranged the political,
commercial, and social interests of two continents, and upset
innumerable family relations, by crowding husbands and fathers
into untimely graves. Had the Honorable Suffrage Committee been
in Boston Harbor, they would have objected to throwing the tea
overboard as too revolutionary a measure; they would have scouted
Jefferson's radical declaration as absurd, in view of the royal
facts on every throne in Europe, and the divine command, "Honor
the king." After revolutionizing, as we have just done, the
entire system of labor at the South, the social and political
status of a race, and in pressing a measure for which public
sentiment seemed unprepared, deluging the land in blood, how
futile is such reasoning as the above in the mouths of those who
inaugurated this second revolution.

Again, "The enfranchisement of woman is at war with the
distribution of duties and functions between the sexes." The plea
of tyrants in all ages. Says the English peer, "I'll make laws
and govern; let the peasant till the earth and provide the sinews
of war." Says the proud slaveholder, "I'll read and write and
think; let the negro hoe the sugar, rice, and corn." Says the New
York Suffrage Committee, "We will do the voting; let women pay
the taxes. We will be judges, jurors, sheriffs; and give woman
the right to be hung on the gallows." Napoleon once said to
Madame de Stael, "Why will you women meddle with politics?"
"Sire," she replied, "if you will hang us, we must ask the reason
why."

The functions of the sexes! What particular function does it
require to vote? In the discussion on this point, we hear of
property, education, morality, sanity; yet "white males" vote
without these, and women possessing all are denied the right.
While different men have different duties, different functions,
different spheres, ranging from the heights of Parnassus to the
bowels of the earth, why legislate all women into a nutshell?
Because a man is a father, must he needs be nothing else? Are
lawyers, merchants, tailors, cobblers, bootblacks less skilled in
their specialties because they vote? Because some women are
mothers, shall all women concentrate every thought in that
direction? and can those who are mothers be nothing else? Have
not those who are training up sons and daughters an interest
beyond the home, in the great outer world, where they are soon to
act their part? If women should vote one day in the year, must
every duty and function of their being be subordinated to that
one act during the whole 365?

Many men, possessing the right of suffrage, never exercise it:
many more use it indifferently once a year, or sell it to the
highest bidder; and on what principle does the theory rest, that
if woman had this right, she would desert husband, child, and
home, and reserve all her love and care, her smiles and
enthusiasm, for the ballot-box? No; woman's love for man is not
based on the statutes of the State, nor the maternal instinct on
the second article of the Constitution. Whatever distribution of
duties and functions are fixed by nature we need no legislation
to enforce. So long as the fact of motherhood does not release
woman from taxation, and the necessity of earning her own bread,
it should not deprive her of that right most needed for her
protection. If the 40,000 drunkards' wives in this State have the
necessary functions to provide food, clothes, and shelter for
worthless husbands and helpless children, they have the necessary
functions to go to the polls and vote for such social and
sanitary laws as shall end the vice of intemperance.

"But," says the Committee, "this measure would disturb relations
as venerable as government itself."

So said objectors twenty years ago in this State when woman was
first secured in her rights of property. Some of our must
distinguished lawyers prophesied a social convulsion on the
adoption of that measure. But it came without earthquake or
tornado. In a single hour, by a stroke of the pen, the women of
the Empire State were crowned property-holders. But only those
who had felt the iron teeth of the law took note of the onward
legislation. It was a mighty wave on the shores of progress, that
made scarce a ripple on the surface, washing the feet of the
lonely traveler on the sand, though unheeded by the multitude on
the bosom of its waters.

The ballot in the hand of woman will bring neither the millennium
nor pandemonium the next day; but it will surely right many
wrongs. It will open to her the colleges, the professions, the
profitable and honorable walks of life, and give her better wages
for her work. In securing to woman self-respect, independence and
power, we shall purify and exalt our social relations. Helpless
and dependent, woman must ever be the victim of society. "Give a
man a right over my subsistence," says Alexander Hamilton, "and
he has a right over my whole moral being."

February 13, 1868, Mr. Graves offered a resolution: "That the article
on suffrage be recommitted to be revised, by striking out the word
'male' after the word 'every' in the first line of Section 1, Article
II."

Mr. GRAVES said: In offering this resolution I am not unmindful
of the opinion that has been expressed in this Convention on the
question. Yet, sir, I see a willingness expressed on all sides,
to extend the suffrage to the black man at the South and the
equally ignorant foreigner, alike without education, without
knowledge of our laws and Constitution, incapable of appreciating
the genius of republican institutions, and who, neither by
manner, by effort, by example, by influence, can do aught to
promote the best interests of this Government.

If this constitution as it now is shall be approved by the
people, you allow the black men of the South, fresh from the
chains of slavery, to go to the ballot-box and vote on all the
great questions involving the interests of this nation, while you
deny the same right to educated, patriotic women--our own wives
and mothers, who are educating our children, who give tone and
character to society, and who are first and foremost in all moral
movements.

You deny them the right to select officers who are to discharge
the duties of government, and, worse still, a voice in the laws
they are compelled to obey. Yes, sir, you say to the drunken
husband who spends his time in whisky saloons, who goes reeling
home at night to abuse his wife and children, that he is fit to
vote on the interests of the family and the town, while you deny
that right to the clear-headed, industrious wife, who feeds,
clothes and shelters the worthless husband and educates the
half-orphaned children.

What a travesty on common sense and justice is such legislation!
I know there are men in this Convention shaking in their boots
for fear their mothers, wives, and daughters shall have equal
power with themselves; cowardly men without gallantry, who fear
that woman's voice in legislation might end some of the pet vices
of society--might be more potent than their own.

Mr. SEAVER rose to a point of order, and asked, "Who are the men
shaking in their boots?"

Mr. GRAVES retorted, "Wounded birds will flutter."

Mr. VEDDER wanted the gentleman's words recorded.

Mr. GRAVES: I was about to say that educated women should be
permitted to go to the ballot-box, and by their votes help to
maintain our form of government. Why is it that every father in
this country is educating his daughter as well as his son in all
branches of science? Why does he expend his money in preparing
his daughter for the most responsible positions, and then deny
her the right to exercise her powers in the most intricate and
exalted of sciences--that of government? I know it is said that
the right of suffrage conferred on woman would destroy all
domestic peace; which is to say a man can not tolerate an equal
at his fireside. Does domestic peace exist in the exact ratio of
a woman's inferiority to the man she calls her husband? The
intelligent, educated wife must exert an influence for good over
the husband. The wise, far-seeing, self-disciplined mother must
exert an influence for good over her children; why, then, may not
this influence be equally potent in the State?

The resolution was lost.

The struggle in New York ended, all thoughts were turned towards
Kansas, where, as already shown, the friends of woman suffrage were
doomed to another disappointment. However, the year was one of active
effort; tracts and petitions were diligently circulated; a thorough
campaign made in Kansas; a series of meetings held in all the chief
cities from Leavenworth to New York, and a newspaper established,
demanding far more time and money than its founders anticipated. Thus
the intervening months were fully occupied until the May
Anniversaries, when all religious and reformatory associations were
accustomed to hold their annual meetings in New York city.

EQUAL RIGHTS ANNIVERSARY.

The American Equal Rights Association held its annual meeting in
Cooper Institute, New York, May 14, 1868. Its officers[106], with but
few changes, were the same as before.

The HUTCHINSON FAMILY, the branch of John, was present, and with
their sister, Abby Hutchinson Patten, opened the meeting with
their song, "We Come to Greet You." Lucy Stone read a letter from
John Stuart Mill, expressing sympathy with the movement. Letters
were also read from Rev. Robert Collyer of Chicago, Maria
Giddings, the daughter of Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio,
Frances Dana Gage, and several others. Miss Anthony invited all
delegates of Equal Rights Societies to seats on the platform; she
also moved that Mrs. Rose, Mrs. Stanton, Mr. Burleigh and Mr.
Foster be a committee to prepare resolutions.

HENRY B. BLACKWELL reported the success of the campaign of the
women of this Society in Kansas, where Rev. Olympia Brown, Lucy
Stone, Mrs. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had canvassed. Their
eloquence and determination gave great promise of success; but in
an inopportune moment, Horace Greeley and others saw fit in the
Constitutional Convention to report unfavorably on the
proposition to extend suffrage to the women of the Empire State,
and that influenced the sentiment of the younger Western States,
and their enterprise was crushed. Even the Republicans in Kansas,
after witnessing this example, set their faces against the
extension of suffrage to women. The negroes got but a few more
votes than did the women.

LUCY STONE gave a resume of the progress of the cause in this
country and in England. Col. Higginson and Mrs. Rose made
excellent remarks. "Keep the ball rolling" was gracefully
rendered by Mrs. Abby Hutchinson Patton, the whole audience
joining in the chorus. Mrs. Stone presented two forms of petition
to Congress; one to extend suffrage to women in the District of
Columbia and the Territories, the other for the submission of a
proposition for a 16th Amendment to prohibit the States from
disfranchising citizens on account of sex. Frederick Douglass
made an acceptable speech in favor of the petitions. The
President announced that Mrs. Patten headed the subscription list
to aid the association in its work for the coming year with $50.
Miss Anthony presented the various tracts published by the
Society, and _The Revolution_, urging the friends of the cause to
aid in the circulation of the paper, as it was the only one owned
and edited by women, wholly devoted to the cause of Equal Rights.
Rev. Dr. Blanchard, of Brooklyn, opened the evening session with
prayer; a resolution was proposed and adopted, on the death of
James Mott, husband of Lucretia Mott, President of the first
Woman's Rights Convention at Seneca Falls.

Rev. OLYMPIA BROWN: It is said that Nature is against us. In the
Massachusetts Legislature, Mr. Dana, Chairman of the Committee
before whom we had a hearing, said: "Nature is against it. It
will take the romance out of life to grant what you desire"! If
the romance of life is a falsehood and a fiction, we want to get
back to truth, nature and God. We all love liberty and desire to
possess it. No one worthy the name of man or woman is willing to
surrender liberty and become subservient to another. Woman may be
shut out of politics by law, but her influence will be felt
there. Some of our leading reformers work for other objects
first; the enfranchisement of the negro, the eight hour law, the
temperance cause; and leave the woman suffrage question in the
background; but woman will be enfranchised in spite of them. It
is no use to tell us to wait until something else is done. _Now_
is the accepted time for the enfranchisement of woman. The
abolition of slavery was thought to be premature, but that
mistake is now clearly seen. Now is the time for every
disfranchised class to make known its wants. The Republican party
is no better than the Democratic. It sacrificed principle and
nominated a man for President to _save the party_, whom they were
afraid the Democrats would nominate if they did not! The
Republican party controlled Kansas, and yet repudiated woman's
rights in the canvass of last year. We want a party (and would
like the Republican party) who will adopt a platform of Universal
Suffrage for every color and every sex. "The Republican party
must be saved," is the cry; but its great danger is in not being
true to principle. We will push on, keeping in view the rights of
our common nature until woman is the peer of man in every sphere
of life.

ELIZABETH A. KINGSLEY, of Philadelphia, CHARLES BURLEIGH, Rev.
HENRY BLANCHARD and Mrs. ROSE made brief addresses.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS deprecated the seeming assertion of Rev. O. B.
Frothingham, that one good cause was in opposition to another. I
champion the right of the negro to vote. It is with us a matter
of life and death, and therefore can not be postponed. I have
always championed woman's right to vote; but it will be seen that
the present claim for the negro is one of the most _urgent_
necessity. The assertion of the right of women to vote meets
nothing but ridicule; there is no deep seated malignity in the
hearts of the people against her; but name the right of the negro
to vote, all hell is turned loose and the Ku-klux and Regulators
hunt and slay the unoffending black man. The government of this
country loves women. They are the sisters, mothers, wives and
daughters of our rulers; but the negro is loathed. Women should
not censure Mr. Phillips, Mr. Greeley, or Mr. Tilton, all have
spoken eloquently for woman's rights. We are all talking for
woman's rights, and we should be just to all our friends and
enemies. There is a difference between the Republican and
Democratic parties.

OLYMPIA BROWN: What is it?

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: The Democratic party has, during the whole
war, been in sympathy with the rebellion, while the Republican
party has supported the Government.

OLYMPIA BROWN: How is it now?

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: The Democratic party opposes impeachment, and
desires a white man's government.

OLYMPIA BROWN: What is the difference in _principle_ between the
position of the Democratic party opposing the enfranchisement of
2,000,000 negro men, and the Republican party opposing the
emancipation of 17,000,000 white women?

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: The Democratic party opposes suffrage to
both: but the Republican party is in favor of enfranchising the
negro, and is largely in favor of enfranchising woman. Where is
the Democrat who favors woman suffrage? (A voice in the audience,
"Train!") Yes, he hates the negro, and that is what stimulates
him to substitute the cry of emancipation for women. The negro
needs suffrage to protect his life and property, and to ensure
him respect and education. He needs it for the safety of
reconstruction and the salvation of the Union; for his own
elevation from the position of a drudge to that of an influential
member of society. If you want women to forget and forsake
frivolity, and the negro to take pride in becoming a useful and
respectable member of society, give them both the ballot.

OLYMPIA BROWN: Why did Republican Kansas vote down negro
suffrage?

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: Because of your ally, George Francis Train!

OLYMPIA BROWN: How about Minnesota without Train? The Republican
party is a party and cares for nothing but party! It has
repudiated both negro suffrage and woman suffrage.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS: Minnesota lacked only 1,200 votes of carrying
negro suffrage. All the Democrats voted against it, while only a
small portion of the Republicans did so. And this was
substantially the same in Ohio and Connecticut. The Republican
party is about to bring ten States into the Union; and Thaddeus
Stevens has reported a bill to admit seven, all on the
fundamental basis of constitutions guaranteeing negro suffrage
forever.

OLYMPIA BROWN again insisted that the party was false, and that
now was the time for every true patriot to demand that no new
State should be admitted except on the basis of suffrage to women
as well as negroes.

LUCY STONE controverted Mr. Douglass' statement that women were
not persecuted for endeavoring to obtain their rights, and
depicted in glowing colors the wrongs of women and the inadequacy
of the laws to redress them. Mrs. Stone also charged the
Republican party as false to principle unless it protected women
as well as colored men in the exercise of their right to vote.

_The Tribune_ said the resolutions adopted declare that suffrage
is an inalienable right without qualification of sex or race;
that our State and National Governments are anti-Republican in
form, and anti-Democratic in fact; that the only way to decide
whether women want to vote is to give them an opportunity of
doing so; that the Republicans are bound to extend the
application of manhood suffrage to women; that Reconstruction
will fail to secure peace, unless it gives women the right to
vote; they invite the National Conventions of both parties to put
a woman suffrage plank in their platforms; petition[107] Congress
to extend suffrage to the women of the District of Columbia, and
to propose a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting political
distinctions on account of sex; assert that the laws depriving
married women of the equal custody of their children and of the
control of their property, are a disgrace to civilization; and
thank the men of Kansas who voted for Woman Suffrage.

FOOTNOTES:

[92] Following this hearing, Mr. Folger presented a resolution in the
Senate for the women of the State to vote for delegates to the
Constitutional Convention, and nine members voted in its favor.

[93] The _Albany Evening Journal_ of January 24th, says: "Mrs. Stanton
had a large audience to hear her argument in favor of so amending the
Constitution as to permit women and colored men to vote and hold
office. She said all that could be said and said it well in support of
her position, but it is still a problem whether the Judiciary
Committee were convinced. Like most men of old-fashioned notions, they
are slow to believe that women would be elevated, either in
usefulness, or dignity, by being transferred from the drawing room and
the nursery to the ballot-box and the forum!!

[94] Horace Greeley, Westchester Co., Leslie W. Russel, Lawrence Co.,
William Cassidy, Albany Co., William H. Merrill, Wyoming Co., George
Williams, Oneida Co., John G. Schumaker, Kings Co., Isaac L. Eudress,
Livingston Co.

[95] _June 20, 1867._--Mr. CORBETT presented a memorial from citizens
of Syracuse for securing the right of suffrage for women on equal
terms with men.

Mr. GRAVES--Petition of Mrs. F. D. Fish and 180 other citizens--worthy
and intelligent men and women--of the city of Utica, asking equal
suffrage for men and women.

Referred to the Committee on Suffrage.

_June 26, 1867._--Mr. RATHBUN--Petition for universal suffrage for
women as well as men.

C. E. PARKER--Petition for citizens of Tioga County.

Mr. CURTIS--A petition from Mrs. Daniel Cady, of Johnstown, and 200
others, asking to have "male" stricken from the State Constitution.

E. G. LAPHAM presented a petition.

Mr. EZRA GRAVES presented thirty-seven petitions--Brooklyn, 1; Mt.
Morris, 4; Troy, 1; Lima, 1; New York City, 8; Buffalo, 3;
Skaneateles, 2; Lockport, 1; Poughkeepsie, 1; Dutchess County, 1;
Utica, 1; Fairfield, Herkimer Co., 1. In all, 2,040 persons asking for
equal suffrage.

_Friday, June 28th._--C. C. DWIGHT--Mrs. Eliza Wright Osborn and 22
others, of Auburn, asking suffrage for women. Mr. COOKE--Mrs. Lina
Vandenburg and 350 others. Mr. ARCHER--Sundry citizens. Mr. MEAD--Mrs.
E. A. Kingsbury and 20 others. Mr. SCHOONMAKER--M. I. Ingraham and
others. Mr. HOUSTON--Lucia Sutton. Mr. RATHBUN--Mrs. A. H. Sabin and
20 others. J. BROOKS--Emma Suydam and 15 others.

Mr. GRAVES--Two memorials. 1st. Schoharie County, 204 men and women
for constitutional amendment prohibiting sale of intoxicating liquors.
2d. Lucia Humphrey and 30 others for equal suffrage. All went to
Committee on Suffrage, except Mr. Graves' first, which went to
Committee on Adulterated Liquors.

[96] Mr. GREELEY, June 26th, from the Committee on Suffrage, offered a
resolution that "The use of this hall on the 27th, Thursday evening of
this week, be granted to the Standing Committee on the Right of
Suffrage, that they may accord a public hearing to the advocates of
female suffrage," which was adopted.

[97] The _Albany Evening Journal_ of June 28, 1867, says, editorially:

WOMANHOOD SUFFRAGE.--The Assembly Chamber was well filled last evening
to listen to Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony. Mrs. Stanton made a
stirring appeal, and Miss Anthony followed. In response to queries,
she said she expected that women would yet serve as jurors and be
drafted. Several hundred had fought in the late war, but when their
sex was discovered they were dismissed in disgrace; and to the shame
of the Government be it said, they were never paid for their services.

[98] Mr. Folger offered a resolution--That the use of this Chamber be
granted to the American Equal Rights Association for a meeting on the
evening of Wednesday, the 10th inst.

[99] GEO. FRANCIS TRAIN BEFORE THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION AT
ALBANY.--The Constitutional Convention at Albany has not had many
variations from its customary slate of topics, but it is a noteworthy
fact that no New York paper mentioned that Geo. Francis Train
addressed the Convention for two hours on the subject of woman voting
and the financial policy of the nation. Mr. Train having been the only
man to volunteer his services in Kansas and before the Convention, it
is worthy of note, when the argument advanced by our chivalrous press
is a sneer, a sarcasm, or an insult, that Mr. Train's defense of women
voting was received by the Convention by loud and repeated applause.
The following was the resolution, passed unanimously, offering the
hall:

STATE OF NEW YORK, IN CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION, }
ALBANY, December 4, 1867. }

On motion of Mr. Ballard:

_Resolved_, That the use of the Assembly Chamber be granted to
Geo. Francis Train, Esq., at 4 P.M. this day.

By order. LUTHER CALDWELL, _Secretary_.

[100] In 1846 the question of negro suffrage was submitted to a
popular vote, and negatived by 223,884 to 85,306; in 1850 it was again
defeated by a vote of 337,984 to 197,503; a similar submission was
provided for by a concurrent resolution of the Legislature of 1859,
which by neglect of the State officer to provide for its publication,
was defeated; but its fate may fairly be regarded as further evidence
of the indifference of the public toward a change.

[101] _July 1st._--Mr. FOWLER presented a petition from Miss Laura
Bosworth and others for woman suffrage.

_July 9th._--From Gerrit Smith and 180 others of Madison County, for
female suffrage.

Mr. ENDRESS--Emma C. Lawrence and 50 others of Westchester, for female
suffrage.

Mr. MURPHY--Thomas N. Cashow and 20 others, of Kings County, for woman
suffrage.

Mr. FULLERTON--Mary J. Quackenbosh and many others, from Newburgh.

Mr. VAN CAMPEN--Mary E. Mead and many others, of Westchester County.

Mr. BEADLE--Mrs. W. S. Shute, Mary C. Bristol, and 120 others from
Horse Heads.

Mr. HAMMOND--Mrs. J. C. Holmes and many others from Westchester
County.

_July 10th._--Mr. TUCKER--A petition from a large number of men and
women for extending the right of suffrage to woman.

Mr. GRAVES--Fifty-four ladies of New York City, asking suffrage for
women.

_July 11th._--Mr. CURTIS--From Charles J. Seymour, Mrs. Mary Newman
and 500 others from Broome County, for equal suffrage.

_July 12th._--Mr. CORBETT--Henry Ward Beecher, Edwin A. Studwell, and
many others, of Kings County, for woman suffrage.

_July 16th._--Mr. FOLGER presented a petition from Emily P. Collins,
of Rochester, and others, asking that women be granted the privilege
of voting, that in 1869 the proposition be submitted for all who can
read and write.

_July 18th._--Mr. GREELEY--From Mrs. Louisa Howland and many others,
of Mt. Vernon, Westchester County, for woman suffrage.

Mr. CURTIS--From Mrs. Eliza Benton and others of New York City, asking
for equal suffrage. Another from Caroline E. Hubbard and 20 others, of
Westchester County.

_July 31st._--Mr. POTTER--Lydia Baldwin, F. Brucklin, and others, of
Erie County, asking for the extension of the suffrage to women.

Mr. GRAVES--Jane E. Turner, Rev. C. H. Bebee, and 56 others,
Bridgewater, Oneida County. Another from Julia M. Sherwood and 22
others, Westchester County, asking for woman suffrage.

[102] The ladies suggested to Mr. Curtis to present Mrs. Greeley's
petition last, and with emphasis, that it might attract the attention
of the reporters, and thus have Mrs. Greeley's petition and Mr.
Greeley's report to antidote each other, and appear side by side in
the Metropolitan journals. After the Convention adjourned that day,
some of the ladies lingered in the vestibule to congratulate Mr.
Greeley on his conservative report; but he had disappeared through
some side door, and could not be found. A few weeks after he met Mrs.
Stanton and Miss Anthony at one of Alice Cary's Sunday evening
receptions. They noticed him slowly making his way toward them, and
prepared for the coming storm. As he approached, both arose, and with
extended hands, exclaimed most cordially, "Good evening, Mr. Greeley."
But his hands hung limp and undemonstrative by his side, as he said in
low and measured words, "You two ladies are the most maneuvering
politicians in the State of New York. You set out to annoy me in the
Constitutional Convention, and you did it effectually. I saw in the
manner my wife's petition was presented, that Mr. Curtis was acting
under instructions. I saw the reporters prick up their ears and knew
that my report and Mrs. Greeley's petition would come out together,
with large headings in the city papers, and probably be called out by
the newsboys in the street."

Turning to Mrs. Stanton, he said, "You are so tenacious about your own
name, why did you not inscribe my wife's maiden name, Mary Cheney
Greeley on her petition?" "Because," I replied, "I wanted all the
world to know that it was the wife of Horace Greeley who protested
against her husband's report." "Well," said he, "I understand the
animus of that whole proceeding, and now let me tell you what I intend
to do. I have given positive instructions that no word of praise shall
ever again be awarded you in the _Tribune_, and that if your name is
ever necessarily mentioned, it shall be as Mrs. Henry B. Stanton!" And
so it has been ever since.

From that time Mr. Greeley was seemingly hostile to the woman suffrage
movement, just as he was toward the anti-slavery cause, after the
Abolitionists in rolling up 60,000 votes for James G. Birney, defeated
Henry Clay, and gave the ascendency to the Democrats by electing Polk.
Clay being a strong Protectionist was a great favorite with Mr.
Greeley, and his defeat was a sore disappointment, and for years he
denounced Abolitionists individually and collectively in his scathing
editorials. Still in his happier moods he firmly believed in the civil
and political equality of both women and negroes.

[103] This amendment was on the following section of Mr. Greeley's
Report:

SECTION I. Every man of the age of twenty-one years who shall have
been an inhabitant of this State for one year next preceding an
election, and for the last thirty days a citizen of the United States,
and a resident of the election district where he may offer his vote,
shall be entitled to vote at such election, in said district and not
elsewhere, for all officers elected by the people.

_Provided_, That idiots, lunatics, persons under guardianship, felons,
and persons convicted of bribery, unless pardoned or otherwise
restored to civil rights, shall not be entitled to vote....

[104] The Albany _Evening Journal_ of July 25, 1867, in speaking of
the "Suffrage Discussion," said: "All men and women have the right to
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. If when deprived of the
ballot the consequence is that this inalienable right is abridged,
then society owes it to the class thus practically enslaved to bestow
suffrage upon them. At the South there is no safety for the negro from
oppressive laws but in the ballot. It is idle to argue ignorance.
Political enfranchisement is the best educator."

[105] Beals, Bell, Corning, Curtis, Duganne, Farnum, Field, Folger,
Fowler, Graves, Hadley, Hammond, Kinney, Lapham, M. H. Lawrence, Pond,
Tucker, Vedder, Wales.

[106] _President_--Lucretia Mott.

_Vice-Presidents_--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, N.Y.; Frederick Douglass,
N.Y.; Henry Ward Beecher, N.Y.; Martha C. Wright N.Y.; Elizabeth B.
Chace. R.I.; C. Prince, Ct; Frances D. Gage, N.Y.; Robert Purvis,
Penn.; Parker Pillsbury, N.H.; Antoinette Brown Blackwell, N.J.;
Josephine S. Griffing, D.C.; Thomas Garrett, Del.; Stephen H. Camp,
Ohio; Euphemia Cochrane, Mich.; Mary A. Livermore, Ill.; Mrs. Isaac H.
Sturgeon, Mo.; Amelia Bloomer, Iowa; Helen Ekin Starrett, Kansas;
Virginia Penny, Kentucky; Olympia Brown, Mass.

_Corresponding Secretary_--Mary E. Gage.

_Recording Secretaries_--Henry B. Blackwell, Hattie Purvis.

_Treasurer_--John J. Merritt.

_Executive Committee_--Lucy Stone, Edward S. Bunker, Elizabeth R.
Tilton, Ernestine L. Rose, Robert J. Johnston, Edwin A. Studwell, Anna
Cromwell Field, Susan B. Anthony, Theodore Tilton, Margaret E.
Winchester, Abby Hutchinson Patton.

[107]
ST. LOUIS, May 4, 1868.

MRS. E. C. STANTON--_Dear Friend_: Our gentlemen friends urge us to
memorialize Congress on the question of Suffrage in the District. Well
knowing how a single petition is suffocated, would it not be well for
all the States to unite, and be presented at the same time? New York,
being the banner State, must head the move and be spokesman. Out list
of names is waiting the interminable Impeachment to be handed in (oh,
for old Ben. Wade in the White House), but it seems to me one State
should not go alone; if all the State organizations were notified to
send in their lists immediately to whoever you think will be most
likely to do justice to the cause, we could make quite a formidable
display combined.

Your sincere friend, MRS. FRANCIS MINOR,
President of the St. Louis Woman's Suffrage Association.

* * * * *

ENFRANCHISEMENT IN THE DISTRICT.--MAY 21, 1868.--_To the Friends of
Equal Rights_: The whole government of the District of Columbia is to
be revised by Congress, in consequence of the expiration of local
charters, within the next nine months. A rare opportunity is thus
afforded to bring the enfranchisement of woman to the attention of
Congress and the country. We urge you to send in petitions as fast as
possible, with as many signatures as you can obtain. They should be
sent to Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing, 213 North Capitol street,
Washington, D. C., who will acknowledge their receipt and attend to
their presentation.

FORM OF PETITION.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in
Congress Assembled_:

The undersigned ----, of the ---- of ----, in the State of ----,
respectfully petition, that in your revision of the government of the
District of Columbia, you will protect the women of the District from
being debarred the exercise of their right of suffrage.

[Illustration: Jane Graham Jones.]

CHAPTER XXI.

RECONSTRUCTION.

The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments--Universal Suffrage and
Universal Amnesty the Key-note of Reconstruction--Gerrit Smith
and Wendell Phillips Hesitate--A Trying Period in the Woman
Suffrage Movement--Those Opposed to the word "Male" in the
Fourteenth Amendment Voted Down in Conventions--The Negro's
Hour--Virginia L. Minor on Suffrage in the District of
Columbia--Women Advised to be Silent--The Hypocrisy of the
Democrats preferable to that of the Republicans--Senator
Pomeroy's Amendment--Protests against a Man's Government--Negro
Suffrage a Political Necessity--Charles Sumner Opposed to the
Fourteenth Amendment, but Voted for it as a Party Measure--Woman
Suffrage for Utah--Discussion in the House as to who Constitute
Electors--Bills for Woman Suffrage presented by the Hon. George
W. Julian and Senators Wilson and Pomeroy--The Fifteenth
Amendment--Anna E. Dickinson's Suggestion--Opinions of Women on
the Fifteenth Amendment--The Sixteenth Amendment--Miss Anthony
chosen a Delegate to the Democratic National Convention July 4,
1868--Her Address Read by a Unanimous Vote--Horatio Seymour in
the Chair--Comments of the Press--The _Revolution_.

The war settled two questions: 1st. That we are a Nation, and not a
mere confederacy of States. 2d. That all "persons" born or naturalized
in the United States are "citizens," and stand equal before the law.
Freedom, United States citizenship, the limit of State authority, and
national protection of the fundamental rights of citizens in the
several States, are clearly set forth in the following amendments:

THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT, DECEMBER 18, 1865.

"1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place
subject to their jurisdiction."

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

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT, JULY 28, 1868.

Section 1. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States
and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges
or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without
due process of law, nor deny to any person within its
jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

Section 2. "Representatives shall be apportioned among the
several States according to their respective numbers, counting
the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not
taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice
of electors for President and Vice-President of the United
States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial
officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof,
is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being
twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in
any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other
crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in
the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear
to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in
such State."

Section 3. "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in
Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any
office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any
State, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of
Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member
of any State Legislature, or as an Executive or Judicial officer
of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States,
shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,
or give aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may,
by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."

* * * * *

Section 5. "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by
appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."

FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, MARCH 30, 1870.

Section 1. "The right of citizens of the United to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Section 2. "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article
by appropriate legislation."

The women understood the principles involved in these amendments, and
accepted the logical conclusions. Under the first they applied to
Congress for protection against the tyranny of the States in depriving
them of the right of suffrage, but they were remanded to the States,
and were told that Congress had no jurisdiction in the matter. Under
the second, when women claimed the rights of citizens as tax-payers
who helped to support the Government, they were told that neither the
fathers nor their sons ever thought of women in framing their
Constitutions, and that some special legislation was needed before
their rights of citizenship could be recognized or accorded.

During the prolonged debates on these amendments, those who watched
the progress of political sentiment and understood the drift of
events, struck the key-note of reconstruction in "universal suffrage
and universal amnesty," but they were speedily silenced or condemned.
Abraham Lincoln saw that this was the true policy, and counseled it
in private. But he was influenced by those who misjudged the signs of
the times, and for the success of his party and his own re-election,
he yielded to weak counselors. Horace Greeley, with the suffering and
humiliation of the South, as well as the guilt and selfishness of the
North before him, declared "universal suffrage and universal amnesty"
to be the true basis of reconstruction, but a few cracks of the party
whip brought him into line. Henry Ward Beecher foreshadowed the same
policy in an able letter, which called down upon him the nation's
scorn and denunciation, for which he was stabbed by the friends of his
own household. He was the one leading man in the nation who, in all
his public speeches, demanded universal suffrage in the
reconstruction. And by universal suffrage Mr. Beecher meant political
equality for all, without distinction of race, color, or sex. Women
would have been dull scholars indeed had they not readily seen that
the watchword "universal suffrage" stripped of the limitations that
lay in the minds of party politicians, included women also.

Under Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment they saw that being
"persons" and born in the United States, they were "citizens," whom
the National Government was bound to protect against the tyranny of
the State.

Section 2 called their attention to another principle of justice, that
those who were counted in the basis of representation should have a
voice in the rulers whose election their numbers helped to secure. To
be sure, the word "male" thrown in seemed to nullify all applications
of the several amendments to one sex, nevertheless the women
understood the breadth of the principle, and made their demands for an
equal recognition on the ground that they too were counted in the
basis of representation.

Again, in the discussion on removing the "political disabilities" of
those who had made war on the Government, when the injustice of taxing
that large class denied the suffrage was pointed out and the exercise
of that right demanded for thousands of rebels, the women saw the
application of that principle to themselves, and echoed the old
war-cry in our first Revolution, "taxation without representation is
tyranny." In the exhaustive discussions on the emancipation and
enfranchisement of the black man and the restoration of the rebels to
political equality, the fundamental principles of republican
government were more clearly comprehended by the American people than
ever before. Hence, it was in harmony with the order of events that
educated women, appreciating the genius of our institutions, with
their interest in politics intensified by all the complications of
the war, should think and reason and express their opinions on all
these great questions of popular thought. They saw that "universal
suffrage and universal amnesty" was the broad, safe foundation for the
new republic. They saw that the enfranchisement of the women of the
South would not only double the vote, but give a new impulse to
thought and education throughout the Southern States, and mitigate the
hostility they would naturally feel in seeing their slaves suddenly
made their political superiors, their rulers, law-makers, judges, and
jurors! They saw that with the incoming tide of ignorant voters from
Southern plantations and from the nations of the Old World, that the
Government needed the intelligent votes and moral influence of woman
to outweigh the ignorance and vice fast crowding round our polling
booths.

Seeing all this, they pressed with earnestness the well-considered
demand for woman's enfranchisement, not from any selfish or personal
considerations, but for the elevation of all womankind, and to
vindicate the principles that underlie republican government. They who
have the responsibility of action are usually more timid in counsel
than those who can exert only an indirect influence. Hence the
statesmen of that period did not dare to trust their own principles to
their logical results, and instead of the broad demand of equal rights
for all, they proposed reconstruction on the basis of "manhood
suffrage"; a half-way measure that satisfied nobody, glossed over by
the party in power as "universal suffrage," "equal suffrage,"
"impartial suffrage," until compelled to call the proposition by its
true name, "manhood suffrage."

Having served the Government during the war in such varied capacities,
and taken an active part in the discussion of its vital principles on
so many reform platforms, women naturally felt that in reconstruction
their rights as citizens should be protected and secured. They who had
so diligently rolled up petitions for the emancipation and
enfranchisement of the slaves now demanded the same liberties, not
only for the white women of the nation, but for the newly made
freed-women from Southern plantations, who had borne more grievous
burdens and endured keener sufferings in the flesh and far more
aggravating humiliations in spirit, than the man slave could ever
know. And yet Abolitionists who had drawn their most eloquent appeals
for emancipation from the hopeless degradation of woman in slavery,
ignored alike the African and the Saxon in reconstruction, and refused
to sign the petition for "woman suffrage." Even such just and liberal
men as Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips, in their haste to see the
consummation of the black man's freedom, to which they had devoted
their life-long efforts, lost sight of the ever-binding principles of
justice, and accepted an amendment to the National Constitution that
made all men rulers, all women subjects. Gerrit Smith, who had often
said, "It is always safe to do right"; "now is the time for action,
you can not be sure of to-morrow"; "speak the truth though the heavens
fall," acted from policy rather than principle in refusing to sign the
following petition:

_To the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress
assembled_:

The undersigned, citizens of the State of New York, earnestly but
respectfully request, that in any change or amendment of the
Constitution you may propose to extend or regulate suffrage,
there shall be no distinctions made between men and women.

PETERBORO, Dec. 30, 1868.

MY DEAR SUSAN B. ANTHONY:--I this evening received your earnest
letter. It pains me to be obliged to disappoint you. But I can
not sign the petition you send me. Cheerfully, gladly can I sign
a petition for the enfranchisement of women. But I can not sign a
paper against the enfranchisement of the negro man, unless at the
same time woman shall be enfranchised. The removal of the
political disabilities of race is my first desire--of sex, my
second. If put on the same level and urged in the same connection
neither will be soon accomplished. The former will very soon be,
if untrammeled by the other, and its success will prepare the way
for the accomplishment of the other.

With great regard, your friend, GERRIT SMITH.

To which letter Mrs. Stanton replied in _The Revolution_ Jan. 14,
1869:

The above is the petition to which our friend Gerrit Smith, as an
abolitionist, can not conscientiously put his name, while
Republicans and Democrats are signing it all over the country. He
does not clearly read the signs of the times, or he would see
that there is to be no reconstruction of this nation, except on
the basis of universal suffrage, as the natural, inalienable
right of every citizen. The uprising of the women on both
continents, in France, England, Russia, Switzerland, and the
United States, all show that advancing civilization demands a new
element in the government of nations. As the aristocracy in this
country is the "male sex," and as Mr. Smith belongs to the
privileged order, he naturally considers it important for the
best interests of the nation, that every type and shade of
degraded, ignorant manhood should be enfranchised, before even
the higher classes of womanhood should be admitted to the polls.
This does not surprise us. Men always judge more wisely of
objective wrongs and oppressions, than of those in which they are
themselves involved. Tyranny on a Southern plantation is far more
easily seen by white men at the North than the wrongs of the
women of their own households.

Then, again, when men have devoted their lives to one reform,
there is a natural feeling of pride, as well as an earnest
principle, in seeing that one thing accomplished. Hence, in
criticising such good and noble men as Gerrit Smith and Wendell
Phillips for their apathy on woman's enfranchisement at this
hour, it is not because we think their course at all remarkable,
nor that we have the least hope of influencing them, but simply
to rouse the women of the country to the fact that they must not
look to these men as their champions at this hour. While
philosophy and science alike point to woman as the new power
destined to redeem the world, how can Mr. Smith fail to see that
it is just this we need to restore honor and virtue in the
Government? There is sex in the spiritual as well as the
physical, and what we need to-day in government, in the world of
morals and thought, is the recognition of the feminine element,
as it is this alone that can hold the masculine in check.

Again; Mr. Smith refuses to sign the petition because he thinks
to press the broader question of "universal suffrage" would
defeat the partial one of "manhood suffrage"; in other words, to
demand protection for woman against her oppressors, would
jeopardize the black man's chance of securing protection against
his oppressors. If it is a question of precedence merely, on what
principle of justice or courtesy should woman yield her right of
enfranchisement to the negro? If men can not be trusted to
legislate for their own sex, how can they legislate for the
opposite sex, of whose wants and needs they know nothing? It has
always been considered good philosophy in pressing any measure to
claim the uttermost in order to get something. Being in Ireland
at the time of the Repeal excitement, we asked Daniel O'Connell
one day if he expected to secure a repeal of the Union. "Oh, no!"
said he, "but I claim everything that I may be sure of getting
something." But their intense interest in the negro blinded our
former champions so that they forsook principle for policy, and
in giving woman the cold shoulder raised a more deadly opposition
to the negro than any we had yet encountered, creating an
antagonism between him and the very element most needed to be
propitiated in his behalf. It was this feeling that defeated
"negro suffrage" in Kansas.

But Mr. Smith abandons the principle clearly involved, and
intrenches himself on policy. He would undoubtedly plead the
necessity of the ballot for the negro at the south for his
protection, and point us to innumerable acts of cruelty he
suffers to-day. But all these things fall as heavily on the women
of the black race, yea far more so, for no man can ever know the
deep, the damning degradation to which woman is subject in her
youth, in helplessness and poverty. The enfranchisement of the
men of her race, Mr. Smith would say, is her protection. Our
Saxon men have held the ballot in this country for a century, and
what honest man can claim that it has been used for woman's
protection? Alas! we have given the very hey day of our life to
undoing the cruel and unjust laws that the men of New York had
made for their own mothers, wives, and daughters.

As to the "rights of races," on which so much stress is laid just
now, we have listened to debates in anti-slavery conventions, for
twenty years or more, and we never heard Gerrit Smith plead the
negro cause on any lower ground than his manhood; his individual,
inalienable right to freedom and equality, and thus, we conjure
every thoughtful man to plead woman's cause to-day. Politicians
will find, when they come to test this question of "negro
supremacy" in the several States, that there is a far stronger
feeling among the women of the nation than they supposed. We
doubt whether a constitutional amendment securing "manhood
suffrage" alone could be fairly passed in a single State in this
Union. Women everywhere are waking up to their own God-given
rights, to their true dignity as citizens of a republic, as
mothers of the race.

Although those who demand "woman's suffrage" on principle are
few, those who would oppose "negro suffrage" from prejudice are
many, hence the only way to secure the latter, is to end all this
talk of class legislation, bury the negro in the citizen, and
claim the suffrage for all men and women, as a natural,
inalienable right. The friends of the negro never made a greater
blunder than when, at the close of the war, they timidly refused
to lead the nation in demanding suffrage for all. If even Wendell
Phillips and Gerrit Smith, the very apostles of liberty on this
continent, failed at that point, how can we wonder at the
vacillation and confusion of politicians at this hour. We had
hoped that the elections of '67, with their overwhelming
majorities in every State against negro suffrage, would have
proved to all alike, how futile is compromise, how short-sighted
is policy. We have pressed these considerations so often on Mr.
Phillips and Mr. Smith during the last four years, that we fear
we have entirely forfeited the friendship of the one, and
diminished the confidence of the other in our good judgment; but
time, that rights all wrongs, will surely bring them back to the
standpoint of principle.

As soon as we had a mouthpiece in _The Revolution_ we found that many
noble women in every State understood the situation, and saw that
while the question of reconstruction was under debate, woman was false
to herself not to put in her claims. In face of all opposition, those
who did see the policy and justice of claiming this time as the
woman's hour also, made the most persistent, brave fight possible.
Again were appeals and petitions sent to Congress and the people, but
now for woman's enfranchisement. When the whole nation was as it were
resolved into its original elements, and the fundamental rights of
citizens the topic for discussion in the halls of legislation and at
every fireside, the time seemed so opportune for the settlement of the
broad question of representation, that the persistency and
determination of a few women to secure their rights was neither
surprising nor unreasonable.

This was one of the most trying periods in the woman suffrage
movement. Negro suffrage being a party measure, a political necessity
and the culmination of the anti-slavery conflict, Republicans and
Abolitionists could bid each other a most sincere and heartfelt
Godspeed. And with them, too, stood the majority of the woman suffrage
associations. Wives and daughters of Republicans and Abolitionists,
imbued with the ideas of politicians, "one measure at a time," "one
reform for a generation," lost sight of the true philosophy, that
justice is always in order, and the fact that "universal suffrage" was
the one reform that belonged specifically to the period of
reconstruction. But women educated to self-sacrifice and
self-abnegation readily accepted the idea that it was divine and
beautiful to hold their claims for rights and privileges in abeyance
to all orders and classes of men. They forgot that the highest
patriotism, and the best interests of man himself demanded the
enfranchisement of woman.

The few who insisted on absolute right stood firmly together under a
steady fire of ridicule and reproach even from their life-long friends
most loved and honored. They knew their position was unassailable, for
they had well learned the lesson taught in the early days of
anti-slavery and the Republican party, that all compromises with
principle are dangerous. Statesmen and reformers alike admitted that
the demands of the women were just and proper, though not opportune.
But when the whole question of suffrage was up for discussion, there
could not be a better time to get all the agitation possible in regard
to woman's claims. The subject once settled on the narrow ground of
class, it would not be renewed for a generation. Time has proved their
fears well grounded. Nearly twenty years have passed, and there has
been no such agitation and excitement as then on the question. If all
the women, to say nothing of the Republicans and Abolitionists who
claimed to believe in the truth of the idea, had stood firm, woman
would have been enfranchised with the negro. But few could withstand
the persecution, the ridicule, the pathetic appeals to keep silent,
and in a large measure when the Anti-Slavery Society disbanded the
woman suffrage movement became the toy of the Republican party, and
has been trifled with ever since, like the cat with the mouse in the
fable.

But Democrats seeing the inconsistency of Republicans, did advocate
our cause, present our petitions in Congress, and frank our documents
to all parts of the country. And because these women, denied help and
encouragement from other sources, accepted aid from the Democrats,
they were called "Copperheads";[108] disloyal to the Government.
Women who had been complimented by the Republican press as "wise,"
"prudent," "noble," while rolling up 300,000 petitions for
emancipation, were now said to be "selfish," "impracticable,"
"unreasonable," because forsooth they demanded some new liberties for
themselves. More over said the Republicans, "these Democrats are
hypocritical, they do not believe in the extension of suffrage to any
class." To this the women replied, "If the Democrats advocate a grand
measure of public policy which they do not believe, they occupy much
higher ground than Republicans who refuse to press the same measure
which they claim to believe. At all events the hypocrisy of Democrats
serves us a better purpose in the present emergency than does the
treachery of Republicans."

But with all their long-time friends against them; such as Charles
Sumner and Henry Wilson in the Senate, William Lloyd Garrison and
Gerrit Smith in reform, Horace Greeley and most of the Liberals in the
press, the position of the women seemed so untenable to the majority
that at times a sense of utter loneliness and desertion made the
bravest of them doubt the possibility of maintaining the struggle or
making themselves fairly understood. And yet, what was done was sound
in principle and wise in policy. Every argument made by Republicans
and Abolitionists for the enfranchisement of the negro was pertinent
for woman. As Mr. Sumner said to us years after he made that great
speech on "Equal rights to all," "substitute sex for color, and you
have the best speech I could make on your platform." Our cause was
wise too in policy, for never before had we such an opportunity to
compel intelligent opposition in the halls of legislation and in
conventions of the people. Black men were at the white heat of anxiety
and expectation; Abolitionists, with bated breath, watched every move
and vote in Congress; Republicans felt that on the success or defeat
of "negro suffrage" hung the life or death of their party; and all
alike feared the slightest influence that might turn the scale, and
deplored the seeming coalition of the women and the Democrats. Hence
what an hour to proclaim our principles of government upon their
broadest basis, and to keep up the discussion of woman suffrage at
every point with so formidable an opposition!

Few[109] only were equal to the emergency. Even in the Equal Rights
Conventions the slightest opposition to the XIV Amendment called out
hisses and denunciation, and all resolutions on that point were
promptly voted down. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were waylaid again
and again in the ante-rooms, and implored to avoid all discussions on
the pending amendments, and were persistently opposed by black men,
Abolitionists, Republicans and women who did not understand either the
principle or policy involved in the discussion. This opposition of the
few did not grow out of any hostility to "negro suffrage," for they
were all Abolitionists, and had labored untiringly for the
emancipation of the slaves; but they were opposed to the
enfranchisement of another class of ignorant men to be lifted above
their heads, to be their law-makers and Governors; to prescribe the
moral code and political status of their daughters. The hue and cry
against those who claimed that "that was the woman's hour," for
accepting the aid of Democrats in the establishment of a paper through
which they could plead their own case, were so many plausible pretexts
in the mouths of those who could not consistently attack their
principles of action. But from this opposition on all sides true woman
suffragists learned their power to stand alone, and to maintain the
right against large and honorable majorities.

Again said our professed friends we can carry "negro suffrage" now; it
is a political necessity; do not trammel us with another issue--this
done, depend upon it, men have too much chivalry to forget the
services of the loyal women all through the war, and through the long
political struggle in Congress. Women in our conventions echoed the
same assuring sentiments, and voted down resolutions of protest and
rebuke. They were deceived with the plausible promises made by
Republicans and Abolitionists--promises still unredeemed, for
Republicans have been busy ever since trying to save the life of their
party; and Abolitionists, with few exceptions, have thrown their
influence into Labor Reform, Temperance, Finance, and Literature. But
of what do you complain, asked our statesmen. Of many things, we
replied:

1st. Our National Constitution was broad and liberal in letter and
spirit, put no limits on suffrage, made no distinctions in sex, until
the Republicans, by their amendments, introduced the word "male," and
thus blocked woman's path to equality.

2d. Republicans in Congress either suppressed our petitions for
suffrage, or presented them under protest, after holding them for
weeks in their possession.

3d. By their speeches and votes in Congress, and their decisions in
the courts on questions involving our civil and political rights, they
have stultified their own grand declarations of the equal rights of
citizens in a republic.

When the XIV Amendment was first proposed, the Hon. Charles Sumner
opposed it, because, he said, there was already enough of Justice,
Liberty, and Equality in the Constitution to protect the humblest
citizen under our flag. He had always taken the ground that the
Constitution was an Anti-Slavery document, hence to vote for an
amendment was to contradict his former position. We opposed the
amendments because, in the Constitution as it was there were no
distinctions of sex recognized, while the amendments declaring
"manhood suffrage," established an aristocracy of sex. However, in due
season, Mr. Sumner withdrew his opposition; and without changing his
opinion, voted for the amendments because negro suffrage was a party
measure, and the political necessity of the hour. We, having no party,
no votes, no political right but to petition and discuss the measures
up for consideration, saw no reason for changing our opinions, hence
we used the best possible means to keep up the agitation until the
amendments were passed, and beyond reconsideration. Nevertheless, in
the midst of this general hostility, the sound policy of the agitation
carried on against the Republican party and its measures was evident
in the numerous bills some of its liberal members soon after presented
in Congress. In _The Revolution_, December 10, 1868, we find the
following:

NOW'S THE HOUR.--Not the "negro's hour" alone, but everybody's
hour. All honor to Senator Pomeroy! He has taken the first step
to redeem the Constitution from all odious distinctions on
account of race or sex. He lost no time in presenting, at the
opening of Congressional proceedings, the following as an
amendment to the Federal Constitution to regulate suffrage
throughout the country:

Article 15. The basis of suffrage in the United States shall
be that of citizenship; and all native or naturalized
citizens shall enjoy the same rights and privileges of the
elective franchise; but each State shall determine by law
the age of a citizen and the time of residence required for
the exercise of the right of suffrage which shall apply
equally to all citizens; and also shall make all laws
concerning the times, places, and manner of holding
elections.

Laid on the table and ordered to be printed.

Now let the work of petitioning and agitating for this amendment
be prosecuted with a vigor and energy unknown before. And let
Senator Pomeroy be honored with receiving and presenting to the
Senate such a deluge of names as shall convince him that his
noble step in the direction of a true democracy, is appreciated;
and such too as shall be a rebuke to all half-way measures that
would leave woman (white and colored) behind the colored male;
and moreover, that shall convince Congress and the whole
government that we can be trifled with no longer on a subject so
vital to the peace, prosperity, and perpetuity of our own people,
and the establishment of free institutions among the nations of
the earth.

CONGRESS WIDE AWAKE.--Last week we gave good account of Mr.
Julian, of Indiana, on behalf of suffrage for woman. This week we
can report similar progress in the Senate also. The following is
Senator Wilson's bill to amend an act entitled an act to regulate
the elective franchise in the District of Columbia:

Be it enacted, etc., That the word "male" in the first
section of the act entitled "An act to regulate the elective
franchise in the District of Columbia, passed on the 8th day
of January, 1867," be struck out, and that every word in
said act applicable to persons of the male sex shall apply
equally to persons of the female sex, so that hereafter
women, who are inhabitants of the said District of Columbia
and citizens of the United States, may vote at all elections
and be eligible to civil offices in said District on the
same terms and conditions in all respects as men.

Mr. Julian, in the House, on leave, introduced the following bill
further to extend the right of suffrage in the District of
Columbia:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress Assembled, That
from and after the passage of this act the right of suffrage
in the District of Columbia shall be based upon citizenship;
and all citizens of the United States, native and
naturalized, resident in said District, who are twenty-one
years of age, of sound mind, and who have not forfeited this
right by crime, shall enjoy the same equally, irrespective
of sex.

SEC. 2, And be it further enacted, That all acts or parts of
acts inconsistent with the provisions of this act are hereby
repealed.

Mr. Julian, on leave, introduced the following bill further to
extend the right of suffrage in the Territories of the United
States:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress Assembled, That
from and after the passage of this act the right of suffrage
in all the Territories of the United States, now or
hereafter to be organized, shall be based upon citizenship;
and all citizens of the United States, native or
naturalized, resident in said Territories, who are
twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and who have not
forfeited their right by crime, shall enjoy the same
equally, irrespective of sex.

SEC. 2, And be it further enacted, That all acts or parts of
acts, either by Congress or the legislative assemblies of
said Territories, inconsistent with the provisions of this
act are hereby declared null and void.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN UTAH.--March 25, 1869.--Mr. Julian introduced
the following bill into Congress to discourage polygamy in Utah
by granting the right of suffrage to the women of that Territory:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress Assembled, That
from and after the passage of this act the right of Suffrage
in the Territory of Utah shall belong to, and may be
exercised by, the people thereof, without any distinction or
discrimination whatever founded on sex.

The bill was read twice, referred to the Committee on
Territories, and ordered to be printed.

The New York _Herald_ is no more than an average of the voice of
the intelligent portion of the press in the following excerpts
from its columns: Senator Wilson has introduced a bill so to
amend the suffrage laws of the District of Columbia as to give to
women of all colors and races, as well as men, the right of
suffrage. As Congress has exclusive powers of legislation over
the District of Columbia in all cases whatsoever, here is a fair
chance to try the two houses upon this very interesting question.
There are a few out-spoken members of the Senate in favor of
Woman Suffrage, and first and foremost among them is "Old Ben
Wade," who goes for the whole programme of negroes' rights and
women's rights. Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, has so far advanced
in the cause of Woman Suffrage that he has proposed to make it a
part of the supreme law of the land. But we like the idea of Mr.
Wilson of first trying the experiment in the District of
Columbia.

We remember the time when, in full view from the west front of
the Capitol, there was a regular slave pen which was also a
market where negroes were bought and sold. The abolitionists
first raised a hue and cry against that pen, and they kept it up
to 1850, when among the compromise measures of Henry Clay passed
that year was a provision abolishing the slave trade in the
District. Some twelve years later, during the rebellion, the
bolder and broader experiment was tried of abolishing slavery _in
toto_ in said District. These measures over a reserved bit of
territory over which Congress possesses absolute authority were
deemed judicious experiments and were demanded for the sake of
consistency, in view of the legislation resolved upon in Southern
reconstruction. So now, in view of a constitutional amendment
establishing not only manhood suffrage, but womanhood suffrage
throughout the United States, Mr. Wilson doubtless thinks it wise
first to try the experiment of Woman Suffrage in the aforesaid
District, to see how it will work. As the District of Columbia
has not only survived but has flourished and continues to
flourish under emancipation and negro suffrage, we can not
imagine why there should be any hesitation in trying therein the
experiment of Woman Suffrage. At all events let Senator Wilson
push forward his bill, so that the country may know, so that
General Grant may know, and so that the women may know who in the
Senate in favor of negroes' rights will dare to oppose woman's
rights.

CONGRESS.--DECEMBER 16, 1869.--In the House, some discussion
arose on a question involving the equality of woman to hold
appointments in the government. It was on a bill providing for
the taking of the census. A motion was made to amend an amendment
by changing the word elector (voter) to resident.

MR. LAWRENCE, of Ohio, said: I am opposed to the amendment of the
gentleman from New York. The effect will be to exclude every
female from any appointment, and although I suppose there will
not be many female applicants for office under this bill, I see
no reason why we should exclude them. (Laughter.) I know no
reason why a soldier's widow or any other female properly
qualified might not receive an appointment to any office the
duties of which she may be as capable of performing as those of
our own sex. If reasons exist let them be given. I will inquire
of the gallant gentleman from New York whether he wishes to
exclude this portion of his constituents and mine from the
privilege of holding office under this bill? (Renewed laughter.)

Mr. WOOD: My amendment says elector, not electress, and until the
ladies have the privilege of electors of the United States I
propose to exclude them.

Mr. LAWRENCE: I am opposed to that. Merit and capacity to serve
the people to the best advantage, after a proper consideration of
claims, should be the test for office.

Mr. GARFIELD, of Ohio: The word "elector" in the amendment of the
gentleman from New York (Mr. Wood) would exclude Alaska
altogether. There are no electors in Alaska. I would suggest that
he substitute the word "resident," which would avoid the
difficulty to which I have referred.

The question being put on Mr. Wood's amendment,

Mr. GARFIELD, of Ohio, moved to amend the proposed amendment by
inserting the word "resident" instead of "elector."

The question being put on Mr. Garfield's amendment to Mr. Wood's
amendment, it was agreed to. The question being put on Mr. Wood's
amendment, as amended, it was agreed to. So far, then, woman is
not to be proscribed.

As in the war women bravely assumed duties in many departments of
labor unknown to them before, so in the reconstruction they gave more
earnest thought to questions of public policy, and made many valuable
suggestions. A well written speech on "Reconstruction and Universal
Suffrage," was delivered by Mrs. M. C. Walling, of Texas, in the
Senate chamber of the Capitol at Washington, May 10th, 1866; The first
and last time that a woman was ever granted the privilege of speaking
there.

To Anna Dickinson belongs the honor of suggesting a XV amendment.
Although the XIV amendment to the National Constitution gave to that
document for the first time a concise definition of a "citizen," and
forbade any State to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States, yet this amendment was found inadequate to
protect the political rights of the colored men; and the Republican
party was anxiously casting about for a method of perfecting their
work, when the puzzle was solved by a proposition for a XV amendment,
which should prohibit disfranchisement on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude. The suggestion for this amendment
originated at the National Loyalists' Convention held at Philadelphia,
September, 1866, in a consultation between Anna Dickinson, Frederick
Douglass, and Theodore Tilton, and was in time accepted by the
Republican party. It was reported in Congress Feb. 26, 1869, and
received the necessary ratification March 30, 1870. Thus a woman and a
colored man were two important factors in perfecting the work of
reconstruction through a constitutional provision prohibiting
disfranchisement on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.

As when the XIV amendment was pending, the efforts of women were
directed toward securing the omission of the invidious word "male," so
on the submission of the XV amendment their efforts were again
directed toward securing the enfranchisement of woman by the
introduction of the word "sex" in the last line of Section 1. But
Congress with the usual short-sightedness of injustice, refused to
secure the political freedom of one half the entire people, even
forgetting to enfranchise a portion of the colored race from their
"previous condition of servitude" because of sex.

The sound position taken by Anna Dickinson at this period is
substantiated by Frederick Douglass, not only in his "Life and Times,"
but in the following letters:

WASHINGTON, D. C., Jan. 31, 1882.

DEAR MRS. STANTON:-- ... Mrs. Gage's version of the origin of the
15th Amendment is in substance true. To dear Anna E. Dickinson
and brave Theodore Tilton belongs the credit of forcing that
amendment upon the attention of the Nation at the right moment
and in the right way to make it successful. I have given Miss
Dickinson the credit you award her in my "Life and Times," and
have made myself one of your earliest converts in the same.

Very truly yours, FRED'K. DOUGLASS.

WASHINGTON, D. C., Feb. 6, 1882.

MY DEAR MRS. STANTON:--Referring, since reading your note, to
what I have said of the National Loyalist Convention, held in
Philadelphia in 1866, I find that I have done but very scant
justice to Anna E. Dickinson and Theodore Tilton. Their courage,
skill and sagacity, were never displayed to greater advantage
than on that occasion. I have, as you will see, mentioned the
main facts, but I have given but a meagre view of the moral
conditions surrounding it. Bold and prompt action was needed, and
the man and the woman were equal to the occasion. From the first
Miss Dickinson, Mr. Tilton and myself felt that any
reconstruction at the South leaving the freedmen without the
ballot, would leave them in the absolute power of the old
master-class. Hence from the first we conferred together as to
the manner of bringing the subject to the attention of the
Convention. We looked to the Committee on Resolutions to bring up
the subject, but waited in vain. They had nothing for us but well
rounded platitudes and glittering generalities about the Union
and the relation of the States to the National Government all
well enough in ordinary times, but totally inappropriate in
respect of the real situation of the country at the moment. When
it became known that Mr. Tilton and myself meant to bring forward
the subject, we were besought not to do a thing so impolitic. We
were implored not to load the Republican party with this new
burden. We were told of the advantage it would give the
Democratic party against us; how it would intensify and
concentrate the prejudice already felt for the negro. It was
evident that negro suffrage was the one great dread of the
Convention. The proposal to discuss it was deplored as a blunder
which would cost us dearly. This apprehension was mainly confined
to the delegates from the border States, and as they had the
control of the Convention, they managed to keep out the
disturbing question of negro suffrage till the last day.

Seeing the evident purpose to this end, Mr. Tilton, after
consulting with Miss Dickinson and myself, introduced the
suffrage question. His action was received as a very large
fire-brand, and caused a storm of tumult and confusion, in the
midst of which the President, Mr. Speed, and other officers left
their places on the platform, declaring the Convention adjourned.
At this critical juncture, with the tact and skill of a veteran,
Mr. Tilton seized the helm, declared the Convention not
adjourned, and moved that Honorable John Minor Botts take the
Chair. The Border States delegates took their hats and heels out
of the Convention without standing upon the order of their going,
while the men from the Gulf States nobly stood their ground. The
Convention was still large. The going out of the Border States
unfettered the platform. Anna E. Dickinson came on the stand with
all her wonted ability, and thrilled the audience by her
eloquent plea for negro suffrage. Hers was the speech, not of a
brilliant declaimer, but the solid logic of a statesman. When she
sat down I felt that the battle was more than half won. Next
after Miss Dickinson came Theodore Tilton. It was plain from the
moment he took the stand that the situation suited him, and that
we were to hear from him that day such words of wisdom, truth and
soberness as only genius could supply. We were not disappointed.
He was the full master of the subject and the occasion, I
followed Mr. Tilton, and resolutions favoring what has since
become the 15th Amendment were passed with very little
opposition.

You will notice on page 480 of my book, that I don't forget my
walk with you from the house of Mr. Joseph Southwick, where you
quietly brought to my notice your arguments for womanhood
suffrage. That is forty years ago. You had just returned from
your European tour. From that conversation with you I have been
convinced of the wisdom of woman suffrage, and have never denied
the faith....

Very truly yours, FRED'K. DOUGLASS.

When Anna Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, and Theodore Tilton pressed
the question of negro suffrage on the Loyalists' convention, they were
met by the same arguments and appeals against it, that were urged upon
those who pressed woman suffrage when the Fourteenth Amendment was
pending. Douglass knew that any reconstruction without political
equality for the black man was a delusion; the women saw as clearly
that any reconstruction without political equality for them was a
delusion also, and their determination to have some recognition under
government sprung from the same love of freedom and self-respect that
moved Douglass when, with equal determination, he walked in the
procession, and took his seat as a delegate, as he had a right to do,
though warned that he would stir up a mob, and be a firebrand in the
convention. The description of this scene by Mr. Douglass himself is a
suggestive study for all oppressed classes:

I was residing in Rochester at the time, and was duly elected as
a delegate from that city to attend this convention. The honor
was a surprise and a gratification to me. It was unprecedented
for a city of over 60,000 white citizens, and only about 200
colored residents, to elect a colored man to represent them in a
national political convention, and the announcement of it gave a
shock to the country of no inconsiderable violence. Many
Republicans, with every feeling of respect for me personally,
were unable to see the wisdom of such a course. They dreaded the
clamor of social equality and amalgamation which would be raised
against the party, in consequence of this startling innovation.
They, dear fellows, found it much more agreeable to talk of the
principles of liberty as glittering generalities, than to reduce
those principles to practice.

When the train on which I was going to the convention reached
Harrisburgh, it met and was attached to another from the West
crowded with Western and Southern delegates on the way to the
convention, and among them were several loyal Governors, chief
among whom was the Governor of Indiana, Oliver P. Morton, a man
of Websterian mould in all that appertained to mental power. When
my presence became known to these gentlemen, a consultation was
immediately held among them, upon the question as to what was
best to do with me. It seems strange now, in view of all the
progress which has been made, that such a question could arise.
But the circumstances of the times made me the Jonah of the
Republican ship, and responsible for the contrary winds and
misbehaving weather. Before we reached Lancaster, on our eastward
bound trip, I was duly waited upon by a committee of my brother
delegates, which had been appointed by other honorable delegates,
to represent to me the undesirableness of my attendance upon the
National Loyalists' Convention. The spokesman of these
sub-delegates was a gentleman from New Orleans with a very French
name, which has now escaped me, but which I wish I could recall,
that I might credit him with a high degree of politeness and the
gift of eloquence. He began by telling me that he knew my history
and my works, and that he entertained a very high respect for me,
that both himself and the gentlemen who sent him, as well as
those who accompanied him, regarded me with admiration; that
there was not among them the remotest objection to sitting in the
convention with me, but their personal wishes in the matter they
felt should be set aside for the sake of our common cause; that
whether I should or should not go into the convention was purely
a matter of expediency; that I must know that there was a very
strong and bitter prejudice against my race in the North as well
as at the South; and that the cry of social and political
equality would not fail to be raised against the Republican party
if I should attend this loyal national convention. He insisted
that it was a time for the sacrifice of my own personal feeling,
for the good of the Republican cause; that there were several
districts in the State of Indiana so evenly balanced that a very
slight circumstance would be likely to turn the scale against us,
and defeat our Congressional candidates and thus leave Congress
without a two-thirds vote to control the headstrong and
treacherous man then in the presidential chair. It was urged that
this was a terrible responsibility for me or any other man to
take.

I listened very attentively to this address, uttering, no word
during its delivery; but when it was finished, I said to the
speaker and the committee, with all the emphasis I could throw
into my voice and manner: "Gentlemen, with all respect, you might
as well ask me to put a loaded pistol to my head and blow my
brains out, as to ask me to keep out of this convention, to which
I have been duly elected. Then, gentlemen, what would you gain by
this exclusion? Would not the charge of cowardice, certain to be
brought against you, prove more damaging than that of
amalgamation? Would you not be branded all over the land as
dastardly hypocrites, professing principles which you have no
wish or intention of carrying out? As a mere matter of policy or
expediency, you will be wise to let me in. Everybody knows that I
have been duly elected as a delegate by the city of Rochester.
The fact has been broadly announced and commented upon all over
the country. If I am not admitted, the public will ask, 'Where is
Douglass? Why is he not seen in the convention?' and you would
find that inquiry more difficult to answer than any charge
brought against you for favoring political or social equality;
but, ignoring the question of policy altogether, and looking at
it as one of right and wrong, I am bound to go into that
convention; not to do so, would contradict the principle and
practice of my life." With this answer, the committee retired
from the car in which I was seated, and did not again approach me
on the subject; but I saw plainly enough then, as well as on the
morning when the Loyalist procession was to march through the
streets of Philadelphia, that while I was not to be formally
excluded, I was to be ignored by the Convention.

I was the ugly and deformed child of the family, and to be kept
out of sight as much as possible while there was company in the
house. Especially was it the purpose to offer me no inducement to
be present in the ranks of the procession of its members and
friends, which was to start from Independence Hall on the first
morning of its meeting. In good season, however, I was present at
this grand starting point. My reception there confirmed my
impression as to the policy intended to be pursued toward me. Few
of the many I knew were prepared to give me a cordial
recognition, and among these few I may mention Gen. Benj. F.
Butler, who, whatever others may say of him, has always shown a
courage equal to his convictions. Almost everybody else whom I
met seemed to be ashamed or afraid of me. On the previous night I
had been warned that I should not be allowed to walk through the
city in the procession; fears had been expressed that my presence
in it would so shock the prejudices of the people of
Philadelphia, as to cause the procession to be mobbed.

The members of the convention were to walk two abreast, and as I
was the only colored member of the convention, the question was,
as to who of my brother members would consent to walk with me?
The answer was not long in coming. There was one man present who
was broad enough to take in the whole situation, and brave enough
to meet the duty of the hour; one who was neither afraid nor
ashamed to own me as a man and a brother; one man of the purest
Caucasian type, a poet and a scholar, brilliant as a writer,
eloquent as a speaker, and holding a high and influential
position--the editor of a weekly journal having the largest
circulation of any weekly paper in the city or State of New
York--and that man was Mr. Theodore Tilton. He came to me in my
isolation, seized me by the hand in a most brotherly way, and
proposed to walk with me in the procession. I have been in many
awkward and disagreeable positions in my life, when the presence
of a friend would have been highly valued, but I think I never
appreciated an act of courage and generous sentiment more highly
than I did that of this brave young man, when we marched through
the streets of Philadelphia on this memorable day.

Well! what came of all these dark forebodings of timid men? How
was my presence regarded by the populace? and what effect did it
produce? I will tell you. The fears of the loyal Governors who
wished me excluded to propitiate the favor of the crowd, met with
a signal reproof, their apprehensions were shown to be
groundless, and they were compelled, as many of them confessed to
me afterwards, to own themselves entirely mistaken. The people
were more enlightened and had made more progress than their
leaders had supposed. An act for which those leaders expected to
be pelted with stones, only brought to them unmeasured applause.
Along the whole line of march my presence was cheered repeatedly
and enthusiastically. I was myself utterly surprised by the
heartiness and unanimity of the popular approval. We were
marching through a city remarkable for the depth and bitterness
of its hatred of the abolition movement; a city whose populace
had mobbed anti-slavery meetings, burned temperance halls and
churches owned by colored people, and burned down Pennsylvania
Hall because it had opened its doors to people of different
colors upon terms of equality. But now the children of those who
had committed these outrages and follies, were applauding the
very principles which their fathers had condemned. After the
demonstrations of this first day, I found myself a welcome member
of the convention, and cordial greeting took the place of cold
aversion. The victory was short, signal, and complete.

This experience shows how little knowledge politicians have of what
lies in the hearts of the people; that even statesmen seldom
appreciate the many steps in progressive thought already achieved,
before there is any popular demonstration. It shows, too, the
commanding influence of personal dignity and lofty self-respect,
incapable of being either flattered or coerced to take any position
among men but one of absolute equality. And this was exactly the
position taken by those women who opposed the Fourteenth Amendment.
The Loyalists' Convention was held at a most critical period in the
Nation's life; the policy and action of all the Southern States
centered in its deliberations. Though Mr. Douglass would not hold the
rightful representation of his race in abeyance to the success of the
Convention, the pacification of the South, the policy of the border
States, nor the life of the Nation, yet he too criticised the women
who took precisely the same position in maintaining the dignity of sex
against the action of the Republican party and the whole Northern
policy of reconstruction. What to either class was the nation's life,
so long as the flag gave them no protection against the humiliating
distinctions of caste? What to them were boasted republican
institutions, so long as their rights, privileges, and immunities as
citizens were denied? White men could only be taught the lesson of a
common humanity by just such resistance as these oppressed classes
made. Protests and petitions, falling like seeds here and there on
good ground, at last moved some liberal Republicans to action, and
several bills recognizing the political existence of women were duly
presented. The best results of the war have been the struggle and
determination of black men and women for recognition in the
reconstruction, for they have compelled the nation's consideration of
the vital principles of republican government, and secured for both
classes many rights and privileges heretofore unknown.

The congressional action throughout this session proves that if all
the friends of woman suffrage had been steadfast to their principles,
and made a simultaneous effort against any further extension of
"manhood suffrage" until woman too was recognized, the measure might
have been carried; at least the agitation could have been prolonged
and intensified in the halls of legislation fourfold. But in the
general confusion as to what might or might not be sound policy, the
most liberal took each onward step with doubt and hesitation. However,
the persistent hostility to the amendments kept up the agitation in
Congress, which at last culminated in a proposition for a Sixteenth
Amendment, for which the National Woman Suffrage Association has, with
one short interval, ever since petitioned.

THE SIXTEENTH AMENDMENT.--March 15, 1869, will be held memorable
in all coming time as the day when the Hon. George W. Julian
submitted a "Joint Resolution" to Congress to enfranchise the
women of the Republic by proposing a Sixteenth Amendment to the
Federal Constitution, which reads as follows:

ART. 16. The Right of Suffrage in the United States shall be
based on citizenship, and shall be regulated by Congress;
and all citizens of the United States, whether native or
naturalized, shall enjoy this right equally without any
distinction or discrimination whatever founded on sex.

Since our famous Bill of Rights was given to the world declaring
all men equal, there has been no other proposition, in its
magnitude, beneficence, and far-reaching consequences, so
momentous as this. The specific work now before us, is to press
the importance of this Amendment on the consideration of the
people, and to urge Congress to its speedy adoption. Suffrage
associations should be formed at once and newspapers established
in every State to press Woman's Enfranchisement, and petitions
should be circulated in every school district from Maine to
California, praying the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment, that
when the Forty-second Congress assembles it may understand the
work before it.--_The Revolution_, April 29, 1869.

Petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment were immediately printed and sent
throughout the nation, and have been steadily rolling into Congress
for the last thirteen years from all the State and National Woman
Suffrage Associations. The Fortieth Congress was the first in which an
amendment to the National Constitution in the interests of woman was
ever proposed. In a series of editorials in _The Revolution_ there was
a decided expression of hostility towards the Fifteenth Amendment
during all the time it was pending in Congress. In the issue of
October 21, 1869, Mrs. Stanton said:

All wise women should oppose the Fifteenth Amendment for two
reasons. 1st. Because it is invidious to their sex. Look at it
from what point you will, and in every aspect, it reflects the
old idea of woman's inferiority, her subject condition. And yet
the one need to secure an onward step in civilization is a new
dignity and self-respect in women themselves. No one can think
that the pending proposition of "manhood suffrage" exalts woman,
either in her own eyes or those of the man by her side, but it
does degrade her practically and theoretically, just as black men
were more degraded when all other men were enfranchised.

2d. We should oppose the measure, because men have no right to
pass it without our consent. When it is proposed to change the
constitution or fundamental law of the State or Nation, all the
people have a right to say what that change shall be.

If women understood this pending proposition in all its bearings,
theoretically and practically, there would be an overwhelming
vote against the admission of another man to the ruling power of
this nation, until they themselves were first enfranchised. There
is no true patriotism, no true nobility in tamely and silently
submitting to this insult. It is mere sycophancy to man; it is
licking the hand that forges a new chain for our degradation; it
is indorsing the old idea that woman's divinely ordained position
is at man's feet, and not on an even platform by his side.

By this edict of the liberal party, the women of this Republic
are now to touch the lowest depths of their political
degradation.

JUNE 3, 1869.

THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT.--It is not to be believed that the
nation which is now engaged in admitting the newly liberated
negro to the plenitude of all political franchise, will much
longer retain woman in a state of _helotage_, which is more
degrading than ever, because being no longer shared by any of the
male sex, it constitutes every woman the inferior of every
man.--JOHN STUART MILL.

It is this thought, so clearly seen and concisely stated by this
distinguished English philosopher and statesman, that I have
endeavored to press on the hearts of American reformers for the
last four years. I have seen and felt, with a vividness and
intensity that no words could express, the far-reaching
consequences of this degradation of one-half the citizens of the
republic, on the government, the Saxon race, and woman herself,
in all her political, religious, and social relations. It is
sufficiently humiliating to a proud woman to be reminded ever and
anon in the polite world that she's a political nonentity; to
have the fact gracefully mourned over, or wittily laughed at, in
classic words and cultured voice by one's superiors in knowledge,
wisdom and power; but to hear the rights of woman scorned in
foreign tongue and native gibberish by everything in manhood's
form, is enough to fire the souls of those who think and feel,
and rouse the most lethargic into action.

If, with weak and vacillating words and stammering tongue, our
bravest men to-day say freedom to woman, what can we hope when
the millions educated in despotism, ignorant of the philosophy of
true government, religion and social life, shall be our judges
and rulers? As you go down in the scale of manhood, the idea
strengthens at every step, that woman was created for no higher
purpose than to gratify the lust of man. Every daily paper
heralds some rape on flying, hunted girls; and the pitying eyes
of angels see the holocaust of womanhood no journal ever notes.
In thought I trace the slender threads that link these hideous,
overt acts to creeds and codes that make an aristocracy of sex.
When a mighty nation, with a scratch of the pen, frames the base
ideas of the lower orders into constitutions and statute laws,
and declares every serf, peasant and slave the rightful
sovereigns of all womankind, they not only degrade every woman in
her own eyes, but in that of every man on the footstool. A
cultivated lady in Baltimore writes us a description of a colored
republican reunion, held in that city a few evenings since, in
which a colored gentleman offered the following toast: "Our wives
and daughters--May the women of our race never unsex themselves
by becoming strong-minded."

E. C. S.

MARCH 11, 1869.

DRAWING THE LINES.--If the fifteenth article of Constitutional
Amendments ever gets ratified and becomes the rule of suffrage,
it will have at least one good effect. Woman will then know with
what power she has to contend. It will be male versus female, the
land over. All manhood will vote not because of intelligence,
patriotism, property, or white skin, but because it is male, not
female. All womanhood will be newly outraged and debased, not for
ignorance, disloyalty, poverty, or a black skin, but because it
is female, not male. Julia Ward Howe, of Boston, has some good
thoughts in the _Galaxy_ for March on this subject, in part as
below:

"The Irish or German savage, after three years' cleansing, is
admitted to the general enrollment of the community. The colored
man, cleaner at the start than these, the natural ally of
republican principles, trained to an understanding of freedom by
a long experience of its opposite, stands next upon the record.
Voting to him is a military necessity. It is the only weapon with
which he can meet those whom law, custom, and prejudice have
hitherto trebly armed against him. This admitted right of
elective franchise to all men, brings one scarcely anticipated
condition. It arrays now the whole male and female sexes in a new
and unforeseen condition. The right of the elective franchise is
now the recognition of the inalienable right of all men to the
proper administration of their interests, and in America this
right is founded upon the right of human intelligence to its own
exercise, the right of human labor to its own recompense. The
generous culture which allows woman in this country so large an
extension of thought, and the social necessities which place in
her hands so many of the nicer tasks hitherto kept for those of
the other sex, alike commission her to claim and make good her
right to the most simple, general and explicit method of
expressing her will in the arena where wills are counted and
respected."

END OF THE SUFFRAGE AGITATION.--"The adoption of the Fifteenth
Amendment will put an end to further agitation of the subject,
for a long time at least, and thus leave the government of the
country free to deal with its material interests, and with the
more pressing questions of public policy and administration which
will arise from time to time. We do not concur with those who
predict that the question of suffrage for women will speedily
demand public action or engross public attention, or that the
right of men to hold office without distinction of color or race,
will absorb any great degree of public time or public thought for
a long while to come. Until some decided practical advantage is
to be gained by a dominant political party, neither of these
questions will be pressed to a decision; and both of them have,
in our judgment, commanded more attention already than they will
soon command again. With the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment,
we may fairly look upon the suffrage agitation as at an end, for
the present political generation at all events; and that
consideration, of itself, affords a very powerful argument in
favor of its adoption."

Such is the conclusion of the New York _Times_. It is, too, the
belief, hope, and intention of a large number of party leaders,
both Republican and Democrat. But such reckon without their host.
They seem to have no idea with whom they have to deal. Woman may
not achieve her rights next year; may not vote for President in
1872. But if President Grant means by "let us have peace," an end
to the struggle for Woman Suffrage, he must pray to some other
than the God of Heaven, or the politicians of his party and
country; for the latter can't stop the agitation, and the former
won't. So President Pierce actually proclaimed peace with slavery
at his inauguration; but John Brown was already whetting his
sword, and the Almighty was forging his thunderbolts for that
vessel of wrath, long fitted for destruction, and the day of
peace is not even yet.

P. P.

PROVIDENCE, June 7, 1869.

PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS ON THE FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT.--MY DEAR MRS.
STANTON: Nothing but the great crisis pending in our movement
would have drawn me from my retirement again into public strife
and turmoil, but I feel it a duty to enter my protest with yours
against the Fifteenth Amendment. Last winter, in Boston, I could
only give my vote against it, for no Sixteenth had been proposed.
It seemed almost a childish, selfish thing to do, when all the
eloquence of a Boston platform was arrayed on the other side, and
other women rose and said they were ready to step aside and let
the colored man have his rights first. Not one said we will step
aside and let the negro woman (whom I affirm, as I ever have, is
better fitted for self-government than the negro man) have her
rights before we press our claim, I could not but think it an
easy thing for them to do, never having had the right they
demanded. But if they truly believe that it will do for humanity
what is claimed for it, I do not see why it should be called
magnanimous for a woman to say, I yield to man just what he has
always asserted as his, the right to rule. You have taken a bold
stand, and I thank God for it. Though still in the minority,
there is hope; for with a radical truth one shall chase a
thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight; and ere very long,
before another convention, I trust many more will see with us
that the Fifteenth Amendment, without the Sixteenth, is a
compromise worse by far for the nation than any other ever
passed. They could be repealed, this can not. Once settled, the
waves of corruption will swamp our little bark freighted with all
humanity, the women of all shades of color, and subject to every
variety of tyranny and oppression, from the cramped feet of the
Chinese to the cramped brains and waists of our own higher order
of civilization.

It seems specially strange to those of us who so well remember
the motto of the old Abolitionists, "Immediate and unconditional
emancipation," now to hear a half measure advocated. It was that
stern principle of justice which attracted and held me in the old
organization when those dearest to me went into the Liberty
party. I had been trained in that school which taught children
that they must do right for right's sake, without hope of reward
or fear of punishment, leaving the consequences with the All wise
Ruler of events. Among the early Abolitionists this
uncompromising spirit was manifest, and to me it was the real
gospel.

I remember well the strong opposition to some who advocated the
election of John C. Fremont, in 1856, among whom was Frederick
Douglass. He was then denounced as a compromiser asking for a
half loaf. He still asks for the half loaf; but others who stood
firmly then for the whole have now come down to his plane, and
desire above all things to finish up the anti-slavery work and
have the negro man out of the way, and so give the Sixteenth
Amendment the go-by, claiming manhood suffrage because it is the
order of nature that man, however ignorant, debased and brutal he
may be, shall always be first, because he always has been,
yielding the whole argument to physical force, leaving the negro
woman wholly out of the question, giving her over to the tyranny
of the husband, which is nearly, if not quite, equal to that of
the master. The anti-slavery platform still carefully guards
itself against the woman question, while on the Suffrage platform
the Fifteenth Amendment is considered essential. Miss Couzins was
the only one who put the two amendments fairly before the
Convention in Boston. After presenting the issues of the two
amendments she trenched lightly on another topic still more
offensive. She plead for the outcast woman in a most womanly way,
but it did not prove to be a popular theme; but I think she is
too true, pure, and noble not to do the same again and again.

Last evening Miss Peckham, Mrs. Churchill, and Miss Couzins
presented the suffrage question to a select audience in
Providence. Each in her own way and from her own stand-point
spoke well. I have not time to give you as elaborate a notice as
I should like to of each, but will do so after the convention
which the State Association propose holding next week, on Monday,
the 14th, in Westerly, R. I. If you have helps to send us we
shall welcome them cordially.

Yours ever truly,
P. W. DAVIS.

JULY 22, 1869.

FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT--ITS LUDICROUS SIDE.--Almost every question
has its ludicrous side. The champions of the Fifteenth Amendment
to the Constitution present an illustration. Conceding woman's
equal right to the ballot with man, they still resist her claims
on the ground that this is not her hour, but man's hour. "The
black man's hour." As though justice and right were determined by
clocks and almanacs. And as though some sort of terrible crisis
could not be urged always. Admitting even that in fitness for the
franchise, the white women, especially of the North, are
eminently superior to the average of Southern men, of any color,
they still demand that woman's claim be postponed to their
favorite Fifteenth Amendment, which presumes every man in the
nation of whatever color, grade, or race, the superior of woman,
however exalted by culture, by wealth, by refinement, by
patriotism, or whatever virtues, gifts, or graces. An Amendment,
it is called, while preparing the way to lift into lordship
absolute, every man, however mean and vile, over every woman,
however divine her character!

And then these "Amenders" presume to charge with "selfishness,"
"ignorance," "conservatism," and nobody knows what else, those
who are laboring night and day, in season, out of season, and at
all seasons, under a banner on which was inscribed at the
formation of their Association, "Equal Rights to all citizens;
ESPECIALLY THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE, IRRESPECTIVE OF RACE, COLOR OR
SEX." Without pretending that the Association, or any of its
members, has violated, in letter or in spirit, a word of this
constitutional pledge, leading Abolitionists are charging
"injustice," "insincerity," and "treachery to the cause of
liberty," on actors in the Equal Rights Association, besides
ignorance, selfishness, and conservatism, because they will not
turn aside from their holy purpose to promote a measure that
basely, grossly insults one-half, and that the best half of the
human race. Were the subject not too serious for mirth, such
accusations, coming from such a source, would be simply
ludicrous. As it is, many will laugh at such absurdity. The
Fifteenth Amendment, at best, is but a trick, a device (as was
the Fourteenth with its word _male_ three times burned into a
single period), of as corrupt and unprincipled a school of
politicians as ever disgraced the name of legislation, to save
themselves and their party in place and power. It is told us in
all seriousness, that the word _male_ is not in the Fifteenth
Amendment, as though that atoned for its infamy, and rendered it
worthy of woman's support. Why should the word _male_ be in it?
Three times solemnly muttered in the Fourteenth, it needed no
repetition in the Fifteenth.

Another ludicrous view of this subject, is the zeal with which so
many women are laboring to hoist all mandom into power over them.
Power as omnipotent as ignorance, prejudice, and love of
domination can possibly create. A little reflection, one would
think, might show and satisfy the blindest that the opposition
they encounter already is quite sufficient, without augmenting it
a thousand fold, and anchoring it fast in the constitution of the
country. True, they are assured by radical Republicans that as
soon as the negro man is secured, the colored woman and the white
woman also shall be equally distinguished. Had this age an Æsop,
he would tell again his story of the goat and the fox at the
bottom of the well. How to get out, of course, was the question.
After long and anxious thought, a happy expedient struck the fox.
"Do you, friend goat, rear yourself up against the wall, as near
the top as possible, and from the tip of your horns I can spring
out, and then it will be quite easy to pull you up by the horns
also." No quicker spoken than done. Out leaped the fox, and was
safe. Then the goat demanded his release, as promised. "You old
fool!" answered Reynard! "Had you half as much brain as beard,
you would know that I would never risk my life to save yours,"
and away he ran. The whole history of American politics is
assurance, but pre-eminently so is the history of present
parties, that a party victory would scarcely be risked to save
all womankind from consuming fire. A very few such elections as
the late one in Virginia, would subdue immensely the present
Republican ardor on the colored man's rights.

But most ludicrous of all is it to hear old anti-slavery leaders
and teachers referring to the past for defense of their present
hostility, and challenging us to re-read that history and be
ashamed of our present course. But when in the past did Wendell
Phillips ever teach that a half loaf is better than no bread, if
poisoned, or if it were snatched or stolen from a family of
starving orphans? It was not in 1839, nor '49, nor '59, that he
held or inculcated such a philosophy. The motto of the
Anti-Slavery _Standard_ was and is "Without Concealment--Without
Compromise." Now under that sublime evangel women are instructed
to bridge over the gulf to colored male enfranchisement with
their own imperiled, nay, sacrificed equal rights. Better now the
"half loaf," festering, putrid with the poison of compromise,
than no bread! Better that the black man have his half loaf,
though he steal it from his mother and sisters, more hungry,
starving, and dying, than himself!

Oh, no! it was never so in the past. Terrible to conservatism as
to slavery itself, was the mighty war-cry of the Abolitionists
for twenty years. "No union with slaveholders!" No compromise
with injustice for an election, or for an hour, not even for a
good ultimate purpose! Colonization proposed a double purpose,
the final extinction of slavery, and a meanwhile redemption of
Africa from the midnight gloom and horror of heathenism. "Get
thee behind me, Satan," was the thundering response and just
rebuke of it by the Abolitionists! "Let us compromise with the
South, and buy up their slaves," said Elihu Burritt and his
overgrown mushroom convention, at Cleveland. "Our curse on your
slave trade, foreign and domestic," was the answering response of
the Garrisonian Invincibles. Many of the oldest leaders and
officers of the society refused even to help an escaped
slave-mother buy her children of her old master. "Let us form a
Republican party," said foxy politicians, and fight the extension
of slavery into Kansas, or any other new territory with ballot,
bullet, and battle-axe, if need be, but leaving the damnable
system in the States with its 4,000,000 of victims and their
posterity still chained under constitutional guarantee and the
army and navy of the nation. "No union with slaveholders," rung
out the lips and lungs of the Abolitionists, in tones that shook
the land from Maine to Mexico! "Fremont and Jessie" harnessed by
constitutional compromise to the Juggernaut car of slavery, were
not to be preferred by them to Beelzebub Buchanan himself. "No
union with slave-holders," though Gabriel were candidate and
chief captain of their hosts!

Now what do we behold? Wendell Phillips has shivered the English
language all to pieces in attempts to describe the baseness and
utter worthlessness of the Republican party. The president has
sold "the poisonous porridge called his soul," to Virginia rebels
and New York and Pennsylvania aristocrats and bondholders, and
yet Mr. Phillips persists in demanding that woman lay her own
right of suffrage at the presidential and Republican party feet,
while they so mould and manipulate the black male element, as by
it, if possible, to save themselves from utter rout and
destruction. Thanks be to God, some of us learned the old
anti-slavery lesson from Wendell Phillips better. And we dare
take our appeal from the Wendell Phillips of to-day, to him of
twenty years ago. And we do "dare to look our past history in the
face." And moreover, we look with triumph, and with hearts
swelling with fervent gratitude that our anti-slavery teachers
schooled us so well. What is it but ludicrous (if mirth be
possible on such a question) for those who are thus seeking the
enfranchisement of but half of even the fragmentary colored race,
to charge with selfishness, compromise, and treachery, the
association, or any of its members, that are earnestly laboring
to extend the ballot to every American citizen, irrespective of
all distinctions of race, complexion or sex? Can such accusers
look each other in the face and not laugh? Cato wondered that
two augurs could meet with gravity. What would he do here? And
still more preposterous, if not ludicrous, is it, when woman
voluntarily stops and becomes the agent of her own degradation,
and with her own hands builds barriers against her own
advancement; piling up opposition, Pelion upon Ossa, when the
majority against her, even in New York and New England, is
already appalling? And then for us to be referred to the
teachings and experiences of the past for lessons in compromise,
cold, calculating compromise, such as Abolitionists ever blasted
with the breath of their nostrils, and scourged from their
presence with fiery indignation! The Equal Rights Association is
not to be turned aside by any seductive devices from its high and
holy purpose of enfranchisement for all American citizens,
KNOWING NO RACE, NO COLOR, NO SEX.

P. P.

OCT. 7, 1869.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--Pardon a few plain words from an earnest friend
of human suffrage.

Your course opposing the Fifteenth Amendment and Political
(combined with moral) Temperance action, seems to me absolutely
suicidal, and must and will logically leave you to the tender
mercies of negro-drivers or haters and rumsellers and their
sympathizers. How much human suffrage can hope for at their
hands, judge ye!

J. K. PHOENIX.

P. S.--To say I am utterly astonished and grieved at _The
Revolution_ therein but feebly expresses my feelings. But we
shall see what you will effect by it.

_The Revolution_ criticises, "opposes," the fifteenth amendment,
not for what it is, but for what it is not. Not because it
enfranchises black men, but because it does not enfranchise all
women, black and white. It is not the little good it proposes,
but the greater evil it perpetuates that we deprecate. It is not
that in the abstract we do not rejoice that black men are to
become the equals of white men, but that we deplore the fact that
two millions black women, hitherto the political and social
equals of the men by their side, are to become subjects, slaves
of these men. Our protest is not that all men are lifted out of
the degradation of disfranchisement, but that all women are left
in. _The Revolution_ and the National Woman's Suffrage
Association make woman's suffrage their test of loyalty, not
negro suffrage, not Maine law or prohibition. Do you believe
women should vote? is the one and only question in our catechism.

In this period of reconstruction the Woman Suffrage Associations sent
their first delegates to National political conventions. The
appointment of Susan B. Anthony to the Democratic Presidential
Convention was a new and unlooked-for sensation.

_The Revolution_, NEW YORK, July 9, 1868.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY IN TAMMANY HALL.--Our readers will remember,
some time ago, it was announced in all the daily journals that
Susan B. Anthony was appointed a delegate to the Democratic
Convention, to represent the woman's suffrage movement in this
country. She accordingly applied by letter for a hearing in the
Convention. Her letter was presented to the Convention by the
President, ex-Governor Horatio Seymour, read by the clerk in a
loud, clear voice, received a most respectful and enthusiastic
hearing, and was referred to the Committee on Resolutions.

As our readers would, no doubt, like to know what radical
doctrines the Democratic party are now sufficiently developed to
applaud, we give the letter below. Let no one say that our
devotion to the education of this party for the last four years
has been in vain:

WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, 37 PARK ROW,}
ROOM 20, NEW YORK, July 4, 1868. }

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, MRS. HORACE GREELEY,} _Central Com._
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS, }

_To the President and Members of the National Democratic
Convention_:

GENTLEMEN:--I address you by letter to ask the privilege of
appearing before you during the sittings of this Convention, to
demand the enfranchisement of the women of America, the only
class of citizens wholly unrepresented in the Government, the
only class (not guilty of crime) taxed without representation,
tried without a jury of their peers, governed without their
consent. And yet in this class are found many of your most noble,
virtuous, law-abiding citizens, who possess all the requisite
qualifications of voters. Women have property and education. We
are not "idiots, lunatics, paupers, criminals, rebels," nor do we
"bet on elections." We lack, according to your constitutions, but
one qualification--that of sex--which is insurmountable, and,
therefore, equivalent to a deprivation of the suffrage; in other
words, the "tyranny of taxation without representation."

We desire to lay before you this violation of the great
fundamental principle of our Government for your serious
consideration, knowing that minorities can be moved by principles
as majorities are only by votes. Hence we look to you for the
initiative step in the redress of our grievances.

The party in power have not only failed to heed our innumerable
petitions, asking the right of suffrage, poured into Congress and
State Legislatures, but they have submitted a proposition to the
several States to insert the word "male" in the Federal
Constitution, where it has never been, and thereby put up a new
barrier against the enfranchisement of woman. This fresh insult
to the women of the Republic, who so bravely shared the dangers
and sacrifices of the late war, has roused us to more earnest and
persistent efforts to secure those rights, privileges, and
immunities that belong to every citizen under Government. As you
hold the Constitution of the fathers to be a sacred legacy to us
and our children forever, we ask you to save it from this
desecration, which deprives one-half our citizens of the right of
representation in the Government. Over this base proposition the
nation has stood silent and indifferent. While the dominant party
has with one hand lifted up two million black men and crowned
them with the honor and dignity of citizenship, with the other it
has dethroned fifteen million white women--their own mothers and
sisters, their own wives and daughters--and cast them under the
heel of the lowest orders of manhood.

We appeal to you, not only because you, being in a minority, are
in a position to consider principles, but because you have been
the party heretofore to extend the suffrage. It was the
Democratic party that fought most valiantly for the removal of
the "property qualification" from all white men, and thereby
placed the poorest ditch-digger on a political level with the
proudest millionaire. This one act of justice to workingmen has
perpetuated your power, with but few interruptions, from that
time until the war. And now you have an opportunity to confer a
similar boon on the women of the country, and thus possess
yourselves of a new talisman that will insure and perpetuate your
political power for decades to come.

While the first and highest motive we would urge on you, is the
recognition in all your action of the great principles of justice
and equality that are the foundation of a republican government,
it is not unworthy to remind you that the party that takes this
onward step will reap its just reward. It needs but little
observation to see that the tide of progress in all countries is
setting toward the enfranchisement of woman, and that this
advance step in civilization is destined to be taken in our day.

We conjure you, then, to turn from the dead questions of the past
to the vital issues of the hour. The brute form of slavery ended
with the war. The black man is a soldier and a citizen. He holds
the bullet and the ballot in his own right hand. Consider his
case settled. Those weapons of defense and self-protection can
never be wrenched from him. Yours the responsibility now to see
that no new chains be forged by bondholders and monopolists for
enslaving the labor of the country.

The late war, seemingly in the interest of slavery, was fought by
unseen hands for the larger liberties of the whole people. It was
not a war between North and South, for the principle of class and
caste knows neither latitude or longitude. It was a war of
ideas--of Aristocracy and Democracy--of Capital and Labor--the
same that has convulsed the race through the ages, and will
continue to convulse future generations, until Justice and
Equality shall reign upon the earth.

I desire, therefore, an opportunity to urge on this Convention
the wisdom of basing its platform on universal suffrage as well
as universal amnesty, from Maine to California, and thus take the
first step toward a peaceful and permanent reconstruction.

In behalf of the Woman's Suffrage Association,

Respectfully yours, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

The comments of the daily city press[110] on this "innovation" were
as varied as amusing. During the reading of this document, several
members of the Equal Rights Association occupied conspicuous seats in
the Convention. This was the first time in the history of that party
that any effort had been made to secure the attendance of their
mothers, wives, and daughters. But observing that women had been an
element of enthusiasm in Republican meetings all through the war and
the period of reconstruction, and seeing the improved tone and manner
their presence had given to the speeches, and the general conduct of
the proceedings, it was thought best to secure the same influence
henceforth in Democratic conventions. The attempt at this
time was quite satisfactory and successful. A large number of
handsomely-dressed ladies helped to swell the immense audience that
assembled in Tammany Hall, one of the most spacious and elegant
auditoriums in the city, to be dedicated on that day, July 4th, 1868,
to Democratic principles.

As there were strong hopes that that party was about to take some new
departure; some onward step; even to nominate for their leader so
radical a man as Salmon P. Chase, a large number of Radicals and
Liberals were present. Had the Democrats made that nomination, and put
a woman suffrage plank in their platform, they would probably have
carried the election. But they timidly clung to their old moorings,
nominated a man who had an unpopular war record, and submitted a
platform without one vital principle with which to rouse the
enthusiasm of the people.

Thus was the movement inaugurated of sending women as delegates to
both Republican and Democratic Presidential conventions, giving rise
to the agitation of the suffrage question on new platforms. With what
success the example has been followed, the records from time to time
fully show.

FOOTNOTES:

[108] GOING OVER TO THE COPPERHEADS.--As we have received several
letters from radical friends, warning us that we are going over to the
copperheads, for their comfort and instruction we will state some part
of our political creed.

1. We believe that suffrage is a natural right that belongs to every
man and woman of sound mind, without any qualification of property,
education, or sex, and moreover, that no reconstruction is worthy the
name that does not secure this right to the humblest citizen under
government.

2. We believe that both the spirit and the letter of the Federal
Constitution and the Declaration of Independence give Congress the
right to secure a republican form of government in every State in the
Union, and if they had done their duty at the end of the war and
proclaimed universal suffrage and universal amnesty, North and South,
the Republican party would not have been floundering about in the fogs
and mists of statesmanship to-day, without one inspiring party cry, or
one grand motto inscribed upon their banners, to carry them through
the coming Presidential campaign.

3. We believe that behind the rights of the Federal Government and the
rights of the several States are fundamental rights more sacred than
either, namely the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and
happiness; that out of these rights all just governments flow, and
whatever hinders the growth of the individual, restricts his liberty,
and destroys his happiness, is tyranny, and it is his sacred duty to
resist it to the death, as it is that of the State to resist the
Federal Government, in order to secure larger liberty for its whole
people. Rebellion in defense of justice, mercy, and the higher law is
always in order. Inasmuch as the rights of the individual are above
all constitutions, customs, creeds, and codes, it is the duty of the
general government to protect these rights against all intermediate
authorities.

4. While we have always demanded emancipation and enfranchisement for
the African race, we have no great enthusiasm for "negro suffrage" as
a party cry, because it is too narrow and partial for the hour. In
'56, Republicans asked aid and comfort of Abolitionists, because they
were opposed to the extension of slavery, but the Abolitionists, who
demanded "immediate emancipation," scouted the proposition;
non-extension, said they, is by no means grappling with the principle;
shutting up slavery where it is, is a step in the right direction, and
will eventually strangle the whole system, but to educate the people
into an idea we need the enthusiasm of a principle. When we say
"slavery is a sin," and therefore demand "immediate emancipation," we
end the evil and its extension in the same breath. So we say, to-day,
to the Abolitionists and Republicans, we can not accept your platform,
because it is not based on the idea that suffrage is a natural right,
we admit that "negro suffrage" is a step in the right direction, but
to educate the people to this partial demand even, we need the
enthusiasm of a principle, which you do not proclaim, so long as you
ask simply the extension of suffrage to two million men, instead of
its universal application to every citizen of the republic. As the
greater includes the less, when we say universal enfranchisement, we
claim all that the most radical Abolitionists and Republicans claim
and much more. Now, if the copperheads are educated up to this point,
we are happy to give them the right hand of fellowship, and shall hope
to be one of the delegates to the Tammany Hall Convention. We have
read their platform, as set forth in four mortal columns of the
_World_, and really do not see much to choose between it and the
Chicago platform. In fact, with the two Democratic candidates, Gen.
Grant and Chief-Justice Chase, and their twin platforms, stump orators
will have a hard task to prove why the people should prefer one
candidate or party to the other. The aristocratic principle--the
government of the many by the few--has been tried six thousand years
in every latitude and longitude, and under every imaginable form, and
the nations based on this principle have all alike perished. We have
proclaimed the true democratic idea on this continent, but never lived
it. Now the work of this generation is to realize what the fathers
declared a government of equality. The ballot is the symbol of this
idea, and it is not too much to demand to-day that it be placed in the
hand of every citizen. It is not too much to ask that this idea,
baptized in the blood of two revolutions, be now made the corner-stone
of the republic, the test of loyalty to the Union, to justice, to
humanity.--E. C. S. _The Revolution_, June 11, 1868.

[109] Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Robert Purvis, Olympia Brown,
Josephine Griffing, Parker Pillsbury, Paulina Wright Davis, Matilda
Joslyn Gage, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ernestine L.
Rose, Clarina Howard Nichols.

[110] (_New York Herald_, July 1, 1868): THE WOMEN'S RIGHTS WOMEN AND
THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION.--The Central Committee of the Woman's
Suffrage Association has prepared a woman's rights platform for the
coming National Democratic Convention. This association was given the
cold shoulder and completely ignored by the radicals at Chicago, and
the Democrats have therefore a splendid opportunity to take wind out
of the Republican sails on "womanhood suffrage" against "manhood
suffrage," and for white women especially, as better qualified for an
intelligent exercise of the suffrage than the thousands of black men
just rescued from the ignorance of negro slavery. The Democratic
Convention can turn the radical party out of doors upon this issue
alone if only bold enough to take strong ground upon it in favor of at
least the same political rights to white women that Congress has given
to Southern niggers.

(_World_, July 1, 1868): The Woman's Suffrage Central Committee have
spoken with a kindness which will be appreciated at its proper value;
they propose to anticipate and obviate the labors of the National
Democratic Convention by preparing a platform for the party in
advance. To this platform we elsewhere give the benefit of our
circulation. The document will not be amenable to censure for any lack
of explicitness or novelty, and will doubtless receive all the
attention to which its intrinsic merits entitle it, and which its
exceptional comprehensiveness will challenge. _Place aux dames!_

(_Evening Telegram_, July 2, 1868): THE WOMAN'S PLATFORM.--The Woman's
Suffrage Association present to the Tammany Hall Fourth of July
Democratic National Convention a platform of principles which contains
some good sound planks and proves at all events that an educated white
woman is more fit to be intrusted with the ballot than is the
brutalized and ignorant negro who has been invested with political
power by the radicals of Congress. The platform is the work of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and the red men of the
wigwam and their associates might do worse than indorse and adopt it
entire. Besides, this declaration of principles on the part of the
strong-minded females opens up a new feature in the campaign and may
get rid of a serious difficulty. Why should not the Democratic
Convention take the cow by the horns, nominate Elizabeth Cady Stanton
or Susan B. Anthony as their candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and
thus strike out at once in a bold revolutionary policy that would
entirely overshadow the radicals and their niggers' rights and sweep
the country from Maine to California? We invite the attention of
Belmont and the National Committee to the suggestion. Chase and
Stanton would be a wonderfully strong ticket and a remarkable
association of names, and so, for that matter, would be Chase and
Anthony. Besides, it might really bring about a great reform in the
character of the Senate to be presided over by a female. There would
be fewer disgraceful scenes in that body, and even Chandler, Nye, and
poor maudlin Yates would feel the influence of woman's presence, and
learn to behave themselves decently.

(_Sun_, July 2, 1868): _The Revolution_ for this week is full of
suggestive and entertaining, if not instructive, reading matter.
Whether or not women ought to vote, it is very clear that those of the
sex who are associated under the leadership of Mrs. Stanton and Miss
Anthony can write in the most saucy and piquant fashion, and,
moreover, know how to disarm by their wit and good humor the most
ill-natured of their adversaries.

(_Tribune_, July 2, 1868): WOMAN SUFFRAGE.--It is said that strong
ground will be taken against the admission of Miss Susan B. Anthony as
a delegate at large to represent the interests of American women in
the Convention; but as that lady's ticket is already "impeticosed,"
and as she has a will of her own, and a number of brawny friends who
will not see her deprived of her rights as a publisher, a woman, and
an American citizen, it may be inferred that Miss Anthony will take a
seat in due form, and will make herself heard when her turn comes.

(_World_, July 2, 1868): The ladies of the spirited woman's rights
weekly, called _The Revolution_, with Miss Susan B. Anthony at their
head, are setting their caps for the Democratic party. Availing
themselves of the privilege conferred on their charming sex by
leap-year, they are making the first advances if not a downright
"proposal." Miss Anthony greets the National Convention by hanging out
a fresh new sign in flaming red, brighter than the blushes of Aurora,
and all the way up three flights of stairs to her office, visitors
will encounter red signs to the right of them, red signs to the left
of them, like the cannon at Balaklava. A conservative stranger needs
all the courage of the immortal Light Brigade to run the gauntlet of
the blazing word "_Revolution_" staring at him on so many sides. Miss
Anthony has taken uncommon pains to make her paper this week
captivating and irresistible, as will be seen by the advertisement she
has inserted in this morning's _World_ for the benefit of members of
the Convention. But if she were a confiding miss of "sweet sixteen,"
instead of the "strong-minded woman" that she is, and the blushes of
all those brilliant signs were transfused into her own lovely cheeks,
we suspect (such is the infirmity or the perversity of "those odious
men") that she would make more conquests than she can reasonably
expect to do with the intellectual blaze and brilliancy of this week's
_Revolution_--splendid new signs and all. We fear the time is rather
distant when gallant young democrats will not surrender to soft eyes
and modest feminine ways sooner than to a good piece of argumentation
in a female mouth. Miss Anthony will be the author of a "Revolution"
indeed, if she succeeds in persuading the well-dressed beaux to prefer
wives to whom they would go to school. The members of the Convention
are more mature, though we doubt if they are much more sensible. But
Miss Anthony is not of a temper to be discouraged by small obstacles,
and we applaud the spirit with which she attempts to "make hay while
the sun shines."

(_Evening Express_, July 2, 1868): "THE REVOLUTION" AND "THE
WOMAN."--The women--naturally enough malcontent when the inferior race
of negroes is given the ballot; when Coolies are promised the ballot,
and even Indians can not be refused equal and universal suffrage as
"men and brethren"--insist now, more and more, upon women being taken
into the Radical party. The Democracy acknowledge their right to
equality with negroes and Coolies and Comanches--not much of an
acknowledgment, by the way, but something in the way of progress, and
far ahead of the Radicals. The last number of _The Revolution_ is
irresistible in argument against the Negro Suffrage Radicals, who will
not give women equal rights with negroes.

CHAPTER XXII.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS--1869.

First Convention in Washington--First hearing before
Congress--Delegates Invited from Every State--Senator Pomeroy, of
Kansas--Debate between Colored Men and Women--Grace Greenwood's
Graphic Description--What the Members of the Convention Saw and
Heard in Washington--Robert Purvis--A Western Trip--Conventions
in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Springfield and
Madison--Editorial Correspondence in _The
Revolution_--Anniversaries in New York and Brooklyn--Conventions
in Newport and Saratoga.

In the Autumn of 1868 a call[111] was issued for the first Woman
Suffrage Convention ever held in Washington. It was a period of
intense excitement, as many important measures of reconstruction were
under consideration. The XIV Amendment was ratified, the XV was still
pending, and several bills were before Congress on the suffrage
question. Petitions and protests against all amendments to the
Constitution regulating suffrage on the basis of sex were being sent
in by thousands in charge of the Washington Association, of which
Josephine S. Griffing was President. A large number of persons from
every part of the Union were crowding into the Capital. Many
Southerners being present to whom the demand for woman suffrage was
new, the arguments were listened to with interest, while the tracts
and documents were eagerly purchased and distributed among their
friends at home. All these things combined to make this Convention
most enthusiastic and influential, not only in its immediate effect on
those present, but from the highly complimentary reports of the press
scattered over the nation. We find a brief summing up of the
Convention in letters to _The Revolution_.

EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE.

WASHINGTON, JANUARY 22, 1869.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--The first National Woman's Suffrage Convention
ever held in Washington, closed on Wednesday night. There were
representatives from about twenty States, and the deepest
interest was manifested through all the sessions, increasing to
the end[112]. On the morning of the Convention the business
committee assembled in the ante-room of Carroll Hall, to discuss
resolutions, officers, etc. As Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, was
present, it was decided that he should open the meeting and
preside as long as his public duties would permit. This gave us
assurance of a healthy repose in the chair, which greatly helps
to take off the chill in opening a convention. After a grave
discussion of resolutions, permanent officers, etc., Mr. Pomeroy
led the way to the platform, called the meeting to order, and
made an able speech, taking the broad ground that as suffrage is
a natural, inalienable right, it must, of necessity, belong to
every citizen of the republic, black and white, male and female.
Mrs. Mott was chosen President, resolutions were reported, and
when everything was in fine working order (except the furnace)
Mr. Pomeroy slipped off to his senatorial duties, to watch the
grand Kansas swindle now on the tapis, and to protect, if
possible, the interests of the people.

Whatever elements or qualities combine to render any popular
convention every way successful, were most felicitously blended
in this gathering in Washington. In numbers, interest,
earnestness, variety and especially ability, there was surely
little left to be desired. As to numbers in attendance, from
Maine, California, and all the way between, it is sufficient to
say that although the first session was most encouragingly large,
there was a constant increase till the last evening, when the
spacious hall was crowded in every part, until entrance was
absolutely impossible, long before people ceased coming. Of the
interest in the proceedings, it may be said that it was proposed
to hold three sessions each day, with a brief recess at noon. But
twelve o'clock and all o'clock were forgotten, and the day
session continued until after four; the only regret seeming then
to be that there were not more hours, and that human nature had
not greater power of endurance.

The harmony that prevailed was all that could reasonably have
been expected (if not even desired), considering the nature of
the questions in hand, and the large number and variety of
opinions entertained and expressed in the different sessions. On
the one vital point, that suffrage is the inalienable right of
every intelligent citizen who is held amenable to law, and is
taxed to support the government, there was no difference
expressed. The issue that roused the most heated debate was
whether the colored man should be kept out of the right of
suffrage until woman could also be enfranchised. One young, but
not ineffectual speaker, declared he considered the women the
bitterest enemies of the negro; and asked, with intense emotion,
shall they be permitted to prevent the colored man from obtaining
his rights? But it was not shown that women, anywhere, were
making any effort toward that result. One or two women present
declared they were unwilling that any more men should possess
the right of suffrage until women had it also. But these are well
known as most earnest advocates of universal suffrage, as well as
the long-tried and approved friends of the colored race.

The discussion between colored men on the one side and women on
the other, as to whether it was the duty of the women of the
nation to hold their claims in abeyance, until all colored men
are enfranchised, was spicy, able and affecting. When that noble
man, Robert Purvis of Philadelphia, rose, and, with the loftiest
sense of justice, with a true Roman grandeur, ignored his race
and sex, rebuked his own son for his narrow position, and
demanded for his daughter all he asked for his son or himself, he
thrilled the noblest feelings in his audience. Is has been a
great grief to the leading women in our cause that there should
be antagonism with men whom we respect, whose wrongs we pity, and
whose hopes we would fain help them to realize. When we contrast
the condition of the most fortunate women at the North, with the
living death colored men endure everywhere, there seems to be a
selfishness in our present position. But remember we speak not
for ourselves alone, but for all womankind, in poverty, ignorance
and hopeless dependence, for the women of that oppressed race
too, who, in slavery, have known a depth of misery and
degradation that no man can ever appreciate.

That there were representatives of both political parties
present, was very apparent, and sometimes forms of expression
betrayed a little unnecessary partisan preference; but there was
not one who bore any part in the long and intensely exciting
discussions, who could be justly charged with any wish, however
remote, to hold personal prejudice or party preference above
principle and religious regard to justice and right. There was
one feature in the convention that we greatly deplore, and that
was an impatience, not only with the audience, but with some on
the platform whenever any man arose to speak. We must not forget
that men have sensibilities as well as women, and that our
strongest hold to-day on the public mind is the fact that men of
eloquence and power on both continents are pleading for our
rights. While we ask justice for ourselves, let us at least be
just to the noble men who advocate our cause. It is certainly
generous in them to come to our platforms, to help us maintain
our rights, and share the ridicule that attends every step of
progress, and it is clearly our duty to defend their rights, at
least when speaking in our behalf.

We had a brief interview with Senator Roscoe Conkling. We gave
him a petition signed by 400 ladies of Onondaga County, and urged
him to make some wise remarks on the subject of woman's suffrage
when he presented it. We find all the New York women are sending
their petitions to Senator Pomeroy. He seems to be immensely
popular just now. We think our own Senators need some education
in this direction. It would be well for the petitions of the
several States to be placed in the hands of their respective
Senators, that thus the attention of all of them might be called
to the important subject. It is plain to see that Mr. Conkling is
revolving this whole question in his mind. His greatest fear is
that coarse and ignorant women would crowd the polls and keep the
better class away.

Parker Pillsbury's speech on "The Mortality of Nations," was one
of the best efforts of his life, and as grand an argument on the
whole question of Republican government as was ever made on the
woman suffrage platform. Although he had been one of the earliest
and most enthusiastic Abolitionists, yet the enfranchisement of
woman had always in his mind seemed of equal importance to that
of the black man. In Mr. Pillsbury's philosophy on both
questions, the present was ever the time for immediate and
absolute justice.

One great charm in the convention was the presence of Lucretia
Mott, calm, dignified, clear and forcible as ever. Though she is
now seventy-six years old, she sat through all the sessions, and
noted everything that was said and done. It was a satisfaction to
us all that she was able to preside over the first National
Woman's Suffrage Convention ever held at the Capitol. Her voice
is stronger and her step lighter than many who are her juniors by
twenty years. She preached last Sunday in the Unitarian Church to
the profit and pleasure of a highly cultivated and large
audience. We were most pleased to meet ex-Governor Robinson, the
first Governor of Kansas, in the convention. He says there is a
fair prospect that an amendment to strike out the word "male"
from the Constitution will be submitted again in that State,
when, he thinks, it will pass without doubt. Mrs. Minor,
President of the Woman's Suffrage Association of Missouri, and
Mrs. Starrett of Lawrence, Kansas, gave us a pleasant surprise by
their appearance at the convention. They took an active part in
the deliberations, and spoke with great effect. Senator Wilson
was present, though he did not favor us with a speech. We urged
him to do so, but he laughingly said he had no idea of making
himself a target for our wit and sarcasm. We asked him, as he
would not speak, to tell us the "wise, systematic, and efficient
way" of pressing woman's suffrage. He replied, "You are on the
right track, go ahead." So we have decided to move "on this line"
until the inauguration of the new administration, when, under the
dynasty of the chivalrous soldier, "our ways will, no doubt, be
those of pleasantness, and all our paths be peace." New Jersey
was represented by Deborah Butler of Vineland, the only live spot
in that benighted State, and we thought her speech quite equal to
what we heard from Mr. Cattell in the Senate. During the evening
sessions, large numbers of women from the several departments
were attentive listeners. Lieutenant-Governor Root of Kansas read
the bill now before Congress demanding equal pay for women in the
several departments where they perform equal work with the men by
their side. He offered a resolution urging Congress to pass the
bill at once, that justice might be done the hundreds of women in
the District, for their faithful work under government.

Mrs. Stanton's speech the first evening of the convention gave a fair
statement of the hostile feelings of women toward the amendments; we
give the main part of it. Of all the other speeches, which were
extemporaneous, only meagre and unsatisfactory reports can be found.

Mrs. STANTON said:--A great idea of progress is near its
consummation, when statesmen in the councils of the nation
propose to frame it into statutes and constitutions; when
Reverend Fathers recognize it by a new interpretation of their
creeds and canons; when the Bar and Bench at its command set
aside the legislation of centuries, and girls of twenty put their
heels on the Cokes and Blackstones of the past.

Those who represent what is called "the Woman's Rights Movement,"
have argued their right to political equality from every
standpoint of justice, religion, and logic, for the last twenty
years. They have quoted the Constitution, the Declaration of
Independence, the Bible, the opinions of great men and women in
all ages; they have plead the theory of our government; suffrage
a natural, inalienable right; shown from the lessons of history,
that one class can not legislate for another; that disfranchised
classes must ever be neglected and degraded; and that all
privileges are but mockery to the citizen, until he has a voice
in the making and administering of law. Such arguments have been
made over and over in conventions and before the legislatures of
the several States. Judges, lawyers, priests, and politicians
have said again and again, that our logic was unanswerable, and
although much nonsense has emanated from the male tongue and pen
on this subject, no man has yet made a fair, argument on the
other side. Knowing that we hold the Gibraltar rock of reason on
this question, they resort to ridicule and petty objections.
Compelled to follow our assailants, wherever they go, and fight
them with their own weapons; when cornered with wit and sarcasm,
some cry out, you have no logic on your platform, forgetting that
we have no use for logic until they give us logicians at whom to
hurl it, and if, for the pure love of it, we now and then
rehearse the logic that is like a, b, c, to all of us, others cry
out--the same old speeches we have heard these twenty years. It
would be safe to say a hundred years, for they are the same our
fathers used when battling old King George and the British
Parliament for their right to representation, and a voice in the
laws by which they were governed. There are no new arguments to
be made on human rights, our work to-day is to apply to ourselves
those so familiar to all; to teach man that woman is not an
anomalous being, outside all laws and constitutions, but one
whose rights are to be established by the same process of reason
as that by which he demands his own.

When our Fathers made out their famous bill of impeachment
against England, they specified eighteen grievances. When the
women of this country surveyed the situation in their first
convention, they found they had precisely that number, and quite
similar in character; and reading over the old revolutionary
arguments of Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Otis, and Adams, they
found they applied remarkably well to their case. The same
arguments made in this country for extending suffrage from time
to time, to white men, native born citizens, without property and
education, and to foreigners; the same used by John Bright in
England, to extend it to a million new voters, and the same used
by the great Republican party to enfranchise a million black men
in the South, all these arguments we have to-day to offer for
woman, and one, in addition, stronger than all besides, the
difference in man and woman. Because man and woman are the
complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national
affairs to make a safe and stable government.

The Republican party to-day congratulates itself on having
carried the Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, thus
securing "manhood suffrage" and establishing an aristocracy of
sex on this continent. As several bills to secure Woman's
Suffrage in the District and the Territories have been already
presented in both houses of Congress, and as by Mr. Julian's
bill, the question of so amending the Constitution as to extend
suffrage to all the women of the country has been presented to
the nation for consideration, it is not only the right but the
duty of every thoughtful woman to express her opinion on a
Sixteenth Amendment. While I hail the late discussions in
Congress and the various bills presented as so many signs of
progress, I am especially gratified with those of Messrs. Julian
and Pomeroy, which forbid any State to deny the right of suffrage
to any of its citizens on account of sex or color.

This fundamental principle of our government--the equality of all
the citizens of the republic--should be incorporated in the
Federal Constitution, there to remain forever. To leave this
question to the States and partial acts of Congress, is to defer
indefinitely its settlement, for what is done by this Congress
may be repealed by the next; and politics in the several States
differ so widely, that no harmonious action on any question can
ever be secured, except as a strict party measure. Hence, we
appeal to the party now in power, everywhere, to end this
protracted debate on suffrage, and declare it the inalienable
right of every citizen who is amenable to the laws of the land,
who pays taxes and the penalty of crime. We have a splendid
theory of a genuine republic, why not realize it and make our
government homogeneous, from Maine to California. The Republican
party has the power to do this, and now is its only opportunity.
Woman's Suffrage, in 1872, may be as good a card for the
Republicans as Gen. Grant was in the last election. It is said
that the Republican party made him President, not because they
thought him the most desirable man in the nation for that office,
but they were afraid the Democrats would take him if they did
not. We would suggest, there may be the same danger of Democrats
taking up Woman Suffrage if they do not. God, in his providence,
may have purified that party in the furnace of affliction. They
have had the opportunity, safe from the turmoil of political life
and the temptations of office, to study and apply the divine
principles of justice and equality to life; for minorities are
always in a position to carry principles to their logical
results, while majorities are governed only by votes. You see my
faith in Democrats is based on sound philosophy. In the next
Congress, the Democratic party will gain thirty-four new members,
hence the Republicans have had their last chance to do justice to
woman. It will be no enviable record for the Fortieth Congress
that in the darkest days of the republic it placed our free
institutions in the care and keeping of every type of manhood,
ignoring womanhood, all the elevating and purifying influences of
the most virtuous and humane half of the American people....

I urge a speedy adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment for the
following reasons:

1. A government, based on the principle of caste and class, can
not stand. The aristocratic idea, in any form, is opposed to the
genius of our free institutions, to our own declaration of
rights, and to the civilization of the age. All artificial
distinctions, whether of family, blood, wealth, color, or sex,
are equally oppressive to the subject classes, and equally
destructive to national life and prosperity. Governments based on
every form of aristocracy, on every degree and variety of
inequality, have been tried in despotisms, monarchies, and
republics, and all alike have perished. In the panorama of the
past behold the mighty nations that have risen, one by one, but
to fall. Behold their temples, thrones, and pyramids, their
gorgeous palaces and stately monuments now crumbled all to dust.
Behold every monarch in Europe at this very hour trembling on his
throne. Behold the republics on this Western continent convulsed,
distracted, divided, the hosts scattered, the leaders fallen, the
scouts lost in the wilderness, the once inspired prophets blind
and dumb, while on all sides the cry is echoed, "Republicanism is
a failure," though that great principle of a government "by the
people, of the people, for the people," has never been tried.
Thus far, all nations have been built on caste and failed. Why,
in this hour of reconstruction, with the experience of
generations before us, make another experiment in the same
direction? If serfdom, peasantry, and slavery have shattered
kingdoms, deluged continents with blood, scattered republics like
dust before the wind, and rent our own Union asunder, what kind
of a government, think you, American statesmen, you can build,
with the mothers of the race crouching at your feet, while
iron-heeled peasants, serfs, and slaves, exalted by your hands,
tread our inalienable rights into the dust? While all men,
everywhere, are rejoicing in new-found liberties, shall woman
alone be denied the rights, privileges, and immunities of
citizenship? While in England men are coming up from the coal
mines of Cornwall, from the factories of Birmingham and
Manchester, demanding the suffrage; while in frigid Russia the
22,000,000 newly-emancipated serfs are already claiming a voice
in the government; while here, in our own land, slaves, but just
rejoicing in the proclamation of emancipation, ignorant alike of
its power and significance, have the ballot unasked, unsought,
already laid at their feet--think you the daughters of Adams,
Jefferson, and Patrick Henry, in whose veins flows the blood of
two Revolutions, will forever linger round the campfires of an
old barbarism, with no longings to join this grand army of
freedom in its onward march to roll back the golden gates of a
higher and better civilization? Of all kinds of aristocracy, that
of sex is the most odious and unnatural; invading, as it does,
our homes, desecrating our family altars, dividing those whom God
has joined together, exalting the son above the mother who bore
him, and subjugating, everywhere, moral power to brute force.
Such a government would not be worth the blood and treasure so
freely poured out in its long struggles for freedom....

2. I urge a Sixteenth Amendment, because "manhood suffrage" or a
man's government, is civil, religious, and social
disorganization. The male element is a destructive force, stern,
selfish, aggrandizing, loving war, violence, conquest,
acquisition, breeding in the material and moral world alike
discord, disorder, disease, and death. See what a record of blood
and cruelty the pages of history reveal! Through what slavery,
slaughter, and sacrifice, through what inquisitions and
imprisonments, pains and persecutions, black codes and gloomy
creeds, the soul of humanity has struggled for the centuries,
while mercy has veiled her face and all hearts have been dead
alike to love and hope! The male element has held high carnival
thus far, it has fairly run riot from the beginning, overpowering
the feminine element everywhere, crushing out all the diviner
qualities in human nature, until we know but little of true
manhood and womanhood, of the latter comparatively nothing, for
it has scarce been recognized as a power until within the last
century. Society is but the reflection of man himself, untempered
by woman's thought, the hard iron rule we feel alike in the
church, the state, and the home. No one need wonder at the
disorganization, at the fragmentary condition of everything, when
we remember that man, who represents but half a complete being,
with but half an idea on every subject, has undertaken the
absolute control of all sublunary matters.

People object to the demands of those whom they choose to call
the strong-minded, because they say, "the right of suffrage will
make the women masculine." That is just the difficulty in which
we are involved to-day. Though disfranchised we have few women in
the best sense, we have simply so many reflections, varieties,
and dilutions of the masculine gender. The strong, natural
characteristics of womanhood are repressed and ignored in
dependence, for so long as man feeds woman she will try to please
the giver and adapt herself to his condition. To keep a foothold
in society woman must be as near like man as possible, reflect
his ideas, opinions, virtues, motives, prejudices, and vices. She
must respect his statutes, though they strip her of every
inalienable right, and conflict with that higher law written by
the finger of God on her own soul. She must believe his theology,
though it pave the highways of hell with the skulls of new-born
infants, and make God a monster of vengeance and hypocrisy. She
must look at everything from its dollar and cent point of view,
or she is a mere romancer. She must accept things as they are and
make the best of them. To mourn over the miseries of others, the
poverty of the poor, their hardships in jails, prisons, asylums,
the horrors of war, cruelty, and brutality in every form, all
this would be mere sentimentalizing. To protest against the
intrigue, bribery, and corruption of public life, to desire that
her sons might follow some business that did not involve lying,
cheating, and a hard, grinding selfishness, would be arrant
nonsense. In this way man has been moulding woman to his ideas by
direct and positive influences, while she, if not a negation, has
used indirect means to control him, and in most cases developed
the very characteristics both in him and herself that needed
repression. And now man himself stands appalled at the results of
his own excesses, and mourns in bitterness that falsehood,
selfishness and violence are the law of life. The need of this
hour is not territory, gold mines, railroads, or specie payments,
but a new evangel of womanhood, to exalt purity, virtue,
morality, true religion, to lift man up into the higher realms of
thought and action.

We ask woman's enfranchisement, as the first step toward the
recognition of that essential element in government that can only
secure the health, strength, and prosperity of the nation.
Whatever is done to lift woman to her true position will help to
usher in a new day of peace and perfection for the race. In
speaking of the masculine element, I do not wish to be understood
to say that all men are hard, selfish, and brutal, for many of
the most beautiful spirits the world has known have been clothed
with manhood; but I refer to those characteristics, though often
marked in woman, that distinguish what is called the stronger
sex. For example, the love of acquisition and conquest, the very
pioneers of civilization, when expended on the earth, the sea,
the elements, the riches and forces of Nature, are powers of
destruction when used to subjugate one man to another or to
sacrifice nations to ambition. Here that great conservator of
woman's love, if permitted to assert itself, as it naturally
would in freedom against oppression, violence, and war, would
hold all these destructive forces in check, for woman knows the
cost of life better than man does, and not with her consent would
one drop of blood ever be shed, one life sacrificed in vain. With
violence and disturbance in the natural world, we see a constant
effort to maintain an equilibrium of forces. Nature, like a
loving mother, is ever trying to keep land and sea, mountain and
valley, each in its place, to hush the angry winds and waves,
balance the extremes of heat and cold, of rain and drought, that
peace, harmony, and beauty may reign supreme. There is a striking
analogy between matter and mind, and the present disorganization
of society warns us, that in the dethronement of woman we have
let loose the elements of violence and ruin that she only has the
power to curb. If the civilization of the age calls for an
extension of the suffrage, surely a government of the most
virtuous, educated men and women would better represent the
whole, and protect the interests of all than could the
representation of either sex alone. But government gains no new
element of strength in admitting all men to the ballot-box, for
we have too much of the man-power there already. We see this in
every department of legislation, and it is a common remark, that
unless some new virtue is infused into our public life the nation
is doomed to destruction. Will the foreign element, the dregs of
China, Germany, England, Ireland, and Africa supply this needed
force, or the nobler types of American womanhood who have taught
our presidents, senators, and congressmen the rudiments of all
they know?

3. I urge a Sixteenth Amendment because, when "manhood suffrage"
is established from Maine to California, woman has reached the
lowest depths of political degradation. So long as there is a
disfranchised class in this country, and that class its women, a
man's government is worse than a white man's government with
suffrage limited by property and educational qualifications,
because in proportion as you multiply the rulers, the condition
of the politically ostracised is more hopeless and degraded. John
Stuart Mill, in his work on "Liberty," shows that the condition
of one disfranchised man in a nation is worse than when the whole
nation is under one man, because in the latter case, if the one
man is despotic, the nation can easily throw him off, but what
can one man do with a nation of tyrants over him? If American
women find it hard to bear the oppressions of their own Saxon
fathers, the best orders of manhood, what may they not be called
to endure when all the lower orders of foreigners now crowding
our shores legislate for them and their daughters. Think of
Patrick and Sambo and Hans and Yung Tung, who do not know the
difference between a monarchy and a republic, who can not read
the Declaration of Independence or Webster's spelling-book,
making laws for Lucretia Mott, Ernestine L. Rose, and Anna E.
Dickinson. Think of jurors and jailors drawn from these ranks to
watch and try young girls for the crime of infanticide, to decide
the moral code by which the mothers of this Republic shall be
governed? This manhood suffrage is an appalling question, and it
would be well for thinking women, who seem to consider it so
magnanimous to hold their own claims in abeyance until all men
are crowned with citizenship, to remember that the most ignorant
men are ever the most hostile to the equality of women, as they
have known them only in slavery and degradation.

Go to our courts of justice, our jails and prisons; go into the
world of work; into the trades and professions; into the temples
of science and learning, and see what is meted out everywhere to
women--to those who have no advocates in our courts, no
representatives in the councils of the nation. Shall we prolong
and perpetuate such injustice, and by increasing this power risk
worse oppressions for ourselves and daughters? It is an open,
deliberate insult to American womanhood to be cast down under the
iron-heeled peasantry of the Old World and the slaves of the New,
as we shall be in the practical working of the Fifteenth
Amendment, and the only atonement the Republican party can make
is now to complete its work, by enfranchising the women of the
nation. I have not forgotten their action four years ago, when
Article XIV., Sec. 2, was amended[113] by invidiously introducing
the word "male" into the Federal Constitution, where it had never
been before, thus counting out of the basis of representation all
men not permitted to vote, thereby making it the interest of
every State to enfranchise its male citizens, and virtually
declaring it no crime to disfranchise its women. As political
sagacity moved our rulers thus to guard the interests of the
negro for party purposes, common justice might have compelled
them to show like respect for their own mothers, by counting
woman too out of the basis of representation, that she might no
longer swell the numbers to legislate adversely to her interests.
And this desecration of the last will and testament of the
fathers, this retrogressive legislation for woman, was in the
face of the earnest protests of thousands of the best educated,
most refined and cultivated women of the North.

Now, when the attention of the whole world is turned to this
question of suffrage, and women themselves are throwing off the
lethargy of ages, and in England, France, Germany, Switzerland,
and Russia are holding their conventions, and their rulers are
everywhere giving them a respectful hearing, shall American
statesmen, claiming to be liberal, so amend their constitutions
as to make their wives and mothers the political inferiors of
unlettered and unwashed ditch-diggers, boot-blacks, butchers, and
barbers, fresh from the slave plantations of the South, and the
effete civilizations of the Old World? While poets and
philosophers, statesmen and men of science are all alike pointing
to woman as the new hope for the redemption of the race, shall
the freest Government on the earth be the first to establish an
aristocracy based on sex alone? to exalt ignorance above
education, vice above virtue, brutality and barbarism above
refinement and religion? Not since God first called light out of
darkness and order out of chaos, was there ever made so base a
proposition as "manhood suffrage" in this American Republic,
after all the discussions we have had on human rights in the
last century. On all the blackest pages of history there is no
record of an act like this, in any nation, where native born
citizens, having the same religion, speaking the same language,
equal to their rulers in wealth, family, and education, have been
politically ostracised by their own countrymen, outlawed with
savages, and subjected to the government of outside barbarians.
Remember the Fifteenth Amendment takes in a larger population
than the 2,000,000 black men on the Southern plantation. It takes
in all the foreigners daily landing in our eastern cities, the
Chinese crowding our western shores, the inhabitants of Alaska,
and all those western isles that will soon be ours. American
statesmen may flatter themselves that by superior intelligence
and political sagacity the higher orders of men will always
govern, but when the ignorant foreign vote already holds the
balance of power in all the large cities by sheer force of
numbers, it is simply a question of impulse or passion, bribery
or fraud, how our elections will be carried. When the highest
offices in the gift of the people are bought and sold in Wall
Street, it is a mere chance who will be our rulers. Whither is a
nation tending when brains count for less than bullion, and
clowns make laws for queens? It is a startling assertion, but
nevertheless true, that in none of the nations of modern Europe
are the higher classes of women politically so degraded as are
the women of this Republic to-day. In the Old World, where the
government is the aristocracy, where it is considered a mark of
nobility to share its offices and powers, women of rank have
certain hereditary lights which raise them above a majority of
the men, certain honors and privileges not granted to serfs and
peasants. There women are queens, hold subordinate offices, and
vote on many questions. In our Southern States even, before the
war, women were not degraded below the working population. They
were not humiliated in seeing their coachmen, gardeners, and
waiters go to the polls to legislate for them; but here, in this
boasted Northern civilization, women of wealth and education, who
pay taxes and obey the laws, who in morals and intellect are the
peers of their proudest rulers, are thrust outside the pale of
political consideration with minors, paupers, lunatics, traitors,
idiots, with those guilty of bribery, larceny, and infamous
crimes.

Would those gentlemen who are on all sides telling the women of
the nation not to press their claims until the negro is safe
beyond peradventure, be willing themselves to stand aside and
trust all their interests to hands like these? The educated women
of this nation feel as much interest in republican institutions,
the preservation of the country, the good of the race, their own
elevation and success, as any man possibly can, and we have the
same distrust in man's power to legislate for us, that he has in
woman's power to legislate wisely for herself.

4. I would press a Sixteenth Amendment, because the history of
American statesmanship does not inspire me with confidence in
man's capacity to govern the nation alone, with justice and
mercy. I have come to this conclusion, not only from my own
observation, but from what our rulers say of themselves.
Honorable Senators have risen in their places again and again,
and told the people of the wastefulness and corruption of the
present administration. Others have set forth, with equal
clearness, the ignorance of our rulers on the question of
finance....

The following letters were received and read in the Convention:

NEW YORK, Jan. 14, 1869.

MRS. JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING,--_Dear Madam_:--Your favor of the 6th
inst. is received. Permit me to assure you it would give me great
pleasure to be present at your important convention of the 19th,
but indisposition will not allow me that gratification.

Looking at all the circumstances; the position, the epoch, and
the efforts now being made to extend the right to the ballot,
your Convention is perhaps the most important that was ever held.
It is a true maxim, that it is easier to do justice than
injustice; to do right than wrong; and to do it at once, than by
small degrees. How much better and easier it would have been for
Congress, when they enfranchised all the men of the District of
Columbia, had they included the women also; but better late than
never. Let the National government, to which the States have a
right to look for good example, do justice to woman now, and all
the States will follow....

It was a terrible mistake and a fundamental error, based upon
ignorance and injustice, ever to have introduced the word "male"
into the Federal Constitution. The terms "male" and "female"
simply designate the physical or animal distinction between the
sexes, and ought be used only in speaking of the lower animals.
Human beings are men and women, possessed of human faculties and
understanding, which we call mind; and mind recognizes no sex,
therefore the term "male," as applied to human beings--to
citizens--ought to be expunged from the constitution and laws as
a last remnant of barbarism--when the animal, not mind, when
might, not right, governed the world. Let your Convention, then,
urge Congress to wipe out that purely animal distinction from the
national constitution. That noble instrument was destined to
govern intelligent, responsible human beings--men and women--not
sex. The childish argument that all women don't ask for the
franchise would hardly deserve notice were it not sometimes used
by men of sense. To all such I would say, examine ancient and
modern history, yes, even of your own times, and you will find
there never has been a time when all men of any country--white or
black--have ever asked for a reform. Reforms have to be claimed
and obtained by the few, who are in advance, for the benefit of
the many who lag behind. And when once obtained and almost forced
upon them, the mass of the people accept and enjoy their benefits
as a matter of course. Look at the petitions now pouring into
Congress for the franchise for women, and compare their thousands
of signatures with the few isolated names that graced our first
petitions to the Legislature of New York to secure to the married
woman the right to hold in her own name the property that
belonged to her, to secure to the poor, forsaken wife the right
to her earnings, and to the mother the right to her children.
"All" the women did not ask for those rights, but all accepted
them with joy and gladness when they were obtained; and so it
will be with the franchise. But woman's claim for the ballot does
not depend upon the numbers that demand it, or would exercise the
right; but upon precisely the same principles that man claims it
for himself. Chase, Sumner, Stevens, and many of both Houses of
Congress have, time after time, declared that the franchise means
"Security, Education, Responsibility, Self-respect, Prosperity,
and Independence." Taking all these assertions for granted and
fully appreciating all their benefits, in the name of security,
of education, of responsibility, of self-respect, of liberty, of
prosperity and independence we demand the franchise for woman.

Please present this hastily-written contribution to your
Convention with best wishes.

Yours, dear madam, very truly, ERNESTINE L. ROSE.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON writes: Unable to attend the Convention, I
can only send you my warm approval of it, and the object it is
designed to promote. It is boastingly claimed in behalf of the
Government of the United States that it is "of the people, by the
people, and for the people." Yet reckoning the whole number at
thirty-eight millions, no less than one-half--that is, nineteen
millions--are political ciphers. A single male voter, on election
day, outweighs them all!

AARON M. POWELL writes: I have no doubt that if a fair and honest
vote can be had upon the question, submitted upon its own merits,
in the Senate and House of Representatives, both the friends and
opponents of the measure here, as in Great Britain when John
Stuart Mill's proposition was first voted upon in Parliament,
will be surprised at the revelation of its real strength.

Mrs. CAROLINE H. DALL writes: It mitigates my regret in declining
your invitation to remember that these are not the dark days of
the cause.

Senator FOWLER, of Tenn., writes: It is not possible that the
people who have so enlarged the boundaries of the political
rights of another race just emerged from slavery, will fail to
recognize the claims of the women of the United States to equal
rights in all the relations of life.

WM. H. SYLVIS says: I am in favor of universal suffrage,
universal amnesty, and universal liberty.

ABBY HOPPER GIBBONS says: My father, Isaac T. Hopper, was an
advocate for woman and her work, he believed in her thoroughly.
His life long he was associated with many of the best women of
his day. With the help of good men, we shall ere long stand side
by side with ballot in hand.

PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS: If women are the only unrecognized class as
a part of the people, then woe to the nation! for there will be
no noble mothers; frivolity, folly, and madness will seize them,
for all inverted action of the faculties becomes intense in just
the ratio of its earnestness.

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE writes: I am deeply interested in the work,
and hopeful that a broader sphere is opening for woman, that as a
class they may be trained in early life more as men are in
education and business.

Gen. OLIVER O. HOWARD answers: Please express to the Committee my
thanks for the invitation. I should be pleased to accept, but a
lecture engagement in the West will compel me to be absent from
the city.

JAMES M. SCOVILL, of New Jersey, says: I deeply desire to come.
Go on in your great work. The Convention tells on the public
mind.

GERRIT SMITH replies: I thank you for your invitation, though it
is not in my power to attend the Convention. God hasten the day
when the civil and political rights of woman shall be admitted to
be equal to those of man.

SIMEON CORLEY, M.C., of South Carolina, writes: Having been an
advocate of woman suffrage for a quarter of a century, I had the
pleasure yesterday of enrolling my name and that of my wife on
your list of delegates. To-day Hon. James H. Goss, M.C., of
South Carolina, requested me to have you insert his name. I think
you may safely count on the South Carolina delegation.

This Convention was the first public occasion when the women opposed
to the XIV Amendment, measuring their logic with Republicans,
Abolitionists, and colored men, ably maintained their position. The
division of opinion was marked and earnest, and the debate was warm
between Messrs. Douglass, Downing, Hinton, Dr. Purvis, and Edward M.
Davis on one side, and the ladies, with Robert Purvis[114] and Parker
Pillsbury on the other. Edward M. Davis, the son-in-law of Lucretia
Mott, was so hostile to the position of the women on the XIV Amendment
that he refused to enroll his name as a member of the Convention.
Nevertheless, Mrs. Mott in the chair, allowed him to criticise most
severely the resolutions and the position of those with whom she
stood. She answered his attacks with her usual gentleness, and
advocated the resolutions.[115] Robert Purvis, differing with his own
son and other colored men, denounced their position with severity. Yet
good feeling prevailed throughout, and the Convention adjourned in
order and harmony.

The following objective view of the Convention, of the tone of the
addresses, and the _personnel_ of the platform, from the pen of one of
our distinguished literary women--Sarah Clarke Lippincott--will serve
to show that the leaders in the suffrage movement were not the rude,
uncultured women generally represented by the opposition, but in point
of intelligence, refinement, appearance, and all the feminine virtues,
far above the ordinary standard. For the honor of this grand reform,
we record the compliments occasionally bestowed.

[From the _Philadelphia Press_].

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21, 1869.

The proceedings were opened with prayer by Dr. Gray, the Chaplain
of the Senate, a man of remarkably liberal spirit. This prayer,
however, did not give perfect satisfaction. Going back to the
beginning of things, the doctor unfortunately chanced to take, of
the two Mosaic accounts of the creation of man and woman, that
one which is least exalting to woman, representing her as built
on a "spare rib" of Adam. Let us hope the reverend gentleman will
"overhaul" his Genesis and "take a note."

On the platform was an imposing array of intellect, courage, and
noble character. First there was dear, revered Lucretia Mott, her
sweet, saintly face cloistered in her Quaker bonnet, her serene
and gracious presence, so dignified yet so utterly unpretending,
so self-poised yet so gentle, so peaceful yet so powerful,
sanctioning and sanctifying the meeting and the movement.

Near her sat her sister, Mrs. Wright, of Auburn, a woman of
strong, constant character and of rare intellectual culture; Mrs.
Cady Stanton, a lady of impressive and beautiful appearance, in
the rich prime of an active, generous, and healthful life; Miss
Susan B. Anthony, looking all she is, a keen, energetic,
uncompromising, unconquerable, passionately earnest woman; Clara
Barton, whose name is dear to soldiers and blessed in thousands
of homes to which the soldiers shall return no more--a brave,
benignant looking woman. But I will not indulge in personal
descriptions, though Dr. Mary Walker in her emancipated garments
and Eve-like arrangement or disarrangement of hair, is somewhat
tempting.

Senator Pomeroy, acting as temporary chairman, called the
Convention to order. Certain committees were appointed, and the
Senator spoke for some twenty or thirty minutes, very happily and
effectively, on the question of Woman's Rights under the
Constitution--both as originally written and as amended. He
argued that all born or naturalized Americans are citizens--that
neither sex nor color has anything to do with citizenship
rightfully. His reasoning seemed to us, who are interested,
cogent and logical, and his spirit fearless and broad. Mrs.
Stanton spoke on the general question with great force and
pithiness. Of all their speakers she seemed to me to have the
most weight. Her speeches are models of composition, clear,
compact, elegant, and logical. She makes her points with peculiar
sharpness and certainty, and there is no denying or dodging her
conclusions. Mrs. Mott followed Mrs. Stanton, and at a later hour
spoke again. She can not speak too often for the good of this or
any cause. Her arguments are always gently put forward, but there
is great force behind them--the force of reason and justice and
simple truth. Her wit, too, though it gleams out softly and
playfully, illuminates her subject as the keener, sharper light
of satire never could illuminate it. She is always reasonable,
gracious, and judicious. She never strives for effect, and is too
conscientious to be sensational, yet no speaker among the younger
women of this movement makes more telling points--no one knows so
well every foot of the broad field of argument. In her practiced
hand every weapon is ready on the instant, whether drawn from the
armories of Scripture, history, literature, or politics. She
reviewed the history of this movement from the beginning, paying
warm tribute to the memory of its early advocates. She proved
that for centuries the discontented, the indignant protest in the
souls of women, which has culminated in this movement, has formed
an element which has been secretly surging and seething under the
surface of society. These were no new wrongs or needs of ours,
she said; the women of the past, of all ages, had felt them; we
are only giving voice to them.

A most eloquent letter from Mrs. Ernestine L. Rose was read,
indorsing the Convention; also one from William Lloyd Garrison.
Mrs. Griffing, of Washington, spoke with remarkable earnestness
and fervor, and was followed by Mrs. Hathaway, of Boston. This
lady said: "They say the majority shall rule. Well, there are,
east of the Alleghanies, 400,000 more women than men. So the
minority rule us." Upon the whole, I was quite willing to have
this body of women orators and debaters compared with either of
the great legislative bodies who meet over in yonder great marble
temple of wisdom, eloquence, logic, and law.

Mrs. Starrett, of Kansas, a bright, ruddy, rosy woman, made a
good, practical speech on the influence of the franchise upon the
domestic life of women.

Mrs. Butler, of Vineland, N. J., made one of the most charming
and womanly speeches, or talks, of the Convention, recounting her
experience as one of the gallant band of women who, at the late
fall elections, made an imposing demonstration at the polls in
her lively and progressive town. Fearful threats had reached them
of insult and violence from rough boys and men; but they met with
absolutely nothing of the kind, though they did not approach the
polls like the Neapolitan heroine who votes for Victor Emanuel,
with pistols and daggers in their belts and war medals on their
breasts. They were made way for as respectfully as though they
had been about to enter a church door. Of course, their votes
were thrown out, but it would not always be so. They would hope
on and vote on. Touching the reforms that women intend to bring
about when they shall "come into the kingdom," she said, "we will
rule liquor out of the country;" a declaration which at the
present critical stage of affairs, and in Washington, struck me
as rather impolitic. "As to the question of woman first or the
black man first," she said, "I mean both together"; evidently
looking for a constitutional amendment gateway wide enough for
the two to dash in abreast, neck-and-neck. "Oh, woman, great is
thy faith!" This speaker related some sad stories illustrative of
woman's legal disabilities, and dwelt feelingly on the old,
palpable, intolerable grievance of inequality of wages, and on
the bars and restrictions which woman encounters at every turn,
in her struggle for an honorable livelihood.

In reply, Mrs. Mott, in her bright, sweet, deprecating way, cast
a flood of sunlight on the dark pictures, by referring to the
remodeling of the laws respecting the relation of husband and
wife, in regard to property, and the right of the mother to her
child, by the Legislatures of the various States and especially
by that of the State of New York.

Miss Anthony followed in a strain not only cheerful, but
exultant--reviewing the advance of the cause from its first
despised beginning to its present position, where, she alleged,
it commanded the attention of the world. She spoke in her usual
pungent, vehement style, hitting the nail on the head every time,
and driving it in up to the head. Indeed, it seems to me, that
while Lucretia Mott may be said to be the soul of this movement,
and Mrs. Stanton the mind, the "swift, keen intelligence," Miss
Anthony, alert, aggressive, and indefatigable, is its nervous
energy--its propulsive force.

Mrs. Stanton has the best arts of the politician and the training
of the jurist, added to the fiery, unresting spirit of the
reformer. She has a rare talent for affairs, management, and
mastership. Yet she is in an eminent degree womanly, having an
almost regal pride of sex. In France, in the time of the
revolution or the first empire, she would have been a Roland or a
De Stael. I will not attempt the slightest sketch of her closing
speech, which was not only a powerful plea for disfranchised
womanhood, but for motherhood. It was now impassioned, now
playful, now witty, now pathetic. It was surpassingly eloquent,
and apparently convincing, for the boldest and most radical
utterances, brought from the great audience the heartiest
applause. For _this_, I love the people. No great, brave, true
thought can be uttered before an American audience without
bringing a cordial and generous response. All are not ready, of
course, to carry into action, into life, legislation, and law the
sentiments of liberty and justice they applaud; but they feel
that somewhere, in some nameless Utopia far away, such things
might be lived out. Thank heaven that Utopia is _possible_ for
humanity--a real, practical condition of our mortal life--only a
little way before us, perhaps.

Many good, refined people turn a cold shoulder on this cause of
woman's rights because their religious sentiment, or their taste,
is shocked by the character or appearance of some of its public
advocates. They say: "If we were only to see at their conventions
that Quaker gentlewoman, Lucretia Mott, with her serene presence;
Mrs. Stanton, with her patrician air; Miss Anthony, with her
sharp, intellectual fencing; Lucy Stone, with her sweet,
persuasive argument and lucid logic--it were very well; but to
their free platform, bores, fanatics, and fools are admitted, to
elbow them and disgust us." I suppose that such annoyances, to
use a mild term, necessarily belong to a free platform, and that
freedom of speech is one of the most sacred rights--especially to
woman. Yet I think some authority there should be to exclude or
silence persons unfit to appear before an intelligent and refined
audience--some power to rule out utterly, and keep out, ignorant
or insane men and women who realize some of the worst things
falsely charged against the leaders of this movement. But to see
the three chief figures of this great movement of Woman's Rights
sitting upon a stage in joint council, like the three Parcæ or
Fates of a new dispensation--dignity and the ever-acceptable
grace of scholarly earnestness, intelligence, and beneficence
making them prominent--is assurance that the women of our
country, bereft of defenders, or injured by false ones, have
advocates equal to the great demands of their cause.

GRACE GREENWOOD.

EDITORIAL CORRESPONDENCE.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22, 1869.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--We hear good accounts from all quarters of the
effect of the Woman's National Suffrage Convention. From the
numbers who called upon us, the courtesy of our rulers, the
marked attentions paid us in society, and the many enthusiastic
letters we daily receive, we are led to believe that woman's
suffrage is becoming very popular. As both the editor and
proprietor of _The Revolution_ are in the sere and yellow leaf,
the many attentions and compliments showered upon us are of
course from no personal considerations, but so many tributes of
respect to the ideas we represent; as such we gratefully accept
all that come to us, and thank our hosts of friends for the words
of good cheer we received in Washington. As we have never been
cast down with scorn and ridicule, we shall never be puffed up
with praise and admiration. In the future, as the past, the motto
of the good Abbe de Lamennais shall be ours, "Let the weal and
the woe of humanity be everything to us, their praise and their
blame of no effect." In conversation with some of the members we
found them quite jealous of the attentions Mr. Pomeroy was
receiving from the women of the nation. This will never do, to be
sowing seeds of discord where fraternal love should abound, and
we hope the women of the several States will send their petitions
to their own members. As Mr. Pomeroy has enough piled up in his
committee room to keep him busy all winter, we advise him to
distribute them among all the gallant gentlemen who would feel
honored in presenting them. Then, too, there is much wisdom in
the remarks made by the Hon. Roscoe Conkling, when he presented a
woman's petition, on the danger of granting Mr. Pomeroy a
monopoly of such privileges, lest he should grow lukewarm in the
cause. True, we have looked in vain for any burst of eloquence
from the Kansas gentleman, thus far, in the Senate, but it may be
that he can not find words to express the depth of his sympathy
for oppressed womanhood, hence the silent eloquence of action
alone in behalf of the fair petitioners.

One gentleman remarked, "Why do you push Pomeroy forward in your
movement? Julian is altogether the most reliable man." We
replied, we always push those who come forward. We should have
been very glad if Boutwell or Brooks, Wade or Wilson, Harlan or
Henderson, Julian or Jenckes had had the courage to come to our
platform, but as Mr. Pomeroy was the only member of Congress who
did come, he stands before the public as our champion in
Washington. These politicians are all alike. No doubt there are
many men in both Houses as earnest on this question as Mr.
Pomeroy, who are silent on personal considerations, while he is
active for the same reason. In Kansas, woman suffrage is a
popular question, hence it is safe for Senators from that State,
looking to a re-election, to advocate it, and when the women of
the several States are as wide awake as in Kansas, the members of
Congress will vie with each other to do them honor. We chanced to
lunch one day in Downing's saloon with the Hon. Sidney Clark, of
Kansas, and Gen. McMillan, of Minnesota, both strongly opposed to
the land swindle. The former has just made an able speech on that
question. Mr. Clark is a tall, fine-looking man, and bears so
striking a resemblance to the editor of the _Independent_ that he
is often accosted for him. The subject of discussion over Mr.
Downing's fine oysters was woman suffrage. Although Mr. Clark
rather gave us the cold shoulder in the Kansas campaign, he
promises to atone for his error by renewed ardor when the
proposition is again submitted.

Miss Anthony called on Senator Harlan, Chairman of the District
Committee, who readily granted us a hearing, which was had on
Wednesday, the 26th. Mr. H. being friendly to the idea, we shall
look to him to report a bill favorable to woman suffrage in the
District. Mr. Harlan has one of the most refined, spiritual faces
in the Senate. Mr. Lawrence, of Ohio, who was on the committee
for investigating the election frauds in New York, said, when he
returned, that the greatest fraud he found there was that
one-half the people were not allowed to vote at all.

Messrs. Aiken and Florence, of the _Sunday Gazette_, were deeply
interested listeners throughout our Convention. On being
introduced to Mr. Florence, we expressed the hope that he would
now sharpen his pen and do valiant service for woman and help to
atone for all the injustice and ridicule of the press in the
past. He promptly pledged himself to defend our ideas valiantly
in the future. And he has started well in writing a glowing
editorial in his last paper, and giving two columns to our speech
on "Manhood Suffrage." To Senator Trumbull, who is Chairman of
the Judiciary Committee, all our petitions, appeals, and
addresses are referred. We hope he will not sink under such a
weight of responsibility, but read everything we send him with a
holy unction to the committee, and report favorably to the
Senate.

We learned from the Southern members that the South Carolina
delegation will go solid for woman suffrage. It has been a wonder
to us that Southern white women did not see the necessity of
their speedy enfranchisement, as a foreign race is, by the edicts
of the Republican party, exalted above their heads--made their
rulers, judges, jurors, and law-givers.

Friday evening, we went to Secretary McCulloch's and Mr. Colfax's
receptions. There we saw Mrs. Colfax for the first time; tall,
handsome, vigorous. We congratulated her on having won the most
popular man in America, whereupon the Vice-President elect smiled
and bowed profoundly, and we turned to greet glorious old Ben
Wade and his noble wife. Finance seemed to be the theme on all
sides, and we have our fears that the negroes, as well as the
women, will be lost sight of, in these discussions about the
currency. But this finance is a grave question, and the more we
read and think on it, the more we are convinced that the need of
money is the root of all evil. We were introduced to Professor
Helyard and Gen. Eaton, members of a scientific society of
gentlemen which meets once a week to discuss all that is in
heaven above, on the earth beneath, and in the waters under the
earth, without permitting a single one of Eve's daughters to
listen to the wisdom. They have lately discussed the subject of
earthquakes, and it was stated, we understand, that after the
women began to hold conventions in this country, earthquakes
became more frequent, occurring from 1850 in California,
simultaneously with these conventions in several States, showing
that old mother earth sympathizes with the sorrows of women. The
fear of similar occurrences in the District fully accounts for
the exclusiveness of these scientific gentlemen. Professor
Helgard discoursed most eloquently on co-operative housekeeping.
As we listened to the many good reasons he gave for cooking,
washing, and ironing on a large scale, we felt the women of the
nation might be benefited ultimately by these weekly cogitations,
if not permitted to enjoy the society of the cogitators.

E. C. S.

The National Woman's Suffrage Convention held in Washington, January
18th and 19th, presented the following appeal to the District
Committee:

TO THE CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA.

HONORABLE GENTLEMEN: As the Franchise bill is now under
consideration, we would urge your committee to so amend it as to
secure the right of suffrage to all the women of the District,
and thus establish in the capital of the nation the first genuine
republic the world has ever known. It would be a work of
supererogation to warn you against the puerile proposition to
disfranchise all the people of the District, by placing their
municipal affairs under the direct control of Congress, for such
retrogressive legislation is beneath the consideration of your
honorable committee, and would never be tolerated by the
American people. The tide of public opinion is setting to-day in
the opposite direction; in all governments we see a steadily
increasing tendency toward individual responsibilities--to the
election of rulers by a direct voice of the people. In this
general awakening, woman too has been roused to a sense not only
of her own rights as a human being, but to her duties as a
citizen under government.

It is especially fitting that the grand experiment of equality
should be first tried in the District of Columbia, where such
able debates on freedom have been heard during the last century;
where slavery was first abolished by an act of Congress; and
where the black man was first recognized as a citizen of the
United States. But in removing all political disabilities from
the male citizens of the District, you have established, for the
first time in the history of nations, a government based on the
aristocracy of sex; an aristocracy of all kinds the most odious
and unnatural. While every type and shade of manhood is rejoicing
to-day in all the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens
in the District, its noblest matrons are still living under the
statute laws of a dark and barbarous age, running back to the old
common law of England centuries ago, having no parallel in our
day, but in the slave codes of the Southern States. Here a
married woman has no right to the property she inherits, to the
wages she earns, or to the children of her love, and from laws
like these she has no appeal; no advocate in the courts of
justice; no representative in the councils of the nation. Such is
the result of class legislation, clearly proving that man has
ever made laws for his own mother with as little justice and
generosity as he has from time to time for different orders of
his own sex. Suffering, as woman does, under the wrongs of Saxon
men, you have added insult to injury by exalting another race
above her head: slaves, ignorant, degraded, depraved, but
yesterday crouching at your feet, outside the pale of political
consideration, are to-day, by your edicts, made her lawgivers!
Thus here in the District you have consummated this invidious
policy of the nation, placing outside barbarians above your
Pilgrim mothers, who have stood by your side from the beginning,
sharing alike your dangers and triumphs in the great struggle on
this continent for free institutions.

We urge you, therefore, to report favorably on Senator Wilson's
amendment, because woman not only needs the ballot for her
protection, but the nation needs her voice in legislation for the
safety and stability of our institutions. We simply ask you to
apply your theory of government, your declaration of rights, the
principles enunciated by the great Republican party, the
far-seeing wisdom with which step by step you have secured all
men in their inalienable rights, to our case, and you will see
that logic, justice, common sense, and constitutional law are all
alike on our side of the question. We need not detain you to
rehearse the fundamental principles of our government, your own
interpretation of the constitution, or the right of Congress to
regulate suffrage in the District, for all this has been argued
before the nation and sealed by your own acts. With the argument
all on our side, the only question that remains is, does woman
herself demand the right of suffrage at this hour? If, honorable
gentlemen, you will look abroad, and note the general uprising of
women everywhere, in foreign nations as well as our own, you will
realize that our demand is the great onward step of the century
and not, as some claim, the idiosyncrasy of a few unbalanced
minds. Man knows as little of the real feeling of the women of
their household as did the proud Southerner of the slaves on his
plantation. Woman fears man's ridicule more than the slave did
the master's lash. Yes! woman waits to-day but for man's
approval, to manifest the intense enthusiasm she feels in the no
distant future, when she, too, shall be crowned sovereign of this
great republic, where all are of the blood royal--all heirs
apparent to the throne.

We are often asked the question, "On what do you base your
assertion that the ballot can achieve so much for woman? It has
not done much for man; in this country all white men vote, yet
the masses are wretchedly fed, housed, clothed, and poorly paid
for their labor. Ignorant alike of social and political economy,
their voting is a mere form; practically they have no more to do
with the government than the masses in the old world who have no
representation whatever." These wholesale philosophers, and we
meet them every day, are incapable of any patient process of
analytical reasoning. If the moment a man is endowed with the
suffrage he does not spring up into knowledge, virtue, wealth,
and position, then the right amounts to nothing. If a generation
of ignorant, degraded men, does not vote at once with the wisdom
of statesmen, then Universal Suffrage is a failure, and the
despot and the dagger the true government. The careful reader of
history will see that with every new extension of rights a new
step in civilization has been taken, and that uniformly those
nations have been most prosperous where the greatest number of
the people have been recognized in the government. Contrast China
with Russia, England with the United States. Where the few
govern, the legislation is for the advantage of the few. Where
the many govern, the legislation will gradually become more and
more for the advantage of the many, as fast as the many know
enough to demand laws for their own benefit. This knowledge comes
from an education in politics; and a ballot in a man's hand and
the responsibility of using it, is the first step in this
education. Even if a man sells his ballot, there is power in
possessing something that a politician must have or perish. The
Southern slaves must have acquired a new dignity in the scale of
being when Judge Kelley and Senator Wilson traveled all through
the South to preach to them on political questions.

The thinking men of England, as they philosophize on the abuses
of their government, see plainly that the only way to abolish an
order of nobility, a law of primogeniture and an established
church, is to give the masses a right by their votes to pitch
this triple power into the channel; for all the bulwarks of
aristocracy will, one by one, be swept away with the education
and enfranchisement of the people. Gladstone, John Bright, and
John Stuart Mill see clearly that the privileges of the few can
be extended to the many only by the legislation of the many. All
the beneficial results of the broad principles they are
advocating to-day, may not be fully realized in a generation,
but, to the philosophical mind, they are as true now as if
already achieved. The greatest minds in this country, too, have
made most exhaustive arguments to prove the power of the ballot,
and recognized the equality of all citizens, in our Declaration
of Rights, in extending suffrage to all white men, and in the
proposition to farther extend it to all black men. The great
Republican party (in which are many of the ablest men of the
nation) declare that emancipation to the black man is a mockery,
without the suffrage. When the thinking minds on both continents
are agreed as to the power of the ballot in the hand of every
man, it is surprising to hear educated Americans ask, "What
possible value would suffrage be to woman?" When, in the British
Parliament, the suffrage was extended to a million new voters,
even Lord Derby and Disraeli, who were opposed to the measure,
said at once, now, if this class are to vote, we must establish
schools for their education, showing the increased importance of
every man who has a voice in the government, and the new interest
of the rulers in his education. Where all vote all must be
educated; our public school system is the result of this
principle in our government. When women vote, Harvard, Yale, and
Princeton will throw wide open their doors.

Woman is not an anomalous being outside all law, that one need
make any special arguments to prove that what elevates and
dignifies man will educate and dignify woman also. When she
exercises her right of suffrage, she will study the science of
government, gain new importance in the eyes of politicians, and
have a free pass in the world of work. If the masses knew their
power, they could turn the whole legislation of this country to
their own advantage, and drive poverty, rags, and ignorance into
the Pacific Ocean. If they would learn wisdom in the National
Labor Conventions and not sell their votes to political
tricksters, a system of Finance, Trade, and Commerce, and
Co-operation could soon be established that would secure the
rights of Labor and put an end to the concentration of wealth in
the hands of the few. Labor holds the ballot now, let it learn
how to use it. Educated women know how to use it now, let them
have it.

Immediately after the convention in Washington, Mrs. Stanton and Miss
Anthony made their first tour through the Western States, speaking at
various points in Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio, having been
invited to attend several State Conventions. The editorial
correspondence in _The Revolution_, gives a brief summary of this
Western trip, so valuable in its results, in the organization of many
suffrage associations. These meetings aroused the women who had been
absorbed by the war to new and higher duties, showing them that
although the battles of freedom had been fought and settled by the
sword, many questions growing out of the conflict were still to be
adjusted by discussion and legislation, and that, all important as
their work had been in helping to save the life of the nation, there
were other duties to themselves as citizens on which the perpetuation
of our free institutions as fully depended.

To awaken women everywhere to a proper self-respect, was the special
mission of the suffrage movement, and it was a labor, for the very
elect were in favor of negro suffrage first, woman suffrage
afterwards, which meant the postponement of the latter question for
another generation. The few who had the prescience to see the long
years of apathy that always follow a great conflict, strained every
nerve to settle the broad question of suffrage on its true basis while
the people were awake to its importance, but the blindness of
reformers themselves in playing into the hands of the opposition, made
all efforts unavailing.

CHICAGO, Feb. 12, 1869.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--Sitting on the platform in the Chicago
Convention, we remember that the mail to-night must take a word
to you. After traveling forty hours on the railroad, sitting two
days in convention and talking in all the leisure hours outside,
our missives to you must be short, but not spicy, for we feel
like a squeezed sponge at the present writing. Our journey
hither, barring delays, was most charming. This was our first
trip on the Erie Railroad, and although we had heard much of the
majesty and beauty of the scenery through the valleys of the
Delaware and Susquehanna, and the spacious, comfortable cars, the
journey surpassed our expectations. The convention has been
crowded and most enthusiastic throughout; judges, lawyers,
clergymen, professors, all taking part in its deliberations. The
women of this nation may congratulate themselves that their cause
is near its triumph when such noble men as Edward Beecher, Rev.
Mr. Goodspeed, Robert Collyer, Prof. Haven, Judge Waite, and
Judge Bradwell come forward in public to advocate their cause.
Mr. Beecher made an able speech yesterday, showing that "manhood
suffrage" was not the demand of this hour, but suffrage for all
the citizens of the republic. He pointed out the necessity of
woman's voice in the legislation of the country, not only for her
own safety, but for the preservation of our free institutions.
The Secretary of the convention, Mrs. J. F. Willing of Rockford,
is a most accomplished woman. She understands Greek, Latin,
French, German, Italian, writes for several periodicals, and is
the author of "Through the Dark to the Light," a new book, it is
said, of much power and merit.

Library Hall has been literally packed throughout the convention;
and, from the letters we have already received urging us to go
hither and thither throughout the West, "The prairies seem to be
all on fire with woman's suffrage." While politicians are trying
to patch up the Republican party, now near its last gasp, the
people in the West are getting ready for the new national party,
to combine the best elements of both the old ones, soon to be
buried forever out of sight. Woman's suffrage, greenbacks, free
trade, homesteads for all, eight hours labor, and three per cent
the legal interest, will be some of the planks in the platforms
of the political parties of the future. Mrs. Livermore, the
President of the Convention, discharged the duties of her office
with great executive ability, grace, and patience. The women of
Chicago are fortunate in having in her so wise and judicious a
manager of their cause. She is a tall, dignified-looking woman,
has a fine voice and pleasant address. William Wells Brown and
Anna Dickinson enlivened the discussions of this afternoon. The
former helped to annihilate "us" of _The Revolution_ on the same
resolutions we discussed at Washington, and Anna left Mr. Robert
_Laird_ Collyer, who had already had a passage at arms with Mrs.
Livermore and Robert Collyer, without one logical weapon for his
defense. This gentleman and Rev. Mr. Hammond, brother-in-law of
Owen Lovejoy, not believing in woman's suffrage, were, unhappily
for themselves, though to the great amusement of the audience,
made the target for all the wit and satire of the platform. Mr.
Hammond, in his death gasp, declared "he believed his Bible,"
which did not help his case, for everyone else on the platform
affirmed the same faith, with only this difference, they did not
believe Mr. Hammond's interpretation of the good book. Mrs. Myra
Bradwell, editor of the Chicago _Legal News_, took a prominent
part in the convention. She is a woman of great force and
executive ability, and it is said her husband is indebted to her
for his success in life.

A telegram from Mrs. Minor, President of the Woman's Suffrage
Association in St. Louis, says that they have announced us to
speak there on Monday evening. What will interest you more than
all besides, is the unanimous passage of a resolution in the
convention indorsing _The Revolution_ as the national organ of
the woman's suffrage movement. The Chicago press has graciously
given many columns to reports of the convention.

E. C. S.

ST. LOUIS, Feb. 18.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--While in Chicago we attended a reception at
Mrs. William Doggett's, where we met Madame de Herricourt, a
distinguished French lady, who published an able work on woman
some years since, in which she severely criticised several French
writers, Michelet among the rest, for their sentimental nonsense
about the sex. She is a very brilliant woman, with a large head,
a bright, expressive face, and a stout figure, rather below the
medium height. We discussed several French writers, among others,
Victor Hugo, and fully agreed as to his women--that they were all
lamentable failures. It is strange that a writer who can paint
such strong men should so utterly fade out whenever he attempts a
woman, and, the strangest part of it is, that he does not see it
himself, and get some gifted woman to draw his female characters.
To make such grand men as Jean Valjean and Gilliette love such
types of womanhood as Victor Hugo creates, always did seem to us
a desecration of that sentiment. We called to see Sidney Howard
Gay, one of the editors of the Chicago _Tribune_, and found him
writing with his left hand, as, owing to a severe fall, his right
hand had forgotten its cunning. If the grand position the Chicago
_Tribune_ takes on Woman Suffrage, is the result of this
accident, we wish all our Republican editors in the East would
take a left handed tilt at our question. Sunday night we left
Chicago for St. Louis in the palace cars, where we slept as
comfortably as in our own home and breakfasted on the train in
the morning. The dining-room was exquisitely arranged and the
cooking excellent. The kitchen was a gem, and the cook, in the
neatness and order of his person and all his surroundings, was a
pink of male perfection. It really did seem like magic, to eat,
sleep, read the morning papers, and talk with one's friends in
bed-room, dining-room and parlor, dashing over the prairies at
the rate of thirty miles an hour. While men can keep house in
this charming manner, the world will not be utterly desolate when
women _do_ vote. As we consider the great versatility in the
talents of our noble countrymen, we are lost in admiration. They
seem as much at home in watching the gyrations of an egg or
oyster in hot water as the revolutions of the heavenly bodies; in
making pins and buttons to unite garments that time and haste may
have put asunder as in spanning continents with railroads and
telegraphs.

As we reached the eastern bank of the Mississippi, we were met by
a delegation of ladies and gentlemen to escort us to St. Louis,
where we found pleasant apartments in the Southern Hotel, which
is extremely well kept, and where one is always sure of a
"christian" cup of coffee. The tea and coffee in all the hotels
on the route are the most miserable concoctions of hayseed and
chiccory that were ever palmed off on a long-suffering, patient
people. We had an enthusiastic meeting in St. Louis, and found
great interest manifested in the question of woman suffrage among
many of its leading citizens. The ladies were in high spirits, as
they had just returned from Jefferson, where they had been most
graciously received by their legislators. Miss Phoebe Couzins had
made an address at the capitol which was well received. She is a
young lady of great beauty and talent, both as a writer and
speaker, and is called the Anna Dickinson of the West. She is
studying law, and hopes to be admitted to the senior class in the
law school next year. Her mother, a woman of rare capacity, is a
candidate for the Post Office of St. Louis. We hope she will get
it. Tuesday evening we had a reception in the parlors of the
hotel. Among others, we were happy to meet Mrs. Tittman, a highly
cultivated German lady, sister of Professor Helyard, whom we met
in Washington. She announced that two of the German papers had
come out in favor of woman suffrage that morning and confessed
that they were converted the night before. We were surprised to
hear that the paper controlled by Carl Schurz and Emile Pretorius
had not taken that position long ago. But, from the character and
influence of the German ladies there, it is evident that the
German politicians must come to terms. Mrs. Minor, President of
the Missouri Woman Suffrage Association, invited us to drive
around and see the parks, gardens and new streets of the city.

We drove to the Polytechnic, and were received by Mr. Baily
(Librarian) and Mr. Devoll, ex-superintendent of schools. He said
that he was ready to vote for educated suffrage, without
distinction of sex.

The ladies then proposed to go to the Merchants' Exchange and see
the bulls and bears. Accordingly we drove there, ascended into
the galleries, and looked down upon a great crowd of men standing
round long lines of tables covered with tin pie-plates. At first
we thought they were lunching, but we soon perceived that the
tins contained different kinds of grains and flour, which wise
ones were carefully examining. As we stood there, laughing at the
idiosyncrasies of the sons of Adam, lo! two most polished
gentlemen approached our charmed circle, and announced that they
were a committee from the merchants on the floor to invite us to
come down and address them. We descended with Mr. John J. Roe and
Mr. Merritt and were introduced to the President of the Board,
George P. Plant, and Mr. Blow, who escorted us to a temporary
platform, and called the house to order. We made a short speech,
and then there were loud calls from all parts of the house for
Miss Couzins. She stepped forward and made a few pleasant
remarks, when we all bowed graciously to the gallant gentlemen
who conferred this great honor upon us, and retired.

SPRINGFIELD, Feb. 21.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--We have been resting here at the capital of
Illinois a few days. Of our meeting in the Opera House we will
say nothing about it, except that we had the Governor and members
of the Legislature as attentive listeners, and the
Lieut.-Governor for presiding officer, who made an admirable
speech indorsing woman's suffrage. Mrs. Livermore made an able
argument, though Robert _Laird_ Collyer says we never have any
logic on our platform, as if we had not been so logical in all
our positions for the last twenty years that the dear men had no
answer to make. Poor fellows! as they saw their outposts, one
after another taken, their fortresses riddled through and
through, their own guns turned on their defenseless heads, and
such fifty-pounders as "taxation without representation," "all
men created equal," "no just government can be formed without the
consent of the governed," hurled at them, no wonder they left
logic and took up ridicule; and now, when we meet them with their
own weapons, they say we can not reason. The drunken man always
imagines the lamp-posts dancing. Poor R. L. C., in the Chicago
Convention, really thought his platitudes logic, and our logic
sentiment.

On arriving at Springfield, we found the Chicago delegation all
ready to besiege the Legislature. Among them were Mrs. Mary A.
Livermore, Mr. Bradwell and his pretty wife Myra, who edits the
Chicago _Legal News_. We have met several members of the bar and
judges of the Supreme Court, among others Judge Lawrence and
Judge Breese. All these gentlemen of the bar are in favor of
amending the laws and constitutions. One thing is certain, unless
these Republicans wheel in and do their duty, the Democrats in
the West will take up woman's suffrage. We would advise the
Western men to come into the measure generously and gracefully,
and not be so obstinate and mulish as our Eastern lords have
been. There is no escape, and where is the use of courting
disgrace and defeat?

Sharon Tyndale, Ex-Secretary of State, escorted us to the House
and Senate, and introduced us to the heads of the departments. We
had two pleasant interviews with Gov. Palmer. He talks very
reasonably in regard to the enfranchisement of women, although he
says he does not quite indorse it yet, but as he has a very
clear, honest mind, he will soon convince himself that what the
ballot has done towards elevating man it will do for woman also.

The telegrams are flying in all directions for us to come here,
there, everywhere. Western women are wide-awake to-day. The
question of submitting an amendment to the Constitution to strike
out the word "male," is under consideration. The poor "white
male" is doomed.

E. C. S.

CHICAGO, March 1.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--From Springfield, I went to Bloomington,
lectured before the Young Men's Association to a large audience,
and met there many liberal men and women. I found that the Rev.
Mr. Harrison had just fired a gun in the town paper on the lack
of logic in the Chicago Convention and women's intuitions in
general. It amuses me to hear the nonsense these men talk. They
say God never intended woman to reason, they shut their college
doors against her so that she can not study that manly
accomplishment, and then they blame her for taking a short cut to
the same conclusion they reach in their roundabout, lumbering
processes of ratiocination. Do these gentlemen wish us to set
aside God's laws, pick up logic on the sidewalks, and go step by
step to a point we can reach with one flash of intuition? As long
as we have the gift of catching truth by the telegraph wires,
neither the sage of Bloomington nor Robert Laird Collyer of
Chicago need ask us to go jogging after it in a stage-coach,
perchance to be stuck in the mud on the highways as they are. It
is enough to make angels weep to see how the logicians, skilled
in the schools, are left floundering on every field before the
simple intuitions of American womanhood.

Finding the ladies of Bloomington somewhat scarified and nervous
under the Reverend's firing, like the good Samaritan, I tried to
pour oil and wine on their wounded spirits, by exalting
intuition, and with a pitiful and patronizing tone deploring the
slowness, the obtuseness, the materialism of most of the sons of
Adam. It had its effect. They soon dried their tears, and with
returning self-respect, told me of all the wonderful things women
were doing in that town. From the scintillations of wit, the fun
and the laughter, an outsider would never have supposed that we
were an oppressed class, and so hopelessly degraded in the
statute laws and Constitution. After the meeting we had a long
talk with the clerical assailant, and were happy to find that the
good man's pen had done his heart great injustice. He is rather
morbid on the question of logic; but the most melancholy symptom
of his disease is his hatred of _The Revolution_. He says it is a
very wicked paper, that he had felt it his duty to warn his
congregation against taking it, thus depriving us of, at least,
five hundred subscribers, though he read it himself (under
protest) regularly every week. Strange what a fascination evil
things have even for those who minister at the altar! He advised
me to strangle Train, gibbet the financial editor, snub the
proprietor, and to say no more in the paper on the questions of
political economy, until we had one and all studied the subject.
Dear _Revolution_, when I listened to those things, I had the
same sinking of the heart that I used to feel when neighbors
complained that my boys were running over their house-tops,
dropping stones down their chimneys, ringing their bells then
running away, throwing balls in their windows, and teazing the
girls on the sidewalk. Now, I do hope, dear _Revolution_, you
will not bring my gray hairs with sorrow to the grave, but turn
over a new leaf and adopt some Christian means to get back these
five hundred subscribers. The reverend gentleman said one thing
that was like balm to my bruised spirit. He liked everything over
the initials P. P. and E. C. S. _Sub rosa_, P. P., we must try
and circumvent Train, and fill the paper ourselves.

I met some grand women at Bloomington, one who has been a
successful merchant in the dry-goods business. She has not only
supported her self and a family of children, but cleared $5,000
in five years. Another lady is a furniture dealer; when her
husband died she went on with the business, and although he was
so much embarrassed that every one advised her to close up and
save what she could, she has paid all the debts, saved a handsome
sum of money, and been every way more successful than her husband
before her. A lady is the head of an establishment where music
and pianos are sold. She carries on a large business, and has
been very successful. All these women with their intuitions seem
to be doing much better than many who can boast the gift of
reason. I should not be surprised if, in the progress of events,
men should come to think that woman's gift, after all, is the
more desirable.

E. C. S.

TOLEDO, March 7.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--A bright, crisp morning I found myself seated
beside Mrs. Livermore in the train for Milwaukee, whither we were
going to attend a convention. In these eventful times of woman
suffrage, having been separated a few days, on meeting, our
hearts were overflowing with good news for one another. While I
told Mrs. L. all I had seen and heard at Bloomington, and the
various conversations I had had with dissenting "white males" on
the trains, she told me her plans in regard to her new paper, the
_Agitator_. Having decided to call such a journal into being,
what its name should be was the question. Accordingly a council
was held of the wise men and willful women of Chicago over the
baptismal font of the new comer. The men, still clinging to the
pleasant illusions that everything emanating from woman should be
mild, gentle, serene, suggested "The Lily," "The Rose Bud," "The
New Era," "The Dawn of Day;" but Mrs. Livermore, always heroic
and brave, now defiant and determined, having fully awakened to
the power and dignity of the ballot, and stung to the very soul
with the proposed amendment for "manhood suffrage," declared that
none of those names, however touching and beautiful, expressed
what she intended the paper should be--nothing more or less than
the twin sister of _The Revolution_, whose mission is to turn
everything inside out, upside down, wrong side before. With such
intentions, she felt the _Agitator_ was the only name that fully
matched _The Revolution_. All the women present echoed her
sentiments, eschewing the "rose bud" dispensation and declaring
that they would rather get the word "male" out of the
constitution than to have a complete set of diamonds--rather have
a right to property, wages, and children, than the best seats in
the cars, and the tid-bits at the table. Thus, with one
simultaneous shout, the women proclaimed the _Agitator_. The men
calmly and sorrowfully resigned all hope of influence in the
matter, and, as they dispersed, it was evident they looked
mournfully into the future. Good Prof. Haven said that the mere
name of the _Agitator_ gave him an ague chill, and what life
would be to most men after this twin sister to _The Revolution_
was under full headway, no one could predict. Filled with
profound pity for our beloved countrymen in this their hour of
humiliation, we arrived in Milwaukee, where a delegation of
ladies and gentlemen awaited us, among whom were a nephew and
niece of Rufus Peckham, of New York, young law students of great
promise. We drove to the Plankington House, where a suite of
beautifully furnished apartments, with a bright fire in the
grate, was prepared for us.

The Convention was held in the City Hall, and lasted two days,
three sessions each, and was crowded throughout. Miss Chapin, the
regularly ordained pastor of the Universalist church, was the
President. Mr. and Miss Peckham, Dr. Laura J. Ross, and Madam
Anneke were the ruling spirits of the Convention. Madam Anneke, a
German lady of majestic presence and liberal culture, made an
admirable speech in her own language. The platform, besides an
array of large, well-developed women, was graced with several
reverend gentlemen--Messrs. Dudley, Allison, Eddy, and
Fellows--all of whom maintained woman's equality with eloquence
and fervor. The Bible was discussed from Genesis to Revelation,
in all its bearings on the question under consideration. By
special request I gave my Bible argument, which was published in
full in the daily papers. A Rev. Mr. Love, who took the opposite
view, maintained that the Bible was opposed to woman's equality.
He criticised some of my Hebrew translations, and scientific
expositions, but as the rest of the learned D.D.s sustained my
views, I shall rest in the belief that brother Love, with time
and thought, will come to the same conclusions. A Rev. Mr.
England also profanely claimed the Bible on the side of tyranny,
and seemed to think that "Nature intended that the male should
dominate over the female everywhere." As Mr. E. is a small, thin,
shadowy man, without much blood, muscle, or a very remarkable
cerebral development, we would advise him always to avoid the
branch of the argument he stumbled upon in the Milwaukee
Convention--"the physical superiority of man." Unfortunately for
him, the platform illustrated the opposite, and the audience
manifested, ever and anon, by suppressed laughter, that they saw
the contrast between the large, well-developed brains and muscles
of the women who sat there, and those of the speaker. Either
Madam Anneke, Mrs. Livermore, or Dr. Ross, could have taken the
reverend gentleman up in her arms and run off with him. Now, I
mean nothing invidious toward small men, for some of the greatest
men the world has known have been physically inferior, for
example, Lord Nelson, Napoleon, our own Grant and Sheridan, and
ex-Secretary Seward. All I mean to say is, that it is not politic
or in good taste for a small man to come before an audience and
claim physical superiority; that branch of the argument should be
left for the great, burly fellows six feet high and
well-proportioned, who illustrate the assertion by their
overpowering presence.

We were happy to meet Mr. Butler in Milwaukee, a good Democrat,
and one of the most distinguished lawyers in Wisconsin, and to
find in him an ardent supporter of our cause. I told him we were
looking to the Democrats to open the constitutional doors to the
women in the several States. He said he thought they were getting
ready to do so in the West. In Milwaukee, my pet resolutions that
had been voted down in Washington and Chicago passed without a
dissenting voice.

MADISON, Wisconsin.

Hearing of the great enthusiasm at Milwaukee, Madison telegraphed
for the convention to adjourn to the capitol and address the
Legislature. Accordingly, on Friday a large delegation took the
train to that city. On arriving, the first person who greeted us
was Mr. Croffet, formerly of the New York _Tribune_. He went with
us to the hotel where we were introduced to lawyers, judges,
senators, generals, editors, Republicans and Democrats, who were
alike ready to break a lance for woman. A splendid audience
greeted us in the Hall of Representatives. Governor Fairchild
presided. Mrs. Livermore, Miss Anthony and myself, all said the
best things we could think of, and with as much vim as we could
command after talking all day in the cars and every moment until
we entered the capitol, without even the inspiration that comes
from a good cup of tea or coffee. Blessed are they who draw their
inspirations from the stars, the grand and beautiful in nature,
and the glory of the human face divine, for such sources
niggardly landlords and ignorant cooks can neither muddle nor
exhaust. After the meeting we were invited into the Executive
apartments and presented to Mrs. Fairchild, a woman of rare
beauty, cultivation, and common sense. She, as well as the
Governor, expressed great interest in the question of woman's
suffrage. The Governor, with many others, subscribed for _The
Revolution_.

From Madison we returned to Chicago. At Janesville, Wis., the
Postmaster, Mr. Burgess, came on board on his way to Washington.
In the course of conversation we learned that there had been some
trouble in that town about the post office, and it was finally
decided to submit the matter to a vote of the people. The result
was that Miss Angeline King, Mr. Burgess's opponent, was chosen
by fifty majority. This was a bomb shell in the male camp, and
half a dozen men started for Washington, to show General Grant
that they had, one and all, done braver deeds during the war than
Angie possibly could have done, and that their loyalty should be
rewarded. Angie, like a wise woman, stole the march on all of
them, and reached Washington before they started. If the people
of Janesville prefer Angie, as they have shown they do by their
votes, we think it would be well for the powers that be to
confirm the choice of the people.

In Chicago, we were glad to meet again our charming friend, Anna
Dickinson. Miss Anthony spent the day with her at Mr. Doggett's
one of the liberal merchant princes of that city. The result of
that day's cogitation was one of the most cutting speeches that
the "Gentle Anna," as the _Tribune_ called her, ever made. It was
a severe, but just criticism of all the twaddle of the Western
press after the Chicago Woman's Suffrage Convention. Liberty Hall
was crowded with a most enthusiastic audience, and although the
press was not very complimentary the next day, the people who
listened were delighted. She was advertised to give "Fair Play,"
but the West is tired of the negro question, and she was besieged
on all sides to speak on woman, which she did with great effect.

E. C. S.

GALENA, March 3.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--As you look at the date, your patriotic heart
will palpitate to think that the women of _The Revolution_ have
taken possession of the home of the President, and propose to
hold a Woman Suffrage Convention right under the very shadow of
his flagstaff, peering up beside one chimney of a large square
brick house with a flat roof. Said house is situated on a high
hill with pleasant grounds about. At the present writing we are
on the opposite hill under the hospitable roof of "Sarah Coates,"
whose name appears in the reports of all the early Ohio
conventions. She is now Mrs. Harris. We arrived here this morning
at six o'clock, and found good Mr. Harris waiting for us at the
depot. He is one of the oldest and wealthiest inhabitants in the
county. They have a beautiful home, surrounded with every comfort
and luxury. Mrs. Harris is a noble woman, tall, fine-looking, and
moves about among her household gods like a queen. Although she
has a large family of black-eyed, rosy-cheeked children,
pictures, statuary, a cabinet of rare minerals, a conservatory of
beautiful plants, and a husband who thinks her but little lower
than the angels, she still demands the right to vote, and
occasionally indulges in the luxury of public speaking. She is
the moving spirit in every step of progress in Galena, and was
the President of the convention. We have had a most enthusiastic
meeting, three sessions, and house crowded throughout on an
admission fee of twenty-five cents. The women all over the West
are wide-awake. Theodore Tilton had just preceded us, and some
ladies laughingly told us that Theodore said they would
_certainly_ vote in _twenty years_!!

Let our cold-blooded Eastern reformers understand that ideas,
like grains, grow fast in the West, and that women here intend to
vote now, "right along," as the Hutchinsons sing. The editor of
the _Independent_ may talk of twenty years down on the Hudson
among the Rip Van Winkles in Spookey Hollow, to H. G. in New
York, or W. P. at the "Hub," but never to Western audiences, or
to the women of _The Revolution_. Why, Mr. Tilton, when you go to
the Senate some wise woman will sit on your right, and some black
man on your left. You are to pay the penalty of your theorizing
and be sandwiched between a woman and a black man in all the laws
and constitutions before five years pass over your curly head.
Twenty years! Why, Theodore, we expect to be walking the golden
streets of the New Jerusalem by that time, talking with Noah,
Moses, and Aaron, about the flood, the Pharaohs, the journey
through the Red Sea and the wilderness. We shall be holding
conventions by that time on the banks of the Jordan with Eve,
Sarah, Rebecca, Huldah, Deborah, Miriam, Ruth, Naomi, Sheba,
Esther, Vashti, Mary, Elizabeth, Priscilla and Phebe, Tryphena
and Tryphosa, and all the strong-minded women honorably mentioned
in sacred history. Do you not know, Theodore, that we have vowed
never to go disfranchised into the Kingdom of Heaven? In the
meantime, we propose to discuss sanitary and sumptuary laws,
finance, and free trade, religion and railroads, education and
elections with such worthies as yourself in the councils of the
American republic. Twenty years! Why, every white male in the
nation will be tied to an apron-string by that time, while all
the poets and philosophers will be writing essays on "The Sphere
of Man"!

We found the good men and women of Galena filled with faith in
the new President. They say he is a sober, honest, true man; that
he will entirely revolutionize affairs at Washington, send the
old political hacks to their homes, drive bribery and corruption
from high places, and draw a new order of statesmen about him.
May the good angels guide and strengthen him, for unless
something is soon done to rouse the slumbering virtue of the
American people, our sun will set in darkness to rise no more.
Feeling the deepest interest in the past, the present, and the
future of Ulysses, we asked a thousand questions concerning him.
Among other things, we proposed to go to the tannery where he
used to work, but found that was a myth. We peeped into some of
the stores where, in his leisure hours, he used to smoke the pipe
of peace, and fancied that in walking up and down the streets our
feet might be treading in his footsteps. What a fascination there
is in the material surroundings of great souls, and in contact
with the people who have seen and loved them! But, alas, how
little of the inner life, that is most interesting to hear about,
mortals ever reveal to one another.

On the way from Galena to Toledo we met Frederick Douglass,
dressed in a cap and a great circular cape of wolf-skins. He
really presented a most formidable and ferocious aspect. I
thought perhaps he intended to illustrate "William the Silent" in
his northern dress, as well as to depict his character in his
Lyceum lecture. As I had been talking against the pending
amendment of "manhood suffrage," I trembled in my shoes and was
almost as paralyzed as Red Riding Hood in a similar encounter.
But unlike the little maiden, I had a friend at hand, and, as
usual in the hour of danger, I fell back in the shadow of Miss
Anthony, who stepped forward bravely and took the wolf by the
hand. His hearty words of welcome and gracious smile reassured
me, so that when my time came I was able to meet him with the
usual _suaviter in modo_. Our joy in shaking hands here and there
with Douglass, Tilton, and Anna Dickinson, through the West, was
like meeting ships at sea; as pleasant and as fleeting.
Douglass's hair is fast becoming as white as snow, which adds
greatly to the dignity of his countenance. We hear his lecture on
"William the Silent" much praised. Mr. Tilton's lecture too, on
"Statesmanship," is said to be the best he has ever delivered. We
had an earnest debate with Douglass as far as we journeyed
together, and were glad to find that he was gradually working up
to our ideas on the question of suffrage. He is at present
hanging by the eyelids half-way between the lofty position of
Robert Purvis, and the narrow one of George W. Downing. As he
will attend the woman suffrage anniversary in New York in May, we
shall have an opportunity for a full and free discussion of the
whole question.

TOLEDO, Ohio.

At two o'clock in the morning we reached Toledo, drove to the
Oliver House, registered our names, left some notes for friends,
who would be looking for us next day, and then retired, giving
orders not to be called till noon, even for the King of France.
At the appointed hour our friend, Mr. Israel Hall, formerly of
Syracuse, was announced. He invited us to his hospitable home,
where we stayed during the convention, which was held in Hunker's
Hall and pronounced a complete success. At the close of the
meetings, a rising vote was called of all those in favor of
woman's suffrage. The entire audience, men and women, rose as if
one body. Two dissenting "white males" (small, men of course)
came to the surface in opposition, to the great amusement of
everybody. The platform throughout the meetings was occupied by
some of the leading men and women of the city. Judge Jones called
the convention to order and presided over its deliberations.
There was no lack of questions in Toledo, but they were all
cunningly propounded in writing. This was a new feature in our
meetings and we were much struck with its wisdom. The questioner
in an audience, no matter how bland and benevolent, is always
viewed with aversion, and, however well armed at all points, is
sure to be unhorsed by a brilliant sally of wit and ridicule. But
when a poser is put in black and white, nothing will do but
downright logic and argument. To that _unwomanly_ work we
addressed ourselves in the Toledo convention, and all admitted
that we gave most satisfactory answers. Mrs. Israel Hall is the
one who heads the woman's rebellion here. To her let all those
write and go who wish to work in that part of the Lord's
vineyard. We are glad to see by the papers that while we have
been so enthusiastically received in the West, Lucy Stone is
drawing crowded houses in all the chief cities of New England.

E. C. S.

THE MAY ANNIVERSARIES IN NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN.

The Executive Committee of the Equal Rights Association issued a
call[116] for the anniversary in New York, early in the spring of
1869. Never for any Convention were so many letters[117] written to
distinguished legislators and editors, nor so many promptly and fairly
answered.

The anniversary commenced on Wednesday morning at Steinway Hall, New
York. The opening session was very largely attended, the spacious hall
being nearly full, showing that the era of anniversaries of important
and useful societies, had by no means passed away.[118] In the absence
of the president, Mrs. Lucretia Mott, the chair was taken by Mrs.
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, First Vice-President. Rev. Mrs. Hanaford, of
Massachusetts, opened the meeting with prayer.

LUCY STONE presented verbally the report of the Executive
Committee for the past year, running over the petitions in favor
of woman suffrage presented during the year to Congress and State
Legislatures and the various conventions held in different parts
of the country, and remarked upon the greater respect now shown
to the petitions. Formerly, she said, they were laughed at, and
frequently not at all considered. This last year they were
referred to committees, and often debated at great length in the
legislatures, and in some cases motions to submit to the people
of the State an amendment to the State Constitution doing away
with the distinction of sex in the matter of suffrage was
rejected by very small majorities. In one State, that of Nevada,
such a motion was carried; and the question will shortly be
submitted to the people of the State. A number of important and
very successful conventions have been held in the Western States,
and have made a decided impression. But what is most significant
is, that newspapers of all shades of opinion are giving a great
deal of space to this subject. It is recognized as among the
great questions of the age, which can not be put down until it is
settled upon the basis of immutable justice and right. The report
was unanimously accepted and adopted.

Rev. O. B. FROTHINGHAM.--I am not here this morning thinking that
I can add any thing to the strength of the cause, but thinking
that perhaps I may gain something from the generous, sweet
atmosphere that I am sure will prevail. This is a meeting, if I
understand it, of the former Woman's Rights Association, and the
subjects which come before us properly are the subjects which
concern woman in all her social, civil, and domestic life. But
the one question which is of vital moment and of sole prominence,
is that of suffrage. All other questions have been virtually
decided in favor of woman. She has the _entrée_ to all the fields
of labor. She is now the teacher, preacher, artist, she has a
place in the scientific world--in the literary world. She is a
journalist, a maker of books, a public reader; in fact, there is
no position which woman, as woman, is not entitled to hold. But
there is one position that woman, as woman, does not occupy, and
that is the position of a voter. One field alone she does not
possess, and that is the political field; one work she is not
permitted, and that is the work of making laws. This question
goes down to the bottom--it touches the vital matter of woman's
relation to the State.... Is there anything in the constitution
of the female mind, to disqualify her for the exercise of the
franchise. As long as there are fifty, thirty, ten, or even one
woman who is capable of exercising this trust or holding this
responsibility it demonstrates that sex, as a sex, does not
disfranchise, and the whole question is granted. (Applause.) Here
our laws are made by irresponsible people--people who demoralize
and debauch society; people who make their living in a large
measure by upholding the institutions that are inherently,
forever, and always corrupt. (Applause.) Laws that are made by
the people who own dramshops, who keep gambling-saloons, who
minister to the depraved passions and vices of either sex, laws
made by the idler, the dissipated, by the demoralized--are they
laws? It is true that this government is founded upon caste.
Slavery is abolished, but the aristocracy of sex is not. One
reason that the suffrage is not conceded to woman is that those
who refuse to do so, do not appreciate it themselves. (Applause.)
As long as the power of suffrage means the power to steal, to
tread down the weak, and get the rich offices into their own
hands, those who have the key of the coffers will wish to keep it
in their own pockets. (Applause.)

The Committee on Organization reported the officers of the
society for the ensuing year.[119]

STEPHEN FOSTER laid down the principle that when any persons on
account of strong objections against them in the minds of some,
prevented harmony in a society and efficiency in its operations,
those persons should retire from prominent positions in that
society. He said he had taken that course when, as agent of the
Anti-Slavery Society, he became obnoxious on account of his
position on some questions. He objected, to certain nominations
made by the committee for various reasons. The first was that the
persons nominated had publicly repudiated the principles of the
society. One of these was the presiding officer.

Mrs. STANTON:--I would like you to say in what respect.

Mr. FOSTER:--I will with pleasure; for, ladies and gentlemen, I
admire our talented President with all my heart, and love the
woman. (Great laughter.) But I believe she has publicly
repudiated the principles of the society.

Mrs. STANTON:--I would like Mr. Foster to state in what way.

Mr. FOSTER:--What are these principles? The equality of
men--universal suffrage. These ladies stand at the head of a
paper which has adopted as its motto Educated Suffrage. I put
myself on this platform as an enemy of educated suffrage, as an
enemy of white suffrage, as an enemy of man suffrage, as an enemy
of every kind of suffrage except universal suffrage. _The
Revolution_ lately had an article headed "That Infamous Fifteenth
Amendment." It is true it was not written by our President, yet
it comes from a person whom she has over and over again publicly
indorsed. I am not willing to take George Francis Train on this
platform with his ridicule of the negro and opposition to his
enfranchisement.

Mrs. MARY A. LIVERMORE:--Is it quite generous to bring George
Francis Train on this platform when he has retired from _The
Revolution_ entirely?

Mr. FOSTER:--If _The Revolution_, which has so often indorsed
George Francis Train, will repudiate him because of his course in
respect to the negro's rights, I have nothing further to say. But
it does not repudiate him. He goes out; it does not cast him
out.

Miss ANTHONY:--Of course it does not.

Mr. FOSTER:--My friend says yes to what I have said. I thought it
was so. I only wanted to tell you why the Massachusetts society
can not coalesce with the party here, and why we want these women
to retire and leave us to nominate officers who can receive the
respect of both parties. The Massachusetts Abolitionists can not
co-operate with this society as it is now organized. If you
choose to put officers here that ridicule the negro, and
pronounce the Amendment infamous, why I must retire; I can not
work with you. You can not have my support, and you must not use
my name. I can not shoulder the responsibility of electing
officers who publicly repudiate the principles of the society.

HENRY B. BLACKWELL said: In regard to the criticisms on our
officers, I will agree that many unwise things have been written
in _The Revolution_ by a gentleman who furnished part of the
means by which that paper has been carried on. But that gentleman
has withdrawn, and you, who know the real opinions of Miss
Anthony and Mrs. Stanton on the question of negro suffrage, do
not believe that they mean to create antagonism between the negro
and the woman question. If they did disbelieve in negro suffrage,
it would be no reason for excluding them. We should no more
exclude a person from our platform for disbelieving negro
suffrage than a person should be excluded from the anti-slavery
platform for disbelieving woman suffrage. But I know that Miss
Anthony and Mrs. Stanton believe in the right of the negro to
vote. We are united on that point. There is no question of
principle between us.

The vote on the report of the Committee on Organization was now
taken, and adopted by a large majority.

Mr. DOUGLASS:--I came here more as a listener than to speak, and
I have listened with a great deal of pleasure to the eloquent
address of the Rev. Mr. Frothingham and the splendid address of
the President. There is no name greater than that of Elizabeth
Cady Stanton in the matter of woman's rights and equal rights,
but my sentiments are tinged a little against _The Revolution_.
There was in the address to which I allude the employment of
certain names, such as "Sambo," and the gardener, and the
bootblack, and the daughters of Jefferson and Washington, and all
the rest that I can not coincide with. I have asked what
difference there is between the daughters of Jefferson and
Washington and other daughters. (Laughter.) I must say that I do
not see how any one can pretend that there is the same urgency in
giving the ballot to woman as to the negro. With us, the matter
is a question of life and death, at least, in fifteen States of
the Union. When women, because they are women, are hunted down
through the cities of New York and New Orleans; when they are
dragged from their houses and hung upon lamp-posts; when their
children are torn from their arms, and their brains dashed out
upon the pavement; when they are objects of insult and outrage at
every turn; when they are in danger of having their homes burnt
down over their heads; when their children are not allowed to
enter schools; then they will have an urgency to obtain the
ballot equal to our own. (Great applause.)

A VOICE:--Is that not all true about black women?

Mr. DOUGLASS:--Yes, yes, yes; it is true of the black woman, but
not because she is a woman, but because she is black. (Applause.)
Julia Ward Howe at the conclusion of her great speech delivered
at the convention in Boston last year, said: "I am willing that
the negro shall get the ballot before me." (Applause.) Woman!
why, she has 10,000 modes of grappling with her difficulties. I
believe that all the virtue of the world can take care of all the
evil. I believe that all the intelligence can take care of all
the ignorance. (Applause.) I am in favor of woman's suffrage in
order that we shall have all the virtue and vice confronted. Let
me tell you that when there were few houses in which the black
man could have put his head, this woolly head of mine found a
refuge in the house of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and if I had
been blacker than sixteen midnights, without a single star, it
would have been the same. (Applause.)

Miss ANTHONY:--The old anti-slavery school say women must stand
back and wait until the negroes shall be recognized. But we say,
if you will not give the whole loaf of suffrage to the entire
people, give it to the most intelligent first. (Applause.) If
intelligence, justice, and morality are to have precedence in the
Government, let the question of woman be brought up first and
that of the negro last. (Applause.) While I was canvassing the
State with petitions and had them filled with names for our cause
to the Legislature, a man dared to say to me that the freedom of
women was all a theory and not a practical thing. (Applause.)
When Mr. Douglass mentioned the black man first and the woman
last, if he had noticed he would have seen that it was the men
that clapped and not the women. There is not the woman born who
desires to eat the bread of dependence, no matter whether it be
from the hand of father, husband, or brother; for any one who
does so eat her bread places herself in the power of the person
from whom she takes it. (Applause.) Mr. Douglass talks about the
wrongs of the negro; but with all the outrages that he to-day
suffers, he would not exchange his sex and take the place of
Elizabeth Cady Stanton. (Laughter and applause.)

Mr. DOUGLASS:--I want to know if granting you the right of
suffrage will change the nature of our sexes? (Great laughter.)

Miss ANTHONY:--It will change the pecuniary position of woman; it
will place her where she can earn her own bread. (Loud applause.)
She will not then be driven to such employments only as man
chooses for her.

Mrs. NORTON said that Mr. Douglass's remarks left her to defend
the Government from the inferred inability to grapple with the
two questions at once. It legislates upon many questions at one
and the same time, and it has the power to decide the woman
question and the negro question at one and the same time.
(Applause.)

Mrs. LUCY STONE:--Mrs. Stanton will, of course, advocate the
precedence for her sex, and Mr. Douglass will strive for the
first position for his, and both are perhaps right. If it be true
that the government derives its authority from the consent of the
governed, we, are safe in trusting that principle to the
uttermost. If one has a right to say that you can not read and
therefore can not vote, then it may be said that you are a woman
and therefore can not vote. We are lost if we turn away from the
middle principle and argue for one class. I was once a teacher
among fugitive slaves. There was one old man, and every tooth was
gone, his hair was white, and his face was full of wrinkles, yet,
day after day and hour after hour, he came up to the school-house
and tried with patience to learn to read, and by-and-by, when he
had spelled out the first few verses of the first chapter of the
Gospel of St. John, he said to me, "Now, I want to learn to
write." I tried to make him satisfied with what he had acquired,
but the old man said, "Mrs. Stone, somewhere in the wide world I
have a son; I have not heard from him in twenty years; if I
should hear from him, I want to write to him, so take hold of my
hand and teach me." I did, but before he had proceeded in many
lessons, the angels came and gathered him up and bore him to his
Father. Let no man speak of an educated suffrage. The gentleman
who addressed you claimed that the negroes had the first right to
the suffrage, and drew a picture which only his great word-power
can do. He again in Massachusetts, when it had cast a majority in
favor of Grant and negro suffrage, stood upon the platform and
said that woman had better wait for the negro; that is, that both
could not be carried, and that the negro had better be the one.
But I freely forgave him because he felt as he spoke. But woman
suffrage is more imperative than his own; and I want to remind
the audience that when he says what the Ku-Kluxes did all over
the South, the Ku-Kluxes here in the North in the shape of men,
take away the children from the mother, and separate them as
completely as if done on the block of the auctioneer. Over in New
Jersey they have a law which says that _any_ father--he might be
the most brutal man that ever existed--_any_ father, it says,
whether he be under age or not, may by his last will and
testament dispose of the custody of his child, born or to be
born, and that such disposition shall be good against all
persons, and that the mother may not recover her child; and that
law modified in form exists over every State in the Union except
in Kansas. Woman has an ocean of wrongs too deep for any plummet,
and the negro, too, has an ocean of wrongs that can not be
fathomed. There are two great oceans; in the one is the black
man, and in the other is the woman. But I thank God for that XV.
Amendment, and hope that it will be adopted in every State. I
will be thankful in my soul if _any_ body can get out of the
terrible pit. But I believe that the safety of the government
would be more promoted by the admission of woman as an element of
restoration and harmony than the negro. I believe that the
influence of woman will save the country before every other
power. (Applause.) I see the signs of the times pointing to this
consummation, and I believe that in some parts of the country
women will vote for the President of these United States in 1872.
(Applause.)

At the opening of the evening session Henry B. Blackwell
presented a series of resolutions.[120] Antoinette Brown
Blackwell spoke, and was followed by Olive Logan.

Miss LOGAN said:--I stand here to-night full of faith, inborn
faith, in the rights of woman to advance boldly in all ennobling
paths.... In my former sphere of life, the equality of woman was
fully recognized so far as the kind of labor and the amount of
reward for her labor are concerned. As an actress, there was no
position in which I was not fully welcomed if I possessed the
ability and industry to reach it. If I could become a Ristori, my
earnings would be as great as hers, and if I was a man and could
become a Kean, a Macready, or a Booth, the same reward would be
obtained. If I reach no higher rank than what is called a
"walking lady," I am sure of the same pay as a man who occupies
the position of a "walking gentleman." In that sphere of life, be
it remembered, I was reared from childhood; to that place I was
so accustomed that I had no idea it was a privilege denied my sex
to enter into almost every other field of endeavor.

In literature also I found myself on an equality with man. If I
wrote a good article, I got as good pay; and heaven knows the pay
to man or woman was small enough. (Applause). In that field, for
a long time, I did not feel an interest in the subject of women's
rights, and stood afar off, looking at the work of those
revolutionary creatures, Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony. The idea
of identifying myself with them was as far removed from my
thoughts as becoming a female gymnast and whirling upon a
trapeze. But once I wrote a lecture, and one night I delivered
it. Adhering to my practice of speaking about that which was most
familiar, my lecture was about the stage. I lectured, simply
because I thought the pay would be better in that department; the
idea that I was running counter to anybody's prejudice, never
entered my head. And I was so far removed that I never read a
page of _The Revolution_ in my life, and, what is more, I did not
want to; and when Miss Anthony passed down Broadway and saw the
bills announcing my lecture she knew nothing about me, and what
is more, she did not want to. (Laughter). She made a confession
to me afterwards. She said to herself, "Here is a lady going to
lecture about the stage," looking through her blessed
spectacles, as I can see her (laughter)--and I can hear her
muttering "a woman's rights woman." (Laughter). That is not so
very long ago, a little over a year. Since this great question of
woman's rights was thrust upon me, I am asked to define my
position; wherever I have traveled in the fifteen months I have
had to do so. A lady of society asked me, "Are you in favor of
woman's rights?" I had either to answer yes or no, and "Yes," I
said. (Applause)....

I met, in my travels, in a New England town, an educated woman,
who found herself obliged to earn her livelihood, after living a
life of luxury and ease. Her husband, who had provided her with
every material comfort, had gone to the grave. All his property
was taken to pay his debts, and she found herself penniless. What
was that woman to do? She looks abroad among the usual
employments of women, and her only resource seems to be that
little bit of steel around which cluster so many
associations--the needle--and by the needle, with the best work
and the best wages, the most she can get is two dollars a day.
With this, poor as it is, she will be content; but she finds an
army of other women looking for the same, and most of them
looking in vain. These things have opened my eyes to a vista such
as I never saw before. They have touched my heart as it never
before was touched. They have aroused my conscience to the fact
that this woman question is the question of the hour, and that I
must take part in it. I take my stand boldly, proudly, with such
earnest, thoughtful women as Susan B. Anthony, Mrs. Stanton, and
Anna Dickinson, to work together with them for the
enfranchisement of woman, for her elevation personally and
socially, and above all for her right and opportunity to work at
such employments as she can follow, with the right to such pay as
men get. (Applause). There are thousands of women who have no
vital interest in this question. They are happy wives and
daughters, and may they ever be so; but they can not tell how
soon their husbands and brothers may be lost to them, and they
will find themselves destitute and penniless with no resources in
themselves against misfortune. Then it will be for such that we
labor. Our purpose is to help those who need help, widows and
orphan girls. 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 man, for the best of men in this country are
with us heart and soul. These are with us in greater numbers even
than our own sex. (A Voice--"That is true." Great applause). Do
not say that we seek to break up family peace and fireside joy;
far from it. (Applause). We interfere not with the wife or
daughter who is happy in the strong protection thrown around her
by a father or husband, but it is cowardice for such to throw
obstacles in the way of those who need help. More than this, for
the sake of the helpless woman, to whose unhappiness in the loss
of beloved ones is added the agony of hard and griping want. For
the sake of the poor girl who has no power to cope with the hard
actualities of a desolate life, while her trembling feet tread
the crumbling edge of the dark abyss of infamy. For the sake of
this we are pleading and entertaining this great question,
withhold your answer till at least you have learned to say, "God
speed."

The next speaker was Miss Phoebe Couzins, a young law student from St.
Louis, who spoke in a most agreeable and forcible manner.

Miss COUZINS said:--MRS. PRESIDENT AND LADIES: I deem it the duty
of every earnest woman to express herself in regard to the XVth
Amendment to our Federal Constitution. I feel deeply the
humiliation and insult that is offered to the women of the United
States in this Amendment, and have always publicly protested
against its passage. During a recent tour through the Eastern
States I became still more (if that were possible) firmly fixed
in my convictions. Its advocates are unwilling to have it
publicly discussed, showing that they know there is an element of
weakness in it which will not bear a thorough investigation.

While feeling entirely willing that the black man shall have all
the rights to which he is justly entitled, I consider the claims
of the black woman of paramount importance. I have had
opportunities of seeing and knowing the condition of both sexes,
and will bear my testimony, that the black women are, and always
have been, in a far worse condition than the men. As a class,
they are better, and more intelligent than the men, yet they have
been subjected to greater brutalities, while compelled to perform
exactly the same labor as men toiling by their side in the
fields, just as hard burdens imposed upon them, just as severe
punishments decreed to them, with the added cares of maternity
and household work, with their children taken from them and sold
into bondage; suffering a thousandfold more than any man could
suffer. Then, too, the laws for women in the Southern States,
both married and single, degrade them still further. The black
men, as a class, are very tyrannical in their families; they have
learned the lesson of brute force but too well, and as the
marriage law allows the husband entire control over his wife's
earnings and her children, she is in worse bondage than before;
because in many cases the task of providing for helpless children
and an idle, lazy, husband, is imposed on the patient wife and
mother; and, with this sudden elevation to citizenship, which the
mass of stupid, ignorant negroes look upon as entitling them to
great honor, I regard the future state of the negro woman,
without the ballot in her hand, as deplorable. And what is said
of the ignorant black man can as truthfully be said of the
ignorant white man; they all regard woman as an inferior being.
She is their helpless, household slave. He is her ruler, her
law-giver, her conscience, her judge and jury, and the prisoner
at the bar has no appeal. This XVth Amendment thrusts all women
still further down in the scale of degradation, and I consider it
neither praiseworthy nor magnanimous for women to assert that
they are willing to hold their claims in abeyance, until all
shades and types of men have the franchise. It is admitting a
false principle, which all women, who are loyal to truth and
justice, should immediately reject. For over twenty-five years,
the advocates of woman suffrage have been trying to bring this
vital question before the country. They have accomplished
herculean tasks and still it is up-hill work. Shall they, after
battling so long with ignorance, prejudice and unreasoning
customs, stand quietly back and obsequiously say they are willing
that the floodgates shall be opened and a still greater mass of
ignorance, vice and degradation let in to overpower their little
army, and set this question back for a century? Their solemn duty
to future generations forbids such a compromise.

The advocates of the XVth Amendment tell us we ought to accept
the half loaf when we can not get the whole. I do not see that
woman gets any part of the loaf, not even a crumb that falls
from the rich man's table. It may appear very magnanimous for
men, who have never known the degradation of being thrust down in
the scale of humanity by reason of their sex, to urge these
yielding measures upon women, they can not and do not know our
feelings on the subject, and I regard it as neither just nor
generous to eternally compel women to yield on all questions (no
matter how humiliating), simply because they are women.

The Anti-Slavery party declares that with the adoption of the
XVth Amendment their work is done. Have they, then, been battling
for over thirty years for a fraction of a principle? If so, then
the XVth Amendment is a fitting capstone to their labors. Were
the earnest women who fought and endured so heroically with them,
but tools in the hands of the leaders, to place "manhood
suffrage" on the highest pinnacle of the temple dedicated to
Truth and Justice? And are they now to bow down, and worship in
abject submission this fractional part of a principle, that has
hitherto proclaimed itself, as knowing neither bond nor free,
male nor female, but one perfect humanity?

The XV. Amendment virtually says that every intelligent, virtuous
woman is the inferior of every ignorant man, no matter how low he
may be sunk in the scale of morality, and every instinct of my
being rises to refute such doctrine, and God speaking within me
says, No! eternally No!

Rev. GILBERT HAVEN, editor of _Zion's Herald_, was introduced,
and said--Ladies and Gentlemen: As I believe that is the way to
address you, or shall I merge you into one and call you fellow
citizens--

Miss ANTHONY--Let me tell you how to say it. It is perfectly
right for a gentleman to say "ladies and gentlemen," but a lady
should say, "gentlemen and ladies." (Great applause.) You mention
your friend's name before you do your own. (Applause.) I always
feel like rebuking any woman who says, "ladies and gentlemen." It
is a lack of good manners. (Laughter and great applause.)

Mr. HAVEN--I thank the lady for the rule she has laid down. Now,
Mr. Beecher has said that a minister is composed of the worst
part of man and woman, and there are wealthy men who say that the
pulpit should be closed against the introduction of politics, but
I am glad this sentiment is not a rule; I rejoice that the
country has emancipated the ministry so that a minister can speak
on politics. I go further than saying that it is the mere right
of the women to achieve suffrage. I say that it is an obligation
imposed upon the American people to grant the demands of this
large and influential class of the commonwealth. The legislation
of the country concerns the woman as much as the man. Is not the
wife as much interested in the preservation of property as her
husband? Another reason is, that the purity of politics depends
upon the admission of woman to the franchise, for without her
influence morality in politics can not be secured. (Applause.)

HENRY B. BLACKWELL presented the following resolution:

_Resolved_, That in seeking to remove the legal disabilities
which now oppress woman as wife and mother, the friends of
woman suffrage are not seeking to undermine or destroy the
sanctity of the marriage relation, but to ennoble marriage,
making the obligations and responsibilities of the contract
mutual and equal for husband and wife.

MARY A. LIVERMORE said that that was introduced by her
permission, but the original resolution was stronger, and she
having slept over it, thought that it should be introduced
instead of that one, and offered the following:

_Resolved_, That while we recognize the disabilities which
the legal marriage imposes upon woman as wife and mother,
and while we pledge ourselves to seek their removal by
putting her on equal terms with man, we abhorrently
repudiate Free Loveism as horrible and mischievous to
society, and disown any sympathy with it.

Mrs. LIVERMORE said that the West wanted some such resolution as
that in consequence of the innuendoes that had come to their ears
with regard to their striving after the ballot.

Mrs. HANAFORD spoke against such inferences not only for the
ministers of her own denomination, but the Christian men and
women of New England everywhere. She had heard people say that
when women indorsed woman suffrage they indorsed Free Loveism,
and God knows they despise it. Let me carry back to my New
England home the word that you as well as your honored President,
whom we love, whose labor we appreciate, and whose name has also
been dragged into this inference, scout all such suggestions as
contrary to the law of God and humanity.

LUCY STONE: I feel it is a mortal shame to give any foundation
for the implication that we favor Free Loveism. I am ashamed that
the question should be asked here. There should be nothing said
about it at all. Do not let us, for the sake of our own
self-respect, allow it to be hinted that we helped forge a shadow
of a chain which comes in the name of Free Love. I am unwilling
that it should be suggested that this great, sacred cause of ours
means anything but what we have said it does. If any one says to
me, "Oh, I know what you mean, you mean Free Love by this
agitation," let the lie stick in his throat. You may talk about
Free Love, if you please, but we are to have the right to vote.
To-day we are fined, imprisoned, and hanged, without a jury trial
by our peers. You shall not cheat us by getting us off to talk
about something else. When we get the suffrage, then you may
taunt us with anything you please, and we will then talk about it
as long as you please.

ERNESTINE L. ROSE: We are informed by the people from the West
that they are wiser than we are, and that those in the East are
also wiser than we are. If they are wiser than we, I think it
strange that this question of Free Love should have been brought
upon this platform at all. I object to Mrs. Livermore's
resolution, not on account of its principles, but on account of
its pleading guilty. When a man comes to me and tries to convince
me that he is not a thief, then I take care of my coppers. If we
pass this resolution that we are not Free Lovers, people will say
it is true that you are, for you try to hide it. Lucretia Mott's
name has been mentioned as a friend of Free Love, but I hurl back
the lie into the faces of all the ministers in the East and into
the faces of the newspapers of the West, and defy them to point
to one shadow of a reason why they should connect her name with
that vice. We have been thirty years in this city before the
public, and it is an insult to all the women who have labored in
this cause; it is an insult to the thousands and tens of
thousands of men and women that have listened to us in our
Conventions, to say at this late hour that we are not Free
Lovers.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY repudiated the resolution on the same ground as
Mrs. Rose, and said this howl came from those men who knew that
when women got their rights they would be able to live honestly:
no longer be compelled to sell themselves for bread, either in or
out of marriage.

Mrs. Dr. L. S. BATCHELDER, a delegate appointed by the Boston
Working Women's Association, said that she represented ten
thousand working women of New England, and they had instructed
her as their representative to introduce a resolution looking to
the amelioration of the condition of the working women.

Senator WILSON spoke as follows: This is a rather new place for
me to stand, and yet I am very glad to say that I have no new
views in regard to this question. I learned fifteen or twenty
years ago something about this reform in its earliest days, when
the excellent people, who have labored so long with so much
earnestness and fidelity, first launched it before the country. I
never knew the time in the last fifteen or twenty years that I
was not ready to give my wife the right to vote if she wanted it.
I believe in the Declaration of Independence in its full scope
and meaning; believing it was born of Christianity; that it came
from the teachings of the New Testament; and I am willing to
trust the New Testament and the Declaration of Independence
anywhere on God's earth, and to adopt their doctrine in the
fullest and broadest manner. I do not know that all the good in
the world will be accomplished when the women of the United
States have the right to vote. But it is sure to come. Truth is
truth, and will stand.

Mrs. ERNESTINE L. ROSE referred to the assertion of the Rev. Mr.
Haven, that the seeds of the Woman's Rights reform were sown in
Massachusetts, and proceeded to disprove it. Thirty-two years ago
she went round in New York city with petitions to the Legislature
to obtain for married women the right to hold property in their
own names. She only got five names the first year, but she and
others persevered for eleven years, and finally succeeded. Who,
asked Mrs. Rose, was the first to call a National Convention of
women--New York or Massachusetts? [Applause.] I like to have
justice done and honor given where it is due.

Mrs. SARAH F. NORTON, of the New York Working Woman's
Association, referring to the former attempt to exclude the
discussion of the relations of capital and labor, argued that the
question was an appropriate one in any Woman's Rights Convention,
and proposed that some member of the New York Working Women's
Association be heard on that point.

Mrs. ELEANOR KIRK accordingly described the beginning, progress,
and operations of the Association. She also replied to the recent
criticism of the _World_ upon the semi-literary, semi-Woman's
Rights nature of the meetings of their associations, and
contended that they had a perfect right to debate and read
essays, and do anything else that other women might do.

Mrs. MARY F. DAVIS spoke in behalf of the rights of her own sex,
but expressed her willingness to see the negro guaranteed in his
rights, and would wait if only one question could be disposed of.
But she thought they would not have to wait long, for the Hon.
Mr. Wilson had assured them that their side is to be strongly and
successfully advocated. Every step in the great cause of human
rights helps the next one forward. In 1848 Mrs. Stanton called
the first Convention at Seneca Falls.

Miss ANTHONY: And Lucretia Mott.

Mrs. DAVIS: Yes, and Lucretia Mott; and I love to speak of them
in association. Mrs. Rose has alluded to the primary steps she
took, and there were Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, Antoinette
Brown Blackwell, and Paulina Wright Davis, and a great galaxy who
paved the way; and we stand here to proclaim the immortal
principle of woman's freedom. [Great applause.] The lady then
referred to the great work that lay before them in lifting out of
misery and wretchedness the numbers of women in this city and
elsewhere, who were experiencing all the fullness of human
degradation. Even when they had finished their present work, a
large field was still before them in the elevation of their sex.
[Applause.]

Mrs. PAULINA W. DAVIS said she would not be altogether satisfied
to have the XVth Amendment passed without the XVIth, for woman
would have a race of tyrants raised above her in the South, and
the black women of that country would also receive worse
treatment than if the Amendment was not passed. Take any class
that have been slaves, and you will find that they are the worst
when free, and become the hardest masters. The colored women of
the South say they do not want to get married to the negro, as
their husbands can take their children away from them, and also
appropriate their earnings. The black women are more intelligent
than the men, because they have learned something from their
mistresses. She then related incidents showing how black men whip
and abuse their wives in the South. One of her sister's servants
whipped his wife every Sunday regularly. [Laughter.] She thought
that sort of men should not have the making of the laws for the
government of the women throughout the land. [Applause.]

Mr. DOUGLASS said that all disinterested spectators would concede
that this Equal Rights meeting had been pre-eminently a Woman's
Rights meeting. [Applause.] They had just heard an argument with
which he could not agree--that the suffrage to the black men
should be postponed to that of the women. I do not believe the
story that the slaves who are enfranchised become the worst of
tyrants. [A voice, "Neither do I." Applause.] I know how this
theory came about. When a slave was made a driver, he made
himself more officious than the white driver, so that his master
might not suspect that he was favoring those under him. But we do
not intend to have any master over us. [Applause.]

THE PRESIDENT, Mrs. Stanton, argued that not another man should
be enfranchised until enough women are admitted to the polls to
outweigh those already there. [Applause.] She did not believe in
allowing ignorant negroes and foreigners to make laws for her to
obey. [Applause.]

Mrs. HARPER (colored) asked Mr. Blackwell to read the fifth
resolution of the series he submitted, and contended that that
covered the whole ground of the resolutions of Mr. Douglass. When
it was a question of race, she let the lesser question of sex go.
But the white women all go for sex, letting race occupy a minor
position. She liked the idea of working women, but she would
like to know if it was broad enough to take colored women?

Miss ANTHONY and several others: Yes, yes.

Mrs. HARPER said that when she was at Boston there were sixty
women who left work because one colored woman went to gain a
livelihood in their midst. [Applause] If the nation could only
handle one question, she would not have the black women put a
single straw in the way, if only the men of the race could obtain
what they wanted. [Great applause.]

Mr. C. C. BURLEIGH attempted to speak, but was received with some
disapprobation by the audience, and confusion ensued.

Miss ANTHONY protested against the XVth Amendment because it
wasn't Equal Rights. It put two million more men in position of
tyrants over two million women who had until now been the equals
of the men at their side.

Mr. BURLEIGH again essayed to speak. The confusion was so great
that he could not be heard.

Mrs. STONE appealed for order, and her first appearance caused
the most respectful silence, as did the words of every one of the
ladies who addressed the audience. Mr. Burleigh again ventured,
but with no better result, and Miss Anthony made another appeal
to the audience to hear him. He tried again to get a word in, but
was once more unsuccessful.

Mrs. LIVERMORE, after protesting against the disorderly behavior
of the audience, said a few words in advocacy of the resolutions
of Mr. Douglass, when a motion was made to lay them upon the
table, and Mr. Blackwell moved the "previous question."

Miss ANTHONY hoped that this, the first attempt at gagging
discussion, would not be countenanced. (Applause.) She made a
strong protest against this treatment of Mr. Burleigh. Sufficient
silence was obtained for that gentleman to say that he had
finished; but he was determined that they should hear the last
word. (Hisses and laughter.) He now took his seat. The motion to
lay the resolutions upon the table for discussion in the evening
was then carried, and the Association adjourned till the evening,
to meet in the large hall of the Cooper Institute. A letter from
Jules Favre, the celebrated French advocate and _litterateur_,
was read, after which addresses were delivered by Madam Anneke,
of Milwaukee (in German), and by Madame de Hericourt, of Chicago
(in French). Both of these ladies are of revolutionary
tendencies, and left their native countries because they had
rendered themselves obnoxious by a too free expression of their
political opinions.

Madam ANNEKE said--_Mrs. President_: Nearly two decades have
passed since, in answer to a call from our co-workers, I stood
before a large assembly, over which Mrs. Mott presided, to utter,
in the name of suffering and struggling womanhood, the cry of my
old Fatherland for freedom and justice. At that time my voice was
overwhelmed by the sound of sneers, scoffs, and hisses--the
eloquence of tyranny, by which every outcry of the human heart is
stifled. Then, through the support of our friends Mrs. Rose and
Wendell Phillips, who are ever ready in the cause of human
rights, I was allowed, in my native tongue, to echo faintly the
cry for justice and freedom. What a change has been wrought since
then! To-day they greet us with deferential respect. Such giant
steps are made by public opinion! What they then derided, and
sought, through physical power and rough ignorance, to render
wholly impossible, to day they greet with the voice of welcome
and jubilee. Such an expression of sentiment is to us the most
certain and joyful token of a gigantic revolution in public
opinion--still more gratifying is it, that the history of the
last few years proves that under the force of an universal
necessity, reason and freedom are being consistently developed.
Such is the iron step of time, that it brings forward every event
to meet its rare fulfillment. Under your protection I am once
more permitted, in this dawning of a new epoch which is visible
to all eyes that will see, and audible to all ears that will
hear, to express my hopes, my longing, my striving, and my
confidence. And now, permit me to do so in the language of my
childhood's play, as well as that of the earnest and free
philosophy of German thinkers and workers. Not that I believe it
is left to me to interest the children of my old Fatherland, here
present, in the new era of truth and freedom, as if these
glorious principles were not of yore implanted in their
hearts--as if they could not take them up in a strange idiom--but
because I am urged from my deepest soul to speak out loud and
free, as I have ever felt myself constrained to do, and as I can
not do in the language of my beloved adopted land. The
consciousness and the holy conviction of our inalienable human
rights, which I have won in the struggle of my own strangely
varied life, and in the wrestling for independence which has
carried me through the terrors of bloody revolution, and brought
me to this effulgent shore where _Sanita Libertas_ is free to all
who seek it--this sacred strand, of which our German poet says:
_Dich halte ich!_ (I have gained thee and will not leave thee.)
So I turn to you, my dear compatriots, in the language of our
Fatherland--to you who are accustomed to German ways of
thinking--to you who have grown up in the light which flows from
thinking brains--to you whose hearts warmly cherish human rights
and human worth--who are not afraid of truth when it speaks of
such deep, clear, and universally important subjects as human
rights and human duties. He who fears truth will find hiding
places, but he who combats for it is worthy of it. The method of
its adversaries is to address themselves to thoughtless passion,
and thus arouse mockery and abuse against those who search for
scientific knowledge to appeal to easily moved feelings and
kindle sentiments of hatred and contempt. They can do this only
while truth is in the minority--only until right shall become
might.

You will learn to judge of woman's strength when you see that she
persists strenuously in this purpose, and secures, by her energy,
the rights which shall invest her with power. That which you can
no longer suppress in woman--that which is free above all
things--that which is pre-eminently important to mankind, and
must have free play in every mind, is the natural thirst for
scientific knowledge--that fountain of all peacefully progressing
amelioration in human history. This longing, this effort of
reason seeking knowledge of itself, of ideas, conclusions, and
all higher things, has, as far as historical remembrance goes
back, never been so violently suppressed in any human being as
in woman. But, so far from its having been extinguished in her,
it has, under the influence of this enlightened century, become a
gigantic flame which shines most brightly under the protection of
the star-spangled banner. There does not exist a man-made
doctrine, fabricated expressly for us, and which we must learn by
heart, that shall henceforth be our law. Nor shall the authority
of old traditions be a standard for us--be this authority called
Veda, Talmud, Koran, or Bible. No. Reason, which we recognize as
our highest and only law-giver, commands us to be free. We have
recognized our duty--we have heard the rustling of the golden
wings of our guardian angel--we are inspired for the work!

We are no longer in the beginning of history--that age which was
a constant struggle with nature, misery, ignorance, helplessness,
and every kind of bondage. The moral idea of the State struggles
for that fulfillment in which all individuals shall be brought
into a union which shall augment a million-fold both its
individual and collective force. Therefore, don't exclude
us--don't exclude woman--don't exclude the whole half of the
human family. Receive us--begin the work in which a new era shall
dawn. In all great events we find that woman has a guiding
hand--let us stay near you now, when humanity is concerned. Man
has the spirit of truth, but woman alone has passion for it. All
creations need love--let us, therefore, celebrate a union from
which shall spring the morning of freedom for humanity. Give us
our rights in the State. Honor us as your equals, and allow us to
use the rights which belong to us, and which reason commands us
to use. Whether it be prudent to enfranchise woman, is not the
question--only whether it be right. What is positively right,
must be prudent, must be wise, and must, finally, be useful. Give
the lie to the monarchically disposed statesman, who says the
republic of the United States is only an experiment, which
earlier or later will prove a failure. Give the lie to such
hopes, I say, by carrying out the whole elevated idea of the
republic--by calling the entire, excluded half of mankind and
every being endowed with reason, to the ballot-box, which is the
people's holy palladium.

MADAME DE HERICOURT said: I wish to ask if rights have their
source in ability, in functions, in qualities? No, certainly; for
we see that all men, however they may differ in endowments, have
equal rights. What, then, is the basis of rights? Humanity.
Consequently, even if it be true that woman is inferior to man in
intelligence and social ability, it is not desirable that she
shut herself within what is called woman's sphere. In a
philosophical light, the objections brought against her have no
bearing on this question. Woman must have equal rights with man,
because she is, like him, a human being; and only in
establishing, through anatomical or biological proof, that she
does not belong to the human race, can her rights be withheld.
When such demonstration is made, my claims shall cease. In the
meantime, let me say that woman--whether useful or
useless--belonging to humanity, must have the rights of humanity.

But is it true that the equality of man and woman would not be
useful to society? We might answer this question in the
affirmative were the sexes alike, but for the very reason that
they differ in many respects, is the presence of woman by the
side of man, if we desire order and justice, everywhere
necessary. Is it graceful, I ask, to walk on one leg? Men, since
the beginning of history, have had the bad taste to prefer a lame
society to one that is healthy and beautiful. We women have
really too much taste to yield longer to such deformity. In law,
in institutions, in every social and political matter, there are
two sides. Up to the present day, man has usurped what belongs to
woman. That is the reason why we have injustice, corruption,
international hatred, cruelty, war, shameful laws--man assuming,
in regard to woman, the sinful relation of slaveholder. Such
relation must and will change, because we women have decided that
it shall not exist. With you, gentlemen, we will vote, legislate,
govern--not only because it is our right, but because it is time
to substitute order, peace, equity, and virtue, for the disorder,
war, cruelty, injustice, and corruption which you, acting alone,
have established. You doubt our fitness to take part in
government because we are fickle, extravagant, etc., etc., as you
say. I answer, there is an inconsiderable minority which deserve
such epithets; but even if all women deserved them, who is in
fault? You not only prefer the weak-minded, extravagant women to
the strong-minded and reasonable ones, but as soon as a woman
attempts to leave her sphere, you, coward-like, throw yourselves
before her, and secure to your own profit all remunerative
occupations. I could, perhaps, forgive your selfishness and
injustice, but I can not forgive your want of logic nor your
hypocrisy. You condemn woman to starvation, to ignorance, to
extravagance, in order to please yourselves, and then reproach
her for this ignorance and extravagance, while you heap blame and
ridicule on those who are educated, wise, and frugal. You are,
indeed, very absurd or very silly. Your judgment is so weak that
you reproach woman with the faults of a slave, when it is you who
have made and who keep her a slave, and who know, moreover, that
no true and virtuous soul can accept slavery. You reproach woman
with being an active agent in corruption and ruin, without
perceiving that it is you who have condemned her to this awful
work, in which only your bad passions sustain her. Whatever you
may do, you can not escape her influence. If she is free,
virtuous, and worthy, she will give you free, virtuous, and
worthy sons, and maintain in you republican virtues. If she
remain a slave, she will debase you and your sons; and your
country will come under the rule of tyranny. Insane men can not
understand that where there is one slave there are always two--he
who wears the chain and he who rivets it. Unreasonable,
short-sighted men can not understand that to enfranchise woman is
to elevate man; to give him a companion who shall encourage his
good and noble aspirations, instead of one who would debase and
draw him down into an abyss of selfishness and dishonesty.
Gentlemen, will you be just, will you preserve the republic, will
you stop the moral ruin of your country; will you be worthy,
virtuous, and courageous for the welfare of your nation, and, in
spite of all obstacles, enfranchise your mothers, wives,
daughters, and sisters? Take care that you be not too late! Such
injustice and folly would be at the cost of your liberty, in
which event you could claim no mercy, for tyrants deserve to be
the victims of tyrants.

After her brief address, Madame de Hericourt submitted to the
Convention a series of resolutions for the organization of
Women's Leagues.[121]

ERNESTINE L. ROSE said--_Mrs. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen_:
What we need is to arouse both men and women to the great
necessity of justice and of right. The world moves. We need not
seek further than this Convention assembled here to-night to show
that it moves. We have assembled here delegates from the East and
the West, from the North and the South, from all over the United
States, from England, from France, and from Germany--all have
come to give us greeting and well-wishes, both in writing and in
speech. I only wish that this whole audience might have been able
to understand and appreciate the eloquent speeches which have
been delivered here to-night. They have been uttered in support
of the claim--the just demand--of woman for the right to vote.
Why is it, my friends, that Congress has enacted laws to give the
negro of the South the right to vote? Why do they not at the same
time protect the negro woman? If Congress really means to protect
the negro race, they should have acknowledged woman just as much
as man; not only in the South, but here in the North, the only
way to protect her is by the ballot. We have often heard from
this platform, and I myself have often said, that with individual
man we do not find fault. We do not war with man; we war with bad
principles. And let me ask whether we have not the right to war
with these principles which stamp the degradation of inferiority
upon women.

This Society calls itself the Equal Rights Association. That I
understand to be an association which has no distinction of sex,
class, or color. Congress does not seem to understand the meaning
of the term universal. I understand the word universal to include
ALL. Congress understood that Universal Suffrage meant the white
man only. Since the war we have changed the name for Impartial
Suffrage. When some of our editors, such as Mr. Greeley and
others, were asked what they meant by impartial suffrage, they
said, "Why, man, of course; the man and the brother." Congress
has enacted resolutions for the suffrage of men and brothers.
They don't speak of the women and sisters. [Applause.] They have
begun to change their tactics, and call it manhood suffrage. I
propose to call it Woman Suffrage; then we shall know what we
mean. We might commence by calling the Chinaman a man and a
brother, or the Hottentot, or the Calmuck, or the Indian, the
idiot or the criminal, but where shall we stop? They will bring
all these in before us, and then they will bring in the
babies--the _male_ babies. [Laughter.] I am a foreigner. I had
great difficulty in acquiring the English language, and I never
shall acquire it. But I am afraid that in the meaning of language
Congress is a great deal worse off than I have ever been. I go
for the change of name; I will not be construed into a man and a
brother. I ask the same rights for women that are extended to
men--the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness;
and every pursuit in life must be as free and open to me as any
man in the land. [Applause.] But they will never be thrown open
to me or to any of you, until we have the power of the ballot in
our own hands. That little paper is a great talisman. We have
often been told that the golden key can unlock all the doors.
That little piece of paper can unlock doors where golden keys
fail. Wherever men are--whether in the workshop, in the store, in
the laboratory, or in the legislative halls--I want to see women.
Wherever man is, there she is needed; wherever man has work to
do--work for the benefit of humanity--there should men and women
unite and co-operate together. It is not well for man to be alone
or work alone; and he can not work for woman as well as woman can
work for herself. I suggest that the name of this society be
changed from Equal Rights Association to Woman's Suffrage
Association.

LUCY STONE said she must oppose this till the colored man gained
the right to vote. If they changed the name of the association
for such a reason as it was evident it was proposed, they would
lose the confidence of the public. I hope you will not do it.

A GENTLEMAN: Mrs. President, I hope you will do it. I move that
the name of the association be changed to the "Universal
Franchise Association."

Mrs. STANTON: The question is already settled by our
constitution, which requires a month's notice previous to the
annual meeting before any change of name can be made. We will now
have a song. [Laughter.]

Mr. BLACKWELL said that he had just returned from the South, and
that he had learned to think that the test oath required of white
men who had been rebels must be abolished before the vote be
given to the negro. He was willing that the negro should have the
suffrage, but not under such conditions that he should rule the
South. [At the allusion of Mr. Blackwell to abolishing the test
oath, the audience hissed loudly.]

Mrs. STANTON said--Gentlemen and Ladies: I take this as quite an
insult to me. It is as if you were invited to dine with me and
you turned up your nose at everything that was set on the table.

Mrs. LIVERMORE said: It certainly requires a great amount of
nerve to talk before you, for you have such a frankness in
expressing yourselves that I am afraid of you. [Laughter and
applause.] If you do not like the dish, you turn up your nose at
it and say, "Take it away, take it away." [Laughter.] I was
brought up in the West, and it is a good place to get rid of any
superfluous modesty, but I am afraid of you. [Applause.] It seems
that you are more willing to be pleased than to hear what we have
to say. [Applause.] Throughout the day the men who have attended
our Convention have been turbulent. [Applause.] I say it frankly,
that the behavior of the majority of men has not been respectful.
[Applause.] She then gave a pathetic narration of the sorrow she
had seen among the depraved and destitute of our great cities,
and said the work of the coming year would be to get up a monster
petition of a million of names asking the Legislature for
suffrage. [Applause.]

After a song from the Hutchinson Family, who had come from
Chicago to entertain the audiences of the Association, the
meeting adjourned.

The friends of woman's suffrage, including most of the delegates to
the Equal Rights Convention in New York, met in mass meeting in the
Academy of Music, Brooklyn, Friday morning, May 14th, at 10 o'clock.
Mr. Edwin A. Studwell called the meeting to order and nominated Mrs.
Anna C. Field for President. This lady was unanimously elected, and
took the chair. Mrs. Celia Burleigh was elected Secretary. On motion
of Mr. Studwell, a committee[122] was appointed to draft resolutions.
Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton was then introduced, and made the opening
speech.

Mrs. LUCY STONE congratulated the ladies upon the large number of
men who had become converted to their cause.

Mr. LANGDON, of Vermont, followed with a brief speech.

Mrs. BURLEIGH read a letter from the Hon. Geo. Wm. Curtis,
indorsing very decidedly the doctrine of woman suffrage.

Rev. PHEBE HANAFORD then delivered a most eloquent and touching
address on the moral influence that the participation of women in
government would have upon the world. Every true mother was with
this movement. The golden rule given by Jesus, if carried out,
would give equal rights to all, and there would be no distinction
between color, race, or sex.

The Rev. GILBERT HAVEN, of Massachusetts, said there were three
reforms needed--one was the abolition of social distinctions,
another was the abolition of the rum-shop, and the third was
giving the ballot to women. Of the three, which should take the
precedence? It was hard to say that woman did not lead them all.
He had claimed yesterday that the Woman's Rights movement
originated in Massachusetts. He was mistaken. The great idea of
woman's equality was taught by Christ; and still further back,
when man and woman were created and placed in Paradise, they were
placed there on an equality. God gave man no supremacy over woman
there. Not until sin had entered the world, not until after the
fall was it said, "He shall rule over her." If we were to be
controlled by this curse of sin, we should still adhere to the
old law giving the supremacy to the first-born son, for that was
declared at the same time between Cain and Abel. Sin degraded,
but grace emancipated. On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit fell
upon the man and woman alike. St. Paul declared this great
doctrine of Woman's Rights when he said, "There is neither Greek
nor Jew, neither bond nor free, neither male nor female, but all
are one in Christ. If a woman prophesy, let her prophesy with the
head covered," but he did not say women shall not prophesy. The
doctrine of Woman's Rights originated with God Himself. There
were many reasons why we should give the ballot to women. It
would elevate woman herself, as well as confer incalculable
benefits on man.

At the afternoon session addresses were made by Mrs. Livermore, Lucy
Stone, Lilie Peckham, Rev. J. W. Chadwick, and Lucretia Mott. In the
evening the building was crowded throughout, including stage and both
galleries, with the very best of people. The Committee on organization
reported for President, Mrs. Celia Burleigh, and for Vice-Presidents
about twenty names. Mrs. Norton read an extract from a letter of Wm.
Lloyd Garrison. Miss Olive Logan spoke in her own dramatic style. She
dealt numerous severe blows at the other sex. Her many sarcastic and
humorous hits elicited great applause. A resolution declaring woman
entitled to vote and hold office under all conditions which it is
proper to impose on man, was read and adopted, after which Lucretia
Mott addressed the convention in her usual happy manner.

Mrs. HARPER spoke on matters concerning her own race.

The Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER said: In relation to this Woman's
Rights movement, I am opposed to coercion. If a woman says, "I
have all the rights I want," I say, very well. We do not preach
the doctrine of coercive rights. You shall have perfect liberty
to stay at home. All we ask is, that women shall follow their
natures. Of all heresies it seems to me there never was one so
absurd as that which supposes that woman is not fit for the
peculiar duties of government. She was fit to whip you and me; to
teach us the best things we know; fit to take care of home; and
let me tell you that the woman who is fit to take care of home is
fit to stand in the gateway of heaven itself. Nothing is more
sacred between this and the heavenly rest than the Christian
household. It is said that woman is not fit to hold office. Take
the Presidents of the United States, as they run for the last
eight or ten years, and I would rather take my chances among the
average of women. A President of these United States requires
merely common sense and honesty. Men are not more honest than
women, not more sincere nor more capable.

Miss PHOEBE COUZINS and Mr. DOUGLASS made brief addresses. The
HUTCHINSONS sang one of their soul-stirring songs. LUCY STONE closed
the exercises with a most effective appeal.

Out of these broad differences of opinion on the amendments, as shown
in the debates, divisions grew up between Republicans and
Abolitionists on the one side, and the leaders of the Woman Suffrage
movement on the other. The constant conflict on the Equal Rights
platform proved the futility of any attempt to discuss the wrongs of
different classes in one association. A general dissatisfaction had
been expressed by the delegates from the West at the latitude of
debate involved in an Equal Rights Association. Hence, a change of
name and more restricted discussions were strenuously urged by them.
Accordingly, at the close of Anniversary week, a meeting was called at
the Woman's Bureau,[123] which resulted in reorganization under the
name of "The National Woman Suffrage Association."[124]

There had been so much trouble with men in the Equal Rights Society,
that it was thought best to keep the absolute control henceforth in
the hands of women. Sad experience had taught them that in trying
emergencies they would be left to fight their own battles, and
therefore it was best to fit themselves for their responsibilities by
filling the positions of trust exclusively with women. This was not
accomplished without a pretty sharp struggle. As it was, they had to
concede the right of membership to men, in order to carry the main
point, as several ladies would not join unless men also could be
admitted. All preliminaries discussed and amicably adjusted, a list of
officers was chosen and an organization completed, making a XVIth
Amendment the special object of its work and consideration. The
regular weekly meetings of this Association were reported by the
metropolitan press with many spicy and critical comments, which did a
great educational work and roused much thought on the whole question.

Conventions were held during the summer at Saratoga and Newport. The
following letter from Celia Burleigh gives a bird's-eye view of that
at Saratoga:

SARATOGA, July 16th, 1869.

The advocates of Woman Suffrage have fairly earned the title of
Revolutionists by their recent bold move on the enemy's
stronghold. The great foe to progress is want of thought, and the
devotees of fashion are about the last to come into line and work
for any great reform. Not a little surprise, and some
indignation, were expressed by the representatives of upper
tendom sojourning here, that strong-minded women were not only
coming to Saratoga, but actually intending to hold a convention.
What next? What place would henceforth be safe from the assaults
of these irrepressible amazons of reform? Saratoga has survived
the shock, however; Flora McFlimsey has looked in the face of
Miss Anthony, and has not been turned to stone. More than that,
finding the convention pouring into the parlors of Congress Hall,
and escape actually cut off, Flora, after deliberating whether to
faint and be carried out, or gratify her curiosity by looking on,
finally submitted gracefully to the inevitable and did the
latter. From her crimson cushioned arm chair by the window, she
saw the meeting called to order, saw one after another of "those
horrid women, whose names are in the newspapers," quietly taking
their places, doing the thing proper to be done, and carrying
forward the business of the meeting. Really, they were not so
dreadful after all. They neither wore beards nor pantaloons.
There was not even a woman with short hair among them. On the
contrary, they seemed to be decidedly appreciative of "good
clothes" and if less familiar with the goddess of fashion than
Miss Flora they did not walk arm in arm with her, they at least
followed at no great distance and were, to a woman, finished off
with the regulation back-bow of loops and ends. Spite of herself,
Miss McFlimsey became interested, and when Miss Anthony mentioned
the fact that the majority of men felt it necessary to talk down
to women, instead of sharing with them their best thoughts and
most vital interests, Flora looked reflective, as if in that
direction might lie the clew to the insufferable stupidity which
she often found in the young gentlemen of her acquaintance.

That a Woman Suffrage Convention should have been allowed to
organize in the parlors of Congress Hall, that those parlors
should have been filled to their utmost capacity by the habitual
guests of the place, that such men as Millard Fillmore, Thurlow
Weed, George Opdyke, and any number of clergymen from different
parts of the country, should have been interested lookers-on, are
significant facts that may well carry dismay to the enemies of
the cause. That the whole business of the Convention was
transacted by women in a dignified, orderly, and business-like
manner, is a strong intimation that in spite of all that has been
said to the contrary, women are capable of learning how to
conduct meetings and manage affairs. Even the least friendly
spectator was compelled to admit it, that the delegates to the
Convention were as free from eccentricity in dress and manner as
the most fastidious taste could demand; that they were remarkable
only for the comprehensive range of thought, indicated in their
utterances, and the earnestness with which they advocate
principles which they evidently believe to be right. Another fact
worth noticing is the character of the reports of the Convention
furnished to the daily papers. They were, for the most part,
full, impartial, and respectful in tone; especially was this the
case with the local papers. Altogether, the Woman Suffrage
Conventions in the State of New York must be regarded as a
decided success. The interest manifested shows that thought on
the subject is no longer confined to the few, but that it is
gradually permeating the whole public mind.

In its present condition, Saratoga realizes one's ideal of a
summer resort, and yet in the good time coming, we can imagine an
improvement--that even Congress Hall, with its gentlemanly and
courteous proprietor, its sumptuous appointments and army of
waiters, may yet have an added excellence; when, by the
possession of the ballot, woman becomes a possible proprietor and
actual worker; when to earn money is as honorable for a woman as
it now is for a man, we may hope to find in every hotel not only
a host, but a hostess; and whatever may be said of the excellence
of men as housekeepers, I confidently predict that even Congress
Hall will be vastly improved by the addition.

The chief speakers at this Convention were Charlotte Wilbour,
Celia Burleigh, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Rev. Mr. Angier, J. N.
Holmes, Esq., Judge McKean, and Mrs. Dr. Strowbridge.

C. B.

THE NEWPORT CONVENTION.--_Dear Revolution_: Susan B. Anthony
having decided that neither age, color, sex, or previous
condition could shield any one from this agitation--that neither
the frosts of winter nor the heats of summer could afford its
champions any excuse for halting on the way, our forces were
commanded to be in marching order on the 25th of August, to
besiege the "butterflies of fashion" in Newport.[125] Having
gleefully chased butterflies in our young days on our way to
school, we thought it might be as well to chase them in our old
age on the way to heaven. So, obeying orders, we sailed across
the Sound one bright moonlight night with a gay party of the
"disfranchised," and found ourselves quartered on the enemy the
next morning as the sun rose in all its resplendent glory.
Although trunk after trunk--not of gossamers, laces, and
flowers, but of Suffrage ammunition, speeches, resolutions,
petitions, tracts, John Stuart Mill's last work, and folios of
_The Revolution_ had been slowly carried up the winding stairs of
the Atlantic--the brave men and fair women, who had tripped the
light fantastic toe until the midnight hours, slept heedlessly
on, wholly unaware that twelve apartments were already filled
with invaders of the strong-minded editors, reporters, and the
Hutchinson family to the third and fourth generation.

Suffice it to say the Convention continued through two days with
the usual amount of good and bad speaking and debating, strong
and feeble resolutions, fair and unfair reporting--but, with all
its faults, an improvement on the general run of conventions
called by the stronger sex. We say this not in a spirit of
boasting, but with a heart overflowing with pity for the "men of
the period." The chief speakers were Paulina Wright Davis,
Isabella Beecher Hooker, Theodore Tilton, Francis D. Moulton,
Rev. Phebe Hanaford, Lillie Devereux Blake, Elizabeth R.
Churchill, the Hon. Mr. Stillman, of Rhode Island; and the editor
and proprietor of _The Revolution_. The occasion was enlivened
with the stirring songs of the Hutchinsons, and a reading by Mrs.
Sarah Fisher Ames, the distinguished artist who moulded the bust
of Abraham Lincoln which now adorns the rooms of the Union
League.

The audience throughout the sittings of the Convention was large,
fashionable, and as enthusiastic as the state of the weather
would permit. From the numbers of _The Revolution_ and John
Stuart Mill's new work sold at the door, it is evident that much
interest was roused on the question. We can say truly that we
never received a more quiet and respectful hearing; and, from
many private conversations with ladies and gentlemen of
influence, we feel assured that we have done much by our
gatherings in Saratoga and Newport to awaken thought among a new
class of people. The _ennui_ and utter vacuity of a life of mere
pleasure is fast urging fashionable women to something better,
and, when they do awake to the magnitude and far-reaching
consequences of woman's enfranchisement, they will be the most
enthusiastic workers for its accomplishment.

E. C. S.

The Fourth of July this year was celebrated for the first time by
members of the Woman Suffrage Association, in a beautiful grove in
Westchester County. Edwin A. Studwell of Brooklyn made all the
necessary arrangements. Speeches were made by Judge E. D. Culver, Mrs.
Stanton, and Miss Anthony. The Woman Suffrage meetings at the Bureau
were crowded every week. October 7th there was an unusually large
attendance, to discuss the coming Industrial Congress at Berlin. The
following letter to the Berlin Congress was read and adopted:

NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION, }
NEW YORK, September 28, 1869. }

_To the Woman's Industrial Congress at Berlin_:

At a meeting of our Executive Committee the call for your
Convention was duly considered, and a committee appointed to
address you a letter. In behalf of the progressive women of this
country we would express to you the deep interest we feel in the
present movement among the women of Europe, everywhere throwing
off the lethargy of ages and asserting their individual dignity
and power, showing that the emancipation of woman is one of those
great ideas that mark the centuries. While in your circular you
specify various subjects for consideration, you make no mention
of the right of suffrage.

As yours is an Industrial Congress in which women occupied in
every branch of labor are to be represented, you may think this
question could not legitimately come before you. And even if it
could, you may not think best to startle the timid or provoke the
powerful by the assertion that a fair day's wages for a fair
day's work and the dignity of labor, alike depend on the
political status of the laborer. Perhaps in your country, where
the right of representation is so limited even among men, women
do not feel the degradation of disfranchisement as we do under
this Government, where it is now proposed to make sex the only
disqualification for citizenship.

The ultimate object of all these labor movements on both
continents, is the emancipation of the masses from the slavery of
poverty and ignorance, and the shorter way to this end is to give
all the people a voice in the laws that govern them, for the
ballot is bread, land, education, dignity, and power. The
extending of new privileges and abating of old grievances may
afford some temporary relief; but the kernel of the whole
question of the people's wrongs can never be touched until the
essential equality of all citizens under the government is fully
recognized. In America we have the true theory of government, and
step by step we are coming to its practical realization.

Seeing that no class ever did or ever can legislate wisely for
another, the women, even in this country, have done complaining
of specific wrongs, and are demanding the right to legislate for
themselves. We are now holding conventions in the chief cities of
the several States, and petitioning Congress for a sixteenth
amendment to the Federal Constitution that shall forbid the
disfranchisement of any citizen on account of sex. In January,
soon after the convening of Congress, we shall hold a National
Convention in Washington to press our arguments on the
representatives of the people. Sooner or later you will be driven
to make the same demand; for, from whatever point you start in
tracing the wrongs of citizens, you will be logically brought
step by step to see that the real difficulty in all cases is the
need of representation in the government. However various our
plans and objects, we are all working to a common centre. And in
this general awakening among women we are taking the grandest
step in civilization that the world has yet seen. When men and
women are reunited as equals in the great work of life, then, and
not till then, will harmony and happiness reign supreme on earth.
Tendering you our best wishes for the success of your convention
and the triumph of our cause in Europe, we are yours, with much
esteem,

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, ELIZABETH B. PHELPS,
CHARLOTTE B. WILBOUR, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS.

The following ladies were appointed delegates to the Woman's
Industrial Congress called to meet at Berlin: Ernestine L. Rose, Laura
C. Bullard, New York; Kate N. Doggett, Mary J. Safford, Illinois; Mary
Peckenpaugh, Missouri. A letter from Mrs. Bullard[126] was listened to
with interest.

During the Autumn of this year there was a secession from our ranks,
and the preliminary steps were taken for another organization. Aside
from the divisions growing out of a difference of opinion on the
amendments, there were some personal hostilities among the leaders of
the movement that culminated in two Societies, which were generally
spoken of as the New York and Boston wings of the Woman Suffrage
reform. The former, as already stated, called the "National Woman
Suffrage Association," with Elizabeth Cady Stanton for President,
organized in May; the latter called "The American Woman Suffrage
Association," with Henry Ward Beecher for President, organized the
following November. Most of those who inaugurated the reform remained
in the National Association--Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright,
Ernestine Rose, Clarina Howard Nichols, Paulina Wright Davis, Sarah
Pugh, Amy Post, Mary H. Hallowell, Lydia Mott, Catharine A. F.
Stebbins, Adeline Thomson, Josephine S. Griffing, Clemence S. Lozier,
Rev. Olympia Brown, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan
B. Anthony--and continued to work harmoniously together.

FOOTNOTES:

[111] A NATIONAL WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE CONVENTION will be held in Carroll
Hall, Washington, D. C., on the 19th and 20th of January, 1869. All
associations friendly to Woman's Rights are invited to send delegates
from every State. Friends of the cause are invited to attend and take
part in the discussions.

_Committee of Arrangements._--Josephine S. Griffing, William
Hutchinson, Lydia S. Hall, John H. Crane, Mary T. Corner, George F.
Needham, James K. Wilcox.

[112] Speeches were made by Mrs. Griffing and Miss Clara Barton of
Washington, Mrs. Wright and Susan B. Anthony of New York, Mr. Edward
M. Davis and Mr. Robert Purvis of Pennsylvania, Dr. Charles Purvis,
Mr. and Mrs. Stebbins, Mr. Wilcox, Mrs. Julia Archibald, Col. Hinton
and Mr. George T. Downing of Washington, Mrs. Starrett, Dr. Root and
Mrs. Archibald of Kansas, Mr. Wolff of Colorado, Mrs. Kingsbury of
Vineland, New Jersey, Mrs. Dr. Hathaway of Massachusetts, Mrs. Minor
of Missouri, and others.

[113] The amendment as proposed by the Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, of
Pennsylvania, extended the right of suffrage to "all citizens," which
included both white and black women. At the bare thought of such an
impending calamity, the more timid Republicans were filled with alarm,
and the word "male" promptly inserted.

[114] A circumstance at the Woman's National Convention served to
impress me profoundly with the monstrousness of slavery, and of the
prejudice it created and has left behind it, which I have been waiting
a convenient opportunity to tell you about. Far into the first evening
of the Convention, when the debate had waxed warm between Mrs.
Stanton--who opposed the admission of any more men (referring to the
negroes) to the political franchise, until the present arbiters of the
question were disposed to admit women also--and Mr. Downing and Dr.
Purvis, of Washington, an elegant looking gentleman arose upon impulse
and began to talk in his seat, but, after a little hesitancy, accepted
the invitation of Mrs. Mott and Miss Anthony to take the platform. As
he stood up before the audience, he appeared a tall, slender, elderly
gentleman, with the white hair and other marks of years, at least not
less than sixty, graced with a handsome face of the highest type,
strikingly fine in character. I have seen many nations and conditions
of people, and I do not fear to say with some regard for my reputation
as an observer--that I believe it one of the most benevolent and
exalted faces--one of the most elevated and least mixed with the
animal and earthly alloys of our humanity, that adorn the whole globe.
He spoke but a few words. They were all of the character of the
generous impulse upon which he rose. In his gratitude for what those
noble women had done for the colored race, _with which he was
identified_, he was willing to wait for the ballot for himself, his
sons, and his race, until women were permitted to enjoy it. The
speaker was Robert Purvis, of Philadelphia, Dr. Purvis's father. By
the gas light of the hall, he not only appeared to be a white man, but
a light complexioned white man. It may be that he has one
thirty-second--possibly one-sixteenth--negro blood in his veins. There
is so little in effect, that the whole make-up of the man is after the
highest pattern of white men. Besides--to descend a little--Mr. Purvis
is a gentleman of wealth and culture, and surrounds his family with
all the gratifications of the intellectual, esthetic and moral
desires, and carefully developed his children at home and at the best
schools into which they could gain admission.--_Correspondence of the
Denver News._

[115] _Resolved_, That governments among men have hitherto signally
failed, their history being but a series of revolutions, bloodshed,
and desolation.

_Resolved_, That a democracy based on a republicanism which proscribes
and disfranchises one part of the citizens for their sex, and another
for their color, is a contradiction in terms more offensive and harder
to be borne than despotism itself, under its true name, and vastly
more dangerous by its seductive influence to human well-being.

_Resolved_, That we demand, as the only assurance of national
perpetuity and peace, as well as a measure of Justice and right, that
in the reconstruction of the Government suffrage shall be based on
loyalty and intelligence, and nowhere be limited by odious
distinctions on account of color, or sex.

_Resolved_, That we earnestly recommend to the friends of equal
suffrage in all the States to call a convention at their respective
capitals during the sessions of their Legislatures, and that
committees be appointed to memorialize those bodies on the subject of
suffrage alike impartial for men and women, and that as far as
possible able and earnest women obtain a hearing before them, to urge
the necessity and justice of their claim.

_Resolved_, That we denounce the proposition now pending in Congress
to abolish the elective franchise in the District of Columbia, as it
tends to make the disfranchisement of the 25,000 women of the
District, and the lately enfranchised colored men perpetual.

_Resolved_, That in demanding the ballot for the disfranchised
classes, we do not overlook the logical fact of the right to be voted
for; and we know no reason why a colored man should be excluded from a
seat in Congress, or any woman either, who possesses the suitable
capabilities, and has been duly elected.

_Resolved_, That we demand of the Government, and of the public also,
that women and colored people shall choose their own occupations, and
be paid always equally with men for equal work.

_Resolved_, That a _man's_ government is worse than a _white_ man's
government, because, in proportion as you increase the tyrants, you
make the condition of the disfranchised class more hopeless and
degraded.

_Resolved_, That as the partisan cry of a white man's government
created the antagonism between the Irishman and the negro, culminating
in those fearful riots in 1863, so the Republican cry of manhood
suffrage creates the same antagonism between the negro and the woman,
and must result, especially in the Southern States, in greater
injustice toward woman.

[116] ANNIVERSARY OF THE AMERICAN EQUAL RIGHTS ASSOCIATION.

The American Equal Rights Association will hold its Anniversary in New
York, at Steinway Hall, Wednesday and Thursday, May 12th and 13th, and
in Brooklyn, Academy of Music, on Friday, the 14th.

After a century of discussion on the rights of citizens in a republic,
and the gradual extension of suffrage, without property or educational
qualifications, to all white men, the thought of the nation has turned
for the last thirty years to negroes and women.

And in the enfranchisement of black men by the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendments to the Federal Constitution, the Congress of the
United States has now virtually established on this continent an
aristocracy of sex; an aristocracy hitherto unknown in the history of
nations.

With every type and shade of manhood thus exalted above their heads,
there never was a time when all women, rich and poor, white and black,
native and foreign, should be so wide awake to the degradation of
their position, and so persistent in their demands to be recognized in
the government.

Woman's enfranchisement is now a practical question in England and the
United States. With bills before Parliament, Congress, and all our
State Legislatures--with such able champions as John Stuart Mill and
George William Curtis, woman need but speak the word to secure her
political freedom to-day.

We sincerely hope that in the coming National Anniversary every State
and Territory, East and West, North and South, will be represented. We
invite delegates, too, from all those countries in the Old World where
women are demanding their political rights.

Let there be a grand gathering in the metropolis of the nation, that
Republicans and Democrats may alike understand, that with the women of
this country lies a political power in the future, that both parties
would do well to respect.

The following speakers from the several States are pledged: Anna E.
Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, Mary A. Livermore, Madam Anneke, Lillie
Peckham, Phoebe Couzins, M. H. Brinkerhoff, Mrs. Frances McKinley,
Amelia Bloomer, Olive Logan, Mrs. E. Oakes Smith, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Henry Ward Beecher, Olympia Brown, Robert Purvis, Josephine
S. Griffing, Lucy Stone, Ernestine L. Rose, Susan B. Anthony, Theodore
Tilton, Rev. O. B. Frothingham.

LUCRETIA MOTT, _President_.

_Vice-Presidents_, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Frederick Douglass, Henry
Ward Beecher, Martha C. Wright, Frances D. Gage, New York; Olympia
Brown, Massachusetts; Elizabeth B. Chase, Rhode Island; Charles
Prince, Connecticut; Robert Purvis, Pennsylvania; Antoinette B.
Blackwell, New Jersey; Josephine S. Griffing, Washington, D. C.;
Thomas Garrett, Delaware; Stephen H. Camp, Ohio; Euphemia Cochrane,
Michigan; Mary A. Livermore, Illinois; Mrs. I. H. Sturgeon, Missouri;
Amelia Bloomer, Iowa; Mary A. Starrett, Kansas; Virginia Penny,
Kentucky.

_Corresponding Secretary_, Mary E. Gage.

_Recording Secretaries_, Henry B. Blackwell, Harriet Purvis.

_Treasurer_, John J. Merritt.

_Executive Committee_, Lucy Stone, Edward S. Bunker, Elizabeth R.
Tilton, Ernestine L. Rose, Robert J. Johnston, Edwin A. Studwell, Anna
Cromwell Field, Susan B. Anthony, Theodore Tilton, Margaret E.
Winchester, Abby Hutchinson Patton, Oliver Johnson, Mrs. Horace
Greeley, Abby Hopper Gibbons, Elizabeth Smith Miller.

[117] See Appendix.

[118] On the platform were seated Ernestine L. Rose, of New York; Mary
A. Livermore, of Chicago; Phoebe Couzins, of St. Louis; Lillie
Peckham, of Milwaukee; Madam Anneke, of Milwaukee; Madam de Hericourt,
of Chicago; Mrs. M. Joslyn Gage, of Syracuse; Frederick Douglass; Lucy
Stone, of New Jersey; Olive Logan, of New York; Josephine Griffing, of
Washington; Mrs. Paulina W. Davis; Mrs. Abby H. Patton; Mrs. Kate N.
Doggett; Eleanor Kirk; Mrs. Bachelder, of Boston; Mrs. Mary Macdonald,
of Mount Vernon; Rev. Mrs. Hanaford; Rev. Antoinette L. Brown
Blackwell, of New Jersey; Mrs. Jennette Brown Heath, of Kansas; Mrs.
Mary Newman, of Binghamton, N.Y.; Mrs. Mathilde Wendt, of New York;
Andrew Jackson Davis; Mary F. Davis; Mrs. Caroline Morey Holmes, of
Union Village, New York; Mrs. Phelps, of the Woman's Bureau, New York;
Senator Pomeroy; Mrs. Longley, of Cincinnati; Mrs. Amelia Bloomer, of
Council Bluffs, Iowa; Lizzie Boynton, of Ohio; Mary A. Gage, of
Brooklyn; Mrs. Sarah Norton, of the New York Working-Women's
Association, and others.

The following committees, on motion of Miss Susan B. Anthony, were
appointed by the Chair: Committee on Nominations--Edwin S. Bunker,
Lydia Mott, Edwin A. Studwell, Abby H. Gibbons, Lucy Stone, Charles C.
Burleigh, and Lillie Peckham. Committee on Resolutions--Ernestine L.
Rose, Henry B. Blackwell, Anna C. Field, Mary A. Livermore, S. S.
Foster, Josephine S. Griffing, Madam Anneke, Madam Hericourt, and
Phebe A. Hanaford. Committee on Finance--Susan B. Anthony, Anna C.
Field, Mary A. Gage, and R. J. Johnston.

[119] _President_:--Lucretia Mott.

_Vice-Presidents at Large_:--Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Ernestine
L. Rose.

_Vice-Presidents for the States_:--John Neal, Maine; Armenia S. White,
New Hampshire; James Hutchinson, Jr., Vermont; William Lloyd Garrison,
Julia Ward Howe, Massachusetts; Elizabeth B. Chase, Rhode Island;
Isabella B. Hooker, Connecticut; Henry Ward Beecher, Frederick
Douglass, Martha C. Wright, New York; Portia Gage, New Jersey; Robert
Purvis, Pennsylvania; Mary A. Livermore, Illinois; George W. Julian,
Indiana; Benjamin F. Wade, Ohio; Gilbert Haven, Michigan; Rev. A. L.
Lindsley, Oregon; Joseph H. Moore, California; Hon. J. Nye, Nevada;
Hon. A. P. K. Safford, Arizona; Hon. James H. Ashley, Montana;
Josephine S. Griffing, District of Columbia; Thomas Garrett, Delaware;
Ellen M. Harris, Maryland; John C. Underwood, Virginia; Mrs. J. K.
Miller, North Carolina; Mrs. Pillsbury, South Carolina; Elizabeth
Wright, Texas; Mrs. Dr. Hawkes, Florida; Hon. Guy Wines, Tennessee;
Mrs. Francis Minor, Missouri; Hon. Charles Robinson, Kansas; Governor
Fairchild and Madam Anneke, Wisconsin; Mrs. Harriet Bishop, Minnesota;
Hon. Mr. Loughridge, Iowa.

_Executive Committee_:---Elizabeth R. Tilton, Lucy Stone, Edwin
Studwell, Susan B. Anthony, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Thomas W.
Higginson, Anna C. Field, Edward S. Bunker, Abby Hutchinson Patton,
Oliver Johnson, Elizabeth Smith Miller, Margaret E. Winchester, Edward
Cromwell, Robert J. Johnston, Mary A. Davis.

_Corresponding Secretaries_:--Mary A. Gage, Harriet Purvis, Henry B.
Blackwell.

_Treasurer_:--John J. Merritt.

[120] _Resolved_, That the extension of suffrage to woman is essential
to the public safety and to the establishment and permanence of free
institutions; that the admission of woman to political recognition in
our national reconstruction is as imperative as the admission of any
particular class of men.

_Resolved_, That as woman, in private life, in the partnership of
marriage, is now the conservator of private morals, so woman in public
life, in the partnership of a republican State, based upon Universal
suffrage, will become the conservator of public morals.

_Resolved_, That the petitions of more than 200,000 women to Congress
and to their State Legislature during the past winter, are expressions
of popular sympathy and approval, everywhere throughout the land, and
ought to silence the cavil of our opponents that "women do not want to
vote."

_Resolved_, That while we heartily approve of the Fifteenth Amendment,
extending suffrage to men, without distinction of race, we
nevertheless feel profound regret that Congress has not submitted a
parallel amendment for the enfranchisement of women.

_Resolved_, That any party professing to be democratic in spirit or
republican in principle, which opposes or ignores the political rights
of woman, is false to its professions, short-sighted in its policy,
and unworthy of the confidence of the friends of impartial liberty.

_Resolved_, That we hail the report of the Joint Special Committee,
just rendered to the Massachusetts Legislature, in favor of woman
suffrage, as a fresh evidence of the growth of public sentiment and we
earnestly hope that Massachusetts, by promptly submitting the question
to a vote of her people, will maintain her historic pre-eminence in
the cause of human liberty.

_Resolved_, That the thanks of the Convention are due to the Hon.
George W. Julian in the House of Representatives, and to the Hon.
Henry Wilson and the Hon. S. C. Pomeroy In the Senate of the United
States, for their recent active efforts to secure suffrage for woman.

_Resolved_, That we recommend the men and women of every Ward, Town,
County, and State, to form local Associations for creating and
organizing public sentiment in favor of Suffrage for Woman, and to
take every possible practical means to effect her enfranchisement.

[121] 1st. That we form a League of all women claiming their rights,
both in America and Europe.

2d. The aim of this League, which shall be called the "Universal
League for Woman's Rights and Universal Peace," is to extinguish
prejudice between nations, to create a common interest through the
influence of woman, in order to substitute the reign of humanity for
the divisions and hatred and causes of war, and to give aid to the
women of all nations in securing their rights.

3d. That in every country Emancipation Societies shall be organized,
that a National Union may be formed which shall be in constant
communication with other countries by means of journals, pamphlets,
and books.

4th. That every year a General Assembly of delegates from every
country shall meet in one of the capitals by turn. These capitals
might for the present be Washington, Paris, London, Florence, and one
of the central cities of Germany.

5th. That at the stated meetings of the League there shall be an
exhibition of works of art by women.

6th. That, in traveling, women should everywhere find friendship and
aid in pursuing the end which they propose. Women, being sisters and
daughters in the ranks of humanity, must feel themselves at home with
their sisters of all nations. Among us there can be no foreigners,
since we are not citizens.

[122] E. S. Bunker, Mrs. E. R. Tilton, Mrs. A. Field, Rev. J. W.
Chadwick, J. J. Merritt and Mrs. E. A. Studwell.

[123] The Woman's Bureau was located at No. 49 East Twenty-third
Street, owned by Mrs. Elizabeth B. Phelps. Handsomely furnished
apartments were rented to the proprietor of _The Revolution_, where
much of the editorial work of that paper was done. Meetings were held
in the spacious parlors every week, where Mrs. Phelps also gave many
pleasant receptions, breakfasts, luncheons, and dinners. It was a kind
of ladies' exchange, where reformers were sure to meet each other.
These pleasant rooms in a fashionable part of the city gave a fresh
impetus to our cause, and the regular meetings, seemingly so novel and
_recherché_, called out several new speakers. This was the school
where Lilie Devereux Blake, Dr. Clemence Lozier, Isabella Beecher
Hooker, and others made their first attempts at oratory.

[124] In _The Revolution_ of May 20th we find the following:

NATIONAL WOMAN'S SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.--This organization was formed
at the reunion held at the Woman's Bureau at the close of the
Convention in New York. Delegates from nineteen States, including
California and Washington Territory, were present on the occasion, and
all felt the importance of an organization distinctively for Woman's
Suffrage, in view of the fact that a Sixteenth Amendment to the
Federal Constitution to secure this is now before the people. The
Association has held several meetings to plan the work for the coming
year. Committees are in correspondence with friends in the several
States to complete the list of officers.

_President._--Elizabeth Cady Stanton. _Vice-Presidents._--Elizabeth B.
Phelps, New York; Anna E. Dickinson, Pennsylvania; Mrs. Kate N.
Doggett, Illinois; Madam Anneke, Wisconsin; Mrs. Lucy Elmes,
Connecticut; Mrs. Senator Henderson, Missouri; Mattie Griffith Brown,
Massachusetts; Mrs. Nicholas Smith, Kansas; Lucy A. Snow, Maine;
Elizabeth B. Schenck, California; Josephine S. Griffing, D.C.; Paulina
W. Davis, Rhode Island; Miss Phoebe W. Couzins, Missouri.
_Corresponding Secretaries._--Mrs. Laura Curtis Bullard, Ida Greeley,
Adelaide Hallock. _Recording Secretaries._--Abby Burton Crosby, Sarah
E. Fuller. _Treasurer._--Elizabeth Smith Miller. _Executive
Committee._--Ernestine L. Rose, Charlotte B. Wilbour, Mathilde F.
Wendt, Mary F. Gilbert, Susan B. Anthony. _Advisory Counsel._--Matilda
Joslyn Gage, New York; Mrs. Francis Minor, Missouri; Adeline Thompson,
Pennsylvania; Mrs. M. B. Longley, Ohio; Mrs. Dr. J. P. Root, Kansas;
Lilie Peckham, Wisconsin.

_Constitution_--Article 1. This organization shall be called the
National Woman Suffrage Association.

Article 2. Its object shall be to secure the Ballot to the women of
the nation on equal terms with men.

Article 3. Any citizen of the United States favoring this object,
shall, by the payment of the sum of one dollar annually into the
treasury, be considered a member of the Association, and no other
shall be entitled to vote in its deliberations.

Article 4. The officers of the Association shall be a President, a
Vice-President from each of the States and Territories, Corresponding
and Recording Secretaries, Treasurer, an Executive Committee of not
less than five nor more than nine members, located in New York City,
and an Advisory Counsel of one person from each State and Territory,
who shall be members of the National Executive Committee. The officers
shall be chosen at each annual meeting of the Association.

Article 5. Any Woman's Suffrage Association may become auxiliary to
the National Association by its officers becoming members of the
Parent Association and sending an annual contribution of not less than
twenty-five dollars.

PETITION FOR WOMEN SUFFRAGE.--The following Petition was adopted by
the National Woman Suffrage Association at their meeting held at the
Woman's Bureau, June 1, 1869:

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:

The undersigned men and women of the United States ask for the prompt
passage by your Honorable Bodies of a Sixteenth Amendment to the
Constitution, to be submitted to the Legislatures of the several
States for ratification, which shall secure to all citizens the right
of suffrage without distinction of sex.

_The Revolution_ of May 27, 1869, said: "NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE
ASSOCIATION.--It is with great pleasure that we announce that Anna E.
Dickinson will deliver the inaugural address of the new National Woman
Suffrage movement at the Cooper Institute to-morrow (Friday) evening
at eight o'clock, also that Miss Dickinson consents to represent
Pennsylvania in that Association as its Vice-President. The title of
Anna Dickinson's lecture is "Nothing Unreasonable."

CHICAGO, Illinois.

_Dear Miss Anthony_: As to the new Society, God bless and speed it.
Write me down for anything in which I can serve it. I feel like "a new
hand," but I am not so dull but I can learn. Please put my name on
your list of members, and also on your list of subscribers.

With entire sympathy, KATE N. DOGGETT.

MANHATTAN, Kansas, _June 3, 1869_.

I shall be indeed proud to represent Kansas in the new National Woman
Suffrage Association, whose formation meets my hearty approval.
Definiteness of purpose is always conducive to success, and I think it
would be well now to concentrate all our efforts upon the one idea of
"Suffrage for Women." You may rely upon me to do whatever lies within
my power and ability to further the cause.

Yours truly, MARY A. HUMPHREY.

[125] NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE CONVENTION AT NEWPORT, R.I.--A Woman
Suffrage Convention will be held in the Academy of Music at Newport,
R.I., on Wednesday and Thursday the 25th and 26th days of August next.
The success attending the recent gathering at Saratoga warrants the
most sanguine hopes and expectations from this also. The intense
interest now everywhere felt on the great question renders all appeal
for a full attendance unnecessary. Among the speakers will be
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs. Paulina Wright Davis, Mrs. Celia
Burleigh, Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Mrs. Wilbour, and Miss Susan B.
Anthony. The Misses Alice and Phoebe Cary, Mrs. Isabella Beecher
Hooker, Mrs. E. H. Bullard, and many other of the most eminent women
of the country will be in attendance. Names of other speakers will be
announced hereafter.

In behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, President.

A. L. NORTON, PAULINA W. DAVIS,
Advisory Counsel for the State of Rhode Island.

[126]

LONDON, July 18, 1869.

_Mrs. President and Members of the Woman's National Suffrage
Association_:

I send an account of the first woman suffrage meeting ever held in
London. But if we may judge anything of the prospects of the movement
from the list of men and women who have interested themselves in the
cause, it will not be the last. When such men as John Stuart Mill,
Charles Kingsley, Prof. Newman, and their peers, put the shoulder to
the wheel, a cause is bound to move on and crush all obstacles in the
way of its progress. No old stumbling blocks of prejudice, or deep
ruts of conventionality can impede the onward movement. As in America,
I find that intellect, genius, wealth, and fashion even, are beginning
in England to fall into the ranks and push on the woman suffrage
question. Miss Frances Power Cobbe writes me: "The uprising of a sex
throughout the civilized world, is certainly an unique fact in
history, and can hardly fail of some important results."

With the confident expectation that her prophecy will find a speedy
and perhaps grander fulfillment than she or any of us dream of now, I
remain yours, respectfully,

LAURA C. BULLARD, _Cor. Sec'y N. W. S. Association_.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE NEW DEPARTURE.

UNDER THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT.

Francis Minor's Resolutions--Hearing before Congressional
Committee--Descriptions by Mrs. Fannie Howland and Grace
Greenwood--Washington Convention, 1870--Rev. Samuel J.
May--Senator Carpenter--Professor Sprague, of Cornell
University--Notes of Mrs. Hooker--May Anniversary in New
York--The Fifth Avenue Conference--Second Decade
Celebration--Washington, 1871--Victoria Woodhull's
Memorial--Judiciary Committee--Majority and Minority
Reports--George W. Julian and A. A. Sargent in the House--May
Anniversary, 1871--Washington in 1872--Senate Judiciary
Committee--Benjamin F. Butler--The Sherman-Dahlgren
Protest--Women in Grant and Wilson Campaign.

Although with Charles Sumner many believed that under the original
Constitution women were citizens and therefore voters in our Republic,
much more bold and invincible were their claims when the XIV.
Amendment added new barriers to the already strong bulwarks of the
Supreme Law of the land.

The significance of these amendments in reference to women was first
seen by Francis Minor, of Missouri, a member of the legal profession
in St. Louis. He called attention to the view of the question,
afterward adopted by many leading lawyers of the American bar, that
women were enfranchised by the letter and spirit of the XIV.
Amendment. On this interpretation the officers of the National
Association began soon after to base their speeches, resolutions, and
hearings before Congress, and to make divers attempts to vote in
different parts of the country.

At a woman suffrage convention in St. Louis, October, 1869, the
following suggestive resolutions were presented by Francis Minor,
Esq., enclosed in the accompanying letter to _The Revolution_:

ST. LOUIS, Oct. 14, 1869.

DEAR REVOLUTION:--I wish to say a few words about the action of
the Woman's Suffrage Convention just held here. It is everywhere
spoken of as a complete success, both in point of numbers and the
orderly decorum with which its proceedings were conducted. But I
desire to call special attention to the resolutions adopted. When
I framed them, I looked beyond the action of this Convention.
These resolutions place the cause of equal rights far in advance
of any position heretofore taken. Now, for the first time, the
views and purposes of our organization assume a fixed purpose and
definite end. We no longer beat the air--no longer assume merely
the attitude of petitioners. We claim a right, based upon
citizenship. These resolutions will stand the test of legal
criticism--and I write now to ask, if a case can not be made at
your coming election. If this were done, in no other way could
our cause be more widely, and at the same time definitely brought
before the public. Every newspaper in the land would tell the
story, every fireside would hear the news. The question would be
thoroughly discussed by thousands, who now give it no
thought--and by the time it reached the court of final resort,
the popular verdict would be in accord with the judgment that is
sure to be rendered. If these resolutions are right, let the
question be settled by individual determination. A case could not
be made here for a year to come, but you could make one in New
York at the coming election.

Respectfully, FRANCIS MINOR.

THE ST. LOUIS RESOLUTIONS.

WHEREAS, In the adjustment of the question of suffrage now
before the people of this country for settlement, it is of
the highest importance that the organic law of the land
should be so framed and construed as to work injustice to
none, but secure as far as possible perfect political
equality among all classes of citizens; and,

WHEREAS, All persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they
reside; be it

_Resolved_, 1. That the immunities and privileges of
American citizenship, however defined, are National in
character and paramount to all State authority.

2. That while the Constitution of the United States leaves
the qualification of electors to the several States, it
nowhere gives them the right to deprive any citizen of the
elective franchise which is possessed by any other
citizen--to regulate, not including the right to prohibit
the franchise.

3. That, as the Constitution of the United States expressly
declares that no State shall make or enforce any laws that
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of
the United States, those provisions of the several State
Constitutions that exclude women from the franchise on
account of sex, are violative alike of the spirit and letter
of the Federal Constitution.

4. That, as the subject of naturalization is expressly
withheld from the States, and as the States clearly would
have no right to deprive of the franchise naturalized
citizens, among whom women are expressly included, still
more clearly have they no right to deprive native-born women
citizens of this right.

5. That justice and equity can only be attained by having
the same laws for men and women alike.

6. That having full faith and confidence in the truth and
justice of these principles, we will never cease to urge the
claims of women to a participation in the affairs of
government equal with men.

Extracts from the Constitution of the United States, upon which
the resolutions are based:

PREAMBLE, We, the people of the United States, in order to
form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure
domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and
establish this Constitution for the United States of
America.

ARTICLE I. Sec. 2. The House of Representatives shall be
composed of members chosen every second year by the people
of the several States, and the electors in each State shall
have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most
numerous branch of the State Legislature.

[Illustration: Virginia L. Minor.]

SEC. 4. The times, places, and manner of holding elections
for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each
State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may, at
any time, by law, alter such regulations, except as to the
places of choosing Senators.--[See Elliot's Debates, vol. 3,
p. 366--remarks of Mr. Madison--Story's Commentaries, Secs.
623, 626, 578].

SEC. 8. The Congress shall have power to establish a uniform
mode of naturalization--to make all laws which shall be
necessary and proper for carrying into execution the
foregoing powers vested by this Constitution in the
Government of the United States, or in any department or
officer thereof.

SEC. 9. No bill of attainder, or _ex post facto_ law shall
be passed.

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States.

No State shall pass any bill of attainder, _ex post facto_
law--or law impairing the obligations of contracts, or grant
any title of nobility.--(See Cummings _vs._ the State of
Missouri. Wallace Rep. 278, and Exparte Garland, same
volume).

ARTICLE IV. Sec. 2. The citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the
several States. (The elective franchise is one of the
privileges secured by this section--See Corfield _vs._
Coryell, 4 Washington Circuit Court Reps. 380--cited and
approved in Dunham _vs._ Lamphere, 3 Gray--Mass. Rep.
276--and Bennett _vs._ Boggs, Baldwin Rep., p. 72, Circuit
Court U. S.)

SEC. 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in
this Union a republican form of government. (How can that
form of government be republican, when one-half the people
are forever deprived of all participation in its affairs).

ARTICLE VI. This Constitution, and the laws of the United
States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, shall be
the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State
shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws
of any States to the contrary notwithstanding.

XIV. AMENDMENT. All persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they
reside.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States.

At this same convention Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, President of the
Missouri State Association, in her opening address said:

I believe that the Constitution of the United States gives me
every right and privilege to which every other citizen is
entitled; for while the Constitution gives the States the right
to regulate suffrage, it nowhere gives them power to prevent it.
The power to regulate is one thing, the power to prevent is an
entirely different thing. Thus the State can say where, when, and
what citizens may exercise the right of suffrage. If she can say
that a woman, who is a citizen of the United States, shall not
vote, then she can equally say that a Chinaman, who is not a
citizen, shall vote and represent her in Congress. The foreign
naturalized citizen claims his right to vote from and under the
paramount authority of the Federal Government, and the State has
no right to prevent him from voting, and thus place him in a
lower degree or grade of citizenship than that of free citizens.
This being the case, is it presumable that a foreign citizen is
intended to be placed higher than one born on our soil? Under our
Constitution and laws, woman is a naturalized citizen with her
husband. There are men in this town to-day, to my certain
knowledge, who have had this boon of citizenship thrust upon
them, who scorned the name, and who freely claimed allegiance to
a foreign power. Our Government has existed for eighty years, yet
this question of citizenship has never been settled. In 1856 the
question came before the then Attorney-General, Mr. Cushing, as
to whether Indians were citizens of the United States, and as
such, were entitled to the privilege of preempting our public
lands. He gave it as his opinion that they were not citizens, but
domestic subjects, and therefore not entitled to the benefits of
the act.

In 1821 the question came before Attorney-General William Wirt,
as to whether free persons of color in the State of Virginia were
citizens of the United States, and as such, entitled to command
vessels engaged in foreign trade. He gave it as his opinion that
they were not, that the Constitution by the term citizen, and by
its description of citizen, meant only those who were entitled to
all the privileges of free white persons, and negroes were not
citizens. In 1843 the question came before Attorney-General
Legree, of South Carolina, as to whether free negroes of that
State were citizens, and he gave it as his opinion that as the
law of Congress intended only to exclude aliens, therefore that
they as denizens could take advantage of the act. Mr. Marcy, in
1856, decided that negroes were not citizens, but entitled to the
protection of the Government.

In justice to our sex, I must ask you to bear in mind the fact
that all these wise Secretaries of State and Attorney-Generals,
were men that made these singular decisions, not illogical,
unreasoning women, totally incapable of understanding politics.
And lastly, in 1862, our late honored and lamented
fellow-citizen, Attorney-General Bates, decided that free negroes
were citizens. Thus, you see, it took forty-one years to make
this simple discovery. I have cited all these examples to show
you that all rights and privileges depend merely on the
acknowledgment of our right as citizens, and wherever this
question has arisen the Government has universally conceded that
we are citizens; and as such, I claim that if we are entitled to
two or three privileges, we are entitled to all. This question of
woman's right to the ballot has never yet been raised in any
quarter. It has yet to be tested whether a free, moral,
intelligent woman, highly cultivated, every dollar of whose
income and property are taxed equally with that of all men, shall
be placed by our laws on a level with the savage. I am often
jeeringly asked, "If the Constitution gives you this right, why
don't you take it?" My reply is both a statement and a question.
The State of Massachusetts allows negroes to vote. The
Constitution of the United States says the citizens of each State
shall be allowed all the privileges of the citizens in the
several States. Now, I ask you, can a woman or negro vote in
Missouri? You have placed us on the same level. Yet, by such
question you hold us responsible for the unstatesmanlike piece of
patchwork which you call the Constitution of Missouri! Women of
the State, let us no longer submit to occupy so degraded a
position! Disguise it as you may, the disfranchised class is ever
a degraded class. Let us lend all our energies to have the stigma
removed from us. Failing before the Legislatures, we must then
turn to the Supreme Court of our land and ask it to decide what
are our rights as citizens, or, at least, not doing that, give us
the privilege of the Indian, and exempt us from the burden of
taxation to support so unjust a Government. [Applause].

Ten thousand extra copies of _The Revolution_ containing these
resolutions and this speech were published and sent to friends
throughout the country, laid on every member's desk in Congress, and
circulated at the Washington Convention of 1870. From this hour up to
the time of the Supreme Court decision in the case of Virginia L.
Minor in 1875, the National Woman Suffrage Association took this view
in regard to the XIV. Amendment. Mrs. Stanton, fully accepting the new
position, made her speech on that basis before the Congressional
Committee[127] on the District of Columbia. In calling this Committee
to order Senator Hamlin said:

We have met this morning for the purpose of considering two
petitions which have been presented, I believe, only to the
Senate Committee of the District of Columbia. The first one is a
petition, very numerously signed, I think, by both ladies and
gentlemen of this city, and in a few brief words it says that:
"The undersigned, residents of the District of Columbia,
earnestly but respectfully request that you extend the right of
suffrage to the women of the District." The other memorial, very
nearly as brief, is in these words: "The undersigned citizens of
the United States pray your honorable body that in the proposed
amendments to the Constitution which may come before you in
regard to suffrage, and in any law affecting suffrage, in the
District of Columbia or in any Territory, the right of voting may
be given to the women on the same terms as to the men." Upon this
subject we have some lady friends who desire to address us, and I
have the pleasure of introducing to you Mrs. Stanton.

Mrs. STANTON said: Accustomed to appeal to the sentiments and
combat the prejudices of popular assemblies, it is a
comparatively easy task to plead the cause of woman before clear,
logical, dispassionate minds--committees of statesmen--trained to
view all subjects in the light of pure reason; for unprejudiced
minds admit to-day that if the democratic theory of government is
true, the argument lies wholly on our side of this question. As
history shows that each step in civilization has been a steady
approximation to our democratic theory, securing larger liberties
to the people, it is fair to infer that its full realization--the
equal rights of all--will be the best possible government.
Whatever is true in theory is safe in practice, and those holding
the destinies of nations in their hands should legislate with a
sublime faith in eternal principles. As bills are soon to be
introduced in both the Senate and the House, asking further
special legislation, we appear before you at this time to urge
that the women of the District shall share equally in all the
rights, privileges, and immunities you propose to confer on male
citizens.

In the adjustment of the question of suffrage, now before the
people of this country for settlement, it is of the highest
importance that the organic law of the land should be so framed
and construed as to secure political equality to all citizens.

While the Constitution of the United States leaves the
qualifications of electors to the several States, it nowhere
gives them the right to deprive any citizen of the elective
franchise; they may regulate, but not prohibit the franchise. The
Constitution of the United States expressly declares that no
State shall make or enforce any law that shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; hence
those provisions of the several State constitutions that exclude
women from the franchise are in direct violation of the Federal
Constitution. Even the preamble recognizes, in the phrase "We,
the people," the true origin of all just government.

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.

Are not women people?

SEC. 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in
this Union a republican form of government.

How can that form of government be republican, when one-half the
people are forever deprived of all participation in its affairs?

ARTICLE VI. The Constitution and the laws of the United
States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, shall be
the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State
shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws
of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

The Constitution tells us, too, who are citizens. The XIV.
Amendment says:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside.

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States.

It has just been decided by the Supreme Court that a foreign born
woman is naturalized by marriage to a native. Therefore, as birth
and marriage secure the right of citizenship to large numbers,
the remaining classes of foreign unmarried women should secure
naturalization papers, that we may all test our right to vote in
the courts. As the subject of naturalization is expressly
withheld from the States, and as the States would clearly have no
right to deprive of the franchise naturalized citizens, among
whom women are expressly included, still more clearly have they
no right to deprive native born women citizens of this right.

The States have the right to regulate but not to prohibit the
elective franchise to citizens of the United States. Thus the
States may determine the qualifications of electors. They may
require the elector to be of a certain age, to have had a fixed
residence, to be of a sane mind, and unconvicted of crime, etc.;
but to go beyond this, and say to one-half the citizens of the
State, notwithstanding you possess all these qualifications, you
shall never vote, is of the very essence of despotism. It is a
bill of attainder of the most odious character.

On this point the Constitution says:

ART. I., Sec. 9. No bill of attainder, or _ex post facto_
law shall be passed.

No title of nobility shall be granted by the United States.

No State shall pass any bill of attainder, _ex post facto_
law, impairing the obligations of contracts, or grant any
title of nobility. (See Cummings vs. the State of Mo., 4th
Wallace Rep 278, and Exparte Garland, same volume.)

Opposed to this provision of the Constitution, by the XV.
Amendment you have established an aristocracy of sex, sanctioning
the unjust legislation of the several States, which make all men
nobles, all women serfs. Justice and equity can only be attained
by having the same laws for men and women in the District as well
as the State.

A further investigation of the subject will show that the
language of the constitutions of all the States, with the
exception of those of Massachusetts and Virginia, on the subject
of suffrage is peculiar. They almost all read substantially
alike. "White male citizens, etc., shall be entitled to vote,"
and this is supposed to exclude all other citizens. There is no
direct exclusion, except in the two States above named. Now the
error lies in supposing that an enabling clause is necessary at
all. The right of the people of a State to participate in a
government of their own creation requires no enabling clause;
neither can it be taken from them by implication. To hold
otherwise, would be to interpolate in the constitution a
prohibition that does not exist. In framing a constitution the
people are assembled in their sovereign capacity; and being
possessed of all rights and all powers, what is not surrendered
is retained. Nothing short of a direct prohibition can work a
deprivation of rights that are fundamental.

In the language of John Jay to the people of New York, urging the
adoption of the Constitution of the United States, "silence and
blank paper neither give nor take away anything," and Alexander
Hamilton says (_Federalist_, No. 83), "Every man of discernment
must at once perceive the wide difference between silence and
abolition." The mode and manner in which the people shall take
part in the government of their creation may be prescribed by the
constitution, but the right itself is antecedent to all
constitutions. It is inalienable, and can neither be bought, nor
sold, nor given away. But even if it should be held that this
view is untenable, and that women are disfranchised by the
several State Constitutions directly, or by implication, then I
say that such prohibitions are clearly in conflict with the
Constitution of the United States and yield thereto.

The proposition is now before the people of the District to
abolish the municipal government and reduce this to a mere
territory, which is clearly retrogressive legislation; as in the
former, the chief magistrate is elected by the people and in the
latter appointed by the President. In your civil rights bill,
compelling black and white to vote together, to go to school
together, to ride in the cars together, you have taken a grand
step in progress. If in the proposed bills soon to come before
you for the establishment of a medical college in the District,
and an improved school system, you shall as carefully guard the
rights of women to equal place and salary, you will take another
onward step. In making the changes you propose, it is evident you
are doing to-day an elementary work in which all the people
should have a voice; hence, your primal duty is to extend to the
women of the District the right of suffrage, that they may vote
on the schools, colleges, hospitals, prisons, and whether their
government shall be republican with a Representative in Congress,
municipal officers, or territorial with a Governor appointed by
the President. In doing such fundamental work, many
distinguished publicists have expressed the opinion that all the
people should have a voice. In the debates in the Illinois
Convention, now in session, members refused to swear to support
the State Constitution, because, said they, "it is absurd to
swear to support what we are now tearing to pieces. We are doing
an elementary work, and are amenable to the Federal Constitution
alone."

Ever since the abolition of slavery, the District has been
resolved into its original elements. In fact by the war, and the
revision of the Federal Constitution, the nation, too, has been
resolved into its original elements, and the women have to-day,
the right to say on what basis the District, their several
States, and the nation shall be reconstructed. We think,
honorable gentlemen, you must all see the broad application of
this principle. And if all the people should have a voice in the
revision of a State or national constitution, women must be
included. The Constitution confers, by express grant upon
Congress, "exclusive jurisdiction in all cases whatsoever," for
the purposes of government. Under this grant Congress, by the
first section of the act of January 8, 1867, enacted that each
and every male person of the age of twenty-one years, who shall
have been born or naturalized in the United States, who shall
have resided in the said District for the period of one year, and
three months in the ward or election precinct in which he shall
offer to vote, shall be entitled to the elective franchise, and
shall be deemed an elector, and entitled to vote. This act, you
perceive, recognizes the pre-existing right of all persons, and
excludes women only by the use of the word male, unless, as
Hamilton says, "silence on that point is not abolition."

It is fitting that here, under the shadow of the national
capitol, under the control of the Federal Government, where the
black man was first emancipated and enfranchised, that the
experiment of a true republicanism should be tried, by securing
to woman, too, the rights of an American citizen.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY addressed the Committee as follows: We are here
for the express purpose of urging you to present in your
respective bodies, a bill to strike the word "male" from the
District of Columbia Suffrage Act, and thereby enfranchise the
women of the District. We ask that the experiment of woman
suffrage shall be tried here, under the eye of Congress, as was
that of negro suffrage. Indeed, the District has ever been made
the experimental ground of each step toward freedom. The
auction-block was here first banished, slavery was here first
abolished, the newly-made freemen were here first enfranchised;
and we now ask that the women shall here be first admitted to the
ballot. There was great fear and trepidation all over the country
as to the results of negro suffrage, and you deemed it right and
safe to inaugurate the experiment here; and you all remember that
three days discussion in 1866 on Senator Cowan's proposition to
amend the Senate bill by striking out the word "male;" the able
speeches of Cowan, Anthony, Gratz Brown, Wade, and the Senate's
nine votes for the amendment. Well do I remember with what
anxious hope we watched the daily reports of that debate, and how
we prayed that Congress might then declare for the establishment
in this District of a real, practical republic. But conscience,
or courage, or something was wanting, and women were bidden still
to wait.

When, on that March day of 1867, the negroes of the District
first voted, with what anxiety did the people wait, and with what
joy did they read the glad tidings, flashed over the wires the
following morning! And the success of that first election in
this District, inspired Congress with confidence to pass the
proposition for the XV. Amendment, and the different States to
ratify it until it has become a fixed fact that black men all
over the nation may not only vote, but sit in legislative
assemblies and constitutional conventions. We now ask Congress to
do the same for women. We ask you to enfranchise the women of the
District this very winter, so that next March they may go to the
ballot-box, and all the people of this nation may see that it is
possible for women to vote and the republic to stand. There is no
reason, no argument, nothing but prejudice, against our demand;
and there is no way to break down this prejudice but to try the
experiment. Therefore we most earnestly urge it, in full faith
that so soon as Congress and the people shall have witnessed its
beneficial results, they will go forward with a XVI. Amendment
that shall prohibit any State to disfranchise any of its citizens
on account of sex.

Mrs. HOOKER said: The fifth commandment, "Honor thy father and
thy mother," can not be obeyed while boys are taught by our laws
and constitutions to hold all women in contempt. I feel it is not
only woman's right, but duty to assume responsibility in the
government. I think the importance of the subject demands its
hearing.

Madam ANNEKE: You have lifted up the slave on this continent;
listen now to woman's cry for freedom.

Mrs. MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE: Liberty is an instinct of the human
heart, and men desirous of creating change in governments or
religion have led other men by promising them greater liberty and
better laws. Nothing is too good, too great, too sacred for
humanity--and, as part of humanity, woman as well as man demands
the best that governments have to offer. Honorable gentlemen have
spoken of petitions. For twenty years we have petitioned, and I
now hold in my hand over three thousand names of citizens from
but a small portion of the State of New York, asking that justice
shall be done women by granting them suffrage. But people have
become tired of begging for rights, and many persons favoring
this cause will not again petition. We but ask justice, and we
say to you that the stability of any government depends upon its
doing justice to the most humble individual under it.

Mrs. PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS: We are tired of petitioning. It is
time our legislators knew what was right and gave us justice.

Mrs. WILBOUR remarked that a lady of the district near her said
she had obtained 1,500 signatures in one ward of the city to a
petition.

Senator PATTERSON inquired what the effect would be in case women
were allowed to vote, if there were a difference of opinion
between the husband and wife on some political question--where
the authority of the family would rest?

Mrs. STANTON replied that there was always a superior will and
brain in every family. If it was the man, he would rule; if it
was the woman, she would rule. Individuality would be preserved
in the family as well as in society.

Hon. Mr. WELKER wanted to know if the women in the District had
shown any interest in the movement yet.

Mrs. STANTON replied that they had; they had attended the
sessions of the Convention held here, and all she had spoken to
were in favor of it.

Mrs. WILBOUR said the petition of 1,500 women of the District
asking for suffrage had been presented to Congress this very
winter.

Hon. Mr. COOKE said that the Committee on the District of
Columbia could not get enough time allowed them by the House to
transact the necessary business of the District during the short
morning hour to which they were limited by the rules, and he
feared they would be unable to get the action of the House on the
subject.

Miss ANTHONY said that they must make time enough to present the
bill at least; and asked if women had the right to vote, and make
and unmake members, if they could not then find time to plead
woman's cause?

The honorable member was obliged to answer this pertinent
question in the affirmative.

Senator HAMLIN said the Committee would take the matter into
consideration and discuss it; that in Scripture language he could
say he "was almost, if not quite, persuaded."

Altogether the hearing was serious and impressive, and it was evident
that the honorable gentlemen had already given the subject a
thoughtful consideration. As each member of the Congressional
Committee was presented by Senator Hamlin, the ladies had abundant
opportunity for learning their individual opinions. Senator Sumner
never appeared more genial, and said though he had been in Congress
for twenty years, and through the exciting scenes of the Nebraska Act,
Emancipation, District of Columbia Suffrage Act, and Reconstruction,
he had never seen a committee in which were present so many Senators
and Representatives, so many spectators, and so much interest
manifested in the subject under discussion.

The following description (in the _Hartford Courant_) is from the pen
of Mrs. Fannie Howland.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 22, 1870.

The close of the Woman's Suffrage Convention in this city was
marked by an event which, no matter how slowly its logical
sequence is developed, must be regarded as initiative.

A committee of ladies appointed by the convention and composed in
great part of those well known as leaders in the movement, was
received at the Capitol by the committee of the Senate and House
(on the District of Columbia) for a formal hearing. The object of
that hearing was to request the honorable gentlemen to present a
bill to Congress for enfranchising the women of the District, as
an experiment preparatory to ultimate acknowledgment of equal
rights for all the women of the United States. The ladies were
received in one of the larger committee rooms, in order to
accommodate a number who wished to be present at this novel
interview. After taking their seats, the Hon. Hannibal Hamlin,
chairman, presented to them successively the gentlemen of the
committee, who certainly greeted their fair appellants with the
deferential courtesy due to fellow-sovereigns, albeit
unacknowledged and disguised, for the present, under the odium of
disfranchisement.

The gentlemen took their seats around a long table in the middle
of the room. Mrs. Stanton stood at one end, serene and
dignified. Behind her sat a large semi-circle of ladies, and
close about her a group of her companions, who would have been
remarkable anywhere for the intellectual refinement and elevated
expression of their earnest faces. Opposite, at the other end of
the table, sat Charles Sumner, looking fatigued and worn, but
listening with alert attention. So these two veterans in the
cause of freedom were fitly and suggestively brought face to
face.

The scene was impressive. It was simple, grand, historic. Women
have often appeared in history--noble, brilliant, heroic women;
but _woman_ collectively, impersonally, never until now. To-day,
for the first time, she asks recognition in the commonwealth--not
in virtue of hereditary noblesse--not for any excellence or
achievement of individuals, but on the simple ground of her
presence in the race, with the same rights, interests,
responsibilities as man. There was nothing in this gathering at
the Capitol to touch the imagination with illusion, no ball-room
splendor of light and fragrance and jewels, none of those
graceful enchantments by which women have been content to reign
through brief dynasties of beauty over briefer fealties of
homage. The cool light of a winter morning, the bare walls of a
committee room, the plain costumes of every day use, held the
mind strictly to the simple facts which gave that group of
representative men and women its moral significance, its severe
but picturesque unity. Some future artist, looking back for a
memorable illustration of this period, will put this new
"Declaration of Independence" upon canvas, and will ransack the
land for portraits of those ladies who first spoke for their
countrywomen at the Capitol, and of those Senators and
Representatives who first gave them audience.

Mrs. Stanton's speech was brief and able, eloquent from the
simplicity and earnestness of her heart, logical from the well
disciplined vigor of her mind. She was followed by Miss Anthony,
morally as inevitable and impersonal as a Greek chorus, but
physically and intellectually individual, intense, original, full
of humor and good nature--anything but the roaring lioness of
newspaper reports some years ago. Mrs. Davis, of Rhode Island,
spoke briefly in support of the demand for franchise. Mrs. I. B.
Hooker presented the Scriptural argument for the equality of
woman in all moral responsibility and duty under the divine law.
She spoke very feelingly, and was heard with marked attention. A
German lady from Wisconsin who, weighed in any balance, would not
be found wanting, struggled to express, in broken English, the
ideas for which she came forward as representing many of her
countrywomen in the West. Madam Anneke fought by her husband's
side in the revolution of 1848; but such an example adds no force
to the argument for woman's suffrage, the plea being made, not
for distinguished exceptional women, but for the average women of
the community.

When the ladies had finished their remarks, the gentlemen were
invited to ask any questions which were suggested by the subject
discussed. Either from indifference or chivalrous sentiment, no
very grave questions were proposed, nothing which required effort
or argument to answer. Probably when the matter comes, as sooner
or later it must come, before Congress, we shall hear some
well-considered defense of the Salic law, which in this
democratic republic, excludes all women from the citizen's
prerogative. One of the honorable gentlemen asked how they could
be certain that any number of women in the United States desired
the ballot. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony recounted their
experience at conventions, the numerous signatures to petitions,
the many demonstrations here and in England in favor of woman
suffrage, but reminded the gentleman that no such separate
expression is required from the unwashed, unkempt immigrants upon
whom the government makes haste to confer unqualified suffrage,
nor from the southern negroes, who are provided for by the XV.
Amendment.

The hearing ended about noon, followed by very cordial shaking
hands and pleasant chat. I do not know if the ladies were invited
to "call again," but am quite sure that Miss Anthony's parting
salutation was an "au revoir." There was some quiet by-play as
the audience dispersed, a little interchange of knowing nods and
condescending smiles, as if to say, "we can keep these absurd
pretensions at bay while _we_ live, and after us the deluge." I
have no doubt that to some persons it appears an extravagant joke
for women to aspire to political equality with the negro. King
George thought it a very good joke when his upstart colonists
steeped their tea in the salt water of Boston harbor, but the
laugh was on their side in the long run. History has no
precedents for the elevation of woman to a civic status, but we
are making precedents every day in our conduct of popular
government. In Athens--where woman was both worshiped and
degraded--the protectress of the city was a feminine ideal whose
glorious image crowned the Parthenon with consummate beauty. In
America, where woman is beloved and respected as nowhere else in
the world--if she is only true to the ideals of private and
public virtue--if she seeks power only as a means for the highest
good of the race, the old fable of the Pellas Athenæ may become
real, and the nation acknowledge with grateful joy, that the
fathers "builded better than they knew," when they placed the
figure of a woman on the dome of their Capitol at Washington.

The second Washington Convention assembled at 10 o'clock, January
19th, 1870, in Lincoln Hall. Mrs. Stanton called the assemblage to
order and invited the Rev. Samuel J. May to open the convention with
prayer. Letters were read from John Stuart Mill, Robert Purvis, Clara
Barton, and others. Miss Barton appealed to her soldier friends in
behalf of woman's right of suffrage thus:

Brothers, when you were weak, and I was strong, I toiled for you.
Now you are strong, and I am weak because of my work for you, I
ask your aid. I ask the ballot for myself and my sex, and as I
stood by you, I pray you stand by me and mine.

Mr. Purvis closed his eloquent letter with these sentiments:

Censured as I may be for apparent inconsistency, as a member and
an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in approving a
movement whose leaders are opposed to the passage of the XV.
Amendment, I must be true to my own soul, to my sense of the
absolute demands of justice, and hence, I say that, much as I
desire (and Heaven knows how deeply through life I have
antagonized therefor) the possession of all my rights as an
American citizen, were I a woman, black or white, I would resist,
by every feeling of self-respect and personal dignity, any and
every encroachment of power, every act of tyranny (for such they
will be), based upon the impious, false, and infamous assumption
of superiority of sex.

Mr. Sinclair Toucey, of New York, wrote a letter in which he said:

The argument of to-day against the legal and political equality
of the sexes carries one back to the days of pro-slavery
ascendency, and brings vividly to mind the old wail of the
non-humanity of the negro, and his lack of capacity for
civilizing improvements: and though the opponents of equal rights
for both sexes do not go quite so far as to deny the humanity of
women, yet one might believe they would, did not such a denial
involve their own status.... In a feeble manner I fought the old
pro-slavery dogma, and in a feeble manner I am trying to fight
its twin--the non-equality of the sexes.... I believe in the
brotherhood of man, regardless of sex, color, or birth-place, and
that every member of the great family is entitled to equal rights
in life's ceaseless struggles.

Mr. Mill's letter was as follows:

AVIGNON, France, Dec. 11, 1869.

DEAR MADAM: I should have reason to be ashamed of myself if your
name were unknown to me. I am not likely to forget one who stood
in the front rank of the woman's rights movement in its small
beginnings, and helped it forward so vigorously in its early and
most difficult stages. You and Mrs. Mott have well deserved to
live to see the cause in its present prosperity, and may now
fairly hope to see a commencement of victory in some of the
States at least. I have received many kind and cordial
invitations to visit the United States, and were I able, the
great convention to which you invite me would certainly be a
strong inducement to do so. My dislike to a sea voyage would not
of itself prevent me, if there were not a greater obstacle--want
of time. I have many things to do yet, before I die, and some
months (it is not worth while going to America for less) is a
great deal to give at my time of life, especially as it would
not, like ordinary traveling, be a time of mental rest, but
something very different. I regret my inability the less, as the
friends of the cause in America are quite able to dispense with
direct personal co-operation from England. The really important
co-operation is the encouragement we give one another by the
success of each in our own country. For Great Britain this
success is much greater than appears on the surface, for our
people, as you know, shrink much more timidly than Americans from
attracting public notice to themselves; and the era of great
public meetings on this subject has not arrived in our country,
though it may be near at hand. I need hardly say how much I am
gratified at the mode in which my name was mentioned in the
National Convention at Newport, and still more at the tribute to
the memory of my dear wife, who from early youth was devoted to
this cause, and had done invaluable service to it as the inspirer
and instructor of others, even before writing the essay so
deservedly eulogized in your resolutions. To her I owe the far
greater part of whatever I have myself been able to do for the
cause, for though from my boyhood I was a convinced adherent of
it, on the ground of justice, it was she who taught me to
understand the less obvious bearings of the subject, and its
close connection with all the great moral and social interests of
the cause. I am, dear madam, very sincerely yours,

J. S. MILL.
To Mrs. Paulina W. Davis.

Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, was introduced and made some very
appropriate remarks:

He said he was no new convert to this idea of woman's right to
suffrage. Woman claims the right to vote, not because she is a
woman, and stronger or weaker than man, but because she is a
citizen, amenable to the laws and under the control of the
government. He did not propose to vote to simply give woman the
franchise, but to remove the obstacles that now forbid the
exercise of that right. He welcomed to this organization every
earnest worker, and he was glad to hear that they were stirring
up the elements. He had been waiting for the last two months for
petitions, but he thought the franchise would never be secured to
any class until it was imbedded in the constitution, and put
beyond the freaks of politicians and majorities in State
Legislatures. He was in favor of carrying the movement into the
fundamental law of the land. The negro's hour is passed, and it
is woman's hour now. The negro has had his day, his cause has
triumphed, and as woman is a citizen, and we need her ballot in
the government, I hope that this movement may have a triumphant
success.

Committees[128] were appointed. Mrs. Wright of Auburn, N. Y., stated
that her sister, Lucretia Mott, had charged her with a message to the
Convention, she sent her "God speed" to the movement, and regretted
that she could not be present.

Paulina W. Davis read an interesting history of the woman's rights
movement, giving a brief sketch of its leaders. Miss Anthony
introduced a series of resolutions,[129] which were laid on the table
for debate.

Mrs. M. GAGE, Secretary of the Suffrage Association of New York,
addressed the Convention. She thought the world had never yet
seen what woman could do, because she had never been given the
opportunity. The ballot is the symbol of a higher power than a
king's crown; it is the promise of justice to him who holds it.
John Bright said no oppression, however hoary headed, could stand
the voice of the people.

Mrs. SUSAN EDSON, of Washington, desired to have the Committee on
Resolutions urge upon Congress the passage of the bill now before
it, providing for the reorganization of the Treasury Department,
but opposing that section of the bill which fixes the salary of
the female employees lower than that of the men. She thought this
was a proper subject for the convention to discuss.

At the evening session Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing occupied the chair.

Hon. JAMES M. SCOVILL, of New Jersey, said:--I believe in
heroism. Grant won with the sword at Appomattox what Charles
Sumner contended for half a century--an idea. That idea is the
liberty of all, limited by the like liberty of each. To-night we
are here to bow to conscience, not to caste. Susan B. Anthony,
the heroine of the hour, sustained by such brave souls as crowd
this platform, who for the last twenty years have worked without
fear and without reproach, deserves the thanks of millions yet
to be, for she is the hero, the champion of the same idea for
which Abraham Lincoln and half a million soldiers died. The
emancipation of man was the proposition. The enfranchisement of
woman was not the corollary to that proposition, but the major
premise.

John Stuart Mill, in his great book, "The Subjection of Women,"
denies the superior mental capacity of man when compared with
woman. The nineteenth century don't yield a blind assent to such
bosh as Tennyson's, "Woman is the lesser man." It would not do
for Madame de Stael to assert (for alas! it was too true
then--for the first Napoleon never read Rochefort's
"Marseillaise") that man could conquer, but woman must submit to
public opinion. To-day Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anna E.
Dickinson take public opinion by storm, because they use the
everlasting logic of human rights. Woman has power enough
whenever fidelity, or truth, or genius are worshiped. She wants
authority. The will of the nation says, "She shall have it and
that speedily." We want and demand that Congress shall make a
loud "amen" to this clearly expressed will of the nation. The
civil rights bill did little good until you armed the African
with the ballot. Then the old master touched his hat to the new
citizen--his old slave. And why? Because he was a power in the
land. It is only Godlike to use power for humanity; and that is
the way we propose to use it. Congress must hear us--shall hear
us--because we speak in the voice of the people. And I speak to
you as a man, yes, and as a lawyer, when I tell you your boasted
amendments are the small dust of the balance till the XVI. is
written. Then we will have a country, never again clasping the
Bible with the handcuffs of slavery, but a land where we, men and
women alike, can worship a common God, before whom there is
neither Jew nor Greek, "white male" nor female, barbarian,
Scythian, bond nor free.

Mrs. WILBOUR remarked that she was fully aware of the truth that
humanity was a unit. She knew the day was coming when a woman
would be considered the equal of man. No disabilities to vote or
hold office should exist in a free country on account of sex or
color. She was anxious to know by what authority the word "male"
had been placed in the constitution, which governed woman as well
as man. Woman's rights were natural rights--nothing more or less.
She claimed the right of self-rule or self-government as a
natural right. Men were united in saying, "We have the right to
vote." She was not present to be an advocate of woman's rights,
whatever they may be, but of human rights. The largest giant had
no more rights than Tom Thumb. It was brain, not force, that
governed the world. A small hand was able to discharge a musket,
guide an engine, or edit a paper as well as a large one. The
womanly in nature should be expressed by woman, the manly by man;
the two were distinct, and could not be blended together without
spoiling the harmony of the whole. Society had to be governed by
the sacred right of self-government. How could a woman be
responsible for her deeds to God if somebody had control over her
conscience?

Mr. ALBERT G. RIDDLE believed that the question of universal
franchise would be tried before the grand tribunal of the world,
and, if not victorious, it would appeal and appeal again. The
question ought to be met squarely by the "masculines" as well as
by the women. He was an earnest advocate of woman's rights,
because he claimed the same rights for his daughters as for his
sons; he wanted for them the same atmosphere, the same public
opinion, the same prestige. Women were often heard to exclaim, "I
wish I were a man." This elucidates how keenly they feel their
position. Mr. Riddle spoke at length in favor of universal
rights, and his logical arguments attracted the admiration of all
who heard him.

Mrs. JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING stated that the city clergy had
evinced a disinclination to attend the convention, as they could
not see any justification for the same in Divine revelation. She
read a letter from Bishop Simpson, in which he wished the
convention God-speed.

Senator POMEROY said he was in favor of the XVI. Amendment, and
he thought the best place in the world to try the experiment was
in the District of Columbia. They had tried negro suffrage in the
District, and it had proved a success and a benefit. There were
plenty of offices in the city that could be filled by capable and
now idle young ladies, which were at present filled by men
weighing two hundred pounds, who were able to do a day's work but
now received large salaries for little labor.

Rev. SAMUEL J. MAY proposed to test the ladies present as to
their ideas of suffrage. He asked that every lady in the house
who desired the ballot should hold up her hand. A few ladies
responded.

Mrs. STANTON stated that Mr. May had adopted a very bad manner of
submitting the question. She would, therefore, reconsider the
vote, and ask all ladies who opposed the XVI. Amendment to rise
from their seats, and those in favor to retain them. About
sixteen ladies arose, amidst great mirth and laughter.

THE CHAIR then announced that the meeting had expressed itself
largely in favor of female suffrage.

Madam ANNEKE, a German lady, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, stated
that, being a foreigner, allowance should be made for her
defective pronunciation. If she could not speak the English
language, she could speak the language of the heart. She came
from the West, burdened heavily with petitions, signed by one
thousand residents of the State of Wisconsin. She would appeal to
her countrymen, Carl Schurz and Finkelnburg, to assist in this
last struggle for universal liberty.

The Rev. OLYMPIA BROWN addressed herself particularly to that
small minority of ladies who had expressed themselves opposed to
the XVI. Amendment. She admired their independence of character,
for it showed they were the kind of women that the friends of
woman suffrage wished to win over to their cause. She thought
them honest in their opinions, but prejudiced. It required strong
minds to combat against the common enemy--prejudice. They may
think they do not require this right, as they might be blessed
with comfortable homes, and be satisfied with the condition they
were in. A change might come--even to them, but if it did not,
ought they not to pity other women whose situation was less
comfortable than their own? She alluded to the idle lives of
young women, to which they were condemned by the customs of
society, and said Christianity demanded a useful life from every
woman as well as every man. This cause is the cause of the
civilized world, and will go on till the ballot is in the hands
of every American woman.

Mr. STILLMAN, of R. I., had no doubt that the result of this
agitation would be to secure the universal franchise of all
women. Women would be admitted to all colleges of the land, and
to the study of the arts and sciences.

Miss ANTHONY said that Senator Pomeroy's being here to advocate
woman suffrage, might be attributed to the fact that he had a
constituency to sustain him. Let the people of other States make
as strong an expression as Kansas, and their representatives
would quickly find their places here too. She wanted women to
emigrate to Wyoming and make a model State of it by sending a
woman Senator to the National capitol. She would go there, if she
had time, but her mission was in the States until this great
reform was accomplished. She desired women to become members of
the National organization, and to pay their dollar, or
twenty-five, or twenty-five hundred dollars. She requested the
Finance Committee to take their pencils and paper, and canvass
the hall for membership and money, commencing at the door, so as
to catch every fugitive. She invited all ladies who visit New
York to call at the Woman's Bureau, and her own sanctum, the
editorial rooms of _The Revolution_.

At the second evening session, letters[130] were read from Senators
Ross, of Kansas, and Carpenter, of Wisconsin.

Miss JENNIE COLLINS, of Lowell, Mass., addressed the meeting in a
speech of some length, which was broken by frequent applause. She
came to plead the cause of the working women, her associates. She
knew the dignity of the kitchen, many of whose occupants were the
daughters of refined and wealthy parents. If these girls could
tell their story to the ladies of Washington, they would not rest
till Congress had conceded to them their rights. The sufferings
of the factory girls could hardly be described; poor wages for
hard labor, in dirty rooms, shut out from bright sunshine, with
dreary homes, were but part of their misery. With a love of the
ennobling and beautiful, a natural taste for reading and study,
many of them were led astray from the path of virtue by the
artifices of men, often the sons of their own employers, and
nothing was done to prevent their fall.

The President announced that so great was the interest evinced, that a
third day's session had been arranged.

THIRD DAY--MORNING.--Among the large and fashionable audience present
were the Governor of Wyoming Territory, many Senators and Members of
Congress, as well as other distinguished persons. Mrs. GRIFFING read
an interesting letter from Mrs. Frances D. Gage:

More than one-half of the "people," are to-day without the
right of franchise, and can exert no power in the
government, and have no voice in electing its
representatives. They have no voice in making the laws under
which they live. If they commit offenses they are punished
the same as voters. If they have property it is taxed
precisely the same and for the same purposes as is the
property of the voter. Government money and lands and
revenues are appropriated for schools, colleges, and
institutions of learning by the voters for their own use,
while the non-voters are debarred all rights and privileges
in the same. And it may be said that the disfranchised "have
no rights that the enfranchised are bound to respect." ... A
government that fails to execute its own laws and mocks at
its own enactments, can not be respected by its people. We
therefore demand that our representatives "shall guarantee
to every State in this Union a republican form of
government;" that the right of suffrage be guaranteed to all
persons of sound mind and adult years, without regard to
race, color, or sex.

Respectfully, FRANCES D. GAGE.

Rev. SAMUEL J. MAY said this movement was the most radical one
ever proposed to the civilized world. America had suffered
severely because it had violated the rights of 4,000,000 people.
If the rights of 15,000,000 were much longer violated, severer
suffering still would be induced.

CHARLOTTE B. WILBOUR said: In demanding suffrage for women we are
not making any innovation on political principles, but only
attempting to restore the broken connection between practice and
profession. A steady, constant, palpable ignoring of the
application of great truths, like the claim of woman's rights,
and the equality of all before the law, begets a reckless manner
of assertion, an illogical application of premises, and thence a
sort of organic dishonesty of mind which is carried into practice
almost unconsciously. Every subject of a government who has not a
voice in its conduct is openly degraded, and must be something
more or less than human not to show it in the conduct of his
life. We demand the ballot for women in the name of that very
domesticity which is urged against it, of that home whose peace
has always been more marred by passive servility and masculine
authority than by any over-assertion of individuality, on the
part of the so-called partner.

Speeches were also made by Mr. Hinton of Washington, and Miss
Phoebe Couzins.

Miss ANTHONY called upon Senator Sherman, of Ohio, to address the
meeting, who expressed himself highly pleased with the convention
to which he only came as a listener. The following letters were
then read:

SYRACUSE, January 18, 1870.

Mrs. M. J. GAGE--_Dear Friend_: I doubt not this meeting
will urge emphatically upon Congress the duty of striking
the word "male" from the suffrage bill for the District of
Columbia. It is a gross injustice, a _shame_ that such a
term should be in any legal paper defining citizenship in
any civilized State, especially a shame that it should stand
in a bill touching suffrage, in what ought to be the model
District, the choice sample ground of wise and just
government for the _model republic_. Let an indignant
protest and admonition go up in regard to this matter from
your convention, that Congress shall not dare to disregard.
I trust also that the convention will urge upon Congress the
eminent fitness and duty of passing without delay the XVI.
Amendment, and submitting the same to the Legislatures of
the several States for ratification.

The world is moving to-day in the direction of the abolition
of all monopolies of privilege and that of equal and exact
justice and fair play to all classes. Woman now has the
floor; the hour has struck for her. Wyoming and Colorado are
already setting example for the older communities. Let the
preaching of this faith in effective ways, its benign and
thorough working, begin at Jerusalem, at the Capitol of the
nation, and may your convention urge the work to immediate
undertaking, aye, and completion then, at home.

Yours truly, CHAS. D. B. MILLS.

CORNELL UNIVERSITY, ITHACA, N. Y., Jan. 17, 1870.

Mrs. M. JOSLYN GAGE--_Dear Madam_: I beg you to be assured
that I heartily sympathize with all well directed efforts to
secure to woman equality before the law. Whatever can be
done to give her a fair and equal chance with man, is due to
her, and no effort of mine shall be wanting to secure so
desirable a consummation.

Very respectfully yours, HOMER B. SPRAGUE.

Mrs. Helen Taylor, of London, after expressing the wish that she
might be with us, says:

It is a great delight to hear of the numerous societies, in
various countries, working well and vigorously for that
justice which for so long has been denied to women. The time
can not be far distant now, when we shall attain the right
of expressing our opinion by giving a vote.

Letters joining in the demand for a XVI. Amendment were received
from E. H. G. Clarke, of Troy, N. Y.; S. D. Dillaye, of Syracuse;
Martha B. Dickinson, Sarah Pugh, Mrs. E. K. Pugh, Abby Kimber, of
Philadelphia; Mrs. Mary J. O'Donovan-Rossa, and Hon. Jacob H.
Ela. The following extracts from private letters of Mrs. Hooker
show somewhat the spirit of the occasion.

WASHINGTON, January 19, 1870.

I have just come from a good meeting; just such a house as
we had at Hartford the mornings of our Convention. Senator
Pomeroy spoke admirably, and carried every one with him.
Then came Olympia Brown, and nothing could have been better
than her speech and the effect of it on the audience, which,
by the way, was earnest and intelligent. But Madam Anneke,
the German patriot who fought with her husband and slept
beside her horse in the field, carried the day over everyone
else. It was fairly overwhelming to hear her English, so
surcharged with feeling, yet so exact in the choice of
words, and the burden of it all was that the trials of the
battle-field were as naught compared to this inward struggle
of her soul toward liberty for woman. Her presence,
gestures, oratory, were simply magnificent.

Mrs. F., of Cincinnati, who lives here now, came to me this
morning with great warmth, saying she had brought two
Senators' wives who were opposed, and they said a few more
such women as Olympia Brown would convert them. She has
promised to bring them to our reception at the Arlington
this evening.

_Jan. 20._--We have had to hold a three days' meeting,
interest grew so fast. Yesterday morning Lincoln Hall
jammed, even aisles full. I never heard better speaking in
my life, not a disturbance in the audience, not a jar on the
platform, all loving, tender, earnest. Olympia Brown is
wonderful; she talked Christ and His Gospel just I should
have done with her voice and practice; can't enlarge, but
she surely is a remarkable woman. We are to have a hearing
by a committee from both Houses on Saturday, and Senator
Pomeroy will present a bill for suffrage in the District of
Columbia next week, and would not be much surprised if it
were carried at once--does not really expect that--but
Senator Trumbull, Chairman of Judiciary, says he shall vote
for it, and so do many others in both Houses. Mrs. Pomeroy
received yesterday afternoon, and to my surprise, nearly all
her callers had been at the Convention--at least three
hundred young ladies were in the hall, they said, and all
spoke with perfect respect of the movement--many seemed in
sympathy with it.

_Jan. 21, two o'clock._--Just from the Committee Room, and
too full to write. Mrs. Stanton standing at the head of the
long table (Committee all round the table, Sumner so
attentive as to fix my eyes upon him with intense interest,
watching changes of expression) read a magnificent argument.
Mrs. Davis and Miss Anthony followed, and then sitting in my
chair, I made a five minutes' talk on my favorite
point--personal responsibility God's only method in human
affairs. Then questions from various gentlemen and
conversation all round the room for two hours. The large
room was full of gentlemen and ladies, and there were
congratulations without stint, but Sumner, grandest of all,
approaching Mrs. Stanton and myself, said in a deep voice,
really full of emotion, "I have been in this place, ladies,
for twenty years; I have followed or led in every movement
toward liberty and enfranchisement; but I have it to say to
you now, that I never attended such a committee meeting as
this in my life, it exceeds all that I have ever witnessed."

Mrs. Howland was there, and excited to her highest eloquence
in speech; with flushed cheeks she said to me, "If only that
scene could have been photographed--it was the grandest one
of history--the first time that _woman_ has ever appeared in
halls of legislation--women often, but woman never before."
I have sent her home to write a letter for the _Courant_,
and I hope she will make it out; she has promised to try.
Senator Pomeroy counts thirteen Senators ready to vote for
us now, but I can not attempt to do justice to the
situation.

_The Revolution_ of March 24, 1870, gives the following call for the
May Anniversary of the National Woman's Suffrage Association, which
held its regular annual meeting in Irving Hall, New York, May 10th and
11th:

The various woman suffrage associations throughout this country
and the Old World are invited to send delegates to the
Convention, prepared to report the progress of our movement in
their respective localities. And, in order that this annual
meeting may be the expression of the whole people, we ask all
friends of woman suffrage to consider themselves personally
invited to attend and take part in its discussions. With the
political rights of woman secured in the Territories of Utah and
Wyoming--with the agitation of the question in the various State
Legislatures, with the proposition to strike the word "male" from
the State Constitution of Vermont--with New York, New England,
and the great West well organized, we are confident that our
leading political parties will soon see that their own interest
and the highest interests of the country require them to
recognize our claim.

The Executive Committee recommend the friends of woman suffrage,
everywhere, to concentrate their efforts upon the work of
securing a XVI. Amendment to the Federal Constitution that shall
prohibit the States from disfranchising any of their citizens on
account of sex.

Many of the ablest advocates[131] of the cause--both men and
women--will address the meetings. Communications and
contributions should be addressed to the Corresponding Secretary.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.
ERNESTINE L. ROSE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.
CHARLOTTE B. WILBOUR, _Corresponding Secretary_,
151 East 51st Street, New York.

The Convention was eventually held in Apollo Hall, the owners of
Irving Hall annulling their contract when they learned that colored
people were not only to be admitted to the audience, but welcomed to
the platform as speakers. The Rev. Phebe Hanaford opened the meeting
with prayer, Mrs. Charlotte Wilbour read the call, and announced the
various committees, Miss Anthony reported the work done during the
past year; excellent addresses were made by the many able speakers
present, and strong resolutions were discussed and adopted.

It was during this convention that a proposition was made, that as the
American Association had chosen Henry Ward Beecher for President, Mrs.
Stanton and Miss Anthony should resign their offices for a season, and
place some popular man at the head of the National Society. They
readily assented, hoping thereby to heal the division so distracting
to friends in every State, and unite all the forces in a grand Union
Association. Theodore Tilton, editor of the _Independent_, was chosen
for the position. He and Mr. Beecher exchanged amicable letters, and a
meeting of pacification[132] was held at the Fifth Avenue hotel where
both sides were fairly represented. Complimentary greetings were
exchanged, but nothing was gained.

The one wise step in this episode was the meeting of the National
Woman Suffrage Association: in Washington, January, 1871, as usual
under its long-tried leaders, as if no mistaken policy had been
suggested or considered. Emerson says the power of the human mind is
shown in its ability to recover after a blunder. The Association
showed its real strength in taking up again and carrying forward its
grand National work.

THE SECOND DECADE CELEBRATION.

At half past ten o'clock Friday morning October 19, 1870, the
twentieth anniversary convention assembled in Apollo Hall, New York.
A large number of the life-long friends were on the platform and a
fine audience in attendance. Mrs. Stanton called the meeting to order
and read the call.[133] She said, after due consultation the committee
had decided that as Mrs. Davis had called the first National
Convention twenty years ago, and presided over its deliberations, it
was peculiarly fitting that she should preside over this also. A
motion was made and seconded to that effect, and unanimously adopted.
On taking the chair Mrs. Davis gave the following resumé of the
Woman's Rights movement:

In assembling to review the past twenty years, it is a fitting
question to ask if there has been progress; or has this universal
radical reform, which was then declared, been like reformations
in religion, but a substitution of a new error for an old one;
or, like physical revolutions, but a rebellion? Has this work,
intended from its inception to change the structure of the
central organization of society, failed and become a monument of
buried hopes? Have we come together after twenty years, bowed
with a profound grief over the wreck and debris of the battle
unwon, or to rejoice over what has been attained, and mark out
work for the next decade?

We answer, in many things we have failed, for we believed and
hoped beyond the possible; but reviewing the past we have only
cause for rejoicing--for thanksgiving to God--and for courage in
the future. We affirmed a principle, an adjustment of measures to
the exigencies of the times, a profound expediency true to the
highest principles of rights, and to-day we reiterate the axiom
with which we started, that "They who would be free, themselves
must strike the blow," believing it as imperative as when the
first woman took it up, and applied it to her needs; and it must
be kept as steadily before the eye, for not yet can we rest on
our privileges gained.

Women are still frivolous; the slaves of prejudice, passion,
folly, fashion, and petty ambitions, and so they will remain till
the shackles, both social and political, are broken, and they are
held responsible beings--accountable to God alone. Not till then
can it be known what untold wealth lies buried in womanhood--"how
many mute, inglorious Miltons." Men are still conceited,
arrogant, and usurping, dwarfing their own manhood by a false
position toward one half the human race.

In commencing this work we knew that we were attacking the
strongholds of prejudice, but truth could no longer be
suppressed, nor principles hidden. It must be ours to strike the
bottom line. We believed it would take a generation to clear away
the rubbish, to uproot the theories of ages, to overthrow
customs, which at some period of the world's history had their
significance.

We proclaimed that our work was to reform, reconstruct, and
harmonize society; not to lay waste her homes and her
sanctuaries. A few only have been found brave enough to do more
than touch the fringe work that circles round the vortex which is
heaving and surging with social pollutions, which might well make
angels stand appalled; but should the occasion come in this
country, the pure women of our nation will rise, as the women of
England are now doing, resisting a legislation which degrades
womanhood to the lowest depths. We proclaimed a peaceful
revolution; for we abhorred then as now the atrocities of war,
hence our demand for a participation in government, that we might
bring a new element into it to restrain and purify it. Says a
French lady in a private letter received a few days since, "Oh,
is it not time that women come? Is it not because we have no
voice in public affairs that Europe is on fire now? Men are true
brutes. Pride, injustice, and cruelty are their most remarkable
qualities. What can free us from their laws so unjust?" This is
the sad, passionate utterance of a French woman now in the hour
of her country's peril. What better proof that women love peace
more than glory, than in the Empress Eugenie's course,--She would
have no force used to uphold her power. "She would rather be
pitied than hated."

Frances Wright, a noble Scotchwoman, early sought to make herself
thoroughly acquainted with the nature of our institutions, and
the genius of our government. She determined to try the
experiment of organized labor with negroes. Purchasing two
thousand acres of land on the Bluffs, now known as Memphis,
Tenn., she took a number of families, with fifteen able-bodied
men, and, giving them their freedom, organized her work.
Prostrated by illness, she was compelled to yield her personal
supervision, and thus her attempt to civilize those people
failed, and they were finally sent to Hayti.

She then commenced lecturing on the nature and object of the
"American Political Institutions." She gave also a course of
Historical and Political Lectures; and another course on the
Nature of Knowledge, Free Inquiry, Divisions of Knowledge,
Religion, Morals, Opinions, Existing Evils and a Reply to the
Traducers of the French Reformers. No other person was at that
time prepared so well to defend them as she was, from her having
been in part educated in General Lafayette's family. In all
those lectures she showed the low estimate of woman, and her
inferior education.

To this heroic woman, who left ease, elegance, a high social
circle of rich culture, and with true self-abnegation gave her
life, in the country of her adoption, to the teaching of her
highest idea of truth, it is fitting that we pay a tribute of
just, though late, respect. Her writings are of the purest and
noblest character, and whatever there is of error in them is
easily thrown aside. The spider sucks poison from the same flower
from which the bee gathers honey; let us therefore ask if the
evil be not in ourselves before we condemn others. Pharisaism,
then as now, was ready to stone the prophet of freedom. She bore
the calumny, reproach and persecution to which she was subjected
for the truth, as calmly as Socrates. Looking down from the
serene heights of her philosophy she pitied and endured the
scoffs and jeers of the multitude, and fearlessly continued to
utter her rebukes against oppression, ignorance and bigotry.
Women joined in the hue and cry against her, little thinking that
men were building the gallows and making them the executioners.
Women have crucified in all ages the redeemers of their own sex,
and men mock them with the fact. It is time now that we trample
beneath our feet this ignoble public sentiment which men have
made for us; and if others are to be crucified before we can be
redeemed, let men do the cruel, cowardly work; but let us learn
to hedge womanhood round with generous, protecting love and care.
Then men will learn, as they should, that this system of
traducing women is no longer to be used as a means for their
subjugation. Let us learn to demand that all men who come into
our presence be as pure as they claim that woman should be. Let
the test be applied which Christ gave, that if any is without sin
in word, or deed, or thought, he shall "cast the first stone."...

When the war ended and National reconstruction commenced, women,
feeling an equal interest in having the work rightly done,
presented their petitions for the right of suffrage, but were
coolly told by those who were most eager to enfranchise the
negro, "stand aside and wait, it is the black man's hour." The
sacrifice of their sons on the altar of freedom was not counted
to them as anything. Their years of toil and weary watching in
camp and hospital were not to be put in the scale with the black
man's, who fought for his own freedom. Such wrong and injustice
is bearing its fruits, in the confusion of the councils of the
Republican party. Like the French of 1848, they refused to deal
justly with the mothers of the nation, and are now reaping a
bitter reward. They dared to suppress the petitions of thousands
of women, and now disintegration has begun; the handwriting is
seen on the wall. Thus injustice has done its work, and thousands
of women have been roused by it to protest who had never before
given any thought to public affairs.

The National Convention, held in the Church of the Puritans,
after the war, was one of intense interest, and marked an era in
this movement. The demand for suffrage became paramount--the only
one with many. Mrs. Stanton, in 1867, went before the Judiciary
Committee of the New York Legislature, asking universal suffrage
to be recognized by the Constitutional Convention which was to be
held. About this time a bill was before a Committee of the
Legislature, the purport of which was to legalize prostitution
Reading this bill in the presence of the Committee, her quick
mind comprehended all its horrors at a glance, and she tried the
test of asking each man if he would be willing that that law
should be applied to his daughter, his sister, or any one dear to
him. Self-ism answered "No." "Then, gentlemen," said she,
"legislate for the poorer daughters of the State as you would for
your own." All that winter she battled against that hideous
system, which would legalize the foulest of sins, and to her
efforts, mainly, the delay of passing that law is due. She made a
clear exposition of that cruel, corrupt, one-sided legislation,
which subjects woman to the grossest indignities, while men are
benefited and allowed safe and unlimited license. To her
lectures, also, is due a healthier tone of public sentiment on
the marriage question. It is slowly beginning to be felt that in
that relation there is a vast amount of legalized prostitution.

In 1867 an extensive lecturing tour through Kansas was made by
Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony, Rev. Olympia Brown, Henry Blackwell,
and Lucy Stone. The proposition of striking the words "white
male" from the Constitution had been submitted to the people, and
the result of the campaign was one third the vote of the State in
favor of both propositions. Of Miss Brown, now preaching in New
England, we can not forbear saying we have few in our ranks more
earnest, honest, or devoted. A clear, incisive intellect, a true
heart and firm purpose mark her every day life. She is
unobtrusive and gentle, but always ready at the call of duty. On
this campaign they were joined by a new worker, George Francis
Train, whether for good or ill it will be for history to decide.
Certain it is, that a new impulse was given to the cause, and
_The Revolution_ established, with Susan B. Anthony as
proprietor, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury as
editors, has done a great work. It has been hated, abused,
slandered, misquoted, and garbled; nevertheless, it has been a
terror to evil doers, and a help to those who would do well.
Others, thinking to do better, have started monthly and weekly
papers....

In May, 1869, at the annual meeting of the Equal Rights Society,
which had been three years in existence, a change of name was
proposed. Notice was given to that effect, and at a large
meeting, in which nineteen States were represented, the National
Woman Suffrage Society was formed, which has done most efficient
service, holding conventions in many of our large cities, and
awakening thought and action. In Saratoga and Newport a new class
was reached. Wearied with the monotony of fashionable dissipation
and the driveling idiocy of flirtations, women were glad to hear
a few sensible, wholesome truths.

In December, 1869, an able report was received from Mrs. Kate N.
Doggett, one of the six delegates to the Labor Convention, in
Berlin. In the spring of 1869 a fresh impulse was given to the
work in the establishment of the Woman's Bureau, by Mrs.
Elizabeth B. Phelps. Its discontinuance was due to the same cause
which has thwarted so many plans of women. There were not a
sufficient number possessed of wealth who had the will to render
this a permanent institution. Mrs. Phelps possesses in an eminent
degree all the requisites for such a post--a queenly hospitality,
elegant manners, fine conversational ability, with a generous
catholic spirit. Delicacy forbids saying all that the heart
prompts of friends.... In November, 1869, a delegate convention
was held in Cleveland, Ohio, and a society organized, called the
American Woman's Suffrage Society. Its work is yet to be done.
The crowning act of 1869, and the one which gave an omen for the
year that was approaching, was the enfranchising of the women of
Wyoming and Utah. For these acts of justice we are most grateful.
A correspondent says:

The cause of woman in Wyoming goes bravely on. At the last
sitting of the District Court in Albany County, both the
Grand and Petit Juries were equally composed of either sex;
and Chief-Justice Howe, presiding, took advantage of this
occasion to compliment, in the highest terms, the
intelligence, discrimination, honesty, and propriety of the
conduct with which the women acquitted themselves last
session, saying they had gone far to vindicate the policy,
justify the experiment, and realize the expectations of
those who had clothed themselves with the right. The bar,
the bench, and the intelligent men of the country had long
felt that something was needed to improve and justify our
jury system; something to lift it above prejudice and
passion, and imbue it with a higher regard for law, justice,
oath, and conscience. His Honor then expressed the opinion
that the introduction of the new element furnished good
reason to expect that to women we should ultimately be
indebted for those reforms which the unaided exertions of
men had been incompetent to effect.

This is certainly a most flattering presentment of the results of
enfranchising the sex in Wyoming, and what is better, it seems
substantially a just one. The question will therefore naturally
suggest itself, if women, in their new political capacity, are
thus able to "tone" the rude elements of Western civilization,
what inconsistency is there in granting them like privileges in
communities whose superior refinement is so much less likely to
expose them to insult or mortification? In Utah it is of less
account, because the women there are under a hierarchy, and as
yet vote only as directed.

In January, 1870, a convention was called in Washington by the
officers of the National Society. This meeting, large in
attendance and deeply earnest, marked an historical era, the
influence of which can not be estimated. A hearing before the
joint committee of the House and Senate of the District was
asked, in order to present the question of woman suffrage, and
granted. Elizabeth Cady Stanton made the argument in favor of
enfranchising women of the District of Columbia. It was clear,
incisive, and cogent; divested of all sentiment, and condensed
into a twenty-minutes' speech. It was very impressive. Susan B.
Anthony, Madam Anneke, and others made a few pertinent remarks.
At the close of the hearing, Hon. Charles Sumner said: "In my
twenty years' experience in the Senate of the United States, I
have never witnessed so fine a hearing as this one, so large an
attendance, and such respectful attention." Thus begins the
national history of this great reform--a fitting opening for
1870.

The work, not only in this country, but in Europe, was greatly
accelerated by the publication of John Stuart Mill's inestimable
book, "The Subjection of Woman," which has been extensively
circulated in a cheap form in this country, and has been
translated and reprinted in France, Prussia, and Russia. The
first National Woman Suffrage Convention was held in London,
July, 1869, at which Members of Parliament, professors of
science--noble men and noble women, still more ennobled by this
great work--took active part, and now women have the right of
suffrage there in the municipal elections. The bill was
introduced by Mr. Jacob Bright, and, says Prof. Fawcett: "In one
night it passed beyond ridicule, so ably and calmly was it
presented, and in less than one year it is a fixed fact." How
stands the comparison, Aristocratic England and Democratic
America? The Crown Princesses of Prussia and Italy are strong
advocates of this movement, while women, who pay taxes in Austria
and Russia, vote and have a voice in making laws. Will America
hold on to her barbarism in this, as she did to chattel slavery,
till all the nations of the earth cry out against her wrong to
womanhood?...

A few of the earlier women who came to this work should be named
here. Martha C. Wright, sister of Lucretia Mott, of Auburn, has
presided in most of the New York State Conventions, and in some
of the National, and her pen has always been sharpened in ready
defense of the cause and its leaders. A woman of rare good sense
and large sympathies, she is always to be trusted in emergencies.
Sarah Helen Whitman was the first literary woman of reputation
who gave her name to the cause, and her interest has never
lessened, though ill health has prevented any work. Alice Cary
for years gave her heartiest sympathy to the movement, and
socially she and her sister Phoebe have awakened an interest in a
large circle not easily penetrated by outside influences. Her
story, never completed, the "Born Thrall," published in _The
Revolution_, gave evidence of thought, experience, and deep
feeling. The songs of the sisters have a new sweet sadness, now
that Alice is singing hers on the other side of the river of
life. Grace Greenwood has done good service with her fluent pen
and voice through the press and on the platform. Mary L. Booth,
with her rich culture and her unsurpassed practical ability, her
skill as a translator of Martin's great History of France, and
numberless other works, has given aid to the cause with her pen,
one of the best in the country. As an editor she has done great
service by showing that a woman can work as earnestly and
persistently at a closely confining business as a man, and can
hold for years a place at the head of a profession so difficult
and so arduous.

As physicians, many women have won not only fame, but wealth. The
names are too many for our limits. A few only who have taken an
active interest in the principles which we have been urging can
be given. Dr. Mercy B. Jackson, Dr. Ann Preston, and Dr. Clemence
Lozier are some of the names which stand out conspicuously.

The government appointments within the last two years have been a
matter of great rejoicing. Many responsible offices are held by
women in different localities. There are 1,400 postmistresses,
some of them of first-class offices. The one in Richmond, Va., is
considered a model office, held by Miss Rachel Van Lew.

Ten years ago a young girl sprang, like Minerva from the head of
Jupiter, fully armed, into the moral and political arena, and has
stirred the heart of the Nation as no other speaker ever did.
Anna E. Dickinson has never feared to utter the boldest truths,
has never shrunk from, or withheld the most scathing rebukes of
sin in high places, has never faltered or failed in principle,
and yet is to-day a far more popular lecturer than those who have
pandered to a corrupt, vitiated public taste. Does this not prove
that the deep heart of the people is better than it has the
credit of being.

About the same time Theodore Tilton threw into the scale his
brilliant and varied talents, and the _Independent_, of which he
was editor, was found on the side of freedom for all. Judge
Samuel E. Sewall, always on the right side in every good work,
published, in 1868, a digest of the laws of Massachusetts in
relation to woman's disabilities, which has done good work.
Later, Prof. Hickox prepared one of like character for
Connecticut, which is enough to rouse the women of that State to
white heat.

Within the last two years of the second decade many new speakers
have appeared on our platform. Standing first is Mrs. Mary A.
Livermore, a woman of rare powers of oratory. Possessing a
magnetism which grasps and holds her audience whether they will
or no, she is a special pleader, and if her logic is not always
perfect it is most effective, for she has the power of unlocking
the hearts of her hearers. She has made within the last two years
extensive lecturing tours in the North and West, and verging
toward the South. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe came in November, 1868,
and laid her rich gifts on the altar of freedom, and has often
been heard in conventions, and twice or thrice before the
Legislature of Massachusetts. Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, from
the family of ministers, also came about this time with her ready
available talents. Phoebe Couzins and Lilie Peckham, alike
generous, enthusiastic, cultured, and above all of high-toned
principles, lead a strong band of young workers. Charlotte B.
Wilbour, gifted in a high degree, calm in judgment and steady in
purpose, is always a tower of strength. Celia Burleigh, graceful,
poetic and earnest, is equally at home on the platform or in the
drawing-room, and Lillie Devereux Blake is always ready with pen
or voice. Myra Bradwell, with her legal knowledge, is another to
be grateful for; and with pride the names of Elizabeth O.
Willard, Catherine B. Waite, and Elizabeth Boynton are recorded
as having given their rare gifts to this work. We gladly pay
tribute to James W. Stillman, of Rhode Island, who has given most
generously of time, money, and, above all, talents, to this
cause, and that, at a time when ridicule and even the sacrifice
of position followed. His logical argument on the inherent right
of self-government has done great service.

Looking back over the names of our co-workers, those of Hannah
Tracy Cutler, and Frances D. Gage, and Jane Elizabeth M. Jones
are widely honored. Another of this class is Josephine S.
Griffing, a woman of rare endowments intellectually, with a heart
as true and gentle as God ever gave to woman. Modest, almost to a
fault, she is the unseen power that moves the machinery in the
very heart of the nation; asking no recognition, no applause, she
works on with a steady, systematic, careful earnestness which
commands the respect of the best and wisest.

Early among women journalists Mrs. Jane G. Swisshelm stands out
conspicuously. The Pittsburg _Saturday Visitor_, which she edited
for several years with marked ability, was the paper most often
quoted, and made war upon by all opposers of progress. Mrs. C. I.
H. Nichols also edited the Windham Co. _Democrat_, in
Brattleboro, Vt., with much ability, and though less radical and
aggressive than Mrs. Swisshelm's paper, it is to the seed sown by
her head and hands that all the spirit of progress there is in
that county is due.

There is yet one other name that well deserves not one page but
many, for his good deeds and unselfish work. A man with a strong,
vigorous mind, a quick conception of principles and perfectly
fearless in his advocacy of them, holding always his personality
so in reserve as sometimes to be overlooked among the many more
assuming. Parker Pillsbury was for some time editor of the
_National Anti-Slavery Standard_, and co-editor of the
_Revolution_. His editorials have been marked by an almost
prophetic spirit; and the profoundness of their thought will be
more justly appreciated as there is a larger development and a
higher demand for unqualified justice. The Hutchinson family were
among our earliest workers, giving of time and money liberally
without regard to party or sectionalism. Mr. John Hutchinson and
family went through Kansas with the lecturing tourists, in 1867,
and with their inspiring songs for freedom did much toward
increasing the vote for woman suffrage. They still continue their
work, penetrating into the most benighted regions, for freedom,
temperance, peace, and the reign of righteousness; they are doing
their quota in the world's great work.

Mrs. Mary F. Davis has been from the first a most able and
efficient advocate; her winning, gentle manners, her courtesy and
respect for the rights of others have been unvarying. If not
herself aggressive, she has never faltered in her adherence to
the fullest truth; in this she is always sustained by her
husband, Andrew Jackson Davis, who has never hesitated or
temporized on any great question. Among business women who have
gone steadily on in the path of duty, the name of Charlotte
Fowler Wells stands out conspicuously. For over thirty years she
has been an equal in all business relations with her husband,
conducting the extensive correspondence of the house, as well as
being head book-keeper. Her serene face gives evidence of a life
of quiet, self-respecting independence.

Mrs. Frances V. Hallock and sister, Mrs. Robert Dale Owen, hold a
place worthy of honorable mention for their good works and steady
adherence to truth, and their clear, quick comprehension of its
far-reaching power. Rev. Phebe Hanaford, pastor of a church in
New Haven, Conn., has done a great work for woman. She is the
mother of a family, and finds time not only to conduct their
education, but to preach regularly every Sabbath, to write books
of merit, and to superintend her domestic affairs, which are
managed with skill, economy and good taste. Always cheerful and
kindly, she wins many friends, not only to herself but for the
cause. There is another movement that began in this decade now
closed upon us, which properly belongs to its history, viz: that
of the Working Women. It has been represented from Boston by Miss
Jennie Collins, a slight woman, all brain and soul. She tells her
stories with such a tender, natural pathos that few eyes are dry
during her speeches. She makes no pretense, but gives most
unmistakable evidence of a rich nature that has been repressed
and tortured. She is the type of a large class that will develop
into beautiful, symmetrical characters when the shackles are
broken and women are free.

Conventions and organizations have so multiplied that it would
require a volume to give their history. The chief of these are
the great Northwestern and Pacific Slope Associations. Added to
these are the State Societies in nearly all the Northern and
Middle States. A State Society was organized in Richmond,
Virginia, in April, 1870, by Matilda Joslyn Gage, a woman of wide
historical information. Lectures have been given in several of
the Southern States by individuals.

If the notices of women are by far more numerous than those of
men,[134] it is not from forgetfulness of their services, for I
credit them with all sincerity of motive, and nobleness in the
wish for our enfranchisement. I have given, as briefly as
possible, the two decades from 1850 to 1870. I have set down
nothing in malice, and what is omitted must be charged to want of
space and time. When the full history of this work is written,
differences which have retarded its progress, and the wide range
of action and reaction can be gone into if the historian so
wills. I have endeavored to keep this report free from
sectionalism and faction, believing that the _finale_ would bring
together all parties in one glad day of rejoicing. That there
will be political parties in the future, with women, as with men,
there can be no question; but that the sexes will have a
purifying influence, each upon the other, is already conceded
even by the opposers.

In closing this _resume_ permit me to say that this meager
outline, condensed from notes made from year to year, in no way
satisfies the writer, but has been given by the earnest
solicitations of friends, who wished that the steady progress of
the cause might be marked in this retrospective hour. There is
much that should have been embodied in this sketch of the past,
especially the resolutions which have marked varying phases of
the work, and which seemed like a divine inspiration in their
comprehensive grasp and far-reaching thought, on this the last
great question of reform.

Mrs. Mott rose at the conclusion of Mrs. Davis' history of the
work for the past twenty years, and expressed herself as greatly
pleased with its succinct and careful preparation. She felt that
it was of great importance to the future work that this history
be preserved, and hoped it would be published as part of the
proceedings of this meeting. She felt that we had lost in not
having kept more careful record of the progress of the work. She
was sorry Mrs. Davis had not said more of herself, as she had
done much toward opening the medical profession to women, and
also in making lecturing a lucrative and respectable profession
for them. She was, I believe, the first woman to claim the right
to equal pay with men for her lectures. Mrs. Stanton expressed
the same pleasure in listening to the report, and satisfaction in
its historical accuracy. Resolutions[135] which had been
prepared by the Committee, were offered for discussion. Mrs.
Gage spoke of the advance in the cause of education for women,
and reviewed the progress in each particular branch of science.
Letters from various parts of the world were read by Mrs.
Griffing and Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake, the latter of whom
demonstrated in an amusing and forcible manner that the women of
our country did not form a part of the "people," according to the
various banners and posters displayed about the streets in
reference to the coming election. Woman did want to vote; she did
love her country; but because she was not one of the "people,"
that privilege was denied her. Miss Anthony made several
characteristic, short speeches at intervals, in a style which is
peculiarly her own. Her force and humor were fully appreciated by
the audience, who applauded her repeatedly. Her appeals for money
met with great favor. The Rev. Olympia Brown made a stirring
speech in reference to woman's work in the cause of the "social
evil," speaking at some length upon the action of the women of
England on the subject. Mr. Crozier, of Brooklyn, was the only
gentleman who spoke, and he acquitted himself very creditably in
his confession upon joining the cause of woman's rights.

Several resolutions were offered in reference to the European
war, and much sympathy was expressed with the present suffering
originated by it. The improved condition of Italy was also
referred to. The Convention was a highly interesting one in many
particulars, and the pioneers of the cause who engaged in active
service twenty years ago proved themselves as ardent as in the
early days.

The following letters were read:

26 HEREFORD SQUARE, LONDON.

DEAR MADAM:--I received your kind letter some weeks ago, and
beg to apologize for the delay of this reply. Pray accept my
thanks for your kind expressions regarding my small efforts
to keep alive the great cause we have all so near at heart.
I regret to hear that one who, like yourself, has been a
pioneer on the way when the path was the ruggedest, should
for many years have been incapacitated from aiding its
progress. May you now be restored fully to activity. We
certainly want all true workers, albeit the progress of the
cause surpasses our most sanguine expectations, on that as
well as on this side of the Atlantic.

Pray accept my thanks for your kind invitation to your
Convention. It will not, I think, ever be likely that I
shall visit America, but I shall always read with deep
interest of all that goes forward there. Accept, dear madam,
my thanks for your kindness and sincere regard.

Mrs. P. W. DAVIS. FRANCES POWER COBBE.

MORNINGSIDE, EDINBURGH, Sept. 24, 1870.

MADAM:--I regret that I am unable to accept the invitation
with which you have honored me, for I have been an invalid
for some months, and am not sufficiently well to undertake
any journey. I can assure you that the cause of woman is
gradually but firmly gaining ground in Scotland, and that
each month we are gaining in the right direction. At present
there are six female medical students studying in our
university. The College of Surgeons has thrown its doors
open, without any restriction, to the female student.

The Merchants' Maiden Company has, within the last few
months, opened large schools in connection with its
hospitals, offering as its prizes Bursaries in the
university to girls as well as boys, which I think is one of
the strongest moves which as yet has been made in behalf of
women. The petition in favor of the medical education of
women was largely signed in Scotland. The Society for the
higher education of Women is progressing well and the
professors spoke highly of the efficiency of their working
pupils. In the university classes of botany and natural
history all the female students were in the honor list, and
Miss Edith Pechey was the first chemistry student for the
year.

With best wishes and thanks to you and your committee for
your kind invitation, I am truly yours,

S. K. KINGSLEY, for HENRY KINGSLEY.

ALDERLEY EDGE, near MANCHESTER, Sept. 26, 1870.

MADAM:--I beg to thank you for the circular and your
accompanying note, both inviting me to attend the Twentieth
Anniversary of the inauguration of the Woman Suffrage
Movement in the United States, to be held in New York on the
20th and 21st of October. I have once traveled through your
country with very much pleasure, and, I hope, with some
profit, and I have a strong desire to come again; but as it
is impossible for me to do so now, I can not attend your
meeting. I need not say that I sympathize with your object.
It seems to me to be inconsistent with the principles of
your Government, and of ours, to deny to women the power to
control those who legislate for them. Until they obtain this
control through the suffrage, they will suffer many
disadvantages and be the victims of unequal laws. How soon
they will obtain it must depend mainly upon their own
efforts. In the meantime the present agitation will give
them an interest in many public questions, will in itself be
an education in preparation for political power, and will
exercise an influence in favor of more equal legislation
between men and women.

Very truly yours,

Mrs. P. W. DAVIS. JACOB BRIGHT.

FROM MRS. DR. TAYLOR.

NOTTING HILL, August 10, 1870.

DEAR MADAM:--I cordially thank you for your kind request
that I should attend your Convention in October. It is quite
impossible for me to leave England now, but I am deputed by
our London Committee for Woman's Suffrage to express their
sympathy with your movement, and the hope that the efforts
you are making will be crowned with success, and that Mrs.
Lucretia Mott will live to see the fruit of some of her good
and noble work.

Believe me yours truly, M. TAYLOR.

FROM LADY AMBERLY.

RODBOROUGH MANOR, STROUD, July 14, 1870.

DEAR MADAM:--I thank you much for your invitation to attend
your second decade meeting of the Woman's Suffrage
Association. I regret that it will not be in my power to
accept it. Much as I enjoyed my visit to America, it is
rather too far to undertake a second journey there. You
must, indeed be glad, after twenty years of work, to see the
great advance in public opinion on this question. It seems
now to be progressing very fast. I have just aided in
establishing a committee at Stroud, and we hope soon to have
one in every borough in England for female suffrage.

Yours truly,
Mrs. P. W. DAVIS. KATE AMBERLY.

280 PARK ROAD, SOUTH HILL, LIVERPOOL.

DEAR MADAM:--Mrs. Butler regrets very much not to have been
able to write to you before, and begs you will kindly accept
her apologies as well as her thanks for your invitation to
your Decade Meeting. I have the honor and privilege to be at
present Mrs. Butler's Secretary. She is overwhelmed with
work, and would be thankful for your sympathy in it. I wish
I could give you a clear idea of the battle she has to
fight, but it is very difficult for me, as a German, to put
it in adequate words.

Mrs. Butler's introductory essay to "Woman's Work and
Woman's Culture" only gives a faint idea of her character
and strivings, compared to the grand reality of her life.
She has devoted more than fifteen years to the rescue of
"fallen women"--a work that requires more active charity and
self-denial than any other. The English Parliament passed,
some time ago, certain acts called the Contagious Disease
Acts, as a sanitary measure, on the model of Continental
legislation. To earnest, religious minds, like Mrs.
Butler's, the acts appear immoral in principle, as declaring
vice a necessity; unjust, as inflicting penalties on women
and letting men go free; and cruel in their application,
enrolling women in a degraded class, making their return to
virtue almost impossible. I think if I tell you that by
these acts a woman can be arrested by a policeman on
suspicion of being a prostitute, and subjected to an
examination which amounts to a surgical operation, always
disgraceful, sometimes injurious, even dangerous, I have
made quite clear to an American lady that such a state of
things can not be endured.

The best English women, with Mrs. Butler and Miss
Nightingale as leaders, stand up nobly for the poor,
degraded women whom, with their true Christian hearts, they
still recognize as sisters. Mrs. Butler, who is rather
delicate, devotes all her strength to this cause at present.
She travels much, has been in the garrison towns, where, for
the benefit of the soldiers, these atrocious acts are in
force, and in large meetings denounces the cruelties to
women. By her efforts more than sixty thousand signatures
have been obtained for the repeal of the acts. Many good
men, I am thankful to say, are on our side, and it is a
matter of congratulation that in this point many people join
who widely differ in other respects. I firmly believe that
this question, which can no longer be avoided, will produce
a great social reform. Women who timidly keep aloof from all
political movements, after this experience of male
legislation, eagerly demand the suffrage.

I am sure you will forgive Mrs. Butler for not writing
herself. As soon as she has a little more breathing time she
is sure to write, but she fears she will never be able to
cross the Atlantic.

Yours sincerely, ROSA BRUHN.
Mrs. P. W. DAVIS.

PARIS, RUE NOLLET 92, 7th September.

DEAR MADAME:--I burned the answer I had written to you under
the shameful government now fallen, and whose crimes and
treasons extorted from me cries of despair for the ruin they
have brought on our country.

I thank you for the generous sympathy you express toward us
in our great woe. Your honored names have been blessed for
this by our French hearts. We are now relieved, and though
our actual peril is none the less, we are in possession of
our own force. We are rid of the despicable robbers of our
honor, our fortune and our lives; and in the most terrible
energy, is a consolation and support. Better is it to die
with honor than live dishonored. How happy you are to be
born on a soil not infested by monarchical roots. They are
like dog-grass, which springs up again and again, nurtured
by the ignorance of our rural population. When the Prussians
shall have been driven away, we may have civil struggles to
fear from the emissaries of this detested monarchy. What
avails experience to the blind.

I forwarded immediately your letter to George Sand. Accept
my heartfelt thanks for your fraternal invitation to me.

Yes, you say right, our hearts are wholly absorbed, and no
place is ours but Paris in this hour of supreme struggle and
sacrifice. We shall be with you in thought only, dear
sisters--you, the pioneers in woman's emancipation--your
names are enshrined in our hearts; but this crisis here will
not be useless for the cause. The women of Paris are noble
and courageous; one may hear them in every group encouraging
the men to desperate resistance. Everywhere they form
societies for the relief of the distressed and the wounded.
Many have petitioned for this revolution, and have
instigated men to the accomplishment of it. Many will take
arms in defense and fight; yea, fight with all the strength
which desperation lends, should the struggle reach our
streets.... They have already proved this sort of courage.
Men feel now how very necessary their co-operation is, and
after the crisis I hope they will not forget it. But it is
better that woman herself should learn to have a will, an
active opinion in public affairs, and this disposition will,
doubtless, continue to increase, as it has done for the last
two years.

Hail, dear and valiant sisters; blessed be your work in
which my heart, and many of those around me unite.

ANDRE LEO.

Mesdames PAULINA W. DAVIS, LUCRETIA MOTT, MARTHA WRIGHT,
ELIZABETH C. STANTON, ISABELLA B. HOOKER.

NAPLES, October 10, 1870.

DEAR MRS. DAVIS:--I have only now received your letter, or I
should sooner have expressed how highly I am gratified by
the honor you do me in asking my opinions with regard to
woman suffrage. I can not more strongly show my sympathy
with my accomplished sisters in the United States, than by
saying that I signed a petition to the British Parliament,
requesting permission for women to vote at the elections. It
was rejected, for the opposition and prejudices in the men
of Great Britain are still very strong against any change in
our condition. We have, however, gained a most important
privilege lately, chiefly through the liberality of the
University of Cambridge, in having the opportunity of
acquiring every branch of knowledge, literary and
scientific.

We owe much to the society of which you are the secretary,
for persevering in our behalf for twenty years under strong
opposition. The progress of civilization will ultimately
emancipate half the human race from the low position in
which we have hitherto been kept. Accept, dear Mrs. Davis,
my thanks for your letter, and believe me,

Very sincerely yours, MARY SOMERVILLE.

VICTORIA PRESS, LONDON, Oct. 3, 1870.

MY DEAR MRS. DAVIS AND MRS. STANTON:--Will you kindly let me
answer both your notes together, and assure you how much I
value the feeling which prompted you to write them. I shall
not easily part with either of those letters, although
pressure of work drives me to answer them in one, and say
that I am utterly unable to respond to your wish that I
should attend your Decade Meeting. Few things would give me
such satisfaction as to find myself in America, especially
after your noble invitations and promises of a cordial
reception everywhere. But--and how many buts there are in
life--I dare not leave my work at present in England. There
are several very important movements just now resting almost
entirely upon me, and having put my hand to the plow, I dare
not look back. I am at present the only regular lecturer
here on this subject, and I am full of engagements up to
April next--north, south, east, and west--and the discussion
society I have started in London is still too young to run
alone, and yet promises such good things for the future,
that I feel it ought to be carefully tended.

I can only add that I shall watch with great interest for
the accounts of your meeting on the 19th. I long for the day
when I can see you in the flesh--those with whose spirits I
now ever hold communion. Excuse haste. I have just returned
from the North, and find my table overwhelmed with
invitations to lecture and appeals for help. The learned
meetings and social discussions of the British Associations
at Liverpool, and the Social Science Congress at Newcastle,
have all been crowded into the last fortnight. Wishing you
and your noble workers God-speed, believe me,

Yours, most truly, EMILY FAITHFUL.

DEAR LADIES:--It would give me great pleasure to accept your
kind invitation to be present at your meeting to-day, if it
were possible, but it is not.

Go on with your great work; it is arduous, but it is
sublime! You are doing good that you know not of in old
Europe. You have taken the initiative, and she is following
hard after. I wish to recommend to you the appeal of Mme.
Gasparin to the American women to join in her heart-cry for
peace. Coming so recently as I have, from the seat of
war--from Paris and from Rome--I can testify to the earnest,
the beseeching appeal of European women to their sisters in
America to give them help in this their hour of calamity and
need--the help of sympathy, the succor of love!

The day before I left France, one of the noblest of French
women, Mademoiselle Daubie (the distinguished author of that
remarkable work, "The Poor Women of the Nineteenth Century,"
which every woman and legislator ought to read,) said to me:
"We are looking wistfully every whither for some hand
stretched out through the darkness, but, alas! there is
none. But you are going to America. Oh! tell the women there
to help us in this struggle with ignorance, corruption, and
war." Let us heed this cry.

France lies prostrate in the dust! But Rome is free! So in
all human sorrow there is some hope. Let us, then, lift up
the one by all possible help, remembering her greatness, and
pity her misfortunes; having faith in her capabilities, and
praying for her liberty--for that liberty that can only be
practicable when built upon intelligence and virtue, and
only real when woman is not the slave, but the helpmate of
man; and let us rejoice with that other sister--Italia--who
is now lifting up her face toward heaven, and after these
long years of anguish and waiting the mother is restored to
her children!

The rule of the Cæsars is gone, and the reign of absolutism
is passing away! And while the science of men goes flashing
round the earth--over sea and land--uniting the nations in
treaties of commerce and compacts of liberty, the warm,
generous heart of woman shall keep pace, uniting humanity in
sympathy and love.

I am, dear ladies, yours most respectfully,
EMELIA J. MERIMAN.[136]

The speakers during the day gave many delightful reminiscences of the
noble men and women who had given their earnest efforts to promote
this great reform, and dwelt with hope on the many encouraging steps
of progress that had marked the years since the initiative steps were
taken. The day before the Convention an elegant reception was held at
the St. James Hotel. Nearly two hundred persons called during the
afternoon, and about forty sat down to a sumptuous dinner.[137]

The Washington Convention of 1871[138] was thus described by _The
Republican_ of that city:

The third Annual National Woman's Suffrage Convention, held at
Lincoln Hall, was an unprecedented success. Its leading spirit
was Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, who, together with Josephine S.
Griffing, Paulina Wright Davis, and Susan B. Anthony, made all
the preliminary arrangements, and managed the meeting. Mrs.
Hooker's zeal, activity, and amiability gave her the power to
make an easy conquest wherever she carries the banner of the good
cause. Her generalship in Washington marshalled hosts of new and
ardent friends into the movement. Five sessions were held, during
each of which the Convention was presided over by some member of
the Senate or House of Representatives; and it was a novel
feature to see such men as Senators Nye, Warren, and Wilson
sitting successively in the president's chair, apparently half
unconscious that it was one of greater honor than their familiar
seats in the Senate. Speeches were made by Adelle Hazlett,
Olympia Brown, Lilie Peckham, Isabella B. Hooker, Lillie Devereux
Blake, Cora Hatch Tappan, Susan B. Anthony, Kate Stanton,
Victoria C. Woodhull, Hon. A. G. Riddle (of the Washington bar),
Frederick Douglass, Senators Nye and Wilson, and Mara E. Post,
who made a journey all the way from Wyoming to attend the
Convention. A good deal was said by the speakers concerning the
proposed interpretation of the existing constitutional
amendments. It was thus a convention with a new idea. The
reporters could not say that only the old, stock arguments were
used. There was an air of novelty about the proceedings,
indicating healthy life in the movement. The consequence was that
the cause of woman's enfranchisement made a new, sudden, and
profound impression at Washington.

This Convention was remarkable for the absence of the usual long
series of resolutions covering every point of our demands.

Another peculiarity was the unusual amount of money that flowed into
the treasury, as the following letter, among many others of the same
character, shows:

MISS ANTHONY--I have this morning deposited $500 for the use
of the N. W. S. A., and I will give a check for the amount
as you desire it.

Washington, D. C. Mrs. M. M. CARTTER.

Letters were read from Mrs. Esther Morris,[139] Justice of the Peace
in Wyoming Territory, and from Mrs. Jane Graham Jones, of Chicago.
Senator Nye, who presided at the evening session, said, "He had not
given much thought to the question of Woman Suffrage, but it was his
opinion that in proportion as we elevated the mothers of voters, so
were the voters themselves elevated." The audiences during this
convention were large, and the press not only respectful but highly
complimentary.

It was just before this enthusiastic convention that Victoria Woodhull
presented her memorial to Congress and secured a hearing[140] before
the Judiciary Committee of the House, which called out the able
Minority Report, by William Loughridge, of Iowa, and Benjamin F.
Butler, of Massachusetts. The following is from the Congressional
_Globe_ of Dec. 21, 1870.

In the Senate: Mr. HARRIS presented the memorial of Victoria C.
Woodhull, praying for the passage of such laws as may be
necessary and proper for carrying into execution the right vested
by the Constitution in the citizens of the United States to vote
without regard to sex; which was referred to the Committee on the
Judiciary, and ordered to be printed.

In the House: Mr. JULIAN--I ask unanimous consent to present at
this time and have printed in the _Globe_ the memorial of
Victoria C. Woodhull, claiming the right of suffrage under the
XIV. and XV. Articles of Amendments to the Constitution of the
United States, and asking for the enactment of the necessary and
appropriate legislation to guarantee the exercise of that right
to the women of the United States. I also ask that the petition
be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.

No objection was made, and it was ordered accordingly.

THE MEMORIAL OF VICTORIA C. WOODHULL.

_To the Honorable the Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States in Congress assembled, respectfully showeth:_

That she was born in the State of Ohio, and is above the age of
twenty-one years; that she has resided in the State of New York
during the past three years; that she is still a resident
thereof, and that she is a citizen of the United States, as
declared by the XIV. Article of the Amendments to the
Constitution of the United States.

That since the adoption of the XV. Article of the Amendments to
the Constitution, neither the State of New York nor any other
State, nor any Territory, has passed any law to abridge the right
of any citizen of the United States to vote, as established by
said article, neither on account of sex or otherwise. That,
nevertheless, the right to vote is denied to women citizens of
the United States by the operation of Election Laws in the
several States and Territories, which laws were enacted prior to
the adoption of the said XV. Article, and which are inconsistent
with the Constitution as amended, and, therefore, are void and of
no effect; but which, being still enforced by the said States and
Territories, render the Constitution inoperative as regards the
right of women citizens to vote:

And whereas, Article VI., Section 2, declares "That this
Constitution and the laws of the United States which shall be
made in pursuance thereof, and all treaties made, or which shall
be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the
supreme law of the land; and all judges in every State shall be
bound thereby, anything in the Constitution and laws of any State
to the contrary, notwithstanding."

And whereas, no distinction between citizens is made in the
Constitution of the United States on account of sex; but the XV.
Article of Amendments to it provides that "No State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities
of citizens of the United States, nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

And whereas, Congress has power to make laws which shall be
necessary and proper for carrying into execution all powers
vested by the Constitution in the Government of the United
States; and to make or alter all regulations in relation to
holding elections for senators or representatives, and especially
to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of the
said XIV. Article:

And whereas, the continuance of the enforcement of said local
election laws, denying and abridging the right of citizens to
vote on account of sex, is a grievance to your memorialist and to
various other persons, citizens of the United States,

Therefore, your memorialist would most respectfully petition your
honorable bodies to make such laws as in the wisdom of Congress
shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the
right vested by the Constitution in the citizens of the United
States to vote, without regard to sex.

And your memorialist will ever pray. VICTORIA C. WOODHULL.

New York City, Dec. 19, 1870.

ADDRESS OF VICTORIA C. WOODHULL JANUARY 11, 1871.

_To the Honorable the Judiciary Committee of the House of
Representatives of the Congress of the United States:_

Having most respectfully memorialized Congress for the passage of
such laws as in its wisdom shall seem necessary and proper to
carry into effect the rights vested by the Constitution of the
United States in the citizens to vote, without regard to sex, I
beg leave to submit to your honorable body the following in favor
of my prayer in said memorial which has been referred to your
Committee.

The public law of the world is founded upon the conceded fact
that sovereignty can not be forfeited or renounced. The sovereign
power of this country is perpetually in the politically
organized people of the United States, and can neither be
relinquished nor abandoned by any portion of them. The people in
this republic who confer sovereignty are its citizens: in a
monarchy the people are the subjects of sovereignty. All citizens
of a republic by rightful act or implication confer sovereign
power. All people of a monarchy are subjects who exist under its
supreme shield and enjoy its immunities. The subject of a monarch
takes municipal immunities from the sovereign as a gracious
favor; but the woman citizen of this country has the inalienable
"sovereign" right of self-government in her own proper person.
Those who look upon woman's status by the dim light of the common
law, which unfolded itself under the feudal and military
institutions that establish right upon physical power, can not
find any analogy in the status of the woman citizen of this
country, where the broad sunshine of our Constitution has
enfranchised all.

As sovereignty can not be forfeited, relinquished, or abandoned,
those from whom it flows--the citizens--are equal in conferring
the power, and should be equal in the enjoyment of its benefits
and in the exercise of its rights and privileges. One portion of
citizens have no power to deprive another portion of rights and
privileges such as are possessed and exercised by themselves. The
male citizen has no more right to deprive the female citizen of
the free, public, political, expression of opinion than the
female citizen has to deprive the male citizen thereof.

The sovereign will of the people is expressed in our written
Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land. The
Constitution makes no distinction of sex. The Constitution
defines a woman born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, to be a citizen. It
recognizes the right of citizens to vote. It declares 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 "race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

Women, white and black, belong to races, although to different
races. A race of people comprises all the people, male and
female. The right to vote can not be denied on account of race.
All people included in the term race have the right to vote,
unless otherwise prohibited. Women of all races are white, black,
or some intermediate color. Color comprises all people, of all
races and both sexes. The right to vote can not be denied on
account of color. All people included in the term color have the
right to vote unless otherwise prohibited.

With the right to vote sex has nothing to do. Race and color
include all people of both sexes. All people of both sexes have
the right to vote, unless prohibited by special limiting terms
less comprehensive than race or color. No such limiting terms
exist in the Constitution. Women, white and black, have from time
immemorial groaned under what is properly termed in the
Constitution "previous condition of servitude." Women are the
equals of men before the law, and are equal in all their rights
as citizens. Women are debarred from voting in some parts of the
United States, although they are allowed to exercise that right
elsewhere. Women were formerly permitted to vote in places where
they are now debarred therefrom. The naturalization laws of the
United States expressly provide for the naturalization of women.
But the right to vote has only lately been definitely declared by
the Constitution to be inalienable, under three distinct
conditions--in all of which woman is clearly embraced.

The citizen who is taxed should also have a voice in the subject
matter of taxation. "No taxation without representation" is a
right which was fundamentally established at the very birth of
our country's independence; and by what ethics does any free
government impose taxes on women without giving them a voice upon
the subject or a participation in the public declaration as to
how and by whom these taxes shall be applied for common public
use? Women are free to own and to control property, separate and
free from males, and they are held responsible in their own
proper persons, in every particular, as well as men, in and out
of court. Women have the same inalienable right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness that men have. Why have they not
this right politically, as well as men?

Women constitute a majority of the people of this country--they
hold vast portions of the nation's wealth and pay a proportionate
share of the taxes. They are intrusted with the most vital
responsibilities of society; they bear, rear, and educate men;
they train and mould their characters; they inspire the noblest
impulses in men; they often hold the accumulated fortunes of a
man's life for the safety of the family and as guardians of the
infants, and yet they are debarred from uttering any opinion by
public vote, as to the management by public servants of these
interests; they are the secret counselors, the best advisers, the
most devoted aids in the most trying periods of men's lives, and
yet men shrink from trusting them in the common questions of
ordinary politics. Men trust women in the market, in the shop, on
the highway and railroad, and in all other public places and
assemblies, but when they propose to carry a slip of paper with a
name upon it to the polls, they fear them. Nevertheless, as
citizens, women have the right to vote; they are part and parcel
of that great element in which the sovereign power of the land
had birth; and it is by usurpation only that men debar them from
this right. The American nation, in its march onward and upward,
can not publicly choke the intellectual and political activity of
half its citizens by narrow statutes. The will of the entire
people is the true basis of republican government, and a free
expression of that will by the public vote of all citizens,
without distinctions of race, color, occupation, or sex, is the
only means by which that will can be ascertained. As the world
has advanced into civilization and culture; as mind has risen in
its dominion over matter; as the principle of justice and moral
right has gained sway, and merely physical organized power has
yielded thereto; as the might of right has supplanted the right
of might, so have the rights of women become more fully
recognized, and that recognition is the result of the development
of the minds of men, which through the ages she has polished, and
thereby heightened the lustre of civilization.

It was reserved for our great country to recognize by
constitutional enactment that political equality of all citizens
which religion, affection, and common sense should have long
since accorded; it was reserved for America to sweep away the
mist of prejudice and ignorance, and that chivalric condescension
of a darker age, for in the language of Holy Writ, "The night is
far spent, the day is at hand, let us therefore cast off the work
of darkness and let us put on the armor of light. Let us walk
honestly as in the day." It may be argued against the proposition
that there still remains upon the statute books of some States
the word "male" to an exclusion; but as the Constitution, in its
paramount character, can only be read by the light of the
established principle, _ita lex Scripta est_, and as the subject
of sex is not mentioned, and the Constitution is not limited
either in terms or by necessary implication in the general rights
of citizens to vote, this right can not be limited on account of
anything in the spirit of inferior or previous enactments upon a
subject which is not mentioned in the supreme law. A different
construction would destroy a vested right in a portion of the
citizens, and this no legislature has a right to do without
compensation, and nothing can compensate a citizen for the loss
of his or her suffrage--its value is equal to the value of life.
Neither can it be presumed that women are to be kept from the
polls as a mere police regulation: it is to be hoped, at least,
that police regulations in their case need not be very active.
The effect of the amendments to the Constitution must be to annul
the power over this subject in the States, whether past, present,
or future, which is contrary to the amendments. The amendments
would even arrest the action of the Supreme Court in cases
pending before it prior to their adoption, and operate as an
absolute prohibition to the exercise of any other jurisdiction
than merely to dismiss the suit. 3 Dall., 382; 6 Wheaton, 405; 9
ib., 868; 3d Circ. Pa., 1832.

And if the restrictions contained in the Constitution as to
color, race or servitude, were designed to limit the State
governments in reference to their own citizens, and were intended
to operate also as restrictions on the federal power, and to
prevent interference with the rights of the State and its
citizens, how, then, can the State restrict citizens of the
United States in the exercise of rights not mentioned in any
restrictive clause in reference to actions on the part of those
citizens having reference solely to the necessary functions of
the General Government, such as the election of representatives
and senators to Congress, whose election the Constitution
expressly gives Congress the power to regulate? S. C., 1847; Fox
vs. Ohio, 5 Howard, 410.

Your memorialist complains of the existence of State laws, and
prays Congress, by appropriate legislation, to declare them, as
they are, annulled, and to give vitality to the Constitution
under its power to make and alter the regulations of the States
contravening the same.

It may be urged in opposition that the courts have power, and
should declare upon this subject. The Supreme Court has the
power, and it would be its duty so to declare the law: but the
court will not do so unless a determination of such point as
shall arise make it necessary to the determination of a
controversy, and hence a case must be presented in which there
can be no rational doubt. All this would subject the aggrieved
parties to much dilatory, expensive and needless litigation,
which your memorialist prays your honorable body to dispense with
by appropriate legislation, as there can be no purpose in special
arguments "_ad inconvenienti_," enlarging or contracting the
import of the language of the Constitution.

_Therefore_, Believing firmly in the right of citizens to freely
approach those in whose hands their destiny is placed under the
Providence of God, your memorialist has frankly, but humbly,
appealed to you, and prays that the wisdom of Congress may be
moved to action in this matter for the benefit and the increased
happiness of our beloved country.

SPEECH OF A. G. RIDDLE,

_In Support of the Woodhull Memorial, before the Judiciary
Committee of the House of Representatives, as Reproduced in the
Convention on the Evening of the same Day._

Mr. RIDDLE spoke as follows: Mr. _Chairman_--(Senator Nye)--I
have always thought that the questions involved in this movement
could be the more effectively presented by ladies; and I have
never appeared in their public discussions unless by special
request, and for some special purpose. I have been asked to bring
to your notice as well as I may this evening the argument: That
the women of these United States are full and complete citizens.
Citizens as fully, broadly, and deeply as it is possible for men
to be, though not permitted to exercise the elective franchise.

As I arise I find between myself and this proposition, two or
three questions, about which I am disposed to tax your patience
for a moment, though there is nothing new to be said. In the
outset, let me say that it is conceded by all, that the right of
self-government, in America at any rate, is a natural right. You
may select with care or at random, any one of the forty or fifty
American constitutions that have been prepared with more or less
pains, and promulgated with solemnity, and you will find there is
not one that has assumed to create and confer this right of
self-government. But they all declare, expressly or impliedly,
that the right to govern is inherent in the people. Now, if these
ladies are a portion of the people, this right resides in them.
There is no new right to be conferred upon them. They are simply
to go into the new exercise of an old franchise; for if the right
of self-government is a natural right, then does it pertain to
every human being alike. Such is the recognized theory of every
American constitution, and such is its practice.

Take a step further and you find that starting with a recognition
of this pre-existing right of government, Constitution makers
have simply provided the means and machinery by which this right
of government may work itself out. The only means placed in the
hands of the individual citizen by which he may accomplish his
portion of this great task is the ballot, or the _viva voce_
vote. If this right of self-government is a natural right, and if
it can be exercised alone by the ballot, then is the right to the
ballot a natural right, and he who stands up against this
everlasting right of nature, had better look to it, and take
himself out of the way. As this is a political question I may
venture a single word to politicians. We of the masculine gender,
are all of us, more or less politicians; and of all the timid
things in the world the professed politician (a member of
Congress excepted) is the most timid. [Laughter.] He is afraid of
his soul, as if he had one, or one large enough to occasion
apprehension. [Laughter.] I have this thing to say to them, that
when any great idea or great truth finds itself at large in this
lower world, and is obliged to get itself incorporated into the
working processes of a government, if it does not find a
political party ready, willing, and worthy to receive it, it
forthwith makes for itself a new party. [Applause.] And as it
does not create new human beings to form a party of, it must
necessarily gather them from the old parties. Just as the
distinguished Senator (Senator Nye) will recollect the present
Republican party was formed, and against which the two old fossil
parties united, as they always do. Now, this new great idea, if
rejected, will disintegrate these old parties; take that which is
fit, proper, and deserving for its own great mission, leaving the
residuum to unite, and crumble and pulverize together under the
feet of the new.

The right of self-government, as I have said, is a natural right
pertaining to all alike, and is to be exercised by the ballot.
And the right to that is therefore a natural right, as is the
right to wear clothes. Decency and comfort require that clothes
should be worn; but they are artificial wholly. Just so is the
right to vote a natural right, though the vote, or the mode of
voting at least, is an artificial means. This logic can not be
caviled with or gainsaid. The young man and the young woman
outside of political considerations, in every other point of
view, stand before the law on an equality, and what one may do,
so may the other, each may govern him or herself. But not so
politically; when the youth reaches the age of twenty-one the
ballot comes to his hands by due course of law, protecting his
natural right, he having grown to it. Why do you give him the
ballot, pray, or permit him to take it for himself? Simply
because it is the means by which he governs and protects himself.
Nobody would start I suppose the terribly heterodox idea that it
is not necessary for the young man to govern himself with the
ballot. It would be one of those unheard-of atrocities that
nobody would have the hardihood to promulgate in the presence of
masculine associates at all. He is entitled to the right for the
purpose of governing himself. Nobody was born to govern anybody
else--man or woman. It is only because in political associations
people become so united, that a man in order to govern himself is
obliged to govern others, that we get the right to govern others
at all. It grows out of our effort to govern ourselves. As an
essential necessity we are obliged to govern others and to be
governed by them. This is our only warrant for the government of
others.

Now, I pray to know why a young maiden, when she approaches the
same age, may not have accorded to her the same protection of her
natural right that is accorded to the youth, and for the same
purpose. In the name of all womanhood, and of all manhood, I beg
to know why this may not be so? In the name of my own daughters
whose whispered words haunt the chambers of my soul, asking to
know why, if it is necessary for their brother to exercise this
right, it is not necessary for them? Nobody need to argue to a
father that his daughters are not the equals of his sons. I will
never tolerate hearing it said, that my son is born to empire and
sovereignty, while his sisters are born to be hidden away and
yarded up in some solitary desert place, as their proper sphere.
[Applause.] I do not propose to raise and educate my daughters to
keep them cooped up with their feet tied until some masculine
purveyor comes along with his market basket.

Oh! ye opponents of the rights of woman, why not be consistent.
If, as you say, she has not the capacity to choose or exercise
the elective franchise, why not choose for her in everything, and
impose upon her the husband of your choice? Don't you represent
her? You concede that the young woman has abundance of capacity
to choose her lord and master to whom she shall be delivered, and
yet she is not fit to vote for a constable. (Laughter.)

Be consistent, you who oppose us in this movement, and say she
shall not have anything to do with the selection of her husband.
If she is competent at an early age, in the vortex and whirlpool
of life, to select him to whom first, last, and always she shall
belong, may she not once in four years have the privilege of
voting for President without any great hazard? Think of it. Oh!
this terrible old question! We have been mining and drilling in
the earth's crust, and we have got finally to the last question,
or, rather, it has made its way to the surface. This question of
woman's suffrage and woman's right at last comes up for final
argument, and it will work its way along until it is definitely
determined. Indeed, I believe it is already settled.

To return to these constitutions, from which I mean not to wander
again. I said to you that these constitutions of the various
American States have recognized as older than themselves the
right of government. They have furnished the means, which were
also older than themselves, the exercise of the elective
franchise. They have not attempted to create and confer any right
to govern. They simply regulate it; and they are framed upon this
idea, that all people are equally entitled to govern themselves,
women and men, and would all govern themselves if some were not
excluded by the terms and provisions of these, their
constitutions. Take up the whole thirty-five that can be found in
the edition of 1864, and every one of them says that the elective
franchise shall be exercised by the _male_ white citizens. We
have got rid of the "white." We have finally given color to the
Constitution. (Laughter.) And, in getting rid of that "white," we
got rid of more than was probably intended at the time. Good does
get itself done by accident sometimes. It has to when bad men do
it. (Laughter and applause.) Why is this term "male" used in the
constitutions, pray? It was not by accident. Forty or fifty of
them would not use it, except by design. It was because every
mortal man knew when tinkering up a constitution that if he did
not put male in, females would vote. They had the right, and
there had to be a constitutional barrier erected to prevent their
exercise of it. Now, the thing which we have to do is either to
strike out this term "male," which, I trust, ladies (turning to
the ladies on the platform), is not particularly odious anywhere
else, except in the constitution.

Mrs. DAVIS and others--Not at all.

Mr. RIDDLE.--I repeat, that what we have to do is either to get
rid of this word "male," or to convince Congress, the courts, and
the rest of the world, that it is already gotten rid of, which, I
think, is easier. If it remains it can be put out in a very
summary way. It makes no difference in how many constitutions it
is found, nor in how many carefully considered statutes it has
been incorporated, for a single provision in the Constitution of
the United States is of that potency that instantaneously all
constitutions and all statutes are clarified of the exclusive
"male" principle, and that without other change or repeal.

And this brings me to the immediate question to be discussed, the
XIV. Amendment of the Constitution, which stands as the XIV.
Article. And you will understand that when the people or the
legislature speak by constitution or law, and use ordinary
language, that they mean what they say, and nobody can get up and
say they do not mean that, or that they mean something else.
There is nobody that can be heard for a moment to argue against
the plain, obvious, declared, well-ascertained meaning of words.
And when such words are used, it is the end of argument and of
construction. The great object to be achieved, so far as women
are concerned, is to bring them into the possession of the rights
of citizenship. "A person" is one thing, and naturally, "a
citizen" is something a little more. He or she is the creature of
a political compact, having the rights, the privileges, the
franchises of that particular political association, whatever
they are. A very ingenious, and at the same time a very
meritorious writer, recently, in overhauling these English
words--and it is a pretty good thing my honorable friends from
the two Houses of Congress are not to be referred to--but it is a
good thing for the rest of us who use words sometimes carelessly,
to see how Mr. Grant White says some of them should be used, and
what they really do mean. On page 100 of his recent work on
"Words and their Uses," which, so far as I know, has received the
highest commendation of the critics--in speaking of this term
"citizen," and how it is used, or rather how it is misused, says:

Citizen is used by some newspaper writers with what seems
like an affectation of the French usage of _citoyen_ in the
First Republic. For instance, "Gen. A. is a well-known
citizen." "Several citizens carried the sufferer," etc. The
writer might as well have said that the sufferer was carried
off by several church members or several "Freemasons." Now
mark, he says, that "a citizen is a person who has certain
political rights, and the word is properly used only to
imply or suggest the possession of those rights."

That is what we should use the term "citizen" for--apply it to a
naturalized person in possession of certain political franchises,
rights, and privileges. Thanking Mr. Grant White for that, let
us, in its light, read the first clause of the XIV. Amendment,
and see what it does say and mean. "Sec. 1st. All persons;" not
all male persons, nor all white persons, but "all persons born or
naturalized in the United States, subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, _are citizens_ of the United States, and of the States
where they reside." That is what they are. They are citizens.
That is, "persons," are "citizens," which means naturalized
persons, clothed and permeated with, surrounded by, and put in
possession of, citizenship. The term is used in the sense in
which Mr. White uses it. It is no new meaning; no new use of the
word.

Now turn to Webster's Unabridged, where citizen is defined:
"Citizen--a person," [in the United States,]--for he inserts in
brackets the expressive "U. S." to indicate what he
means,--"native or naturalized, who has the privilege of voting
for public officers, and who is qualified to fill offices in the
gift of the people."

Worcester says of "citizen":--"An inhabitant of a Republic who
enjoys the rights of a citizen or freeman, and who has a right to
vote for public officers, as a citizen of the United States."

Turn to Bouvier's Law Dictionary, in orthodox sheep skin, and see
what he says a citizen is: "Citizen, one who, under the
Constitution and laws of the United States has a right to vote
for representatives in Congress and other public offices, and who
is qualified to fill offices in the gift of the people."--4th
ed., vol. 1, p. 221.

All known authority concurs in establishing this as the sole,
proper signification of the word citizen; and in this sense, and
in no other, is it used in the XIV. Amendment. I know that the
term is sometimes used--is once used, perhaps, in the
Constitution--to correspond somewhat with the term "inhabitant,"
as thus, "citizens of different States may sue each other in the
courts of the United States," etc. But it was not necessary to
shake the foundations of this great Republic, to formulate and
get adopted this new amendment, for the purpose of stating that
the people who were born and always had lived in the United
States might be inhabitants of them. But it was necessary to say
so, that cavaliers might be estopped from denying that they are
citizens.

But to recur to the further clause of this XIV. Amendment. Let us
see, now, really what the makers and promulgators of it did mean.
"No State shall make or enforce any law"--neither make any new
law, nor enforce any that had already been made--"which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States." Is there any doubt now as to what "citizen" means? He,
or she, or both, are persons in possession, and have by express
declaration all the privileges and the immunities of citizens.

When I stated this before the Judiciary Committee this morning, a
distinguished Representative from Illinois, and a very able
lawyer, stopped me and said, "Mr. Riddle, babies would be
citizens according to that, and would have the privilege of going
straight to the ballot-box, the first thing." (Laughter.) Perhaps
so; but I could not see it then, and can not see it now. All
power is inherent in the people, and it is perfectly competent
for this "all power" to declare at what age and under what
circumstances the citizen shall vote; so that the rule applies
uniformly, and excludes none. One-half of the people were
excluded, and this article removes that exclusion--and that is
all. Apply the gentleman's idea to other provisions of the
Constitution; for instance, to this: "The right of the people to
keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." Would he contend that
therefore every new-born baby might at once grasp a musket? This
might be constitutional, but it would put the infantry on a
war-footing before the commissariat could be mobilized, I fear.
(Laughter and applause.)

Women are not only citizens, but the amendment further says, that
no State shall pass any law or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges and immunities of this citizenship. The
privileges--not a part of them. What do we mean when we say the
privileges? For instance, when we say "the ladies," do we not
mean them all? "The Senators," we mean them all. We do not merely
mean the Senator from Nevada (Mr. Nye), however he may have the
right to be spoken of first. (Laughter and applause.) These
terms, "privileges and immunities," are not now used for the
first time in the American Constitution. They are old
acquaintances of ours. They have done service a great while. They
occur in this same Constitution, as will be seen by referring to
the second section of Article IV, on page 38 of Paschal's
admirably annotated Constitution of the United States: "Citizens
of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States." Precisely, as the
XIV. Amendment has it, but, as Judge Bradley recently said, with
a much more enlarged meaning in the latter. They were old before
the Constitution, and were incorporated into it from the fourth
article of the Old Confederation, which provided, "that the free
inhabitants of each of the States shall be entitled to all the
privileges and immunities of the free citizens of the several
States."

If you would see a comment upon these terms, read the
forty-second number of the _Federalist_, or a tumefied and
diluted edition of it, in Story on the Constitution, which, like
some other of his books, contains some remarks of his own, and
are not always the best things in them. For the benefit of the
Judiciary Committee, made up, as you know, of some of the ablest
lawyers and best men of the country, I procured a judicial
definition of these terms, "privileges, and immunities," although
Mr. Attorney Bates said none exists, and my friend Judge Paschal,
a more learned man, repeated it. I referred them to the case of
Corfield _vs._ Coryell, 4th vol. of the so-called "Washington
Circuit Court Reports," p. 371, where these terms came up, away
back in the old time. Bushrod Washington, the favorite nephew of
our Washington, made the decision, ladies. He was the Washington
who got all of the brains of the family outside of its great
chief; and he put them to a most admirable use. He was one of the
judges of the Supreme Court of the United States, and he
judicially defined the meaning of these "privileges and
immunities," and said that they included such privileges as are
fundamental in their nature. And among them he says, is the right
to EXERCISE THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE, and to HOLD OFFICES, as
provided for by the laws of the various States. And the great
Chancellor Kent, quoting this case, thus approvingly incorporates
its very language into his text, where it stands unchallenged,
unquestioned, and uncontradicted.

"It was declared in Corfield _vs._ Coryell, that the
privileges and immunities conceded by the Constitution of
the United States to citizens in the several States, were to
be confined to those which were in their nature fundamental,
and belonged of right to the citizens of all free
governments. Such are the rights of protection of life and
liberty, and to acquire and enjoy property, and to pay no
higher impositions than other citizens, and to pass through
or reside in the State at pleasure, and _to enjoy the
elective franchise according_ to the regulations of the law
of the State" (2 Kent Com., p. 71).

Why, the gentlemen of the Upper and of the Lower House, who are
familiar with that decision and with its canonization by Kent,
are not obliged to resort to Webster (not Daniel) and Worcester,
nor to Grant White, nor even to Bouvier's Law Dictionary. They
may overrule them all if they will. But they must go back to
these sometimes forgotten decisions, which rest in the leaves of
these dusty volumes, to these witnesses of the law, who declare
that these expressions, "privileges, and immunities" include the
elective franchise. And the whole people of these United States
have solemnly declared "that all persons are citizens, and no
State shall make or enforce any law to abridge the privileges and
immunities of the citizens." If such authority and such reasoning
were presented to a court on the trial of any other case in the
wide world, save that of women and their rights, an advocate
would be stopped by the court before he had gone half the length
I have in this argument. The court would say that they would hear
from the other side. (Laughter.) But this thing of opposition to
woman's rights does not rest in intelligence so that it can be
grasped in argument. It has no intellectual foundation anywhere.
No logic supports it. No reason or argument sustains it. It
rests upon no foundation of the human understanding; hence, it
can not be combated; for, as Mr. Mills says, the worse it is
beaten in argument the stronger it is fortified in prejudice. Men
seem to think that inasmuch as this thing has always been,
somehow or other, in some way or other, there was somewhere, at
some time some reason for it, which could be shown now if
somebody could only think of it or find it; but, of course,
nobody ever did and nobody ever will. There never was any.
(Laughter.)

One consideration alone is absolutely conclusive of this
argument, and from it escape is impossible. "Persons born or
naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof," were already in the full and complete enjoyment of
every privilege and immunity known to our political system,
except the elective franchise and its correlative, the right to
hold office. The only difference between the naturalized and
unnaturalized individual is this right of voting. I pray our
opponents to tell us then what is conferred by this first section
of this wonderful article, if it be not these rights? Nothing
else remained that it could confer; and this view alone silences
cavil, even. If this section does not confer or guarantee the
exercise of the elective franchise, then at infinite pains have
we mined among the foundations of our marvelous structure, and
have deposited there as one of them an utter sham, full of the
emptiness of nothing. Let him escape this who may.

If there can still remain a question of doubt about this, I beg
the attention of the doubters to the further words of the
Constitution, to be found in the XV. Amendment. And here I am met
with the apt inquiry, "Why, Mr. Riddle, if women are a part of
'all persons,' colored men are also a part of the same 'all
persons,' and if women are made citizens and clothed with the
immunities and privileges of citizenship by the XIV. Amendment,
so were colored men; why, then, was it necessary to enact the XV.
Amendment? This fact is fatal to your argument." Well, there was
no necessity for it. It was a stupid piece of business, very
stupid, and when we recover the lost art of blushing, some faces
will color when that XV. Amendment is recalled. But it does us
this good service; it settles the construction of this XIV.
Amendment, as we contend for it, beyond all cavil. The general
impression is, that the XV. Amendment confers the elective
franchise upon the colored man. If it does not, then our opposers
must give it up, for colored men rightfully vote. What does this
article say? That the elective franchise is conferred upon
persons of African descent, or those who have suffered from a
previous condition of servitude? Not a word of it. It does say:
"The right of citizens"--not the right of persons of African
descent--"the right of citizens of the United States to vote,
shall not be denied." That is what it says--"Shall not be denied
or abridged, by the United States or by the several States." That
does not confer suffrage; _it recognizes a right already
conferred_, and says that it shall not be denied or abridged. A
gentleman of the committee this morning took the ground that this
amendment granted the franchise because it declares that the
right to it shall not be denied! This is in effect that when a
thing can not be denied, the lack of power to deny it creates it.
(Laughter.) I confess I could not see it. (Laughter.) I have
thought of it since, and I do not see it now. "Shall not be
denied or _abridged_." How can you abridge a thing that does not
exist? And would the gentleman also contend that a lack of power
to cut off a thing not in existence also creates the thing? This
XV. Article then treats the right of the citizen to vote as
already existing, and it specifies classes, as persons of color,
of certain race, and of previous servitude, as especially having
the right to vote.

Where, when, and how did they get it? Was it by virtue of the
XIV. Amendment? If so, it was because they were a part of the
"all persons" named in it, of whom women are also a much larger
and much more important part. So, past cavil, if the African
received this franchise by the XIV. Article, then did women also
receive it, and more abundantly! If you go back to the starting
point of American politics, and say that the right is inherent in
the colored man, then by the law of nature it is inherent in
woman. I do not care which of these formulas you adopt. Not at
all. In either event it is recognized as existing in a citizen of
the United States. But my learned and subtle friend from Illinois
said to me to-day, "Why, don't you see, Mr. Riddle, that they
have limited the franchise in this XV. Amendment, so that it
shall not be denied in the case of persons of color, and of a
certain race, and previous condition of servitude, and does that
not permit the States to deny it in other cases?" Well, the XV.
Amendment alone would, perhaps, under the artificial rules of
law, but I referred the gentleman immediately, as I refer you
now, back to the XIV. Amendment where the right is conferred, and
where in its great, broad, sweeping language it is declared that
no State shall either enact or enforce any law that abridges the
privileges and immunities of any citizen.

The XV. Amendment in no way changes the XIV., nor does it add an
iota to the privileges and immunities of the citizen. It could
not. It reiterates for the benefit of these classes the
declaration of the XIV.; and as that declares that no State shall
deny the rights of the citizen, this adds to the list the United
States, and its real force is spent in conferring upon Congress
power to legislate in favor of the classes named in it, a power
not granted by the XIV. Well, really, this must be the end of the
argument. And I repeat, you find the XIV. Amendment declares that
all persons are citizens; that they have the privilege and
immunities of citizens, and the XV. declares that among the
privileges and immunities of citizens is the right to suffrage,
because it says in words that that shall not be denied, though
men do deny it. How is the XV. Amendment declaring that it shall
not be denied on account of either race, color, or previous
condition of servitude, to be regarded? It spends its force in
these two things. The XIV. Amendment only denied the power to the
several States to abridge the privileges of citizenship. The XV.
Amendment goes further, and says that neither any State nor the
United States shall do it, using the term "deny" with the term
"abrogate" of the other. It goes further; for the purposes of
these three conditions it confers express power upon Congress to
legislate, while the XIV. Amendment does not. But there is just
one little thing further that I drop for the henpecked to pick
at. There are three classes whose right to vote shall not be
denied according to the XV. Amendment--persons of color, persons
on account of race, and persons who have suffered from previous
condition of servitude. Now, ladies, what is really the legal
status of marriage, so far as the condition of the wife is
concerned?

SUSAN B. ANTHONY.--One of servitude, and of the hardest kind, and
just for board and clothes, at that, too. (Laughter and
applause.)

Mr. RIDDLE.--And they frequently have to make and pay for their
clothes, and board themselves--(renewed laughter)--and not only
themselves, but board also the lord and master, who calls himself
the head of the family. But that is not all of it. It is not
cant; it is not popular phraseology, but it is the language of
the law. The condition of the married woman is that of servitude.
The law calls her husband "baron," and she is simply a
woman--"feme." The law gives her to the man, not the man to her,
nor the two mutually to each other. They become one, and that one
is the husband--such as he is. Her name is blotted out from the
living, or at best it is appended to that of the husband. She
belongs to her master; all that she has belongs to him. All that
she earns is his, because she is his. If she does anything that
binds him, it is simply as his servant. If she makes a contract
that is binding even upon herself, it is because he consents to
it. She does not own anything; she does not own the children that
are born of her. The husband exclusively controls them while
living, and by his will he may, and often does, bequeath to
somebody else the custody and care of them after his death. And
the law which we men make enforces all this to-day. I trust that
most of us are a great deal better than the law. If the wife of a
man should suffer by an accident on a railroad, and suit should
be brought to recover against the company for injury to her
person, the suit brought by the husband would be upon the ground
that his wife was his servant, and he had lost her service. If he
did not, he could not recover.

Mrs. STANTON.--Is such the law in case of a daughter?

Mr. RIDDLE.--So far as that is concerned, where the daughter is a
minor, it is the same as the case of a son a minor; but the wife
is always the servant of the husband; she never graduates from
him; she never becomes of age or arrives at the years of
discretion. (Sotto voce.) If she had, she never would have
entered into that condition. Miss Anthony would say the law
pronounces the state of matrimony to be a condition of servitude
for the wife in express terms. How does the XV. Amendment apply
to her? Here is the previous condition of servitude provided for;
and this XV. Amendment in its effect was but to enforce the XIV.
in favor of persons held in a previous and, of course, a
continuing condition of servitude. Does this really abrogate the
servitude of the wife, and invoke in her favor the action of
Congress? My distinguished brother, Butler, said this morning,
that the clause relative to the previous condition of servitude
applied only to widows. (Laughter.)

But, ladies and gentlemen, aside from badinage, for the subject
is too grave and too solemn, it comes back to this thing. The
Constitution of the United States solemnly declares that every
person born and naturalized in the United States, and within its
jurisdiction, are citizens; and that no State shall pass, or
enforce a law to abrogate the privileges and immunities of
citizenship. We do not need any XVI. Amendment. We need only
intelligent, firm decisive, and deciding--reasonably brave
courts, and to have a question made and brought to their
adjudication. I propose to offer Mrs. Griffing and two or three
other ladies for registration, two or three months hence, when
the time comes, here. (Applause.) If they are not registered, I
propose to try the strength of the Supreme Court of the District
of Columbia, composed of five intelligent gentlemen, and known
not to be conservatives on some questions, whatever they will
prove to be on this, and see whether they will issue a mandamus.
If they won't, I will take the case to the Supreme Court of the
United States, and one of the present judges of that Court, who
is not pre-eminently in favor of what is called woman's rights,
recently passed upon this XIV. Amendment. In the case of the
"Live Stock Dealers" et al. _vs._ "The Crescent City Live Stock
Company," in the circuit court of the United States, at New
Orleans, Judge Bradley, of the Supreme Court of the United
States, said of the XIV. Amendment:

"It is possible that those who framed the article were not
themselves aware of the far-reaching character of its terms.
They may have had in mind but one particular phase of social
and political wrong, which they desired to redress. Yet, if
the amendment, as framed and expressed, does, in fact, bear
a broader meaning, and does extend its protecting shield
over those who were never thought of when it was conceived
and put in form, and does reach such social evils which were
never before prohibited by Constitutional Amendment, it is
to be presumed that the American people, in giving it their
imprimatur, understood what they were doing, and meant to
decree what has, in fact, been done.

"It embraces much more. The 'privileges and immunities'
secured by the original Constitution were only such as each
State gave to its own citizens. Each was prohibited from
discriminating in favor of its own citizens, and against the
citizens of other States.

"But the XIV. Amendment prohibits any State from abridging
the privileges or immunities of the citizens of the United
States, whether its own citizens or any others. It not
merely requires equality of privileges, but it demands that
the privileges and immunities of all citizens shall be
absolutely unabridged, unimpaired."--_Mrs. Bradwell's Legal
News._

What "particular phase of social and political wrong" could have
been in the mind of the clear-seeing judge when he gave forth
these utterances?

Gentlemen and ladies, when I stand in the presence of and
contemplate for a moment this great XIV. Article, the crown of
the now perfected Constitution, I bow with amazed reverence to
it. It shines upon me with the light of a new revelation. And
this argument is great from no effort of mine, but great in its
power of self-enunciation. This article is one of those great
principles that come, Messiah like, to announce themselves. It
needed no forerunner, and it works its own miracles in its own
good time, and will convert all to its own sway, and to its own
purposes. And, I trust that ere long we shall hear from the
committee of the House upon this question, and that we shall get
enlightened and intelligent discussion of it in the House of the
American Representatives.

Here the argument closes, but suffer a word further. It is said
that woman does not want the suffrage. Who says that she does not
want it? Man says so and nobody else. Man asks the question, and
answers it himself. I know it often comes from female lips, but
it is man's answer.

I deny that women have declared that they don't want the ballot.
They have never been asked whether they want it. When we want a
response from men how do we propound the question? We submit it
formally to be voted upon by the ballot. That is the way we
propound a political question to men. How do they answer it? They
answer it by their solemn votes at the ballot box. Propound this
question, and in this solemn way to the women of the United
States. Pass a law to that effect and take a vote, or else
forever stop--close up all gabble on this subject, that women do
not want it. Offer her the chance by which she can speak and see
whether she wants it or not, and let her vote "yes" or "no." Then
from that we will take another start. But don't refuse to let her
answer, and assume to answer for her, and say you represent her.
You barely succeed in misrepresenting men at your best, let alone
this atrocious twaddle about representing women. Let her vote,
and then we can tell whether you have a right to represent her or
not.

We men have made the institutions for men, and for men alone;
never consulted woman. We have said she was nobody, and nowhere,
or, if she was found anywhere she was out of her sphere,
(laughter) and must go back to nowhere immediately, and to
nobody. We have gravely assumed that we understood her nature and
character better than she did herself. It is one of the wondrous
elements of the sexes that they shall perpetually reveal
themselves to each other, and neither shall ever fully comprehend
the other. Let woman speak for herself. Give her a chance to
speak as man speaks, by precisely the same language, and in the
same manner, and then reverently incline your heads, and listen
to what she says.

I have said this great question is up for final argument. My
mission was simply to present to you this dry, but very
interesting question of woman's rights, under the XIV. Amendment.
To my mind, the argument is perfectly invincible. It never can be
met, and never will be, and it will, ultimately work out its own
end.

Thanking you for the kindness with which you have listened to me,
I leave this matter with you.

ADDRESS OF MRS. ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.

Mrs. HOOKER said: We are told by men themselves that there are
too many voters already; restriction is what we want, not
enlargement of the suffrage. Let us see how this is, my
friends--let us reason together on this point for a few moments.
The one great propelling power of this Government that moves the
great political engine, and that keeps us alive as a Nation on
the face of the earth, is God's own doctrine of personal liberty
and personal responsibility. That is all we have to go upon. It
is, in fact, fuel and steam. Liberty is the steam, responsibility
puts on the brakes, and then what is the safety-valve, I ask you?
Is it not our election day? Look at it in this way. Every honest
lawyer will tell you that the next best thing to settling a
quarrel between two belligerents is to bring the parties into
court. Because the court-room is a great cooling off place, a
perfect refrigerator. A man who has quarreled with his neighbor
comes into court, and, before the lawyers get through with him,
he wishes he hadn't quarreled. How is it that our courts act in
this way? What do we gain in this? Everything. In old times a
dispute between man and man was settled by
blows--fisticuffs--gradually superseded by the sword, at last by
the pistol; and now we have thrown that out, and established a
system of jurisprudence. Now all these petty grievances must be
settled in court. Private violence must no longer be permitted,
and that is a great march in civilization.

The parallel case is this: We in this country--we men, I mean,
for women are nobodies and nowhere when you come to the
discussion of great questions like these, but I use the
conventional we--we in this country are attempting to carry our
ideas of liberty and responsibility into legislation, and we
don't agree--we quarrel bitterly and almost come to blows
again--but election days cool us off, acting like a court-room
itself. We accept their judgment, and go about our business
quietly till next time. Now if we were all Americans, acting
under an intelligent sense of responsibility, everything might be
expected to run smoothly under this regime; but the trouble is
when the foreigner comes in who does not understand our
institutions, who is, perhaps, ignorant, debased, and
superstitious. But the foreigner is, it seems to me, the very man
who needs this safety-valve of the election day more than any
other on the face of the globe. We ourselves could run our own
nationality; but here comes this man from the principalities of
the old world--from Europe we will say, to begin with--and he has
an idea that he is going to be richer, smarter, happier, more on
an equality with every other man than ever he was before. He
comes here, and what does he find? He finds a ladder, reaching
higher into the clouds, perhaps, but the lower rounds are just as
near the earth as over there, and he is on the lowest round
still. He sees his next-door neighbor has more money than he has,
is better educated, and commands the respect of the community, as
he does not, and he is filled with disappointment, and sometimes
with rage. What would he naturally do, with his old world
antecedents and training, when he is thus aggrieved as he
conceives himself to be? Why, burn your barn, break into your
house, steal all he could from you. But what does election day do
for him? On that day he is as good as anybody. He goes to the
polls side by side with the first man in the land, and he rides
in a carriage there, if he is too drunk to walk, and he can vote
the first man in the line, if he chooses. The richest man in the
country must walk behind him and wait for his turn. He drops his
ballot and he is cooled off. He soon begins to get hold a little
of this idea of responsibility that I am speaking of, and after a
while it will come into his head--very slowly, perhaps, for we
are all slow to learn these things--that he has got to work
himself up and get on a par with those intelligent and
influential people who are so powerful in making laws and
customs.

Now, gentlemen, it seems to me if you could disfranchise every
foreigner to-day who was not intelligent, or if you could make
intelligence the test of voting, you would have ten barns burned
where you have one now. I believe it firmly. Being naturally
conservative, as I think all women are, a few years ago I really
thought that ten, even twenty years' residence might be required
of foreigners before they should be allowed to vote. I said they
did not know enough, and so ought to be kept out as long as that.
To-day I am inclined not to limit the time a moment longer than
it is necessary for men to get their naturalization papers out,
and go through the required legal formalities. If
disfranchisement meant annihilation, selfishly, I might be glad
to get rid of this troublesome question in that way, the task of
ruling this country would then be a far easier one than it is;
but it does not mean annihilation. So when gentlemen talk with
me, and say we have too many voters already, I reply, do not
disfranchise these men, enlighten them, for God has sent them
here for a purpose of His own. And I say to you gentlemen the
ballot in the hands of every man is the only thing that saves us
from anarchy to-day, that keeps us alive as a republic--the
ballot in the hands of these ignorant men, and the more ignorant
they are the more they need it, and the more we need they should
have it. And let me say, in passing, that reconstruction at the
South is hindered to-day for the same reason, responsibility is
taken away from a large class of citizens. A disfranchised class
is always a restless class; a class that, if it be not as a whole
given up to deeds of violence, will at least wink at them, when
committed by men either in or out of its own ranks. What the
South needs to-day is ballots, not bullets.

I leave out of the question the ultimate educating power of the
ballot, though I would like to make you an argument upon that
alone. But I say give the poor men, ignorant men the ballot for
purposes of self-defense, and because we could not live in safety
in our homes otherwise. New York is poorly governed, we say,
to-day, and getting to be a pretty dangerous place to live in.
But what would it be if every foreigner and every ignorant man
could not go out on election day, and prove that he was as good
as anybody? That is human nature, and it is human nature, and
plenty of it too, that we have to deal with. And now, let me ask
you, what are these men sent here for and who sent them? We have
got all Europe, and all Asia is coming, and who sends them? When
God put into that good ship _Mayflower_ those two great ribs of
oak, personal liberty and personal responsibility, He knew the
precious freight she was to bear, and all the hopes bound up in
her, and He pledged Himself by both the great eternities, the
past and the future, that that ship should weather all storms and
come safe to port with all she had on board. And what God has
promised He will perform. So I beg of you not to think for a
moment of limiting manhood suffrage.

And if men can not live in this country in safe homes, except
their neighbor men are enfranchised, can they live without
enfranchised women any more? If you can not live in safety with
irresponsible men in your midst, how can you live with
irresponsible women? Much more, how can you grow into the stature
of perfect men in Christ Jesus our Lord; how can you become
perfect legislators, except your mothers are instructed on these
great subjects you are called to legislate upon, that they may
instruct you in their turn? You do not know anything so well as
what your mothers have taught you; but they have not taught you
political economy. It is not their fault that they have not, nor
yours, perhaps. No man nor woman studies a subject profoundly
except he or she is called upon to act upon it. What business man
studies a business foreign to his own? What woman studies a
business foreign to her own? In past ages this woman, in the
providence of God, we will say, has been shut out from political
action, for, so long as the sword ruled and man had to get his
liberty by the sword, so long woman had all she could do to guard
the home, for that was her part of the work; and she did it
bravely and well, you will say. But now men are not fighting for
their liberty with the gun by the door and the Indians outside.
You are fighting for it in halls of legislation, with the spirit
of truth--with spiritual weapons--and woman would be disloyal to
her womanhood if she did not ask to share these heavy
responsibilities with you. And she has really been training
herself all these years she has seemed so indifferent; she has
neglected her duty in part--I confess it freely--it is not your
fault alone, gentlemen, that we are not with you to-day. If we
had been as conscious of our duty and privilege years ago as we
are to-day, if we had known our birthright, we should have stood
by your side, welcome coadjutors, long since. So we will take the
blame of the past alike--we have all been walking very slowly
this path of Christian civilization. But in the greatest conflict
of modern times, you announced great principles and fought for
them on the field, and we stood by them in the home, and we stand
by them still there. And when we come to deliberate with you in
solemn council as to how these principles shall be carried into
legislation, your task will be easier, our opportunities will be
larger, and still our hearts will be where they have ever
been--in our homes.

Forty-first Congress, 3d Session, House of Representatives,
Report, No. 22, Jan. 30, 1871, recommitted to the Committee on
Judiciary and ordered to be printed. Mr. BINGHAM, from the
Committee on the Judiciary, made the following report.

_The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the
Memorial of Victoria C. Woodhull, having considered the same,
make the following report:_

The Memorialist asks the enactment of a law by Congress which
shall secure to citizens of the United States in the several
States the right to vote "without regard to sex." Since the
adoption of the XIV. Amendment of the Constitution, there is no
longer any reason to doubt that all persons, born or naturalized
in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,
are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they
reside, for that is the express declaration of the amendment.

The clause of the XIV. Amendment, "No State shall make or enforce
any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States," does not, in the opinion of the
Committee, refer to privileges and immunities of citizens of the
United States other than those privileges and immunities embraced
in the original text of the Constitution, article IV., section 2.
The XIV. Amendment, it is believed, did not add to the privileges
or immunities before mentioned, but was deemed necessary for
their enforcement, as an express limitation upon the powers of
the States. It has been judicially determined that the first
eight articles of amendment of the Constitution were not
limitations on the power of the States, and it was apprehended
that the same might be held of the provision of section 2,
article iv.

To remedy this defect of the Constitution, the express
limitations upon the States contained in the first section of the
XIV. Amendment, together with the grant of power in Congress to
enforce them by legislation, were incorporated in the
Constitution. The words "citizens of the United States," and
"citizens of the States," as employed in the XIV. Amendment, did
not change or modify the relations of citizens of the State and
Nation as they existed under the original Constitution.

Attorney-General Bates gave the opinion that the Constitution
uses the the word "citizen," only to express the political
quality of the individual in his relation to the Nation; to
declare that he is a member of the body politic, and bound to it
by the reciprocal obligation of allegiance on the one side and
protection on the other. The phrase "a citizen of the United
States," without addition or qualification, means neither more
nor less than a member of the Nation. (Opinion of
Attorney-General Bates on citizenship.)

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled that, according
to the express words and clear meaning of the section 2, article
iv. of the Constitution, no privileges are secured by it except
those which belong to citizenship. (Connor _et al._ _vs._ Elliott
_et al._, 18 Howard, 593). In Corfield _vs._ Coryell, 4
Washington Circuit Court Reports, 380, the Court say:

The inquiry is, what are the privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States? We feel no hesitation in
confining these expressions to those privileges and
immunities which are in their nature fundamental; which
belong of right to the citizens of all free governments; and
which have at all times been enjoyed by the citizens of the
several States which compose this Union, from the time of
their becoming free, independent, and sovereign. What these
fundamental principles are would, perhaps, be more tedious
than difficult to enumerate. They may, however, be all
comprehended under the following general heads: Protection
by the Government; the enjoyment of life and liberty, with
the right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and
to pursue and obtain happiness and safety, subject,
nevertheless, to such restraints as the Government may
justly prescribe for the general good of the whole; the
right of a citizen of one State to pass through or to reside
in any other State, for the purpose of trade, agriculture,
professional pursuits, or otherwise; to claim the benefit of
the writ of _habeas corpus_; to institute and maintain
actions of any kind in the courts of the State; to take,
hold, and dispose of property, either real or personal; and
an exemption from higher taxes or impositions than are paid
by the other citizens of the State, may be mentioned as some
of the particular privileges and immunities of citizens
which are clearly embraced by the general description of
privileges deemed to be fundamental; to which may be added
the elective franchise, as regulated and established by the
laws or Constitution of the State in which it is to be
exercised.... But we can not accede to the proposition which
was insisted on by the counsel, that under this provision of
the Constitution, sec. 2, art. 4, the citizens of the
several States are permitted to participate in all the
rights which belong exclusively to the citizens of any other
particular State.

The learned Justice Story declared that the intention of the
clause--"the citizens of each State shall be entitled, to all the
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States"--was
to confer on the citizens of each State a general citizenship,
and communicated all the privileges and immunities which a
citizen of the same State would be entitled to under the
circumstances. (Story on the Constitution, vol. 2, p. 605).

In the case of the Bank of the United States _vs._ Primrose, in
the Supreme Court of the United States, Mr. Webster said:

That this article in the Constitution (art. 4, sec. 2) does
not confer on the citizens of each State political rights in
every other State, is admitted. A citizen of Pennsylvania
can not go into Virginia and vote at any election in that
State, though when he has acquired a residence in Virginia,
and is otherwise qualified, is required by the Constitution
(of Virginia), he becomes, without formal adoption as a
citizen of Virginia, a citizen of that State politically.
(Webster's Works, vol. 6, p. 112).

It must be obvious that Mr. Webster was of opinion that the
privileges and immunities of citizens, guaranteed to them in the
several States, did not include the privilege of the elective
franchise otherwise than as secured by the State Constitution.
For, after making the statement above quoted, that a citizen of
Pennsylvania can not go into Virginia and vote, Mr. Webster adds,
"but for the purposes of trade, commerce, buying and selling, it
is evidently not in the power of any State to impose any
hindrance or embarrassment, etc. upon citizens of other States,
or to place them, going there, upon a different footing from her
own citizens." (Ib.) The proposition is clear that no citizen of
the United States can rightfully vote in any State of this Union
who has not the qualifications required by the Constitution of
the State in which the right is claimed to be exercised, except
as to such conditions in the constitutions of such States as deny
the right to vote to citizens resident therein "on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude."

The adoption of the XV. Amendment to the Constitution imposing
these three limitations upon the power of the several States, was
by necessary implication, a declaration that the States had the
power to regulate by a uniform rule the conditions upon which the
elective franchise should be exercised by citizens of the United
States resident therein. The limitations specified in the XV.
Amendment exclude the conclusion that a State of this Union,
having a government republican in form, may not prescribe
conditions upon which alone citizens may vote other than those
prohibited. It can hardly be said that a State law which excludes
from voting women citizens, minor citizens, and non-resident
citizens of the United States, on account of sex, minority, or
domicil, is a denial of the right to vote on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude.

It may be further added that the 2d section of the XIV.
Amendment, by the provision that "when the right to vote at any
election for the choice of electors of President and
Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress,
or executive and judicial officers of the State, or the members
of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male
inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, a
citizen of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for
participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of
representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which
the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number
of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State," implies
that the several States may restrict the elective franchise as to
other than male citizens. In disposing of this question effect
must be given, if possible, to every provision of the
Constitution. Article 1, section 2, of the Constitution provides:

That the House of Representatives shall be composed of
members chosen every second year by the people of the
several States, and the electors in each State shall have
the qualifications requisite for electors of the most
numerous branch of the State Legislature.

This provision has always been construed to vest in the several
States the exclusive right to prescribe the qualifications of
electors for the most numerous branch of the State Legislature,
and therefore for Members of Congress. And this interpretation is
supported by section 4, article 1, of the Constitution, which
provides:

That the time, places, and manner of holding elections for
Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each
State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at
any time by law make or alter such regulations except as to
the place of choosing Senators.

Now it is submitted, if it had been intended that Congress should
prescribe the qualifications of electors, that the grant would
have read: The Congress may at any time by law make or alter such
regulations, and also prescribe the qualifications of electors,
etc. The power, on the contrary, is limited exclusively to the
time, place, and manner, and does not extend to the
qualification of the electors. This power to prescribe the
qualification of electors in the several States has always been
exercised, and is, to-day, by the several States of the Union;
and we apprehend, until the Constitution shall be changed, will
continue to be so exercised, subject only to express limitations
imposed by the Constitution upon the several States, before
noticed. We are of opinion, therefore, that it is not competent
for the Congress of the United States to establish by law the
right to vote without regard to sex in the several States of this
Union, without the consent of the people of such States, and
against their constitutions and laws; and that such legislation
would be, in our judgment, a violation of the Constitution of the
United States, and of the rights reserved to the States
respectively by the Constitution. It is undoubtedly the right of
the people of the several States so to reform their constitutions
and laws as to secure the equal exercise of the right of suffrage
at all elections held therein under the Constitution of the
United States, to all citizens, without regard to sex; and as
public opinion creates constitutions and governments in the
several States, it is not to be doubted that whenever, in any
State, the people are of opinion that such a reform is advisable,
it will be made.

If however, as is claimed in the memorial referred to, the right
to vote "is vested by the Constitution in the citizens of the
United States without regard to sex," that right can be
established in the courts without further legislation.

The suggestion is made that Congress, by a mere declaratory act,
shall say that the construction claimed in the memorial is the
true construction of the Constitution, or in other words, that by
the Constitution of the United States the right to vote is vested
in citizens of the United States "without regard to sex,"
anything in the constitution and laws of any State to the
contrary notwithstanding. In the opinion of the Committee, such
declaratory act is not authorized by the Constitution nor within
the legislative power of Congress. We therefore recommend the
adoption of the following resolution:

_Resolved_, That the prayer of the petitioner be not
granted, that the memorial be laid on the table, and that
the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged from the
further consideration of the subject.

Forty-first Congress, 3d Session, House of Representatives,
Report No. V., Part 2, Feb. 1, 1871, ordered to be printed.

Mr. LOUGHRIDGE, from the Committee on the Judiciary, submitted
the following as the view of the minority:

_In the matter of the Memorial of Victoria C. Woodhull, referred
by the House to the Committee on the Judiciary, the undersigned,
members of the Committee, being unable to agree to the report of
the Committee, present the following as their views upon the
subject of the Memorial:_

The memorialist sets forth that she is a native born citizen of
the United States, and a resident thereof; that she is of adult
age, and has resided in the State of New York for three years
past; that by the Constitution of the United States she is
guaranteed the right of suffrage; but that she is, by the laws of
the State of New York, denied the exercise of that right; and
that by the laws of different States and Territories the
privilege of voting is denied to all the female citizens of the
United States; and petitions for relief by the enactment of some
law to enforce the provisions of the Constitution, by which such
right is guaranteed.

The question presented is one of exceeding interest and
importance, involving as it does the constitutional rights not
only of the memorialist but of more than one-half of the citizens
of the United States--a question of constitutional law in which
the civil and natural rights of the citizen are involved.
Questions of property or of expediency have nothing to do with
it. The question is not "Would it be expedient to extend the
right of suffrage to women," but, "Have women citizens that right
by the Constitution as it is." A question of this kind should be
met fairly and investigated in that generous and liberal spirit
characteristic of the age, and decided upon principles of
justice, of right, and of law.

It is claimed by many that to concede to woman the right of
suffrage would be an innovation upon the laws of nature, and upon
the theory and practice of the world for ages in the past, and
especially an innovation upon the common law of England, which
was originally the law of this country, and which is the
foundation of our legal fabric. If we were to admit the truth of
this, it is yet no argument against the proposition, if the right
claimed exists, and is established by the Constitution of the
United States. The question is to be decided by the Constitution
and the fundamental principles of our Government, and not by the
usage and dogmas of the past. It is a gratifying fact that the
world is advancing in political science, and gradually adopting
more liberal and rational theories of government. The
establishment of this Government upon the principles of the
Declaration of Independence was in itself a great innovation upon
the theories and practice of the world, and opened a new chapter
in the history of the human race, and its progress toward perfect
civil and political liberty.

But it is not admitted that the universal usage of the past has
been in opposition to the exercise of political power by women.
The highest positions of civil power have from time to time been
filled by women in all ages of the world, and the question of the
right of woman to a voice in government is not a new one by any
means, but has been agitated, and the right acknowledged and
exercised, in governments far less free and liberal than ours. In
the Roman Republic, during its long and glorious career, women
occupied a higher position, as to political rights and
privileges, than in any other contemporaneous government. In
England unmarried women have, by the laws of that country, always
been competent to vote and to hold civil offices, if qualified in
other respects; at least such is the weight of authority. In
"Callis upon Sewers," an old English work, will be found a
discussion of the question as to the right of women to hold
office in England. The learned and distinguished author uses the
following language:

And for temporal governments I have observed women to have
from time to time been admitted to the highest places; for
in ancient Roman histories I find Eudocia and Theodora
admitted at several times into the sole government of the
empire; and here in England our late famous Queen Elizabeth,
whose government was most renowned; and Semiramis governed
Syria; and the Queen of the South, who came to visit
Solomon, for anything that appears to the contrary, was a
sole queen; and to fall a degree lower, we have precedents
that King Richard the First and King Henry the Fifth
appointed by commissions their mothers to be regents of this
realm in their absence in France.

But yet I will descend a step lower; and doth not our law,
temporal and spiritual, admit of women to be executrixes
and administratrixes? And thereby they have the rule or
ordering of great estates, and many times they are
guardianesses in chivalry, and have hereby also the
government of many great heirs in the kingdom and of their
own estates.

So by these cases it appeareth that the common law of this
kingdom submitted many things to their government; yet the
statute of justices of the peace is like to Jethro's counsel
to Moses, for there they speak of men to be justices, and
thereby seemeth to exclude women; but our statute of sewers
is, "Commission of sewers shall be granted by the King to
such person and persons as the lords should appoint." So the
word persons stands indifferently for either sex. I am of
the opinion, for the authorities, reasons and causes
aforesaid, that this honorable countess being put into the
commission of the sewers, the same is warrantable by the
law; and the ordinances and decrees made by her and the
other commissions of sewers are not to be impeached for that
cause of her sex.

And it is said by a recent writer:

Even at present in England the idea of women holding
official station is not so strange as in the United States.
The Countess of Pembroke had the office of sheriff of
Westmoreland and exercised it in person. At the assizes she
sat with the judges on the bench. In a reported case it is
stated by counsel and assented to by the court that a woman
is capable of serving in almost all the offices of the
kingdom.

As to the right of women to vote by the common law of England,
the authorities are clear. In the English Law Magazine for
1868-'69, vol. 26, page 120, will be found reported the case of
the application of JANE ALLEN, who claimed to be entered upon the
list of voters of the Parish of St. Giles, under the reform act
of 1867, which act provides as follows: Every man shall, in and
after the year 1868, be entitled to be registered as a voter, and
when registered to vote for a member or members to serve in
Parliament, who is qualified as follows: 1st. Is of full age and
not subject to any legal incapacity, etc., etc. It was decided by
the court that the claimant had the right to be registered and to
vote; that by the English law, the term man, as used in that
statute, included woman. In that case the common law of England
upon that question was fully and ably reviewed, and we may be
excused for quoting at some length:

And as to what has been said of there being no such adjudged
cases, I must say that it is perfectly clear that not
perhaps in either of three cases reported by Mr. Shaen, but
in those of Catharine _vs._ Surry, Coates _vs._ Lyle, and
Holt _vs._ Lyle, three cases of somewhat greater antiquity,
the right of women freeholders was allowed by the courts.
These three cases were decided by the judges in the reign of
James I. (A. D. 1612). Although no printed report of them
exists, I find that in the case of Olive _vs._ Ingraham,
they were repeatedly cited by the lord Chief Justice of the
King's Bench in the course of four great arguments in that
case, the case being reargued three times (7 Mod., 264), and
the greatest respect was manifested by the whole court for
those precedents. Their importance is all the greater when
we consider what the matter was upon which King James'
judges sitting in Westminster Hall had to decide. It was not
simply the case of a mere occupier, inhabitant, or scot or
lot voter. Therefore the question did not turn upon the
purport of a special custom, or a charter, or a local act of
Parliament, or even of the common right in this or that
borough. But it was that very matter and question which has
been mooted in the dictum of Lord Coke, the freeholder's
franchise in the shire, and upon that the decision in each
case expressly was, that a feme sole shall vote if she hath
a freehold, and that if she be not a feme sole, but a feme
covert having freehold, then her husband during her
coverture shall vote in her right. These, then, are so many
express decisions which at once displace Lord Coke's
unsupported assertion and declare the law so as to constrain
my judgment. It is sometimes said, when reference is made to
precedents of this kind, that they have never been approved
by the bar. But that can not be said of these. Hakewell, the
contemporary of Lord Coke and one of the greatest of all
parliamentary lawyers then living--for even Selden and
Granvil were not greater than Hakewell--left behind him the
manuscript to which I have referred, with his comments on
those cases.

Sir William Lee, Chief Justice, in his judgment in the case of
Olive _vs._ Ingraham, expressly says that he had perused them,
and that they contained the expression of Hakewell's entire
approval of the principles upon which they were decided, and of
the results deduced; and we have the statement of Lord Chief
Justice Lee, who had carefully examined those cases, that in the
case of Holt _vs._ Lyle, it was determined that a feme sole
freeholder may claim a vote for Parliament men; but if married,
her husband must vote for her. In the case of Olive _vs._
Ingraham, Justice Probyn says:

The case of Holt _vs._ Lyle, lately mentioned by our Lord
Chief Justice, is a very strong case; "_They who pay ought
to choose whom they shall pay._" And the Lord Chief Justice
seemed to have assented to that general proposition, as
authority for the correlative proposition, that "women, when
_sole_, had a right to vote." At all events, there is here
the strongest possible evidence that in the reign of James
I., the _feme sole_, being a freeholder of a country, or
what is the same thing, of a county, of a city, or town, or
borough, where, of custom, freeholders had the right to
vote, not only had, but exercised the parliamentary
franchise. If married, she could not vote in respect merely
of her freehold, not because of the incapacities of
coverture, but for this simple reason, that, by the act of
marriage, which is an act of law, the title of the _feme
sole_ freeholder becomes vested for life in the husband. The
qualification to vote was not personal, but real;
consequently, her right to vote became suspended as soon and
for as long as she was married. I am bound to consider that
the question as to what weight is due to the dictum of my
Lord Coke is entirely disposed of by those cases from the
reign of James I. and George II., and that the authority of
the latter is unimpeached by any later authority, as the
cases of Rex. _vs._ Stubles, and Regina _vs._ Aberavon,
abundantly show.

In Anstey's Notes on the New Reform Act of 1867, the authorities
and precedents upon the right of women to vote in England are
examined and summed up, and the author concludes:

It is submitted that the weight of authority is very greatly
in favor of the female right of suffrage. Indeed, the
authority against it is contained in the short and hasty
dictum of Lord Coke, referred to above. It was set down by
him in his last and least authoritative institute, and it is
certain that he has been followed neither by the great
lawyers of his time nor by the judicature. The principles of
the law in relation to the suffrage of females will be found
in Coates _vs._ Lyle, Holt _vs._ Ingraham, and The King
_vs._ Stubles, cases decided under the strict rules for the
construction of statutes.

It can not be questioned that from time whereof the memory of man
runneth not to the contrary, unmarried women have been by the
laws of England competent voters, subject to the freehold
qualification which applied alike to men and women. Married women
could not vote because they were not freeholders; by the common
law their property upon marriage became vested in the husband. So
that it appears that the admission of woman to participation in
the affairs of government would not be so much of an innovation
upon the theories and usage of the past as is by some supposed.

In England the theory was that in property representation, all
property should be represented. Here the theory is that of
personal representation, which of course, if carried out fully,
includes the representation of all property. In England, as we
have seen, the owner of the property, whether male or female was
entitled to representation, no distinction being made on account
of sex. If the doctrine contended for by the majority of the
committee be correct, then this Government is less liberal upon
this question than the government of England has been for
hundreds of years, for there is in this country a large class of
citizens of adult age, and owners in their own right of large
amounts of property, and who pay a large proportion of the taxes
to support the Government, who are denied any representation
whatever, either for themselves or their property--unmarried
women, of whom it can not be said that their interests are
represented by their husbands. In their case, neither the English
nor the American theory of representation is carried out, and
this utter denial of representation is justified upon the ground
alone that this class of citizens are women. Surely we can not be
so much less liberal than our English ancestors! Surely the
Constitution of this Republic does not sanction an injustice so
indefensible as that!

By the XIV. Amendment of the Constitution of the United States,
what constitutes citizenship of the United States, is for the
first time declared, and who are included by the term citizen.
Upon this question, before that time, there had been much
discussion judicial, political, and general, and no distinct and
definite definition of qualification had been settled. The people
of the United States determined this question by the XIV.
Amendment to the Constitution, which declares that--

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the
United States, and of the State wherein they reside. No
State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States;
nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or
property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person
within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the law.

This amendment, after declaring who are citizens of the United
States, and thus fixing but one grade of citizenship, which
insures to all citizens alike all the privileges, immunities and
rights which accrue to that condition, goes on in the same
section and prohibits these privileges and immunities from
abridgment by the States. Whatever these "privileges and
immunities" are, they attach to the female citizen equally with
the male. It is implied by this amendment that they are inherent,
that they belong to citizenship as such, for they are not therein
specified or enumerated.

The majority of the committee hold that the privileges guaranteed
by the XIV. Amendment do not refer to any other than the
privilege embraced in section 2, of article 4, of the original
text. The committee certainly did not duly consider this
unjustified statement. Section 2, of article 4, provides for the
privileges of "citizens of the _States_," while the first section
of the XIV. Amendment protects the privileges of "_citizens of
the United States_." The term citizens of the _States_ and
citizens of the _United States_ are by no means convertible.

A circuit court of the United States seems to hold a different
view of this question from that stated by the committee. In the
case of The Live Stock Association _vs._ Crescent City (1st
Abbott, 396), Justice Bradley, of the Supreme Court of the United
States, delivering the opinion, uses the following language in
relation to the first clause of the XIV. Amendment:

The new prohibition that "no State shall make or enforce any
law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States" is not identical with the
clause in the Constitution which declared that "the citizens
of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of citizens in the several States." It embraces
much more. It is possible that those who framed the article
were not themselves aware of the far-reaching character of
its terms, yet if the amendment does in fact bear a broader
meaning, and does extend its protecting shield over those
who were never thought of when it was conceived and put in
form, and does reach social evils which were never before
prohibited by constitutional enactment, it is to be presumed
that the American people, in giving it their _imprimatur_,
understood what they were doing and meant to decree what in
fact they have decreed. The "privileges and immunities"
secured by the original Constitution were only such as each
State gave to its own citizens, ... but the XIV. Amendment
prohibits any State from abridging the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States, whether its own
citizens or any others. It not merely requires equality of
privileges, but it demands that the privileges and
immunities of all citizens shall be absolutely unabridged
and unimpaired.

In the same opinion, after enumerating some "privileges" of the
citizens, such as were pertinent to the case on trial, but
declining to enumerate all, the Court further says:

These privileges can not be invaded without sapping the
foundation of Republican government. A Republican government
is not merely a government of the people, but it is a free
government.... It was very ably contended on the part of the
defendants that the XIV. Amendment was intended only to
secure to all citizens equal capacities before the law. That
was at first our view of it. But it does not so read. The
language is, "No State shall abridge the privileges or
immunities of citizens of the United States." What are the
privileges and immunities of the citizens of the United
States? Are they capacities merely? Are they not also
rights?

The Court in this seems to intimate very strongly that the
amendment was intended to secure the natural rights of citizens,
as well as their equal capacities before the law.

In a case in the Supreme Court of Georgia, in 1869, the question
was before the court whether a negro was competent to hold office
in the State of Georgia. The case was ably argued on both sides,
Mr. Akerman, the present Attorney General of the United States,
being of counsel for the petitioner. Although the point was made
and argued fully, that the right to vote and hold office were
both included in the privileges and immunities of citizens, and
were thus guaranteed by the XIV. Amendment, yet that point was
not directly passed upon by the court, the court holding that
under the laws and constitution of Georgia, the negro citizen had
the right claimed. In delivering the opinion, Chief Justice Brown
said:

It is necessary to the decision of this case to inquire what
are the "privileges and immunities" of a citizen, which are
guaranteed by the XIV. Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States. Whatever they may be, they are protected
against all abridgment by legislation.... Whether the
"privileges and immunities" of the citizens embrace
political rights, including the right to hold office, I need
not now inquire. If they do, that right is guaranteed alike
by the Constitution of the United States and of Georgia, and
is beyond the control of the legislature.

In the opinion of Justice McKay, among other propositions, he
lays down the following:

2d. The rights of the people of this State, white and black,
are not granted to them by the constitution thereof; the
object and effect of that instrument is not to _give_, but
to restrain, deny, regulate and guarantee rights, and all
persons recognized by that constitution as citizens of the
State have _equal, legal and political rights_ except as
_otherwise expressly declared_.

3d. It is the settled and uniform sense of the word
"citizen," when used in reference to the citizens of the
separate States of the United States, and to their rights as
such citizens, that it describes a person entitled to every
right, _legal and political_, enjoyed by any person in that
State, unless there he some express exceptions made by
positive law covering the particular persons, whose rights
are in question.

In the course of the argument of this case, Mr. Akerman used the
following language upon the point, as to whether citizenship
carried with it the right to hold office:

It may be profitable to inquire how the term (citizen) has
been understood in Georgia.... It will be seen that men whom
Georgians have been accustomed to revere believed that
citizenship in Georgia carried with it the right to hold
office in the absence of positive restrictions.

The majority of the committee having started out with the
erroneous hypothesis that the term "privileges of citizens of the
United States," as used in the XIV. Amendment, means no more than
the term "privileges of citizens," as used in section 2 of
article 4, discuss the question thus:

The right of suffrage was not included in the privileges of
citizens as used in section 2, article 4, therefore that
right is not included in the privileges of citizens of the
United States, as used in the XIV. Amendment.

Their premise being erroneous their whole argument fails. But if
they were correct in their premise, we yet claim that their
second position is not sustained by the authorities, and is shown
to be fallacious by a consideration of the principles of free
government. We claim that from the very nature of our Government,
the right of suffrage is a fundamental right of citizenship, not
only included in the term "privileges of citizens of the United
States," as used in the XIV. Amendment, but also included in the
term as used in section 2, of article 4, and in this we claim we
are sustained both by the authorities and by reason. In Abbott
_vs._ Bayley, (6 Pick., 92,) the Supreme Court of Massachusetts
says:

"The privileges and immunities" secured to the people of
each State, in every other State, can be applied only to the
case of a removal from one State into another. By such
removal they become citizens of the adopted State without
naturalization, and have a right to sue and be sued as
citizens; and yet this privilege is qualified and not
absolute, for they can not enjoy the right of suffrage or
eligibility to office without such term of residence as
shall be prescribed by the constitution and laws of the
State into which they shall remove.

This case fully recognizes the right of suffrage as one of the
"privileges of the citizen," subject to the right of the State to
regulate as to the term of residence--the same principle was laid
down in the case of Corfield _vs._ Coryell in the Supreme Court
of the United States. Justice Washington, in delivering the
opinion of the court, used the following language:

"The privileges and immunities conceded by the Constitution
of the United States to citizens in the several States," are
to be confined to those which are in their nature
fundamental, and belong of right to the citizens of all free
governments. Such are the rights of protection of life and
liberty, and to acquire and enjoy property, and to pay no
higher impositions than other citizens, and to pass through
or reside in the State at pleasure, and to enjoy the
elective franchise as regulated and established by the laws
or constitution of the State in which it is to be exercised.

And this is cited approvingly by Chancellor Kent. (2 Kent, sec.
72).

This case is cited by the majority of the Committee, as
sustaining their view of the law, but we are unable so to
understand it. It is for them an exceedingly unfortunate
citation.

In that case the court enumerated some of the "privileges of
citizens," such as are "in their nature fundamental and belong of
right to the citizens of all free governments" (mark the
language), and among those rights, place the "right of the
elective franchise" in the same category with those great rights
of life, liberty, and property. And yet the Committee cite this
case to show that this right is not a fundamental right of the
citizen! But it is added by the Court that the right of the
elective franchise "is to be enjoyed as regulated and established
by the State in which it is to be exercised." These words are
supposed to qualify the right, or rather take it out of the list
of fundamental rights, where the Court had just placed it. The
Court is made to say by this attempt in the same sentence, "the
elective franchise is a fundamental right of the citizen, and it
is not a fundamental right." It is a "fundamental right,"
provided the State sees fit to grant the right. It is a
"fundamental right of the citizen," but it does not exist, unless
the laws of the State give it. A singular species of "fundamental
rights!" Is there not a clear distinction between the regulation
of a right and its destruction? The State may regulate the right,
but it may not destroy it.

What is the meaning of "regulate" and "establish?" Webster says:
Regulate--to put in good order. Establish--to make stable or
firm. This decision then is, that "the elective franchise is a
fundamental right of the citizen of all free governments, to be
enjoyed by the citizen, under such laws as the State may enact to
regulate the right and make it stable or firm." Chancellor Kent,
in the section referred to, in giving the substance of this
opinion, leaves out the word establish, regarding the word
regulate as sufficiently giving the meaning of the Court. This
case is, in our opinion, a very strong one against the theory of
the majority of the Committee.

The Committee cite the language of Mr. Webster, as counsel in
United States _vs._ Primrose. We indorse every word in that
extract. We do not claim that a citizen of Pennsylvania can go
into Virginia and vote in Virginia, being a citizen of
Pennsylvania. No person has ever contended for such an absurdity.
We claim that when the citizen of the United States becomes a
citizen of Virginia, the State of Virginia has neither right nor
power to abridge the privileges of such citizen by denying him
entirely the right of suffrage, and thus all political rights.
The authorities cited by the majority of the Committee do not
seem to meet the case--certainly do not sustain their theory.

The case of Cooper _vs._ The Mayor of Savannah (4 Geo., 72),
involved the question whether a free negro was a citizen of the
United States? The Court, in the opinion, says:

Free persons of color have never been recognized as citizens
of Georgia; they are not entitled to bear arms, vote for
members of the legislature, or hold any civil office; they
have no political rights, but have personal rights, one of
which is personal liberty.

That they could not vote, hold office, etc., was held evidence
that they were not regarded as citizens.

In the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Scott
_vs._ Sanford (19 Howard, p. 476), Mr. Justice Daniel, in
delivering his opinion, used the following language as to the
rights and qualities of citizenship:

For who it may be asked is a citizen? What do the character
and status of citizens import? Without fear of
contradiction, it does not import the condition of being
private property, the subject of individual power and
ownership. Upon a principle of etymology alone, the term
citizen, as derived from _civitas_, conveys the idea of
connection or identification with the State or government,
and a participation in its functions. But beyond this there
is not, it is believed, to be found, in the theories of
writers on government, or in any actual experiment
heretofore tried, an exposition of the term citizen which
has not been understood as conferring the actual possession
and enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and
enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and
political.

And in the same case Chief Justice Taney said: "The words 'people
of the United States' and 'citizens' are synonymous terms, and
mean the same thing; they both describe the political body, who,
according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty,
and who hold the power and conduct the Government through their
representatives. They are what we familiarly call the sovereign
people, and every citizen is one of this people, and a
constituent member of this sovereignty." (19 Howard, 404).

In an important case in the Supreme Court of the United States,
Chief Justice Jay, in delivering the opinion of the Court, said:
"At the Revolution the sovereignty devolved on the people, and
they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are
sovereigns without subjects (unless the African slaves may be so
called), and have none to govern but themselves. The citizens of
America are equal as fellow-citizens, and joint tenants of the
sovereignty." (Chishol _vs._ Georgia, 2 Dallas, 470).

In Conner _vs._ Elliott (18 Howard), Justice Curtis, in declining
to give an enumeration of all the "privileges" of the citizen,
said, "According to the express words and clear meaning of the
clause, no privileges are secured except those that belong to
citizenship."

The Supreme Court said, in Corfield _vs._ Coryell, that the
elective franchise is such privilege; therefore, according to
Justice Curtis, it belongs to citizenship. In a case in the
Supreme Court of Kentucky (1 Littell's Ky. Reports, p. 333), the
Court say:

No one can, therefore, in the correct sense of the term, be
a citizen of a State who is not entitled upon the terms
prescribed by the institutions of the State to all the
rights and privileges conferred by these institutions upon
the highest class of society.

Mr. Wirt, when Attorney-General of the United States, in an
official opinion to be found on p. 508, 1st volume Opinions of
Attorney-Generals, came to the conclusion that the negroes were
not citizens of the United States, for the reason that they had
very few of the "privileges" of citizens, and among the
"privileges of citizens" of which they were deprived, that they
could not vote at any election.

Webster defines a citizen to be "a person, native or naturalized,
who has the privilege of voting for public officers, and who is
qualified to fill offices in the gift of the people." Worcester
defines the word thus: "An inhabitant of a republic who enjoys
the rights of a citizen or freeman, and who has a right to vote
for public officers as a citizen of the United States." Bouvier,
in his Law Dictionary, defines the term citizen: "One who, under
the Constitution and laws of the United States, has a right to
vote for Representatives in Congress and other public officers,
and who is qualified to fill offices in the gift of the people."
Aristotle defines a citizen to be "one who is a partner in the
legislative and judicial power, and who shares in the honors of
the State." (Aristotle de Repub., lib. 3, cap. 5, D.) The
essential properties of Athenian citizenship consisted in the
share possessed by every citizen in the legislature, in the
election of magistrates, and in the courts of justice. (See
Smith's Dictionary of Greek Antiquities, p. 289). The possession
of the _jus suffragii_, at least, if not also of the _jus
honorum_, is the principle which governs at this day in defining
citizenship in the countries deriving their jurisprudence from
the civil law. (Wheaton's International Law, p. 892).

The Dutch publicist, Thorbecke, says:

What constitutes the distinctive character of our epoch is
the development of the right of citizenship. In its most
extended, as well as its most restricted sense, it includes
a great many properties. The right of citizenship is the
right of voting in the government of the local, provincial,
or national community of which one is a member. In this last
sense, the right of citizenship signifies a participation in
the right of voting, in the general government, as member of
the State. (Rev. & Fr. Etr., tom. v, p. 383).

In a recent work of some research, written in opposition to
female suffrage, the author takes the ground that women are not
citizens, and urges that as a reason why they can properly be
denied the elective franchise, his theory being that if full
citizens they would be entitled to the ballot. He uses the
following language:

It is a question about which there may be some diversity of
opinion, what constitutes citizenship or who are citizens.
In a loose and improper sense the word citizen is sometimes
used to denote any inhabitant of the country, but this is
not a correct use of the word. Those, and no others, are
properly citizens who were parties to the original compact
by which the government was formed, or their successors who
are qualified to take part in the affairs of government by
their votes in the election of public officers. Women and
children are represented by their domestic directors or
heads in whose wills theirs is supposed to be included.
They, as well as others not entitled to vote, are not
properly citizens, but are members of the State, fully
entitled to the protection of its laws. A citizen, then, is
a person entitled to vote in the elections. He is one of
those in whom the sovereign power of the State resides.
(Jones on Suffrage, p. 48.)

But all such fallacious theories as this are swept away by the
XIV. Amendment, which abolishes the theory of different grades of
citizenship, or different grades of rights and privileges, and
declares all persons born in the country or naturalized in it to
be citizens, in the broadest and fullest sense of the term,
leaving no room for cavil, and guaranteeing to all citizens the
rights and privileges of citizens of the republic. We think we
are justified in saying that the weight of authority sustains us
in the view we take of this question. But considering the nature
of it, it is a question depending much for its solution upon a
consideration of the government under which citizenship is
claimed. Citizenship in Turkey or Russia is essentially different
in its rights and privileges from citizenship in the United
States. In the former, citizenship means no more than the right
to the protection of his absolute rights, and the "citizen" is a
subject; nothing more. Here, in the language of Chief Justice
Jay, there are no subjects. All, native-born and naturalized, are
citizens of the highest class; here all citizens are sovereigns,
each citizen bearing a portion of the supreme sovereignty, and
therefore it must necessarily be that the right to a voice in the
Government is the right and privilege of a citizen as such, and
that which is undefined in the Constitution is undefined because
it is self-evident.

Could a State disfranchise and deprive of the right to a vote all
citizens who have red hair; or all citizens under six feet in
height? All will consent that the States could not make such
arbitrary distinctions the ground for denial of political
privileges; that it would be a violation of the first article of
the XIV. Amendment; that it would be abridging the privileges of
citizens. And yet the denial of the elective franchise to
citizens on account of sex is equally as arbitrary as the
distinction on account of stature, or color of hair, or any other
physical distinction. These privileges of the citizen exist
independent of the Constitution. They are not derived from the
Constitution or the laws, but are the means of asserting and
protecting rights that existed before any civil governments were
formed--the right of life, liberty and property. Says Paine, in
his Dissertation upon the Principles of Government:

The right of voting for representatives is the primary
right, by which other rights are protected. To take away
this right is to reduce man to a state of slavery, for
slavery consists in being subject to the will of another;
and he that has not a vote in the election of
representatives is, in this case. The proposal, therefore,
to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the
proposal to take away property.

In a state of nature, before governments were formed, each person
possessed a natural right to defend his liberty, his life and his
property from the aggressions of his fellow men. When he enters
into the free government he does not surrender that right, but
agrees to exercise it, not by brute force, but by the ballot, by
his individual voice in making the laws that dispose of, control
and regulate those rights. The right to a voice in the government
is but the natural right of protection of one's life, liberty and
property, by personal strength and brute force, so modified as to
be exercised in the form of a vote, through the machinery of a
free government. The right of self-protection, it will not be
denied, exists in all equally in a state of nature, and the
substitute for it exists equally in all the citizens after a free
government is formed, for the free government is by all and for
all.

The people "ordained and established" the Constitution. Such is
the preamble. "We, the people." Can it be said that the people
acquire their privileges from the instrument that they themselves
establish? Does the creature extend rights, privileges and
immunities to the creator? No; the people retain all the rights
which they have not surrendered; and if the people have not given
to the Government the power to deprive them of their elective
franchise, they possess it by virtue of citizenship. The true
theory of this Government, and of all free governments, was laid
down by our fathers in the Declaration of Independence, and
declared to be "self-evident." "All men are endowed by their
Creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these
rights governments are instituted among men, deriving all their
just powers from the consent of the governed." Here is the great
truth, the vital principle, upon which our Government is founded,
and which demonstrates that the right of a voice in the conduct
of the government, and the selection of the rulers, is a right
and privilege of all citizens. Another of the self-evident truths
laid down in that instrument is:

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or
abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its
foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in
such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety and happiness.

How can the people carry out this right without the exercise of
the ballot; and is not the ballot then a fundamental right and
privilege of the citizen, not given to him by the Constitution,
but inherent, as a necessity, from the very nature of the
government?

Benjamin Franklin wrote:

That every man of the commonalty, except infants, insane
persons, and criminals, is, of common right, and by the laws
of God, a freeman, and entitled to the free enjoyment of
liberty. That liberty or freedom consists in having an
actual share in the appointment of those who frame the laws,
and who are to be the guardians of every man; life,
property, and peace; for the all of one man is as dear to
him as the all of another, and the poor man has an equal
right but more need to have representatives in the
legislature than the rich one. That they who have no voice
nor vote in the electing of representatives do not enjoy
liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes
and to their representatives; for, to be enslaved is to have
governors whom other men have set over us, and be subject to
laws made by the representatives of others, without having
had representatives of our own to give consent in our
behalf. (Franklin's Works, vol. 2. p. 372.)

James Madison said:

Under every view of the subject it seems indispensable that
the mass of the citizens should not be without a voice in
making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the
magistrates who are to administer them. (Madison Papers,
vol. 3, p. 14.)

Taxation without representation is abhorrent to every principle
of natural or civil liberty. It was this injustice that drove our
fathers into revolution against the mother country.

The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not
represented appears to me to be depriving them of one of
their most essential rights as freemen, and if continued,
seems to be, in effect, an entire disfranchisement of every
civil right. For what one civil right is worth a rush after
a man's property is subject to be taken from him at pleasure
without his consent? If a man is not his own assessor, in
person or by deputy, his liberty is gone, or he is entirely
at the mercy of others. (Otis's Rights of the Colonies, p.
58.)

Nor are these principles original with the people of this
country. Long before they were ever uttered on this continent
they were declared by Englishmen. Said Lord Summers, a truly
great lawyer of England:

Amongst all the rights and privileges appertaining unto us,
that of having a share in the legislation, and being
governed by such laws as we ourselves shall cause, is the
most fundamental and essential, as well as the most
advantageous and beneficial.

Said the learned and profound Hooker:

By the natural law whereunto Almighty God hath made all
subject, the lawful power of making laws to command whole
politic societies of men, belongeth so properly unto the
same entire societies, that for any prince or potentate of
what kind soever upon earth to exercise the same of himself
(or themselves), and not either by express commission
immediately received from God, or else by authority derived
at the first from their consent upon whose persons they
impose laws, it is no better than mere tyranny! Agreeable to
the same just privileges of natural equity, is that maxim
for the English constitution, that "Law to bind all must be
assented to by all"; and there can be no legal appearance of
assent without some degree of representation.

The great champion of liberty, Granville Sharpe, declared that--

All British subjects, whether in Great Britain, Ireland, or
the colonies, are equally free by the laws of nature; they
certainly are equally entitled to the same natural rights
that are essential for their own preservation, because this
privilege of "having a share in the legislation" is not
merely a British right, peculiar to this island, but it is
also a natural right, which can not without the most
flagrant and stimulating injustice be withdrawn from any
part of the British empire by any worldly authority
whatsoever. No tax can be levied without manifest robbery
and injustice where this legal and constitutional
representation is wanting, because the English law abhors
the idea of taking the least property from freemen without
their consent. It is iniquitous (_iniquum est_, says the
maxim) that freemen should not have the free disposal of
their own effects, and whatever is iniquitous can never be
made lawful by any authority on earth, not even by the
united authority of king, lords, and commons, for that
would be contrary to the eternal laws of God, which are
supreme.

In an essay upon the "first principles of government," by
Priestly, an English writer of great ability, written over a
century since, is the following definition of political liberty:

Political liberty I would say, consists in power, which the
members of the State reserve to themselves, of arriving at
the public offices, or at least of having votes in the
nomination of those who fill them. In countries where every
member of the society enjoys an equal power of arriving at
the supreme offices, and consequently of directing the
strength and sentiments of the whole community, there is a
state of the most perfect political liberty.

On the other hand, in countries where a man is excluded from
these offices, or from the power of voting for the proper
persons to fill them, that man, whatever be the form of the
government, has no share in the government and therefore has
no political liberty at all. And since every man retains and
can never be deprived of his natural right of relieving
himself from all oppression, that is, from everything that
has been imposed upon him without his own consent, this must
be the only true and proper foundation of all governments
subsisting in the world, and that to which the people who
compose them have an inalienable right to bring them back.

It was from these great champions of liberty in England that our
forefathers received their inspiration and the principles which
they adopted, incorporated into the Declaration of Independence,
and made the foundation and framework of our Government. And yet
it is claimed that we have a Government which tramples upon these
elementary principles of political liberty, in denying to
one-half its adult citizens all political liberty, and subjecting
them to the tyranny of taxation without representation. It can
not be.

When we desire to construe the Constitution, or to ascertain the
powers of the Government and the rights of the citizens, it is
legitimate and necessary to recur to those principles and make
them the guide in such investigation. It is an oft-repeated maxim
set forth in the bills of rights of many of the State
constitutions that "the frequent recurrence to fundamental
principles is necessary for the preservation of liberty and good
government." Recurring to these principles, so plain, so natural,
so like political axioms, it would seem that to say that one-half
the citizens of this republican government, simply and only on
account of their sex, can legally be denied the right to a voice
in the government, the laws of which they are held to obey, and
which takes from them their property by taxation, is so
flagrantly in opposition to the principles of free government,
and the theory of political liberty, that no man could seriously
advocate it.

But it is said in opposition to the "citizen's right" of suffrage
that at the time of the establishment of the Constitution, women
were in all the States denied the right of voting, and that no
one claimed at the time that the Constitution of the United
States would change their status; that if such a change was
intended it would have been explicitly declared in the
Constitution or at least carried into practice by those who
framed the Constitution, and, therefore, such a construction of
it is against what must have been the intention of the framers.
This is a very unsafe rule of construction. As has been said, the
Constitution necessarily deals in general principles; these
principles are to be carried out to their legitimate conclusion
and result by legislation, and we are to judge of the intention
of those who established the Constitution by what they say,
guided by what they declare on the face of the instrument to be
their object.

It is said by Judge Story, in Story on the Constitution:

Contemporary construction is properly resorted to to
illustrate and confirm the text.... It can never abrogate
the text; it can never fritter away its obvious sense; it
can never narrow down its true limitations.

It is a well-settled rule that in the construction of the
Constitution, the objects for which it was established, being
expressed in the instrument, should have great influence; and
when words and phrases are used which are capable of different
constructions, that construction should be given which is the
most consonant with the declared objects of the instrument. We go
to the preamble to ascertain the objects and purpose of the
instrument. Webster defines preamble thus: "The introductory part
of a statute, which states the reason and intent of the law." In
the preamble, then, more certainly than in any other way, aside
from the language of the instrument, we find the intent. Judge
Story says:

The importance of examining the preamble for the purpose of
expounding the language of a statute has been long felt and
universally conceded in all juridical discussion. It is an
admitted maxim ... that the preamble is a key to open the
mind of the matters as to the mischiefs to be remedied and
the objects to be accomplished by the statute.... It is
properly resorted to where doubts or ambiguities arise upon
the words of the enacting part, for if they are clear and
unambiguous, there seems little room for interpretation,
except in cases leading to an obvious absurdity or a direct
overthrow of the intention expressed in the preamble. [Story
on the Constitution, sec. 457.]

Try this question by a consideration of the objects for which the
Constitution was established, as set forth in the preamble, "to
establish justice." Does it establish justice to deprive of all
representation or voice in the Government one-half of its adult
citizens, and compel them to pay taxes to and support a
government in which they have no representation? Is "taxation
without representation" justice established? "To insure domestic
tranquillity." Does it insure domestic tranquillity to give all
the political power to one class of citizens, and deprive another
class of any participation in the government? No. The sure means
of tranquillity is to give "equal political rights to all," that
all may stand "equal before the law."

"To provide for the common defense." We have seen that the only
defense the citizen has against oppression and wrong is by his
voice and vote in the selection of rulers and law makers. Does
it, then, "provide for the common defense," to deny to one half
the adult citizens of the republic that voice and vote?

"To secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our
posterity." As has been already said, there can be no political
liberty to any citizen deprived of a voice in the government.
This is self-evident; it needs no demonstration. Does it, then,
"secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,"
to deprive one half the citizens of adult age of this right and
privilege?

Tried by the expressed objects for which the Constitution was
established, as declared by the people themselves, this denial to
the women citizens of the country of the right and privilege of
voting is directly in contravention of these objects, and must,
therefore, be contrary to the spirit and letter of the entire
instrument. And according to the rule of construction referred
to, no "contemporaneous construction, however universal it may
be, can be allowed to set aside the expressed objects of the
makers, as declared in the instrument." The construction which we
claim for the 1st section of the XIV. Amendment, is in perfect
accord with those expressed objects; and even if there were
anything in the original text of the Constitution at variance
with the true construction of that section, the amendment must
control. Yet we believe that there is nothing in the original
text at variance with what we claim to be the true construction
of the amendment.

It is claimed by the majority of the committee that the adoption
of the XV. Amendment was by necessary implication a declaration
that the States had the power to deny the right of suffrage to
citizens for any other reasons than those of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude. We deny that the fundamental
rights of the American citizen can be taken away by
"implication." There is no such law for the construction of the
Constitution of our country. The law is the reverse--that the
fundamental rights of citizens are not to be taken away by
implication, and a constitutional provision for the protection of
one class can certainly not be used to destroy or impair the same
rights in another class. It is too violent a construction of an
amendment, which prohibits States from, or the United States
from, abridging the right of a citizen to vote by reason of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude, to say that by
implication it conceded to the States the power to deny that
right for any other reason. On that theory the States could
confine the right of suffrage to a small minority, and make the
State governments aristocratic, overthrowing their republican
form. The XV. Article of Amendment to the Constitution clearly
recognizes the right to vote, as one of the rights of a citizen
of the United States. This is the language:

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 race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.

Here is stated, first, the existence of a right. Second, its
nature. Whose right is it? The right of citizens of the United
States. What is the right? The right to vote. And this right of
citizens of the United States, States are forbidden to abridge.
Can there be a more direct recognition of a right? Can that be
abridged which does not exist? The denial of the power to abridge
the right, recognizes the existence of the right. Is it said that
this right exists by virtue of State citizenship, and State laws
and Constitutions? Mark the language: "The right of citizens of
the United States to vote;" not citizens of States. The right is
recognized as existing independent of State citizenship.

But it may be said, if the States had no power to abridge the
right of suffrage, why the necessity of prohibiting them? There
may not have been a necessity; it may have been done through
caution, and because the peculiar condition of the colored
citizens at that time rendered it necessary to place their rights
beyond doubt or cavil.

It is laid down as a rule of construction by Judge Story that the
natural import of a single clause is not to be narrowed so as to
exclude implied powers resulting from its character simply
because there is another clause which enumerates certain powers
which might otherwise be deemed implied powers within its scope,
for in such cases we are not to assume that the affirmative
specification excludes all other implications. (2 Story on
Constitution, sec. 449.)

There are numerous instances in the Constitution where a general
power is given to Congress, and afterward a particular power
given, which was included in the former; yet the general power is
not to be narrowed, because the particular power is given. On
this same principle the fact that by the XV. Amendment the States
are specifically forbidden to deny the right of suffrage on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude, does
not narrow the general provision in the XIV. Amendment which
guarantees the privileges of all the citizens against abridgment
by the States on any account.

The rule of interpretation relied upon by the committee in their
construction of the XV. Amendment is, "that the expression of one
thing is the exclusion of another," or the specification of
particulars is the exclusion of generals. Of these maxims, Judge
Story says:

They are susceptible of being applied, and often are
ingeniously applied, to the subversion of the text and the
objects of the instrument. The truth is, in order to
ascertain how far an affirmative or negative provision
excludes or implies others, we must look to the nature of
the provision, the subject-matter, the objects, and the
scope of the instrument; these and these only can properly
determine the rule of construction (2 Story, 448).

It is claimed by the committee that the second section of the
XIV. Amendment implies that the several States may restrict the
right of suffrage as to other than male citizens. We may say of
this as we have said of the theory of the committee upon the
effect of the XV. Amendment. It is a proposal to take away from
the citizens guarantees of fundamental rights, by implication,
which have been previously given in absolute terms. The first
section includes "all citizens" in its guarantees, and includes
all the "privileges and immunities" of citizenship and guards
them against abridgment, and under no recognized or reasonable
rule of construction can it be claimed that by implication from
the provisions of the second section the States may not only
abridge but entirely destroy one of the highest privileges of the
citizen to one-half the citizens of the country. What we have
said in relation to the committee's construction of the effect of
the XV. Amendment applies equally to this. The object of the
first section of this amendment was to secure all the rights,
privileges, and immunities of all the citizens against invasion
by the States. The object of the second section was to fix a rule
or system of apportionment for Representatives and taxation; and
the provision referred to, in relation to the exclusion of males
from the right of suffrage, might be regarded as in the nature of
a penalty in case of denial of that right to that class. While
it, to a certain extent, protected that class of citizens, it
left the others where the previous provisions of the Constitution
placed them. To protect the colored man more fully than was done
by that penalty was the object of the XV. Amendment. In no event
can it be said to be more than the recognition of an existing
fact, that only the male citizens were, by the State laws,
allowed to vote, and that existing order of things was recognized
in the rule of representation, just as the institution of slavery
was recognized in the original Constitution, in the article
fixing the basis of representation, by the provision that only
three-fifths of all the slaves ("other persons") should be
counted. There slavery was recognized as an existing fact, and
yet the Constitution never sanctioned slavery, but, on the
contrary, had it been carried out according to its true
construction, slavery could not have existed under it; so that
the recognition of facts in the Constitution must not be held to
be a sanction of what is so recognized.

The majority of the committee say that this section implies that
the States may deny suffrage to others than male citizens. If it
implies anything it implies that the States may deny the
franchise to all the citizens. It does not provide that they
shall not deny the right to male citizens, but only provides that
if they do so deny they shall not have representation for them.
So, according to that argument, by the second section of the XIV.
Amendment the power of the States is conceded to entirely take
away the right of suffrage, even from that privileged class, the
male citizens. And thus this rule of "implication" goes too far,
and fritters away all the guarantees of the Constitution of the
right of suffrage, the highest of the privileges of the citizen;
and herein is demonstrated the reason and safety of the rule that
fundamental rights are not to be taken away by implication, but
only by express provision. When the advocates of a privileged
class of citizens under the Constitution are driven to
implication to sustain the theory of taxation without
representation, and American citizenship without political
liberty, the cause must be weak indeed.

It is claimed by the majority that by section 2, article 1, the
Constitution recognizes the power in States to declare who shall
and who shall not exercise the elective franchise. That section
reads as follows:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of members
chosen every second year by the people of the several
States, and the electors in each State shall have the
qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous
branch of the State Legislature.

The first clause of this section declares who shall choose the
Representatives--mark the language--"Representatives shall be
chosen by the people of the States," not by the male people; not
by certain classes of the people, but by the people; so that the
construction sought to be given this section, by which it would
recognize the power of the State to disfranchise one half the
citizens, is in direct contravention of the first clause of the
section, and of its whole spirit, as well as of the objects of
the instrument. The States clearly have no power to nullify the
express provisions that the election shall be by the people, by
any laws limiting the election to a moiety of the people. It is
true the section recognizes the power in the State to regulate
the qualifications of the electors; but as we have already said,
the power to regulate is a very different thing from the power to
destroy. The two clauses must be taken together, and both
considered in connection with the declared purpose and objects of
the Constitution.

The constitution is necessarily confined to the statement of
general principles. There are regulations necessary to be made as
to the qualifications of voters, as to their proper age, their
domicil, the length of residence necessary to entitle the citizen
to vote in a given State or place. These particulars could not be
provided in the Constitution but are necessarily left to the
States, and this section is thus construed as to be in harmony
with itself, and with the expressed objects of the framers of
the Constitution and the principles of free government. When the
majority of the committee can demonstrate that "the people of the
States," and one-half the people of the States, are equivalent
terms, or that when the Constitution provides that the
Representatives shall be elected by the people, its requirements
are met by an election in which less than one-half the adult
people are allowed to vote, then it will be admitted that this
section to some extent sustains them.

The committee say, that if it had been intended that Congress
should prescribe the qualifications of electors, the grant would
have given Congress that power specifically. We do not claim that
Congress has that power; on the contrary, admit that the States
have it; but the section of the Constitution does prescribe who
the electors shall be. That is what we claim--nothing more. They
shall be "the people;" their qualifications may be regulated by
the States; but to the claim of the majority of the committee
that they may be "qualified" out of existence, we can not assent.

We are told that the acquiescence by the people, since the
adoption of the Constitution, in the denial of political rights
to women citizens, and the general understanding that such denial
was in conformity with the Constitution, should be taken to
settle the construction of that instrument. Any force this
argument may have it can only apply to the original text, and not
to the XIV. Amendment, which is of but recent date. But, as a
general principle, this theory is fallacious. It would stop all
political progress; it would put an end to all original thought,
and put the people under that tyranny with which the friends of
liberty have always had to contend--the tyranny of precedent.

From the beginning, our Government has been right in theory, but
wrong in practice. The Constitution, had it been carried out in
its true spirit, and its principles enforced, would have stricken
the chains from every slave in the republic long since. Yet, for
all this, it was but a few years since declared, by the highest
judicial tribunal of the republic, that, according to the
"general understanding," the black man in this country had no
rights the white man was bound to respect. General understanding
and acquiescence is a very unsafe rule by which to try questions
of constitutional law, and precedents are not infallible guides
toward liberty and the rights of man.

Without any law to authorize it, slavery existed in England, and
was sustained and perpetuated by popular opinion, universal
custom, and the acquiescence of all departments of the government
as well as by the subjects of its oppression. A few fearless
champions of liberty struggled against the universal sentiment,
and contended that, by the laws of England, slavery could not
exist in the kingdom; and though for years unable to obtain a
hearing in any British court, the Somerset case was finally tried
in the Court of King's Bench in 1771, Lord Mansfield presiding,
wherein that great and good man, after a long and patient
hearing, declared that no law of England allowed or approved of
slavery, and discharged the negro. And it was then judicially
declared that no slave could breathe upon the soil of England,
although slavery had up to that time existed for centuries, under
the then existing laws. The laws were right, but the practice and
public opinion were wrong.

It is said by the majority of the committee that "if the right of
female citizens to suffrage is vested by the Constitution, that
right can be established in the courts." We respectfully submit
that, with regard to the competency and qualification of electors
for members of this House, the courts have no jurisdiction. This
House is the sole judge of the election return and qualification
of its own members (article 1, section 5, of Constitution); and
it is for the House alone to decide upon a contest, who are, and
who are not, competent and qualified to vote. The judicial
department can not thus invade the prerogatives of the political
department. And it is therefore perfectly proper, in our opinion,
for the House to pass a declaratory resolution, which would be an
index to the action of the House, should the question be brought
before it by a contest for a seat. We, therefore, recommend to
the House the adoption of the following resolution:

_Resolved, by the House of Representatives_, That the right
of suffrage is one of the inalienable rights of citizens of
the United States, subject to regulation by the States,
through equal and just laws.

That this right is included in the "privileges of citizens of the
United States," which are guaranteed by section 1 of article XIV.
of Amendments to the Constitution of the United States; and that
women citizens, who are otherwise qualified by the laws of the
State where they reside, are competent voters for Representatives
in Congress.

WM. LOUGHRIDGE.
BENJ. F. BUTLER.
H. Rep. 22, pt. 2----2.

On January 20, 1871, in the House of Representatives, a bill for the
better government of the District of Columbia came up. The Hon. George
W. Julian, of Indiana, moved to strike out the word "male" in the
section providing who shall vote, and supported his amendment as
follows:

The establishment of universal male suffrage throughout the
United States was preceded by its establishment in the District
of Columbia and in the Territories. Following the same order, I
desire that the District of Columbia shall first enjoy the
further and full extension of the Democratic principle, by giving
the ballot to all the people here, irrespective of sex. I know of
no reason why this should not be done. I believe the question of
woman's rights necessarily involves the question of human rights.
The famous maxim of our fathers that "taxation without
representation is tyranny" applies not to one-half only, but to
the whole people. I am a Democrat in full of all demands, and I
can not, therefore, accept as a real democracy, or even a
republic, a government "half slave and half free."

Mr. Cook, of Illinois, who had charge of the bill, objected to
"cumbering it with such an amendment," and called the previous
question, which being sustained, cut off all debate. Mr. Julian then
called for the ayes and noes, thus making every man put himself square
on the record. The vote stood 55 ayes[141], 117 noes, 65 not voting.
The next day the House met for general debate, and Hon. Aaron A.
Sargent, of California, had an opportunity to express his views of the
Amendment, which he had not been able to do the previous day.

Mr. SARGENT: Mr. Speaker, if no other gentleman desires to
address the House, I will briefly remark that I was glad on
yesterday to have an opportunity to cast my vote in favor of the
proposition admitting the women of this District to the right of
suffrage. I believe the time is rapidly coming when all men will
conclude that it is no longer wise or judicious to exclude
one-half of the intelligence, and more than one-half of the
virtue of the people from the ballot-box. It is a matter of
congratulation that one-third of the members who were present
yesterday and voting, recorded their votes for that proposition.
It was a glorious commencement. I will not take up the time of
the House with any elaborate discussion of that proposition, but
content myself with the remark that I was very glad of the
opportunity to cast my vote for it. I trust the work thus
commenced will go on until fully successful. But I would like to
say further that I do not agree with those gentlemen who allege
that the women who advocate this movement are universally, or to
any considerable extent, desirous to unsettle family relations,
or that they would change the present honored form of union of
the sexes. I believe they embrace among their number, and largely
embrace, the best and purest women of the land, who will have an
influence growing year by year in favor of the recognition of the
rights of their sex. So may it be.

During Mr. Sargent's candidacy for the Senate the following autumn, a
California newspaper objected that he was in favor of woman's
suffrage, and called for a denial of the truth of the damning charge.
Mr. Sargent took no notice of it until a week or two later, when a
suffrage convention met in San Francisco; he then went before that
body and delivered a radical speech in favor of woman's rights, taking
the most advanced grounds. When he was through he remarked to a
friend, "They have my views now, and can make the most of them. I
would not conceal them to be Senator." This bold stand ended the
objection to him on the ground of his favor to woman's rights. He
opened the political campaign in 1874 before an immense audience in
Platt's Hall, San Francisco, by saying, as reported in the papers of
the day:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, FELLOW-CITIZENS: I trust the time is near
at hand when the phrase "fellow-citizens" will not need the
explanatory remark, "Ladies and gentlemen." I trust we are
nearing the day when our wives and daughters will share with us
in the duties and privileges of citizenship, and give expression
to their principles and views, not only indirectly by personal
influence, but at the ballot-box. I am in favor of this great
reform, and hail the day when it shall purify politics by the
influence of women exerted directly and legitimately at
elections.

The National Woman's Suffrage Association met in Apollo Hall, New
York, Anniversary Week, May 11, 1871. The audiences were large and the
speakers earnest.[142] Mrs. Griffing, the Corresponding Secretary of
the Association, thus summed up the closing events of the past year:

It now appears that under the Federal Constitution and its
Amendments, woman is entitled to equal rights of citizenship with
man; and as voting is a fundamental right of the citizen in a
free government, woman not only may, but should vote. The last
Woman Suffrage Convention, held in Washington, January, 1871,
called by Paulina W. Davis, J. S. Griffing, and I. B. Hooker, in
behalf of the women of the country, contemplated no new issue,
proposed only to discuss the XVI. Amendment, and a more thorough
system of education for the women of the country, through the
issue of a monthly series of tracts. With slight exception, this
programme would have been the order of the Convention, as it was
the indication of the call, had not the time arrived for the
bugle-note, calling all "to the front." Events of the hour at
once changed the direction of thought, and inaugurated a line of
movement for the practical enfranchisement of, and restoration to
woman, of her equal rights as an American citizen. A few days
previous to the time of holding this Convention, Mrs. Victoria C.
Woodhull, of the City of New York, memorialized Congress for the
exercise of the elective franchise, which memorial was read in
the House of Representatives by Hon. George W. Julian, early
friend of the cause, referred to the Judiciary Committee and
ordered to be printed.

This action on the part of Mrs. Woodhull was taken without
consultation with, or even knowledge of the movers of the
Convention, and by unprecedented energy and great intelligence,
pressed upon the attention of both branches of Congress, upon the
plea that she was "born upon the soil and was subject to the
jurisdiction of the United States," and that as a citizen, she
desired a voice in legislation, through the only means in a free
government, that of a vote; and on this pivot she based her
demand. With some difficulty she obtained permission for a
hearing before the Judiciary Committee. Learning this important
step taken by Mrs. Woodhull, a stranger to the Convention, a
conference was held between the parties, resulting in a friendly
agreement, that with consent of the chairman of the Committee,
Mrs. I. B. Hooker, on the part of the Convention, should at the
same time, through a constitutional lawyer, Hon. A. G. Riddle,
ex-member of Congress, defend the memorialists (30,000 women)
whose names were already before Congress, asking to exercise the
right of the ballot.

Mrs. Woodhull spoke with power and marvelous effect, as though
conscious of a right unjustly withheld, and feeling a duty, she
was forbidden to do. Under the supreme law of the land, the
Constitution, and the XIV. and XV. Amendments thereto, she asked
equal protection to person, property, and full citizenship; in
response to this, the key-note, Mr. Riddle followed with an
unanswerable legal argument, sweeping away all laws of the United
States, and of any State, restricting woman in the right to vote,
as directly opposed to the supreme law of the land, as pointed
out in the XIV. and XV. Amendments to the Federal Constitution,
which he showed to be consonant with both the letter and spirit
of that instrument. He also suggested that the immediate action
of woman, as a citizen, might be found the most speedy method of
triumph. The result of this hearing, in the printed reports of
Judge Bingham and the majority, and of Judge Loughridge and Hon.
B. F. Butler, the minority of the Judiciary Committee, is already
before the country, and marks well the beginning of the end.

It was now clearly seen by the leaders of the movement that the
agitation of woman's wrongs and oppressions was no longer a
necessary part of the discussion. That in the statute books, and
above all, in the heart of God, a record of this was made, and
that henceforth woman's citizenship and full enfranchisement must
be declared. That under the supreme law of the land her right to
person, property, children, and full and equal citizenship must
be pronounced and admitted; and, finally, her duty to vote, and
through her highest capabilities, to assume a share of the
responsibility of the State, as she has already of the home, are
hereafter to be the legitimate theme of discussion till woman is
emancipated. These events and this decision indicated an
immediate want of a National Woman Suffrage and Educational
Committee, to carry forward measures for the speedy execution of
the work, and upon consultation with the experienced and wise men
and women of the Convention, and with the approval of all
well-wishers who were present, a committee, consisting of Mrs. I.
B. Hooker (Chairwoman), J. S. Griffing (Secretary), Mrs. M. B.
Bowen (Treasurer), Susan B. Anthony, Paulina Wright Davis, and
Ruth Carr Dennison, was organized in the City of Washington, D.
C., and the machinery set in operation to accomplish what is now
known as the work of that committee. For the temporary use of
this committee a part of the House of Education and Labor
Committee-room, through the marked kindness of Hon. Mr. Arnell,
Chairman of the Committee, was granted; afterward, the beautiful,
artistic House Agriculture Committee-room, also used for the
Committee on Manufactures, was generously proffered by the
chairmen of both, Hon. Mr. Morrell and Gen. Smith, and is still
retained.

Books are now opened for signatures to the new Declaration and
Pledge,[143] and the autographs of all women ready to exercise
the elective franchise. Thousands of tracts, constitutional
arguments of Mr. Riddle and Mrs. Woodhull, report of the minority
Judiciary Committee, and an address to the women of the United
States, are being sent to the whole country, carrying conviction
to the weak, force to the active, and hastening the consummation
of a triumph worthy of the struggle and undying faith of all who
have nobly borne their part in this history. The names of the
earnest women who took part in this Convention, and who
participated in the inauguration of the new issue, are recorded
in the books of the Committee; and now, only the funds--generous
and prompt contributions--are needed to respond to the call from
all the States and Territories for knowledge--either by voice or
pen--to complete a reconstruction of the government "of the
people, for the people and by the people," without arms,
court-martial, or bloodshed.

In this connection Mrs. Belva A. Lockwood's very able memorial to
Congress asking suffrage for the women of the District should be
mentioned. It was a well-sustained argument, showing the writer
to be mistress of her subject. Mrs. Lockwood is an efficient,
earnest, honest worker. She presented to Congress a large
petition, fully equal in numbers to the one presented by Mrs.
Dahlgren and Sherman, whose anti-suffrage petition and memorial
against it formed one of the peculiar features of the work of
last winter. Mrs. H. C. Spencer, of Washington, answered Mrs.
Dahlgren's pamphlet with a most admirable one entitled
"Problems," which has already had an extensive circulation, and
is more earnestly called for than any other, with the exception
of Mrs. Woodhull's constitutional argument, and Mr. Riddle's on
the same question. The meetings were held daily in the
committee-room during the entire session, and the interchange of
thought was often very interesting and encouraging.

[Illustration: Isabella Beecher Hooker.]

On the day of the adjournment of Congress Mrs. Hooker presented
thanks, in the name of the Committee, to such members of the
House as had been most active in serving our cause. She said:

GENTLEMEN: The National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee
desire me to express to you their heartfelt thanks for the good
service you have rendered the whole woman movement by your
willingness to entertain, examine, and, in some instances,
advocate our new claim that we are already enfranchised under the
original Constitution and the XIV. and XV. Amendments.

To you, Mr. Julian, we are especially indebted, in that while you
were the first member of the House who introduced our claim to
the suffrage under the form of a XVI. Amendment, you were in the
front once more when a new issue was presented in the shape of
the "Woodhull Memorial." Your resolution asking the House "to
participate in the proceedings," by which two women citizens of
the United States "might present the moral and constitutional
argument in favor of the enfranchisement of the women citizens of
the United States, and in support of a memorial lately reported
upon by a majority and minority of the Judiciary Committee," was
in keeping with every other act of your public life, a protest
against injustice, a proposition looking toward perfect equality;
and we thank you for it in the name of the disfranchised millions
who will one day realize, as they now do not, the significance of
that act.

To you, Mr. Arnell, we owe not only the passage of "A bill to do
justice to the female employes of the Government," but the first
admission of women to this Capitol as citizens having common
rights with the ruling class in the use of buildings devoted to
the public service. In your committee-room we found not only a
home, but such courtesy, such opportunity for friendly
consultation with members of Congress upon subjects of deepest
political importance, as must forever silence the absurd charge
that men and women will cease to regard the decorums of life, to
interchange its happy civilities when they become equally
responsible for the welfare of the State.

To other gentlemen of the House we owe thanks also for their
co-operation with you in this manly service, especially to
General Wilson, of Ohio, to Mr. Morrill, of Pennsylvania, and
General Butler, of Massachusetts, who have, as chairmen of their
respective committees, offered us the use of their several rooms,
in case the threats of a certain gentleman in the House should so
terrify you, sir, that you should feel compelled to withdraw your
most friendly offer. We have accepted the use of the
Committee-room on Agriculture, leaving you, sir, with reluctance,
simply because it is larger and more accessible than your room,
and one so beautifully adorned by art, that our womanly tastes
are daily gratified in its use.

To you, Mr. Loughridge, as the author of the minority report of
the Judiciary Committee on the Woodhull Memorial, and to General
Butler, your faithful colleague, we owe that most luminous
statement of the historic position of woman, her natural, civil,
and constitutional rights, and the best method of enforcing these
in the interest of the women citizens of the United States. For
that report, sir, we thank you from the depth of our hearts. We
claim it as our bill of rights. On that line we also fight, not
with weapons of steel, but with pen and voice and silent prayer;
and when at last the solemn responsibilities of citizenship shall
have been laid upon us by the men of this great nation, and
together we shall strive to bring justice and equality into
legislation and administration, we shall not forget to whom we
owe this first judicial protest in these halls against
traditional misrepresentations of the constitutional rights of
women citizens of the Republic.

And, gentlemen, permit us to congratulate you all, that having
secured equal rights to all men in these United States by your
vote, and having welcomed the proscribed black man to a seat by
your side in halls of legislation, you are now turning your
attention to the women of the United States, with a firm
resolution that they shall no longer be denied the rights nor
excused from the responsibilities of a full citizenship.

Permit us to express the hope that in coming years you may be
returned to this Capitol by the votes of grateful women citizens,
enfranchised through your instrumentality; and should you be
called to take upper seats here in remembrance of faithful
service during this session, we shall congratulate not only
ourselves but our common and well-beloved country; and if,
gentlemen, you should find here as colleagues some of the matrons
of this Republic whose names are now being daily signed to this
new declaration of fealty to human rights, we have confident
assurance that you will cheerfully work hand in hand with them,
according to the tenor of their pledge to work with you for the
maintenance of those equal rights on which our Republic was
originally founded, to the end that it may have what is declared
to be the first condition of just government--the consent of the
governed.

Mr. JULIAN responded:--I thank you, Mrs. Hooker, and the
committee you represent, for your words of cordial approbation.
Such a testimony will go far to redeem the ordinary drudgery and
dreariness of public life, and I shall ever cherish it with real
satisfaction and pride. I ought to say, however, that in
performing the acts so handsomely commended by you I did nothing
but my simple duty. Indeed, constituted as I am, and believing as
I do, it was morally impossible for me to do otherwise. Having
espoused the cause of woman's enfranchisement more than twenty
years ago, when it was first launched in the United States, and
having labored so long and so earnestly for the enfranchisement
of the male citizens of our country, irrespective of color or
race, it would have been grossly inconsistent in me, not to say
recreant and mean, to shrink from the duties for which you
compliment me when invited to their performance.

You are pleased to express the hope that some of the retiring
members of the XLI. Congress may hereafter be returned to the
places they have filled. For myself, I am weary of the service
in which I have toiled for so many years, and I welcome a season
of rest, or at least a change of labor. But when your hope goes
farther, and points to our return here by the votes of
enfranchised women, and our welcome from a sisterhood of
co-representatives in the halls of Congress, I confess the
prophecy is so pleasing and the picture seems so tempting that
its realization would completely reconcile me to my restored
place in the House of Representatives, or even to a seat in that
smaller body at the other end of the Capitol. And I am not
lacking in the spirit of good courage and hope which animates
you. These are revolutionary times. Whole years of progress are
now crowded into days. Who will venture to judge the future by
any political almanac of by-gone times? I can say with old Thomas
Carlyle, "One strong thing I find here below, the just thing, the
true thing." And no man or party is strong enough, no earthly
power is strong enough to stay the grand march of events through
which the hand of God is visibly guiding the Republic to
universal liberty, and through that to enduring prosperity and
peace.

Mr. ARNELL, of Tennessee, said--_Mrs. Hooker and Ladies_: You
have been kind enough to refer to me by name. I think you have
been over-generous in your estimation of my poor services. If I
have accomplished anything, no matter how inconsiderable, for
your cause, I greatly rejoice. Yet, in reality, it is my cause as
much as yours--a man's cause as much as a woman's; for the
inquiry you have raised is a great fundamental question, broad as
humanity itself. I thank you for your wide interpretation of the
invitation I gave you to occupy the Committee-room of Education
and Labor. You have rightly touched its true meaning. The doors
were opened hopefully, invitingly to you as the advance-guard of
American women, who are soon, I trust, to take equal part with
their brothers, husbands and fathers in the government of this
great and free Republic.

There is a bit of history connected with this room of Education
and Labor. A hard-working woman was once driven from it by vote
of the House of Representatives. She carried her work across the
ocean, rested it under the Italian skies, until it blossomed into
everlasting stone. Then she brought it back. A great admiring
city and the self-same men who had voted her out, marveled and
said, "Well done, woman." Her success is a triumph for woman.
Meantime you, representing, arguing a higher cause than Art, had
found a footing in this very apartment from which she had been
turned out. This was a higher triumph. The amiable New York
_Tribune_, chuckling over a false rumor that you were denied its
further use, has misstated the facts. The _Tribune_ only
advertised its own narrow, pretentious wishes.

In bringing the proposition before Congress to pay women the same
price as men for the same work performed, I desired not only to
help those spirited, deserving women in the Departments, but also
to aid two and a half millions of my working sisters in this
country. It seemed to me that just here was room for practical
legislation. Here was an angle to be carried in this great
contest for justice and freedom, and I drew my best inspiration
from a bright, sunny-faced wife, who to-day is far away among the
hills of Tennessee. I greatly admire and respect either a working
man or woman, for I devoutly believe in this latest evangel,
that "to work is to pray." Allow me to say, as a parting word,
"Courage." The world may sneer at you, for it does not believe
that a man is moved save by some selfish ambition. Trojan's noble
fraction of a line, "_indocillis privata loqui_," is not
generally considered as adapted to, or to be applied to, the
domain of every-day life. Yet, ladies, far above all ridicule,
misjudgment, slander, and abuse even, is the holy consciousness
you have of the nobility of your work, which is, as I have said,
the emancipation and elevation of both man and woman. The great
Republic, of which you are citizens, by express provision of its
fundamental law, can exist only as it is free, as it is just; two
ideas that lie, as I understand it, at the bottom of your
movement. The country must continue one-sided, ill-balanced,
imperfect in its civilization, until woman, with her peculiar
nature, is admitted to that individuality which of right belongs
to every human being. Therefore I bid you God-speed in your work.

Judge LOUGHRIDGE, of Iowa, spoke as follows--_Ladies_: I take
pleasure in appearing here in response to your kind invitation. I
understand fully your desire to express in this way your
appreciation of the aid given by a portion of the Representatives
to the XLI. Congress to the cause you have so much at heart--the
cause of universal suffrage and political liberty.

In reference to the report of the minority of the Judiciary
Committee, to which Mrs. Hooker has referred in such
complimentary terms and in which I had the honor to join with the
distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts, Mr. Butler, I am glad
to know that you are satisfied with it, and that you think it
does justice to your cause. What is written there is the honest
conviction of my judgment, and in my opinion the principles
contended for therein will, before many years, be accepted as the
law of the land.

I desire to say one word, suggested by the remark which I have
heard made frequently of late, that the only resort now for the
advocates of woman suffrage is to the courts of the country. I
think it is a mistake. In this country, on questions involving
political rights, the courts are generally in the rear rank; the
people are mostly in advance of the courts. In my opinion the
most speedy and certain victory will be acquired through the
political departments of the government, which are moulded and
controlled by the people, and which will always in the end
reflect the will of the people. You applied to Congress; although
not successful, yet the support you did receive was greater than
the most sanguine expected. Continue your efforts, persevere in
your determination, and in the end you will win, for you are
right, and the right always triumphs.

The ladies then shook hands with each of these gentlemen, and added a
few words of personal thanks, after which the committee adjourned.

That the position in regard to the rights of women under the XIV. and
XV. Amendments was still maintained is shown in the call[144] and
resolutions[145] as well as the speeches in the three days' convention
held in Lincoln Hall, Washington, in January, 1872.

One of the interesting episodes of this convention was the invitation
extended by the Association to certain non-believers to appear in open
session, and meet the champions of the cause in argument. Mrs. Gage
wrote an invitation[146] to Mrs. Dahlgren, which she most courteously
declined.[147] The idea was suggested to Mrs. Gage by the memorial
which Mrs. General Sherman and Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren had presented to
the Senate of the United States. Their petition was as follows:

TO THE U. S. SENATE AGAINST WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

We, the undersigned, do hereby appeal to your honorable body, and
desire respectfully to enter our protest against an extension of
suffrage to women; and in the firm belief that our petition
represents the sober convictions of the majority of the women of
the country. Although we shrink from the notoriety of the public
eye, yet we are too deeply and painfully impressed by the grave
perils which threaten our peace and happiness in these proposed
changes in our civil and political rights, longer to remain
silent.

_Because_, Holy Scripture inculcates a different, and for us
higher, sphere apart from public life.

_Because_, as women, we find a full measure of duties, cares, and
responsibilities devolving upon us, and we are therefore
unwilling to bear other and heavier burdens, and those unsuited
to our physical organization.

_Because_, we hold that an extension of suffrage would be adverse
to the interests of the workingwomen of the country, with whom we
heartily sympathize.

_Because_, these changes must introduce a fruitful element of
discord in the existing marriage relation, which would tend to
the infinite detriment of children, and increase the already
alarming prevalence of divorce throughout the land.

_Because_, no general law, affecting the condition of all women,
should be framed to meet exceptional discontent.

For these, and many more reasons, do we beg of your wisdom that
no law extending suffrage to women may be passed, as the passage
of such a law would be fraught with danger so grave to the
general order of the country.

[Signed by Mrs. General Sherman, Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren, and other
ladies to the number of 1,000.]

Mrs. Dahlgren presented a form of XVI. Amendment as follows:

SHERMAN-DAHLGREN XVI. AMENDMENT.

Congress shall have power to, and shall pass laws which shall be
uniform throughout the United States.

To regulate the transfer and descent of all kinds of property.

To regulate marriages and the registration of the same, and the
registration of births.

To regulate the right of dower and all rights and obligations of
married persons.

To regulate divorces and to grant alimony, but no divorces _a
vinculo matrimonii_ shall be granted, except for the cause of
adultery, and in such case the offending party shall not have the
privilege of marrying during the lifetime of the offended party.

In her opening remarks Mrs Stanton said:

This is the fourth convention we have held in Washington, and the
effect can hardly be estimated in the education of the American
people toward woman suffrage. I feel more anxious about how women
will vote than in their speedy enfranchisement. So many important
political questions are seen in the horizon that woman's
influence is needed to guide safely through all storms the ship
of state. We propose to change our tactics. Instead of
petitioning Congress for our rights we propose to settle the
question before the courts, unless Congress gives us the
declaratory act this winter, which I think they will. We have
reasoned for twenty-five years, and we now propose to take our
rights under the Constitution as it is. The people are beginning
already to discuss the fitting celebration for our centennial
anniversary. No grander step could mark that great national event
than to extend the right of suffrage to one half the citizens of
our republic.

The following letter was read at the morning session:

BROOKLYN, January 1, 1872.

MY DEAR MADAM: Your letter of December 30th, in which you invite
me to take part in the Washington convention in behalf of woman's
suffrage, is duly received.

I am engaged during the whole week with lectures in Massachusetts
and Maine. I can not say that I am so sanguine of the immediate
or new admission of women to the right of suffrage. But of its
ultimate accomplishment I have not a doubt, since justice and
expediency combine in requiring it. That manhood is, on the
whole, made better and stronger by a direct participation in the
duties, and responsibilities of active citizenship,
notwithstanding incidental evils, is becoming the sentiment of
the civilized world; nor is there any reason to doubt that, in
spite of temporary and incidental evils, the same advantages
would accrue to womanhood. In every wise and Christian movement
for the education and enfranchisement of woman I hope always to
be in sympathy. I am, respectfully, yours,

HENRY WARD BEECHER.

MR. BURLINGAME, of R. I., remarked:--I sympathize with this
movement. It commands my respect and admiration. I have come here
unexpected and unsolicited, because I think my wife and other
women should have the same rights as the colored man and
Irishman. I believe in this movement, because I believe it to be
right; it is the most important question of the times. The
speaker then reviewed the objections against female suffrage, and
pronounced them all weak, and closed with allusions to the many
heroic deeds of illustrious women now a part of history.

MRS. ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER then presented the following report, in
relation to the work of the Association for the past year:

REPORT.

The work to be done in the future is precisely what has been
recommended during the past year by every member of the committee
in public and in private.

1. Women should attempt to qualify and attempt to vote in every
State election or otherwise, according to opportunity. This
action not only serves the purpose of agitation of the whole
question of suffrage, but it puts upon men, our brothers, the
onus of refusing the votes of their fellow citizens, and compels
them to show just cause for such proceeding. If it could be well
understood that every woman who believes that she has a right to
vote, would actually test her right by an appearance at the polls
before and at the next Presidential election, the question as to
nominees for that office would contain a new element, and the
views and preferences of this large constituency would receive
serious consideration at the hands of president-makers in both
the great parties of the country.

2. Women should study the question of their present rights and
duties, and make their views known in public and in private to
the utmost extent of their ability. In a time like this, when the
interests of our whole beloved country are at stake; when
political corruption is appalling, and men are paralyzed with
fear because of the threatened failure of republican
institutions, ignorance and indifference on the part of women,
who are the natural protectors of purity and honor, whether in
the family or the State, are sins against God, their country, and
their own souls.

3. Men and women should pour out money like water for the
propagation of these views. A copy of the Declaration of
Independence and of the Constitution of the United States,
together with an argument on the fair interpretation of these
documents, should be put into every family in the United States
which has a reading member in it. Your committee are able and
willing to send these documents directly into these homes--one at
a time, carefully directed and franked by members of Congress,
who believe they are making a patriotic and legitimate use of the
franking privilege by thus educating their constituents in the
first principles of a constitutional government--a government
founded upon personal liberty and personal responsibility. Half a
million dollars appropriated by Congress itself for this simple
purpose would inaugurate a reign of patriotism and purity
scarcely dreamed of as yet by the most powerful lovers of their
country. But Congress has not yet even printed the able reports
from the Judiciary Committee of the House, and the few copies we
have been able to send out have been the gift of a private
individual. Women must educate themselves--men must help them.
The latter hold the purse-strings; and so surely as they desire
peace, plenty, and the perpetuity of republican institutions,
they must see to it that women are supplied with the sinews of
war. Moral warfare costs not only heart's blood, but treasure.
Women are offering their very souls in behalf of mankind. Can men
do less than empty their pockets for the good of the race?

And there is one thing more that men can and must do before the
reign of justice and equality can be inaugurated. They, being
voters, must pledge themselves in their own breasts, and to one
another, that they will vote for such candidates in either party
as are in favor of woman suffrage, and for no others. Such
proceedings would settle the question in less than a year, and
the peaceful working of a new _regime_ would prove the wisdom and
patriotism of these faithful souls before the whole world. We
confidently believe that there are at least 300,000 voters to-day
who desire to share the burdens and responsibilities of
government with their mothers, wives, and sisters. Let them
combine and speak the sovereign words, "Principle before party,"
and the day is won.

Mrs. Hooker and other ladies united in a memorial, which was presented
in the Senate and referred to the Judiciary Committee, asking for a
recognition of the rights of women under the XIV. Amendment, and
asking further that the advocates of the cause be heard at the bar of
the Senate. Mr. Trumbull, the chairman of the committee, was not
willing for this; but, at Mrs. Hooker's solicitation, he agreed to
lay the subject before the committee, and it was finally agreed that a
hearing should be given on Friday morning, January 10th, at 11
o'clock.

_To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the
United States in Congress assembled:_

The undersigned, citizens of the United States, believing that
under the present Federal Constitution all women who are citizens
of the United States have the right to vote, pray your honorable
body to enact a law during the present session that shall assist
and protect them in the exercise of that right.

And they pray further that they may be permitted, in person, and
in behalf of the thousands of other women who are petitioning
Congress to the same effect, to be heard upon this memorial
before the Senate and House at an early day in the present
session. We ask your honorable body to bear in mind that while
men are represented on the floor of Congress, and so may be said
to be heard there, women who are allowed no vote, and therefore
no representation, can not truly be heard except as Congress
shall open its doors to us in person.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.
ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.
ELIZABETH L. BLADEN.
OLYMPIA BROWN.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.

Hartford, Conn., December 12, 1871.

* * * * *

SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY,}
WASHINGTON, January 10, 1872 }

MADAM: The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the
memorial of yourself and others, asking to be heard before the
Senate in behalf of the constitutional right of women to vote,
and modified by your letter of this morning, so as to ask that
the committee hold a public meeting in the Senate Chamber for
that purpose, have concluded that it would not be consistent with
the usage and rules of the Senate to admit memorialists to appear
and advocate their claims before the Senate, nor for the
committee to ask the use of the Senate Chamber for public
discussion before them.

The committee would, however, be happy to receive any
communication you and the other memorialists may think proper to
make, or, if the memorialists prefer to present their views in
person, the committee will hear them in its committee-room at 11
o'clock A.M., next Friday morning.

Very respectfully, LYMAN TRUMBULL,
_Chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary._

MRS. ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.

Accordingly the hearing being granted, at the appointed hour the whole
convention adjourned to the Capitol, crowding not only the committee
room but the corridors, thousands of eager, expectant women struggling
to gain admission. The committee,[148] seated round a large table,
manifested a respectful attention to each speaker in turn,
complimenting them warmly at the close.

MRS. HOOKER said: _Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee_--In
accordance with your courteous invitation of the 10th, I have the
honor to present to you an argument upon the question: Are women
entitled to vote under the United States Constitution, as
amended? It is not important to inquire what was the status of
woman before the adoption of the XIV. Amendment. By that
amendment they are clearly made citizens. No one denies this. The
first section of the amendment is as follows:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.

The whole question is, what is the meaning of the term "citizen"
as here used. The term is familiar to law and politics, and the
authorities are very numerous and uncontradicted which make
citizenship include the right to vote. These authorities consist
of lexicographers, English and American, and legal and political
writers. It is said, however, that to give the term a meaning by
which women become voters under it is contrary to the actual
intent of Congress and the State Legislatures in passing the
amendment, as, unquestionably, the legislators who voted for it
had personally (with, perhaps, a few exceptions) no thought of
enfranchising women.

To this it is replied: 1. That the question is not whether they
thought of enfranchising women, but whether they used the term as
a term of enfranchisement at all; for if it would have
enfranchised black men, it would have equally enfranchised women,
and unquestionably the predominant idea in these legislators was
a political benefit, not very precisely measured, to black men.
2. An inquiry as to actual intent in such a case is never
admissible. A rule that allowed it would make every law
uncertain. An enactment can be construed only by the language in
fact used, and where that language is doubtful, by other parts of
the same enactment, and by a consideration of the public evil
which the law was intended to remedy. The evil to be remedied in
this case was the political disadvantage under which black men,
made free by the XIII. Amendment, still labored. The object was
to give them a positive political benefit. The terms used are
such that, necessarily and confessedly, whatever benefit accrues
to black men under it accrues equally to women.

It is said, in the next place, that the term "citizen" has
acquired a meaning in American usage, legal and political, that
does not carry with it the idea of suffrage; and the report of
the majority of the Judiciary Committee on the Woodhull memorial
places its adverse construction of this amendment entirely on the
ground of an American use of the term in its restricted sense.
Such a use of the term undoubtedly exists. Webster recognizes it,
and so do some of our political writers. But this meaning is a
secondary and lower one, and has not attained such dignity of use
as to encroach at all upon the well-established general meaning,
and would not be presumed in a law, much less in a constitution.
The American authorities are strongly in favor of the larger
meaning.

The term is used in the second section of the original
Constitution, article four, which provides that "the citizens of
each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States." In Corfield _vs._ Coryell, 4
Wash. C. C. R., 380, the court say: "The inquiry is what are the
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States? They
may be all comprehended under the following general heads: (Here
follows a statement of numerous rights, civil and political,
closing as follows:) "To which may be added the elective
franchise as regulated and established by the laws or
constitution of the State in which it is to be exercised." And in
the Dred Scott case, 19 Howard, 476, Mr. Justice Daniel says:

There is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of
writers on government, or in any actual experiment
heretofore tried, an exposition of the term 'citizen' which
has not been understood as conferring the actual possession
and enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and
enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and
political.

And the supreme court of Kentucky, 1 Little R., 333, says:

No one can, in the correct sense of the term, be a citizen
of a State who is not entitled, upon the terms prescribed by
the institutions of the State, to all the rights and
privileges conferred by those institutions upon the highest
class of society.

These are American authorities, and would seem to settle the
question that the term has not acquired a distinctive American
meaning variant from the well-established general meaning.

It is said, in the next place, and finally, that the second
section of the XIV. Amendment shows clearly that the term
"citizen" could not have been used in the sense of full
citizenship. This objection is the most serious one that the
argument encounters. That section, so far as relates to this
subject, is as follows:

When the right to vote is denied to any of the male
inhabitants of such State being twenty-one years of age and
citizens of the United States, the basis of representation
therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number
of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male
citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

The consideration of this section is perfectly legitimate in the
inquiry as to the meaning of the first section. It is said, with
great force, that here is an implied admission that the States
retained the power to exclude black men from the right to vote,
and it will be asked why, if that right is absolutely conferred
by the first section, and is one of the privileges and immunities
of citizens which no State may abridge, the amendment does not
boldly forbid any such State legislation, instead of merely
imposing certain limitations upon the State that should assume to
exercise such right of exclusion.

Two answers have been made by public writers on the subject which
are merely specious. One is, that if the second section be
construed as admitting the right of a State to exclude certain
classes of men from the franchise, yet it could not operate as an
admission of the right to exclude women. The fallacy here is,
that if the citizenship conferred by the first section does not
secure against all legislation the right of suffrage to men, it
does not secure it to women; the question being merely as to the
meaning of the term "citizen" as used, and not as to its
application to either sex, as such. The other answer that has
been made is, that this second section is repealed by the XV.
Amendment, which forbids the denial of suffrage in the cases
where this section seems to allow it; and it is asked, with
apparent confidence, whether a law that is repealed can have any
further operation whatever. The fallacy here is, that the
operation of this second section, so far as it relates to the
present question, is wholly in throwing light upon the meaning of
the term "citizen," as used in the first section, and this
operation is just as perfect after its repeal as before;
precisely as a part of a will that has been revoked by a codicil,
may yet be read with the rest of the will if it will throw light
upon the meaning of the whole.

It is believed, however, that a valid answer can be made to the
objection which is founded upon the second section, and that the
view here presented will be ultimately sustained by the legal
opinion of the country.

1. It is not a necessary inference that the right to exclude from
suffrage is admitted by the second section, for this section will
bear a construction that is consistent with the enlarged
construction which we give to the first section; and it is a
well-settled principle that a construction that favors the
extension of liberty is itself to be favored, and one which
restricts liberty is not to be adopted, except under a necessity.
This second section provides for a penalty, in the reduction of
its basis of representation, in every case where a State should
deny to any class of citizens the right of suffrage. Now, this is
not necessarily a concession of the right, but may be regarded as
a punishment of the attempt to exercise the so-called right. The
matter was practically so much within the power of the States
(and the States in view were the disorganized Southern States),
that it would be far easier for Congress to enforce the penalty
for denying the right of suffrage than for the President to
protect that right. It may be regarded as a case, well known to
the law, of cumulative remedies. It is precisely as if, in
addition to the express prohibition by the Constitution of the
making of war by any State, there had been a provision that if
any State should make war upon a foreign State, such State should
pay the entire expense in which the General Government should
become involved by the war. This clearly would be only a penalty
and not a concession of the right, the object being to increase
and not to diminish the security of the General Government
against any attempt of a State to do the act prohibited.

2. The first section of the XIV. Amendment is entirely senseless
and idle, except upon the construction which we claim. The term
"citizen" means either "voter" or merely "member of the nation,"
as distinguished from an alien. Judge Cartter, in his late
opinion in the case of Spencer _vs._ The Board of Registration,
in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, sees this
necessity, and that there is no intermediate status, and holds
that the term means merely a person clothed with the civil rights
of an inhabitant, as distinguished from an alien. Let it be borne
in mind, then, that those who deny the construction which we
claim, must make the word citizen mean merely "not an alien." Let
it also be borne in mind that by the XIII. Amendment, which
abolished slavery, every inhabitant of the land became a free
inhabitant, so that nothing is now added to the force of the term
"inhabitant" by prefixing to it the term "free." It follows,
therefore, that the XIV. Amendment, under the adverse
construction claimed, means only that the persons referred to in
it are _inhabitants of the land_. Let us see, then, how it will
read: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States are
inhabitants of the United States and the State wherein they
reside." This is sheer nonsense. In the construction of an
ordinary law, passed by a Legislature in the crowded moments of
its last hour, every Court would say that it must, if possible,
give the law a construction that will make it have a sensible
meaning and effect, and that of two constructions, one of which
gives it sense and purpose and the other none, the former is
without a question to be preferred. How much more should such a
rule be applied to an amendment of a national constitution,
deliberately adopted first by Congress and then by three-quarters
of the Legislatures of the States?

3. It is a universal rule in the construction of statutes that
the construction of an enabling or enlarging statute must be
liberal and in the direction of enlargement. This rule is
applicable with much greater force to the construction of this
amendment, because, in the first place, it is dealing with the
most fundamental of all political rights--that of _free
citizenship in a democracy_--and is besides an amendment of a
constitution, which _is itself the charter of freedom_, and the
amendment is made for the very purpose of giving _larger freedom_
than that free constitution originally gave. This rule alone is
enough to settle the question of the construction of this
amendment, especially as the question is between a construction
that shall make it an enlargement of liberty and a construction
that shall make it confer nothing that was not before possessed.

The whole question thus far has been considered with reference to
the XIV. Amendment alone. The XV. Amendment, though, as we think,
conferring no new rights, yet should be briefly noticed. That
amendment is as follows: "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 race, color, or previous
condition of servitude." Here it will be seen that the language,
in its natural meaning, implies a pre-existing _right to vote_.
It is not pertinent to the creation of a new right, but only to
the protection of a right already existing. It is like the case
occurring in some of the State constitutions, where it is
provided that the right of trial by jury shall not be denied or
impaired, in which case it has been held not to confer a new
right, but merely to protect, in its then existing form, a right
that was enjoyed when the constitution was adopted. This
construction of the XV. Amendment, however, though the natural
and obvious one, is not a necessary one, since, if there had been
no XIV. Amendment, the XV. would undoubtedly be held to create a
new right of suffrage. The argument, from the language used,
though not without very positive weight, can not be regarded as
decisive of the question, and the claim that women are entitled
to vote must rest essentially upon the construction of the XIV.
Amendment.

There is, however, an adverse claim that is made under the XV.
Amendment, which ought to be briefly considered. That claim is
that even if the XIV. Amendment gives the right to vote, yet the
XV., in prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude, impliedly
confers the right to prohibit it on all other grounds. Now, if it
has this effect, it does so merely by impliedly repealing that
clause of the XIV. Amendment which provides that the rights of
citizens shall not be abridged. But it is a well-established rule
of law that a repeal by implication is never favored, and will
not be sustained unless the implication is a clear and necessary
one. Much more would not such a repeal be sustained where the
clause claimed to be repealed was a part of a constitution, and
was intended as a security for human rights and liberty. The rule
that would favor a construction toward liberty of the XIV.
Amendment, would equally forbid a construction toward curtailment
of liberty of the XV.

But it will be said that the XV. Amendment becomes without
purpose and effect, and really as senseless as we claim the XIV.
Amendment to be under the construction which we oppose, if it is
to be regarded as operating only in the way claimed, and not as
conferring rights not previously existing. This is a point of
some force, and which can be replied to only by the fact that
there was an impression upon the minds of the legislators and of
the people, that the XIV. Amendment did not confer the right of
suffrage. That impression weighs nothing in now determining the
meaning of the XIV. Amendment; but it furnishes the explanation
that seems to be needed of the passage of the XV. Amendment. It
was in our view wholly unnecessary, but was generally thought to
be necessary. The difference in the two cases is that the XV.
Amendment was passed under a supposed necessity, and with,
therefore, a complete object; while the XIV. Amendment, under the
construction which our opponents give to it, not only conferred
nothing, but was believed at the time to confer nothing, and had
therefore no purpose whatever. Our view that the XV. Amendment
was unnecessary was held by some leading statesmen at the time.
Mr. Sumner in the Senate declared it to be so before its passage,
and proposed instead of it a mere law of Congress recognizing the
right of suffrage and regulating its exercise.

It is at any rate very clear that the construction of the XV.
Amendment, which makes it impliedly allow the denial of suffrage
on all other grounds than the three stated, can not be sustained.
Such rights as those with which it deals will never be allowed in
a free constitution like ours to be curtailed or restricted by
mere implication. If that construction is adopted--and a State
may deny the right to vote on all other grounds but race and
color and previous servitude--then, of course, a State may deny
the right to all naturalized foreigners, although they have
already acquired and enjoyed the right, and may also deny the
right to vote to persons of a particular height or color of hair
or profession. Indeed, to reduce the case to an absurdity,
suppose the women are allowed to vote in Massachusetts, and,
being a great majority over the men, turn around and exclude the
men. This would be precisely the ground on which women are now
excluded--that of sex; and yet can any one doubt that the
constitutional right to vote of men would be sustained?

It is worth noticing that the Act of Congress of May 31, 1870, to
carry into effect the provisions of the XIV. and XV. Amendments,
is entitled, "An Act to enforce the right of citizens of the
United States to vote in the several States of this Union."

Our conclusion, stated in a few words, is this: All women are
citizens. Every citizen, in the language of Judge Daniel in the
Dred Scott case, has "the actual possession and enjoyment or the
perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment of an entire equality
of privileges, civil and political." The right to prescribe
qualifications rests with the States, in the absence of any law
of Congress prescribing them. These qualifications involve time
of residence, age, and other matters that are entirely within the
reach of the citizen by acquisition or lapse of time. Mr. Sumner
has demonstrated in a manner that can not be answered that the
qualifications thus left for the States to prescribe must be
those under which the citizen can become a voter, and can not be
such as would permanently exclude him from the right of suffrage.

It has been said that it is not fair for women to take advantage
of a right to vote, no matter how clearly given them, which there
was no actual intention to give. This objection does not touch
the argument we have been making, but it may be well to say a
word upon it. The law has so far dealt so unfairly with women
that it would seem as if they should not be severely criticised
for taking advantage of the law, when, though by mere accident,
it happens to favor them. But it is especially to be considered
that their claim is in accordance with the whole spirit of the
Constitution and in harmony with all the fundamental principles
of our Government, while the denial of suffrage to them is in
opposition to those principles. If anything is settled in this
country as an abstract general principle, it is the right of
tax-payers to have a voice in the legislation that is to
determine their taxes and in the appointment of the officers who
are to levy and expend them, and that the members of the nation
should elect its rulers. Our error (and the day is not far
distant when we shall all see its absurdity) is in making these
fundamental rights the rights of men alone and in denying them to
women. The latter have equal intelligence, patriotism, and
virtue, and their fidelity to their country has been as well
proved as that of men, and it is difficult to see any good reason
why they should have no voice in deciding who shall be the rulers
of the nation, what its laws, what its taxes and how
appropriated, what the policy that is to affect, for good or
evil, the business interests that they are becoming more and more
largely engaged in. With all this equity in their favor, may they
not be allowed, without censure, to avail themselves of a legal
right? If the freedom of the slave could have been declared by
our judicial tribunals under some guarantee of freedom in the
National Constitution, originally intended only for white men,
all lovers of freedom would have rejoiced. When Alvan Stewart,
thirty years ago, attempted to get such a decision from the
supreme court of New Jersey, there was not a cavil heard among
the opponents of slavery. So when, in the face of the whole
legal opinion of England, Granville Sharpe got a decision in
favor of the slave Somerset, forever overthrowing slavery in
England, by an application of latent principles of the English
constitution, the whole world applauded, and does to this day. It
was thus, as we understand it, that slavery was overthrown in
Massachusetts, a lawyer claiming before its courts the
application to a slave of a clause in its bill of rights supposed
to have been intended only for white men. We would add that it
would not accord at all with the good sense and directness of
method that specially characterize the American people, for the
friends of woman suffrage to labor years for the passage of a
further constitutional amendment when they already have all that
such an amendment could give.

Having attempted a strictly legal view of this question, permit
me, gentlemen, to say that in my heart my claim to vote is based
upon the original Constitution, interpreted by the Declaration of
Independence. I believe that Constitution comprehensive enough to
include all men and all women. I believe that black men needed no
other charter than white men. I recognize the stress laid upon
Congress, by reason of the infancy of that race, their past
bondage, and the duty of protection toward them. But the great
principles of liberty and responsibility contained in the
Declaration and the Constitution should have afforded protection
to every human being living under the flag, and properly applied
they would have been found sufficient. For my own part, I will
never willingly consent to vote under any special enactment
conferring rights of citizenship upon me as upon an alien. Like
Paul, I was free-born. "With a great sum obtained I this
freedom," said the Roman centurion to this old patriot apostle,
but he replied, "I am free-born." There is music in those words
to my ear. They are the deep vibrations of a soul that loves its
country as itself.

You sit here, gentlemen, in judgment on my rights as an American
citizen, as though they were something different from your own!
By whatsoever title you sit in these seats and make laws, wise or
unwise, just or unjust, for this great people, by that same title
do I claim my share in this great responsibility, owing
allegiance to God and my own conscience alone. I may have been
born with less capacity than the least among you, with small
chance of growing to your mental stature, or reaching your
standard of moral elevation; but I have a perfect right to sit in
your midst, pigmy that I may be, since I am one of "the people"
who did ordain this glorious old Constitution, and one of "the
governed," whose consent is made the basis of a government that
can be called just.

It is for this reason that I and my fellow memorialists have
asked to be protected in the use of our present rights, rather
than endowed with any new ones; and we do pray you, gentlemen of
the committee, to give immediate attention to our claim, and to
report to the Senate within a short time, favorably if you can,
adversely if you must, because we not only wish, in common with
thousands of other women-citizens, to vote for the next
President, but to have a potent voice in his nomination, and we
wish to know, therefore, how far Congress will aid us, and how
far we must work out our own salvation. For we can wait no
longer. We feel that we have neglected our duty already, else
what means this appalling official corruption that is bringing
dismay to the stoutest hearts among men, and leading them to
doubt the wisdom of republican institutions, the strength of the
great doctrines of liberty and responsibility on which our
Government is founded? We do not doubt these great doctrines, we
know what they mean and whereto they tend. Our Ship of State
carries two engines, gentlemen, and was built for them, but
heretofore you have used only one, and now you have reached the
place where not only two seas meet, but all ocean currents are
struggling together for the mastery. The man power alone will not
save you, but put on the woman power, and our gallant ship will
steady itself for a moment, and then ride the waves triumphantly
forevermore.

Gentlemen, we come to you with petitions no longer. Here is our
declaration and pledge, issued a year ago this day, signed
already by thousands of women, and eager names are coming every
day. (Mrs. H. read the pledge and exhibited the great autograph
book.)

We did hope to present this to Congress itself in the Senate
Chamber to-day. We believe that women, being unrepresented in
that body, are entitled to appear there by their memorialists in
person, and we have so asked. But Congress has referred us to
you, and you have declined even to submit our proposition
officially to that body. You find no precedent for this, you
say--forgetting, gentlemen, that history makes its own
precedents. The men of America made theirs in 1776; the women of
America are making theirs to-day, and may God prosper the right.

Mrs. STANTON said: _Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee_: We
appear before you at this time to call your attention to our
memorial asking for a "declaratory act" that shall protect women
in the exercise of the right of suffrage. Benjamin F. Butler,
early in the session, presented a bill in the House to this
effect that may soon, in the order of legislation, come before
you for consideration in the Senate of the United States. As you
well know, women are demanding their rights as citizens to-day
under the original Constitution, believing that its letter and
spirit, fairly interpreted, guarantee the blessings of liberty to
every citizen under our flag. But more especially do we claim
that our title deed to the elective franchise is clearly given in
the XIV. and XV. Amendments. Therein for the first time, the
Constitution defines the term citizen, and, in harmony with our
best lexicographers, declares a citizen to be a person possessed
of the right to vote. In the last year the question of woman's
political status has been raised from one of vague generalities
to one of constitutional law.

The Woodhull memorial, and the able arguments sustaining it made
by Mr. Riddle and Mrs. Woodhull herself, and the exhaustive
minority report of Messrs. Butler and Loughridge, have been
before the nation for one year, and yet remain unanswered; in
fact, the opinions of many of our most learned judges and lawyers
multiplying on all sides, sustain the positions taken in the
"Woodhull Memorial." As our demands are based on the same
principles of constitutional interpretation, I will not detain
you with the re-statement of arguments already furnished, but
will present a few facts and general principals showing the need
of some speedy action on this whole question.

Gentlemen hold seats in Congress to-day by the votes of women.
The legality of the election of Mr. Garfield, of Washington
Territory, and Mr. Jones, of Wyoming, involves the question
whether or not their constituents are legal voters. Ultimately,
this question, involving the fundamental rights of citizens, must
be considered in the Senate as well as the House. Women have
voted in the general elections in several of the States, and if
legislators chosen by women choose Senators, their right to their
seats can not be decided until it is first decided whether women
are legal voters. Some speedy action on this question is
inevitable, to preserve law and order.

In some States women have already voted; in others they are
contesting their rights in the courts, and the decisions of
judges differ as widely as the capacities of men to see first
principles.

Judge Howe, Judge Cartter, and Judge Underwood have given their
written opinions in favor of woman's citizenship under the XIV.
and XV. Amendments. Even the majority report of the Judiciary
Committee, presented by John A. Bingham, though adverse to the
prayer of Victoria Woodhull, admits the citizenship of woman. In
the late cases of Sarah Spencer against the Board of
Registration, and Sarah E. Webster against the superintendent of
election, the judge decided that under the XIV. Amendment women
are citizens.

We do not ask to vote outside of law, or in open violation of it,
nor to avail ourselves of any strained interpretations of
constitutional provisions, but in harmony with the Federal
Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and our American
theory of just government. The women of this country and a
handful of foreign citizens in Rhode Island, the only
disfranchised classes, ask you to-day to secure to them a
republican form of government to protect them against the
oppression of State authorities, who, in violation of your
amendments, assume the right not merely to regulate the suffrage,
but to abridge and deny it to these two classes of citizens. The
Federal Constitution, in its Amendment, clearly defines, for the
first time, who are citizens: "All persons born or naturalized in
the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States, and of the States wherein they
reside."

No one denies that "all persons," in the XIV. Amendment, is used
without limitation of sex, or in other words, that not men only,
but women also are citizens. Whether in theory the citizenship of
women is generally admitted or not, it certainly is in practice.
Women pre-empt land; women register ships; women obtain
passports; women pay the penalty of their own crimes; women pay
taxes, sometimes work out the road tax. In some States, even
married women can make contracts, sue and be sued, and do
business in their own names; in fact, the old Blackstone idea
that husband and wife are one, and that one the husband, received
its death blow twenty years ago, when the States of New York and
Massachusetts passed their first laws securing to married women
the property they inherited in their own right.

You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a
citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a
voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred
and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family
Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.

"Individual rights," "Individual conscience and judgment," are
great American ideas, underlying our whole political and
religious life. We are here to-day to ask a Congress of
Republicans for that crowning act that shall secure to 15,000,000
women the right to protect their persons, property, and opinions
by law. The XIV. Amendment, having told us who are citizens of
the republic, further declares that "no State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the 'privileges or
immunities' of 'citizens' of the United States." Some say that
"privileges and immunities" do not include the right of suffrage.
We answer that any person under Government who has no voice in
the laws or the rulers has his privileges and immunities abridged
at every turn, and when a State denies the right of suffrage, it
robs the citizen of his citizenship and of all power to protect
his person or property by law.

Disfranchised classes are ever helpless and degraded classes. One
can readily judge of the political status of a citizen by the
tone of the press. Go back a few years, and you find the Irishman
the target for all the gibes and jeers of the nation. You could
scarce take up a paper without finding some joke about "Pat" and
his last bull. But in process of time "Pat" became a political
power in the land, and editors and politicians could not afford
to make fun of him. Then "Sambo" took his turn. They ridiculed
his thick skull, woolly head, shin-bone, long heel, etc., but he,
too, has become a political power; he sits in the Congress of the
United States and in the Legislature of Massachusetts, and now
politicians and editors can not afford to make fun of him.

Now, who is their target? Woman. They ridicule all alike--the
strong-minded for their principles, the weak minded for their
panniers. How long think you the New York _Tribune_ would
maintain its present scurrilous tone if the votes of women could
make Horace Greeley Governor of New York? The editor of the
_Tribune_ knows the value of votes, and if, honorable gentlemen,
you will give us a "Declaratory law," forbidding the States to
deny or abridge our rights, there will be no need of arguments to
change the tone of his journal; its columns will speedily glow
with demands for the protection of woman as well as broadcloth
and pig-iron. Then we might find out what he knows and cares for
our real and relative value in the Government.

Without some act of Congress regulating suffrage for women as
well as black men, women citizens of the United States who, in
Washington, Utah, and Wyoming Territories, are voters and jurors,
and who, in the State of Kansas, vote on school and license
questions, would be denied the exercise of their right to vote in
all the States of the Union, and no naturalization papers,
education, property, residence, or age could help them. What an
anomaly is this in a republic! A woman who in Wyoming enjoys all
the rights, privileges, and immunities of a sovereign, by
crossing the line into Nebraska, sinks at once to the political
degradation of a slave. Humiliated with such injustice, one set
of statesmen answer her appeals by sending her for redress to
the courts; another advises her to submit her qualifications to
the States; but we, with a clearer intuition of the rightful
power, come to you who thoughtfully, conscientiously, and
understandingly passed that Amendment defining the word
"citizen," declaring suffrage a foundation right. How are women
"citizens" from Utah, Wyoming, Kansas, moving in other States, to
be protected in the rights they have heretofore enjoyed, unless
Congress shall pass the bill presented by Mr. Butler, and thus
give us a homogeneous law on suffrage from Maine to Louisiana?
Remember, these are citizens of the United States as well as of
the Territories and States wherein they may reside, and their
rights as such are of primal consideration. One of your own
amendments to the Federal Constitution, honorable gentlemen, says
"that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by any State on account of race, color,
or previous condition of servitude." We have women of different
races and colors, as well as men. It takes more than men to
compose peoples and races, and no one denies that all women
suffer the disabilities of a present or previous condition of
servitude. Clearly the State may regulate, but can not deny the
exercise of this right to any citizen.

You did not leave the negroes to the tender mercies of the courts
and States. Why send your mothers, wives, and daughters
suppliants at the feet of the unwashed, unlettered, unthinking
masses that carry our elections in the States? Would you compel
the women of New York to sue the Tweeds, the Sweeneys, the
Connollys, for their inalienable rights, or to have the scales of
justice balanced for them in the unsteady hand of a Cardozo, a
Barnard, or a McCunn? Nay, nay; the proper tribunal to decide
nice questions of human rights and constitutional
interpretations, the political status of every citizen under our
national flag, is the Congress of the United States. This is your
right and duty, clearly set forth in article 1, section 5, of the
Constitution, for how can you decide the competency and
qualifications of electors for members of either House without
settling the fundamental question on what the right of suffrage
is based? All power centers in the people. Our Federal
Constitution, as well as that of every State, opens with the
words, "We, the people." However this phrase may have been
understood and acted on in the past, women to-day are awake to
the fact that they constitute one half the American people; that
they have the right to demand that the constitution shall secure
to them "justice," "domestic tranquillity," and the "blessings of
liberty." So long as women are not represented in the government
they are in a condition of tutelage, perpetual minority, slavery.

You smile at the idea of women being slaves in this country.
Benjamin Franklin said long ago, "that they who have no voice in
making the laws, or in the election of those who administer them,
do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who
have votes and to their representatives." I might occupy hours in
quoting grand liberal sentiments from the fathers--Madison,
Jefferson, Otis, and Adams--in favor of individual
representation. I might quote equally noble words from the
statesmen of our day--Seward, Sumner, Wade, Trumbull, Schurz,
Thurman, Groesbeck, and Julian--to prove "that no just government
can be formed without the consent of the governed"; that "the
ballot is the columbiad of our political life, and every man who
holds it is a full-armed Monitor." But what do lofty utterances
and logical arguments avail so long as men, blinded by old
prejudices and customs, fail to see their application to the
women by their side? Alas! gentlemen, women are your subjects.
Your own selfish interests are too closely interwoven for you to
feel their degradation, and they are too dependent to reveal
themselves to you in their nobler aspirations, their native
dignity. Did Southern slaveholders ever understand the
humiliations of slavery to a proud man like Frederick Douglass?
Did the coarse, low-bred master ever doubt his capacity to govern
the negro better than he could govern himself? Do cow-boys,
hostlers, pot-house politicians ever doubt their capacity to
prescribe woman's sphere better than she could herself? We have
yet to learn that, with the wonderful progress in art, science,
education, morals, religion, and government we have witnessed in
the last century, woman has not been standing still, but has been
gradually advancing to an equal place with the man by her side,
and stands to-day his peer in the world of thought.

American womanhood has never worn iron shoes, burned on the
funeral pile, or skulked behind a mask in a harem, yet, though
cradled in liberty, with the same keen sense of justice and
equality that man has, she is still bound by law in the swaddling
bands of an old barbarism. Though the world has been steadily
advancing in political science, and step by step recognizing the
rights of new classes, yet we stand to-day talking of precedents,
authorities, laws, and constitutions, as if each generation were
not better able to judge of its wants than the one that preceded
it. If we are to be governed in all things by the men of the
eighteenth century, and the twentieth by the nineteenth, and so
on, the world will be always governed by dead men. The exercise
of political power by woman is by no means a new idea. It has
already been exercised in many countries, and under governments
far less liberal in theory than our own. As to this being an
innovation on the laws of nature, we may safely trust nature at
all times to vindicate herself. In England, where the right to
vote is based on property and not person, the _feme sole_
freeholder has exercised her right all along. In her earliest
history we find records of decisions in courts of her right to do
so, and discussions on that point by able lawyers and judges. The
_feme sole_ voted in person; when married, her husband
represented her property, and voted in her stead; and the moment
the breath went out of his body, she assumed again the burden of
disposing of her own income and the onerous duty of representing
herself in the Government. Thus England is always consistent;
property being the basis of suffrage, is always represented. Here
suffrage is based on "persons," and yet one-half our people are
wholly unrepresented.

We have declared in favor of a government of the people, for the
people, by the people, the whole people. Why not begin the
experiment? If suffrage is a natural right, we claim it in common
with all citizens; if it is a political right, that the few in
power may give or take away, then it is clearly the duty of the
ruling powers to extend it in all cases as the best interests of
the State require. No thinking man would admit that educated,
refined womanhood would not constitute a most desirable element
and better represent the whole humanitarian idea than a
government of men alone.

The objections to Mr. Butler's bill, extending the provisions of
the enforcement act to women, all summed up, are these:

1st. This is too short a cut to liberty. It is taking the nation
by storm. The people are not ready for it. The slower process of
a XVI. Amendment would be safer, surer, and do more toward
educating the people for the final result. To all of which I
answer, the women at least are ready and as well prepared for
enfranchisement as were the slaves of the Southern plantation.
There could have been no plan devised to educate the people so
rapidly as the startling announcement in the Woodhull Memorial
that women already had the right to vote. It has roused wise men
to thought on the question, stirred the bar and bench of the
nation, with the prospect of a new and fruitful source of
litigation; it has inspired woman with fresh hope that the day of
her enfranchisement is at hand, given the press of the country
solid arguments for their consideration, and changed the tone of
the speeches in our conventions from whinings about brutal
husbands, stolen babies, and special laws, to fundamental
principles of human rights.

This question has been up for discussion in this country over
thirty years; it split the first anti-slavery society in two, was
a firebrand in the world's convention, and has been a disturbing
element in temperance, educational and constitutional conventions
ever since, and it is high time it took a short cut to its final
consummation. There have been many shorter cuts to liberty than
this is likely to be, even with a declaratory act at this
session. Why multiply amendments when we have liberty and justice
enough in the spirit and letter of the Constitution as it now is
to protect every citizen under this Government?

The simple opinion of a Chief Justice, a century ago, without any
change in legislation, settled in one hour as great a question of
human rights as we now submit to your consideration. Lord
Mansfield, presiding in the Court of Queen's Bench, listening to
the arguments in the fatuous Somerset case, with higher light and
knowledge, suddenly awoke to the truth that by the laws of
England, a slave could not breathe on that soil, and he so
decided, and the negro was discharged. Slavery was abolished in
Massachusetts in the same way, without any amendment of her
constitution or new legislation, simply by the decision of her
Chief Justice. So you perceive, honorable gentlemen, we have two
precedents for the "short cut" we propose to liberty.

2d. Some object that it was not the "intention" of the framers of
the original Constitution, nor of the amendments, to enfranchise
woman. When ordinary men, in their ordinary condition, talk of
the "intentions" of great men specially inspired to utter great
political truths, they talk of what they can not know or
understand. When by some moral revolution men are cut loose from
all their old moorings and get beyond the public sentiment that
once bound them, with no immediate selfish interest to
subserve--as, for instance, our fathers in leaving England, or
the French Communes in the late war--in hardship and suffering
they dig down to the hard-pan of universal principles, and in
their highest inspirational moments proclaim justice, liberty,
equality for all.

Visiting Chicago not long since, I saw great pieces of rock of
the most wonderful mineral combination--gold, silver, glass,
iron, layer after layer, all welded beautifully together, and
that done in the conflagration of a single night which would have
taken ages of growth to accomplish in the ordinary rocky
formations. Just so revolutions in the moral world suddenly mould
ideas, clear, strong, grand, that centuries might have slumbered
over in silence; ideas that strike minds ready for them with the
quickness and vividness of the lightning's flash. It is in such
ways and under such conditions that constitutions and great
principles of jurisprudence are written; the letter and spirit
are ever on the side of liberty; and highly organized minds,
governed by principle, invariably give true interpretations;
while others, whose law is expediency, coarse and material in all
their conceptions, will interpret law, Bible, constitution,
everything, in harmony with the public sentiment of their class
and condition. And here is the reason why men differ in their
interpretations of law. They differ in their organizations; they
see everything from a different standpoint. Could ideas of
justice, and liberty, and equality be more grandly and
beautifully expressed than in the preamble to our Federal
Constitution?

It is an insult to those Revolutionary heroes to say that, after
seven years' struggle with the despotic ideas of the old world,
in the first hour of victory, with their souls all on fire with
new-found freedom, they sat down like so many pettifogging
lawyers, and drew up a little instrument for the express purpose
of robbing women and negroes of their inalienable rights. Does
the preamble look like it? Women did vote in America, at the time
the Constitution was adopted. If the framers of the Constitution
meant they should not, why did they not distinctly say so? The
women of the country, having at last roused up to their rights
and duties as citizens, have a word to say as to the "intentions"
of the fathers. It is not safe to leave the "intentions" of the
Pilgrim fathers, or the Heavenly Father, wholly to masculine
interpretation, for by Bible and Constitution alike, women have
thus far been declared the subjects, the slaves of men.

But able jurists tell us that the "intention" of the framers of a
document must be judged by the letter of the law. Following this
rule the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia has decided
that the XIV. Amendment does affect the status of women; that it
advances them to full citizenship, and clothes them with the
capacity to become voters. The exact language of Judge Cartter,
who spoke for the court, is as follows:

All that has been accomplished by this amendment to the
Constitution, or its previous provisions, is to distinguish
them (women) from aliens, and make them capable of becoming
voters. In giving expression to my judgment, this clause
does advance them to full citizenship, and clothes them with
the capacity to become voters.

If so much has been done, we have already gone beyond the
"intention" of the framers of the amendments, if, as some say,
they did not intend to touch the status of woman at all. But with
or without intent, a law stands as it is written--"_Lex ita
scripta est_." The true rule of interpretation, says Charles
Sumner, under the National Constitution, especially since its
additional amendments, is that anything for human rights is
constitutional. "No learning in the books, no skill in the
courts, no sharpness of forensic dialectics, no cunning in
splitting hairs, can impair the vigor of the constitutional
principle which I announce. Whatever you enact for human rights
is constitutional, and this is the supreme law of the land,
anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary
notwithstanding."

SUSAN B. ANTHONY said--_Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee_: It
is not argument nor Constitution that you need; you have already
had those. I shall therefore refer to existing facts. Prior to
the war the plan of extending suffrage was by State action, and
it was our boast that the National Constitution did not contain a
word that could be construed into a barrier against woman's right
to vote. But at the close of the war Congress lifted the question
of suffrage for men above State power, and by the amendments
prohibited the deprivation of suffrage to any citizen by any
State. When the XIV. Amendment was first proposed in Congress, we
rushed to you with petitions, praying you not to insert the word
"male" in the second clause. Our best woman-suffrage men, on the
floor of Congress, said to us the insertion of the word there
puts up no new barrier against woman; therefore do not embarrass
us, but wait until the negro question is settled. So the XIV.
Amendment, with the word "male," was adopted. Then, when the XV.
Amendment was presented without the word "sex," we again
petitioned and protested, and again our friends declared to us
that the absence of that word was no hindrance to us, and again
they begged us to wait until they had finished the work of the
war. "After we have freed the negro, and given him a vote, we
will take up your case." But have they done as they promised?
When we come before you, asking protection under the new
guarantees of the Constitution, the same men say to us our only
plan is to wait the action of Congress and State Legislatures in
the adoption of a XVI. Amendment that shall make null and void
the insertion of the word "male" in the XIV., and supply the want
of the word "sex" in the XV. Such tantalization endured by
yourselves, or by any class of men, would have wrought rebellion,
and in the end a bloody revolution. It is only the friendly
relations that exist between the sexes that has prevented any
such result from this injustice to women.

Gentlemen, I should be sure of your decision could you but
realize the fact that we, who have been battling for our rights,
now more than twenty years, have felt, and now feel, precisely as
you would under such circumstances. Men never do realize this.
One of the most ardent lovers of freedom (Senator Sumner), said
to me, two winters ago, after our hearing before the Committee of
the District, "Miss Anthony, I never realized before that you, or
any woman, could feel the disgrace, the degradation, of
disfranchisement precisely as I should if my fellow-citizens had
conspired to take from me my right to vote." We have petitioned
for our rights year after year. Although I am a Quaker and take
no oath, yet I have made a most solemn "affirmation" that I would
never again beg my rights, but that I would come up to Congress
each year, and demand the recognition of them under the
guarantees of the National Constitution.

What we ask of the Republican party, is simply to take down its
own bars. The facts in Wyoming show how a Republican party can
exist in that Territory. Before women voted, there was never a
Republican elected to office; after their enfranchisement, the
first election sent a Republican to Congress, and seven
Republicans to their Territorial Legislature. Thus the nucleus of
a Republican party there was formed by the enfranchisement of
women. The Democrats seeing this, are now determined to again
disfranchise the women. Can you Republicans so utterly stultify
yourselves, can you so entirely work against yourselves, as to
refuse us a Declaratory Law? Can you longer deny us the
protection we ask? We pray you to report immediately, as Mrs.
Hooker has said, "favorably, if you can, adversely, if you must."
We can wait no longer.

In the House, on January 24, 1872, the following discussion took
place:

Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts.--I ask unanimous consent, out of
the usual course of the rules, to present a petition.

The SPEAKER.--Is there objection? The Chair hears none.

Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts.--I am honored with the duty of
presenting a petition for a declaratory law to assure the right
of suffrage to the women citizens of the United States. They
believe their absolute constitutional right is to vote. They here
and now desire to bring to the attention of Congress the
necessity of passing a new law declaring and executing that
right. They claim such a law in two views: first, as of right,
and secondly, as of expediency to the nation. They insist that
this their right ought to be secured to them by law, and they
insist also that it is expedient for the Republic that this right
should be accorded to them.

The mothers of the land, who shall form the characters of all its
citizens through their teaching in childhood, giving direction to
the thoughts which shall hereafter govern the land, may well
claim that it is expedient that they shall have a voice in making
the laws which govern them, which will give them greater freedom
of action than they now have, which will afford them higher
opportunities for noble culture than they now have, and raise
their thoughts to a plane worthy of the generation that shall
come after us, which must in all its social and moral qualities
take its impress from their teachings, so that the men of the
land shall then be as the women of the land now are; and as you
elevate and ennoble woman, in so much, in a greater ratio, will
our sons be better fitted for the great duties and
responsibilities of the future. No stream shall rise higher than
its fountain.

Sir, I recognize the fact that I have no right at this time to
trespass on the business and indulgence of the House to argue
the momentous question involved in this memorial, but I present
this petition of 35,000 women of America, from almost every State
in the Union. From every class and condition of life, from the
highest and most refined, and from the humblest and most lowly,
all are represented here, all asking that their claim to what
they conceive to be their greatest right, and which we claim to
be the inalienable right of every male citizen shall be granted
to them.

The unanimity with which they come here; the fact that without
organization, almost as a matter of spontaneity, 35,000 names
should have been gathered and sent to this Capitol to a
committee, whose voluntary duty it was made to receive them; the
fact that other names are now coming in at the rate of some 500 a
day; that from California 10,000 more are on the way, all speak
to the Representatives of the people in accents that can not be
misunderstood, that here is a great and necessary reform which
calls for the fullest consideration and the promptest action of
the Congress of the United States.

They are not to be told that this is an innovation, that this is
a new thing. Division of property between the husband and the
wife was a greater innovation upon the feudal law, which is the
foundation of our law as regards women, and a very much greater
innovation than this will be. That in the parent State from which
we come women have had the right to act in public affairs; from
the fact that in that parent State a woman is at the head of
public affairs, seems to point to us that women may safely be
trusted with the right to vote.

I have desired to say this much, in presenting this petition, in
order that it may be brought to the notice of the House and the
country; that it may take the same place in the consideration of
the people that in a not very far day in the past anti-slavery
petitions took, which founded the great party which now has
control of the Government of this country. There was a great
reform, beginning in the little, urged on by petitions, not so
numerous in its early days, and hardly so numerous in its later
days, as this, scarcely arriving to the dignity of numbers of
applicants which characterizes the petition which I now present;
and although, when a great moneyed interest was at stake, it took
years to bring that freedom which those petitions asked for, yet
let me assure the House of Representatives that in my judgment,
much sooner, and as certainly as the sun rolls around in its
course a few more times, just so sure will the right asked for in
this petition be accorded to the women citizens of the United
States.

I ask that this petition, which I propose simply to show to the
House in its large volume (unrolling the petition), may be
referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, to whom this subject
has already been referred.

Mr. ELDRIDGE.--I ask that the petition be read.

The SPEAKER.--With the names?

Mr. ELDRIDGE.--Certainly.

The SPEAKER.--That would require unanimous consent.

Mr. BUTLER, of Massachusetts.--I pray that may not be done,
because I promised the Committee on Appropriations not to take
much time. I ask that the petition simply be read.

The Clerk read as follows:

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United
States in Congress assembled:_

The undersigned, citizens of the United States, pray your
honorable bodies that in any proposed amendment to the
Constitution which may come before you in regard to suffrage
in the District of Columbia or any Territory, the right of
voting may be given to women on the same terms as to men.

The petition was then referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.

IN THE HOUSE, JANUARY 29, 1872.--MR. PARKER, of Missouri,
introduced a bill (H. R. No. 1277) to allow women to vote and
hold office in the Territories of the United States; which was
read a first and second time, referred to the Committee on the
Judiciary, and ordered to be printed.

IN UNITED STATES SENATE ON JANUARY 29, 1872.--THE VICE-PRESIDENT
said:--The Chair has been requested to present the protest of
ladies of the county of Munroe, Indiana, signed by Mrs. Morton C.
Hunter, Mrs. A. Y. Moore, and several hundred other ladies,
remonstrating against an extension of the right of suffrage to
women, "because the Holy Scripture inculcates a different and for
us a higher sphere, apart from public life; because as women we
find a full measure of duties, cares, and responsibilities
devolving upon us, and we are therefore unwilling to bear other
and heavier burdens, and those unsuited to our physical
organization; because we hold that an extension of suffrage would
be adverse to the interests of the working women of the country,
with whom we heartily sympathize: because these changes must
introduce a fruitful element of discord in the existing marriage
relation, which would tend to the infinite detriment of children,
and increase the already alarming prevalence of divorce through
the land; because no general law affecting the condition of all
women should be framed to meet exceptional discontent." This
memorial will be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.

The National Woman Suffrage Association held its May Anniversary of
1872 in New York, at Steinway Hall. As can be seen by the call,[149]
the intention was to form a political party, but the delegates, after
some discussion, decided that nominees without electors were
incongruous. As usual a large number of States were represented by
delegates, California sending Laura de Force Gordon, and Oregon,
Abigail Scott Duniway. This convention was chiefly remarkable as being
the first at which the presidency changed hands--Miss Anthony, instead
of Mrs. Stanton, being elected to fill the position of chief officer.

A delegation, consisting of Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. De Force Gordon, and
Miss Anthony, was sent by the National Woman Suffrage Association to
the Presidential Conventions held by the Liberal Republicans at
Cincinnati, the Democrats at Baltimore, and the Republicans at
Philadelphia. The fruit of all the earnest labor of this delegation
was a splinter in the Republican platform. This, however, was
something to be grateful for, as it was the first mention of woman in
the platform of either of the great political parties during our
National existence. On the strength of this plank the following
address was issued:

GRANT AND WILSON--APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF AMERICA FROM THE
NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.

Women of the United States, the hour for political action has
come. For the first time in the history of our country woman has
been recognized in the platform of a large and dominant party.
Philadelphia has spoken and woman is no longer ignored. She is
now officially recognized as a part of the body politic. The
fourteenth plank of its platform declares:

The Republican party mindful of its obligations to the loyal
women of America expresses gratification that wider avenues
of employment have been open to women, and it farther
declares that her demands for additional rights should be
treated with respectful consideration.

We are told that this plank does not say much, that in fact it is
only a "splinter;" and our "liberal" friends warn us not to rely
upon it as a promise of the ballot to woman. What it is, we know
full better than others. We recognize its meagerness; we see in
it the timidity of politicians; but beyond and through it all, we
farther see its promise of the future. We see in it the thin
edge of the entering wedge which shall break woman's slavery in
pieces and make us at last a nation truly free--a nation in which
the caste of sex shall fall down by the caste of color, and
humanity alone shall be the criterion of all human rights. The
Republican party has been the party of ideas, of progress. Under
its leadership, the nation came safely through the fiery ordeal
of the rebellion; under it slavery was destroyed; under it
manhood suffrage was established. The women of the country have
long looked to it in hope, and not in vain; for to-day we are
launched by it into the political arena, and the Republican party
must hereafter fight our battles for us. This great party, this
progressive party, having taken the initiative step, will never
go back on its record. It needed this new and vital issue to keep
it in life, for Cincinnati indorsed its work up to this hour; the
constitutional amendments, the payment of the bonds in gold, the
civil service reform, the restoration of the States. It thanked
the soldiers and sailors of the Republic, it proposed lands to
actual settlers. The Republican party went up higher; it
remembered all citizens. The widows and orphans of the soldiers
and sailors were not forgotten; it acknowledged its obligation to
the loyal women of the Republic, and to the demands for
additional rights, of all women, whatever their class, color, or
birth, it promised "respectful consideration." Its second plank
declared that "complete liberty and exact equality in the
enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights should be
established and maintained throughout the Union by efficient and
appropriate State and Federal legislation." These two planks are
the complement of each other, and are the promise of exact and
equal justice to woman. They were the work of radical woman
suffrage Republicans--of Wilson, Sargent, Loring, Claflin, Hoar,
Fairchild, and others. They were accepted by the candidates.
General Grant, in his letter, expresses his desire to see "the
time when the title of 'citizen' shall carry with it all the
protection and privilege to the humblest, that it does to the
most exalted." His course since his elevation to the Presidency
has always been favorable to increased rights for women. He has
officially recognized their competency, and has given them many
government positions. Senator Wilson is an old and staunch
advocate of woman suffrage, and his letter in pointed terms
refers to the recognition given woman by his party, and says, "to
her new demands it extends the hand of grateful recognition, and
it commends her demands for additional rights to the calm and
careful consideration of the nation." And, too, thus early in the
campaign, the strongest men of the party, among whom are Forney,
of the Philadelphia _Press_, Gerrit Smith, Bowen, of the New York
_Independent_, and President White, of Cornell University, speak
of this recognition as introducing a new era into politics.

While the old and tried Republican party in its platform and
candidates thus gives woman assurance that her claim to equal
political rights is to be respected, the other party in the field
gives her no promise either in its platform or the letters of its
nominees. The Liberal Republican party is a new party; it has no
record; it has done no work; it is wholly untried; it ignores
women; and by its silence in regard to the equal rights of
one-half of the people--the most important question now in the
political horizon--it proves itself unworthy of its name,
unworthy of woman's confidence, and unworthy of the votes of
truly liberal men. In regard to its candidates, Gratz Brown, once
our friend, has practically denied his record. Horace Greeley,
its chief nominee, has for years been our most bitter opponent.
Both by tongue and pen he has heaped abuse, ridicule, and
misrepresentation upon our leading women, while the whole power
of the _Tribune_ has been used to crush out our great reform. And
now that he is a candidate for election to the highest office in
the country, he still continues his bitter and hostile course
toward one half of its citizens. He presses the iron-heel of his
despotism upon their liberties; and, in answer to our appeals, he
says he "neither desires our help nor believes us capable of
giving any."

What can liberty expect from such a man? What can woman hope from
such a party? Women of the Republic, you can not in self-respect
give your aid to such nominees; you can not in self-respect work
for such a party. It has repulsed you, pushed you back, said to
you "go hence."

The Republican party, with Grant and Wilson as its
standard-bearers, opens its doors to you. By its fourteenth plank
it invites your aid and co-operation.

Shall it not have it? Women of the South, will you not work for
your own freedom? Women of the North, will you not strive for
your own enfranchisement?

There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.
But we must take the current when it serves our turn,
Or lose our ventures.

For us to-day this tide has risen; for us to-day the current
serves our turn. Let us lay aside our party preferences. Let us
one and all forget our many grievances of the past; let us forget
the many times we have been ignored, buffeted, and spurned by
politicians. Let us throw our whole influence of voice and pen
into this campaign, and in making it a success for the Republican
party, make it a success for ourselves.

And now an especial word to the Women Suffrage organizations of
the country. Prepare to hold mass meetings in all the large
cities of your States; be ready to co-operate with Republican
committees; send into the election districts your best women
speakers, circulate addresses and documents throughout every
school district; persuade fathers, brothers, husbands, and sons
to work and vote for Grant and Wilson; offer your own votes, as
in many election districts women's votes have already been
received and counted; in every possible way throw the whole
weight of your influence on the side of the Republican party. By
persistent, united action for one party during this Presidential
canvass, the women suffragists of the nation will make themselves
felt as a power by both.

Women speakers, do not hesitate, do not vacillate; let no party
or personal consideration bias you to act against the Republican
party at this momentous crisis. Remember we owe to it a debt of
gratitude that it has made for us this opportunity, that it has
thus launched our cause into the political arena, where it must
go on and on till justice and equality to woman shall at last
triumph in a true Republic; "a government of the people, for the
people, and by the people."

On behalf of the National Woman Suffrage Association.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, President,
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, Chair. Ex. Com.
ROCHESTER, July 19, 1872.

The Congressional Republican Committee published thousands of this
appeal, and scattered them over the country. It also telegraphed to
the President of the National Woman Suffrage Association, to go to
Washington in order to consult with the committee as to what women
could do to aid in the coming campaign. Miss Anthony's plan was
cordially accepted, and liberal appropriations placed at her disposal
by both the National and New York Republican Committees for carrying
on a series of meetings.[150] The first of this series was at
Rochester, and was presided over by Hon. Carter Wilder, Mayor of the
city, the last in Cooper Institute, New York, at which meeting Luther
R. Marsh occupied the chair.

Mrs. Livermore and Mrs. Stanton, by special invitation of Republican
State Committees, also took part in the canvass in Connecticut and
Pennsylvania.

FOOTNOTES:

[127] Honorables Hamlin, Sumner, Patterson, Rice, Vickers, Pratt,
Harris, Cook, Welcker, Williams, Cowles, Bowles, Gilfillen.

[128] On Resolutions--Miss Susan B. Anthony, Dr. J. P. Root, Miss
Phoebe Couzins, Rev. Samuel J. May, Mrs. M. E. J. Gage, Mrs. Colby,
Mrs. Jacob Ela.

On Finance--Mrs. Paulina W. Davis, Miss S. B. Anthony, Mrs. B.
Lockwood, Mrs. M. Wright, Mr. Wilcox.

On Credentials--Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing, Mr. Stillman, Mrs. A. D.
Cridge.

[129] _Resolved_, That the National Woman's Suffrage Convention
respectfully ask the XLI. Congress of the United States--

First. To submit to the Legislatures of the several States a
XVI. Amendment to the Federal Constitution, prohibiting the
disfranchisement of any of their citizens on account of sex.

Second. To strike the word "male" from the laws governing the District
of Columbia.

Third. To enfranchise the women of Utah as the one safe, sure and
swift means to abolish polygamy in that Territory.

Fourth. To amend the laws of the United States so that women shall
receive the same pay as men for services rendered the government.

[130]
WASHINGTON, Jan. 19, 1870.

Miss SUSAN B. ANTHONY--DEAR MADAM:.... Accept my assurance of full and
cordial sympathy with the movement to extend the right of suffrage to
the women of the country, and my pledge to make that sympathy active
on the first and all occasions that may arise for my official action.

Very respectfully your obedient servant, E. G. ROSS.

WASHINGTON, Jan 19.

Mrs. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON--MADAM: Your favor of the 18th instant,
inviting me to address the convention now in session in this city for
the promotion of the cause of female suffrage, has been received. I
regret that my official duties will not allow me the time to comply
with this request; but I assure you, and the ladies with whom you are
associated, that I am heartily in sympathy with the efforts you are
making for the success of the cause which you especially have so long
and so ably advocated. I beg further to say that the bestowal of the
right of equal political suffrage upon the women of this republic can
not, in my judgment, be much longer withheld, and that whatever
influence I have shall be exerted, at every proper opportunity, to
hasten the consummation for which you are laboring. I have the honor
to be, very truly, yours,

MATT. H. CARPENTER.

[131] Rev. Olympia Brown, Connecticut; E. H. Heywood and Jennie
Collins, Massachusetts; M. Adele Hazlitt, Michigan; Mrs. Francis Minor
and Phoebe Couzins, Missouri; Hon. Henry B. Stanton; Judge Barlow,
Canastota; Josephine S. Griffing, Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Lizzie M.
Boynton, Maud D. Molson, Susan B. Anthony, Gen. E. M. Lee, Act Gov.
Wyoming; Hon. A. G. Riddle, Washington; Hon. Jas. W. Stillman, Rhode
Island; Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Illinois; Hon. J. M. Scovill, New
Jersey; Dr. James C. Jackson, New York; Mrs. Louisa H. Dent, New York;
Lillie Peckham, Wisconsin; Mrs. M. E. J. Gage, New York; Mrs. Dr. S.
Hathaway, Boston; and S. D. Dillaye, Syracuse.

[132] The Fifth Avenue Conference proposition was presented to the
members of the National Association, duly discussed, and so far as one
of the parties could do, accepted; that is, the National Society
pledged itself to be merged into a Union Association, provided the
American would make the same surrender at its first Anniversary. But
as this overture for peace was rejected, the mission of the Union
Society ended, leaving the National free to reassert itself and go
forward with its catholic platform and persistent demands for
"National protection for United States citizens," while the American
devoted itself primarily to State legislation.

[133] WOMAN SUFFRAGE CELEBRATION.--The twentieth anniversary of the
inauguration of the woman suffrage movement in this country, will be
celebrated in Apollo Hall, in the city of New York, on the 19th and
20th of October, 1870. The movement in England, as in America, may be
dated from the first National Convention, held at Worcester, Mass.,
October, 1850. The July following that convention, a favorable
criticism of its proceedings and an able digest of the whole question
appeared in the _Westminster Review_, written by Mrs. John Stuart
Mill, which awakened attention in both hemispheres. In the call for
that convention, the following subjects for discussion were presented:
Woman's right to _education_, literary, scientific and artistic; her
_avocations_, industrial, commercial and professional; her
_interests_, pecuniary, civil and political: in a word, _her rights_
as an individual, and her _functions_ as a citizen. It is hoped that
the Old and the New World will both be largely represented by the
earlier advocates of this reform who will bring with them reports of
progress and plans for future action. An extensive foreign
correspondence will also add interest to the meetings. We specially
invite the presence of those just awakening to an interest in this
great movement, that from a knowledge of the past they may draw fresh
inspiration for the work of the future and fraternize with a
generation now rapidly passing away. As those who inaugurated a
reform, so momentous and far reaching in its consequences, should hold
themselves above all party considerations and personal antagonisms,
and as this gathering is to be in no way connected with either of our
leading woman suffrage organizations, we hope that the friends of real
progress everywhere will come together and unitedly celebrate this
Twentieth Anniversary of a great National Movement for Freedom.

Committee of Arrangements.--Lucretia Mott, Sarah Pugh, Elizabeth C.
Stanton, Ernestine L. Rose, Samuel J. May, Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols. On
behalf of the Committee,

PAULINA W. DAVIS, Chairman.

[134] In 1843, John Neal, of Portland, Maine, gave a lecture in New
York which roused considerable discussion; it was replied to by Mrs.
Eliza W. Farnham, with all the objections which have ever been urged,
and far more ably than by any of the later objectors. Mrs. Farnham
lived long enough to retrace her ground and accept the highest truth.
"Woman and her Era" fully refutes her early objections. Mr. Neal's
lecture, published in _The Brother Jonathan_, was extensively copied,
and as it reviewed some of the laws relating to woman and her
property, it had a wide, silent influence, preparing the way for
action. It was a scathing satire, and men felt the rebuke.

In this conflict for principle, the names of Wm. L. Garrison, Wendell
Phillips, Edmund Quincy, Oliver Johnson, Parker Pillsbury, S. S.
Foster, William Henry Channing, Samuel J. May, Charles Burleigh, James
Mott, Frederick Douglass, Edmund M. Davis, and Robert Purvis, stand
out conspicuously, and will so be remembered in all the future.

[135] _Resolved_, That at the close of over twenty years of persistent
agitation, petitioning, State Legislatures and Congress for the right
of suffrage, we, who inaugurated this reform, now demand the immediate
adoption of a XVI. Amendment to the Federal Constitution, that shall
prohibit any State from disfranchising its citizens on the ground of
sex; and whatever national party does this act of justice, fastens the
keystone in the arch of the Republic.

_Resolved_, That as neither free trade, finance, prohibition, capital
and labor, nor any other political question, can be so vital to the
existence of the Republic as the enfranchisement of women, it is
clearly our duty to aid and support the great National party that
shall first inscribe woman suffrage on its banner.

_Resolved_, That our thanks are due to the Democratic party of Utah
and Wyoming for securing to woman her right of suffrage in those
Territories.

_Resolved_, That the Democratic party of Kansas, in declaring, at its
recent convention at Topeka, the enfranchisement of women in its
judgment a most reasonable and timely enterprise, no longer to be
justly postponed, is entitled to the hearty support of the friends of
our cause in that State.

_Resolved_, That the American Equal Rights Association, in sending
Susan B. Anthony to the National Democratic Convention in 1868, and
the Massachusetts Suffrage Association, in sending Mary A. Livermore
to the Republican State Convention in 1870, have inaugurated the right
political action, which should be followed in the National and State
Conventions throughout the country.

_Resolved_, That we rejoice in the fact that the Republican
Legislatures of Iowa and other Western States have submitted to the
people the proposition to strike the word "male" from their
Constitutions.

_Resolved_, That it is as disastrous to human progress to teach women
to bow down to the authority of man, as divinely inspired, as it is to
teach man to bow down to the authority of Kings and Popes, as divinely
ordained, for in both cases we violate the fundamental idea on which a
Republican government and the Protestant religion are based--the right
of individual judgment.

_Whereas_, The accident of sex no more involves the capacity to govern
a family than does the accident of Papal election or royal birth the
capacity to govern a dominion or a kingdom; therefore,

_Resolved_, That the doctrine of woman's subjection, enforced from the
text, "Wives, submit yourselves unto your husbands," should be thrown
aside, with the exploded theories of kingcraft and slavery, embodied
in the injunction, "Honor the king," and "Servants, obey your
masters."

_Resolved_, That as the gravest responsibilities of social life must
ever rest on the mother of the race, therefore law, religion, and
public sentiment, instead of degrading her as the subject of man,
should unitedly declare and maintain her sole and supreme sovereignty
over her own person."

[136] Married afterwards to Père Hyacinth.

[137] Chief among the guests were Mrs. Margaret Lucas, of Scotland,
sister of John and Jacob Bright; Mrs. Governor Jewell, of Conn.; Mrs.
Elmes, of Birmingham; Mrs. Caroline Stratton, and Miss Sarah Pugh, of
Philadelphia; Lucretia Mott, Abby H. Price, Adelle Hazlett, Olympia
Brown, Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Lucas, Mrs. Stanton, Mrs. Gage, and Miss
Anthony; Mrs. Godbie, wife of one of the leading reform advocates of
Utah; Mrs. Denman, of Quincy, Ill.; Mrs. Laura Curtis Bullard, and Dr.
Clemence Lozier.

Among the gentlemen present were Alexander Delmar, Rev. Henry Powers,
Mr. Lewis, of the _National Intelligencer_, Col. Hastings, Theodore
Tilton, Oliver Johnson, Prof. Wilcox, and Mr. Packard, of the Business
College, and others.

[138] CALL FOR A NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION AT WASHINGTON.--We, the
undersigned, desiring to secure a full discussion of the question of
the enfranchisement of women during the present session of Congress,
with a view to the speedy passage of a XVI. Amendment to the Federal
Constitution, invite all men and women desiring this change in the
Constitution to meet us in convention for that purpose in the city of
Washington on the 11th and 12th of January. Eminent speakers will be
present from all parts of the country, including several members of
Congress, and plans of work will be presented and discussed. We
earnestly urge you, dear friends, to come together at this time in a
spirit of unselfishness and of hard work, and let us take one another
by the hand and move onward as never before.

PAULINA W. DAVIS, JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING, ISABELLA B. HOOKER.

[139] Mrs. Esther Morris, a large fine-looking woman, administered
justice in that Territory for nearly two years, and none of her
decisions were ever questioned.

[140] The hearing took place in the committee room, which was crowded
with a goodly assemblage of men and women. Judge Bingham, of Ohio, was
chairman, Gen. B. F. Butler, of Mass., was prominent in favor of the
cause. Messrs. Eldridge, B. C. Cook, I. A. Peters, Ulysses Morcur, Wm.
Loughridge, Michael Kerr, S. W. Kellogg, and G. W. Hitchcock formed
the rest of the committee. The claimants for woman suffrage were
represented by Mrs. V. C. Woodhull and Mrs. L. D. Blake, New York;
Mrs. I. B Hooker, Rev. O. Brown, Conn.; Mrs. P. W. Davis, Miss K.
Stanton, Rhode Island; Mrs. J. Griffing, and Mrs. Lockwood, D. C.; and
Miss Susan B. Anthony. The proceedings were opened by the reading of
her memorial by Mrs. Woodhull. It was the first time the lady had ever
appeared in public, and her voice trembled slightly with emotion which
only made the reading the more effective. She claimed not a XVI.
amendment; but that under the XIV. and XV. Amendments, women have
already the right to vote, and prayed Congress merely to pass a
declaratory resolution to that effect.--The Washington _Republican._

[141] _Yeas_--Messrs. Allison, Arnell, Asper, Atwood, Banks, Barry,
Buck, Buffinton, Burdett, Churchill, Amasa Cobb, Clinton L. Cobb,
Coburn, Cullom, Darrall, Joseph Dixon, Ela, Farnsworth, Finkelnburg,
Hamilton, Harris, Hawkins, Hoar, Alexander H. Jones, Julian, Kelley,
Lawrence, Long, Loughridge, Maynard, Milnes, William Moore, Morey,
Daniel J. Morrell, Negley, Orth, Packard, Paine, Pierce, Platt,
Pomeroy, Porter, Prosser, Sargent, Scofield, Shanks, William J. Smith,
Stevenson, Stoughton, Strickland, Twichell, Cadwallader C. Washburn,
Willard, John T. Wilson, and Wolf.

[142] Among the speakers were Isabella Beecher Hooker, Paulina Wright
Davis, Minnie Swayze, Mrs. Dr. Hallock, Josephine S. Griffing,
Victoria C. Woodhull, Anna Middlebrook, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan B.
Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott.

[143] _An Appeal to the Women of the United States by the National
Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee, Washington, D. C._:

DEAR FRIENDS:--The question of your rights as citizens of the United
States, and of the grave responsibilities which a recognition of those
rights will involve, is becoming the great question of the day in this
country, and is the culmination of the great question which has been
struggling through the ages for solution, that of the highest freedom
and largest personal responsibility of the individual under such
necessary and wholesome restraints as are required by the welfare of
society. As you shall meet and act upon this question, so shall these
great questions of freedom and responsibility sweep on, or be
retarded, in their course.

This is pre-eminently the birthday of womanhood. The material has long
held in bondage the spiritual; henceforth the two, the material
refined by the spiritual, the spiritual energized by the material, are
to walk hand in hand for the moral regeneration of mankind. Mothers,
for the first time in history, are able to assert, not only their
inherent first right to the children they have borne, but their right
to be a protective and purifying power in the political society into
which those children are to enter. To fulfill, therefore, their whole
duty of motherhood, to satisfy their whole capacity in that divine
relation, they are called of God to participate with man in all the
responsibilities of human life, and to share with him every work of
brain and heart, refusing only those physical labors that are
inconsistent with the exalted duties and privileges of maternity, and
requiring these of men as the equivalent of those heavy yet necessary
burdens which women alone can bear.

Under the Constitution of the United States justly interpreted, you
were entitled to participate in the government of the country, in the
same manner as you were held to allegiance and subject to penalty. But
in the slow development of the great principles of freedom, you, and
all, have failed both to recognize and appreciate this right; but
to-day, when the rights and responsibilities of women are attracting
the attention of thoughtful minds throughout the whole civilized
world, this constitutional right, so long unobserved and unvalued, is
becoming one of prime importance, and calls upon all women who love
their children and their country to accept and rejoice in it.
Thousands of years ago God uttered this mingled command and promise,
"Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long upon the
land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." May we not hope that in the
general recognition of this right and this duty of woman to
participate in government, our beloved country may find her days long
and prosperous in this beautiful land which the Lord hath given her.

To the women of this country who are willing to unite with us in
securing the full recognition of our rights, and to accept the duties
and responsibilities of a full citizenship, we offer for signature the
following Declaration and Pledge, in the firm belief that our
children's children will with fond veneration recognize in this act
our devotion to the great doctrines of liberty in their new and wider
and more spiritual application, even as we regard with reverence the
prophetic utterances of the fathers of the Republic in their
Declaration of Independence:

DECLARATION AND PLEDGE OF THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES CONCERNING
THEIR RIGHT TO AND THEIR USE OF THE ELECTIVE FRANCHISE.

We, the undersigned, believing that the sacred rights and privileges
of citizenship in this Republic were guaranteed to us by the original
Constitution, and that these rights are confirmed and more clearly
established by the XIV. and XV. Amendments, so that we can no longer
refuse the solemn responsibilities thereof, do hereby pledge ourselves
to accept the duties of the franchise in our several States, so soon
as all legal restrictions are removed. And believing that character is
the best safeguard of national liberty, we pledge ourselves to make
the personal purity and integrity of candidates for public office the
first test of fitness. And lastly, believing in God, as the Supreme
Author of the American Declaration of Independence, we pledge
ourselves in the spirit of that memorable Act, to work hand in hand
with our fathers, husbands, and sons, for the maintenance of those
equal rights on which our Republic was originally founded, to the end
that it may have, what is declared to be the first condition of just
government, the consent of the governed.

You have no new issue to make, no new grievances to set forth. You are
taxed without representation, tried by a jury not of your peers,
condemned and punished by judges and officers not of your choice,
bound by laws you have had no voice in making, many of which are
specially burdensome upon you as women; in short, your rights to life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are daily infringed, simply
because you have heretofore been denied the use of the ballot, the one
weapon of protection and defense under a republican form of
government. Fortunately, however, you are not compelled to resort to
force in order to secure the rights of a complete citizenship. These
are provided for by the original Constitution, and by the recent
amendments you are recognized as citizens of the United States, whose
rights, including the fundamental right to vote, may not be denied or
abridged by the United States, nor by any State. The obligation is
thus laid upon you to accept or reject the duties of citizenship, and
to your own consciences and your God you must answer, if the future
legislation of this country shall fall short of the demands of justice
and equality.

The participation of woman in political affairs is not an untried
experiment. Woman suffrage has within a few years been fully
established in Sweden and Austria, and to a certain extent in Russia.
In Great Britain women are now voting equally with men for all public
officers except members of Parliament, and while no desire is
expressed in any quarter that the suffrage already given should be
withdrawn or restricted, over 126,000 names have been signed to
petitions for its extension to parliamentary elections, and Jacob
Bright, the leader of the movement in Parliament, and brother of the
well known John Bright, says that no well-informed person entertains
any doubt that a bill for such extension will soon pass.

In this country, which stands so specially on equal representation, it
is hardly possible that the same equal suffrage would not be
established by law, if the matter were to be left merely to the
progress of public sentiment and the ordinary course of legislation.
But as we confidently believe, and as we have before stated, the right
already exists in our National Constitution, and especially under the
recent amendments. The interpretation of the Constitution which we
maintain, we can not doubt, will be ultimately adopted by the courts,
although, as the assertion of our right encounters a deep and
prevailing prejudice, and judges are proverbially cautious and
conservative, we must expect to encounter some adverse decisions. In
the meantime it is of the highest importance that in every possible
way we inform the public mind and educate public opinion on the whole
subject of equal rights under a republican government, and that we
manifest our desire for and willingness to accept all the rights and
responsibilities of citizenship, by asserting our right to be
registered as voters and to vote at the Congressional elections. The
original Constitution provides in express terms that the
representatives in Congress shall be elected "by the people of the
several States," with no restrictions whatever as to the application
of that term. This right, thus clearly granted to all the people, is
confirmed and placed beyond reasonable question by the XIV. and XV.
Amendments. The act of May, 1870, the very title of which, "An Act to
enforce the rights of citizens of the United States to vote," is a
concession of all that we claim, provides that the officers of
elections throughout the United States shall give an equal opportunity
to all citizens of the United States to become qualified to vote by
the registry of their names or other prerequisite; and that where upon
the application of any citizen such prerequisite is refused, such
citizen may vote without performing such prerequisite; and imposes a
penalty upon the officers refusing either the application of the
citizen to be qualified or his subsequent application to vote. The
Constitution also provides that "each House shall be the judge of the
elections, returns, and qualifications of its own members." When,
therefore, the election of any candidate for the lower House is
effected or defeated by the admission or rejection of the votes of
women, the question is brought directly before the House, and it is
compelled to pass at once upon the question of the right of women to
vote under the Constitution. All this may be accomplished without the
necessity of bringing suits for the penalty imposed upon public
officers by the act referred to; but should it be thought best to
institute prosecutions where the application of women to register and
to vote is refused, the question would thereby at once be brought into
the courts. If it be thought expedient to adopt the latter course, it
is best that some test case be brought upon full consultation with the
National Committee, that the ablest counsel may be employed and the
expenses paid out of the public fund. Whatever mode of testing the
question shall be adopted, we must not be in the slightest degree
discouraged by adverse decisions, for the final result in our favor is
certain, and we have, besides, great reason to hope that Congress, at
an early day, will pass a declaratory act affirming the interpretation
of the Constitution which we claim.

The present time is specially favorable for the earnest presentation
before the public mind of the question of the political rights of
women. There are very positive indications of the approaching
disintegration and reformation of political parties, and new and vital
issues are needed by both the great parties of the country. As soon as
the conviction possesses the public mind that women are to be voters
at an early day, as they certainly are to be, the principles and the
action of public parties will be shaping themselves with reference to
the demands of this new constituency. Particularly in nominations for
office will the moral character of candidates become a matter of
greater importance.

To carry on this great work a Board of six women has been established,
called "The National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee," whose
office at Washington it is proposed to make the center of all action
upon Congress and the country, and with whom their Secretary, resident
there, it is desired that all associations and individuals interested
in the cause of woman suffrage should place themselves in
communication. The Committee propose to circulate the very able and
exhaustive Minority Report of the House Judiciary Committee on the
constitutional right of woman to the suffrage, and other tracts on the
general subject of woman suffrage. They also propose ultimately, and
as a part of their educational work, to issue a series of tracts on
subjects vitally affecting the welfare of the country, that women may
become intelligent and thoughtful on such subjects, and the
intelligent educators of the next generation of citizens.

The Committee are already receiving urgent appeals from women all over
the United States to send them our publications. The little light they
have already received concerning their rights under the Constitution,
and the present threatening political aspect of the country, make them
impatient of ignorance on these vital points. A single tract has often
gone the rounds in a neighborhood until worn out, and the call is for
thousands and thousands more.

A large printing fund will therefore be needed by the Committee, and
we appeal first to the men of this country, who control so large a
part of its wealth, to make liberal donations towards this great
educational work. We also ask every thoughtful woman to send her name
to the Secretary to be inserted in the Pledge-Book, and if she is
able, one dollar. But as many workingwomen will have nothing to send
but their names, we welcome these as a precious gift, and urge those
who are able, to send us their fifties and hundreds, which we promise
faithfully to use and account for. Where convenient, it is better that
many names should be sent upon the same paper, and the smallest
contributions in money can be put together and sent with them. Every
signature and every remittance will be at once acknowledged by the
Secretary, and one or more tracts enclosed with a circular as to the
work to be done by individuals.

ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER, _President_. PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS,
JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING, _Secretary_. RUTH CARR DENNISON,
MARY B. BOWEN, _Treasurer_. SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

_Washington, D. C., April 19, 1871._

[144] The National Woman Suffrage Association will hold its annual
convention at Lincoln Hall, Washington, D. C., January 10th, 11th and
12th, 1872. All those interested in woman's enfranchisement are
invited there to consider the "new departure"--women already citizens,
and their rights as such, secured by the XIV. and XV. Amendments of
the Federal Constitution.

LUCRETIA MOTT. ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON. SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.

[145] RESOLUTIONS.

Whereas, in the adjustment of the question of suffrage now before the
people of this country for settlement, it is of the highest importance
that the organic law of the land should be so framed and constructed
as to work injustice to none, but secure, as far as possible, perfect
political equality among all classes of citizens; and whereas, all
persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the
State wherein they reside; be it

_Resolved_, That the privileges and immunities of American
citizenship, however defined, are National in character and paramount
to all State authority.

That while the Constitution of the United States leaves the
qualifications of electors to the several States, it nowhere gives
them the right to deprive any citizen of the elective franchise which
is possessed by any other citizen--the right to regulate, not
including the right to prohibit the franchise.

That, as the Constitution of the United States expressly declares that
"no State shall make or enforce any law that shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States," those
provisions of the several State Constitutions that exclude women from
the franchise on account of sex, are violative alike of the spirit and
letter of the Federal Constitution.

That, as the subject of naturalization is expressly withheld from the
States, and as the States clearly would have no right to deprive of
the franchise naturalized citizens, among whom women are expressly
included, still more clearly have they no right to deprive native-born
women citizens of this right.

That justice and equity can only be attained by having the same laws
for men and women alike.

That having full faith and confidence in the truth and justice of
these principles, we will never cease to urge the claims of women to a
participation in the affairs of government equally with men.

_Resolved_, That as the XIV. and XV. Amendments to the Constitution of
the United States have established the right of woman to the elective
franchise, we demand of the present Congress a declaratory act which
shall secure us at once in the exercise of this right.

As the recognition of woman suffrage involves immediate political
action, and as numbers as well as principles control parties,

_Resolved_, That we rejoice in the rapidly organizing millions of
Spiritualists, labor reformers, temperance, and educational forces,
now simultaneously waking to their need of woman's help in the cause
of reform.

_Resolved_, That the movement for the enfranchisement of woman is the
movement of universal humanity; that the great questions now looming
upon the political horizon can only find their peaceful solution by
the infusion of the feminine element in the councils of the nation.
Man, representing force, would continue in the future, as in the past,
in the New World as in the Old, to settle all questions by war, but
woman, representing affection, would, in her true development,
harmonize intellect and action, and weld together all the interests of
the human family--in other words, help to organize the science of
social, religious, and political life.

_Resolved_, That our thanks are due to Governor Campbell, of Wyoming,
for his veto, and to the Republican members of the Legislature of
Wyoming, for their votes against the bill disfranchising the women of
that Territory.

_Resolved_, That the thanks of the women of America are due to Hon.
Benjamin F. Butler for introducing so early in the present session of
Congress, a bill to enfranchise woman under the Constitution, and also
to Hon. Wm. Loughridge and to the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler for their
admirable minority report, at the last session, sustaining the
Woodhull memorial.

[146]
WASHINGTON, D. C., January 8, 1872.

_Mrs. Admiral Dahlgren_--MADAM: The National Woman Suffrage
Association is to hold a three days' convention the present week, in
Lincoln Hall, commencing on the morning of Wednesday, the 10th.
Nothing would afford the officers and speakers of the convention
greater pleasure than to hold a debate, during some session, with
yourself and your friends, upon the question of woman suffrage. As you
have publicly expressed your opposition to woman's enfranchisement,
not only through the papers, but also by a petition against it to
Congress, we feel sure you will gladly accept our invitation and let
us know your reason for the faith that is within you.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as president of the association and
convention, will afford you every opportunity for argument, and will
herself enter the list against you. Not only Mrs. Stanton, but all
members of the committee, cordially extend this invitation for debate,
to be held at any session most convenient for yourself.

An early answer is desirable.

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE,
Chairman of the Committee of Arrangements.

[147] _Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage, Chairman Committee of
Arrangements_--MADAM: Mrs. Sherman and myself are this morning in
receipt of a note from you in which you invite us, in the name "of the
officers and speakers of the National Woman Suffrage Association," to
hold a debate upon the question of "woman suffrage," and mention that
"Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as President of the association and
convention, will afford every opportunity for argument, and will
herself enter the lists," etc.

In reply to this invitation, for which we thank you, in so far as it
may have been extended in a true desire to elicit fair argument, we
would remind you that in the very fact of soliciting us to "hold
debate" on a public platform, on this or any other question, you
entirely ignore the principle that ourselves and our friends seek to
defend, viz., the preservation of female modesty.

The functions of men and women in the State as citizens are
correlative and opposite. They can not be made common without
seriously impairing the public virtue.

Our men must be brave, and our women modest, if this country may hope
to fulfill her true mission for humanity.

We protest against woman suffrage, because the right of petition may
safely be considered as common to all, and its exercise most
beneficial.

We publish written articles, giving "our reasons for the faith that is
within us," because we may, consistently with the home life and its
duties, make such use of whatever talents God may have confided to our
keeping. To these printed articles, in which we have fully and at
different times explained our views, we are happy to refer you.

We likewise hold that an appeal to the public made in this manner is
much more likely to evolve a clear apprehension of this important
subject, as presenting a strict issue to the reasoning faculties, and
one undimmed by those personalities which generally are indulged in
during the course of oral debate.

I am, truly yours, MADELINE VICTOR DAHLGREN.

WASHINGTON, January 9, 1872.

[148] Lyman Trumbull of Illinois, Chairman, Roscoe Conkling of New
York, Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, Matthew Carpenter of Wisconsin.

[149] PEOPLE'S CONVENTION.--The undersigned citizens of the United
States, responding to the invitation of the National Woman Suffrage
Association, propose to hold a Convention at Steinway Hall, in the
city of New York, the 9th and 10th of May.

We believe the time has come for the formation of a new political
party whose principles shall meet the issues of the hour, and
represent equal rights for all.

As the women of the country are to take part for the first time in
political action, we propose that the initiative steps in the
convention shall be taken by them, that their opinions and methods may
be fairly set forth, and considered by the representatives from many
reform movements now ready for united action; such as the
Internationals, and other Labor Reformers--the friends of peace,
temperance, and education, and by all those who believe that the time
has come to carry the principles of true morality and religion into
the State House, the Court, and the market place.

This convention will declare the platform of the People's Party, and
consider the nomination of candidates for President and Vice-President
of the United States, who shall be the best possible exponents of
political and industrial reform.

The Republican party, in destroying slavery, accomplished its entire
mission. In denying that "citizen" means political equality, it has
been false to its own definition of Republican Government; and in
fostering land, railroad, and money monopolies, it is building up a
commercial feudalism dangerous to the liberty of the people.

The Democratic party, false to its name and mission, died in the
attempt to sustain slavery, and is buried beyond all hope of
resurrection.

Even that portion of the Labor party which met recently at Columbus,
proved its incapacity to frame a national platform to meet the demands
of the hour.

We therefore invite all citizens who believe in the idea of
self-government; who demand an honest administration; the reform of
political and social abuses; the emancipation of labor, and the
enfranchisement of woman, to join with us and inaugurate a political
revolution which shall secure justice, liberty, and equality to every
citizen of the United States.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER,
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.

[150] The speakers were Rev. Olympia Brown, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan
B. Anthony, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Dr.
Clemence S. Lozier, Helen M. Slocum, Lillie Devereux Blake.

[Illustration: Belva A. Lockwood.]

CHAPTER XXIV.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS 1873, '74, '75.

The fifth Washington Convention was held in Lincoln Hall, January 16th
and 17th, 1873. The President, Miss Anthony, in opening, said:

There are three methods of extending suffrage to new classes. The
first is for the Legislatures of the several States to submit the
question to the vote of the people; that is to those already
voters. Before the war this was the only way thought of, and
during all those years we petitioned to strike the word "male"
from the State Constitutions. The second method is for Congress
to submit to the several legislatures a proposition for a XVI.
Amendment that shall prohibit the States from depriving women
citizens of their right to vote. The third plan is to take our
rights under the XIV. Amendment of the Constitution which
declares "that all persons are citizens," and "no State shall
deny or abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens."

Again, there are two ways of securing the right of suffrage under
the Constitution as it is; one by a declaratory act of Congress
instructing the officers of election to receive the votes of
women, the other in appeals to the courts by instituting suits as
women have already done, in order to secure a judicial decision
on the broad interpretation of the Constitution "that all persons
are citizens, and all citizens voters." The vaults in yonder
Capitol hold the petitions of many thousands of women for a
Declaratory Act, and the calendars of our courts show that many
are already testing their right to vote under the XIV. Amendment.
I stand here under indictment for having exercised my right as a
citizen to vote at the last election; and by a fiction of the
law, I am now in custody, and not free on this platform.

A series of resolutions[151] were reported, and discussed at great
length.

After the appointment of committees,[A] Matilda Joslyn Gage made the
annual report. She said:

Though the casual observer might think but little progress had
been made during the year, this is not the fact. There has been
in many ways a marked advance, and although I do not claim to
have a complete and exact record, I would mention points which
have come under my notice.

Soon after the opening of the last session of Congress several
important bills were introduced. The Hon. Mr. Hoar introduced a
bill against Territorial disfranchisement, which, as women vote
in two Territories, was a bill having an important bearing upon
this question of suffrage. About the same time, the Hon. Mr.
Butler introduced a bill for a Declaratory Law to protect women
citizens in their right to vote. During the progress of our
annual Convention in January last, a memorial was presented, and
a hearing obtained before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The
speeches made by women at that time have been printed in pamphlet
form, and extensively circulated throughout the nation. Within a
few days after this hearing, a petition, containing 35,000 names,
was presented to the House by the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler. During
his remarks upon this occasion his coadjutors left their seats
and pressed around him, so anxious were they to hear, until, in
order to give all an equal chance, the Speaker was forced to call
to order.

The Hon. Matt. Carpenter made an elaborate argument before the
Supreme Court, in the Myra Bradwell case. Mrs. Bradwell, as is
well known, is the editor of a paper, entitled the _Legal News_,
which is ably conducted, and accepted as authority by the
profession. Mrs. Bradwell, upon applying for admission to the bar
in Illinois, found her husband a "legal disability," and carried
her case up to the Supreme Court. This argument was also
published and circulated in pamphlet form.

The Hon. Mr. Munroe, member from Indiana, presented a petition
from the women of that State, praying for the removal of
political disabilities; and in the Senate Mr. Wilson introduced a
bill to allow women to hold office in the Territories.

In February an argument was made before the Senate Military
Committee in behalf of women who served in the army. Mrs. Admiral
Dahlgren argued in person before a Congressional committee, in
reference to moneys due her deceased husband.

* * * * *

Mrs. Lockwood and Mrs. Spencer both gave interesting statements in
regard to women voting in the District of Columbia, and ably argued
their right to do so under the National Constitution. Mrs. Lockwood
introduced the following resolution:

_To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives, in
Congress assembled:_

We, the undersigned, citizens of the United States, being
deprived of some of the privileges and immunities of citizens,
among which is the right to vote, beg leave to submit the
following resolution:

_Resolved_, That we, the officers and members of the
National Woman Suffrage Association, in convention
assembled, respectfully ask Congress to enact appropriate
legislation, during its present session, to protect women
citizens in the several States of this Union in their right
to vote.

FRANCIS MILLER, Esq. said that he had one reason for
congratulation in being engaged in the suit with Mr. Riddle, as
it gave him an opportunity to do something for the women of his
country. Under the XIV. Amendment he contended that women had the
right to vote, and no lawyer that read the amendment could decide
in any other way.

It was not true that the cohorts of this issue had been defeated
every time, but it was true that they had gained two victories.
Chief-Justice Cartter had decided that woman was a full citizen,
and had not the right to vote, simply because they had not passed
a law necessary for the purpose. If the XIV. Amendment did not
confer suffrage they must go through the States with a new
amendment, and fight a battle in each. He thought that very
obscure ideas prevailed on the subject. How could anyone that had
no self-government enjoy any inalienable right? It was said that
the ballot was a creature of legislation, consequently not
natural. This was an absurdity. There was no way in the world for
a man to govern himself except by the ballot. To deny any one the
only means of exercising that right is a wrong before heaven and
should be redressed. He did not propose to go into a legal
argument; the best of his ability has been expended in the cause,
and is before the public.

At the evening session Mrs. Gage gave the following address:

Mrs. GAGE said: We hear many fears expressed in regard to the
danger of "centralized power," and the growing tendency of the
nation toward it. The people have been told that through this
tendency their liberties were endangered. The truth is just the
contrary. "State rights" has from the very commencement of this
Government been the rock on which the ship of the nation has many
times nearly foundered, and from which it is to-day in great
danger. The one question of the hour is, Is the United States a
Nation with full and complete National powers, or is it a mere
thread upon which States are strung as are the beads upon a
necklace?

Let us look back a hundred years. The War of the Revolution
commenced merely as a rebellion of the Colonies against the
Nation to which they belonged. Though all were located on the
continent of America, each colony was under its own charter,
separate and distinct from every other one. Each colony resisted
what it deemed to be acts of oppression against itself.
Therefore, the War of the Revolution began as the resistance of
individual colonies, but with the progress of this resistance
grew up a feeling of united interests, and in 1774 eleven of
these colonies, and a portion of the twelfth, connected
themselves under certain articles of association. The colonies
still considered themselves as belonging to the British Empire,
and in these articles avowed their allegiance to His Majesty,
George the Third. Although we date the birth of our nation two
years later, our nationality actually dates back to these
articles of association, for the colonies bound themselves as one
in regard to non-importation, non-exportation, and
non-consumption; the first two pledges having National bearing as
regarded commerce, and the last one regulating internal affairs
in a National manner. This course of the colonies made them one,
and has had a bearing on our every step since, even up to this
day of grace, January 17, 1873. Resolutions of independence and
freedom from all control of Great Britain were introduced into
the Colonial Congress in June, 1776, and the committee which was
then appointed to draft a declaration of independent government
was required to base it upon the first resolution of the June
declaration of rights, which said, "These United Colonies are,
and of right ought to be, free and independent," etc. The veriest
school-boy needs not to be told the date of this instrument,
which we are fond of terming the "Great Charter of our
Liberties;" yet even professed statesmen, from that day to this,
have seemingly forgotten that this declaration was agreed to, and
signed by the already United Colonies in their Congress
assembled, and issued as the action of "one people." No new
Congress met; the declaration was not the act of single colonies,
or states, but the act of already united colonies, or states, and
in this instrument we first find our National name of United
States.

The members of Congress did not sign this declaration as New
Yorkers, or Virginians, or New Englanders, but as Americans. Nor
was it referred to different colonies for approbation, but on
that very Fourth of July, 1776, Congress, with already National
authority, flung to the world the announcement that these united
colonies were a Nation, and ordered that copies of the
declaration should be sent to the several colonial assemblies,
conventions, councils of safety, and to each of the commanding
officers of the Continental troops, and that it should be
proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the
army. We see, therefore, that the Declaration of Independence, in
being truly National, was wholly centralizing--and much more so
than any act since, and is therefore the truest basis of our
liberties.

Our age has annihilated space; danger lies in darkness and
distance. With every newspaper, every railroad, every line of
telegraph, danger from centralized National power grows less.
With the newspaper, the railroad, the telegraph, the course of
the government is constantly before our eyes The reporter
penetrates everywhere, the lightning flashes everywhere, and
before plans are scarcely formed here in Washington, the miner of
California, the lumberman of Maine, and the cotton-grower of
Carolina are passing opinions and interchanging views upon them
with their neighbors. The increase of education in the common
schools, and the vast private correspondence of the country, too,
help to put the proceedings of the government under the
cognizance of the whole people. Our danger lies elsewhere, and to
clearly see it we must still look back to the early history of
our Nation. For a few months after the Declaration of
Independence, our new-born republic worked under a common
sentiment, for a common interest; but ultimately self-interest
prompted the claim of "State Rights." This doctrine was, by wise
men, seen to be utterly destructive to the government, and in the
second year of our independence it became necessary to fight this
State-right doctrine, and the second step was taken in
centralization, by the Articles of Confederation, which were
declared to make the Union perpetual, and States were forbidden
to coin money, establish their own weights and measures, their
own post-offices, and forbidden to do many other things which, by
right, belong to independent self-controlling States.

So anxious was the Nation to set its own power upon a firm basis,
entirely over and above that of the States, that back in these
articles of confederation we find the term "privileges and
immunities," that vexed phrase in the present discussion. In the
fourth article, the inhabitants of each State were declared to be
entitled to all privileges and immunities of free citizens of the
several States, etc. These articles, unlike the declaration, were
made dependent upon ratification by the Legislatures of the
several States, which was not fully accomplished till 1781.

For awhile all went merry as a marriage bell. Power had been
further centralized, and the Nation felt secure. But there had
been left a little loophole, which was destined to create State
claims in defiance of the general government. Congress soon found
that under the articles of confederation the limitation of States
was more theoretical than practical. It found that though, in a
general way, the United States possessed national powers, as over
boundaries, peace and war, the issue of money, the establishment
of post-offices, etc., yet in the very necessary matter of
revenue, and the regulation of trade and commerce, it was
powerless against the States. The old form of the confederation
was found insufficient to secure the full independence of the
United States as a Nation, and in the very year that the articles
were fully adopted, and before the last State had given its
adherence (1781), a member of Congress from New Jersey moved a
recommendation to the States to invest Congress with additional
means of paying the public debt and prosecuting the war of the
Revolution, by laying duties on imports and prize goods.

This proposition at once roused opposition, and it is well to
remember that it did not first come from a Southern State. "State
rights" is not a peculiar Southern doctrine. South Carolina was
not the original nullifying State. It was Rhode Island, which
then, as to-day, set at defiance national authority, and asserted
her right to control her own internal affairs. The New England
States, which claim to lead the Union in all that is grand and
good, must be made to bear the shame of the evils into which
they have also led. Even John C. Calhoun learned his first State
rights lessons in Connecticut and Massachusetts of the most
eminent men; of President Dwight when a student in Yale college,
and Theophilus Parsons, with whom he read law in Massachusetts.
When Rhode Island, in 1781, refused to comply with the
recommendations of Congress in regard to levying duties on
imports and prizes, she looked only at her own interests as a
sea-board State. The address of her Assembly to Congress, through
Hon. William Bradshaw, gave reasons of purely local self-interest
for her refusal; but her State selfishness was seen by the
patriots of the hour not to be even that of an enlightened
State-interest, and Congress at once declared there "could be no
general security, no confidence in the Nation, at home or abroad,
if its actions were under the constant revisal of thirteen
different deliberations."

It therefore became necessary to take another step in the
centralization of power, and let it be remembered that every such
successive step we have traced was taken in the interests of
liberty, and for the benefit of the whole people. The Nation has
acted in the defense of its citizens against the tyranny of
States. We are not first citizens of Rhode Island, or South
Carolina, but, if we belong to the Nation at all, we are first
parts of that Nation. I am first a citizen of the United States,
then a citizen of the State of New York, then a citizen of
Onondaga county in that State, and then a citizen of the town of
Manlius, and lastly, a citizen of the village of Fayetteville.
That every person born or naturalized in the Nation, is first a
citizen of the Nation, must be borne in mind, for upon that
depend the liberties of every man, woman and child in the Nation,
black or white, native or foreign. Although Rhode Island led in
State rights, she had many followers, as only four States
complied with the recommendation of Congress to invest that body
with more powers for collecting the revenue and prosecuting the
war. This non-compliance led to active debate. In regard to the
public debt it was said, "That it must, once for all, be defined
and established on the faith of the States, solemnly pledged to
each other, and not revocable by any, without a breach of the
general compact." If a feeling of insecurity existed in regard to
the property interests of the Nation when but thirteen
legislative bodies assumed their control, how much greater is the
insecurity of our personal interests if they are, as is assumed,
under the control of thirty-seven separate legislative bodies,
and subject to their constant revision?

The controversy soon based itself upon the security of human
rights. It was said that it "had ever been the pride and boast of
America that the rights for which she contended were the rights
of human nature," that "the citizens of the United States were
responsible for the greatest trust ever confided to a political
society," and that it was for "the people of the United States,
by whose will and for whose benefit the Federal Government was
instituted, to decide whether they would support their rank as a
Nation." Virginia and New York ultimately led in the proceeding
which caused the formation of the Constitution; New York, through
her Legislature, declaring that the radical source of the
government embarrassments lay in the want of sufficient power in
Congress, and she suggested a convention for the purpose of
establishing a firm National government. Out of this agitation
grew the Constitution of the United States, which was the third
great step in the centralization of power. The pride and the
boast of this country has been more fully centered, if possible,
on the Constitution than on the Declaration, and yet the
Constitution was not framed until eleven years after our
existence as a Nation--not ratified by the whole of the original
States until about fourteen years after we had taken rank as a
free and independent people--Rhode Island being the last State to
give her adherence--and it was expressly framed and adopted in
order to centralize power, and to destroy the State rights
doctrine.

Washington himself, in transmitting, as President of the
Convention, the Constitution to Congress, said: "It is obviously
impracticable in the Federal Government of these States to secure
all rights of independent sovereignty to each, and yet provide
for the interest and safety of all," and in the deliberations of
the Convention upon the subject, they kept steadily in view that
which appeared to them "the greatest of every true American--the
consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity,
safety, and, perhaps, our National existence." Thus we see not
only the desire of the originators of the Constitution to
strengthen the National power by that instrument, but we also
have the views of Washington himself in regard to the necessity
of consolidating power in the Nation.

The various amendments to the Constitution have been adopted with
the intent of further defining and securing National power. The
first ten, which were called the conciliatory amendments, were
suggested in the conventions of a number of the States at the
very time of adopting the Constitution. The first Congress which
met thereafter proposed twelve amendments, of which ten were
adopted in 1791, only two years after the full adoption of the
Constitution. These ten amendments secured religious freedom,
freedom of speech, the right of people to be secure in their
houses, trials by jury, etc. All of them centralizing power in
the National hands, and at the same time securing broader liberty
to the people. These amendments were passed at the first session
of the First Congress. An eleventh amendment was proposed by the
Third National Congress in 1794, and declared ratified in 1798,
thus making eleven amendments to the Constitution in the short
space of seven years. In 1803 a twelfth amendment was proposed by
the Eighth Congress, and ratified in 1804.

We pass now over quite a space of time, in which the National
power and State power retained their relative positions to each
other. Perhaps in no better place can I mention two constantly
existing, yet diverse tendencies in the people of the United
States, which are well-defined in the minds of but few persons.
There are two kinds of centralized power, one dangerous to
liberty, and the other fortifying and securing liberty. The
dangerous is that which has grown to such dimensions in the
various States, multiplying legislation and regulating each petty
local concern within its borders, down to a village cemetery.
This has led to that destruction of liberty--a multiplication of
statutes which have scarcely been recorded ere a second
legislative body has annulled them. Each State has, in fact, been
an immense centralized power; and as bitter as has been the South
against centralized National power, we have in it seen a most
imperious, tyrannical exercise of centralized power under the
specious name of State rights. The evil is such a constantly
increasing one under the old constitutions, that they are being
revised in many States with special intent to check this
centralizing tendency. New York has now a commission sitting, and
Pennsylvania a convention in session, for the purpose of revising
their constitutions, and attention has been especially directed
to this dangerous feature of State centralization. The new
constitution of Illinois limits the passage of special laws by
its legislature to certain specified subjects, leaving all local
interests in the hands of local corporations. The need of the
hour--and, in fact, I may say the new tendency of the hour--is
toward diffused power within the limits of States in matters
pertaining solely and entirely to their small or local interests.

The centralization that fortifies and secures liberty is National
centralization, which we have traced through six steps since
1776, and which has, within the last ten years, received a new
impetus by the XIII., XIV., and XV. Amendments, and which, as
they successively followed each other at short intervals, may be
termed the seventh, eighth, and ninth steps in centralization. By
and through these three amendments the Nation fortified and
enlarged its powers in reference to personal rights. It defined
citizenship; it secured the exercise of the ballot--and we can
not fail to see that in these last three centralizing steps, it
more broadly than ever before enlarged the bounds of liberty. The
protection of citizens of the Nation, by the Nation, is the
national duty.

This is the second tendency of which I spoke. Most persons who
have been awake to the evils of State centralization, have
applied the same rules of judgment to National centralization.
The two are dissimilar as are darkness and light. State
centralization is tyranny; National centralization is freedom.
State centralization means special laws; National centralization
means general laws. The continued habit of States to make laws
for every part of their own boundaries brought to the surface the
"State rights" theory which precipitated upon us our civil war.
States had become so absolute in themselves that out of it grew
the feeling of absoluteness in regard to the Nation. But is it
not strange that after the late sad experience there can still be
found people so stupid as not to see that the security of
individual citizens of the Nation in matters pertaining to their
personal political rights, does lie, and in the very fact of our
Nationality must lie, in National power superior to State power?
The corner-stone of our Nation is political equality. Our
ancestors came here for civil and religious freedom. To secure
political freedom they formed themselves into a Nation; if the
United States has no power to protect its citizens it is not a
Nation.

The eighth step in centralization, the XIV. Amendment,
specifically declares that "all persons born or naturalized in
the United States, are citizens of the United States, and of the
States in which they reside." Notwithstanding this plain
language--notwithstanding the corner-stone of this Nation is
political equality--notwithstanding the chief right of
citizenship in this country is a right to share in making its
laws--notwithstanding the Constitution and laws of the United
States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, are declared to
be the supreme law of the land, and the judges in every State
shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or law of
any State to the contrary notwithstanding, yet 10,000 naturalized
citizens of the United States have, during this session of
Congress, petitioned that body for protection of their rights as
citizens of the United States against the State in which they
live.

"State rights" is again rearing its head. Rhode Island is again
raising her hand against National power. She again assumes to be
superior to the United States. All foreign-born citizens of that
State, not possessed of a freehold estate of $134 value, or
property amounting to an annual rental of $7, are, by State law,
forbidden to vote. These men were naturalized under a law of the
United States, not under a law of Rhode Island. The United States
not only made them citizens, but expressly in the XIV. Amendment
declares them to be citizens, and yet little Rhode Island
presumes to be stronger than the United States.

Here again arises what I have shown to be the question of the
hour. Is the United States a Nation? If it does not possess
powers to protect its own citizens it is not a Nation. Citizens
of the United States are entitled to protection, whether they are
robbed of their liberties in a Spanish dungeon, or in the States
of Rhode Island or New York. The Judiciary Committee of Congress
has reported adversely upon the petition of the 10,000
naturalized citizens of Rhode Island. Does Congress intend to
sustain State Rights? What better is it for those 10,000 men that
they became naturalized? If they are first citizens of the United
States, as the XIV. Amendment declares, they should be protected
in their rights of citizenship by the United States against the
States, and their thirty-seven isolated methods of legislation.
This adverse report of the Judiciary Committee in regard to the
10,000 disfranchised men of Rhode Island, foreshadows the course
of Congress in regard to the great class of citizens now knocking
at its door. Women claim National protection as citizens of the
Nation.

The original Constitution in its fourth article touches upon
State control, for it declares that the Constitution shall
guarantee to every State a republican form of government. The
"shall" is imperative. It shall! Even as long ago as 1787 it was
declared that the people of the States should no longer be
dependent upon State caprice for their rights, but the general
government took upon itself the authority and the duty of
enforcing in each State a republican form of government. Either
this article is a mere sounding phrase, or the Constitution has
such power, although until the XIV. Amendment the real status of
citizenship had not been settled. People thought of themselves as
first citizens of the States, then of the United States, but now
such a position can not be taken. The eighth step in
centralization settled that point; "every person," not every male
person--but "every person born or naturalized in the United
States"--"is a citizen of the United States, and of the State in
which he resides." First, entitled to national protection, and
through the Nation to State protection. Moreover,

The Constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof, are
by article sixth of the Constitution, declared to be the
supreme law of the land, and the Judges in every State shall
be bound thereby; anything in the Constitution or laws of
any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

Is the Constitution supreme in the case of the 10,000 naturalized
citizens of Rhode Island, whose petition the honorable judiciary
reported adversely upon, the 12th of December?

The naturalized citizens of our country should rise _en masse_
against his attack upon their liberties. If Rhode Island can say
that a naturalized citizen shall not vote unless possessed of a
certain amount of property, any State can, with equal justice,
enact a law declaring that only those naturalized citizens who
live in brick houses shall vote; a law, equally as binding as the
present property qualification in Rhode Island, can be enacted,
that only those foreign-born citizens who come over in a Cunarder
shall vote. Why not? If a State has a right to deprive one class
of citizens of its vote for one cause, it has a right to deprive
any other class of its vote for any reason.

The power and the mischief do not stop here. If a State has power
over the political rights of a naturalized citizen of the United
States, it has like power over the native-born citizen. If a
State has power over the franchise of the women citizens of the
United States, it also has power over the men citizens. Unjust
laws, like curses, go home to roost; they can always be made to
plague their enactors. When the rights of any one class of
citizens are assailed, a blow is struck against the rights of
all. The danger to individual liberty lies in special laws. If
States are powerful enough to weaken the National constitution,
then are we weak indeed. The safety of the citizen lies in a
strong National constitution: it lies in a National
centralization of power that shall override the States in their
attempt to destroy individual rights.

If the National government has not power over the ballot in the
several States, where did the United States Commissioner get his
authority to institute proceedings against Miss Anthony for
voting in the State of New York? If the ballot is in the control
of the States, then is the United States guilty of a high-handed
outrage against New York, in the case of the fourteen women who
are now bound over for trial in Rochester for voting at the last
election. If the control of the franchise is the right of each
State as sovereign, then the National law of 1870 in regard to
frauds in voting was an unauthorized interference of the United
States in a matter belonging solely to the respective States. On
the contrary, if the question as to who may vote in any
State--exclusive of black men, over whom it is conceded the
nation has thrown its ægis of protection--is one of National
control, how does it happen that the Judiciary Committee of the
present Congress reported adversely upon the petition of the
10,000 naturalized citizens of Rhode Island? If, then, voting is
a matter of State control alone, what authority had the United
States to prosecute Susan B. Anthony? One of two things is
plainly true. Either the United States authorities had no right
to prosecute Miss Anthony in the State of New York, or, if they
had, then they had the right to regulate suffrage in Rhode
Island. If the general government could not extend suffrage to
Irishmen in Rhode Island, it could not abolish it for women in
New York.

The time has passed when men can take their choice between "State
sovereignty" and "centralized power." What State of the
thirty-seven has power to make a treaty, to form an alliance, to
declare war? Not one, because not one of them is a sovereign
State. An attempt would be treason against the Nation. If the
general government can not be secure with a diversity of laws in
regard to war, or the tariff, in regard to questions of property,
how much less secure is it with diverse laws in regard to
personal rights; in regard to the elective franchise, the vital
principle of our government.

This government does not stand to-day on free trade, or tariff,
or the war-power, or its right to manage post-offices, or to coin
money, or to make treaties. Not one of these singly, nor all
collectively, form the ground-plan of this Nation. This Nation
stands upon the ballot, the self-governing power; it stands upon
the right of every person governed by the Nation to share in the
election of its rulers.

How can statesmen believe the Nation secure unless personal
rights are held inviolable? The National government has control
over money, currency, and national banks. It will not trust its
question of finance to individual States; shall it trust the
personal political rights of its citizens where it can not its
money? Is it not an anomaly that the lesser rights shall be held
by the Nation, the greater by the States?

In the case of the 10,000 naturalized citizens of Rhode Island,
and that of Susan B. Anthony and other women of New York and
elsewhere, who try to vote, there is one great dissimilarity. The
suffrage of the 10,000 is only regulated. As soon as each one
secures real estate to the small value of one hundred and
thirty-four dollars, he votes; but there women can never vote,
simply because they are _women_. Property amounts to nothing;
education amounts to nothing; even native-born citizenship
amounts to nothing; the ballot for them is not regulated but
prohibited because they were born women instead of men. Congress
would quickly waken up to an appreciation of its power over the
ballot, if under pretense of "regulating" suffrage, all the male
citizens of a State were denied the ballot simply because they
were men. The Nation would lose no time in deciding that a
regulation of a character not possible to overcome was not a
regulation, but a prohibition destructive of every natural right.
The word "deny" would be elucidated by able lawyers and
lexicographers. We should then be told that to deny pre-supposes
an existing right; that only positive rights can be denied, and
force of arms would be invoked to maintain the existence of those
rights.

The battle for suffrage is narrowed down to the meaning of
"privileges and immunities." Those who believe the consent of the
governed to be the fundamental principle of the Nation, define
"privileges and immunities" as the right of voting, which is the
only "consent." Thaddeus Stevens went so far as to affirm that
"inalienable rights" in the Declaration meant the ballot. Persons
who thus define "inherent rights" belong to the true national,
patriotic class. But others, deeply tinctured with belief in the
supreme right of States, declare "privileges and immunities" to
comprehend anything and everything except the ballot. Even some
good Republicans, contrary to the principles indorsed and
sustained by them in the war amendments, led by their prejudices
against acknowledging woman's right to self-government; have
declared that "privileges and immunities" merely signify civil
and legal rights, but not political. Such was the groundwork of
the argument of the Hon. Matt. Carpenter in the Myra Bradwell
case. What a farce! It declared at an early day that the United
States possessed the greatest trust ever confided to a "political
society." "Political society" is the foundation of our nation,
and our political trust is the ballot.

It has been said by a member of the present Congress that no man
in that body doubts that the Constitution authorizes women to
vote, precisely as it authorizes trial by jury and many other
rights guaranteed to the citizens of the United States, but that
in order to give them practical force there must be legislation;
that these guaranteed rights are not self-executing. This is a
fine legal quibble, stated for a purpose; but since legal minds
disagree upon this point, a caviller might say no law is
self-executing; all laws require enforcement. It may be said that
the Ten Commandments are not self-executing; yet though given to
Moses, not only as the underlying constitution of the Jewish
nation and all nations, they contain self-executing provisions,
bearing the penalties of their infraction within themselves. By
their simple statement they carry within themselves the authority
for their enforcement. The provision that the sun shall each day
rise and run its accustomed rounds is a self-executing provision,
until some Joshua vetoes this divine right of the sun.

The Constitution is the supreme law of the land, and no
difficulty should be found in executing its provisions. But
while, as aimed against the exercise of arbitrary power, we have
no objection to the passage of a declaratory law which shall make
plain to every United States judge, and to the most obtuse
inspector of election, that women are voters, we still claim that
the recent "Act for enforcing the XIV. Amendment" should protect
woman in the exercise of her rights of self-government.

Although the States ratified the XIII., XIV. and XV. Amendments
by the requisite two-thirds vote, they still find it difficult to
realize the fact that these amendments have actually strengthened
the National power. The Enforcement Act, and the previous law in
regard to frauds in voting, may be called definitions of these
last centralizing steps, but as yet neither amendments nor
definitions are fully comprehended. A Rhode Island lawyer
astutely said: "The people of the United States have not yet
awakened to a sense of the vast centralizing power hidden in the
XIV. Amendment." Opposition and struggles have already come, and
will continue to arise, but legislators may beat their brains as
they will, the fact of new National centralization still remains.
Though State power dies never so hard, die it must, as only
through reorganized National power can the political rights of
citizens of the United States be protected.

"Citizen suffrage" is to-day the battle-ground of "State Rights,"
and the denial of woman's constitutional right to vote, and of
National protection in voting, is the weapon it uses against the
Nation. This question of citizen suffrage is not a woman question
alone, but it is a question of the rights of citizenship
affecting every man in this wide land. Let us, then, have the
centralization which shall recognize the United States as the
supreme political power of the land, which shall no longer allow
the political rights of citizens of the United States to be the
plaything of thirty-seven petty legislatures, of thirty thousand
ambitious demagogues. Without this, our National experiment is a
failure; without this, we are not freemen, but slaves; without
this, we are neither protected nor self-protecting; without this,
centralized State power, under the specious name of "State
rights," will continue to be a many-headed monster, impossible to
overcome. Elect the President direct by the people, and for a
single term, if you will; take from him his immense official
patronage; base senatorship upon population, not upon State
sovereignty through legislative gift; limit the power of the
judiciary: these steps must come; make of the people in reality
what they now are in theory--sovereigns, not first of States, or
the Nation, but of themselves, possessing in themselves all
rights, all powers, whose exercise is only delegated to the
Nation as their servant.

The call[152] for the annual May Convention in New York announced the
interesting fact that it was the Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Woman
Suffrage movement. The speakers[153] represented many of the far
Western States. Among the letters of interest was one from Madam
Mathilde Francisca Anneke, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, who accompanied
her letter with a beautiful laurel wreath to be presented to the
founder of the Woman's Rights movement, the venerable Lucretia
Mott.[154] The resolutions embody the substance of the various
speeches made at that Convention. The following letters were read:

MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Being detained from attending this very
important Convention, which celebrates twenty-five years of as
honest and glorious work as ever was done by man or woman upon
the face of the earth, permit me through yourself, as president
of the National Society, to address a few words to my
fellow-workers in the cause of political equality.

At first, let me beg you, my friends, one and all, to read the
report of the first Convention held at Seneca Falls, twenty-five
years ago, as I have just been doing for the third time, that you
may join me in heartfelt admiration of the distinguished women
who there enunciated a "declaration of sentiments" equal to the
old Declaration of Independence, and founded on a similar list of
grievances as those which provoked and justified the
Revolutionary war. Especially will you note the speech of a woman
there, hardly thirty years of age, which for philosophic
comprehension of the great truths of liberty and responsibility,
for patriotism and eloquence, has not been surpassed in the
history of our country. This alone should be sufficient to send
the name of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, side by side with the
grandest of our revolutionary statesmen, down to the latest
posterity.

The moving spirit of the occasion, however, we are told, was
Lucretia Mott, who spoke with her usual eloquence to a large and
intelligent audience on the subject of "Reform in General," and,
from time to time, during the numerous sessions of the
Convention, swayed the assembly by her beautiful and spiritual
appeals, and was the first to affix her name to this prophetic
and inspired "Declaration of sentiments"--an act which she will
tell you to-day, I trust, has brought to her more joy than,
perhaps, any other act of her life.

Had I the means, the printed report of this Convention should be
placed in the hands of every woman in the United States capable
of reading it and understanding its high import. And, my friends,
if this could be done, our labors would be well nigh ended, and
those women who so desire might approach the polls unmolested,
leaving their sisters "who have all the rights they want" in the
comfortable security of homes made twice secure in that they are
guarded by the watchful care of the mothers as well as by the
courage of the fathers of the republic. That these noble women,
so intensely in earnest to secure the blessings of liberty to all
their posterity, and so deeply conscious of the heavy
responsibilities of such a trust, should have suspended their
claims during the season of our civil war, and have thrown
themselves into the contest for the rights of enslaved black men,
is only new proof, where none was wanting, of the unselfishness
of their nature, and the purity of their motive. But the war
being over, and a new million of black males being added to the
many million white males as rulers of the land, what do we find
to-day? Susan B. Anthony, the Garrison of the woman's rights
movement, not dragged by a rope round her neck, through the
streets of Rochester, precisely, but indicted for the crime of
attempting to vote for her rulers, she being an honest citizen of
the United States, and a tax-paying, law-abiding citizen of the
State of New York! Nevertheless, permit me, dear friend, to
congratulate you upon the immense progress in our work which this
indicates. It is but a little time since you and your illustrious
compeers were counted only worthy of jests and sneers or
contemptuous neglect. That you are called to-day to answer for
the crime of loving liberty too well, declares to us who are
watching your career, that the beginning of the end is close at
hand, that slavery is soon to cease, and reconstruction to begin
under the auspices of noble women not a few, and of the noble men
who have acted as a body-guard through all these years of
struggle.

I have heard that with your accustomed indomitableness you have
been attempting to instruct your possible jurors of the county
upon the just principles of personal liberty and a republican
form of government. But have you considered in doing this to what
an incompetent jury you are possibly consigning your case, and
with it the hopes of multitudes of your sisters, who, less
favored than yourself, in not actually having been allowed to
enter the sacred precincts of the polls, have put their trust in
you as in one who should not fail, sooner or later, to achieve a
victory for herself and for us all? Have you considered the
result of white male legislation for nearly one hundred years, in
elaborating a jury that must inevitably consist of fools or
knaves, and twelve of these to declare in unison upon a case of
which they have formed no previous opinion, though the papers
have rung with it, and you have lectured every night for more
than a month to crowded houses upon it? But even this difficulty
you are able to meet, and we leave our destiny in your hands with
unfaltering hope and faith, saying only, as many a time before,
God bless Susan B. Anthony.... In conclusion, let me urge upon
you, dear friends, one and all, that each man and woman of you
shall work for impartial suffrage as though the welfare of our
beloved country depended upon the devotion of each single life,
and the day is ours. I am now and always yours for liberty,

ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER.

WASHINGTON, May 5, 1873.

MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY:--Your favor requesting my opinion of the
recent decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in
the New Orleans and Bradwell cases, was received yesterday. I had
not then seen those decisions, indeed they were not ready for
distribution until to-day. I have very hastily run over them and
only feel prepared to say that there is nothing in them
necessarily conclusive of the suffrage cases. The opinion of the
Court in the New Orleans cases is given by a bare majority, four
out of the nine justices dissenting, and the majority expressly
say: "We hold ourselves excused from defining the privileges and
immunities of citizens of the United States, which no State can
abridge until some case involving those privileges may make it
necessary to do so." This language leaves us entirely at liberty
to present the question whether suffrage is one of these
"privileges" to their consideration.

There are expressions in the dissenting opinions that upon the
rules of interpretation applied to any other subject than the
rights of women would indicate that the minority were fully
prepared to admit that the recent amendments to the
Constitution--the new _magna charta_ as one of the justices
styles them--recognized the right of suffrage in women. Justice
Field says: "That only is a free government, in the American
sense of the term, under which the inalienable right of every
citizen to pursue his happiness is unrestrained, except by just,
equal, and impartial laws."

Justice Bradley says: "The States have not now, if they ever had,
any power to restrict their citizenship to any classes or
persons. A citizen of the United States has a perfect
constitutional right to go to and reside in any State he chooses,
and to claim citizenship therein, and an equality of rights with
every other citizen, and the whole power of the nation is pledged
to sustain him in that right. He is not bound to cringe to any
superior, or to pray for any act of grace, as a means of enjoying
all the rights and privileges enjoyed by other citizens."

Such language on any other subject would be conclusive, but the
crust of custom and prejudice is hard and thick and strong, and
the heat of the lava of regeneration may not yet have weakened
it sufficiently to allow of its destruction and removal.

We will try to have our cases fully prepared for argument when
reached in the call of the calendar, which will be about next
January, and after doing our best in them will have to trust for
success if not in this in some other effort.

Very truly yours, FRANCIS MILLER.

Miss Anthony gave the incidents of her arrest and trial to an immense
audience in the evening, moving them alternately to laughter and
indignation. At the close of this convention a large reception was
given to the friends of woman suffrage by Dr. Clemence Lozier at her
hospitable home in 34th street, New York. Her spacious parlors were
crowded until a late hour. The occasion was enlivened with music,
readings, and short, spicy speeches.

The National Woman Suffrage Association held its fifth convention at
Washington in January, 1874. Before the arrival of the principal
actors, the hall was filled with spectators. Soon after 11 o'clock the
President, accompanied by a large number of speakers[155] and friends,
came on the stage. Many interesting letters were received[156] and a
series of resolutions[157] reported.

Mrs. Gage occupied the evening with an address on Judge and Jury. The
following brief sketch of the convention by Frances Ellen Burr is as
good a summary of the proceedings as we find.

(Correspondence Hartford _Times_,) WASHINGTON, Jan. 15, 1874.

The National Woman Suffrage Convention opened in Lincoln Hall
this morning with a full house.

Miss Anthony opened the meeting by reading the call, and then
briefly stated its purposes, which were to bring influences to
bear upon Congress that will secure National protection for women
in their right to vote. Black men are the only ones guaranteed by
the National Constitution in their right to vote. Women ask for
the same security. A letter from the Hon. E. G. Lapham, of New
York, puts a point in the closing paragraph to the effect that
the most degraded elector, who would sell his vote for a dollar,
or for a dram, couldn't be induced by the offer of a kingdom to
sell his right to vote.

Miss Anthony stated that the two articles of the woman suffrage
creed were: First, That every woman should get her vote into the
ballot box whenever she could get a judge of election to take it;
and wherever refused, should go just the same again next time.
Second, That all women owning property should refuse to pay
taxes. She read a memorial to Congress for "no taxation without
representation," the closing paragraph running as follows:

_Therefore_, We pray your honorable bodies to pass a law
during the present session of Congress, that shall exempt
women from taxation for national purposes so long as they
are unrepresented in national councils.

Mrs. Spencer has a case now pending in the Supreme Court of the
United States. She carried a suit for herself and seventy-two
other women who applied to be made voters and were refused. She
has prepared a petition for woman suffrage for the women of the
District of Columbia, on the ground, as Miss Anthony stated it,
that as "this little ten-mile square belongs to us all, if the
women here are enfranchised, those of the rest of the nation can
not long be shut out." As Congress has absolute control over the
District, no one can dispute its right to enfranchise the women
here, even though they dispute its control of this matter in
other parts of the nation. Miss Spencer submitted the following
petition for woman suffrage by the women of the district of
Columbia:

_Whereas_, The Supreme Court or the District or Columbia in
the ease of Spencer against the Board of Registration has
decided that by the operation of the first section of the
XIV. Amendment to the Constitution of the United States,
"Women have been advanced to full citizenship and clothed
with the capacity to become voters," and

_Whereas_, The same court further decided that the said
first section of the XIV. Amendment does not execute
itself, but requires the supervention of legislative power
in the exercise of legislative discretion to give it effect.
And

_Whereas_, The Congress of the United States is the
legislative body having exclusive jurisdiction over this
District,

_Therefore_, We respectfully pray your honorable bodies for
the passage of an act amending an act entitled "An act to
provide a government for the District of Columbia," approved
Feb. 21, 1871, by striking the word "male" from the seventh
section of said act, thus placing the constitutional rights
of the women of this District, as declared by the highest
judicial tribunal, under the protection of the legislative
power.

She said it might surprise and encourage many, as it did her, to
learn that neither the Constitution of the United States nor any
State constitution, nor legislative enactment, general or local,
has ever forbidden women to vote. They have simply permitted
certain male citizens to vote, and have said nothing about women
whatever. It is one thing to forbid women to vote; it is quite
another thing to simply fail to expressly declare that they may.
Some people think the Bible forbids women to vote because it
doesn't say anything about it from beginning to end. True, it
does not give any authority for it. Neither does it give any
authority for using sewing-machines or clothes-wringers. The zeal
of the people who search the Scriptures in the interest of
bigotry and intolerance, assumes that all that is not commanded
to women is strictly forbidden. Judge Cartter says the general
Constitution interposes not a single obstacle to woman suffrage,
and there is therefore no need of a new amendment; while the
State constitutions simply leave her right in abeyance by
omitting to declare it. That this view of the general
constitution largely prevails is shown by so many women bringing
suits against those who have rejected their votes, under the
constitution as it is. Mrs. Spencer's manner is very pleasing,
and her speech was pungent and to the point. She closed with the
following pithy illustration of the need of woman's influence in
legislative matters:

I wanted a loaf of bread one day in a great hurry, and found
six dram-shops on one square and only one bakery, and that
was shut.

Mrs. Spencer was followed by Mrs. Gage, Mrs. Stanton, Mr. Black,
and Mr. Davis, of Philadelphia, son-in-law of Lucretia Mott.
Committees on resolutions and finance were appointed, and the
meeting adjourned till afternoon.

F. E. B.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 17.

This convention, of which I sent you some account in my last
letter, adjourned last night, _sine die_. Lincoln Hall has been
crowded at all the sessions except one, when an admission fee was
charged. And the admission fee worked up a little unpleasantness
in another direction, for in such a case a license has to be
bought of the city authorities. So on Thursday evening before the
meeting opened, word was sent to Miss Anthony in the ante-room,
that a police officer was after her. "Well, let him come then,"
she replied; "I shan't go after him, that's sure." In due time
the policeman walked in, brass buttons and all. Miss Anthony had
a pleasant little conversation with him for a few minutes. The
policeman was very mild and amiable, and so was Miss A. Having
had considerable experience with officers of justice(?), she has
gotten a little used to them--in fact, rather indifferent. Hard
knocks and rubs conduce to philosophy, and Miss Anthony has
acquired a philosophy akin to that of Diogenes in his tub. She
told the policeman she had no intention of paying this
government for the poor privilege of coming here to demand
justice at its hands. While Miss Anthony was as calm as a June
morning, and wholly indifferent in the matter, Mrs. Belva
Lockwood, a practicing attorney in this city, raised such a din
about the policeman's ears that he took to his heels, and didn't
darken the ante-room doors of Lincoln Hall again while the
convention was in session. That license remains _in statu quo_.

Mrs. Stanton said that people were always saying women didn't
want to vote, but the fact that the word "male" was in all the
statute books showed that men knew all the time that they would
vote if they had a chance. But whether they want to or not is a
matter, she claimed, that had nothing to do with the question. It
is time woman had a civil rights bill. No woman can enter
Columbia College, Princeton, Harvard, or Yale. During the century
we have spent $16,000,000 for the boys of New York, and
$1,500,000 for the girls. Are you willing to believe, women, that
your girls are sixteen times less valuable than the boys? What is
the reason of this low valuation of woman? Because she is never
to have anything to do with the State. It is a humiliating thing
to ask, but I insist that the white women of this country be
placed on the same civil and political footing with the colored
men from the plantations of the South. If a woman traveling alone
is belated at night, the hotels slam their doors in her face and
turn her into the street. We want a civil rights bill that shall
make every white woman just as respectable as a negro or a white
man.

Mrs. Blake followed with an anecdote of a girl who applied for
admission to Ann Arbor University. One of the sentences she had
to translate from the Greek was this one from Antigone: "Seeing
then that we are women, ought we not to be modest and not try to
compete with men?" She took the highest honors in Greek, and was
ahead of every man in the class. She prepared a Greek composition
and introduced this sentence: "Seeing then that we are men, ought
we not to be ashamed that we have been vanquished by women?"

Mrs. Stanton thought if girls could come out of colleges and
schools ahead of the boys in their studies, it was pretty clear
proof that they could accomplish almost anything within the power
of human capacity, for girls have to study under all sorts of
disadvantages that boys do not have to contend with. Hang a
hoop-skirt on a boy's hips; lace him up in a corset; hang pounds
of clothing and trailing skirts upon him; puff him out with humps
and bunches behind; pinch his waist into a compass that will
allow his lungs only half their breathing capacity; load his head
down with superfluous hair--rats, mice, chignons, etc., and stick
it full of hair-pins; and then set him to translating Greek and
competing for prizes in a first-class university. What sort of a
chance would he stand in running that race or any other!! Mrs.
Stanton read a civil rights bill for women, to be presented to
Congress. This bill is to secure to them, equally with colored
men, all the advantages and opportunities of life; open to them
all colleges of learning; secure to them the right to sit on
juries; to sue and be sued; to practice in all our courts on the
same terms with colored men; to be tried by a jury of their
peers; to be admitted to theaters and hotels alone; to walk the
streets by night and by day, to ramble in the forest, or beside
the lakes and rivers, as do colored men, without fear of
molestation or insult from any white man whatsoever, to secure
equal place and pay in this world of work.

She also presented a series of resolutions, nine in number. The
first five are for freedom generally, and no taxation without
representation. The sixth and seventh denounce the bills of
Senators Frelinghuysen and Logan, the former being designed to
deprive the women of the Territories of jury trial, and the
latter to restore the common law in the Territories. The eighth
recognizes the importance of the organization of the Grangers;
and the ninth opposes the granting of general amnesty to former
rebels. This resolution Mrs. Stanton denounced, speaking in favor
of universal amnesty. Quite a spicy discussion ensued on this
resolution, which was drawn up by Mrs. Joslyn Gage. Mrs. Stanton
in her remarks in opposition, said it was hardly worth while for
women in their conventions to throw any stigma on Jefferson
Davis. The institution of slavery was sustained by the North as
well as the South; the North got out expurgated editions of books
for the Southern market. It was in bad taste for the North to
denounce the South, and it was in particularly bad taste for
woman suffragists who are clamoring for representation and for
the ballot, to call for its denial to any part of the nation.

Col. R. J. Hinton, of Washington, also denounced the resolution,
saying that it violated one of the fundamental principles of the
woman suffrage platform, which is that the limitation of suffrage
is a gross outrage. Miss Anthony very pertinently said: "All the
trouble on this platform is that we haven't the right to vote. If
we had it we shouldn't complain of anybody else voting." The
resolution was voted down by a large majority.

At the evening session the Hall was literally packed. Mrs.
Dundore of Baltimore, and Miss Taintor of California were the
first speakers. Then the fascinating St. Louis lawyer, Miss
Phoebe Couzins, whose logic is as sound as her wit is sparkling,
was introduced, and delivered an address on "Woman as Lawyer," a
subject which, in most hands, would have put the audience to
sleep, but in hers, kept them wide awake with laughter and
applause at her brilliant sallies. At the conclusion of her
speech the Hutchinsons sang a stirring song, and then Miss
Anthony introduced the colored member of Congress from South
Carolina, Mr. A. J. Ransier, who spoke unqualifiedly in favor of
woman suffrage. Mr. Ransier is president of a woman suffrage
association in South Carolina. He was a little inclined to repeat
himself, and after having returned several times to the statement
that he had "no speech to make," an old lady in the audience
popped up on the bench and said: "Well, if you haven't got a
speech to make, I have," and immediately started out at the rate
of twenty-five knots an hour, utterly oblivious of the rights of
Mr. Ransier, who already had the floor, and who was very politely
waiting for her to subside. Miss Anthony, after patiently waiting
some time, said she should have to call the lady to order, but
she paid no attention to the call. After a while the ludicrous
situation set the audience to smiling audibly, and the louder
they smiled, and the greater the excitement grew, the swifter
flew the old lady's tongue. After consultation among the managers
of the meeting, it was finally decided to send a policeman to
quietly remove this garrulous disturber of the peace. A policeman
was accordingly summoned, but his entreaties had no effect on the
old lady, who stoutly maintained her perch, and declared she
would not go with him. Then Miss Couzins descended from the
platform, and accomplished with her winning ways what the
policeman couldn't. She calmed the troubled waters--got the old
lady to sit down by her side and keep the peace the rest of the
evening. Who wouldn't maintain the peace when entreated from such
a quarter? Mr. Ransier was enabled to finish his speech--a really
good one--Miss Anthony remarking at its close that she wished she
could have had him for her judge instead of Mr. Hunt. She then
made a wide awake and telling speech, which, if this letter were
not already too long, I should like to give. At its close she
introduced Mrs. Guthrie, a daughter of Frances Wright, that woman
of rare mind and original thought, who came from England to this
country some forty or more years ago; and who, with Robert Owen
and some others, tried to start a colony on the community system.
To the surprise of all, Mrs. Guthrie declared herself opposed to
woman suffrage. At the close of her remarks the Doxology was
sung, and the convention adjourned _sine die_.

F. E. B.

The correspondent of the Boston _Commonwealth_, after giving a
pen-picture of the ladies on the platform, said:

The Convention laid out some very practical work for the
consideration and action of Congress. It circulated a petition
and obtained six hundred names of citizens, both men and women of
the District, asking that the word male be stricken from the
organic act of the District government. This was presented by Mr.
Dawes, for Mr. Butler, to the House, and referred to the
Judiciary Committee, before the members of which the ladies
to-day had a hearing. Their case was presented and briefly argued
by Mr. Miller, a lawyer of some promise and reputation, a
resident of the District. Mrs. Sarah Spencer, of Washington,
addressed the Committee on the legal points involved. She said
that the petitioners did not conceal the point that the XIV.
Amendment did not give them the right to vote, but since Congress
had referred them to the State legislatures, they came now to ask
that the women of the District be allowed to vote. Mrs. Spencer
answered the argument so often made, that all of the bad women
would vote and the good ones would stay at home. She said in
reply to this oft-repeated objection, that she had found in
talking with that class they made the same objection to woman
suffrage that the fashionable women make, and were quite as
averse to its adoption. Again, she said statistics show the
lamentable fact that only one-fifth of this class live to be
eighteen years of age; their average length of life being only
five years, no real danger was to be apprehended from giving
woman the ballot. Mrs. Spencer spoke with feeling, and evidently
made a favorable impression upon the Committee. Mrs. Lockwood
made a few pertinent remarks. As this lady has lately been
admitted to the bar in this city, she can speak from experience
upon many points of law and fact. Miss Burr, of Hartford, asked
simply for full justice, eschewing law and legal lore upon the
subject, willing to be numbered with Plato and John Stuart Mill
on this question. Miss Couzins appealed to the heart; as so many
knock-down arguments had been hurled at their heads she preferred
to attack the heart. She said she felt great delicacy in
appearing before so much learning and wisdom, but the veteran
commander-in-chief of the forces, Miss Anthony, had ordered her
to the front, and when she told her she must spike a gun, like a
good soldier, although a raw recruit, she obeyed. Miss Anthony
introduced the speakers, and closed the meeting with a few
well-chosen words.

It was a picture worthy the brush of an old master. Eleven
lawyers seated around a table, with Benjamin F. Butler at the
head, listening to women pleading for the right of
self-government. Their faces, as they listened, every one of them
with respectful attention, was a study worthy the most thoughtful
student of human nature. Some of them listened, no doubt, for the
first time to an argument in favor of this innovation, but the
most unbelieving were evidently impressed with the earnestness
and strong feeling displayed in the advocacy of the cause. The
room was well filled with spectators, drawn together, some from
sympathy, others from idle curiosity, but all were compelled to
respectful consideration by the ease, dignity, and ability
displayed by the ladies in presenting their cause. Only upon the
faces of a few newspaper reporters just emerging from adolescence
into manhood, rested the traditional sneer at the strong-minded;
and when the hour for adjournment arrived, one of the members of
the Committee remarked he regretted that a longer time could not
have been given to the ladies. To those who think the cause of
woman suffrage has gone backwards, we commend the proceedings of
this meeting of the Judiciary Committee.

In addition to the petition for suffrage in the District, another
one has also been drawn, which Mr. Loughridge, of Iowa, will
present at an early day, asking for the remission of the fine
imposed upon Miss Anthony for voting at the last Presidential
election.

By the way, an incident showing the singular independence of Gen.
Grant happened on Saturday. When the President was taking his
afternoon stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue, he met Miss Anthony
and Miss Couzins. Instead of bowing and passing on, as most any
one of the high dignitaries occupying official position would
have done, he stopped, shook hands, and entered into conversation
with them. The chief justiceship being the absorbing subject of
interest, Miss Couzins suggested the name of Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, since he seemed to have so much trouble in getting a man
to suit. The President pleasantly replied he would not subject
any woman to the ordeal of such an examination as she would be
subjected to over Sunday, if the announcement of the nomination
to that office were made. Miss Anthony said if he would only
nominate Henry R. Selden, her counsel, the man who had brains and
courage enough to defend her for voting for him, the country
would at once recognize it as the best possible thing that could
be done. The group, as they stood there on the avenue, the
President of the United States with a pleased and animated face,
and Miss Anthony, whom everybody knows and respects, even
although they don't believe in suffrage for women, and the
strikingly handsome young lawyer from St. Louis, in animated
conversation over the Chief Justiceship, was the object of
attraction of all passing by. If some fortunate photographer
could have taken the picture his fortune would have been secured
beyond doubt.

The May Anniversary[158] of 1874 was held in Irving Hall, with the
usual list of speakers.[159] The attendance was large throughout.
Martha C. Wright, one of the most judicious and clear-sighted women in
the movement, was elected president. A large number of letters[160]
was received from nearly every State in the Union.

On May 28th, 1874, while the bill to establish the Territory of
Pembina was pending in the Senate, Mr. Sargent, of California, moved
to add "sex" to line 10 of section 5, which would make the clause
read:

_Resolved_, That the Legislative Assembly shall not, at any time,
abridge the right of suffrage, or to hold office, on account of
sex, race, color, or previous condition of servitude of any
resident of the Territory.

Mr. SARGENT.--In the same connection I move in the first line of
section 5 to strike out the word "male," so as to read "every
inhabitant of the United States."

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_.--The question is on the amendment of
the Senator from California.

Mr. SARGENT.--At the time when the last National Convention of
the Republican party assembled in Philadelphia, which nominated
General Grant for his second term, there was assembled a body of
able, respectable ladies of the United States, who urged upon
that convention a consideration of the subject involved in the
amendment which I propose; and as a concession to the demand made
by those persons, a plank was inserted in the platform whereby it
was declared that the Republican party would treat with
consideration the claims of women to be admitted to additional
rights. Since that time, although the Republican party has had a
two-thirds majority in both Houses of Congress and elected the
President of its choice, and now has full power and has had ever
since the assembling of this Congress to carry out this promise,
not one step has been taken in this direction. It has not been
for want of petition or solicitation. It certainly has not been
because the matter has not been called to the attention of both
Houses of Congress, for petition after petition has been
presented, and no action has been taken except adverse action in
the other House, the committee reporting back those petitions
with the recommendation that the prayer be not granted. In the
Senate we have not yet been favored with the views of the
committee to whom those petitions were referred. Considering that
a great constitutional question was involved, it might be assumed
that these subjects would receive very early attention at the
hands of the committees of the Senate; but up to this time we
have had no light on the matter.

I believe, Mr. President, that the amendment which I offer to
this bill is justified by the organic law of the United States,
and in fact required by that law. Before the adoption of the XIV.
and XV. Articles of Amendment to the Constitution of the United
States women were hedged from the ballot-box by the use of the
word "male." Since that time another rule has been prescribed by
the organic law, giving to all citizens of the United States the
right to exercise this highest privilege of a citizen. By the
XIV. Article of Amendment it is provided that "all persons born
or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of
the State wherein they reside." This most important declaration
is now the organic law of the United States. It does not say "all
males born or naturalized in the United States," but "all
persons," and it can not be contended successfully that a woman
is not a person, and not a person within the meaning of this
clause of the Constitution.

This being the status of all individuals, male and female, they
being citizens of the United States, it is provided that "no
State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor
shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law." Of course if any State is prohibited
from doing this, any Territory should be prohibited from doing
it, because no Territory can constitutionally do that which a
State itself can not do. Then, if women are citizens of the
United States, and there is no right to abridge the privileges
and immunities of citizens of the United States, as proclaimed by
the supreme law of the land, what are these privileges and
immunities? Grant White, in his able work on "Words and Their
Uses," defines, on page 100, the privileges and immunities of
citizens, and among them gives the right to vote and the right to
hold office. Webster gives the same definition of the word
"citizen" and so does Worcester, and Bouvier's Law Dictionary
speaks expressly of these rights of citizens of the United States
to vote and hold office; and there is little adverse authority to
these definitions.

The Constitution, if it needs construction at all--and it would
hardly seem to need it in a case so plain as this--must be
construed by the ordinary and authoritative use of the words
contained in it; and here is both the ordinary and the
authoritative use of those words. This matter has not been
without judicial construction. In the Circuit Court Reports (4
Washington, 371), it was held that these privileges and
immunities included the right to hold office and to exercise the
elective franchise; and this view was adopted by Chancellor Kent
in his Commentaries, volume II., page 71. So that both by United
States courts and the best and highest commentary upon the laws
of the United States the construction which I contend for of the
XIV. Amendment is insisted upon and ably illustrated. The
considerations which I have urged address themselves not merely
to Republicans, they address themselves with great force to my
Democratic friends who are such sticklers for the Constitution.
Although that is true, nevertheless the Republican party has
pledged itself especially to a respectful consideration of these
demands in its last national platform, and it has control of both
Houses of Congress and of the executive department.

Passing from that consideration, we have all persons born or
naturalized in the United States declared by the Constitution to
be citizens; and we have the meaning of the word "citizen" given
by our courts, by our lexicographers, by our law commentators; we
have further their "privileges and immunities" settled by all
these authorities to include the right to vote and the right to
hold office. In consonance with this organic law, the policy of
which is not open to discussion because it has been adopted
according to all the legal forms by the people of the United
States, I offer this amendment.

Were this the time and place, and were not the discussion
foreclosed by the considerations which I have already advanced, I
might speak at some length upon the advantage which there would
be in the admission of women to the suffrage. I might point with
some pride to the experiment which has been made in Wyoming,
where women hold office, where they vote, where they have the
most orderly society of any of the Territories, where the
experiment is approved by the executive officers of the United
States, by their courts, by the press, and by the people
generally; and if it operates so well in Wyoming, where it has
rescued that Territory from a state of comparative lawlessness to
one of the most orderly in the Union, I ask why it might not
operate equally well in the Territory of Pembina or any other
Territory? I hope the time is not far distant when some of the
older States of the Union like New York, or Massachusetts, or
Ohio may give this experiment a fuller chance. But so far as it
has gone, the experiment has been entirely in favor of
legislation for admitting women to the ballot-box. And I do not
believe that in putting these higher responsibilities upon women
we degrade their character, that we subject them to uncongenial
pursuits, that we injure their moral tone, that we tarnish their
delicacy, that we in any way make them less noble and admirable
as women, as wives, and mothers. I believe that by realizing the
intention of the Constitution, which uses words that are so fully
explained by our courts and by our writers upon the uses of
words, we simply open a wider avenue to women for usefulness to
themselves and to society. I think we give them an opportunity,
instead of traveling the few and confined roads that are open to
them now, to engage more generally in the business of life under
some guarantee of their success. I believe that, instead of
driving them to irregular efforts like those which they recently
have made in many of the States to overthrow liquor selling, it
will give them an opportunity through the ballot-box to protect
their families, to break up the nefarious traffic and purify
society. As it is now, their energies in this direction are
repressed, and sometimes in order to have force are compelled to
be exercised even in opposition to law. I would give them an
opportunity to exercise them under the forms of law, and I would
enforce the law by the accession of this pure element. I do not
think that they would be corrupted by it, but rather that society
and politics would be purified by admitting them to the
ballot-box and giving them this opportunity.

I therefore trust that, in the spirit of the pledge that was made
by us as Republicans, in the spirit of the adhesion to the
Constitution professed by our democratic friends, there may be an
assent to this amendment, and that the United States will engraft
this feature in the organic law of this new Territory. There is
nothing peculiar in the form of this proposition. All the
original steps which we took toward circumscribing slavery were
taken by engrafting provisos on the organic laws of Territories,
from Nebraska down, providing that the Territories, when
organized, should not do this or that affecting the liberty of
human beings. In the mode pursued by that legislation, and
according to those precedents, I now propose that the
Constitution shall be invoked; that women shall have the right in
this Territory which is guaranteed by the organic law.

Mr. STEWART.--If this region is to be created into a Territory, I
think it eminently proper that this amendment should be adopted.
The question of female suffrage is a question that is being
seriously considered by a large portion of the people of the
United States. We may think lightly of it here; we may think it
never will be accomplished; but there are a great many earnest
people who believe if females had the ballot they could better
protect themselves, be more independent, and occupy useful
positions in life which are now denied to them. Whether they be
correct or not, it is not necessary for us to determine in
passing upon this amendment. Here is a new Territory to be
created, and it is a good opportunity to try this experiment. If
it works badly, when the Territory becomes a State there is
nobody committed. It is not an amendment of the organic law of
the nation. This is a bill simply providing for the organization
of a Territory and for a preliminary government, and I should
like for one to see this experiment tried. It is suggested by my
friend on my right (Mr. Conkling) that it can not spread unless
it is catching. (Laughter.) If it works well, if it succeeds in
protecting females in their rights and enabling them to assert
their rights elsewhere and obtain such employment as is suitable
to them, I hope it will become catching and spread all over the
country, if that is the light in which it is to be treated. I am
in earnest about this matter. I think this new Territory is the
place to try the experiment. If it works badly, we can see it,
and no great harm will be done. If it works well, the example
will be a good one and will be imitated. We first tried the
experiment of negro suffrage in the District of Columbia, and it
became catching and spread all over the South. Now, when there is
a large portion of the people of the United States desirous of
having this principle illustrated, here is a fair field for the
illustration of it, that they may see and we may see, whether
there is anything in their arguments by the practical
illustration of them for a few years until this new Territory
shall become a State. I say let them have female suffrage there
and try it. If it works well, their arguments will be vindicated;
if it works badly, it need not be followed. I hope that the
Senator from Minnesota will consent that this shall become a part
of the law. Let us try it. It will do no harm.

Mr. BOREMAN.--I do not propose to enter into a discussion of the
question of the constitutionality or unconstitutionality of woman
suffrage, nor a discussion of the propriety or impropriety of the
adoption of a provision in favor of it upon this bill. I think
this is not a very good time to "try experiments," to use the
language of the Senator from Nevada, and I trust we may have a
vote upon this question.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ingalls in the Chair).--The question
is on the amendment proposed by the Senator from California.

Mr. SARGENT and Mr. SPRAGUE called for the yeas and nays, and
they were ordered.

Mr. MORTON.--I desire simply to state my views upon this
amendment; views long entertained. I am in favor of the amendment
on what I regard as the fundamental principles of our Government,
upon the theory upon which we have based our Government from the
beginning. The Declaration of Independence says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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.

The word "men" in that connection does not mean males, but it
means the human family; that all human beings are created equal.
This will hardly be denied. I remember it was formerly contended
that the Declaration of Independence in this clause did not
include black people. It was argued learnedly and frequently, in
this Chamber and out of it, that the history surrounding the
adoption of that declaration showed that white men only were
intended. But that was not the general judgment of the people of
this country. It was held to embrace all colors and all races. It
embraces both sexes; not simply males, but females. All human
beings are created equal. That is the foundation principle of our
Government. It then goes on to say:

That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted
among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to
alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government,
laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to
effect their safety and happiness.

If these rights are fundamental, if they belong to all human
beings as such, if they are God-given rights, then all persons
having these God-given rights have a right to use the means for
their preservation; the means is government: "To secure these
rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed." I ask you whether the
women of this country have ever given their consent to this
Government? Have they the means of giving their consent to it?
The colored men had not given their consent to it. Why? Because
they had not the right to vote. There is but one way that the
consent to government can be given, and that is by a right to a
voice in that government, and that is the right to vote. I know
it was argued in times past in regard to the South that the
master gave the consent on the part of his slaves; that he
represented them; that he had their good at heart, and that he
gave their consent. We denied that. We know it was not true. Now,
sir, to come down to the main question, I ask if the women of
this country have given their consent to this Government? You say
they are consenting. I say they are assenting to it, the majority
of them; but they have no means of giving their consent to this
Government within the theory of the Declaration of Independence;
and they can not consent to it unless they have a voice, have a
right to vote "yes" or to vote "no."

What was the old theory of the common law? It was that the father
represented the interests of his daughter, the husband of his
wife, and the son of his mother. They were deprived of all legal
rights in a state of marriage, because it was said that they were
taken care of by those who stood to them in these relations; but
they never were taken care of. The husband never took care of the
rights of his wife at common law; the father never took care of
the rights of his daughter; the son never took care of the rights
of his mother. The husband at common law was a tyrant and a
despot. Why, sir, he absorbed the legal existence of his wife at
common law; she could not make a contract except as his agent.
Her legal existence was destroyed, and the very moment the
marriage was consummated he became the absolute owner of all her
personal property. What was the theory of it? The old theory of
the common law, as given in elementary writers, was that if the
wife was allowed to own property separate from her husband it
would make a distinct interest; it would break up and destroy the
harmony of the marriage relation; the marriage relation must be a
unit; there must be but one interest; and therefore the legal
existence of the wife must be merged into that of the husband. I
believe a writer as late as Blackstone laid it down that it would
not do to permit the wife to hold any property in severalty from
her husband, because it would give to her an interest apart from
his.

We have got over that. It took us one hundred and fifty years to
get past that, and from year to year in this country, especially
in the last twenty-five years, we have added to the rights of the
wife in regard to property and in many other respects. We now
give to her a legal status in this country that she has not in
England or in any European country. She has now a legal status
that she had not twenty-five years ago, and progress is still
going on in that direction. While it was argued by old
law-writers and old law-makers that to allow women to hold
property separate from their husbands was to break up the harmony
of the marriage relation, we know practically that it has not
worked that way. We know that as we have made woman independent,
recognized her legal existence as a wife, secured her rights, it
has elevated her. We know that instead of disturbing the marriage
relation, it has improved it constantly; and I believe that the
woman has the same natural right to a voice in this Government
that the man has. If we believe in the theory of our Government
that must be so. I believe that as you make woman the equal of
man in regard to civil rights, rights of property, rights of
person, political rights, you elevate her, you make her happier;
and as you do that you elevate the male sex also.

This idea that women will be degraded by allowing them to go to
the polls comes down to us from other countries and from remote
periods of civilization. Why, sir, in countries now that claim to
be civilized it is said that to allow the wife or the mother to
go to the dinner-table with the husband and meet his guests face
to face degrades her and degrades them. In some countries a woman
must not appear on the streets unless she is so closely veiled
that she can not be recognized; for it is said to allow her to go
upon the streets barefaced or so thinly veiled that she can be
recognized, subjects her to insult and degrades her; and in some
countries to-day it destroys her character as effectually as
other things would destroy her character in our country. We know
that is a prejudice; and the idea that woman will be degraded by
giving her the right of suffrage is a remnant of that same idea.
It is born of the same parentage. It has no sounder reason for it
than these other nations have. I believe that to give women the
right of suffrage would elevate the character of suffrage in this
country. It would make the polls more decent, more respectable
than they are now. Why, sir, fifty years ago the idea of women
attending political meetings was intolerable to a great many
people. The idea of her going to lectures of a scientific
character was thought to be out of all reason. But now women go
to political meetings. In almost every canvass in my State there
are nearly as many women who attend the meetings as men. What is
the effect of it? Are they degraded? On the contrary, their
presence elevates the character of those meetings. It is an
assurance of peace, it is a security against rowdyism and
violence, because in this country men have to be very low if they
are guilty of rowdyism or blackguardism in the presence of women.
We have a habitual respect for them; and I can testify from my
own experience in politics that the attendance of women upon
political meetings, so far from degrading them or affecting men
injuriously, has elevated the character of political assemblages,
has made them more respectable, has secured to them immunity from
violence, and from degrading scenes and blackguardism, and so it
will be at the polls. When a woman is allowed to go to the polls
and vote her sentiments and convictions, it will have the same
effect there that her presence has in society. There is not a bit
of doubt about it. And there will be no more discord in the
family circle than there was when, in violation and against the
old principles of the common law, you gave a woman the right to
retain her legal existence after marriage and to own property
separate and apart from her husband. These old notions have been
giving away one after another little by little, and we shall
finally come down to the true theory of our Government in all
respects, and that is to allow every person, man or woman, who is
to be affected and controlled by the Government, whose interest
or whose happiness is to be controlled by or depends on the
administration of that Government, to have an equal voice in that
Government. Therefore I give my vote heartily and cheerfully for
this amendment.

Mr. FLANAGAN.--I confess, sir, that I was delighted when my
distinguished friend from California presented this amendment.
Unlike my distinguished friend from Indiana, however, I am a new
convert to this doctrine. He has been of this opinion long since,
I am gratified to learn. I have reflected much on this subject,
and within the last few months I have settled down in my
determination, and that is to advocate this great measure. Why
have I so recently arrived at that conclusion? In the last few
months the women's war upon the whisky trade and intemperance at
large has prompted me thus to declare unequivocally for them and
their glorious efforts. It is from them and with them that I
hope, judging from their success up to this time, to save this
great Nation from the worst curse known to the human family, that
of intemperance; and I believe it is they and only they through
Almighty God who can do it. Man has been found incompetent and
unable to perform that great and desired object. And gratified am
I to receive the idea from my distinguished friend, that if women
had the right to vote they would not be expelled from many
pursuits as they now are, or be compelled to go upon the streets
as they now are, seeking in self-defense the preservation of man.
The effect of this measure on politics has been so well described
by the distinguished Senator from Indiana that I need not comment
upon that branch of the subject. They would tend to purify the
atmosphere morally, either at the ballot-box or anywhere else, I
care not where it may be. They are more directly interested in
good morals, in the temperance of the world and everything
bearing on that line, than the husbands are. I think it is a
right they are entitled to in every sense of the word, and from
this time henceforth I am a woman's rights man.

Mr. MERRIMON.--Mr. President, I will not yield to any Senator in
the measure of my respect for and admiration of woman; I do not
propose by any act or word of mine to detract from her dignity or
to diminish the pleasures she may enjoy in this life; but I claim
the right to be the judge, in conjunction with herself, of what
is best calculated to elevate and protect her dignity and promote
her happiness. I do not believe that woman herself believes that
her dignity would be elevated or her happiness promoted by
putting her upon an exact equality, civilly or politically, in
both points of view, with man; and very strong and controlling
evidence of that fact is, that neither in this country nor in any
country has woman--I mean the great mass of them--ever demanded
such a state of things. Our Government has existed for about a
hundred years, and the number of females who have demanded to be
invested with equal political and civil rights and to be placed
upon an exact equality with the male portion of our population,
compared with those who have remained in retirement, who have
staid at their homes and lived and ruled within that sphere in
which it seems God intended that they should rule, is as a drop
in the sea. So it appears in this conclusive way that the women
of America do not demand this state of things. They do not
protect themselves by votes, nor do they need to do so. They
shape the man when he is a child, rule him with the power of
love, and thus they shape, affect, and often control the
destinies of men, nations, and empires. I do not propose,
however, to go into a discussion in detail of what the women
desire or what we ought to grant. My main purpose is to reply
very briefly to some remarks that fell from the honorable Senator
from Indiana [Mr. Morton] in reference to the Declaration of
Independence. I differ, with all respect, from the revolutionary
construction which he puts upon that instrument. It is true, as
he says, that the Declaration of Independence provides in these
words:

[Illustration: Ellen Clark Sargent.]

Now, I maintain in the first place that we must put a reasonable
construction on those words. Plainly, to my mind, all men are
created equal in point of natural rights, certainly not equal in
point of civil rights, not equal in point of political rights. By
nature man has no civil or political rights. Natural rights are
one sort of rights; civil rights are another sort of rights; and
political rights are a third sort of rights. Every human being
has a natural right to life and liberty; but every human being
has not a natural right to government. He has not a natural right
to the civil rights conferred and defined by a system of
government. When he becomes subject to civil government he
surrenders a part of his natural rights--agrees that civil
government may regulate these and then enjoys the benefit of
civil rights conferred by civil government; but then he does not
thereby necessarily become entitled to political rights. He can
not become entitled to political rights until they shall be
conferred upon him by government.

Mr. MORTON.--Will the Senator cite what follows?

Mr. MERRIMON.--When our fathers adopted the Declaration of
Independence, and declared these general truths, they had
reference to the natural rights of man, and only to those rights.
They well knew the distinctions to which I have adverted, had
them in view and acted upon them, as I shall now proceed to show.

Mr. MORTON.--It says that "to secure these rights" referred to,
the right of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
"governments were instituted which derive their just powers from
the consent of the governed." Now, I ask if women are a part of
"the governed?"

Mr. MERRIMON.--Yes, sir; they are a part of "the governed," and I
say that they have not only assented, but they have consented to
this system of government.

Mr. MORTON.--How?

Mr. MERRIMON.--I say so, because they have never raised their
voice in opposition to it; they have given for nearly a century
their highest moral sanction to it; we have had a moral
expression from the American women with a degree of unanimity and
cordiality that is striking. I am warranted in saying that nine
hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand have given their
moral assent, in as full a measure as it was possible for them
to do, to our system of government. They have sustained it under
all circumstances with their love, their hands, and their hearts,
with their smiles and their tears, educated their children to
love it and to die for it. They have manifested their love for it
in every form, it has never appeared, be it said to their honor,
that they disliked or disapproved it. They have had the right
under the bill of rights of every State in the Union, they have
had the right under the Constitution of the Union at all times to
memorialize the States and to memorialize Congress, protesting
against any abridgment of their natural or civil rights, if they
deemed there was any abridgment of those rights. But I repeat
what I said a while ago, the number who have thus memorialized
Congress and the State governments, compared with those who have
not opened their mouths on this subject, is as a drop in the sea
compared to the waste of waters. They have yielded their assent
to this system of government; they have ratified it by every
means in their power outside of exercising the political right to
vote. I know that there are a few women in the country who
complain, but those who complain, compared with those who do not
complain, are as one to a million.

But to get back to the point. Those who established the
Declaration of Independence gave an exposition to their view of
it in the formation and administration of the several State
governments they adopted. For years in those State governments
they provided civil and political distinctions and
discriminations; they provided that certain classes of white men
should enjoy certain classes of rights, that certain other men
should not enjoy the same rights. They provided that the male
population should enjoy rights that the female should not enjoy.
They provided that the white race should be free and that the
black race should be slaves. They did that, and according to
their action and the organic laws which they adopted, they said
in the most solemn manner they could, that that system of
government carried out the purposes they meant to declare and
define in the Declaration of Independence. They not only did
that, but they had a right to do it, nor was it inconsistent with
the declaration, for it referred only to natural rights, and when
they instituted governments they provided civil and political
rights, and therefore there was no contradiction and no practical
absurdity as is suggested. Their theory was practical and adapted
to the comprehension and protection of human rights. They were
not visionary theorists but practical statesmen. They were not
radical but conservative in their notions of government. Not only
the State governments did at first what I have indicated, but
when the American people came to establish the Constitution of
the United States they again provided in the Constitution a
distinction and discrimination between the male and the female
portion of the American people; they provided that the males
should hold the offices, that the males should have the right to
vote; and not only that, but by way of further exposition of
their views of the nature, purposes, and meaning of the
Declaration, they provided that the black race should be slaves.
That Constitution recognizes negro slavery in three several
provisions.

Mr. MORTON.--Does the Senator speak of the Constitution of the
United States?

Mr. MERRIMON.--Yes, sir. In the matter of representation, slavery
was expressly provided for; it was recognized in another
provision relative to prohibiting the importation of certain
persons until after the year 1808; and in another provision which
provided that those held to labor, escaping to another State,
should be surrendered to their masters on demand. The
Constitution of the Union, made in pursuance of this very
Declaration of Independence and conforming to it, recognized a
distinction between the white race and the black race, and
recognized and provided distinctions between the male and the
female portions of the people of the American Union, and thereby
in the most absolute manner drew the civil and political
distinctions that have been kept up in one way or another from
that day to this, and which I contend, with a view to good
government, so far as the male and female portions of the
American people go, ought to be kept up and perpetuated. It seems
to me that any one who will take into consideration the facts to
which I have called attention must see that the broad, radical
construction which the Senator puts on the Declaration of
Independence can not be sustained by reason, authority, or
practice.

But, sir, I want now to refer to the position taken by the
Senator from California [Mr. Sargent]. He says that under the
Constitution by the XIII., XIV. and XV. articles of Amendment,
Congress has no power to deprive the females of this country of
the right of suffrage. That I deny as emphatically as I can. I
read from Paschal's Annotated Constitution, p. 65:

18. But citizenship of the United States, or of a State,
does not of itself give the right to vote; nor, _e
converso_, does the want of it prevent a State from
conferring the right of suffrage. (Scott _vs._ Sandford, 19
Howard, 422.)

The right of suffrage is the right to choose officers of the
Government, and it does not carry along the right of
citizenship. (Bates on Citizenship, 4, 5.) Our laws make no
provision for the loss or deprivation of citizenship.
(_Id._)

The word "citizen" is not mentioned in this clause, and its
idea is excluded in the qualifications for suffrage in all
the State constitutions. (_Id._, 5, 6.)

Mr. SARGENT.--What clause is he commenting on?

Mr. MERRIMON.--He is commenting on section 2 of article 1. He
says further:

American citizenship does not necessarily depend upon nor
co-exist with the legal capacity to hold office or the right
of suffrage, either or both of them.

No person in the United States did ever exercise the right
of suffrage in virtue of the naked, unassisted fact of
citizenship. (_Id._)

There is a distinction between political rights and
political powers. The former belong to all citizens alike,
and cohere in the very name and nature of citizenship. The
latter (voting and holding office) does not belong to all
citizens alike, nor to any citizen merely in virtue of
citizenship. His power always depends upon extraneous facts
and superadded qualifications; which facts and
qualifications are common to both citizens and aliens.
(Bates on Citizenship.)

I read these hasty citations of authority which happen to be
convenient to show that there is a distinction between political
power and political rights, and in further support of the
distinction between citizenship, or civil rights, and political
rights.

Mr. SARGENT.--Will my friend allow me a moment?

Mr. MERRIMON.--Yes, sir.

Mr. SARGENT.--The author there is commenting on the second
section of the first article of the Constitution, and I think his
reasoning on that upon general principles may be correct, at any
rate it is in consonance with the authority that he cites. But
it will be observed that by the XIV. article, section 1, it is
provided that--

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside.

And then it says:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens,

Covering the whole broad ground. Whatever may be the privileges
and immunities of citizens are covered and protected by this
clause. This is subsequent to the article commented on there and
changes the spirit of the old Constitution, is inconsistent with
it, repeals it, or modifies it _pro tanto_; or else there would
be no object in the adoption of the XIV. article.

Mr. MERRIMON.--I was just coming to the discussion of that
Amendment. The XIV. Amendment applies to civil rights. As I have
shown, a citizen merely by virtue of citizenship does not enjoy
political rights; neither the right to vote nor the right to hold
office. The manifest object and purpose of the XIV. Amendment was
to secure to all the American people equality of right in the
States, equality of right under the United States, civilly, not
politically; and that is made more manifest when we consider the
second section of the XIV. Amendment. It is in these words:

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several
States according to their respective numbers, counting the
whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not
taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the
choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the
United States, Representatives in Congress, the executive
and judicial officers of a State, or the members of the
Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male
inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,
and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged,
except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the
basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the
proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear
to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age
in such State.

Thus it appears the amendments recognized the right of the State
itself to regulate the political right to vote. The XV. article
of Amendment still further confirms my view. It provides that
"the right of citizens of the United States to vote"--and that
word "vote" is material there--"the right of citizens of the
United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the
United States or by any State." Note what follows: "On account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The right of a
citizen of the United States in the first place to vote shall not
be abridged on account of three considerations, to-wit: race,
color, or previous condition of servitude. Why was it limited to
those three causes? Manifestly because the framers of this
article saw that Congress had the power to abridge the rights of
the colored race--indeed, any race--in the matter of voting and
in the matter of holding office as well. Can it be contended that
the United States would not have the power to-day to provide that
a negro or an Indian or a Chinese or a Mongolian, if naturalized,
and a citizen, should not hold office under the United States
Government? It is plain they would have such power. But they can
not act upon the ground of race, color, or previous condition as
to the matter of voting, and the restriction is to that alone.
This clause provides expressly that as to voting the right of no
human being shall be abridged because of his race, or his color,
or his previous condition of servitude, but such right may be
abridged for any other cause or consideration. This amendment did
not impose a restriction simply on the power of the United
States. In order to protect the colored race in the Southern
States, and indeed I may say throughout the whole Union, this
provision embraces the States as well as the United States, and
provides that the States shall not have power to abridge the
right to vote on any one of three accounts--race, color, or
previous condition of servitude. But that does not imply that the
States shall not have the power to abridge this right for other
causes. Each State has the power to-day to abridge the right to
vote because a man can not read, because he can not write, or for
any similar cause. The States have power to provide that a man
shall not be allowed to hold office or to vote because he can not
read or because he can not write, or for any cause whatever. That
is not only so according to the plain construction to be given to
the XV. Amendment, but some of the States exercise such power in
this country to-day.

Mr. SARGENT.--Will the Senator allow me to direct his mind to one
consideration?

Mr. MERRIMON.--I will.

Mr. SARGENT.--The XV. Amendment to the Constitution which the
Senator refers to, reads: "The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged:" It does not
create a right, it says "the right"; it speaks of something
existing which shall not be denied. The right, then, to vote is
the right of a citizen of the United States; the right exists. In
other words, the right which exists of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged.

Mr. MERRIMON.--There is no affirmative provision or principle in
the Constitution that confers such a right, and my friend arrives
at his conclusion by a simple inference; that is all. And I
apprehend that a right of so much moment, contravening the whole
policy of the Government, heretofore, can not be established by a
simple inference; and especially in the strength and in the face
of the fact, however it might be as to other matters, that the
United States shall not have the power to abridge the right for
the cause mentioned. Besides this, if I concede what the
honorable Senator says, he must acknowledge that it is within the
power of the United States to abridge the right to vote for other
causes than those stated. The constitution of Connecticut
prescribes these qualifications: Every white male citizen of the
United States; one year's residence; freehold of the yearly value
of six dollars; good moral character; able to read any article of
the Constitution or any section of the statutes of the State. But
if that State had undertaken to restrict the right to vote
because a man was black or because he belonged to a particular
race, or because heretofore he had been subject to a condition of
servitude, that would be absolutely null and void; or if they had
put in that he should not vote because he was white it would be
null and void.

Next, by the constitution of Massachusetts, the right to vote is
limited to "male citizens (excepting persons or paupers under
guardianship); residence in the State one year; in the town or
district six months; having paid all required taxes." That
constitution has existed since 1780. It was provided further in
that constitution that "no person shall have the right to vote or
to be eligible to office under this Commonwealth who shall not be
able to read the constitution in the English language and write
his name. So that the power which I insist belongs to the United
States, and I think I have shown belongs to the States, not only
exists, but is actually exercised by States, at least two States
of the Union, at this moment; and indeed in nearly or quite all
the States there are more or less restrictions of the right to
vote; and the State and the Union have absolute power to abridge
the political right to vote except for three causes only, and
those three causes are race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.

Mr. STEWART.--I hope that the Senate will not suppose that there
is any constitutional question here involved. It is simply a
question of regulating the suffrage in a Territory, exclusively
under the jurisdiction of the Congress of the United States.
There is no doubt of the power of Congress to allow women to vote
in the Territories, and I hope there will not be a great deal of
time spent on that matter.

Mr. MERRIMON.--Why do you want to go into a remote, sparsely
settled Territory to make the experiment?

Mr. STEWART.--Why not try it everywhere? Why not try it in North
Carolina? Because we can not.

Mr. MERRIMON.--Why not try it in this city?

Mr. STEWART.--Because we have not the power to do it.

Mr. MERRIMON.--You have in the District of Columbia.

Mr. SARGENT.--We tried the question of negro suffrage in Nebraska
first.

Mr. STEWART.--Negro suffrage was opened in a Territory when there
were less people in it than there are here, and see how that has
spread.

Mr. MERRIMON.--My friend did not hear my question. Why not confer
suffrage on the women of the District of Columbia.

Mr. SARGENT.--We will the first time we get a chance.

Mr. STEWART.--The Senator from North Carolina asks, "Why not try
it here?" The question has been suggested whether there is not a
constitutional reason for not trying it here, and that
constitutional question applies to males as well as females. The
Constitution says that Congress shall have exclusive power of
legislation within the District of Columbia, and it shall
exercise like power over places owned by the United States with
the consent of the States for arsenals, dock-yards, and other
needful buildings, making this District under the exclusive
control of Congress. I think that nothing but the emergencies of
the case could have justified the experiment we tried here with
negro suffrage; but we did it. We now have a fair field in the
West where the country is rich and inviting, as my friend from
Minnesota says, a country that is able to become a State; the
land fertile, the climate salubrious, and is to be occupied by
the very best people, and we can try it there under the most
favorable auspices.

Mr. CONKLING.--May I ask a question?

Mr. STEWART.--Most certainly.

Mr. CONKLING.--The Senator has assured us so often that he is in
earnest, that I know he will be able to afford those like me who
are following him, although they may be somewhat in the dark, the
requisite information. Some Senator inquired of my friend why he
did not try the experiment here, and he answered that Congress
has power to legislate here, and therefore there is no experiment
to try here. Now I know my friend does not mean to paddle out of
any thing, because he has courage enough to stand up to it; and I
submit to him that that is rather "thin." Under the organic law
of this District men vote here annually; the things upon which
they vote are prescribed; and if the Senator is in earnest, I
should like to know some better reason why he does not try it
here. An amendment is in order on this bill to try it here. We
have confessedly in this District, exceptionally in this District
the entire power upon this question; and if the Senator is in
earnest, knowing as he does that under the organic law, of which
as a member of the committee of investigation he has learned so
much, voting is to be done and is now committed exclusively to
men and denied to women, I beg him to state some broader and
better answer to the question why he does not try it here. And
let me remind him at the same time that under the rules of the
Senate an amendment is in order to this bill; he need not go
beyond this bill in order to insure the right in the District of
Columbia.

Mr. STEWART.--Inasmuch as the Senator from New York has
designated me as the leader whom he is to follow, and I take it
for granted he is in earnest in his question, I shall occupy the
time of the Senate briefly in answering it. When the question
arises for suffrage at all in this District, with my present
ideas, I shall vote for female suffrage in this District. I was
saying that I do not think there need be any popular voting at
all in this District by males or females, for the reason that the
great mass of people here are merely sojourners. I think we
should govern the District directly by the Congress of the United
States, that can pass all needful laws. When the question comes
up properly as to the District, it will be time enough to meet
it. Here is the question directly up as to a Territory, and there
is no doubt about this being a good opportunity.

Mr. CONKLING.--I beg to inquire when ever in time or eternity
that question will come up here, unless some champion who has the
courage and genius of my friend brings it up? Who shall bring it
up if he refuses to do it? And when a bill is pending to which
that amendment is appropriate, and his attention is called to it,
if he flinches, if he goes back, who shall we hope for to come
hereafter who will break a lance in such a cause? I say to him
that unless he wants to discourage me and other men of less
courage who are trying to follow him, he must not flinch by
saying that he can not do anything about it until it comes on a
motion to bring it up. He should bring it up himself.

Mr. STEWART.--The only fear I have as to the Senator from New
York is that he will not have sufficient courage to follow.
(Laughter.) The question is up now. The question is squarely up
on this amendment whether we will allow the females in this
distant Territory to vote. I propose to vote for it. He has said
that I was his leader. The only question now is whether he has
the courage to follow my lead, I following the lead of the
Senator from California. I want to put his courage to the fullest
test now. I only ask him to follow me in this one little step. If
he breaks down here, I hope he will not say any thing more about
it; and I am afraid he will. I will say to him, however, that the
time will come when he will look very much astonished if anybody
questions the right of a female to vote; and when that time
comes, I shall never mention his past record to him because I do
not mention unpleasant things to gentlemen. I say that for his
benefit in case he should not do the gallant thing he proposes to
do of following me, I following the lead of the Senator from
California. The question is squarely up, and is nothing more than
this: will you give women a chance to try this experiment where
it is admitted it can do no harm, and where a large portion if
not a majority of the people of the United States believe it will
do a great good? Try this experiment there; and if the struggle
which is inaugurated there shall spread over the country as the
struggle that was inaugurated in Kansas spread over the country
and finally terminated in the colored man having full rights, if
it should have full effect on the rest of the country, so be it.
I rather think it will.

Mr. MERRIMON.--In the discussion in which I engaged, I was more
anxious about the principle involved than I was about the
particular amendment, and therefore I hardly mentioned it in the
hasty argument which I submitted. In order to support my position
now, I desire to read a report from the Judiciary Committee which
embraces the very subject under discussion, the question of the
power of the State governments and the Federal Government to
abridge the right to vote and hold office. The subject came
before that committee in the way of a petition of certain
citizens of the State of Rhode Island who insisted that their
rights as citizens of the United States were abridged--

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

Mr. MERRIMON.--Certainly.

Mr. STEWART.--Suppose the American people come to the conclusion
that it is right that females should vote, does not the Senator
think there will be plenty of ways to accomplish it
notwithstanding that report of the Judiciary Committee?

Mr. MERRIMON.--O yes, I think so; but I do not care to debate
that. My object was to throw light on this question. I do not
want a wrong construction put upon the powers of the Government
at this day. It is important that we should be upon the right
line and keep upon it; and with a view to strengthen my argument
I ask the Clerk to read the report which I send to the desk. It
is very brief; and I beg leave to say now that it is well known
to the Senate and must be known to the country that this
committee embraces the ablest lawyers in this country on
constitutional law.

The CHIEF CLERK read the following report submitted by Mr.
EDMUNDS on the 26th of May, 1870:

The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the
petition of citizens of Rhode Island setting forth, by
reference, the XIV. and XV. Articles of Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States, and stating that, "the
State of Rhode Island, notwithstanding the provisions of the
above-named amendments, persists, in and by the first
section of article 2 of the constitution of said State, in
denying and abridging the right of about 10,000 citizens of
the United States to vote at any and all elections holden in
said State," and praying that Congress will "pass such
appropriate legislation as may be found necessary to obtain
for, and secure to, the citizens of the United States
resident in Rhode Island all the rights, privileges, and
immunities guaranteed to them by the Constitution of the
United States," respectfully report:

That the constitution of Rhode Island, adopted in 1842,
prescribes two alternative classes of qualifications for
voting. The first gives to _all_ male citizens of the United
States of a certain age, etc., the right to vote, if they
own real estate of the value of $134, or which shall rent
for $7 per annum. The second gives to every male _native_
citizen of the United States of a certain age, etc., the
right to vote, if he pays a tax of $1 a year, etc., although
he may not own real estate. No man or party has ever
questioned the right of the people of Rhode Island and of
every other State to establish such a constitution of
government as maybe agreeable to their views of the public
welfare in that State, although its provision as to suffrage
may not conform to the opinions of other States. At the time
when this constitution of Rhode Island was adopted the right
to regulate the qualifications of voters belonged
exclusively to the respective States. The petition under
consideration fully recognizes this, but it raises the
question (although studiously framed in such a manner as not
to declare or insist upon such a conclusion) whether, by the
XIV. and XV. Amendments to the Constitution of the United
States, natives of foreign countries who have become
citizens of the United States are not entitled to vote in
Rhode Island, without regard to the qualifications imposed
by her Constitution?

The committee is unanimously of the opinion that this
question must be answered in the negative.

The "privileges and immunities of citizens of the United
States" mentioned in the petition as secured by the XIV.
Amendment do not include the right of suffrage. If they did,
the right must necessarily exist in _all_ citizens of the
United States from the mere fact of citizenship, without the
power in any State or in Congress to abridge the same in any
degree; and in such case, therefore, no qualification of any
kind could be imposed, and all persons (being citizens),
males and females, infants, lunatics, and criminals, without
respect to age, length of residence, or any other thing,
would be entitled to participate directly in all elections.
Every provision in every State which experience has proved
to be essential to security and good order in society would
thereby be overthrown. It is enough to say that the rights
secured by this amendment to the constitution are of an
altogether different character.

The XV. Amendment does apply to rights of suffrage, and to
those only. By it the State of Rhode Island, in common with
every other State, is forbidden to deny or abridge the right
of citizens of the United States "to vote on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude." But,
plainly, the constitution of Rhode Island does not preclude
any citizen from voting on either or any of the grounds thus
prohibited. No fact of race, or color, or previous servitude
prevents any citizen from voting in Rhode Island. Neither of
these qualities depends in any degree upon the place of his
nativity. This seems too obvious to need discussion. It is
also a fact, appearing in the public records of Congress and
doubtless known to the petitioners, that when the XV.
Amendment was under consideration by Congress it was
proposed to embrace in it a prohibition of any denial of
suffrage, on account of "nativity," and that this
proposition was not agreed to, for the reason that Congress
did not think it expedient to restrict the ancient powers of
the States in these respects any further than appeared to be
absolutely needful to secure to the whole people the great
results of the overthrow of the rebellion.

The committee is therefore of opinion that there is nothing
in the provisions of the constitution of Rhode Island
referred to in conflict with the Constitution of the United
States.

Whether these provisions are wise or right in themselves is
a matter over which neither the committee nor Congress has
any control. That subject belongs to the people of Rhode
Island, who it must be presumed will correct any and all
errors that may from time to time be found to exist in her
internal affairs.

Mr. MERRIMON.--I think the Senator from Nevada will be unable to
answer that position.

Mr. CARPENTER (Mr. INGALLS in the chair.)--Mr. President-----

Mr. EDMUNDS.--Before the Senator from Wisconsin proceeds with his
remarks, I should like to ask the chairman of the committee
whether he means to include Indians and Canadians? The language
is "every inhabitant of the United States."

Mr. SARGENT.--No, it is qualified further, as the Senator will
see if the whole section is read.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--Not as to the first election.

Mr. SARGENT.--I think myself the section is very inartificially
drawn.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--I do not know but that it is very artificially
drawn, if it is intended to include the Indian and the Canadian.

Mr. SARGENT.--To answer the Senator from Vermont I ask that the
final proviso of the section be read, which qualifies the part he
referred to.

The CHIEF CLERK read as follows:

_Provided, further_, That the right of suffrage and of
holding office shall be exercised only by citizens of the
United States, and those who shall have declared on oath,
before a competent court of record, their intention to
become such, and shall have taken an oath to support the
Constitution and Government of the United States.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--That does not relate to the first election.

Mr. SARGENT.--That objection applies to the details of the bill;
it does not apply to my amendment.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--That is true.

The PRESIDING OFFICER.--The Senator from Wisconsin is entitled to
the floor.

Mr. CARPENTER.--Mr. President, as the yeas and nays have been
ordered on this question and I shall vote for this amendment,
without going into any argument of the general question, I desire
to say one word as to the reason why I shall so vote.

I believe it is not one of woman's rights, but it is one of man's
that the franchise should be extended to women. I believe there
is no situation in which man can be placed where the aid of woman
is not beneficial; that in all the relations of life, in all the
occupations and all the duties of life it was the intention of
God in creating the race that woman should be the helpmate of
man, everywhere and in all circumstances and occupations. Look
through your country, look in your railroad cars, look in your
post-offices, look in your dry-goods stores, and there you see
everything decent and orderly and quiet. Why? Because women go
there. The only place in this country from which they are
excluded by law is the voting place, and in many of our large
cities those places are the most disgraceful that can be found
under our institutions. Now, I believe if the elections were open
to ladies as well as gentlemen, to women as well as men, there
would be as much order, quiet, and decency at the voting places
as there is in a railroad car, and for precisely the same reason.
If our wives and mothers and daughters were going to these
election places there would be order and decency there, or there
would be a row once for all that would make them decent. I have
more confidence in the influence of women at the elections in New
York City to reform the condition of things that exists there and
bring about decency and order at the elections and the prevention
of violence and fraud, than I have in all the Army and Navy that
the President can send there under the election bill which was
put through here by my honorable friend from New York (Mr.
Conkling).

Without enlarging on the subject, I shall vote for this
amendment, not because this Territory is located, as some Senator
has said, near Minnesota. I would vote for female suffrage in the
District of Columbia to-morrow; I would vote for it in the State
of Wisconsin; I would vote for it anywhere and everywhere if I
had an opportunity to do so.

Mr. MORRILL, of Maine.--Mr. President, I shall vote against this
amendment, and for the reason that I do not consider the right
of suffrage a woman's right or a man's right. I do not understand
it to be a natural right at all. It is a political right; and I
do not understand, as applied to women, that it is a privilege at
all. It is akin to a service; and it is a very rough service. It
is in its nature akin to militia service. The man who exercises
the ballot must be prepared to defend it with the bayonet; and
therefore the propriety of its being confined in all ages to men.
That it is not a natural right is apparent to anybody who
reflects upon it; and it never was so considered in any country
in the world.

We talk about it here now as a natural right, and my honorable
friend who sits next me (Mr. Morton) has invoked the principles
of the Declaration of Independence and said that it stands with
those rights which are called inherent, such as life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. It is not so in any sense whatever,
and never was so regarded. If it were, do you not perceive that
it applies as well to infants as to adults? If it is natural to
all citizens, then it applies, as I have said, to infants as well
as to adults. I regard it as strictly a political right. It does
not inhere in man naturally, or in woman; and I do not propose,
myself, to impose it on women. It is a severe, rugged service,
which in my judgment ought not to be imposed on women.

My honorable friend from Wisconsin says there is no position in
life in which the society of woman would not be an improvement.
How is it on the deck of a battle-ship? How is it in military
affairs? Should she be placed in the militia to enforce the
results of a ballot? Is there any one of us who believes that? Is
there anybody here who would be glad to see a woman in the
train-band, on the muster-field, at the cannon's mouth, or on the
decks of your war-ships? That is what your argument means, if it
means anything logically.

But sir, I am not going to argue the proposition at all. I am
going to vote against it because the right of suffrage is that
rugged and severe service which man has no right to devolve upon
woman. It is enough to say that when the American women want the
ballot, when they come to hanker for it, and fall in love with
the exercise of the ballot at the polls, I am in favor of their
voting, but not until then; and I am not in favor of that
sentimental sort of stuff which is gotten up somewhere or other
by portions of the people who would force it upon the American
women as a general proposition. Whenever they come to desire it,
whenever the American women come to ask it, and particularly when
they come to demand it, or even to solicit it, there will be no
question as to what the American Congress will do; but until that
time comes I shall vote steadily against it.

Nobody will be surprised at these sentiments from me who has had
occasion to know the sentiments that I have expressed on this
same subject on former occasions. I will send to the desk and ask
to have read a paragraph or two from a speech made by me some
years ago on the subject of suffrage.

The CHIEF CLERK read as follows:

Universal suffrage is affirmed by its advocates as among the
absolute or natural rights of man, in the sense of mankind,
extending to females as well as males, and susceptible of no
limitation unless as opposed to child or infant. It is
supposed to originate in rights independent of citizenship;
like the absolute rights of liberty, personal security, and
possession of property, it is natural to man. It exists, of
course, independent of sex or condition, manhood or
womanhood. To admit it in the adult and deny it to the youth
would be to abridge the right and ignore the principle. Now,
sir, in practice its extension to women would contravene all
our notions of the family; "put asunder" husband and wife,
and subvert the fundamental principles of family government,
in which the husband is, by all usage and law, human and
divine, the representative head. Besides, it ignores woman,
womanhood, and all that is womanly; all those distinctions
of sex whose objects are apparent in creation, essential in
character, and vital to society, these all disappear in the
manly and impressive demonstration of balloting at a popular
election. Here maids, women, wives, men, and husbands
promiscuously assemble to vindicate the rights of human
nature.

Moreover, it associates the wife and mother with policies of
State, with public affairs, with making, interpreting, and
executing the laws, with police and war, and necessarily
disseverates her from purely domestic affairs, peculiar care
for and duties of the family; and, worst of all, assigns her
duties revolting to her nature and constitution, and wholly
incompatible with those which spring from womanhood.

Besides, the ballot is the inseparable concomitant of the
bayonet. Those who practice the one must be prepared to
exercise the other. To introduce woman at the polls is to
enroll her in the militia; to transfer her from the class of
non-combatants to the class of combatants.--_Congressional
Globe_, part 1, second session Thirty-ninth Congress,
1866-'67, page 40.

Mr. SARGENT.--I have no doubt of the consistency of my friend
from Maine on this proposition and on every other. I have no
doubt that the remarks which he made formerly on this subject he
repeats to-day with the same idea of their entire correctness;
but I differ with him upon both the propositions which he
advances. He says that women do not desire the right of suffrage
and there is no evidence before Congress that they do desire it.
Why, sir, the tables of your committee-rooms have been loaded
with petitions from every State in this Union on this subject,
and they come forward day after day.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--And remonstrances also.

Mr. SARGENT.--Very few indeed.

Mr. STEWART.--I suggest to my friend from California if the only
question is whether women desire the right of suffrage or not,
that can only be determined by submitting it to them. When we
wish to ascertain whether the male citizens of the country desire
a proposition, we submit the question to them and let them vote
upon it.

Mr. SARGENT.--That suggestion is very just. But the fact that
there are remonstrances against the extension of the suffrage to
women shows that there is agitation, and agitation shows interest
in the matter. If this opinion were not in danger of prevailing,
if it were not sweeping over the country, we would get no
remonstrances; it would be looked upon as mere idle wind blowing
nowhere and amounting to nothing. I say these petitions are
coming here in every form. There are large and popular
conventions, attended by ladies and attended by a great many men,
making strong efforts to this end. There is as much agitation on
this point as there was for the abolition of slavery before the
war broke out.

Now I come to the other proposition of my friend from Maine. He
says the ballot and the bayonet go together, and that he who
handles the one must be prepared to handle the other. What do you
do with men who are past the years of military service and
exempted by your laws? Do you deprive them of the ballot? That of
itself is a sufficient answer to that argument. They are not
inseparable. Fortunately for our country the necessity for the
use of the bayonet occurs very seldom; but when it does occur
there are large classes of male voters who are not called to the
field, but are exempted by the policy of our law. No one believes
that if women had this privilege, or this immunity, or this
right--whatever you may call it--put into their hands we would
therefore require of them to do things that would degrade or
unsex them, or that would be improper for them to perform. I
believe that men would have the same respect for women with the
ballot in their hands as without it.

It is not for the few women who remonstrate from luxurious
parlors, sitting upon sofas, in the glare of the gaslight,
changing and choosing their phrases, but for the great class of
laboring women in the country that I appeal for this redress. I
appeal for the women who have been struggling on in these
Government offices, doing the same work that men do, aye, and in
many cases doing it better, for about one-half of the pay. Do you
suppose if they had ballots they would not make their voices
heard here and get for the same work the same pay? Who ever knew
a labor strike of women to succeed? When women in New York City
and other places are bowed down to the earth by their
labor--making shirts at a shilling a day--and they strike for
more pay, for more bread, for an opportunity to live, who ever
heard of one of their strikes succeeding? Men strike from their
workshops and they succeed, and why? Because they have the
ballot; because they have political force, because they have the
power of citizenship behind them in its fullest sense. Give these
poor struggling women the same chance and they can make their way
to a fair remuneration of wages in the public offices, and they
can make their way in the workshops, and these toiling mothers,
widows, and sisters supporting orphan brothers and sisters will
have some opportunity to vindicate their rights and to procure
not merely political rights, but a chance to live, and a chance
to avoid infamy.

Senators talk about this question as if the ballot was not
demanded for women. Will you tell me why it was that the great
party which controls both branches of Congress and holds the
Executive, when it met in Philadelphia at that grand convention,
put a plank in its platform stating that these demands for
further rights should be respectfully considered? Do you think
there was no agitation, no desire on the part of women for the
ballot when that great convention could be moved to a declaration
like this:

The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the
loyal women or America for their noble devotion to the cause
of freedom. Their admission to higher fields of usefulness
is viewed with satisfaction, and the honest demand of any
class of citizens for additional rights shall be treated
with respectful consideration.

Was that mere euphuism, mere phrasing? Did that mean nothing? Did
it respond to no demand? Ay, sir, did it not only respond to a
demand which was there pressed, but did it not imply a duty, a
pledge which this party ought to redeem?

But the Senator from Maine, as well as the Senator from North
Carolina, asserts that the XIV. Amendment of the Constitution has
no relation whatever to political rights, that it relates to
something with reference to social equality, something in the far
distance, but does not touch this question at all. When I called
the attention of the Senator from North Carolina to the XV.
Amendment which says "the right of citizens to vote shall not be
denied or abridged," assuming the right to exist, not saying that
the right hereafter shall exist and shall not be abridged; but
the right now existing by fair intendment shall not be abridged,
he replied "that I deduced this right by an inference," and he
thought a right of this kind ought not to stand on mere
inference. His argument for the opposite construction, that the
right to vote may be abridged for any other cause than those
enumerated in the amendment, is drawn only by an inference from
it. The affirmative language is that the right shall not be
abridged for certain causes; and then by an inference the Senator
says it may be abridged for others. In other words, his argument
is that I am not at liberty to infer from the Constitution of the
United States rights for women or rights for mankind. I shall not
extend it by inference in favor of freedom, but any inference
which will limit its operation, which will destroy or curtail its
meaning, is legitimate.

Mr. MERRIMON: What clause of the Constitution does the Senator
assert creates the right?

Mr. SARGENT: The first section of the XV. Amendment declares that
the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be
denied or abridged--speaking of it as an affirmative right; not
speaking of it as here established but as a right which of course
must have been established by the XIV. Amendment.

Now, sir, to show that I do not strain the interpretation of the
Constitution, I desire to refer to some few authorities even
under the old Constitution which go very far to answer the
authority that the Senator cited. Bushrod Washington, a member of
the United States Supreme Court, and well known as a jurist of
high attainments and great powers of mind, in the case of
Corfield _vs._ Coryell declared what I shall read, which is
approvingly cited by Kent, the master writer upon American law,
in the second volume of his Commentaries:

It was declared in Corfield _vs._ Coryell that the
privileges and immunities conceded by the Constitution of
the United States to citizens in the several States were to
be confined to those which were in their nature fundamental,
and belonged of right to the citizens of all free
governments. Such are the rights of protection of life and
liberty, and to acquire and enjoy property, and to pay no
higher impositions than other citizens, and to pass through
or reside in the State at pleasure, and to enjoy the
elective franchise according to the regulations of the laws
of the State.

Those, according to the decision in Corfield _vs._ Coryell, cited
approvingly by Chancellor Kent, are the rights and immunities of
citizens of the United States. Then comes in the XIV. Amendment
to the Constitution of the United States, which declares that
"all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States," and further, that "no State shall make or enforce any
law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States."

Now, sir, I quote from Bouvier's Law Dictionary, under the title
"citizen." He gives what the word means, first in English law,
and then he comes down to American law:

One who, under the Constitution and laws of the United
States, has a right to vote for Representatives in Congress
and other public officers, and who is qualified to fill
offices in the gift of the people.

In the face of authorities like these, who shall deny that the
right to vote is one of those privileges and immunities of
citizenship, or that citizenship itself carries with it that
highest right? Go into literature and you find the same
definition; as, for instance, in the work which I hold in my hand
entitled "Words and their Uses," by R. Grant White. He says:

A citizen is a person who has certain political rights, and
the word is properly used only to imply or suggest the
possession of these rights.

Is it a mere question of privilege or immunity? It is a right
which exists and so it is considered in all the law; so it is
treated in the well-considered decisions on the subject, and by
the text writers.

By the pledge which was given by the dominant party of the
country in their last National Convention, by the allegiance
which Democrats themselves owe to the Constitution of the United
States, by the higher benefit which will be conferred upon
society, upon the women themselves who are struggling for a
chance in life, and upon men themselves by the purification of
society, I ask that this amendment be adopted.

Mr. BAYARD: I should like to ask the honorable Senator a question
before he takes his seat. I understand that he denies the power
of the Congress of the United States or of a State to exclude a
female from voting, to make an exclusion based upon sex, because
it would be an infringement of her rights as a citizen, under the
meaning of that word in the Constitution, according to the
construction given it by the courts. I should like to ask him
whether he considers that an exclusion by reason of age is not
just as arbitrary and unauthorized as the exclusion by reason of
sex, and by what right can it be that a State or the United
States shall arbitrarily fix a period in a person's life at which
he shall attain his civil rights? In most of the States, and by
the common law of England, the age of twenty-one years was fixed
as what they term the majority, when a person becomes _sui
juris_. Under the laws of the various States of this Union,
following the laws of other civilized communities of older date,
a period has been fixed in the life of man at which he attains
his civil rights. Ordinarily it is at the age of twenty-one
years; under the civil law it is twenty-five; it is so in France;
it is so in Spain; it is so in the French and Spanish Colonies.
Among the English-speaking people the age of twenty-one years is
the period fixed. If the rights which have been spoken of by the
Senator from Indiana and the Senator from California are
inalienable, natural rights, are part and parcel of those
"privileges and immunities" referred to by the Constitution of
the United States, how can it be that a law, a mere arbitrary
enactment by a State or by Congress, shall exclude a man who is
twenty years and six months old from exercising those inalienable
rights, those privileges and immunities which six months after,
by the mere difference of time, they permit him to enjoy? I have
stated the question at length for the purpose of letting the
Senator from California answer it more fully.

Mr. SARGENT: Mr. President, I do not think the Constitution
prevents a regulation of the power to vote. The States
unquestionably have a right to fix the time when voting shall
take place, to fix the places where the voting shall be done, and
they have the right to fix the age at which voting shall be
exercised. But under the Constitution they have no power to
prescribe a test which is not equally attainable by all persons.
They have no right to say that only white men shall vote, for
that would exclude black men. They have no right to say that only
black men shall vote, for that would exclude white men. They have
no right to say that only men shall vote, for that would exclude
women. The Constitution says that all shall be put on an equality
in this respect, that any test which may be required shall apply
to all alike, men and women, black or white.

Mr. BAYARD: But the law does no such thing. There are classes,
and a very large and great class in the State that the Senator
represents, who can not become citizens of the United States and
can not vote there.

Mr. SARGENT: Why not?

Mr. BAYARD: Because of their race; because they are Asiatics and
not Africans.

Mr. SARGENT: The Constitution of the United States does not
prevent it.

Mr. BAYARD: No; but the law of Congress prevents it. The Senator
says these are all entitled under the law.

Mr. SARGENT: I will not detain the Senate now on the point
referred to by the Senator. He has shifted his ground and I will
not follow him. Whenever legislation comes up on that subject I
will discuss it. They are not citizens of the United States. I am
dealing now with citizens whose privileges and immunities as such
no one has a right to abridge.

Mr. FERRY, of Michigan: It is not my intention to speak on the
merits of this proposition; but inasmuch as the Senator from
Maine (Mr. Morrill) has raised the question of consistency and
appealed to his record, it reminds me of the fact that the
question of woman suffrage appeared as early, I think, as 1858,
before the Legislature of Michigan. I had the honor of holding a
seat in the Senate of the State at that time, and the question
was referred to the committee of which I was a member, and it
fell to my lot to report upon it. If my recollection serves me
rightly the resolution favoring the right of women to vote was
lost by but a majority of three in the Michigan Senate.

Mr. EDMUNDS: Which way was the report?

Mr. FERRY, of Michigan: I am reminded by the Senator from Vermont
that perhaps I have not intimated which side the report took. The
report was in favor of woman suffrage, and it may be regarded as
having contributed to so large a vote. To-day, sir, is the first
time since that occasion that I have been officially called upon
to record my judgment upon the same question. I have had no
reason since that report was drawn to shake my belief that the
right of suffrage will not be jeopardized or perverted if wielded
by the hand of woman. Believing that now and desiring to act in
accord with my action in 1858 in the Senate of my native State. I
am glad of the opportunity to prove my consistency by voting for
woman suffrage to-day.

Mr. ANTHONY: Mr. President, I am quite content that this
experiment of female suffrage should be tried in this new
Territory. I believe that female suffrage is coming with the
other ameliorations and changes which have been tending for so
many years in the same direction. I have not taken any part in
the measures which have been agitated to hasten that event. I
think it will come in its own good time; but I should do very
great injustice to myself if I should allow it to be supposed
that my opinion is based upon some of the arguments that have
been made here. I do not believe that suffrage is a natural
right. I believe it is a right that grows out of society, a
political right, and that it is within the body-politic to decide
upon its limits, its modifications, and its conditions. The only
question in my mind is whether it is proper and expedient. I
think that the XIV. Amendment has nothing whatever to do with it.

Mr. MORTON: Mr. President, the Senators from Rhode Island, Maine,
and North Carolina have all said that the right to vote is not a
natural right, but merely a political right. Is not that a
distinction without a difference? If I have a natural right, I
have a right to use the necessary and proper means to enforce
that right; it is a part of it. To say that I have a natural
right but have not the right to use the means for its protection
is illogical; it makes nonsense of it. The natural and proper
means to enforce any right are a part of it. The right of
self-defense is one of the natural rights; everybody concedes it,
and to take from me the natural and effective means of defending
myself is to take from me the right itself. Government is the
means of securing natural rights, and should depend upon the
consent of the governed. Therefore the right to give or to
withhold my consent is a part of the natural right. Let us come
down to the substance and put away these shadowy distinctions. To
say that I have the right of self-defense, but that I have no
right to use the knife or any instrument necessary to protect my
life against the assassin, is nonsense. So far as the right of
government is concerned, the right to assent, to consent, or to
dissent, the natural means under our system is the right to vote.
You can not conceive any other. Therefore it is a part of the
right and without it the other is worth nothing.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I wish to ask the Senator from Indiana whether
persons under the age of twenty-one and eighteen years
respectively have not all the natural rights that grown-up people
have?

Mr. MORTON: I think I can answer that question very readily, if
the Senator is through.

Mr. EDMUNDS: That is my only question at present.

Mr. MORTON: Every right must have some sort of regulation.

Mr. EDMUNDS: That does not answer the question.

Mr. MORTON: Wait until I get through. We have in our country, and
I believe generally in Europe, certainly in England, agreed that
twenty-one years is the age when men and women have come into the
full possession of their understanding and are supposed to be so
well informed that they can take upon themselves the government
of their own fortunes and the control of their own property. The
mere fact that this thing is to be regulated does not take away
the right. The natural right to own and control property is
regulated in that way. There must be some age fixed. We know the
infant can not do it; we know the child ten years old has not the
necessary knowledge of the world or strength of understanding;
and we have agreed upon a certain age when men and women come to
the possession of their understanding and are able to take care
of their own rights, whatever they may be.

Mr. EDMUNDS: May I ask the Senator, after all, what his opinion
is, whether a child of tender years, say ten years of age, has
not every natural right that a man of seventy has?

Mr. MORTON: Certainly.

Mr. EDMUNDS: Morally, legally, and every other way?

Mr. MORTON: To my mind that furnishes no argument at all.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I am not arguing it.

Mr. MORTON: It is merely putting an extreme case to say that a
woman twenty-five years of age shall not have the right to vote
because if she votes the child in her arms has the right to vote.
Is there any force in that?

Mr. EDMUNDS: I have not put any case at all. I am asking the
Senator from Indiana, which he seems to be very unwilling to
answer, whether a child of tender years has or has not, in his
opinion, the same natural rights that a grown-up person has. That
can be answered one way or the other without saying it is an
argument.

Mr. MORTON: I suppose the child has the right, certainly the
incipient right; but that amounts to nothing when you apply it to
a child that has not the strength, the experience, the knowledge
of the world, or the age to exercise it. The common sense of
mankind in this and every other country fixes a certain age when
men and women shall be regarded as mature and qualified to take
care of themselves.

Mr. EDMUNDS: They do not fix the same age, let me suggest to the
Senator.

Mr. MORTON: Now, Mr. President, unless we are prepared to deny
the very fundamental doctrine upon which our Government is based,
we must admit that women have the same rights that men have. The
Senator from North Carolina will not deny that women have the
same natural rights that men have. The Senator nods his assent.
Then if that is so, they have the same natural right to use the
means necessary to protect those rights that men have. That
right, so far as men are concerned, is the ballot.

Mr. MERRIMON: Natural means.

Mr. MORTON: Whatever means are necessary and proper to the
protection of a natural right are natural means.

Mr. BAYARD: Did the Senator from Indiana answer the Senator from
Vermont in the affirmative or negative?

Mr. MORTON: I tried to answer him.

Mr. BAYARD: I merely ask the question. He says now very
triumphantly to the Senator from North Carolina that the rights
of men and women are the same, their natural rights are the same.

Mr. MORTON: Yes.

Mr. BAYARD: I ask are the rights of children different from those
of men?

Mr. MORTON: I think not, but I do not think there is any force in
that argument, as I said before. There is a certain common sense
and a certain practical regulation of natural rights all the
world over.

Mr. EDMUNDS: But is it the common sense of men alone, let me
suggest to the Senator. The children may differ with us; they
generally do on such questions.

Mr. MORTON: I will not spend any time on that argument.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I think that is wise.

Mr. MORTON: To say that the mature woman has not the right to
vote because the child in her arms must have the same right,
comes so near making nonsense of the whole business that I
dismiss it, and come back to the other statement, that women
having the same natural rights that men have, have the right to
the use the same means for their protection; and as the means
under our form of government for the protection of the natural
rights of men is the right to vote, women should have the same
right and power accorded to them. The whole theory of natural
rights is mere trash unless you shall give women the right and
the power to protect them. The Declaration of Independence says
that governments are instituted for that purpose, and that they
must depend upon the consent of the governed; and as the women
are one-half of the governed, they have a right to give one-half
of the consent.

The Senator from North Carolina says that the women of the
country have consented to our form of government, because they
have not dissented. They have no power to refuse their consent.
They may remonstrate and scold about it, but that amounts to
nothing; their consent one way or the other means nothing except
so far as their influence may be concerned. There were four and a
half million of slaves who did not remonstrate against their
bondage. Why? They had no means of doing it, and if they had had
it would not have amounted to anything. Would the Senator argue
from that, that they had no natural rights, or that they were
consenting to their bondage? When you take into consideration the
fact that men have all "political power and all the other sources
of influence and power over women," it is not very strange
perhaps that a majority of them are not asking for the right of
suffrage. Some women at least are asking for it; I know that very
many women all over the country believe they have the right to
vote and ought to vote who never go near a political meeting and
never sign petitions or anything of that kind. I would be willing
to-day to submit the question to the votes of the women of the
United States whether they should have that privilege or not. But
suppose that a majority do not want the ballot, how does that
affect the rights of the minority who do want it? One woman can
not consent for another.

I believe women will never have their rights in this country,
will never enjoy the same means for taking care of themselves and
making an honest living in the world, until they have the right
to vote. As soon as they have that right you will find they will
be placed upon an equality with men. The Senator from California
refers to the fact, and it is a notorious fact, that in every
State in this Union, women are paid only about one-half for the
same quantity and the same kind of labor that men receive. Does
any man say that there is any sense or any justice in that
distinction? Will that ever be remedied until woman has the right
to vote? It never will.

I believe, Mr. President, in every point of view the right of
suffrage should be extended to woman. I maintain that it is a
God-given right to take part in the administration of that
government which controls their earthly destinies and interests.
I believe it is for the interest of the men, for the interest of
children, for the interest of our country, for the interest of
the race.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I could name a dozen instances all of which show
that in all the States of this Union, speaking as a general rule,
as it is in Great Britain and in almost all other civilized
countries, the law, instead of discriminating against womanhood,
discriminates in its favor in every respect whatever except the
political respect of voting. That is a fact that no man can
truthfully deny who has studied the history of society or who
knows anything about the history of legislation in civilized
States. Therefore, it does not do to say that the right to vote,
the privilege of voting, or the duty of voting--because I use
those phrases as not having the peculiar meaning that the Senator
from California imputes to them, is essential to the protection
of the female sex as such, because, as I have said, the
protection that the law gives them is now in all respects, where
their rights or privileges come in collision with the rest of
society, greater than is extended to men.

The Senator from Indiana insists--and he has a perfect right to
do so, of course--that the right to vote is a natural right, and,
therefore, if females are excluded from voting, as they are by
the constitutions and laws of the various States, it is an
infringement upon natural right, and that that infringement ought
to be abolished. Of course, his conclusion is correct if his
premises are true; but is the right to vote a natural right? Can
the Senator refer me to the work of any writer upon natural or
municipal law from the beginning of the world to the year 1860,
which maintains, or asserts, or insinuates, or suggests that the
right to vote in a political community is a natural right?

Mr. MORTON: I do not call to mind any author.

Mr. EDMUNDS: No; the Senator does not. With candor he says so,
because the Senator, learned in history as he is, knows, as the
rest of us know, that there is no such thing. He knows that in
all the discussions and all the turmoils of society where the
rights of men and women in political respects, the rights of
society at large, have been discussed and turned over and over
and all manner of experiments in government tried and suggested,
it never has been suggested that the right to participate in the
government of a political community is a natural right belonging
to every human being.

Mr. MORTON: I ask the Senator, if there are natural rights, do
not the natural and necessary means to protect those rights
become a part of them? What is the right worth if that be denied?

Mr. EDMUNDS: I answer no, in the broad sense in which the Senator
has put it. If he asks of me as to a state of nature, without
being organized into any social or political community whatever,
then I answer yes, and every man is what the civil writers called
in old times a barbarian; and he is invested, upon his own
judgment and in his own right, with the power of defending and
affirming whatever natural rights he has against all comers,
exactly as a nation stands in respect to another nation; no man
has a right to impose upon him any restraint; no man has a right
to demand from him any concession; he is absolutely independent;
and when his rights or claims come in conflict with those of
anybody else he "fights it out" or runs away. So far, there is
natural right, no doubt, but I hope the Senator has not gone back
quite so far from the present condition of the world as to wish
to discuss questions of that kind. That is not what he means.
What he means by natural rights no doubt is what organized
communities recognize as things of natural right, and those are
things which are inherent in the person but are regulated and
limited and restrained according to the rights and necessities of
all the other persons in the community. In an organized society
the right of self-defense is not a natural right in the broad
sense, so that under all circumstances A B or C D has a right to
defend himself against all aggression. An officer may come to
arrest me on a warrant issued by a court irregularly. I have not
the right to slay the officer because he takes me on the
warrant. My place to resist is not by my natural force, not by
raising a mob, but by going to the court that issued the warrant
and showing that it had been issued contrary to law. And yet on
the Senator's notion every time a man is brought under the law,
if he does not agree with the law, his business is to fight. The
community can not get along in that way. There is no such right
as that in society.

Mr. STEWART: I ask the Senator what right, whether it be a
natural right or an acquired right, has one man to govern
another, or has society to govern the individual?

Mr. EDMUNDS: What right?

Mr. STEWART: Is it a natural or acquired right?

Mr. EDMUNDS: No man has a natural right to govern another, or an
acquired right, or a political right, or a civil right that I
know of, unless he is appointed the guardian of somebody. Of
course, of that the Senator has not any experience; certainly not
on the side of being a ward.

Mr. STEWART: Then what right has society, the body of men, to
govern an individual? Is it a natural right or an acquired right?

Mr. EDMUNDS: Suppose I should answer the Senator and say I do not
know?

Mr. STEWART: What right have they to take from him his freedom in
his savage state to do as he pleases? And if they have a right to
take it from him, what right have they to say he shall not
participate with them equally in the regulations that shall be
made for his government? If they have a right to govern him, he
has a right, whether it be natural or not, to have a voice in it,
if the principle of equality and fair play is one of the
fundamental principles that should govern mankind.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I see the Senator's point. The substance of it is,
if I correctly understand him, that if society has a right to
govern him, he has a right to govern society, and that makes
equality; and if the majority has a right to control him, he has
a right to control the majority, and there is equality! Very
well. I leave the Senator, with his point, to enjoy it.

Now, let us return to the subject. It is perfectly plain that the
right to vote is one which society, as it is organized, is to
determine by its fundamental laws. Society does determine, in the
State of Vermont, if you please, that voting must only be
exercised by males above the age of twenty-one years, those who
are not in the penitentiary, those who are not in the lunatic
asylums, those who are not idiots, and so on. The laws of Indiana
may provide the same thing, or may declare that the age shall be
twenty, or may declare as the Roman law used to do, that it shall
be twenty-five, and so on; or it may declare as the Constitution
of the United States does as to the age of Senators and as to the
age of the President of the United States. On the argument of
Senators in favor of this amendment to this bill, there would
exist no right whatever in constituted society to make any
limitation upon the free exercise of political rights to vote and
hold office in respect to age. Why say a man can not be a member
of the Senate until he is thirty years of age? Who can say he is
not just as good at twenty-nine?

The Senator from Indiana says that common sense teaches that we
must put some limitation on this. So it does; and common sense
has taught that it is left to each political community to
determine what are the qualifications and limitations upon the
privilege of exercising political rights; and it has always been
so, and it always will be so, because when the Senator proposes
to say that the other sex may vote--which I admit he has a
perfect right to say, and society may so say--he does not
undertake to say that ladies of seventeen, instead of eighteen,
shall vote, because they come of age in my State at eighteen, and
do in many of the States--the Senator does not propose to say
that all ladies of seventeen shall vote; and yet it is impossible
to say that there is any distinction in respect to intelligence
as a matter of right, any philosophical distinction between one
year and another. True, as the Senator says, you may run it down
so far that at last you have reached a condition of infancy, and
there everybody says the child is not wise enough to vote, is not
wise enough to do anything without having guardianship and
tutelage. But if you put it upon the ground of natural right, the
child has just as good a right to say to you that he shall be the
judge of it, as you have to say to him that you must be; and this
shows that the notion of any natural right of anybody of any age
to participate in the government of society is an absolute
absurdity. It is one of those figments of the imagination that
have crawled into some people's brains within a very few years,
and will go out again as other delusions do.

Then when you come to the XIV. Amendment it is equally obvious
that that has nothing to do with the subject. If anybody had
thought it related to suffrage when the XV. Amendment was passed,
nobody would have voted for it, because on that theory the right
to vote did exist in all colored persons, females as well as
males; and yet nobody of any party or any creed pretended at that
time when we proposed the XV. Amendment that we had guaranteed
the right to vote by the XIV. Nobody suspected it; nobody
suggested it; and nobody believed in it, and very few people do
now, for the simple reason that the XIV. Amendment was directed,
as everybody knows, by its language, by its history, by its
relation to other laws, to what are called civil rights; but I am
not going to define what they are, because to do so takes time.
So, Mr. President, the XV. Amendment was passed in order to
secure a right to vote without regard to race, color, or previous
condition of servitude.

Then you come to the real question which is involved here; and
that is the propriety of providing that females, twenty-one years
of age, not idiots, not lunatics, not in the
penitentiary--standing upon the same limitations that men do in
these respects--are to vote. That presents a fair question, one
that we have a perfect right to pass upon; and I have only said
what I have in order to show that we had not better run crazy
over the idea that we were dealing with natural and inalienable
rights, and that we were violating human rights if we happened to
say no, or that we were vindicating human rights in the sense now
spoken of if we should say yes. We are merely considering a
question of political expediency, as confessedly we have the
power in governing the Territories to let anybody vote we choose.
We can put the whole concern in Pembina, if we think it wise,
into the hands of the madmen up there, and I do not know but that
they are in the majority, for I certainly know nothing about
it.... If no other Senator wishes to make any remarks, I move to
lay the bill upon the table.

Mr. SARGENT: I ask for the yeas and nays on that motion.

Mr. HAGER: I hope the Senator from Vermont will withdraw his
motion. I desire to make a few remarks.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Clayton in the chair). The motion is
not debatable.

Mr. HAGER: I ask the Senator to withdraw the motion for a few
minutes.

Mr. EDMUNDS: If the Senator will renew it when he finishes his
remarks, I will do so.

Mr. HAGER: Very well.

Mr. EDMUNDS: I withdraw the motion.

Mr. HAGER: Mr. President, it seems to me strange that a question
of so much importance as that raised by this amendment appears to
be, from the positions taken by Senators on the floor, should be
presented upon this bill, which, if amended as proposed, will not
confer the right of suffrage upon females throughout the country;
and for us to undertake to legislate upon this question in regard
to a distant Territory where perhaps there are few or no women,
unless they be of the Indian race, is to me a very astonishing
thing.... If suffrage should be extended to females let it come
up as a distinct, independent proposition by itself, and then
every Senator can take his position in regard to a question which
affects the whole country, and not a distant Territory merely.
That is the way, in my opinion, to get at it.... Inasmuch as in
the wisdom of the Government and people of the United States the
right to the elective franchise has been conferred upon the black
race in this country, I see no reason on the ground of
qualification why it should not be conferred upon females.... But
I am unwilling to legislate by piecemeal in this manner. If there
is any good in it; if, as the Senator from Indiana says, as a
matter of right women should be entitled to the franchise, that
right should be co-extensive with the whole country, and not be
limited to the little Territory of Pembina, which is not yet
organized.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--I renew the motion to lay the bill on the table.

Mr. SARGENT.--On that motion I ask for the yeas and nays. The
yeas and nays were ordered.

Mr. RAMSEY.--I should like to appeal to the Senator from Vermont
to withdraw the motion for five minutes.

Mr. STEWART.--We will not lay it on the table.

Mr. RAMSEY.--Very well; let the vote be taken. The question being
taken by yeas and nays, resulted--yeas, 24; nays, 24; as follows:

YEAS--Messrs. Bayard, Buckingham, Conkling, Conover, Cooper,
Davis, Edmunds, Frelinghuysen, Hager, Hamilton of Maryland,
Howe, Ingalls, Johnston, Jones, MeCreery, Merrimon, Morrill
of Maine, Norwood, Ransom, Scott, Sherman, Wadleigh,
Washburn, and Wright--24.

NAYS--Messrs. Bogy, Boreman, Boutwell, Carpenter, Chandler,
Clayton, Ferry of Michigan, Flanagan, Gilbert, Harvey,
Hitchcock, Logan, Mitchell, Morton, Patterson, Pratt,
Ramsey, Sargent, Spencer, Sprague, Stewart, Tipton, West,
and Windom--24.

ABSENT--Messrs. Alcorn, Allison, Anthony, Brownlow, Cameron,
Cragin, Dennis, Dorsey, Fenton, Ferry of Connecticut,
Goldthwaite, Gordon, Hamilton of Texas, Hamlin, Kelly,
Lewis, Morrill of Vermont, Oglesby, Pease, Robertson,
Saulsbury, Schurz, Stevenson, Stockton, and Thurman--25.

So the motion was not agreed to.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. CLAYTON in the chair.)--The question
is on the amendment of the Senator from California [Mr.
SARGENT], upon which the yeas and nays have been ordered.

Mr. BAYARD.--Mr. President, it would seem scarcely credible that
in the Senate of the United States an abrupt and sudden change in
so fundamental a relation as that borne by the two sexes to our
system of Government should be proposed as an "experiment," and
that it should be gravely recommended that a newly organized
Territory under act of Congress should be set aside for this
"experiment," which is in direct, grossly irreverent disregard of
all that we have known as a rule, our great fundamental rule, in
organizing a government of laws, whether colonial, State, or
Federal, in this country.

I frankly say, Mr. President, that which strikes me most forcibly
is the gross irreverence of this proposition, its utter disregard
of that Divine will by which man and woman were created
different, physically, intellectually, and morally, and in
defiance of which we are now to have this poor, weak, futile
attempt of man to set up his schemes of amelioration in defiance
of every tradition, of every revelation, of all human experience,
enlightened as it has been by Divine permission. It seems to me
that to introduce so grave a subject as this, to spring it here
upon the Senate without notice in the shape of an amendment to a
pending measure, to propose thus to experiment with the great
laws that lie at the very foundation of human society, and to do
it for the most part in the trivial tone which we have witnessed
during this debate, is not only mortifying, but it renders one
almost hopeless of the permanence of our Government if this is to
be the example set by one of the Houses of Congress, that which
claims to be more sedate and deliberate, if it proposes in this
light and perfunctory way to deal with questions of this grave
nature and import. Sir, there is no time at present for that
preparation which such a subject demands at the hands of any
sensible man, mindful of his responsibilities, who seeks to deal
with it.

This is an attempt to disregard laws promulgated by the Almighty
Himself. It is irreverent legislation in the simplest and
strongest sense of the word. Nay, sir, not only so, but it is a
step in defiance of the laws of revealed religion as given to
men. If there be one institution which it seems to me has
affected the character of this country, which has affected the
whole character of modern civilization, the results of which we
can but imperfectly trace and but partly recognize, it is the
effect of the institution of Christian marriage, the mysterious
tie uniting the one man and the one woman until they shall become
one and not two persons. It is an institution which is
mysterious, which is beyond the reach and the understanding of
man, but he certainly can best exhibit his sense of duty and
proper obligation when he reverently shall submit to and
recognize its wisdom. All such laws as proposed by this amendment
are stumbling-blocks, and are meant to be stumbling-blocks in the
way of that perfect union of the sexes which was intended by the
law of Christian marriage.

Suffrage is a political franchise; it is not a right; because the
word "right" is used in reference to voting in the XIV. Amendment
to the Constitution, that does not make it a right. It is in the
very nature of government a political privilege confided,
according to the exigency, the expediency, by the wisdom of
those who control the government, to a certain class. If this
right to vote be what the Senator from Indiana declares it to be,
a natural and inalienable right, then you have no more right to
deny it to a person who is under the age of twenty-one than you
have to deny it to a person who is over the age of twenty-one
years. Sir, the difference is radical. Voting is no right; it is
a privilege granted, a franchise which is granted to certain
classes, more or less extended according to the supposed
expediency which shall control the minds of those who frame the
constitution of government for a people. There is no wrong done,
so far as the abnegation of a right is involved, by denying this
to certain classes of a community, whether on account of age or
sex or any other supposed causes of disqualification. In this
country the whole foundation of our institutions has been that
the male sex when arrived at years of supposed discretion alone
should take part in the political control of the country.

It is not necessary for me to speak now of other influences than
those that come from politics; it is not necessary for me to
dwell upon the actual and potential influences that control the
fate of men and of nations. We all know they are not those most
apparent. We all know it is the passions, the affections, the
sympathies, and desires of the human heart and human ambition
that control the vote, and not the vote that controls them. And
now you propose to try an "experiment" upon a community composed
of your own fellow-citizens, which is in defiance of all human
experience, all suggestions of philosophy, of your own laws, and
of every lesson you should have drawn from every civilized nation
that has preceded you.

Under the operation of this Amendment, what will become of the
family hearthstone around which cluster the very best influences
of human education? You will have a family with two heads--a
"house divided against itself." You will no longer have that
healthful and necessary subordination of wife to husband, and
that unity of relationship which is required by a true and a real
Christian marriage. You will have substituted a system of
contention and difference warring against the laws of nature
herself, and attempting by these new fangled, petty, puny, and
most contemptible contrivances, organized in defiance of the best
lessons of human experience, to confuse, impede, and disarrange
the palpable will of the Creator of the world. I can see in this
proposition for female suffrage the end of all that home life and
education which are the best nursery for a nation's virtue. I can
see in all these attempts to invade the relations between man and
wife, to establish differences, to declare those to be two whom
God hath declared to be one, elements of chaotic disorder,
elements of destruction to all those things which are, after all,
our best reliance for a good and a pure and an honest government.

As I said, Mr. President, I rose simply to express my
astonishment that a measure of this kind could have received the
assent which it apparently has received from the Senate of the
United States in the vote just recorded. The subject is too
broad, it is too deep, it is too serious to attempt to discuss it
unprepared and within the time which is allotted to me. I
sincerely hope that if this subject is to be acted upon, it will
be after long, serious, severe, close consideration. Let all
sides of the subject be viewed in all its vastness and
far-reaching consequences. Let Senators consider the results, and
let at least their aims in this matter be something higher than
mere political and partisan considerations, which I fear have
animated much of the discussion to which we have listened. Mr.
President, I trust sincerely that the vote just taken, indicating
the refusal of the Senate to lay this bill upon the table, may
not indicate the will of the Senate in respect of this Amendment.
We have no right to subject this or any other portion of our
fellow-citizens to so sad, so untoward, so unhappy an experiment
as is here proposed. I have sat in this Chamber, and seen laws
leveled with the most serious and cruel penalties against a class
of people practicing polygamy in our Territories. What will this
law do? Will it not in fact sever those relations to which I have
referred as being essential for the virtue and safety of a State?
What is your State unless it is founded upon virtuous and happy
homes? And where can there be a virtuous and happy home unless a
Christian marriage shall have consecrated it?

No, Mr. President, I trust that this Amendment will not be
adopted, that we shall not trifle in this way with the happiness
of a large portion of our fellow-citizens, that we shall not set
what I must consider this indecorous example of government; and I
trust that the vote of the Senate most emphatically will stop
here, and I trust stop permanently even the suggestion of
granting the political franchise of voting to the women of
America. They do not need it, sir. I can not, of course, speak
for all, but I know that I can speak the sentiment of many when I
say that to them the proposition is abhorrent to take them from
the retirement where their sway is so admitted, so beneficent, so
elevating, and to throw them into another sphere for which they
are totally unfitted and where all that at present adorns and
protects them must be taken away by the rough and vulgar contact
with those struggles which men are much better fitted to meet.
No, sir; the relations of the sexes as they exist to-day under
the laws of this country have produced happy and stable
government, or at least are not responsible for the evil features
which we witness. The best protection for the women of America is
in the respect and the love which the men of America bear to
them. Every man conversant with the practical affairs of life
knows that the fact, that the mere fact that it is a woman who
seeks her rights in a court of justice alone gives her an
advantage over her contestant which few men are able to resist, I
would put it to any who has practiced law in the courts of this
country; let him stand before a jury composed only of men, let
the case be tried only by men; let all the witnesses be men; and
the plaintiff or the defendant be a woman, and if you choose to
add to that, even more unprotected than women generally are, a
widow or an orphan, and does not every one recognize the
difficulty, not to find protection for her rights, but the
difficulty to induce the men who compose the juries of America to
hold the balance of justice steadily enough to insure that the
rights of others are not invaded by the force of sympathy for her
sex? These are common every-day illustrations. They could be
multiplied _ad infinitum_.

Mr. President, there never was a greater mistake, there never was
a falser fact stated than that the women of America need any
protection further than the love borne to them by their
fellow-countrymen. Every right, every privilege, many that men do
not attempt, many that men can not hope for, are theirs most
freely. Do not imperil the advantages which they have, do not
attempt in this hasty, ill-considered, shallow way to interfere
with the relations which are founded upon the laws of nature
herself. Depend upon it, Mr. President, man's wisdom is best
shown by humble attention, by humble obedience to the great laws
of nature; and those discoveries which have led men to their
chiefest enjoyment and greatest advantages have been from the
great minds of those who did lay their ears near the heart of
nature, listened to its beatings, and did not attempt to correct
God's handiwork by their own futile attempts at improvement.

Mr. STEWART.--Mr. President, I listened to the speech of the
Senator from Delaware with great attention; I appreciate his
feelings on the subject; and it has occasioned me to have some
reflection upon this subject during the time he was speaking. I
want to call the attention of the Senator from Delaware and of
the Senate and of the country to a few facts in regard to this
matter of woman's rights, and to see whether it has not been well
to change some of the ancient order of things. There was a time
among our Anglo-Saxon fathers when it was seriously discussed in
the law-books what size the whip should be with which a husband
could properly chastise his wife. If it was no larger than the
thumb, I believe no action would lie. Those were the good old
times, and those times you can see illustrated to-day all over
the world where savages----

Mr. SARGENT.--That was when we were near to nature.

Mr. STEWART.--Yes; that was when man held sway, and when God's
law of man's supremacy was omnipotent! Then harmony was
preserved. If you will go out into my State and see the Indian
women carrying the loads on their backs and the men riding on
horses, and the women doing the work, you will see the harmony of
the supremacy of man! Now, I undertake to say that there is no
surer criterion of the civilization of any nation than the
position which woman occupies; and the less dependent she is, the
more she has to do with the management of society, the more she
is regarded as an individual, the higher that society stands; but
where she depends exclusively on man and man's justice, there you
have absolute barbarism. Do you think that women have been less
loyal to their husbands, do you think that virtue has been less
protected in this country since the rights of women were
vindicated by the law, since they were entitled to hold property?
Have they not been as good wives as they were formerly? Has
society been injured thereby? Show me the nation that elevates
its women and acknowledges their rights and protects them by the
law and severs them in point of protection from the caprice or
the sympathy of men--show me that nation, and that nation shall
be first. It is one of the evidences of the advance of
civilization in America that woman does occupy the position she
does here; and it is idle to say that society will be destroyed
by recognizing her as having rights to protect.

It is very well for women who chance to have kind husbands and
luxurious homes, under the flattery of their husbands, to sneer
at their less fortunate sisters who are debarred every right. It
is very well for those who have luxury and power and wealth to
trample upon the unfortunate that cry for bread and for help. It
is very easy to philosophize about laws and say that women are
not fit for this place and not fit for that; that it is
indelicate, and all that kind of thing, to allow her to earn an
honest living or to have a place in a Department where she can do
work; it is very well for us to say, "Here, we will give her only
half pay for the same labor;" but they who serve and they who
suffer feel it differently. How is the voice of women on this
subject to be heard? Shall it be heard from that class only who
are satisfied with their protection, or shall the voice of the
weak and the starving be heard? There is no way for it to be
heard. We see it daily. You talk about degradation. One of the
great sources of the degradation of this country, one of the
great sources of the breaking up of families and destroying
society is your low groggeries and your gambling-houses and your
places of resort for bad men, that are tolerated in spite of your
laws and will be so long as men only vote. The women suffer by
these things; and that consideration alone has often made me
hesitate upon this question. I do believe that if the good women
of America could speak to-day they would reform many evils that
we wink at or allow to exist because we want the votes of the
parties who are committing these sins against society. I say let
the women have a voice; and when it is said that this is
ill-considered, that this is not the proper time, and that this
is too serious a business to be considered by the Senate of the
United States on this bill, I tell you society is marching on to
it, and as I remarked before, it will not be ten years before
there will be no voice in this Senate against female suffrage. It
is necessary for women, if they are to be protected in society
and not to be the prey of man, that they shall have the ballot to
protect themselves. It is the only thing in a free government
that can protect any one; and whether it is a natural right or an
artificial right it is nonsense to discuss. It is a necessary
right; it is necessary to freedom; it is necessary to equal
rights; it is necessary to protection; it is necessary for every
class to have the ballot if we are to have a square deal.

Mr. BOREMAN.--I had not intended to utter a word. I supposed the
bill would pass upon the report which was made by the committee.
I am inclined now to think that if it had not been for the
unfortunate, if I may say so, amendment offered by my friend from
California [Mr. Sargent] it would have passed long since. But
this question of woman suffrage is one upon which all our friends
probably do not desire to vote either one way or the other, and
it is a very convenient way to get rid of voting on the question
directly to lay this bill on the table. Fortunately that question
has been settled for the present, and I am glad the Senate has
seen fit not to lay the bill on the table.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--The Senator speaks about people not wishing to vote
on the amendment directly; and as I made the motion to lay on the
table I assume that he refers to me. I beg to disabuse his mind
on that subject, inasmuch as I am opposed to the amendment and am
perfectly free to vote against it, and in doing so I suppose I
represent, according to the latest advices I have, a very large
majority of the people of Vermont.

Mr. BOREMAN.--I agree with the Senator from Vermont on the
subject of woman suffrage myself.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--Then I hope the Senator will not suggest that I am
trying to dodge the question by moving to lay the bill on the
table.

Mr. BOREMAN.--Not at all. I did not allude to the Senator who
made the motion; and the remark I made was more intended to be
playful than serious. I simply thought that probably the bill had
enough friends to pass it if that subject was not mooted. I may
be mistaken. However, I shall be glad to have a vote on the bill
either with or without woman suffrage incorporated in it. I shall
vote against incorporating it, but if it is put there I shall
nevertheless be gratified to have the bill passed. I feel no
interest in it except as representing what I believe to be the
interests and wishes of those to be affected by it. I think the
circumstances are such as to justify Congress in organizing the
Territory, else as representing the committee I should not have
reported the bill. That is all I desire to say.

The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Anthony in the chair).--The question
is on the amendment of the Senator from California [Mr. Sargent],
upon which the yeas and nays have been ordered.

The Secretary proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. JOHNSON (when his name was called).--On this question I am
paired with the Senator from Alabama [Mr. Spencer]. If he were
here he would vote "yea" and I should vote "nay."

Mr. BOGY (after having first voted in the negative).--I rise to
withdraw my vote. At the time I voted I forgot that I was paired
with the Senator from Arkansas [Mr. Dorsey]. I should have voted
"nay" and he would have voted "yea."

The PRESIDING OFFICER.--The vote will be withdrawn if there be no
objection.

Mr. MORRILL, of Maine (after having first voted in the
negative).--It occurs to me that I am paired with the Senator
from Illinois (Mr. Oglesby). If he were here he would vote "yea"
and I should vote "nay." I ask leave to withdraw my vote.

The PRESIDING OFFICER.--Leave will be granted if there is no
objection.

The roll-call having been concluded, the result was
announced--yeas 19, nays 27; as follows:

YEAS--Messrs. Anthony, Carpenter, Chandler, Conover, Ferry
of Michigan, Flanagan, Gilbert, Harvey, Mitchell, Morton,
Patterson, Pratt, Sargent, Sprague, Stewart, Tipton,
Washburn, West, and Windom--19.

NAYS--Messrs. Allison, Bayard, Boreman, Boutwell,
Buckingham, Clayton, Conkling, Cooper, Davis, Edmunds,
Frelinghuysen, Hager, Hamilton of Maryland, Hitchcock,
Jones, Kelly, McCreery, Merrimon, Morrill of Vermont,
Norwood, Ramsey, Ransom, Saulsbury, Scott, Sherman,
Wadleigh, and Wright--27.

ABSENT--Messrs. Alcorn, Bogy, Brownlow, Cameron, Cragin,
Dennis, Dorsey, Fenton, Ferry of Connecticut, Goldthwaite,
Gordon, Hamilton of Texas, Hamlin, Howe, Ingalls, Johnson,
Lewis, Logan, Morrill of Maine, Oglesby, Pease, Robertson,
Schurz, Spencer, Stevenson, Stockton, and Thurman--27.

So the amendment was rejected.

The PRESIDING OFFICER.--The question now is on ordering the bill
to be engrossed for a third reading.

Mr. MORTON called for the yeas and nays; and they were ordered.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--I ask the chairman of the committee if the clause
still stands in the bill which authorizes all the male
inhabitants of that Territory to vote at the first election?

Mr. BOREMAN.--I think the Senator is mistaken about that.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--I am not asking whether I am mistaken or not; I am
asking if the clause remains as it stood reported by the
committee?

Mr. BOREMAN.--Yes, sir.

Mr. EDMUNDS.--That is enough for me.

Mr. RAMSEY.--There is nothing new in that.

The question being taken by yeas and nays, resulted--yeas 19,
nays 29; as follows:

YEAS--Messrs. Bogy, Boreman, Chandler, Clayton, Ferry of
Michigan, Flanagan, Harvey, Hitchcock, Jones, Kelly, Logan,
Mitchell, Patterson, Pratt, Ramsey, Sherman, Tipton,
Wadleigh, and Windom--19.

NAYS--Messrs. Anthony, Bayard, Boutwell, Buckingham,
Carpenter, Conkling, Conover, Davis, Edmunds, Frelinghuysen,
Gilbert, Hager, Hamilton of Maryland, Ingalls, Johnson,
McCreery, Merrimon, Morrill of Maine, Morrill of Vermont,
Norwood, Ransom, Sargent, Saulsbury, Scott, Sprague,
Stewart, Washburn, West, and Wright--29.

ABSENT--Messrs. Alcorn, Allison, Brownlow, Cameron, Cooper,
Cragin, Dennis, Dorsey, Fenton, Ferry of Connecticut,
Golthwaite, Gordon, Hamilton of Texas, Hamlin, Howe, Lewis,
Morton, Oglesby, Pease, Robertson, Schurz, Spencer,
Stevenson, Stockton, and Thurman--25.

So the bill was rejected.

Though the measure was lost, and the women sad under repeated
disappointments, yet the progress was noted with gratitude. In 1866
only nine Senators voted in favor of woman's enfranchisement after a
three days' discussion of the measure. In 1874, after eight years of
education, nineteen voted aye to the proposition.

The seventh Washington Convention was held January 14th and 15th,
1875, in Lincoln Hall as usual. Mrs. Stanton opened the proceedings by
stating that owing to the death of the President of the association,
Martha C. Wright, the duties of presiding officer devolved upon her.
After paying a well-merited tribute to her noble coadjutor, she said
that many of their noblest friends had passed away. Among them Dr.
Harriot K. Hunt, Hon. Gerrit Smith, and Rev. Beriah Green.

This meeting comes at a most auspicious moment, when the entire Nation
is wide awake to the rights of self-government now being trampled on
in Louisiana. At such a crisis it would seem that liberty-loving
statesmen might easily be converted to the idea of universal suffrage.
On every principle that they now demand self-government for the people
of Louisiana, they should extend the right of suffrage to the women of
that State now in so unsettled a condition. The annual report and
resolutions were discussed and speeches made by Miss Anthony and Mrs.
Blake during the morning session. Letters were read from Robert Dale
Owen, of Philadelphia, Rev. O. B. Frothingham, of New York, Paulina
Wright Davis, of Providence, Dr. J. C. Jackson, of Dansville, N. Y.,
and Abby Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn. Miss Couzins' speech in the
evening on the "Social Trinity" was a touching appeal for woman's
moral, spiritual, and æsthetic influence on humanity at large. Miss
Carrie Burnham made an interesting argument showing that the
disabilities of women might be directly traced to papal decrees; to
the canon rather than the civil law. Miss Lillie Devereux Blake made a
strong appeal on the duty of enfranchising the women of the Nation
before celebrating the coming Centennial. She thought it would be an
act of justice that would glorify that day as it could be done in no
other manner. Belva A. Lockwood, Marilla M. Ricker, Catharine
Stebbins, Lavinia Dundore, and Dr. Clemence Lozier, all took part in
the discussion of the resolutions.

3. _Resolved_, That as the duties of citizens are the outgrowth
of their rights, a class denied the common rights of citizenship
should be exempt from all duties to the State. Hence the Misses
Smith, of Glastonbury, Conn., and Abby Kelly Foster, of
Worcester, Mass., who refused to pay taxes because not allowed to
vote, suffered gross injustice and oppression at the hands of
State officials, who seized and sold their property for taxes.

4. _Resolved_, That to deny the right of suffrage to the women of
the Nation, is a dangerous innovation on the rights of man, since
the assumed power to deny the right to one class, is the implied
power to deny it to all others; acting on this principle, New
Hampshire abridges the rights of her citizens by forbidding
Catholics to hold office; and Rhode Island abridges the rights of
her citizens by forbidding foreigners to vote, except on a
property qualification.

5. _Resolved_, That our thanks are due to the Hon. A. A. Sargent
and the other eighteen Senators who voted for woman suffrage on
the Pembina Bill, and to the 40,000 brave men who went to the
polls and voted for woman suffrage in Michigan.

6. _Resolved_, That in the death of Martha C. Wright, the
President of our National Association, Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, the
first woman in the country who entered the medical profession,
the Rev. Beriah Green, and the Hon. Gerrit Smith, steadfast
advocates of woman suffrage, we have in the last year been called
to mourn the loss of four most efficient and self-sacrificing
friends of our movement--women and men alike true to the great
principles of republican government.

WHEREAS, It is now proposed to celebrate our coming centennial
birthday as a free Government, inviting the monarchies of the Old
World to join in the festivities, while the women of the country
have no share in its blessings; therefore,

_Resolved_, That the National Woman Suffrage Association will
hold a convention in Philadelphia on July 4, 1876, to protest
against such injustice unless Congress shall in the meantime
secure to woman the rights, privileges, and immunities of
American citizens.

_Resolved_, That we cordially invite all women in the Old World
and the New, to co-operate with us in promoting the objects of
the convention in 1876. As the enfranchisement of woman would be
the most fitting way of celebrating this great event in our
nation's history, women suffragists throughout the country should
now make an united effort with Congress and all State
Legislatures to act on this question, that when the old liberty
bell rings in the dawn of the new century, we may all be free and
equal citizens of a true republic.

MISS ANTHONY said that man neither supports woman nor protects
her. The census reports show that two million women are entirely
independent of men in regard to employments. Thousands of women
do work outside the home from necessity. A million women are
engaged in domestic service providing for their own necessities,
and a million more are supporting their families and drunken
husbands.

Letters were read from Dr. Mary Thomas, President of the Indiana
Association, and from Clara Barton, then traveling in Italy, deploring
the subject condition of women in foreign lands. The day after the
Convention the ladies received their friends in the spacious parlors
at Willard's Hotel. Congressmen, lawyers, clergymen, and many bright
girls from the departments were among the guests. Nothing indicates
the progress of a reform more readily than the cordial social
recognition of its leaders. While pausing now and then to note the
adverse winds we are compelled to encounter in the jealousies,
discords, and divisions of friends, and in the ridicule and
misrepresentation of enemies, a broader vision shows us that the great
tidal waves of thought are all flowing in one direction.

May 11, 1875, the twenty-seventh anniversary of the suffrage movement
was held in the new Masonic Temple, Twenty-third street, New York.
This magnificent Hall for the first time echoed to the demands of
woman for an equal share in the great interests of the world.

The convention was opened with prayer by the Rev. Olympia Brown, who
referred most impressively to the coming Centennial, expressing the
hope that the Fourth of July, 1876, might indeed be a day of jubilee,
in which liberty and justice would be secured to the whole people. The
resolutions[161] were discussed with great spirit by the various
speakers.[162] An interesting letter was read from Isabella Beecher
Hooker, giving some of her experiences and observations in France.

The Hall was crowded in the evening to listen to Mr. Frothingham. His
address was an able exposition of the injustice of the heavy taxes
laid on women. He read several extracts from the reports of William I.
Bowditch, of Boston, in regard to the large number of women in
Massachusetts holding property, and in closing, depicted with great
feeling the constant sacrifices women were compelled to endure because
they had no representation in the Government. After a song by the
Hutchinsons, the large audience slowly dispersed.

At a business meeting next day the officers[163] for the year were
chosen, and arrangements made to canvass Iowa if, as was proposed, an
amendment to the Constitution extending the right of suffrage to the
women of that State, should be submitted to the people.

All thoughts were now turned to the Centennial year, as to what new
forms of agitation could be suggested; what onward steps of progress
accomplished, for after the untiring labors of thirty years, the
leaders in this movement naturally felt that the great event of the
century could not pass without bringing some new liberty to woman.

FOOTNOTES:

[151] 2. _Resolved_, That the present attempts in our courts, by a
false construction of the National Constitution, to exalt all men as
sovereigns, and degrade all women as slaves, is to establish the most
odious form of aristocracy known in the civilized world--that of sex.

3. _Resolved_, That women are "persons" and "citizens," possessed of
all the legal qualifications of voters in the several States--age,
property, and education--and by the XIV. Amendment of the National
Constitution have been secured the right of suffrage.

4.: _Resolved_, That it is the duty of Congress, by appropriate
legislation, to protect women in their exercise of this right.

5. _Resolved_, That women are citizens, first of the United States,
and second of the States and Territories wherein they reside; hence we
claim National protection of our inalienable rights, against all State
authority.

6. _Resolved_, That States may regulate all local questions of
property, taxation, etc., but the inalienable personal rights of
citizenship must be declared by the Constitution, interpreted by the
Supreme Court, protected by Congress, and enforced by the arm of the
Executive.

7. _Resolved_, That the criminal prosecution of Susan B. Anthony by
the United States, for the alleged crime of exercising the citizen's
right of suffrage, is an act of arbitrary authority, unconstitutional,
and a blow at the liberties of every citizen of this nation.

_Business Committee_:--Matilda Joslyn Gage, New York; Belva A.
Lockwood, District of Columbia; Lillie Devereux Blake, New York; Mrs.
Mary Henderson, Missouri; Mrs. Lavinia Dundore, Maryland; Edward M.
Davis, Pennsylvania; Mrs. Mary A. Dobyns, Kentucky; Mrs. Anna C.
Savery, Iowa; Miss Phebe Couzins, St. Louis; Mrs. Jane Graham Jones,
Illinois; Mrs. Helen M. Barnard, District of Columbia; Rev. Olympia
Brown, Connecticut; Robert Purvis, District of Columbia.

_Finance Committee_:--Mrs. Ellen C. Sargent, Belva A. Lockwood; Edward
M. Davis, Ruth Carr Dennison, Helen M. Barnard.

_Committee on Resolution_:--Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Belva A. Lockwood,
Lillie Devereux Blake, Matilda Joslyn Gage.

[152] WOMAN SUFFRAGE ANNIVERSARY.--NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE
ASSOCIATION.--The Twenty-fifth Woman Suffrage Anniversary will be held
in Apollo Hall, New York, Tuesday, May 6, 1873. Lucretia Mott and
Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who called the first Woman's Rights convention
at Seneca Falls, 1848, will be present to give their reminiscences.
That Convention was scarcely mentioned by the local press; now, over
the whole world, equality for woman is demanded. In the United States,
woman suffrage is the chief political question of the hour. Great
Britain is deeply agitated upon the same topic; Germany has a princess
at the head of its National Woman's Rights organization. Portugal,
Spain, and Russia have been roused. In Rome an immense meeting,
composed of the representatives of Italian democracy, was recently
called in the old Coliseum; one of its resolutions demanded a reform
in the laws relating to woman and a re-establishment of her natural
rights. Turkey, France, England, Switzerland, Italy, sustain papers
devoted to woman's enfranchisement. A Grand International Woman's
Rights Congress is to be held in Paris in September of this year, to
which the whole world is invited to send delegates, and this Congress
is to be under the management of the most renowned liberals of Europe.
Come up, then, friends, and celebrate the Silver Wedding of the Woman
Suffrage movement. Let our Twenty-fifth Anniversary be one of power;
our reform is everywhere advancing, let us redouble our energies and
our courage.

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Ch'n Ex. Com._ SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Pres._

[153] Mrs. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, Tennessee; Isabella Beecher
Hooker, Connecticut; Francis Miller, Washington, D. C.; Sarah R. L.
Williams, Toledo, Ohio; Mrs. C. M. Palmer, California; Carrie S.
Burnham, Pennsylvania; Ellen C. Sargent, Washington; Le Grand Marvin,
Buffalo, N. Y.; Carl Doerflinger, Wisconsin; Emily Pitts Stevens,
editor of the _Pioneer_, San Francisco, Cal.; A. Jane Duniway, editor
of the _New Northwest_, Portland, Oregon.

[154] WHEREAS, This being the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first
combined effort of women for the recognition of their civil and
political rights; and,

WHEREAS, The demands first publicly promulgated in an obscure village
in the State of New York have now spread over the world; therefore,

_Resolved_, That while we congratulate women on the progress of this
reform during a quarter of a century, we urge them not to grow
discouraged or faint-hearted when obstacles arise in their attack upon
hoary wrongs. We remind them that the race is not to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong, and that the nearer we come to victory the
stronger will be the effort against us. But our cause is one of
eternal justice, and must ultimately prevail.

_Resolved_, That Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton will
evermore be held in grateful remembrance as the pioneers in this
grandest reform of the age; that as the wrongs they attacked were
broader and deeper than any other, so as time passes they will be
revered as foremost among the benefactors of the race, and that we
also hold sacred the memory of their co-laborers in the Convention of
1848.

WHEREAS, The underlying principle of our Government is equality of
political rights, therefore,

_Resolved_, That in the prosecution and trial of Susan B. Anthony, a
citizen of the United State, for having cast a ballot at the last
election, the Government of the United States declares it is a crime
to vote, thus attempting to undermine the very foundation of the
Republic.

_Resolved_, That as in this trial Susan B. Anthony represents one-half
of the people, the whole power of the United States is arrayed against
the women of the nation--against law-abiding, tax-paying women
citizens.

_Resolved_, That the trial of Susan B. Anthony, though ostensibly
involving the political status of woman alone, in reality questions
the right of every man to share in the Government; that it is not
Susan B. Anthony, or the women of the Republic who alone are on trial
to-day, but it is the Government of the United States, and that as the
decision is rendered for or against the political rights of
citizenship, so will the men of America find themselves free or
enslaved.

_Resolved_, That the decisions of the courts in the case of Mrs.
Bradwell, of Illinois, Mrs. Spencer and Mrs. Webster, of Washington;
Mrs. Minor, of St. Louis; Miss Burnham, of Philadelphia, and others,
are warnings to the people that their liberties are in danger.

_Resolved_, That it is because women are not voters, and, therefore,
have no recognized political power, that the members of the
Forty-second Congress, while raising their own salaries from $5,000 to
$7,500, dared to reject an amendment to the same bill, which proposed
to raise the salaries of the women employés of the Government from
$900 to $1,200.

_Resolved_, That in the coming Centennial of our nation's birth it is
mockery to ask woman to lend a helping hand without some pledge to
right her wrongs; what cause has she for rejoicing unless the century
shall round out with her enfranchisement, and the old liberty bell
ring in equality for all.

_Resolved_, That the report of the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly
of the State of New York in regard to a property suffrage
qualification for women, is one of the signs of awakened thought
toward our reform.

_Resolved_, That the rapid advance of Woman's Rights in foreign
countries is a subject of gratulation, and as a matter of special
cheer we call particular attention to the grand international Woman's
Rights Congress, under the control of the liberals of Europe, to be
held in Paris during the present year.

WHEREAS, The National Woman Suffrage Association has been requested to
send delegates to the International Woman's Rights Congress to be held
in Paris in October next; therefore,

_Resolved_, That this Association empower Ernestine L. Rose, Paulina
Wright Davis, Mathilde F. Wendt, Jane Graham Jones, and Elizabeth
Phelps Pearsall, to represent our woman suffrage movement in that
congress.

[155] Mrs. Nettie C. Tabor, Cal.; Frances Ellen Burr, Hartford, Conn.;
Mrs. Elizabeth B. Phelps, N. Y.; Mrs. E. Langdon, N. Y.; Jane B.
Archibald, D. C.; Miss Jennie V. Jewell, D. C.; Mrs. Adeliah Gardiner,
Baltimore; Kate C. Harris, Baltimore; Miss Laura Ewing, Baltimore;
Phoebe W. Couzins; Edward M. Davis, Philadelphia; Matilda Joslyn Gage,
Fayetteville, N. Y.; Lillie Devereux Blake, New York City; Ruth C.
Dennison, D. C.; Sara Andrews Spencer, D. C.; Dr. Clemence S. Lozier,
New York City; Belva A. Lockwood, Virginia L. Vaughn, James K. Wilcox,
and the Hutchinson Family.

[156] Letters were received from Paulina Wright Davis, Providence, R.
I.; Virginia L. Minor, St. Louis, Mo.; Hon. E. G. Lapham, Canandaigua,
N. Y.; Vice-Pres. Henry Wilson, Natick, Mass.; John Van Vhoris,
Rochester, N. Y.; Dr. James C. Jackson, Dansville, N. Y.; Hon. Henry
R. Selden, Rochester, N. Y.; Hon. John A. Kasson, Iowa; Thomas
Wentworth Higginson, Newport, R. I.; Ernestine L. Rose, London,
England; Dr. Laura Ross Wolcott, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Carrie S.
Burnham, Philadelphia, Pa.; Lewia C. Smith, Rochester, N. Y.; Asenath
Coolidge, Watertown, N. Y.; Priscilla Holmes Drake, Alabama; Laura De
Force Gordon, California; George F. Downing, Washington, D. C.; The
Free Thinkers Club of Milwaukee; The Radical Democracy of Wisconsin.

[157] _Resolved_, That this convention, representing as it does all
portions of our country, cordially sympathizes with the proposed
efforts of the women of the District of Columbia to secure the
practical enjoyment of their constitutional right to vote, as declared
by the Supreme Court of said District, by the passage of an act of
Congress amending the organic law of the District by striking out the
word "male" from the seventh section of said act; and we earnestly
request our senators and representatives to support a bill providing
for such an amendment by speech and vote.

_Resolved_, That a committee of seven be appointed by the president of
this convention to co-operate with the committee heretofore appointed
by the women of the District of Columbia in their application to
Congress for the passage of an act amendatory of the organic act of
said District, as above indicated.

_Resolved_, That among the important events in our struggle for the
equal rights of woman we place the trial of Miss Susan B. Anthony
before Hon. Ward Hunt, a judge of the Supreme Court of the United
States, at Canandaigua, New York, in June last, on an indictment for
voting as a citizen at the general election in November, 1872; that
the grossly partial course of Judge Hunt on that occasion, his seeming
unacquaintance with the plainest rules of law, and his eagerness for
the conviction of Miss Anthony, stand in marked contrast with the calm
demeanor and clear apprehension of the facts and principles at issue
which she exhibited on the trial, and their conduct respectively in
this memorable contest affords proof that, though it may be possible
that all women have not a constitutional right to be voters, it is
very certain that some men are not fit to be judges.

_Resolved_, That waiving for the present moment the question whether
or not Judge Hunt was correct in his decision concerning the
constitutional right of women to vote for Federal officers,
nevertheless, in the opinion of all sound lawyers and intelligent men,
he committed a great outrage against Miss Anthony by assuming, without
proof, that she voted for a candidate for Congress, and by arbitrarily
refusing to allow the jury to pass upon the question of her innocence,
and by peremptorily commanding them to render a verdict of guilty.
That so plain is this to the minds of those who possess any clear
knowledge of general principles of law, and of the ordinary duties of
a criminal court, that Judge Hunt has shown by his conduct on that
trial that he is too ignorant to fill his high position, or too
arbitrary to be entrusted with its grave responsibilities; and,
therefore, in either case, he ought to be impeached and removed from
the bench.

_Resolved_, That by the death of John Stuart Mill, woman has lost a
wise, brave friend. His great work for the enfranchisement of woman,
and for the elevation of all mankind deserves the public thanks of
this convention.

_Resolved_, That in Hon. John C. Underwood, lately removed from the
bench by death, the women of his district have lost that rarest of
public servants, a judge to whom the disfranchised could confidently
look for justice.

_Resolved_, That by the death of John M. Morris, late editor of the
Washington _Chronicle_, the cause of woman's freedom lost a tried and
valued friend, whose faithfulness and judgment entitled him to the
gratitude of the women of this Nation.

Miss Anthony submitted the following:

_Resolved_, That the thanks of the friends of woman suffrage are due
to the Misses Smith, of Glastonbury, Connecticut, for their patriotic
resistance to the tyranny of taxation without representation, and that
all women tax payers through the country should follow their example.

_Resolved_, That the best means of agitating at the present hour is
for all women to insist on their right of representation by actually
presenting their votes at every election, and for all property-holding
women to refuse to pay another dollar of tax until their right of
representation is recognized.

PETERBORO, January 5, 1874

SUSAN B. ANTHONY--MY DEAR FRIEND: As I am suffering from an attack of
vertigo, I answer your letter by the hand of my wife. Enclosed is my
contribution toward defraying the expenses of your convention. Strong
as is the Constitutional argument for woman suffrage, I nevertheless
hope that your convention will not tolerate the idea of measuring the
rights of woman by a man-made constitution. Have you heard of a State
in which women and women only bear rule, and the constitution of which
was made by women only? Perhaps there is such a flagrantly unjust
state, either on this or some other planet. If so, deep is the injury
done to its men. But deeper the insult added to this injury if, when
the men complain of being excluded from the government, the women
apply to the measurement of man's rights the yardstick of a woman-made
constitution. Constitutions are useful in settling ten thousand
subordinate questions. But the great questions of primary and inherent
human rights are to be submitted to no lower decisions than those of
God's immutable and everlasting justice.

With high regard, your friend, GERRIT SMITH.

GEN. BUTLER'S LETTER.

WASHINGTON, December 1.

MY DEAR MADAM: As a rule I have refused to take part in any convention
in the District of Columbia about any matter which might come before
Congress. I do not think it proper. I went far out of my way in this
regard, having given evidence that I am most strongly committed to the
legality, propriety and justice of giving the ballot to woman. I do
not see how I can add anything to it by appearing on the platform in
advocacy of any measure that may come before me as a Member of
Congress, and I do not think my sense of propriety would over-balance
such considerations. Hoping that your cause may succeed, I have the
honor to be, very truly yours,

BEN. F. BUTLER.

[158] ANNUAL CONVENTION OF THE NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE
ASSOCIATION.--For more than a quarter of a century the representative
women of this nation have held annual meetings, demanding the
recognition of their rights as citizens of the United States. In halls
of legislation and courts of justice, as well as in Conventions,
woman's equality with man in all civil and political rights,
privileges and immunities, has been debated and variously decided by
popular opinion, statute law and judicial decree, without arriving at
any permanent settlement of the question. And until the world learns
that there should be but one code of laws and morals for man and
woman, this question never can be settled. But the discussion has
roused woman herself to new thought and action, and kindled in her an
enthusiasm that the best interests of the nation demand should be
wisely directed and controlled.

The fact that women are already voting, holding office and resisting
taxation, that thousands are enrolling in the Grange movement and
Temperance Crusade, that Woman Suffrage is to be voted upon in
Michigan at the next election, should warn the Government that the
hour for its action has come. It must now determine whether woman's
transition from slavery to freedom shall be through reformation or
revolution, whether she shall be permitted to express her interest in
national questions through law by the direct power of the ballot, or
outside of law by indirect and irresponsible power; and thus, by a
blind enthusiasm, plunge the nation into anarchy.

For an earnest discussion of the duty of the hour, we invite all
persons interested in woman's enfranchisement to meet in Irving Hall,
New York, on the 14th and 15th of May.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _President_.
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _Chairman Ex. Com_.

[159] The speakers at this Convention were Ernestine L. Rose, Martha
C. Wright, O. B. Frothingham, Rev. Olympia Brown, Rev. Antoinette
Brown Blackwell, Elizabeth B. Phelps, Carrie S. Burnham, Sarah Andrews
Spencer, Frances V. Hallock, Amanda Deyo, Dr. J. Mix, Mrs. Helen M.
Slocum, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Lillie Devereux Blake, Susan B.
Anthony.

[160] Letters were received at this May Anniversary (1874) from
Lucinda B. Chandler, Vineland, New Jersey; Mrs. C. C. Hussey, Report
of New Jersey; Mary F. Davis, New Jersey; Catherine F. Stebbins,
Michigan; Mary J. Channing, Paulina Wright Davis, Rhode Island; Alfred
H. Love, Edward M. Davis, Sarah Pugh, Philadelphia; Lorenza Haynes,
Theological School, St. Lawrence University, Canton, N. Y.; Sarah R.
L. Williams, Toledo, Ohio; Harriet S. Brooks, Report for Illinois;
Catharine V. Waite, Illinois; Lizzie Boynton Harbert, Iowa; Virginia
L. Minor, Missouri; Annie L. Quinby, Kentucky; Sarah Burger Stearns,
Duluth, Minnesota; Hon. Benj. F. Butler, Massachusetts; Mrs. C. H.
Baker, Mrs. H. K. Clapp, Nevada; Sarah J. Wallis, California; Mrs. C.
I. H. Nichols, Pomo, California; Mariana Thompson Folsom, Foxboro,
Mass.; Emily P. Collins, La.; Mary K. Spalding, Atlanta, Ga.; Mrs.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, New York; Mary L. Booth, _Harper's Bazar_, New
York; Ann T. Greeley, Ellsworth, Me.; Mary Olney Brown, Olympia,
Washington Territory.

[161] _Resolved_, That as complete individual development depends on
the harmonious exercise of our three-fold nature, and undue power
given to either deranges and undermines the whole being, so in the
nation, a complete experiment of self-government can be made only by
the equal recognition of the rights of all citizens, and in their
homogeneous education into the laws of national life.

_Resolved_, That the decision of Chief Justice Waite, in the case of
Virginia L. Minor of Missouri, that according to the Federal
Constitution woman is a citizen, but not entitled to the right of
suffrage, is more infamous and retrogressive in principle at this
hour, than was Chief-Justice Tancy's decision in the Dred Scott case,
that a black man was not a United States citizen, and therefore not
entitled to the rights of a citizen of every State.

_Whereas_, By the recent decisions of the Supreme Court in the case of
Myra Bradwell of Illinois, and of Virginia L. Minor of Missouri, the
Federal Constitution is declared powerless to protect the civil and
political rights of woman.

_Resolved_, That it is the duty of Congress to take the necessary
steps to secure an amendment to the Constitution that shall prohibit
the several States from disfranchising citizens of the United States
on account of sex.

_Whereas_, One of the strongest evidences of the degradation of
disfranchised classes is the denial of their right to testify against
their rulers in courts of justice (slaves could not testify against
their masters; Chinamen in California to-day can not testify against
white men, nor wives in cases of crim. con. against their husbands);
therefore

_Resolved_, That the denial of Elizabeth R. Tilton's right to testify
in the pending Brooklyn trial, is but proof of woman's need of the
ballot in her own right for self-defence and self-protection.

_Resolved_, That as the proposition for woman's enfranchisement is to
be submitted in Iowa, in 1876, the National Woman Suffrage Association
will hold there 100 county conventions, and by lectures and the
circulation of tracts, help the women of Iowa to make a thorough
canvass of the State.

_Resolved_, That we congratulate the women of England for the large
vote secured on the Woman's Disabilities Bill in the House of Commons.
With a Queen on her throne, 400,000 women already voting, and her
Premier in favor of the measure, England bids fair to take the lead in
the complete enfranchisement of women.

[162] Rev. O. B. Frothingham, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Rev. Olympia Brown,
Lillie Devereux Blake, Carrie S. Burnham, Mrs. Stanton, and Miss
Anthony.

[163] Matilda Joslyn Gage, President; Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady
Stanton, Vice-Presidents; Henrietta P. Westbrook, Recording Secretary;
Isabella Beecher Hooker, Corresponding Secretary; Ellen Clark Sargent,
Treasurer; Susan B. Anthony and fifteen others, Executive Committee.

CHAPTER XXV.

TRIALS AND DECISIONS.

Women voting under the XIV. Amendment--Appeals to the
Courts--Marilla M. Ricker, of New Hampshire, 1870--Nannette B.
Gardner, Michigan--Sarah Andrews Spencer, District of
Columbia--Ellen Rand Van Valkenburgh, California--Catharine V.
Waite, Illinois--Carrie S. Burnham, Pennsylvania--Sarah M. T.
Huntingdon, Connecticut--Susan B. Anthony, New York--Virginia L.
Minor, Missouri--Judges McKee, Jameson, Sharswood,
Cartter--Associate Justice Hunt--Chief Justice Waite--Myra
Bradwell--Hon. Matt. H. Carpenter--Supreme Court Decisions--Mrs.
Gage's Review.

We have already shown in previous chapters that by a fair
interpretation of the XIV. Amendment women were logically secured in
their right to vote. Encouraged by the opinions of able lawyers and
judges, they promptly made a practical test of this question by
registering and voting during the State and Presidential elections of
1871 and '72. This transferred the discussion, for a time, from the
platform and halls of legislation to the courts for final
adjudication.

The first woman to offer her vote was Marilla M. Ricker, of Dover, New
Hampshire, a young widow of large property. In March,[164] 1870, the
day previous to the election, she made application to the selectmen
for registry. No objection being made, and one of the Board, promising
to put her name on the check-list, she departed, leaving with them
several copies of a speech she had prepared in case of a refusal. On
election day she appeared at the polls and offered a straight
Republican ticket. It was received by the moderator and her name
called, but on examination of the list it was found that the selectman
had been false to his promise, and her vote was refused. Extended
comments were made by the press of the State, Democrats generally
sustaining her, while Republicans were bitter in opposition. Mrs.
Ricker in the meantime prepared to sue the selectmen, but being
strongly opposed by her republican friends, she silently submitted to
the injustice, and thus lost the opportunity of being the first woman
to prosecute the authorities for refusing the vote of a citizen on the
ground of sex. However, she still enjoys the distinction of being the
first woman to cast a vote under the XIV. Amendment, as the following
spring she saw that her name was on the registry list, and her vote
was received without opposition.

The next case was that of Nannette B. Gardner, in Detroit, Michigan.
She registered her name in that city March 25, 1871, and voted,[165]
unquestioned, April 3d. April 20th, of the same year, Sara Andrews
Spencer and Sarah E. Webster, with seventy other women of the District
of Columbia, marched in a body to the polls, but their votes were
refused at the election as they had been previously refused
registration. They immediately took steps to prosecute the Board of
Inspectors, and suit was brought in the Supreme Court of the District
at the general term, October, 1871. Albert G. Riddle and Francis
Miller, able lawyers of the District, and well known advocates of
woman suffrage, were retained by the plaintiffs, and in their defense
made the following arguments:

Mr. RIDDLE said: May it please the Court; ... These plaintiffs,
describing themselves as women, claim to be citizens of the
United States and of this District, with the right of the
elective franchise, which they attempted to exercise at the
election of April 20th last past, and were prevented. They say
that as registration was a prerequisite of the right to vote,
they tendered themselves in due form, and demanded it, under the
second section of the Act of May 31, 1870 (16th U.S. Stats.,
140). That is the "Act to enforce the right of citizens of the
United States to vote," etc., and authorizes a suit for refusing
registration. They say, that being refused registration, they
tendered their votes to the proper inspectors of said election,
with proof of their attempt to register, citizenship, etc., as
authorized by the third section of said Act, and their votes were
refused; and, thereupon, Spencer brings her suit under said
second section, against the registering officers, and Webster
hers under the third section, which authorizes it, for rejecting
her vote. The questions in both cases are identical and presented
together.

To the declarations the defendants demur, and thereby raise the
only questions we desire to have adjudicated. The defendants, by
their demurrer, admit all the allegations of the plaintiffs,
severally, but say, that as they are women, they are not entitled
to vote in the District of Columbia. That the seventh section of
the organic Act, the Constitution of the District, provides,
"That all male citizens," etc., "shall be entitled to vote,"
etc., and that this word male excludes women, of course.

To this the plaintiffs reply that the language of the statute
does exclude women, but they say that in the presence of the
first section of the XIV. Amendment, which confers the elective
franchise upon "all persons," this word "male" is as if
unwritten, and that the statute, constitutionally, reads, "That
all citizens shall be entitled to vote." For we contend, your
honors, that although the Congress "has exclusive legislation in
all cases over this District," it can legislate only, as could
the States, from which it was taken. It must legislate in
accordance with American ideas, and can exercise no power not
granted by the Constitution; and that instrument certainly
confers no power to limit the right of suffrage. And so we are at
issue....

As the FIRST proposition of my brief, I contend, _that under our
system the right to vote is a natural right_.

Obviously, government is of right or it is an usurpation. If of
right, it sprang from some right older than itself; and this
older right must have existed in persons (people), in each and
all alike, male and female. And having this right, they used it
to form for themselves a government. Of course, this supposes
that all joined in and consented to the government having the
power to dissent; for, to just the extent that a government got
itself agoing without the free consent of its people, it is
without right. The right of self-government, and from that
springs our right to govern others, is a natural right. This is
the primary idea of American politics, and the foundation of our
Government. This was formulated in the second clause of our great
Declaration, and no man has dared to deny it....

It follows, then, if the right of government is a natural right,
and to be exercised alone by the ballot, that the right to vote
is a natural right. This never has been and never can be
successfully controverted....

I will read from the highest American authority upon our
politico-constitutional questions, partly in support of my
proposition that the right to vote is a natural right, and also
to show that the assumed claim of one part of the people to
exclude another from all share in the Government has the most
doubtful and shadowy foundation in right, and to an American it
needs no evidence to show that a portion of the people thus
excluded are in a state of vassalage. I read from Story on the
Constitution, volume 1st, commencing at

Sec. 578. The most strenuous advocate for universal suffrage
has never yet contended that the right should be absolutely
universal. No one has ever been sufficiently visionary to
hold that all persons of every age, degree, and character,
should be entitled to vote in all elections of all public
officers. Idiots, infants, minors, and persons insane or
utterly imbecile, have been, without scruple, denied the
right as not having the sound judgment and discretion fit
for its exercise. In many countries, persons guilty of
crimes have also been denied the right as a personal
punishment, or as a security to society. In most countries,
females, whether married or single, have been purposely
excluded from voting, as interfering with sound policy and
the harmony of social life ... And yet it would be extremely
difficult, upon any mere theoretical reasoning, to establish
any satisfactory principle upon which the one-half of every
society has thus been systematically excluded by the other
half from all right of participating in government, which
would not at the same time apply to and justify many other
exclusions. If it be said that all men have a natural,
equal, and inalienable right to vote, because they are all
born free and equal; that they all have common rights and
interests entitled to protection; and, therefore, have an
equal right to decide, either personally or by their chosen
representatives, upon the laws and regulations which shall
control, measure, and sustain those rights and interests;
that they can not be compelled to surrender, except by their
free consent, what by the bounty and order of Providence
belongs to them in common with all their race. What is there
in these considerations which is not equally applicable to
females as free, intelligent, moral, responsible beings,
entitled to equal rights and interests and protection, and
having a vital stake in all the regulations and laws of
society? And, if an exception, from the nature of the case,
could be felt in regard to persons who are idiots, infants,
and insane, how can this apply to persons who are of more
mature growth, and are yet deemed minors by the municipal
law?

SEC. 580. If, then, every well-organized society has the
right to consult for the common good of the whole; and if,
upon the principle of natural law, this right is conceded by
the very union of society, it seems difficult to assign any
limit to this right which is compatible with the due
attainment of the end proposed. If, therefore, any society
shall deem the common good and interests of the whole
society best promoted under the particular circumstances in
which it is placed by a restriction of the right of
suffrage, it is not easy to state any solid ground of
objection to its exercise of such an authority. At least, if
any society has a clear right to deprive females,
constituting one-half of the whole population, of the right
of suffrage (which, with scarcely an exception, has been
uniformly maintained), it will require some astuteness to
find upon what ground this exclusion can be vindicated,
which does justify, or at least excuse, many other
exclusions.

Sec. 581. Without laying any stress upon this theoretical
reasoning which is brought before the reader, not so much
because it solves all doubts and objections, as because it
presents a view of the serious difficulties attendant upon
the assumption of an original and inalienable right of
suffrage, as originating in natural law, and independent of
civil law, it may be proper to state that every civilized
society has uniformly fixed, modified, and regulated the
right of suffrage for itself according to its own free will
and pleasure. Every constitution of government in these
United States has assumed, as a fundamental principle, the
right of the people of the State to alter, abolish, and
modify the form of its own government according to the
sovereign pleasure of the people. In fact, the people of
each State have gone much further, and settled a far more
critical question, by deciding who shall be the voters
entitled to approve and reject the constitution framed by a
delegated body under their direction. In the adoption of no
State constitution has the assent been asked of any but the
qualified voters; and women, and minors, and other persons
not recognized as voters by existing laws, have been
studiously excluded. And yet the constitution has been
deemed entirely obligatory upon them as well as upon the
minority, who voted against it. From this it will be seen
how little, even in the most free of republican governments,
any abstract right of suffrage, or any original and
indefeasible privilege, has been recognized in practice.

This, remember, was written thirty years ago. Where would Story
be now, if living? I beg also to read a single paragraph from the
"Spirit of Laws," London edition, vol. I., p. 220:

"All the inhabitants of the several districts ought to have
the right to vote at the election of the representatives,"
etc.

All of the inhabitants, says Montesquieu, ought to have the right
to vote. Under such a rule I suppose my learned opponent would
contend that a woman could not be an inhabitant, of course. I
feel that I ought to apologize for presenting this point to this
extent; it is so obvious, and rests on such broad and ample
ground, that argument for it is without excuse, and I rest it
here. So that if you consider this XIV. Amendment as a grant from
the sovereign, then, like all such grants, you must take it most
strongly against the grantor, and most favorable to the subject.
And if, as I have shown, it is in favor of natural right, then
must you construe it most strongly to extend that right. No court
needs authority for these propositions.

The SECOND proposition of my brief is, _that by the old common
law of our English ancestors, the old storehouse of our rights
and liberties, as well as the arsenal where we find weapons for
their defense, woman always possessed this right of suffrage_.

I will show by several English cases, by long usage, and general
understanding, by principle and precedent, that the English woman
both voted and held office; and I will show that not a single
case, that not a single resolution of the House of Commons exists
to the contrary; and that in all the now innumerable tomes of the
common law, of judicial decision, commentary, or essay, but a
single dictum exists to the contrary. And if I thus establish
that the construction of the XIV. Amendment, for which I this day
contend, is in favor of a common law right, is in accordance with
its scope and spirit, every lawyer understands by how much I
strengthen my position. And for the satisfaction of the court I
am glad to state that this part of my argument will consist
entirely of extracts from recent English text-writers, and a
reference to two or three old cases. I read first from Mr.
Anstey's Notes upon the Reform Act of Great Britain of 1867. The
writer in his comment upon the words of the act, "every man of
full age," etc., commences by showing that the term man in the
act, as in Magna Charta and other statutes, is epicene--means
both men and women. And he then goes on to show that to construe
this phrase, "every man," to include every woman also, is in
strict accordance with the common law from old times to the
present. I read from p. 87:

That the rights in question (the right of suffrage) are not
incompatible with the legal status of the woman, the
following authorities seem to show. On the other hand, there
can not be adduced any one authority against the position
that the franchise of the shire and the borough were enjoyed
by the female "resiants" equally with those of the male sex
in times when "resiants," as such, and not as "tenants," had
the franchise. The statutes by which the parliamentary
franchise in counties was taken away from the "resiants" and
vested in the "tenants," and at length restricted to those
of freehold tenure (8 Hen., 6, c. 7; 18 Geo., 2, c. 18; 31
Geo., 2 c. 14), did not in any manner create or recognize
any such distinction as that of the male and the female
freeholders. Those acts had relation to tenure, not to sex.
For the same reason, in all those boroughs where the "common
right" prevailed, the suffrage would naturally be
exercisable by the female no less than by the male
"inhabitants" or "residants." It is believed that in not one
of the boroughs where the suffrage was said to be regulated
by "charter," or by "custom," or by "prescription" or even
where it was regulated by a local act of Parliament, there
can be found one instance of any provision or usage
whatsoever whereby any voter was excluded from the enjoyment
of the suffrage by reason of sex. That a woman may be a
householder, or freeholder, or burgage tenant, parishioner,
is plain enough. That she may answer the description of "a
person paying scot and lot" within the "city of London," has
been solemnly decided by the Court of King's Bench (Olive
_vs._ Ingram, 7 Mod. 264, 267, 270, 271,) and that
determination was expressly grounded by their Lordships
"singly upon the foot of the common law, without regard to
the usages of the parishes in London," which usage,
nevertheless, had been also shown to be in favor of the same
construction. In all cases, whether of statutory, of
customary, or of common law qualification for the suffrage,
the general rule is that which was laid down by the Court of
King's Bench with respect to the choice of parochial
officers under the first "Act for the Relief of the Poor,"
which directed them to be made from among the "substantial
householders" of the place. The court held (Rex. _vs._
Stubbs, 2 T. R., 395)--overruling a dictum in Viner's
Abridgment to the contrary--that a woman, being a
"substantial householder," was properly chosen under that
act to the office of overseer of the poor, notwithstanding
the objections raised at the bar that it was a burthensome
office and one of which, being once appointed to it, she
would be called upon to perform duties some of which were
above the bodily and mental powers, and others were
inconsistent with the morality, or, at least, the decency of
that sex.--(Id. 400.)

And so again on pages 90 and 91:

That there are some offices as to which it is the practice,
by the "custom of England," to exclude them, is undoubtedly
the fact. But it has been well said, as to these, that
"there is a difference between being exempted and being
incapacitated," and that "an excuse from acting, etc., is
different from an incapacity of doing so. For it must not be
forgotten, that it is upon the footing, not of disability,
but of exemption, that those exclusions are vested, by the
authorities which declare them." Thus, Whitelocke: "By the
custom of England, women are not returned of juries, nor
put into offices or commissions, nor eligible to serve in
Parliament, or admitted to be members of the House of Peers;
but, by reason of their sex, they are exempted from such
employment. The omission of the electoral franchise from
that enumeration [of exemption] is remarkable. If women
were, at that time, considered to be excluded by any "custom
of England" from the Parliamentary franchise, as well as
from Parliament, it is scarcely conceivable that Whitelocke
would have omitted to mention so important a fact. Singular
to say, there is no trace of any such custom or usage in the
reports or amongst the records, not even, so far as the
author's researches have been successful, in the Journals of
the House of Commons itself; and yet the right of the
returning officer to reject the vote of a female elector
when tendered at the polling-booth is always assumed to be
an adjudged point. Mr. Oldfield appears to have been under
the impression that the resolution of the House of Commons
upon the occasion of the Westminster election, asserting the
incapacity of an alien to vote in elections of members to
serve in Parliament, extended to "women" also. If it were
so, the incident would have no weight, for the enactment,
which, according to a second resolution of the same date,
was to be prepared for carrying into effect that intention,
never received the sanction even of that House. But, in
truth, no mention of "women" appears in either resolution.
Nor was there, in that year, or at any other period, any
resolution or determination of the House, so far as the
author's information goes, directly impeaching the capacity
of any female, in respect of her sex, to vote at an election
to Parliament. He is aware that the House of Commons did,
upon one remarkable occasion, deny the capacity of a female
to be heard even as a witness at their bar; and that this
extraordinary vote was obtained through the influence of Sir
Edward Coke, the only text-writer who can be vouched for the
position, that a woman's vote ought not to be received at a
parliamentary election.

Further on, pages 94 and 95;

On the other hand, there are extant many parliamentary
returns for counties and boroughs from the earliest times,
which were made by female electors, and yet were received.
Some of them are enumerated in Prynne's Collections of
Parliamentary Writs. Some of later dates are mentioned in
the Commons' Journals themselves. Others are to be found in
the repositories of the learned or the curious.

Three of the returns in question which related to one and
the same borough, were, at a period long subsequent,
produced before a "Committee of Privilege and Election,"
presided over by the great parliamentary lawyer, Mr.
Hakewell, as evidence for and against the respective parties
in an election trial then pending. The question was whether
the borough was close or open; that is to say, whether
amongst the former returns so produced, those by "Mrs.
Copley, as sole inhabitant," showed the suffrage to be
limited to the Lord or Lady of Gatton for the time being, or
whether those by "Mrs. Copley, _et omnes inhabitantes_,"
showed the suffrage to be of a more popular character. No
question of sex was raised on either side, and neither the
report of the committee which found for the popular right,
nor the resolution of the house for giving effect thereto,
and for taking the Lord of the Manor's return off the file,
contain any allusion to the question of sex.

At that time the House of Commons was not prepared to enter
into conflict with the courts of law, and "privilege" had
not attained to the height which, amid the excitement of the
era of 1688, it was doomed to reach. It was impossible for
the Committee of Privileges, in the Gatton case, to deny the
female suffrage without coming into collision with the law,
which had been declared but a few years previously by the
judges. (Holt _vs._ Lyle and Coates _vs_. Lyle, 14 Jac., 1
and Catherine _vs_. Surrey, (Hakewell MSS.,) Append., 7
Mod., 264-5.) "The opinion of the judges," it was said by
Sir William Lee, a chief justice of the King's Bench in
1739, "was that a _feme-sole_, if she has a freehold," in a
county (as it seems) "may vote for members of Parliament,"
and that women when sole had a power to vote.... In Lady
Packington's case (she) returns to Parliament; that the
sheriff made a precept to her, as lady of the manor, to
return two members to Parliament.... In the case of Holt
_vs_. Lyle it is determined that a _feme-sole_ freeholder,
in counties, may claim a vote for Parliament men, but, if
married, her husband must vote for her.... I only mention
what I found in a manuscript by the famous Hakewell.

CHIEF-JUSTICE--Coverture then incapacitated a woman from voting?

Mr. RIDDLE.--No, your honor; the right to vote attached to the
freehold, and by the old law that by marriage vested in the
husband.

In the case of Olive _vs._ Ingram, 7th Mod. Reps., already
recited by the author, it was urged that the right of woman
suffrage was lost by _non-user_, which is thus disposed of. I
quote from page 97:

The same can not be said of the learned Solicitor General's
objection of _non-user_. "As their claim," he argued, "is at
common law, and usage is the only evidence of right at
common law, they ought to show it, or else _non-user_ shall
be evidence of a waiver of the right, if they ever had any."
The reply was conclusive enough. "There was a difference
between being exempted and being incapacitated." But there
was another and a not less conclusive reply. The franchise
was a public, not a private right--_omnis libertas regia
est, et ad coronam pertinet_--[every liberty is royal and
pertinent to the crown]--and of such there can be no waiver,
for the right implies a duty, and the duty is co-equal and
co-extensive with the right.

I now ask your attention to the case of Jane Allen, which came
before Mr. Anstey in the Revising Court, a tribunal created by
the parliamentary elector's trial bill of 1868, and which sits to
revise the registration of voters, under the Act of 1867, and
from whom appeals lie to the Court of Common Pleas. The case came
up in 1868, and was fully and ably argued, and the Revising
Barrister went luminously over the whole ground in an exhaustive
opinion when he rendered judgment. I find the case in the Eng.
Law Mag. and Law Rev. for 1868, at p. 121:

_In re Jane Allen_ (_Parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields_).
_September 23, 1868_.

This was a claim to be entered on the St. Giles' list of
occupiers for the borough, under the "Representation of the
People Act, 1867," s. 3; the claimant's name, in common with
those of all female occupiers, having been omitted by the
overseers.

* * * * *

The Revising Barrister said, p. 132: In the meantime, and
dealing with the case according to my own opinion of what
the law is, I hold, in the first place, that this incapacity
of mere sex, as it is called, did not exist at common law in
any constituency; and (on the authority of the cases cited
already of Catherine _vs._ Surrey, Holt _vs._ Lyle, and
Coates _vs._ Lyle, which show that there is in counties no
such incapacity even as to the freehold franchise, even
under the acts passed before 1832, greatly narrowing the
basis of that suffrage there), that, _à fortiori_, there was
no such incapacity in boroughs of the common right at least,
and also of many, perhaps all, of those by custom also, as
appears by the valuable records preserved from the time of
the Conquest down to our own time, including the Damesday
and the Doom Books of the various boroughs. For I find that
(although in some boroughs, a later charter or special act
of Parliament was to the contrary), where the common right
obtained, the woman burgess took her place, and her name was
inscribed on the burgess roll with the male burgesses,
enjoying the same rights and liable to the same heavy
duties--such as watch and ward, scot and lot, and the like,
as the burgesses of the male sex. Curiously enough, I see
that it has been objected to the right of female suffrage
within the last few days, that there is this analogy between
the right of franchise and the liability to watch and ward.
It is because that analogy exists, that I think that the
claim of franchise must surely prevail, it being clear that,
under the common law, a woman was liable to the former
burthen, as she is still liable to serve as a constable, as
an overseer of the poor, and the like offices, and,
therefore, was rightfully put upon the burgess roll, and
voted in the borough court equally with the male burgess.

But the matter does not rest there. The Rolls of Parliament,
which end with the reign of Queen Mary, certainly contain no
notice of the right of women to vote at common law, because
they contain no entries relating to the right of suffrage at
all, and I, therefore, pass them by. But I make this
observation upon them, that they do contain not unfrequent
notices of the presence of women in Parliament itself. But
the returns to the parliamentary writs of the period are
more to the purpose. Take, for instance, those relating to
the county of York, collected by Prynne for quite another
purpose than the present. He had to show that the lords and
esquires of that great county, and not the freeholders at
large, had for the long period of time which began with the
reign of Henry IV. and ended with that of Edward IV., alone
returned the knights of that shire to Parliament, and among
those lords and esquires not a few clearly appear to have
been of the female sex. But now I pass to the period of the
journal.

It was said by Mr. Bennett [who argued against woman
suffrage], that if a single instance could be shown in which
a woman had voted, and not simply claimed the right to vote,
then _cadit questio_. But two such cases, Lady Packington's
case and Mrs. Copley's case, were admitted by Mr. Bennett
himself. I do not think that he explained away the effect of
that admission. It was certainly not as a mere returning
officer that either of those ladies signed and returned the
indenture. It was as a person having or claiming to have,
the sole property in the soil of the whole of the populous
borough of Aylesbury, that Lady Packington made her return;
and during two or three generations the Packington family
had, or had claimed to have, precisely that right.

* * * * *

It is thus made broad and clear that the right of woman to the
elective franchise was one of the best acknowledged and clearest
of common law rights; and that in the whole circle of English
authority the ghost of a dictum can alone be raised to question
it. So that if the force of its language compels you to construe
the XIV. Amendment as authorizing woman to vote, you will have
the satisfaction of knowing that it but restores her to her old
common law right in the persons of her American daughters.

THIRD. I am now to deal directly with the Amendments. The first
clause of Section 1 of the XIV Amendment I now read:

SECTION 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they
reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States.

Until this was promulgated there was no absolute standard or rule
of citizenship in the United States. Each State made a rule for
itself, and its rule was not always clearly expressed, as you
will see by these constitutions. Some of them say that the male
citizens of the State, being inhabitants, etc., shall vote, yet
do not declare in what citizenship shall consist. Others, that
citizens of the United States, etc., shall vote, while no person
was a citizen of the United States except as he had become a
citizen of a State. Many States permitted aliens, on a short
residence, to vote, without naturalization, and they, in that
indirect way, became citizens of such State, and hence of the
United States. This Amendment puts an end to doubt and cavil, and
broadly declares that all persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they
reside, etc....

By an unwritten article of the American Constitution--for whoever
looks to the written text will not find the whole of the
Constitution--persons, no matter where born, or however unnatural
they may be, are permitted to become domiciled, gain settlements,
hold lands, bring suits, and acquire and enjoy every possible
right, privilege, and immunity of native born persons. Nor has
Congress, nor has any State ever attempted, by law or ordinance,
to discriminate against them, nor will either ever dare to do so,
nor could or would such a law be enforced. The unwritten
Constitution, by the name of public policy, or without any name,
would prevent it. The only possible things which a resident alien
may not do, are, he can not vote or hold office. There need be no
mistake about this, and it can be reduced to an absolute
certainty. What, pray, does the resident alien acquire by the
transmuting process of naturalization? What is the sum total of
his citizenship? He acquires the right of suffrage, and the right
to hold office, and no other thing under the heavens and the
Star-Spangled Banner. Does he acquire these rights by virtue of
any word or special provision of our naturalization laws, which
annexes suffrage to naturalization as its special perquisite? Not
a word of it. Nor is there a word in any act of Congress or law
of a State that confers suffrage upon the naturalized American as
a thing incident to or consequent upon his act of naturalization.
He thereby becomes a citizen, and takes up and enjoys its
peculiar and distinguishing right. He gets naturalized for that
and for no other purpose. Naturalization confers suffrage, then,
because suffrage is a property of citizenship.

* * * * *

Colored male citizens now vote constitutionally and rightfully,
although the word "white" stands as before in most of the State
constitutions; and yet they vote in spite of it. Some potent
alembic has destroyed the force of this word, although the text
remains as of old. We are at once referred to the XV. Amendment
for a solution. That has conferred the power of voting upon them,
and it is superior to the State constitutions and statutes, and
executes itself, as is claimed. I concede, your honors, that if
the XV. Amendment does confer suffrage, or remove the exclusion
so that colored citizens can vote; if they have derived the
franchise from that, then the argument is against me. But, if it
does confer it, then judgment must go for me. Let us read it:

ARTICLE XV., 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 race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.

Sec. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this
article by appropriate legislation. (15 Stat., p. 316.)

You see in a moment this does not confer anything. It uses no
words of grant or grace, apt or otherwise, nor does it profess
to. It expressly recognizes, as an already existing fact, that
the citizens of the United States have the right to vote. The
right which shall thus be respected is a right peculiar to the
citizen--it is not a personal right, but a political right; and a
right to vote, the same one mentioned in the second section of
the XIV. Amendment--a right not created or conferred by the XV.
Amendment. It could not be, for it existed, and, as I have just
said, was spoken of in the XIV. Amendment; so that it must be as
old as that at the least. This amendment is a solemn mandate to
all concerned not to deny this right, because it existed, and
because it was of the highest value.

Justice WYLIE: It is not to be denied for either of the three
reasons mentioned.

Mr. RIDDLE: Yes, your honor, I have not reached that; I am now
only showing that it is a right--a citizen right--and older than
the XV. Amendment; but, if your honor intends to infer that,
because the right can not be denied in any one of those cases,
that, therefore, it may be in all others, then you have another
instance of a constitutional right to deny a constitutional
right; and, without vanity, I have already pulverized that
assumption. It is thus absolutely certain that colored male
citizens do not claim their admitted right to vote from this XV.
Amendment. They had it before, and this came in to protect and
secure them in its enjoyment. Whence did they derive it? From the
XIV. Amendment? If so, then did women acquire it by the same
amendment? Was it an inherent right in them as a part of "the
people?" So women are a much larger and more important part of
"the people."

The right to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color,
or previous condition of servitude, was not used to make the
right sacred in male negroes alone, while the rights of all
others were left to political caprice, or to be controlled
hereafter by these same colored males mayhap; but this amendment
was aimed fully at the mischief of the second section of the XIV.
Amendment, and there its force is expended. It fossilizes the
second section of that amendment. While the broad language of its
first section secures, beyond the abridging hand of the States,
the great rights it secures--rights which Congress can not
abridge on any pretext, for it can exercise no power not granted,
and the Constitution confers on it no power to abridge the
"privileges or immunities of the citizen" in any instance.

And here I rest this solemn argument. I have brought this cause
of woman, and of man as well--of the race--into the presence of
the court, surrounded by the severe atmosphere of the law, beyond
the reach of chronic ribaldry, and into the region of argument,
where it must be estimated by its legal merits. I have applied to
it the rules of law. I have pushed away the dead exfoliations
that cumber the path; and have gone to the foundations, to the
ever fresh and preserving spirit of the rules of the common law,
and have sought to apply them with candor....

FRANCIS MILLER following Mr. Riddle, said: May it please the
Court; ... Clearly the XV. Amendment does not confer any right of
suffrage. Clearly, prior to the XIV. Amendment, colored men had
no right to vote. The XIII. Amendment, which emancipated them,
did not give them the right of suffrage, because the States had
the constitutional power to say they should not vote. But between
the XIII. and XV. Amendments, in some way or other, the colored
man came into possession of this right of suffrage; and the
question is, where did he get it? If he did not get it under the
XIV. Amendment, by what possible authority are they voting by
hundreds of thousands throughout this country? The legislative
and constitutional provisions that prohibit their voting still
remain unrepealed upon the statute books of many of the States,
but yet they do vote. There is no possible, no conceivable, means
by which they legally can vote, except by the operation of the
XIV. Amendment. It may be said that if that is the case the XV.
Amendment was not necessary. Well, admit it was not. It was very
well said by Justice Swayne, in the case of the United States
_vs._ Rhodes, in answer to the argument that if the XIII.
Amendment conferred certain rights upon the colored man it was
unnecessary to pass the Civil Rights Bill; "that it was not
necessary, but it was well to do it to prevent doubts and
differences of opinion." It is not well to leave any man's rights
and liberties subject even to a doubt, and the Congress of the
United States had better adopt amendment after amendment than to
allow the slightest cloud to rest upon the tenure of the rights
of the American citizen....

The Constitution has formulated into law the Declaration of
Independence. We were one hundred years coming to it; but we have
reached it at last--certainly by recognizing the political rights
of the black man--and, as I believe, those of woman; and that is
all this Court is called upon here to declare, to wit: that the
Declaration of Independence has been enacted into law, and that
you will see that that law is enforced.

* * * * *

If I have established, as I believe I have, that under the first
section of the XIV. Amendment women have the right to vote, and
there is any particular limitation in the second section that
contradicts it, that part of the amendment falls void and
useless, so far as its effect upon woman is concerned. There is
the declaration of the general principles expressly stated; and,
if there is anything contradictory, "the particular and inferior
can not defeat the general and superior." (Lieber's Hermeneutics,
p. 120.) The great object of that XIV. Amendment, so far as it
can be deduced from the words in which it is expressed, is this:
that the rights of the citizens of the United States shall not be
abridged. If there is anything contradictory of that in the
subsequent sections, those sections must fall. But if the second
section affects this argument at all, it is because it seems, by
implication, to admit that the rights of certain male citizens of
the United States can be denied. That is the whole force and
effect of it--I mean so far as this argument is concerned. All
that can be claimed for it is, that by implication, perhaps, it
would permit that to be done. The XV. Amendment comes in and
says, in express terms, that that which the second section by
implication permits, shall not be done; and by this declaration
it strikes out that section, and it is no more in the
Constitution now than is that clause of the second section of the
first article of the Constitution which permitted States to deny
suffrage to any of their citizens--black or white. That section
is gone. It is no more a part of the Constitution, because it has
been absolutely repealed by the adoption of the XIV. Amendment.
Just so this second section of the XIV. Amendment disappeared by
the operation of the XV. Amendment.

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 race, color, or previous
condition of servitude.

SEC. 2. The Congress shall have power to enforce this
article by appropriate legislation. (15 Stat., p. 345.)

The CHIEF JUSTICE.--There is a very strong implication, is there
not, in that Amendment, that you may deny the right of suffrage
for other causes.

Mr. MILLER.--I do not think there can be any implication by which
a citizen may be robbed of a fundamental right. It must be
something expressed. I do not believe in any power of taking away
the rights of citizens by construction. No human being can be
robbed of his God-given rights by implication. You can not take
away his property by implication. You can not take away his
liberty. I think it is equally true that you can not take away
his right of self-government by implication.

Finally, in regard to the construction of this XIV. Amendment, it
must be observed that it is remedial in its character, and it
must be "construed liberally to carry out the beneficent
principles it was intended to embody," (Dwarris on Statutory Law,
p. 632,) and that "its construction must be extended to other
cases within the reason and rule of it." (Lord Mansfield in
Atcheson _vs._ Everett, Cowper, 382, 391.) Lieber's fourteenth
rule of construction is:

Let the weak have the benefit of a doubt without defeating
the general object of a law. Let mercy prevail, if there be
real doubt. (Lieber's Hermeneutics, p. 144.)

Now, if mercy must prevail when there is real doubt, still more
should justice prevail if there is any doubt. If your honors have
any doubt in regard to this decision, I call upon you, not in the
name of mercy, but in the name of justice, to give us the benefit
of that doubt, and to recognize the right of all human beings to
govern themselves.

* * * * *

Chief Justice Cartter then delivered the opinion of the court,
sustaining the demurrer, which is as follows:

These cases, involving the same questions, are presented
together. As shown by the plaintiffs' brief, the plaintiffs claim
the elective franchise under the first section of the XIV.
Amendment of the Constitution. The fourth paragraph of the
regulations of the Governor and Judges of the District, made
registration a condition precedent to the right of voting at the
election of April 20th, 1871. The plaintiffs, being otherwise
qualified, offered to register, and were refused. They then
tendered their ballots at the polls, with evidence of
qualification and offer to register, etc., when their ballots
were rejected under the seventh section of the act providing a
government for the District of Columbia. Mrs. Spencer brings her
suit for this refusal of registration, and Mrs. Webster for the
rejection of her vote, under the second and third sections of the
act of May 31, 1870. The seventh section of the organic act above
referred to, limits the right to vote to "all male citizens," but
it is contended that in the presence of the XIV. Amendment, the
word male is without effect, and the act authorizes "all
citizens" to exercise the elective franchise. The question
involved in the two actions which have been argued, and which,
for the purposes of judgment, may be regarded as one, is, whether
the plaintiffs have a right to exercise within this jurisdiction,
the elective franchise. The letter of the law controlling the
subject is to be found in the seventh section of the act of
February 21, 1871, entitled, "An Act to provide a government for
the District of Columbia," as follows:

_And be it further enacted_, That all male citizens of the
United States, above the age of twenty-one years, who shall
have been actual residents of said District for three months
prior to the passage of this act, except such as are _non
compos mentis_, and persons convicted of infamous crimes,
shall be entitled to vote at said election, in the election
district or precinct in which he shall then reside, and
shall have so resided for thirty days immediately preceding
said election, and shall be eligible to any office within
the said district, and for all subsequent elections, twelve
months prior residence shall be required to constitute a
voter; but the Legislative Assembly shall have no right to
abridge or limit the right of suffrage.

It will be seen by the terms of this act that females are not
included within its privileges. On the contrary, by implication,
they are excluded. We do not understand that it is even insisted
in argument that authority for the exercise of the franchise is
to be derived from law. The position taken is, that the
plaintiffs have a right to vote, independent of the law; even in
defiance of the terms of the law. The claim, as we understand it,
is, that they have an inherent right, resting in nature, and
guaranteed by the Constitution in such wise that it may not be
defeated by legislation. In virtue of this natural and
constitutional right, the plaintiffs ask the court to overrule
the law, and give effect to rights lying behind it, and rising
superior to its authority.

The Court has listened patiently and with interest to ingenious
argument in support of the claim, but have failed to be convinced
of the correctness of the position, whether on authority or in
reason. In all periods, and in all countries, it may be safely
assumed that no privilege has been held to be more exclusively
within the control of conventional power than the privilege of
voting, each State in turn regulating the subject by the
sovereign political will. The nearest approach to the natural
right to vote, or govern--two words in this connection signifying
the same thing--is to be found in those countries and governments
that assert the hereditary right to rule. The assumption of
Divine right would be a full vindication of the natural right
contended for here, provided it did not involve the hereditary
obligation to obey.

Again, in other States, embracing the Republics, and especially
our own, including the States which make up the United States,
this right has been made to rest upon the authority of political
power, defining who may be an elector, and what shall constitute
his qualification; most States in the past period declaring
property as the familiar basis of a right to vote; others,
intelligence; others, more numerous, extending the right to all
male persons who have attained the age of majority. While the
conditions of the right have varied in several States, and from
time to time been modified in the same State, the right has
uniformly rested upon the express authority of the political
power, and been made to revolve within the limitations of express
law.

Passing from this brief allusion to the political history of the
question to the consideration of its inherent merits, we do not
hesitate to believe that the legal vindication of the natural
right of all citizens to vote would, at this stage of popular
intelligence, involve the destruction of civil government. There
is nothing in the history of the past that teaches us otherwise.
There is little in current history that promises a better result.
The right of all men to vote is as fully recognized in the
population of our large centres and cities as can well be done,
short of an absolute declaration that all men shall vote,
irrespective of qualifications. The result in these centres is
political profligacy and violence verging upon anarchy. The
influences working out this result are apparent in the utter
neglect of all agencies to conserve the virtue, integrity and
wisdom of government, and the appropriation of all agencies
calculated to demoralize and debase the integrity of the elector.
Institutions of learning, calculated to bring men up to their
highest state of political citizenship, and indispensable to the
qualifications of the mind and morals of the responsible voter,
are postponed to the agency of the dram-shop and gambling hell;
and men of conscience and capacity are discarded, to the
promotion of vagabonds to power.

This condition demonstrates that the right to vote ought not to
be, and is not, an absolute right. The fact that the practical
working of the assumed right would be destructive of civilization
is decisive that the right does not exist.... It will be seen by
the first clause of the XIV. Amendment, that the plaintiffs, in
common with all other persons born in the United States, are
citizens thereof, and, if to make them citizens is to make them
voters, the plaintiffs may, of right, vote. It will be inferred
from what has already been said, that to make a person a citizen
is not to make him or her a voter. All that has been accomplished
by this Amendment to the Constitution, or by its previous
provisions, is to distinguish them from aliens, and make them
capable of becoming voters.

In giving expression to my own judgment, this clause does advance
them to full citizenship, and clothes them with the capacity to
become voters. The provision ends with the declaration of their
citizenship. It is a constitutional provision that does not
execute itself. It is the creation of a constitutional condition
that requires the supervention of legislative power in the
exercise of legislative discretion to give it effect. The
constitutional capability of becoming a voter created by this
Amendment lies dormant, as in the case of an infant, until made
effective by legislative action. Congress, the legislative power
of this jurisdiction, as yet, has not seen fit to carry the
inchoate right into effect, as is apparent in the law regulating
the franchise of this District. When that shall have been done,
it will be the pleasure of this court to administer the law as
they find it. Until this shall be done, the consideration of
fitness and unfitness, merit and demerit, are considerations for
the law-making power. The demurrer in these cases is sustained.

After the reading of the opinion of the Court by Chief Justice
Cartter, Mr. Riddle, counsel for the plaintiffs, in open court, prayed
an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. And that highest
tribunal affirmed the decision of Judge Cartter.

This contradictory decision of Judge Cartter averring that the XIV.
Amendment clothed women with the capacity to become voters, but did
not create them voters, afforded opportunity for criticism and
ridicule. The Washington _Sunday Morning Herald_ wittily reported[166]
this trial in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.

On July 21st, 1871, Ellen Rand Van Valkenburg, of Santa Cruz,
California, having applied for registration and been refused, brought
suit against Albert Brown, of Brown County, who acted as Register upon
this occasion. Although later suits exceeded this in interest it was
notable for being the first decision under the new amendments.[167]

September 16, 1871, suit was brought by Carrie S. Burnham, an
unmarried woman, residing in Philadelphia. She was duly assessed by
the canvassers of the Fourteenth Ward of that city as a resident of
the Eleventh Election District of that ward. Two days afterwards she
paid her tax, and her name was registered on the canvassers' printed
list of legal voters in that division. Having complied with all the
laws regulating suffrage in Pennsylvania, she presented her ballot in
legal form at the proper time and place at the general election, but
her vote was refused. Her argument in the Court of Common Pleas and
the opinion of the judge, will be given in the Pennsylvania chapter.

Mrs. Catharine V. Waite, of Illinois, also instituted suit for the
refusal of her vote proffered in the fall of 1871, and received an
adverse decision, a report of which will be found in the Illinois
chapter.

Two years previous to these suits for the recognition of the political
rights of women a contest of a different character was commenced in
Illinois. Mrs. Myra Bradwell, editor of the Chicago _Legal News_, in
September, 1869, having passed the examination, and received the
required certificate of qualification, applied for admission to the
bar of that State, which was refused by its Supreme court, on the
ground that she was a woman. She made this denial of her civil rights
a test case by bringing a writ of error against the State of Illinois
in the Supreme Court of the United States. We copy from the _Legal
News_ of February 5, 1870:

A WOMAN CAN NOT PRACTICE LAW OR HOLD ANY OFFICE IN ILLINOIS.

_Full Report of the Proceedings in the Supreme Court upon the
Application of Myra Bradwell to be admitted to the Bar._

LICENSING ATTORNEYS.--The following extract from rule 76 shows
what is required by the Supreme Court of applicants for admission
to the bar:

_Ordered_, That rules 69 and 70 be rescinded, and applicants
for license to practice law in the courts of this State, on
presenting to any member of this court a certificate of
qualification, signed by the Circuit Judge and State's
Attorney of the circuit in which the applicant may reside,
setting forth that the applicant has been examined and found
qualified, will be a sufficient voucher on which to grant a
license.

CERTIFICATE OF ADMISSION.--The undersigned have examined Mrs.
Myra Bradwell as to her qualifications to enter upon the practice
of the law, and finding her qualified therefor, recommended that
a license should be issued to her.

E. S. WILLIAMS, _Judge Seventh Judicial Circuit_.
CHARLES H. REED, _State's Attorney_.

Chicago, Illinois, August 2, 1869.

MOTION TO BE ADMITTED.--Robert Hervey, Esq., of the Chicago Bar,
at the September term, kindly, at the request of the applicant,
filed her certificate of examination and of character from Judge
Jameson of the Superior Court of Chicago; also the following
written application prepared by her, and moved the court that she
be admitted:

_Supreme Court of Illinois--Third Grand Division--September Term.
1869--(In the matter of the Application of Myra Bradwell for
license to practice law.)_

_To the Honorable the Judges of the Supreme Court of Illinois_:
Now comes your petitioner, Myra Bradwell, a resident of Chicago,
Ill., over twenty-one years of age, and presents to your honors,
under rule 76 of this honorable court, the certificate of the
Hon. E. S. Williams, Judge of the Circuit Court for the Seventh
District, and the Hon. Charles H. Reed, State's Attorney for the
said circuit, stating that they have examined your petitioner and
found her qualified to practice law, and recommend that a license
issue to her for that purpose, and also a certificate as to
character from the Superior Court of Chicago, as required by the
statute and the rule aforesaid, and moves your honors that an
order of this honorable court may be entered directing a license
to be given to your petitioner. Your petitioner suggests that the
only question involved in her case is--Does being a woman
disqualify her under the laws of Illinois from receiving a
license to practice law?--and claims that the Legislature has
answered this question in the negative. The first section of
chapter eleven of the Revised Statutes, in regard to the
admission of attorneys, is as follows:

No person shall be permitted to practice as an attorney or
counselor-at-law, or to commence, conduct, or defend any
action, suit, or plaint, in which he is not a party
concerned, in any court of record within this State, either
by using or subscribing his own name or the name of any
other person without having previously obtained a license
for that purpose from some two of the Justices of the
Supreme Court, which license shall constitute the person
receiving the same an attorney and counselor-at-law, and
shall authorize him to appear in all the courts of record
within this State, and there to practice as an attorney and
counselor-at-law, according to the laws and customs thereof,
for and during his good behavior in said practice, and to
demand and receive all such fees as are or hereafter may be
established for any services which he shall or may render as
an attorney or counselor-at-law in this State.

Your petitioner claims that the pronoun he, not only in this
section, but the whole chapter, is used indefinitely for any
person, and may refer to either a man or woman.

The Legislature devoted the whole of chapter 90 to construing
various expressions and words used in the Revised Statutes, and
in section 28 said:

When any party or person is described or referred to by
words importing the masculine gender, females as well as
males shall be deemed to be included.

It is declared by Act No. 29, appendix to the Revised Statutes,
that the several chapters composing the Revised Statutes shall be
deemed and taken as one act.

It is evident that if a woman should practice law without a
license, recover for her services, and be sued for three times
the amount, that under Sec. 11 of Chap. 11 for practicing law
without a license, it would be no defense for her to say that the
masculine pronoun was used in this section.

Section 3 of our Declaration of Rights, says "that all men have a
natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God," etc. It
will not be contended that women are not included within this
provision.

The 8th section declares "that no freeman shall be imprisoned or
disseized of his freehold," etc., but by the judgment of his
peers or the law of the land. Will woman be deprived of the
guarantees in this section and the right of trial by jury because
the masculine pronoun is used? Under the 11th section no man's
property can be taken or applied to public use without the
consent, etc. Is not the property of a woman as secure under this
provision as that of a man? In the chapter upon forcible entry
and detainer, the masculine pronoun is used throughout, but no
court would hesitate for a moment in holding a woman to be within
its provisions if she should wrongfully hold possession of
premises.

In the whole Chancery Code of this State, consisting of 53
sections, the word woman, female, she, her, herself, or any other
feminine pronouns are not to be found, while in the 5th, 8th,
15th, 18th, 19th, 24th, 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th, 30th, 31st,
36th, 37th, and 46th, and some others, the masculine pronouns
frequently occur. The same construction that would exclude a
woman from the provisions of the statute in regard to the
admission of attorneys, would place her without the Chancery
Code. Yet no respectable attorney would claim because defendants
in chancery are represented in the law by masculine pronouns,
that a woman could not be made a defendant in chancery.

All of which is respectfully submitted.

MYRA BRADWELL.

COMMUNICATION FROM THE COURT.

No order having been entered or opinion filed in this case, on
the seventh of October the applicant received from the court,
through Hon. Norman L. Freeman, Supreme Court Reporter, the
following communication:

STATE OF ILLINOIS, SUPREME COURT, THIRD GRAND }
DIVISION, CLERK'S OFFICE, Ottawa, Oct. 6, 1869. }

MRS. MYRA BRADWELL--_Madam_: The court instruct me to inform you
that they are compelled to deny your application for a license to
practice as an attorney-at-law in the courts of this State, upon
the ground that you would not be bound by the obligations
necessary to be assumed where the relation of attorney and client
shall exist, by reason of the disability imposed by your married
condition--it being assumed that you are a married woman.

Applications of the same character have occasionally been made by
persons under twenty-one years of age, and have always been
denied upon the same ground that they are not bound by their
contracts, being under a legal disability in that regard.

Until such disability shall be removed by legislation, the court
regards itself powerless to grant your application.

Very respectfully, your obedient servant,

N. L. FREEMAN.

The applicant, satisfied that under the common law, as modified
by our statutes, she could not properly be denied a license to
practice law solely upon the ground of her married condition, on
the 18th of November filed the following printed argument:

ADDITIONAL BRIEF.

_In the Supreme Court of Illinois_--_Third Grand
Division_--_September Term, 1869._ [In the matter of the
application of Myra Bradwell to obtain a license to practice as
an Attorney-at-law.] And now again comes the said Myra Bradwell,
it having been suggested to her that the court had assumed that
she is a married woman, and therefore queried whether this would
not prevent her from receiving a license, and files this her
additional brief.

Your petitioner admits to your honors that she is a married woman
(although she believes that fact does not appear in the record),
but insists most firmly that under the laws of Illinois it is
neither a crime nor a disqualification to be a married woman.

I propose to state very briefly,

1. What is an attorney?

2. Who may act as attorneys?

3. The rights and powers of married women in relation to their
business and property under the common law.

4. Their rights and powers as to transacting business under the
recent statutes of our State, with reference to their transacting
business in their own names and acting as attorneys.

5. The avenues of trade and the professions opened to women by
the liberal enactments of the law-makers, and the construction of
the courts.

6. How the Legislature has regarded petitioner with reference to
her rights to carry on business in her own name and act for
herself.

I. WHAT IS AN ATTORNEY?--An attorney is "one who takes the turn
or place of another."--_Webster._ "An attorney at-law," says
Bouvier, "is an officer in a court of justice who is employed by
a party in a cause to manage the same for him." All attorneys are
agents. They transact business, and appear for, and in the place
of their clients who have not the requisite learning, time, or
desire to appear in suits for themselves.

Mr. Story, in his work upon "Agency," and Mr. Bouvier, in his
"Institutes," in treating of the different kinds of agents, both
speak first of attorneys-at-law. All the elementary writers upon
law tell us that attorneys are agents. Without reference to our
recent statutes modifying the common law, we will open the books
and see who may be attorneys or agents.

II. WHO MAY BE ATTORNEYS OR AGENTS.--Mr. Story, in his work on
Agency, says, sec. 7:

Secondly, who are capable of becoming agents? And here it
may be stated that there are few persons who are excluded
from acting as agents, or from exercising an authority
delegated to them by others. Therefore, it is by no means
necessary for a person to be _sui juris_ or capable of
acting in his or her own right, in order to qualify himself
or herself to act for others. Thus, for example, monks,
infants, _femes covert_, persons attainted, outlawed, or
excommunicated villains, and aliens, may be agents for
others.... A _feme covert_ may be an attorney of another, to
make livery to her husband upon a feoffment; and a husband
may take such livery to his wife, although they are
generally deemed but one person in law. She may also act as
agent or otherwise of her own husband, and as such, with his
consent, bind him by her contract, or other act; or she may
act as the agent of another, in a contract, with her own
husband.

III. UNDER THE COMMON LAW.--In Cox _vs._ Kitchin, 1 Bos. & Pul.,
438, where a _feme covert_ represented herself falsely to the
tradesman to be a _feme sole_, and obtained goods on credit, it
was held that she rendered herself personally responsible.

In Derry _vs._ Mazarine, 1 Ld. Raymond, 147, it was held that the
wife of an alien, who was doing business in her own name, in
England, was liable as a _feme sole_. In Hauptman _vs._ Catlin,
20 N. Y., 248, the Court of Appeals says:

Even before the late statute respecting married women, they
were regarded as _femes sole_ in respect to their separate
property, and were as to such property liable on their
contracts respecting the same, to the same extent and as
though they were not under the disability of coverture. It
was held by Lord Mansfield and his associates, in Corbett
_vs._ Poelnitz, 1 T. R., 5, that if a husband and wife
choose to separate, and the husband allows the wife a
separate maintenance, she may contract and be sued as though
she were unmarried, and may be held to bail and imprisoned
on a _ca. sa._ without her husband. The court made this
innovation on the ground that "the times alter new customs,
and new manners arise, which require new exceptions, and a
different application of the general rule.

IV. UNDER THE RECENT STATUTES.--In Conway _vs._ Smith and Wife,
13 Wis., 125, the court held that "the statute gives to married
women, as necessarily incidental to the power of holding property
to their own use, the power of making all contracts necessary or
convenient to its beneficial enjoyment, and such contracts are to
be regarded as valid in law, and may be enforced by legal
remedies." Cole, J., dissenting.

In Barton _vs._ Beer, 35 Barbour, 81, the court, in treating of
the liability of a married woman, says:

If she acts as a _feme sole_, she ought, in justice to the
public, to be subjected to all the duties and liabilities of
a _feme sole_.

In Emerson _vs._ Clayton, 32 Ill., 493, this honorable court
held, that a married woman might bring replevin in her own name,
for her separate property, against a third party, or even against
her own husband, and that the act designed to make and did make a
radical and thorough change in the condition of a _feme covert_;
that she is to be regarded as unmarried, so far as her separate
property is concerned.

In Pomeroy _vs._ Manhattan Life Insurance Co., 40 Ill., 398,
Walker, C. J., in delivering the opinion of the court, says:

Under the statute she is entitled to the benefits it
confers, and must be held liable for her acts performed in
pursuance of the authority it confers. If it gives the
rights of a sole ownership, it must impose the liabilities
incident to such an act.

In Brownell _vs._ Dixon, 39 Ill., 207. this court not only held,
under the act of 1861, that a married woman possessed of separate
property might employ "an agent to transact her business", but
that she might employ her own husband as such agent.

Relying upon the doctrine laid down in this case, we insist that
the power "to employ an agent" carries with it the liability to
pay such an agent a reasonable compensation for his services; and
that if a married woman employs a man to work on her farm for one
day, and agrees to give him two dollars therefor, and fails so to
do, that a fair construction of the act of 1861 would allow him
to sue her before a justice of the peace, and not drive him to
the expense of filing a bill in chancery that would amount to
more than a denial of justice.

Now, if under the Act of 1861 she can employ an agent to transact
her business, we insist under the Act of 1869, giving the wife
her own earnings, and the rights to sue for the same in her own
name, free from her husband, that she has the right to be
employed as an agent, or attorney, or physician, if she is
capable, and to agree to do the duties of her profession. It
would almost seem that this question is answered by the following
extract from the opinion of this honorable court, as delivered by
Mr. Justice Lawrence, in Carpenter _vs._ Mitchell, 2 _Legal
News_, 44:

It may be said that a married woman can not adequately enjoy
her separate property unless she can make contracts in
regard to it. This is true, and hence her power to make
contracts, so far as may be necessary for the use and
enjoyment of her property, must be regarded as resulting by
implication from the statute. If she owns houses she must be
permitted to contract for their repair or rental. If she
owns a farm she must be permitted to bargain for its
cultivation, and to dispose of its products. We give these
as illustrations of the power of contracting which is fairly
implied in the law.

It is true, in this opinion the learned Judge confines his
remarks strictly to the contracts of the wife made in relation to
her separate property, and not in relation to general trade. This
case arose before the passage of the Act of 1869. The right of a
married woman to bring a suit in her own name is a necessary
incident to the law. (Cole _vs._ Van Riper, 1 _Legal News_, 41.)

V. THE TRADES AND PROFESSIONS OPEN TO WOMEN.--The doors of many
of our universities and law schools are now open to women upon an
equality with men. The Government of the United States has
employed women in many of its departments, and appointed many,
both single and married, to office. Almost every large city in
the Union has its regularly-admitted female physicians. The law
schools of the nation have now many women in regular attendance,
fitting themselves to perform the duties of the profession. The
bar itself is not without its women lawyers, both single and
married.

Mrs. Arabella A. Mansfield, wife of Prof. J. M. Mansfield, of
Mount Pleasant, Iowa, was admitted to the bar of Iowa, upon the
unanimous petition of the attorneys of that place, after a very
careful examination, not only of the applicant, but of the
statutes regulating the admission of attorneys.

The statute of Iowa provides that "any white male person,
twenty-one years of age, who is an inhabitant of this State," and
who satisfies the court, "that he possesses the requisite
learning, and that he is of good moral character, may, by such
court, be licensed to practice in all the courts of the State,
upon taking the usual oath of office."

The clause construing statutes is as follows:

Words importing the singular number only, may be extended to
several persons or things; and words importing the plural
number only may be applied to one person, or thing; and
words importing the masculine gender only may be extended to
females.

In Mrs. Mansfield's case, the court not only held that she could
be admitted, notwithstanding the fact that she was a married
woman, under the clause of the statute giving a construction to
the masculine noun "male," and pronoun "he"; but that the
affirmative declaration, that male persons may be admitted, is
not an implied denial of the right to females. We know of no
instance in the United States, where a woman, whether married or
single, who has complied with the statutes of the State in which
she lived and applied for admission, that the proper court has
refused to grant her license.

VI. HOW THE LEGISLATURE HAVE REGARDED YOUR PETITIONER.--It has
been held, in England, that a wife who does business in her own
name, with either the express or implied consent of her husband,
should be treated as a _feme sole_, and be sued as such; and,
with such consent, could be an administrator, executor, or
guardian, in England or America.

The Legislature has, in repeated instances, acknowledged the
capability and capacity of your petitioner to transact business,
by providing that the _Chicago Legal News_, edited by her, and
containing the decisions rendered by your honors, should be
received in evidence in all the courts of this State, and in the
following extract from the charter of the Chicago Legal News
Company:

And all the real and personal estate of said Myra Bradwell
shall be liable for the debts of said company, contracted
while she is a stockholder therein, and all stock of said
company owned by her, and the earnings thereof, shall be her
sole and separate property, the same as if she were an
unmarried woman; and she shall have the same right to hold
any office or offices in said company, or transact any of
its business that a _feme sole_ would have.--_Legal News_,
Edition Laws of 1869, p. 93. Sec. 4, p. 93.

Your petitioner claims that a married woman is not to be classed
with an infant since the passage of the Act of 1869. A married
woman may sue in her own name for her earnings, an infant can
not. A married woman, if an attorney, could be committed for
contempt of court the same as any other attorney. If she should
collect money and refuse to pay it over, she could be sued for it
the same as if she were single. A married woman is liable at law
for all torts committed by her, unless done under the real or
implied coercion of her husband. Having received a license to
practice law as an attorney, and having acted as such, she would
be estopped from saying she was not liable as an attorney upon
any contract made by her in that capacity.

The fees that a married woman receives for her services as an
attorney are just as much her earnings as the dollar that a
sewing-woman receives for her day's work, and are just as much
protected by the Act of 1869. Is it for the court to say, in
advance, that it will not admit a married woman? Should she be
admitted, and fail to perform her duty, or to comply with all her
contracts as an attorney, could not the court, upon application,
strike her name from the roll, or inflict more summary
punishment?

Your petitioner has complied with all the provisions of the
statutes of the State regulating the admission of attorneys, and
asks, as a matter of right and justice, standing as she does upon
the law of the land, that she be admitted.

Not a line of written law, or a single decision in our State, can
be found disqualifying a married woman from acting as an
attorney. This honorable court can send me from its bar, and
prevent me from practicing as an attorney, and it is of small
consequence; but if, in so doing, your honors say to me: "You can
not receive a license to practice as an attorney-at-law in the
courts of this State upon the ground that you would not be bound
by the obligations necessary to be assumed, where the relation of
attorney and client shall exist, by reason of the disability
imposed by your married condition"; you, in my judgment, in
striking me down, strike a blow at the rights of every married
woman in the great State of Illinois who is dependent on her
labor for support, and say to her, you can not enter into the
smallest contract in relation to your earnings or separate
property, that can be enforced against you in a court of law.

This result can, in my opinion, only be reached by disregarding
the liberal statutes of our State, passed for the sole purpose of
extending the rights of married women, and forever removing from
our law, relating to their power to contract in regard to their
earnings and property, the fossil foot-prints of the feudal
system, and following the strictest rules of the common law.

Lord Mansfield, notwithstanding the fact that slaves had been
held, bought and sold for years in the streets of London,
declared that the moment a slave touched British soil his
shackles fell. The same noble lord held that a married woman
might under certain circumstances, contract, and sue, and be sued
at law, as a single woman, upon the ground that, the reason of
the law ceasing, the law itself must cease; and that, as the
usages of society alter, the law must adapt itself to the various
situations of mankind. Mr. Justice Buller, in speaking of this
decision years afterward, declared that "the points there decided
were founded in good sense, and adapted to the transactions, the
understanding, and the welfare of mankind."

Apply this reasoning in our State, now that the Legislature has
removed every claim that the husband had, under the common law,
upon the property of the wife, except his life estate in her
hands, which only commences with her death, and all difficulty is
removed, and the case is clear.

MYRA BRADWELL.

Applicant, with a view of placing herself in a position to obtain
the benefit of the provisions of the Constitution of the United
States, and the Civil Rights Bill, applicable to her case, on the
second day of January, 1870, filed the following affidavit and
points:

_In the Supreme Court of Illinois, Third Grand
Division--September Term, 1869. [In the matter of the application
of Myra Bradwell to obtain a license to practice as an
Attorney-at-law]--State of Illinois, County of Cook, ss.:_ Myra
Bradwell, being duly sworn, doth depose and say that she was born
in Manchester, in the State of Vermont, and that she was a
citizen of said State last named, that she is now a citizen of
the United States; that she is and has been for many years last
past a resident of Chicago, in said State of Illinois, and
further deponent says not.

MYRA BRADWELL.

Subscribed and sworn to before me this 31st day of December, A.D.
1869.

E. B. PAYNE, Notary Public. [Seal.]

And now again comes the said Myra Bradwell, and files the
following additional points:

VII. Your petitioner claims under the XIV. Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States, and the act commonly known as
the "Civil Rights Bill," the "full and equal benefit of all laws
and proceedings for the security of person and property," and the
right to exercise and follow the profession of an attorney-at-law
upon the same terms, conditions, and restrictions as are applied
to and imposed upon every other citizen of the State of Illinois,
and none other.

And that having complied with all the laws of the State, and the
rules and regulations of this honorable court, for the admission
of attorneys, it is contrary to the true intent and meaning of
said Amendment and said "Civil Rights Bill," for your petitioner
to be refused a license to practice law, upon the sole ground of
her "married condition."

VIII. And your petitioner further claims, that having been born
in the State of Vermont, and having been a citizen of the State
last named, and of the United States, and having removed to the
State of Illinois, where she has resided for many years, that
under the second section of the IV. Article of the Constitution
of the United States, which is in these words, "The citizens of
each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of
citizens in the several States," she has guaranteed to her the
privileges and immunities which every other citizen of the State
of Illinois has, among which may be named the protection of the
Government, the right to the enjoyment of life and liberty, to
acquire and possess property, to reside in the State, to carry on
trade, and the right to follow any professional pursuit under the
laws of the State, which must work equally upon all the citizens
of the State, and that under this section of the Constitution she
has a right to receive a license to practice law upon the same
terms and conditions as the most favored citizen of the State of
Illinois.

(People _vs._ Washington, 36 California R., 662. Corfield _vs._
Coryell, 4 Washington C. R., 381.)

MYRA BRADWELL.

On last week the court filed an opinion denying the application,
for a very carefully prepared copy of which we are indebted to
Mr. Freeman:

OPINION OF THE COURT DENYING THE APPLICATION.

[_In the matter of the application of Mrs. Myra Bradwell for a
license to practice as an Attorney-at-Law._] OPINION OF THE COURT
DELIVERED BY MR. JUSTICE LAWRENCE.--At the last term of the court
Mrs. Myra Bradwell applied for a license as an attorney-at-law,
presenting the ordinary certificates of character and
qualifications. The license was refused, and it was stated as a
sufficient reason, that under the decisions of this court the
applicant, as a married woman, would be bound neither by her
express contracts, nor by those implied contracts which it is the
policy of the law to create between attorney and client. Since
the announcement of our decision, the applicant has filed a
printed argument in which her right to a license is earnestly and
ably maintained. Of the ample qualifications of the applicant we
have no doubt, and we put our decision in writing in order that
she or other persons interested may bring the question before the
next Legislature.

The applicant, in her printed argument, combats the decision of
the court in the case of Carpenter _vs._ Mitchell, June term,
1869, in which we held a married woman was not bound by contracts
having no relation to her own property. We are not inclined to go
over again the grounds of that decision. It was the result of a
good deal of deliberation and discussion in our council chamber,
and the confidence of the present members of this court in its
correctness can not easily be shaken. We are in accord with all
the courts in this country which have had occasion to pass upon a
similar question, the Supreme Court of Wisconsin in Conway _vs._
Smith, 13 Wis., 125, differing from us only on the minor point as
to whether, in regard to contracts concerning the separate
property of married women, the law side of the court would take
jurisdiction.

As to the main question, the right of married women to make
contracts not affecting their separate property, the position of
those who assert such right is, that because the Legislature has
expressly removed the common law disabilities of married women in
regard to holding property not derived from their husbands, it
has therefore, by necessary implication, also removed all their
common law disabilities in regard to making contracts, and
invited them to enter, equally with men, upon those fields of
trade and speculation by which property is acquired through the
agency of contracts.

The hiatus between the premise and the conclusion is too wide for
us to bridge. It may be desirable that the Legislature should
relieve married women from all their common law disabilities. But
to say that it has done so in the Act of 1861, the language of
which is carefully guarded, and which makes no allusion to
contracts, and does not use that or any equivalent term, would be
simple misinterpretation. It would be going as far beyond the
meaning of that act as that act goes beyond the common law in
changing the legal status of women. The act itself is wise and
just, and therefore entitled to a liberal interpretation.

This we have endeavored to give it in the cases that have come
before us, but we do not intend to decide that the Legislature
has gone to a length in its measure of reform for which the
language it has carefully used furnishes no warrant.

It is urged, however, that the law of the last session of the
Legislature, which gives to married women the separate control of
their earnings, must be construed as giving to them the right to
contract in regard to their personal services. This act had no
application to the case of Carpenter _vs._ Mitchell, having been
passed after that suit was commenced, and we were unmindful of it
when considering this application at the last term. Neither do we
now propose to consider how far it extends the power of a married
woman to contract, since, after further consultation in regard to
this application, we find ourselves constrained to hold that the
sex of the applicant, independently of coverture; is, as our law
now stands, a sufficient reason for not granting this license.

Although an attorney-at-law is an agent, as claimed by the
applicant's argument, when he has been retained to act for
another, yet he is also much more than an agent. He is an officer
of the court, holding his commission in this State, from two of
the members of this court, and subject to be disbarred by this
court for what our statute calls "mal-conduct in his office." He
is appointed to assist in the administration of justice, is
required to take an oath of office, and is privileged from arrest
while attending courts.

Our statute provides that no person shall be permitted to
practice as an attorney or counselor-at-law, without having
previously obtained a license for that purpose from two of the
justices of the Supreme Court. By the second section of the act,
it is provided that no person shall be entitled to receive a
license until he shall have obtained a certificate, from the
court of some county, of his good moral character, and this is
the only express limitation upon the exercise of the power thus
intrusted to this court. In all other respects it is left to our
discretion to establish the rules by which admission to this
office shall be determined. But this discretion is not an
arbitrary one, and must be held subject to at least two
limitations. One is, that the court should establish such terms
of admission as will promote the proper administration of
justice; the second, that it should not admit any persons or
class of persons who are not intended by the Legislature to be
admitted, even though their exclusion is not expressly required
by the statute.

The substance of the last limitation is simply that this
important trust reposed in us should be exercised in conformity
with the designs of the power creating it.

Whether, in the existing social relations between men and women,
it would promote the proper administration of justice, and the
general well-being of society, to permit women to engage in the
trial of cases at the bar, is a question opening a wide field of
discussion upon which it is not necessary for us to enter. It is
sufficient to say that, in our opinion, the other implied
limitation upon our power, to which we have above referred, must
operate to prevent our admitting women to the office of
attorney-at-law. If we were to admit them, we should be
exercising the authority conferred upon us in a manner which, we
are fully satisfied, was never contemplated by the Legislature.

Upon this question it seems to us neither this applicant herself,
nor any unprejudiced and intelligent person, can entertain the
slightest doubt. It is to be remembered that at the time this
statute was enacted we had, by express provision, adopted the
common law of England; and, with three exceptions, the statutes
of that country passed prior to the fourth year of James the
First, so far as they were applicable to our condition.

It is to be also remembered that female attorneys-at-law were
unknown in England, and a proposition that a woman should enter
the courts of Westminster Hall in that capacity, or as a
barrister, would have created hardly less astonishment than one
that she should ascend the bench of Bishops, or be elected to a
seat in the House of Commons. It is to be further remembered,
that when our act was passed, that school of reform which claims
for women participation in the making and administering of the
laws had not then arisen, or, if here and there a writer had
advanced such theories, they were regarded rather as abstract
speculations than as an actual basis for action.

That God designed the sexes to occupy different spheres of
action, and that it belonged to men to make, apply, and execute
the laws, was regarded as an almost axiomatic truth. It may have
been a radical error, and we are by no means certain it was not,
but that this was the universal belief certainly admits of no
denial. A direct participation in the affairs of government, in
even the most elementary form, namely, the right of suffrage, was
not then claimed, and has not yet been conceded, unless recently
in one of the newly-settled Territories of the West.

In view of these facts, we are certainly warranted in saying,
that when the Legislature gave to this court the power of
granting licenses to practice law, it was with not the slightest
expectation that this privilege would be extended equally to men
and women.

Neither has there been any legislation since that period which
would justify us in presuming a change in the legislative
intent. Our laws to-day in regard to women, are substantially
what they have always been, except in the change wrought by the
acts of 1861 and 1869, giving to married women the right to
control their own property and earnings.

Whatever, then, may be our individual opinions as to the
admission of women to the bar, we do not deem ourselves at
liberty to exercise our power in a mode never contemplated by the
Legislature, and inconsistent with the usages of courts of the
common law from the origin of the system to the present day.

But it is not merely an immense innovation in our own usages as a
court that we are asked to make. This step, if taken by us, would
mean that in the opinion of this tribunal, every civil office in
this State may be filled by women--that it is in harmony with the
spirit of our Constitution and laws that women should be made
governors, judges, and sheriffs. This we are not yet prepared to
hold.

In our opinion, it is not the province of a court to attempt, by
giving a new interpretation to an ancient statute, to introduce
so important a change in the legal position of one-half the
people. Courts of justice were not intended to be made the
instruments of pushing forward measures of popular reform. If it
be desirable that those offices which we have borrowed from the
English law, and which from their origin some centuries ago down
to the present time, have been filled exclusively by men, should
also be made accessible to women, then let the change be made,
but let it be made by that department of the Government to whom
the Constitution has intrusted the power of changing the laws.
The great body of our law rests merely upon ancient usage. The
right of a husband in this State to the personal property of his
wife, before the act of 1861, rested simply upon such usage, yet
who could have justified this court if, prior to the passage of
that act, it had solemnly decided that it was unreasonable that
the property of the wife should vest in the husband, and this
usage should no longer be recognized? Yet was it not as
unreasonable that a woman by marriage should lose the title of
her personal property, as it is that she should not receive from
us a license to practice law? The rule in both cases, until the
law of 1861, rested upon the same common law usage and could have
pleaded the same antiquity. In the one case it was never
pretended that this court could properly overturn the rule, and
we do not see how we could be justified should we disregard it in
the other. The principle can not be too strictly and
conscientiously observed, that each of the three departments of
the Government should avoid encroachment upon the other, and that
it does not belong to the judiciary to attempt to inaugurate
great social or political reforms. The mere fact that women have
never been licensed as attorneys-at-law is, in a tribunal where
immemorial usage is as much respected as it is and ought to be in
courts of justice, a sufficient reason for declining to exercise
our discretion in their favor, until the propriety of their
participating in the offices of State and the administration of
public affairs shall have been recognized by the law-making
department of the Government--that department to which the
initiative in great measures of reform properly belongs. For us
to attempt, in a matter of this importance, to inaugurate a
practice at variance with all the precedents of the law we are
sworn to administer, would be an act of judicial usurpation
deserving of the gravest censure. If we could disregard, in this
matter, the authority of those unwritten usages which make the
great body of our law, we might do so in any other, and the
dearest rights of person and property would become a matter of
mere judicial discretion.

But it is said the 28th section of chapter 90 of the Revised
Statutes of 1845 provides that, whenever any person is referred
to in the statute by words importing the masculine gender,
females as well as males shall be deemed to be included. But the
36th section of the same chapter provides that this rule of
construction shall not apply where there is anything in the
subject or context repugnant to such construction. That is the
case in the present instance.

In the view we have taken of this question the argument drawn by
the applicant from the Constitution of the United States has no
pertinency.

In conclusion we would add that, while we are constrained to
refuse this application, we respect the motive which prompts it,
and we entertain a profound sympathy with those efforts which are
being so widely made to reasonably enlarge the field for the
exercise of woman's industry and talent. While those theories
which are popularly known as "woman's rights" can not be expected
to meet with a very cordial acceptance among the members of a
profession which, more than any other, inclines its followers, if
not to stand immovable upon the ancient ways, at least to make no
hot haste in measures of reform, still all right-minded men must
gladly see new spheres of action opened to woman, and greater
inducements offered her to seek the highest and widest culture.
There are some departments of the legal profession in which she
can appropriately labor.

Whether, on the other hand, to engage in the hot strifes of the
Bar, in the presence of the public, and with momentous verdicts
the prizes of the struggle would not tend to destroy the
deference and delicacy with which it is the pride of our ruder
sex to treat her, is a matter certainly worthy of her
consideration. But the important question is, what effect the
presence of women as barristers in our courts would have upon the
administration of justice, and the question can be satisfactorily
answered only in the light of experience.

If the Legislature shall choose to remove the existing barriers
and authorize us to issue licenses equally to men and women, we
shall cheerfully obey, trusting to the good sense and sound
judgment of women themselves to seek those departments of the
practice in which they can labor without reasonable objection.

Application denied.

The opinion will be best understood by reading our arguments
first, and knowing all the points made before the court. We have
not the space to review the opinion in this issue, but shall do
so at some future day, and will simply say now, that what the
decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the Dred
Scott case was to the rights of negroes as citizens of the United
States, this decision is to the political rights of women in
Illinois--annihilation.

CAN A WOMAN PRACTICE LAW OR HOLD ANY OFFICE IN ILLINOIS?

_Full Report of the Proceedings in the Supreme Court of Illinois
and the Supreme Court of the United States, upon the application
of Myra Bradwell to be admitted to the Bar._

On pp. 145, 146, and 147 of this volume, we gave the proceedings
in full in the Supreme Court of this State upon our application
to be admitted to practice law, including the opinion of Judge
Lawrence, the present learned Chief-Justice of that tribunal,
denying the application on the sole ground that a woman could not
be admitted to the bar or hold any office in Illinois. As soon
after this opinion was announced as we could obtain a certified
copy of the record, we placed it in the hands of the Hon. Matt.
H. Carpenter, one of the ablest constitutional lawyers in the
nation, with a view of obtaining a writ of error from the Supreme
Court of the United States. Mr. Carpenter prepared and presented
our petition for a writ of error, together with the record. The
following is the indorsement upon the record, allowing the writ
of error from the Supreme Court of the United States:

I allow a writ of error from the Supreme Court of the United
States to the Supreme Court of Illinois, in the suit and
judgment of which the foregoing record is a transcript.

SAM. F. MILLER, _Asso. Jus. Sup. Court U. S._

_August 16, 1870_.

CITATION TO THE STATE OF ILLINOIS TO APPEAR AT WASHINGTON.

_The United States of America to the State of
Illinois_:--The State of Illinois is hereby cited and
admonished to appear and be at the Supreme Court of the
United States to be holden at Washington City in the
District of Columbia, on the first Monday of December next,
pursuant to a writ of error filed in the clerk's office of
the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois, wherein Myra
Bradwell is plaintiff in error, and the State of Illinois is
defendant in error, to show cause, if any there be, why the
judgment in the said writ of error mentioned should not be
corrected, and speedy justice should not be done to the
parties in that behalf.

Witness the Honorable Salmon P. Chase, Chief-Justice of the
Supreme Court of the United States this 16th day of August,
A.D. 1870.

SAM. F. MILLER, _Asso. Jus. Sup. Court U. S._

WRIT OF ERROR.

_United States of America, ss.:_

[SEAL.] The President of the United States, To the Honorable
the Judges of the Supreme Court of the State of
Illinois--Greeting:

Because, in the record and proceedings, as also in the
rendition of the judgment of a plea which is in the said
Supreme Court of the State of Illinois, before you, or some
of you, being the highest court of law or equity of the said
State in which a decision could be had in the said suit in
the matter of the application of Myra Bradwell, of Cook
County, Illinois for a license to practice law in the courts
of said State, wherein was drawn in question the validity of
a treaty or statute of, or an authority exercised under, the
United States, and the decision was against their validity;
or wherein was drawn in question the validity of a statute
of, or an authority exercised under, said State, on the
ground of their being repugnant to the Constitution,
treaties, or laws of the United States, and the decision was
in favor of such their validity; or wherein was drawn in
question the construction of a clause of the Constitution,
or of a treaty, or statute of, or commission held under, the
United States, and the decision was against the title,
right, privilege, or exemption, specially set up or claimed
under such clause of the said Constitution, treaty, statute,
or commission, a manifest error hath happened, to the great
damage of the said Myra Bradwell, as by her complaint
appears. We being willing that error, if any hath been,
should be duly corrected, and full and speedy justice done
to the parties aforesaid in this behalf, do command you, if
judgment be therein given, that then under your seal,
distinctly and openly, you send the record and proceedings
aforesaid, with all things concerning the same, to the
Supreme Court of the United States, together with this writ,
so that you have the same at Washington on the first Monday
of December next, in the said Supreme Court, to be then and
there held, that the record and proceedings aforesaid being
inspected, the said Supreme Court may cause further to be
done therein to correct that error what of right, and
according to the laws and custom of the United States,
should be done.

Witness the Honorable Salmon P. Chase, Chief-Justice of the
said Supreme Court, the first Monday of December, in the
year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-nine.

D. W. MIDDLETON,
_Clerk of the Supreme Court of the U. S._

Issued 23d August, 1870. Allowed by me,

SAM. F. MILLER, _Asso. Jus. Sup. Court, U. S._

While these suits for the recognition of the political rights of women
were pending, a contest of a different character took place in
Illinois. Mrs. Myra Bradwell, editor of the Chicago _Legal News_,
applied for admission to the bar of that State, and was refused. She
made this denial of her civil rights a test case by bringing suit
against the State of Illinois in the Supreme Court of the United
States. The case was argued for the plaintiff in the December term,
1871, by the Hon. Matt. H. Carpenter, of Wisconsin, an eminent
republican United States Senator. In addressing the Court Mr.
Carpenter said:

This is a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the State of
Illinois, to review the proceedings of that court, denying the
petition of the plaintiff in error to be admitted to practice as
an attorney and counselor of that court, which right was claimed
by the plaintiff in error in that court under the XIV. Amendment
of the Constitution of the United States. The plaintiff in error
is a married woman, of full age, a citizen of the United States
and of the State of Illinois; was ascertained and certified to be
duly qualified in respect of character and attainments, but was
denied admission to the bar for the sole reason that she was a
married woman. This is the error relied upon to reverse the
proceedings below.

By the rules of this court no person can be admitted to practice
at the bar without service for a fixed term in the highest court
of the State in which such person resides. Consequently a denial
of admission in the highest court of the State is an
insurmountable obstacle to admission to the bar of this court.
This record, therefore, presents the broad question, whether a
married woman, being a citizen of the United States and of a
State, and possessing the necessary qualifications, is entitled
by the Constitution of the United States to be admitted to
practice as an attorney and counselor-at-law in the courts of the
State in which she resides. This is a question not of taste,
propriety, or politeness, but of civil right. Before proceeding
to discuss this question, it may be well to distinguish it from
the question of the right of female citizens to participate in
the exercise of the elective franchise.

The great problem of female suffrage, the solution of which lies
in our immediate future, naturally enough, from its transcendent
importance, draws to itself, in prejudiced minds, every question
relating to the civil rights of women; and it seems to be feared
that doing justice to woman's rights in any particular would
probably be followed by the establishment of the right of female
suffrage, which, it is assumed, would overthrow Christianity,
defeat the ends of modern civilization, and upturn the world.

While I do not believe that female suffrage has been secured by
the existing amendments to the Constitution of the United States,
neither do I look upon that result as at all to be dreaded. It is
not, in my opinion, a question of woman's rights merely, but, in
a far greater degree, a question of man's rights. When God
created man, he announced the law of his being, that it was not
well for him to be alone, and so He created woman to be his
helpmate and companion. Commencing with the barbarism of the
East, and journeying through the nations toward the bright light
of civilization in the West, it will everywhere be found that,
just in proportion to the equality of women with men in the
enjoyment of social and civil rights and privileges, both sexes
are proportionately advanced in refinement and all that ennobles
human nature. In our own country, where women are received on an
equality with men, we find good order and good manners
prevailing. Because women frequent railroad cars and steamboats,
markets, shops, and post-offices, those places must be, and are,
conducted with order and decency. The only great resorts from
which woman is excluded by law are the election places; and the
violence, rowdyism, profanity, and obscenity of the gathering
there in our largest cities are sufficient to drive decent men,
even, away from the polls. If our wives, sisters, and daughters
were going to the polls, we should go with them, and good order
would be observed, or a row would follow, which would secure
order in the future. I have more faith in female suffrage, to
reform the abuses of our election system in the large cities,
than I have in the penal election laws to be enforced by soldiers
and marines. Who believes that, if ladies were admitted to seats
in Congress, or upon the bench, or were participating in
discussions at the bar, such proceedings would thereby be
rendered less refined, or that less regard would be paid to the
rights of all?

But whether women should be admitted to the right of suffrage, is
one thing; whether this end has already been accomplished, is
quite another. The XIV. Amendment forbids the States to make or
enforce any law which shall abridge "the privileges or
immunities" of a citizen. But whether the right to vote is
covered by the phrase "privileges and immunities," was much
discussed under the provisions of the old Constitution; and at
least one of the earliest decisions drew a distinction between
"privileges and immunities" and political rights. On the other
hand, Mr. Justice Washington, in a celebrated case, expressed the
opinion, that the right to vote and hold office was included in
this phrase. But in neither of the cases was this point directly
involved, and both opinions are _obiter dicta_ in relation to it.

But the XIV. and XV. Amendments seem to settle this question
against the right of female suffrage. These amendments seem to
recognize the distinction at first pointed out between
"privileges and immunities," and the right to vote. The XIV.
Amendment declares,

[Illustration: Myra Bradwell.]

All persons born and naturalized in the United States, etc.,
are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein
they reside.

Of course, women, as well as men, are included in this provision,
and recognized as citizens. This Amendment further declares:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United
States.

If the privileges and immunities of a citizen can not be
abridged, then, of course, the privileges and immunities of all
citizens must be the same. The second section of this Amendment
provides that

Representatives shall be apportioned among the several
States according to their respective numbers, counting the
whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians,
not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election, etc.,
is denied to any of the male inhabitants, being twenty-one
years of age, etc., the basis of representation therein
shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such
male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male
citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

It can not be denied, that the right or power of a State to
exclude a portion of its male citizens from the right to vote, is
recognized by this second section; from which it follows, that
the right to vote is not one of the "privileges or immunities"
which the first section declares shall not be abridged by any
State. The right of female suffrage is also inferentially denied
by that provision of the second section, above quoted, which
provides that when a State shall deny the right to vote to any
male citizen,

The basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the
proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear
to the whole number of male citizens in such State.

In the first place, it is to be observed that the basis of
representation in a State, which is the whole number of
persons--male and female, adults and infants--is only to be
reduced when the State shall exclude a portion "of the male
inhabitants of such State." The exclusion of female inhabitants,
and infants under the age of twenty-one years, does not effect a
reduction of the basis of representation in such State. And,
again, when a State does exclude a portion of its male
inhabitants, etc., the basis of representation in such State is
not reduced in the proportion which the number of such excluded
males bears to the number of persons--male and female--in such
State; but only

In the proportion which the number of such (excluded) male
citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens
twenty-one years of age in such State.

This provision assumes that females are no part of the voting
population of a State. The XV. Amendment is equally decisive. It
recognizes the right--that is, power--of any State to exclude a
portion of its citizens from the right to vote, and only narrows
this right in favor of a particular class. Its language is:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged, etc., on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude.

This amendment was wholly unnecessary upon the theory that the
XIV. Amendment had established or recognized the right of every
citizen to vote. It recognizes the right of a State to exclude a
portion of its citizens, and only restrains that power so far as
to provide that citizens shall not be excluded on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude. In every other
case, the power of exclusion recognized by the XIV. Amendment is
untouched by the XV. It is also worthy of notice that, throughout
the XIV. and XV. Amendments, voting is not treated as, or
denominated a privilege, and evidently was not intended to be,
nor regarded as included in the "privileges or immunities" of a
citizen, which no State can abridge for any cause whatever. I
have taken this pains to distinguish between the "privileges and
immunities" of a citizen, and the "right" of a citizen to vote,
not because I feared that this court would deny one, even if the
other would follow, but to quiet the fears of the timid and
conservative.

I come now to the narrower and precise question before the court:
Can a female citizen, duly qualified in respect of age,
character, and learning, claim, under the XIV. Amendment, the
privilege of earning a livelihood by practicing at the bar of a
judicial court? It was provided by the original Constitution:

The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all
privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.

Under this provision each State could determine for itself what
the privileges and immunities of its citizens should be. A
citizen emigrating from one State to another carried with him,
not the privileges and immunities he enjoyed in his native State,
but was entitled, in the State of his adoption, to such
privileges and immunities as were enjoyed by the class of
citizens to which he belonged by the laws of such adopted State.
A white citizen of one State, where no property qualification for
voting was required, emigrating to a State which required such
qualification, must conform to it before he could claim the right
to vote. A colored citizen, authorized to hold property in
Massachusetts, emigrating to South Carolina, where all colored
persons were excluded from such right, derived no aid, in this
respect, from the Constitution of the United States, but was
compelled to submit to all the incapacities laid by the laws of
that State upon free persons of color born and residing therein.
A married woman, a citizen of the State of Wisconsin, where by
law she was capable of holding separate estate, and making
contracts concerning the same, emigrating to a State where the
common law in this regard prevailed, could not buy and sell
property in her own name, or contract in reference thereto.

But the XIV. Amendment executes itself in every State of the
Union. Whatever are the privileges and immunities of a citizen in
the State of New York, such citizen, emigrating, carries them
with him into any other State of the Union. It utters the will of
the United States in every State, and silences every State
constitution, usage, or law which conflicts with it. If to be
admitted to the bar, on attaining the age and learning required
by law, be one of the privileges of a white citizen in the State
of New York, it is equally the privilege of a colored citizen in
that State; and if in that State, then in any State. If no State
may "make or enforce any law" to abridge the privileges of a
citizen, it must follow that the privileges of all citizens are
the same. We have already seen that the right to vote is not one
of those privileges which are declared to be common to all
citizens, and which no State may abridge; but that it is a
political right, which any State may deny to a citizen, except on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It
therefore only remains to determine whether admission to the bar
belongs to that class of privileges which a State may not
abridge, or that class of political rights as to which a State
may discriminate between its citizens.

In discussing this subject, we are compelled to use the words
"privileges and immunities" and the word "rights" in the precise
sense in which they are employed in the Constitution. In popular
language, and even in the general treatises of law writers, the
words "rights" and "privileges" are used synonymously. Those
privileges which are secured to a man by the law are his rights;
and the great charter of England declares that the ancient
privileges enjoyed by Englishmen, are the undoubted rights of
Englishmen. But, as we have seen, the XIV. and XV. Amendments
distinguish between privileges and rights; and it must be
confessed that it is paradoxical to say, as the XIV. Amendment
clearly does, that the "privileges" of a citizen shall not be
abridged, while his "right" to vote may be. But a judicial
construction of the Constitution is wholly different from a mere
exercise in philology. The question is not whether certain words
were aptly employed--but the context must be searched to
ascertain the sense in which such words were used.

It is evident that there are certain "privileges and immunities"
which belong to a citizen of the United States as such; otherwise
it would be nonsense for the XIV. Amendment to prohibit a State
from abridging them; and it is equally evident from the XIV.
Amendment that the right to vote is not one of those privileges.
And the question recurs whether admission to the bar, the proper
qualification being possessed, is one of the privileges which a
State may not deny. In Cummings _vs._ Missouri, 4 Wall., 321,
this court say:

In France, deprivation or suspension of civil rights, or
some of them--and among these of the right of voting, of
eligibility to office, of taking part in family councils, of
being guardian or trustee, of bearing arms, and of teaching
or being employed in a school or seminary of learning--are
punishments prescribed by her code. The theory upon which
our political institutions rest is, that all men have
certain inalienable rights--that among these are life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that in the
pursuit of happiness all avocations, all honors, all
positions, are alike open to every one, and that in the
protection of these rights all are equal before the law. Any
deprivation or extension of any of these rights for past
conduct is punishment, and can be in no otherwise defined.

No broader or better enumeration of the privileges which pertain
to American citizenship could be given. "Life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness; and, in the pursuit of happiness, all
avocations, all honors, all positions, are alike open to every
one; and in the protection of these rights all are equal before
the law." In _ex parte_ Garland (4 Wall., 378) this court say:

The profession of an attorney and counselor is not like an
office created by an act of Congress, which depends for its
continuance, its powers, and its emoluments upon the will of
its creator, and the possession of which may be burdened
with any conditions not prohibited by the Constitution.
Attorneys and counselors are not officers of the United
States; they are not elected or appointed in the manner
prescribed by the Constitution for the election and
appointment of such officers. They are officers of the
court, admitted as such by its order, upon evidence of their
possessing sufficient legal learning and fair private
character.... The order of admission is the judgment of the
court, that the parties possess the requisite qualifications
as attorneys and counselors, and are entitled to appear as
such and conduct causes therein. From its entry the parties
become officers of the court, and are responsible to it for
professional misconduct. They hold their office during good
behavior, and can only be deprived of it for misconduct,
ascertained and declared by the judgment of the court, after
opportunity to be heard has been offered. (_Ex parte_
Heyfron, 7 How., Miss., 127; Fletcher _vs._ Daingerfield, 20
Cal., 430.) Their admission or their exclusion is not the
exercise of a mere ministerial power. It is the exercise of
judicial power, and has been so held in numerous cases....
The attorney and counselor being, by the solemn judicial act
of the court, clothed with his office, does not hold it as a
matter of grace and favor. The right which it confers upon
him to appear for suitors, and to argue causes, is something
more than a mere indulgence, revocable at the pleasure of
the court, or at the command of the Legislature. It is a
right of which he can only be deprived by the judgment of
the court, for moral or professional delinquency. The
Legislature may undoubtedly prescribe qualifications for the
office, to which he must conform, as it may, where it has
exclusive jurisdiction, prescribe qualifications for the
pursuit of the ordinary avocations of life.

It is now well settled that the courts, in admitting attorneys
to, and in expelling them from, the bar, act judicially, and that
such proceedings are subject to review on writ of error or
appeal, as the case may be. (_Ex parte_ Cooper, 22 N. Y., 67.
Strother _vs._ Missouri, 1 Mo., 605. _Ex parte_ Secomb, 19 How.,
9. _Ex parte_ Garland, 4 Wall., 378.)

From these cases the conclusion is irresistible, that the
profession of the law, like the clerical profession and that of
medicine, is an avocation open to every citizen of the United
States. And while the Legislature may prescribe qualifications
for entering upon this pursuit, they can not, under the guise of
fixing qualifications, exclude a class of citizens from admission
to the bar. The Legislature may say at what age candidates shall
be admitted; may elevate or depress the standard of learning
required. But a qualification, to which a whole class of citizens
never can attain, is not a regulation of admission to the bar,
but is, as to such citizens, a prohibition. For instance, a State
Legislature could not, in enumerating the qualifications, require
the candidate to be a white citizen. This would be the exclusion
of all colored citizens, without regard to age, character, or
learning. Such an act would abridge the rights of all colored
citizens, by denying them admission into one of the avocations
which this court has declared is alike open to every one. I
presume it will be admitted that such an act would be void. I am
certain this court would declare it void. And I challenge the
most astute mind to draw any distinction between such an act and
a custom, usage, or law of a State, which denies this privilege
to all female citizens without regard to age, character, or
learning. If the Legislature may, under pretense of fixing
qualifications, declare that no female citizen shall be permitted
to practice law, they may as well declare that no colored citizen
shall practice law. It should be borne in mind that the only
provision in the Constitution of the United States which secures
to colored male citizens the privilege of admission to the bar,
or the pursuit of the other ordinary avocations of life, is that
provision that

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of a citizen.

If this provision does not open all the professions, all the
avocations, all the methods by which a man may pursue happiness,
to the colored as well as the white man, then the Legislatures of
the States may exclude colored men from all the honorable
pursuits of life, and compel them to support their existence in a
condition of servitude. And if this provision does protect the
colored citizen, then it protects every citizen, black or white,
male or female. Why may a colored citizen buy, hold, and sell
land in any State of the Union? Because he is a citizen of the
United States, and that is one of the privileges of a citizen.
Why may a colored citizen be admitted to the bar? Because he is a
citizen, and that is one of the avocations open to every citizen;
and no State can abridge his right to pursue it. Certainly no
other reason can be given.

Now, let us come to the case of Myra Bradwell. She is a citizen
of the United States, and of the State of Illinois, residing
therein; she has been judicially ascertained to be of full age,
and to possess the requisite character and learning. Indeed, the
court below, in their opinion, found in the record, page 9, say:
"Of the ample qualifications of the applicant we have no doubt."
Still, admission to the bar was denied the petitioner, not upon
the ground that she was not a citizen; not for want of age or
qualifications; not because the profession of the law is not one
of those avocations which are open to every American citizen as
matter of right, upon complying with the reasonable regulations
prescribed by the Legislature: but upon the sole ground that
inconvenience would result from permitting her to enjoy her legal
rights in this, to wit, that her clients might have difficulty in
enforcing the contracts they might make with her, as their
attorney, because of her being a married woman.

Now, with entire respect to that court, it is submitted that this
argument _ab inconvenienti_, which might have been urged with
whatever force belongs to it, against adopting the XIV. Amendment
in the full scope of its language, is utterly futile to resist
its full and proper operation, now that it has been adopted.
Concede, for argument, that the XIV. Amendment ought to have read
thus:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of any citizens except married
women;

yet that exception is not found in the sweeping provision of this
amendment. It is provided that citizens may be disfranchised for
treason; but it is nowhere provided that a citizen shall be
disfranchised for being a married woman. The opinion of the court
below puts a limitation upon this unlimited constitutional
provision. If this court shall approve this exception, in the
very teeth of the unambiguous language of the Constitution, where
may we expect judicial legislation to stop? Can this court say
that married women have no rights that are to be respected? Can
this court say that, when the XIV. Amendment speaks of all
persons, etc., and declares them to be citizens, it means all
male persons and unmarried females? Or can this court say that,
when the XIV. Amendment declares "the privileges of no citizen
shall be abridged," it means that the privileges of no male
citizen or unmarried female citizen shall be abridged? This would
be bold dealing with the constitutional provision. It would be
excluding a large proportion of the citizens of the United States
from privileges which the Constitution declares shall be the
inheritance of every citizen alike.

But it is respectfully submitted that the court below erred in
holding that a married woman, admitted to the bar under the XIV.
Amendment, would not be liable on contracts, express or implied,
between her and her clients. In Wisconsin, when the Legislature
passed the act protecting married women in the enjoyment of their
separate estate, our court, upon reasoning that can not be
gainsaid, held that the Legislature must have intended all the
natural and logical results of the act in question; and,
therefore, that the contracts of a married woman, relating to her
separate estate, were as binding as if made by a _feme sole_. It
is submitted that, for still stronger reasons, the great
innovation of the XIV. Amendment should be carried to its logical
conclusion, and that it sweeps away the principles of the common
law, as it does the express provisions of State constitutions and
statutes.

But again: Mrs. Bradwell, admitted to the bar, becomes an officer
of the court, subject to its summary jurisdiction. Any
malpractice or unprofessional conduct towards her client would be
punishable by fine, imprisonment, or expulsion from the bar, or
by all three. Her clients would, therefore, not be compelled to
resort to actions at law against her. But if the courts of
Illinois should refuse to exercise this summary jurisdiction, and
should hold that actions at law could not be maintained on
contracts between her and her clients, it might result that she
would not be as generally employed as she otherwise would be. But
that is no reason why she should be prohibited from appearing and
trying causes for clients who are willing to rely upon her
integrity and honor.

But let it not be supposed that, in trying to answer as to the
inconveniences imagined by the court below, I am at all departing
from the broad ground of constitutional right upon which I rest
this cause. I maintain that the XIV. Amendment opens to every
citizen of the United States, male or female, black or white,
married or single, the honorable professions as well as the
servile employments of life; and that no citizen can be excluded
from any one of them. Intelligence, integrity, and honor are the
only qualifications that can be prescribed as conditions
precedent to an entry upon any honorable pursuit or profitable
avocation, and all the privileges and immunities which I
vindicate to a colored citizen, I vindicate to our mothers, our
sisters, and our daughters. The inequalities of sex will
undoubtedly have their influence, and be considered by every
client desiring to employ counsel.

There may be cases in which a client's rights can only be rescued
by an exercise of the rough qualities possessed by men. There are
many cases in which the telling sympathy and the silver voice of
woman would accomplish more than the severity and sternness of
man could achieve. Of a bar composed of men and women of equal
integrity and learning, women might be more or less frequently
retained, as the taste or judgment of clients might dictate. But
the broad shield of the Constitution is over them all, and
protects each in that measure of success which his or her
individual merits may secure.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. _December Term_, 1872. Myra
Bradwell, Plaintiff in Error, _vs._ the State of Illinois. In
error to the Supreme Court of the State of Illinois.

1. The Supreme Court of Illinois having refused to grant to
plaintiff a license to practice law in the courts of that
State, on the ground that females are not eligible under the
laws of that State, such a decision violates no provision of
the Federal Constitution.

2. The second section of the fourth article is inapplicable,
because plaintiff is a citizen of the State of whose action
she complains, and that section only guarantees privileges
and immunities to citizens of other States, in that State.

3. Nor is the right to practice law in the State courts a
privilege or immunity of a citizen of the United States,
within the meaning of the first section of the XIV. Article
of Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

4. The power of a State to prescribe the qualifications for
admission to the bar of its own courts is unaffected by the
XIV. Amendment, and this court can not inquire into the
reasonableness or propriety of the rules it may prescribe.

Mr. Justice MILLER delivered the opinion of the Court.

The plaintiff in error, residing in the State of Illinois, made
application to the judges of the Supreme Court of that State for
a license to practice law. She accompanied her petition with the
usual certificate from an inferior court of her good character,
and that on due examination she had been found to possess the
requisite qualifications. Pending this application she also filed
an affidavit, to the effect "that she was born in the State of
Vermont; that she was (had been) a citizen of that State; that
she is now a citizen of the United States, and has been for many
years past a resident of the city of Chicago, in the State of
Illinois." And with this affidavit she also filed a paper
claiming that, under the foregoing facts, she was entitled to the
license prayed for by virtue of the second section of the fourth
article of the Constitution of the United States, and of the XIV.
Article of Amendment of that instrument.

The statute of Illinois on this subject enacts that no person
shall be permitted to practice as an attorney or
counselor-at-law, or to commence, conduct, or defend any action,
suit, or plaint, in which he is not a party concerned, in any
court of record within this State, either by using or subscribing
his own name or the name of any other person, without having
previously obtained a license for that purpose from some two of
the justices of the Supreme Court, which license shall constitute
the person receiving the same an attorney and counselor-at-law,
and shall authorize him to appear in all the courts of record
within this State, and there to practice as an attorney and
counselor-at-law, according to the laws and customs thereof.

The Supreme Court denied the application, apparently upon the
ground that it was a woman who made it. The record is not very
perfect, but it may be fairly taken that the plaintiff asserted
her right to a license on the grounds, among others, that she was
a citizen of the United States, and that having been a citizen of
Vermont at one time, she was, in the State of Illinois, entitled
to any right granted to citizens of the latter State. The court
having overruled these claims of right, founded on the clauses of
the Federal Constitution before referred, those propositions may
be considered as properly before this court.

As regards the provision of the Constitution that citizens of
each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities
of citizens in the several States, the plaintiff in her affidavit
has stated very clearly a case to which it is inapplicable. The
protection designed by that clause, as has been repeatedly held,
has no application to a citizen of the State whose laws are
complained of. If the plaintiff was a citizen of the State of
Illinois, that provision of the Constitution gave her no
protection against its courts or its legislation. The plaintiff
seems to have seen this difficulty, and attempts to avoid it by
stating that she was born in Vermont. While she remained in
Vermont that circumstance made her a citizen of that State. But
she states, at the same time, that she is a citizen of the United
States, and that she is now, and has been for many years past, a
resident of Chicago, in the State of Illinois.

The XIV. Amendment declares that citizens of the United States
are citizens of the State within which they reside; therefore
plaintiff was, at the time of making her application, a citizen
of the United States and a citizen of the State of Illinois. We
do not here mean to say that there may not be a temporary
residence in one State, with intent to return to another, which
will not create citizenship in the former. But plaintiff states
nothing to take her case out of the definition of citizenship of
a State as defined by the first section of the XIV. Amendment.

In regard to that amendment counsel for plaintiff in this court
truly says that there are certain privileges and immunities which
belong to a citizen of the United States as such; otherwise it
would be nonsense for the XIV. Amendment to prohibit a State from
abridging them, and he proceeds to argue that admission to the
bar of a State of a person who possesses the requisite learning
and character is one of those which a State may not deny. In this
latter proposition we are not able to concur with counsel. We
agree with him that there are privileges and immunities belonging
to citizens of the United States, in that relation and character,
and that it is these, and these alone, which a State is forbidden
to abridge. But the right to admission to practice in the courts
of a State is not one of them. The right in no sense depends on
citizenship of the United States. It has not, as far as we know,
ever been made in any State, or in any case, to depend on
citizenship at all. Certainly many prominent and distinguished
lawyers have been admitted to practice, both in the State and
Federal Courts, who were not citizens of the United States or of
any State. But, on whatever basis this right may be placed, so
far as it can have any relation to citizenship at all, it would
seem that, as to the courts of a State, it would relate to
citizenship of the State, and as to Federal Courts, it would
relate to citizenship of the United States.

The opinion just delivered in the Slaughter-house Cases from
Louisiana renders elaborate argument in the present case
unnecessary; for, unless we are wholly and radically mistaken in
the principles on which those cases are decided, the right to
control and regulate the granting of license to practice law in
the courts of a State is one of those powers which are not
transferred for its protection to the Federal Government, and its
exercise is in no manner governed or controlled by citizenship of
the United States in the party seeking such license. It is
unnecessary to repeat the argument on which the judgment in those
cases is founded. It is sufficient to say they are conclusive of
the present case.

The judgment of the State court is, therefore, affirmed.

D. W. MIDDLETON, C. S. C. U. S.

Mr. Justice BRADLEY gave the following: I concur in the judgment
of the court in this case by which the judgment of the Supreme
Court of Illinois is affirmed, but not for the reasons specified
in the opinion just read.

The claim of the plaintiff, who is a married woman, to be
admitted to practice as an attorney and counselor-at-law, is
based upon the supposed right of every person, man or woman, to
engage in any lawful employment for a livelihood. The Supreme
Court of Illinois denied the application on the ground that, by
the common law, which is the basis of laws of Illinois, only men
were admitted to the bar, and the Legislature had not made any
change in this respect, but had simply provided no person should
be admitted to practice as attorney or counselor without having
previously obtained a license for that purpose from two justices
of the Supreme Court, and that no person should receive a license
without first obtaining a certificate from the court of some
county of his good moral character. In other respects it was left
to the discretion of the court to establish the rules by which
admission to the profession should be determined. The court,
however, regarded itself as bound by at least two limitations.
One was that it should establish such terms of admission as would
promote the proper administration of justice, and the other that
it should not admit any persons, or class of persons, not
intended by the Legislature to be admitted, even though not
expressly excluded by statute. In view of this latter limitation
the court felt compelled to deny the application of females to be
admitted as members of the bar. Being contrary to the rules of
the common law and the usages of Westminster Hall from time
immemorial, it could not be supposed that the Legislature had
intended to adopt any different rule.

The claim that, under the XIV. Amendment of the Constitution,
which declares that no State shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the
United States, the statute law of Illinois, or the common law
prevailing in that State, can no longer be set up as a barrier
against the right of females to pursue any lawful employment for
a livelihood (the practice of law included), assumes that it is
one of the privileges and immunities of women as citizens to
engage in any and every profession, occupation, or employment in
civil life.

It certainly can not be affirmed, as a historical fact, that this
has ever been established as one of the fundamental privileges
and immunities of the sex. On the contrary, the civil law, as
well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference
in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is,
or should be, woman's protector and defender. The natural and
proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex
evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.
The constitution of the family organization, which is founded in
the divine ordinance, as well as in the nature of things,
indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly belongs to
the domain and functions of womanhood. The harmony, not to say
identity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong,
to the family institution is repugnant to the idea of a woman
adopting a distinct and independent career from that of her
husband. So firmly fixed was this sentiment in the founders of
the common law that it became a maxim of that system of
jurisprudence that a woman had no legal existence separate from
her husband, who was regarded as her head and representative in
the social state; and, notwithstanding some recent modifications
of this civil status, many of the special rules of law flowing
from and dependent upon this cardinal principle still exist in
full force in most States. One of these is, that a married woman
is incapable, without her husband's consent, of making contracts
which shall be binding on her or him. This very incapacity was
one circumstance which the Supreme Court of Illinois deemed
important in rendering a married woman incompetent fully to
perform the duties and trusts that belong to the office of an
attorney and counselor.

It is true that many women are unmarried and not affected by any
of the duties, complications, and incapacities arising out of the
married state, but these are exceptions to the general rule. The
paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfill the noble
and benign offices of wife and mother. This is the law of the
Creator. And the rules of civil society must be adapted to the
general constitution of things, and can not be based upon
exceptional cases.

The humane movements of modern society, which have for their
object the multiplication of avenues for woman's advancement, and
of occupations adapted to her condition and sex, have my
heartiest concurrence. But I am not prepared to say that it is
one of her fundamental rights and privileges to be admitted into
every office and position, including those which require highly
special qualifications and demanding special responsibilities. In
the nature of things it is not every citizen of every age, sex,
and condition that is qualified for every calling and position.
It is the prerogative of the legislator to prescribe regulations
founded on nature, reason, and experience for the due admission
of qualified persons to professions and callings demanding
special skill and confidence. This fairly belongs to the police
power of the State; and, in my opinion, in view of the peculiar
characteristics, destiny, and mission of woman, it is within the
province of the Legislature to ordain what offices, positions,
and callings shall be filled and discharged by men, and shall
receive the benefit of those energies and responsibilities, and
that decision and firmness which are presumed to predominate in
the sterner sex.

For these reasons I think that the laws of Illinois now
complained of are not obnoxious to the charge of abridging any of
the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States.

* * * * *

I concur in the opinion of Mr. Justice Bradley. FIELD, J.

D. W. MIDDLETON, C. S. C. U. S.

The result of this suit taught woman that for her civil as well as
political rights she had no National protection. This was the first
case under the XIV. Amendment that was decided by the Supreme Court of
the United States. This august body based its decision against Mrs.
Bradwell on the ground of "no jurisdiction," declaring that the case
rested with the Legislature of the State of Illinois. In language
stripped of legal verbiage and obscurity, it decided that the civil
rights of women could be extended and restricted at the caprice of any
legislative body in the several States; that the methods for earning
their daily bread, in the trades and professions, the use of their
powers of mind and body, could be defined, permitted or denied for the
citizen by State authorities.

In Norwalk, Connecticut, long known as the Gibralter of republicanism
in that State, Mrs. Sarah M. T. Huntington was allowed to register by
sufferance of the selectmen whose objections she overcame by a logical
argument upon the constitutional provisions under the XIV. Amendment,
but she was not permitted to vote (see Connecticut chapter). At the
same election several ladies voted in Nyack, New York, and in Toledo,
Ohio, and many unsuccessful attempts were made by others in several
States of the Union.

It was on November 1st, 1872, at her quiet home in Rochester, while
reading her morning paper, that Miss Anthony's eye fell on the
following editorial:

Now Register? To-day and to-morrow are the only remaining
opportunities. If you were not permitted to vote, you would fight
for the right, undergo all privations for it, face death for it.
You have it now at the cost of five minutes' time to be spent in
seeking your place of registration, and having your name entered.
And yet, on election day, less than a week hence, hundreds of you
are likely to lose your votes because you have not thought it
worth while to give the five minutes. To-day and to-morrow are
your only opportunities. Register now!

She immediately threw aside her journal, and asking one of her sisters
to accompany her, made her determined way to the registration office.
The inspectors were young men, entirely unversed in the intricacies of
constitutional law, so that when Miss Anthony expounded to them the
XIV. Amendment, they were utterly incapable of answering her legal
argument. After some hesitation the two Republican members of the
board agreed to receive her name, while the Democratic official
remained obdurate. The United States Supervisor being present strongly
advised the young men against refusing to allow Miss Anthony to
register. A full report of this scene appeared in the afternoon papers
with varying comments; the Republican paper inclined toward a
favorable view of the right of women to vote, while the Democratic
paper denounced these proceedings and warned all inspectors that if
they received the names of women they would be liable to prosecution
under the 19th section of the enforcement act.

That if at any election for representative or delegate in the
Congress of the United States, any person shall knowingly
personate and vote, or attempt to vote, in the name of any other
person, whether living, dead, or fictitious; or vote more than
once at the same election for any candidate for the same office;
or vote at a place where he may not be lawfully entitled to vote;
or vote without having a lawful right to vote; or do any unlawful
act to secure a right to vote, or an opportunity to vote, for
himself or any other person; or by force, threats, menace,
intimidation, bribery, reward or offer, or promise thereof, or
otherwise unlawfully prevent any qualified voter of any State of
the United States of America, or of any Territory thereof, from
freely exercising the right of suffrage; or by any such means
induce any voter to refuse to exercise such right; or compel or
induce, by any such means or otherwise, any officer on any
election in any such State or Territory to receive a vote from a
person not legally qualified or entitled to vote or interfere in
any manner with any officer of said elections in the discharge of
his duties, shall be deemed guilty of a crime and shall for such
crime be liable to prosecution in any court of the United States,
and on conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not
exceeding $500 or imprisonment for not exceeding three years or
both at the discretion of the court.

Upon reading this article Miss Anthony hastened back to the
registration office and assured the young men that she would be
personally responsible for all costs growing out of any suit that
might be instituted against them for having registered women. As an
outgrowth of all this discussion about fifty women registered in the
city, fourteen of them in Miss Anthony's own ward. As a whole, the
tone of the press was so adverse that all the inspectors except those
of the 8th ward were intimidated and refused to receive the votes of
women on election day.

Bright and early on the morning of November 5th, Miss Anthony and six
of the women presented themselves at the polling booth. The ladies
went early not in order to vote often, but to avoid any disturbance
which might result from so novel a scene if it were enacted when the
streets had become crowded. Each of these new voters was in turn
challenged, and each swore in her vote, except Rhoda De Garmo, who in
true Quaker fashion refused either to "swear" or to "affirm," simply
saying "I will tell the truth." Nevertheless her vote was also
received.

The discussion of this action continued in the papers and on November
28th, Thanksgiving day, those fourteen offending citizens were
informed that they were to be prosecuted by the United States
Government, and that Commissioner Storrs wished them to call at his
office. The ladies refusing to respond to this polite invitation,
Marshal Keeney made the circuit to collect the rebellious forces. It
was the afternoon of Thanksgiving day that Miss Anthony was summoned
to her parlor to receive a visitor. As she entered she saw her guest
was a tall gentleman in most irreproachable attire, nervously dandling
in his gloved hands a well-brushed high hat. After some incidental
remarks the visitor in a hesitating manner made known his mission.
"The Commissioner wishes to arrest you" were his first words touching
the object of his call. "Is this your usual method of serving a
warrant," asked Miss Anthony; whereupon the Marshal summoned courage
enough to serve the usual legal paper.[168] He gallantly offered to
leave his prisoner to go alone, but Miss Anthony refusing to take
herself to Court, the United States official meekly escorted her to
the Commissioner's office. When all the ladies had arrived, the
Commissioner, after hours of waiting, announced that the Assistant
District Attorney whom he had summoned to examine the culprits, was
unable to reach the city that afternoon, and so the ladies were
dismissed to appear the next morning.

The voters received their preliminary examination in the same small
dingy office where, in the days of slavery, fugitives escaping to
Canada had been examined and remanded to bondage. This historic little
room is a double disgrace to the American Republic, as within its
walls the rights of color and of sex have been equally trampled upon.

The fourteen women pleaded "not guilty," but the Commissioner ordered
bail of $500 each for their appearance at the Albany term of the
United States District Court January 21, 1873. Miss Anthony refused to
give bail, and petitioned for a writ of _habeas corpus_. The
Inspectors were also arrested, and had their final hearing the
afternoon of the same day before Commissioner Ely,--Hon. John Van
Voorhis their counsel--and were bound over to the Albany Term. The
hearing on Miss Anthony's petition was had before Judge Hall. The
decision was adverse, and bail of $1,000 demanded for her appearance
at the May term at Rochester. The Grand Jury found a true bill of
indictment against her, the fourteen other women, and the three
Inspectors. Miss Anthony objected to giving bail, but was overruled by
her counsel, Hon. Henry R. Selden, whose sense of gallantry made him
feel it a disgrace to allow his client to go to jail. This was a
source of deep regret to Miss Anthony, as it prevented her case going
to the Supreme Court of the United States for final adjudication.

During the intermediate period between November 28, 1872, and January
21, 1873, Miss Anthony, in the eye of the law, was imprisoned, but the
Marshal, though somewhat uneasy, left her free to fulfill her lyceum
engagements and attend woman suffrage conventions. A singularly
anomalous position for a criminal, traveling about the country as a
teacher of morals to the people! Learning that in case the jury
returned a verdict of guilty the judge must declare the costs of the
trial against the defendants, she determined to canvass Monroe County,
in order to make a verdict of "guilty" impossible. She held meetings
in twenty-nine of the post-office districts, speaking on the equal
rights of all citizens to the ballot. Hearing that District Attorney
Crowley threatened to move her trial out of that county, she sent him
word that she would then canvass the next with an army of speakers.

The court sat in Rochester May 13th, but several days passed without
calling the case. Finally, it was moved by District Attorney Crowley,
merely to ask its adjournment to the June United States Circuit Court
at Canandaigua. Counsel protested, but without avail, and both the
women and the Inspectors were again required to answer the charge and
renew bail. This motion for change of venue was made on Friday, and
the following Monday night Miss Anthony held her first meeting in
Ontario County. In the twenty-two days before the convening of the
Court she made twenty-one speeches. Matilda Joslyn Gage came to her
aid, and spoke in sixteen townships, thus together making a thorough
canvass of that county. Miss Anthony's speech, "Is it a crime for a
United States citizen to vote," and that of Mrs. Gage, "The United
States on trial, not Susan B. Anthony," were most effective in rousing
general thought on the vital principles of republican government, and
did much toward enlightening the possible jury in the coming trial.

The last meeting of the series was held at Canandaigua on the evening
before the trial. Strong resolutions against these acts of injustice
toward woman were introduced by Mrs. Gage, and unanimously indorsed by
the audience. Thus the case went to trial with ample opportunity for
the District Attorney and the Judge to know the opinions of the
people, and for the men of Ontario to be too generally enlightened on
the subject to find any twelve who could be trusted to bring in a
verdict of guilty against the women for voting, or the inspectors for
receiving their votes.

The following is the argument which Miss Anthony made in twenty-nine
of the post office-districts of Monroe, and twenty-one of Ontario, in
her canvass of those counties, prior to her trial, June 17, 1873:

FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS:--I stand before you to-night, under
indictment for the alleged crime of having voted illegally at the
last Presidential election. I shall endeavor this evening to
prove to you that in voting, I not only committed no crime, but
simply exercised my "citizen's right," guaranteed to me and all
United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the
power of any State to deny.

Our democratic republican government is based on the idea of the
natural right of every individual member thereof to a voice and a
vote in making and executing the laws. We assert the province of
government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their
inalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that
governments can give rights. Before governments were organized,
no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect
his own life, liberty, and property. And when 100 or 1,000,000
people enter into a free government, they do not barter away
their natural rights; they simply pledge themselves to protect
each other in the enjoyment of them, through prescribed judicial
and legislative tribunals. They agree to abandon the methods of
brute force in the adjustment of their differences, and adopt
those of civilization. The Declaration of Independence, the
National and State Constitutions, and the organic laws of the
Territories, all alike propose to protect the people in the
exercise of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to
bestow rights.

All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with
certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these,
governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers from the consent of the governed.

Here is no shadow of government authority over rights, nor
exclusion of any class from their full and equal enjoyment. Here
is pronounced the rights of all men, and "consequently," as the
Quaker preacher said, "of all women," to a voice in the
government. And here, in this very first paragraph of the
Declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of all to the
ballot; for, how can "the consent of the governed" be given, if
the right to vote be denied. Again:

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of
these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or
abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its
foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in
such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
safety and happiness.

Surely, the right of the whole people to vote is here clearly
implied. For, however destructive to their happiness this
government might become, a disfranchised class could neither
alter nor abolish it, nor institute a new one, except by the old
brute force method of insurrection and rebellion. One half of the
people of this Nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from
the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a
just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of
government, that enforces taxation without representation,--that
compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their
consent--that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury
of their peers--that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of
their own persons, wages, and children--are this half of the
people left wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct
violation of the spirit and letter of the declarations of the
framers of this government, every one of which was based on the
immutable principle of equal rights to all. By those
declarations, kings, priests, popes, aristocrats, were all alike
dethroned, and placed on a common level, politically, with the
lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, men, as such, were
deprived of their divine right to rule, and placed on a political
level with women. By the practice of those declarations all class
and caste distinction will be abolished; and slave, serf,
plebeian, wife, woman, all alike, will bound from their subject
position to the proud platform of equality.

The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:

We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more
perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic
tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the
general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to
ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.

It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet
we, the male citizens, but we, the whole people, who formed this
Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty,
but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of
our posterity, but to the whole people--women as well as men. And
it is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of
the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the
only means of securing them provided by this democratic
republican government--the ballot.

The early journals of Congress show that when the Committee
reported to that body the original Articles of Confederation, the
very first article which became the subject of discussion was
that respecting equality of suffrage. Article 4th said:

The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and
intercourse between the people of the different States of
this Union, the free inhabitants of each of the States
(paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted),
shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of
the free citizens of the several States.

Thus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see the necessity of
the universal application of the great principle of equal rights
to all--in order to produce the desired result--a harmonious
union and a homogeneous people. Luther Martin, Attorney-General
of Maryland, in his report to the Legislature of that State of
the convention that framed the United States Constitution, said:

Those who advocated the equality of suffrage took the matter
up on the original principles of government; that the reason
why each individual man in forming a State government should
have an equal vote, is because each individual, before he
enters into government, is equally free and equally
independent.

James Madison said:

Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that
the mass of the citizens should not be without a voice in
making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the
magistrates who are to administer them.

Also,

Let it be remembered, finally, that it has ever been the
pride and the boast of America that the rights for which she
contended were the rights of human nature.

And these assertions of the framers of the United States
Constitution of the equal and natural rights of all the people to
a voice in the government, have been affirmed and reaffirmed by
the leading statesmen of the nation, throughout the entire
history of our Government.

Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said in 1866:

I have made up my mind that the elective franchise is one of
the inalienable rights meant to be secured by the
Declaration of Independence.

B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, in the three days' discussion in the
United States Senate in 1866, on Senator Cowan's motion to strike
"male" from the District of Columbia suffrage bill, said:

Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American
Senate, I stand for universal suffrage; and as a matter of
fundamental principle, do not recognize the right of society
to limit it on any ground of race or sex. I will go farther,
and say that I recognize the right of franchise as being
intrinsically a natural right. I do not believe that society
is authorized to impose any limitations upon it that do not
spring out of the necessities of the social state itself.

Charles Sumner, in his brave protests against the XIV. and XV.
Amendments, insisted that, so soon as by the XIII. Amendment the
slaves became free men, the original powers of the United States
Constitution guaranteed to them equal rights--the right to vote
and to be voted for:

I do not hesitate to say that when the slaves of our country
became "citizens," they took their place in the body politic
as a component part of the "people," entitled to equal
rights, and under the protection of these two guardian
principles: First, that all just governments stand on the
consent of the governed; and second, that taxation without
representation is tyranny; and these rights it is the duty
of Congress to guarantee as essential to the idea of a
Republic.

The preamble of the Constitution of the State of New York
declares:

We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to
Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its
blessings, do establish this Constitution.

Here is not the slightest intimation, either of receiving freedom
from the United States Constitution, or of the State conferring
the blessings of liberty upon the people; and the same is true of
every one of the thirty-six State Constitutions. Each and all
alike declare rights God-given, and that to secure the people in
the enjoyment of their inalienable rights, is their one and only
object in ordaining and establishing government. And all of the
State constitutions are equally emphatic in their recognition of
the ballot as the means of securing the people in the enjoyment
of these rights. Article 1 of the New York State Constitution
says:

No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived
of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof,
unless by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers.

And so carefully guarded is the citizen's right to vote, that the
Constitution makes special mention of all who may not vote:

Laws may be passed excluding from the right of suffrage all
persons who have been or may be convicted of bribery,
larceny, or any infamous crime.

In naming the various employments that shall not affect the
residence of voters, the 3d section of Article 2d says

That being kept at any almshouse or other asylum, at public
expense, nor being confined at any public prison, shall
deprive a person of his residence,

and hence his vote. Thus is the right of voting most sacredly
hedged about. The only seeming permission in our constitution for
the disfranchisement of women is in section 1st of Article 2d:

Every male citizen of the age of twenty-one years, etc.,
shall be entitled to vote.

But I insist that in view of the explicit assertions of the equal
right of the whole people, both in the preamble and previous
article of the constitution, this omission of the adjective
"female" in the second, should not be construed into a denial;
but, instead, counted as of no effect. Mark the direct
prohibition:

"No member of this State shall be disfranchised, unless by
the 'law of the land,' or the judgment of his peers."

"The law of the land," is the United States Constitution; and
there is no provision in that document that can be fairly
construed into a permission to the States to deprive any class of
their citizens of their right to vote. Hence New York can get no
power from that source to disfranchise one entire half of her
members. Nor has "the judgment of their peers" been pronounced
against women exercising their right to vote. No disfranchised
person is allowed to be judge or juror--and none but
disfranchised persons can be women's peers; nor has the
Legislature passed laws excluding them on account of idiocy or
lunacy; nor yet the courts convicted them of bribery, larceny, or
any infamous crime. Clearly, then, there is no constitutional
ground for the exclusion of women from the ballot-box in the
State of New York. No barriers whatever stand to-day between
women and the exercise of their right to vote save those of
precedent and prejudice.

The clauses of the United States Constitution, cited by our
opponents as giving power to the States to disfranchise any
classes of citizens they shall please, are contained in sections
2d and 4th of article 1st. The second says:

The House of Representatives shall be composed of members
chosen every second year by the people of the several
States; and the electors in each State shall have the
qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous
branch of the State Legislature.

This can not be construed into a concession to the States of the
power to destroy the right to become an elector, but simply to
prescribe what shall be the qualifications, such as competency of
intellect, maturity of age, length of residence, that shall be
deemed necessary to enable them to make an intelligent choice of
candidates. If, as our opponents assert, the last clause of this
section makes it the duty of the United States to protect
citizens in the several States against higher or different
qualifications for electors for Representatives in Congress, than
for members of Assembly, then must the first clause make it
equally imperative for the national government to interfere with
the States, and forbid them from arbitrarily cutting off the
right of one half of the people to become electors altogether.
Section 4th says:

The times, places, and manner of holding elections for
Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each
State by the Legislature thereof; but Congress may at any
time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to
the places of choosing Senators.

Here is conceded the power only to prescribe times, places, and
manner of holding the elections; and even with these Congress may
interfere, with all excepting the mere place of choosing
Senators. Thus you see, there is not the slightest permission in
either section for the States to discriminate against the right
of any class of citizens to vote. Surely to regulate can not be
to annihilate! nor to qualify to wholly deprive! And to this
principle every true Democrat and Republican said amen, when
applied to black men by Senator Sumner in his great speeches for
EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL from 1865 to 1869; and when, in 1871, I asked
that Senator to declare the power of the United States
Constitution to protect women in their right to vote--as he had
done for black men--he handed me a copy of all his speeches
during that reconstruction period, saying:

Miss Anthony, put "sex" where I have "race" or "color," and
you have here the best and strongest argument I can make for
woman. There is not a doubt but women have the
constitutional right to vote, and I will never vote for a
XVI. Amendment to guarantee it to them. I voted for both the
XIV. and XV. under protest; would never have done it but for
the pressing emergency of that hour; would have insisted
that the power of the original Constitution to protect all
citizens in the equal enjoyment of their rights should have
been vindicated through the courts. But the newly made
freedmen had neither the intelligence, wealth, nor time to
wait that slow process. Women possess all these in an
eminent degree; and I insist that they shall appeal to the
courts, and through them establish the powers of our
American _magna charta_, to protect every citizen of the
Republic.

But, friends, when in accordance with Senator Sumner's counsel, I
went to the ballot-box, last November, and exercised my citizen's
right to vote, the courts did not wait for me to appeal to
them--they appealed to me, and indicted me on the charge of
having voted illegally. Senator Sumner, putting sex where he did
color, would have said:

Qualifications can not be in their nature permanent or
insurmountable. Sex can not be a qualification any more than
size, race, color, or previous condition of servitude. A
permanent or insurmountable qualification is equivalent to a
deprivation of the suffrage. In other words, it is the
tyranny of taxation without representation, against which
our revolutionary mothers, as well as fathers, rebelled.

For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result
in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to
pass a bill of attainder, or an _ex post facto_ law, and is
therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it, the
blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their
female posterity. To them, this government has no just powers
derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government
is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious
aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy; the most hateful ever
established on the face of the globe. An oligarchy of wealth,
where the rich govern the poor; an oligarchy of learning, where
the educated govern the ignorant; or even an oligarchy of race,
where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but surely
this oligarchy of sex, which makes the men of every household
sovereigns, masters; the women subjects, slaves; carrying
dissension, rebellion into every home of the Nation, can not be
endured. And yet this odious aristocracy exists in the face of
Section 4, of Article 4, which says:

The United States shall guarantee to every State in the
Union a Republican form of government.

What, I ask you, is the distinctive difference between the
inhabitants of a Monarchical and those of a Republican form of
government, save that in the Monarchical the people are subjects,
helpless, powerless, bound to obey laws made by superiors--while
in the Republican, the people are citizens, individual
sovereigns, all clothed with equal power, to make and unmake both
their laws and their law makers. And the moment you deprive a
person of his right to a voice in the government, you degrade him
from the status of a citizen to that of a subject, and it matters
very little to him whether his monarch be an individual tyrant,
as is the Czar of Russia, or a 15,000,000 headed monster, as here
in the United States.

But, it is urged, the use of the masculine pronouns he, his, and
him, in all the constitutions and laws, is proof that only men
were meant to be included in their provisions. If you insist on
this version of the letter of the law, we shall insist that you
be consistent, and accept the other horn of the dilemma, which
would compel you to exempt women from taxation for the support of
the government, and from penalties for the violation of laws.

A year and a half ago I was at Walla Walla, Washington Territory.
I saw there a theatrical company, the "Pixley Sisters," playing
before crowded houses every night of the whole week of the
Territorial fair. The eldest of those three fatherless girls was
scarce eighteen. Yet every night a United States officer
stretched out his long fingers, and clutched six dollars of the
proceeds of the exhibitions of those orphan girls, who, but a few
years before, were starvelings in the streets of Olympia, the
capital of that far-off north-west territory. So the poor widow,
who keeps a boarding-house, manufactures shirts, or sells apples
and peanuts on the street corners of our cities, is compelled to
pay taxes from her scanty pittance. I would that the women of
this republic at once resolve, never again to submit to taxation
until their right to vote be recognized. Miss Sarah E. Wall, of
Worcester, Mass., twenty years ago, took this position. For
several years, the officers of the law distrained her property
and sold it to meet the necessary amount; still she persisted,
and would not yield an iota, though every foot of her lands
should be struck off under the hammer. And now, for several
years, the assessor has left her name off the tax list, and the
collector passed her by without a call. Mrs. J. S. Weeden, of
Viroqua, Wis., for the past six years has refused to pay her
taxes, though the annual assessment is $75. Mrs. Ellen Van
Valkenburg, of Santa Cruz, Cal., who sued the County Clerk for
refusing to register her name, declares she will never pay
another dollar of tax until allowed to vote; and all over the
country, women property holders are waking up to the injustice of
taxation without representation, and ere long will refuse, _en
masse_, to submit to the imposition.

There is no she, or her, or hers, in the tax laws. The statute of
New York reads:

Every person shall be assessed in the town or ward where he
resides when the assessment is made, for the lands owned by
him, etc. Every collector shall call at least once on the
person taxed, or at his usual place of residence, and shall
demand payment of the taxes charged on him. If any one shall
refuse to pay the tax imposed on him, the collector shall
levy the same by distress and sale of his property.

The same is true of all the criminal laws:

No person shall be compelled to be a witness against
himself, etc.

In the law of May 31, 1870, the 19th section of which I am
charged with having violated; not only are all the pronouns
masculine, but everybody knows that that particular section was
intended expressly to hinder the rebels from voting. It reads:

If any person shall knowingly vote without his having a
lawful right, etc.

Precisely so with all the papers served on me--the U. S.
Marshal's warrant, the bail-bond, the petition for habeas corpus,
the bill of indictment--not one of them had a feminine pronoun
printed in it; but, to make them applicable to me, the Clerk of
the Court made a little carat at the left of "he" and placed an
"s" over it, thus making she out of he. Then the letters "is"
were scratched out, the little carat placed under and "er" over,
to make her out of his, and I insist if government officials may
thus manipulate the pronouns to tax, fine, imprison, and hang
women, women may take the same liberty with them to secure to
themselves their right to a voice in the government.

So long as any classes of men were denied their right to vote,
the government made a show of consistency, by exempting them from
taxation. When a property qualification of $250 was required of
black men in New York, they were not compelled to pay taxes, so
long as they were content to report themselves worth less than
that sum; but the moment the black man died, and his property
fell to his widow, the black woman's name would be put on the
assessor's list, and she be compelled to pay taxes on the same
property exempted to her husband. The same is true of ministers
in New York. So long as the minister lives, he is exempted from
taxation on $1,500 of property, but the moment the breath goes
out of his body, his widow's name will go down on the assessor's
list, and she will have to pay taxes on the $1,500. So much for
the special legislation in favor of women. In all the penalties
and burdens of the government (except the military), women are
reckoned as citizens, equally with men. Also, in all the
privileges and immunities, save those of the jury-box and
ballot-box, the two fundamental privileges on which rest all the
others. The United States government not only taxes, fines,
imprisons, and hangs women, but it allows them to pre-empt lands,
register ships, and take out passport and naturalization papers.
Not only does the law permit single women and widows to the right
of naturalization, but Section 2 says:

A married woman may be naturalized without the concurrence
of her husband. (I wonder the fathers were not afraid of
creating discord in the families of foreigners); and again:
When an alien, having complied with the law, and declared
his intention to become a citizen, dies before he is
actually naturalized, his widow and children shall be
considered citizens, entitled to all rights and privileges
as such, on taking the required oath.

If a foreign-born woman, by becoming a naturalized, citizen, is
entitled to all rights and privileges of citizenship, is not a
native-born woman by her National citizenship, possessed of equal
rights and privileges?

The question of the masculine pronouns, yes and nouns too, has
been settled by the United States Supreme Court, in the case of
Silver _vs._ Ladd, December, 1868, in a decision as to whether a
woman was entitled to lands under the Oregon donation law of
1850. Elizabeth Cruthers, a widow, settled upon a claim and
received patents. She died, and her son was heir. He died. Then
Messrs. Ladd & Nott took possession, under the general
pre-emption law, December, 1861. The administrator, E. P. Silver,
applied for a writ of ejectment at the land office in Oregon
City. Both the Register and Receiver decided that an unmarried
woman could not hold land under that law. The Commissioner of the
General Land Office, at Washington, and the Secretary of the
Interior, also gave adverse opinions. Here patents were issued to
Ladd & Nott, and duly recorded. Then a suit was brought to set
aside Ladd's patent, and it was carried through all the State
Courts and the Supreme Court of Oregon; each, in turn, giving
adverse decisions. At last, in the United States Supreme Court,
Associate Justice Miller reversed the decisions of all the lower
tribunals, and ordered the land back to the heirs of Mrs.
Cruthers. The Court said:

In construing a benevolent statute of the government, made
for the benefit of its own citizens, inviting and
encouraging them to settle on its distant public lands, the
words "single man," and "unmarried man" may, especially if
aided by the context and other parts of the statute, be
taken in a generic sense. Held, accordingly, that the fourth
section of the Act of Congress, of September 27th, 1850,
granting by way of donation, lands in Oregon Territory, to
every white settler or occupant, American half-breed Indians
included, embraced within the term single man an unmarried
woman.

And the attorney, who carried this question to its final success,
is now the Senator elect from Oregon, Hon. J. H. Mitchell, in
whom the cause of equal rights to women has an added power on the
floor of the United States Senate.

Though the words persons, people, inhabitants, electors,
citizens, are all used indiscriminately in the National and State
constitutions, there was always a conflict of opinion, prior to
the war, as to whether they were synonymous terms, as for
instance:

No _person_ shall be a representative who shall not have
been seven years a _citizen_, and who shall not, when
elected, be an _inhabitant_ of that State in which he is
chosen. No _person_ shall be a senator who shall not have
been a _citizen_ of the United States, and an _inhabitant_
of that State in which he is chosen.

But, whatever room there was for a doubt, under the old regime,
the adoption of the XIV. Amendment settled that question forever,
in its first sentence:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States and
subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the
United States and of the State wherein they reside.

And the second settles the equal status of all persons--all
citizens:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty or property,
without due process of law, nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The only question left to be settled now, is: Are women persons?
And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood
to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens, and
no State has a right to make any new law, or to enforce any old
law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence,
every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws
of the several States, is to-day null and void, precisely as is
every one against negroes. Is the right to vote one of the
privileges or immunities of citizens? I think the disfranchised
ex-rebels, and the ex-state prisoners will all agree with me,
that it is not only one of them, but _the one without which all
the others are nothing_. Seek first the kingdom of the ballot,
and all things else shall be given thee, is the political
injunction.

Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define citizen to be a person,
in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office. And prior
to the adoption of the XIII. Amendment, by which slavery was
forever abolished, and black men transformed from property to
persons, the judicial opinions of the country had always been in
harmony with these definitions. To be a person was to be a
citizen, and to be a citizen was to be a voter. Associate Justice
Washington, in defining the privileges and immunities of the
citizen, more than fifty years ago, said:

They included all such privileges as were fundamental in
their nature. And among them is the right to exercise the
elective franchise and to hold office.

Even the "Dred Scott" decision, pronounced by the Abolitionists
and Republicans infamous, because it virtually declared "black
men had no rights white men were bound to respect," gave this
true and logical conclusion, that to be one of the people was to
be a citizen and a voter. Chief Judge Daniels said:

There is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of
writers on government, or in any actual experiment
heretofore tried, an exposition of the term citizen, which
has not been considered as conferring the actual possession
and enjoyment of the perfect right of acquisition and
enjoyment of an entire equality of privileges, civil and
political.

Associate Justice Taney said:

The words "people of the United States" and "citizens," are
synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both
describe the political body, who, according to our
republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold
the power and conduct the government, through their
representatives. They are what we familiarly call the
sovereign people, and every citizen is one of this people,
and a constituent member of this sovereignty.

Thus does Judge Taney's decision, which was such a terrible ban
to the black man while he was a slave, now that he is a person,
no longer property, pronounce him a citizen, possessed of an
entire equality of privileges, civil and political. And not only
the black man, but the black woman, and all women as well. And it
was not until after the abolition of slavery, by which the
negroes became free men, hence citizens, that the United States
Attorney-General Bates rendered a contrary opinion:

The Constitution uses the word "citizen" only to express the
political quality (not equality, mark) of the individual in
his relation to the nation; to declare that he is a member
of the body politic, and bound to it by the reciprocal
obligations of allegiance on the one side, and protection on
the other. The phrase "a citizen of the United States,"
without addition or qualification, means neither more nor
less than a member of the nation.

Then, to be a citizen of this Republic, is no more than to be a
subject of an Empire. You and I, and all true and patriotic
citizens must repudiate this base conclusion. We all know that
American citizenship, without addition or qualification, means
the possession of equal rights, civil and political. We all know
that the crowning glory of every citizen of the United States is,
that he can either give or withhold his vote from every law and
every legislator under the government. Did "I am a Roman
citizen," mean nothing more than that I am a "member" of the body
politic of the Republic of Rome, bound to it by the reciprocal
obligations of allegiance on the one side, and protection on the
other? When you, young man, shall travel abroad among the
monarchies of the old world, and there proudly boast yourself an
"American citizen," will you thereby declare yourself neither
more nor less than a "member" of the American nation?

And this opinion of Attorney-General Bates, that a black citizen
was not a voter, made merely to suit the political exigency of
the Republican party in that transition hour between emancipation
and enfranchisement, was no less infamous, in spirit or purpose,
than was the decision of Judge Taney, that a black man was not
one of the people, rendered in the interest and at the behest of
the old Democratic party, in its darkest hour of subjection to
the Slave power. Nevertheless, all of the adverse arguments,
adverse congressional reports and judicial opinions, thus far,
have been based on this purely partisan, time-serving opinion of
General Bates, that the normal condition of the citizen of the
United States is that of disfranchisement. That only such classes
of citizens as have had special legislative guarantee have a
legal right to vote. And if this decision of Attorney-General
Bates was infamous, as against black men, but yesterday
plantation slaves, what shall we pronounce upon Judge Bingham, in
the House of Representatives, and Carpenter, in the Senate of the
United States, for citing it against the women of the entire
nation, vast numbers of whom are the peers of those honorable
gentlemen themselves, in morals, intellect, culture, wealth,
family--paying taxes on large estates, and contributing equally
with them and their sex, in every direction, to the growth,
prosperity, and well-being of the Republic? And what shall be
said of the judicial opinions of Judges Cartter, Jameson, McKay,
and Sharswood, all based upon this aristocratic monarchical idea,
of the right of one class to govern another?

I am proud to mention the names of the two United States judges
who have given opinions honorable to our Republican idea, and
honorable to themselves--Judge Howe, of Wyoming Territory, and
Judge Underwood, of Virginia. The former gave it as his opinion a
year ago, when the Legislature seemed likely to revoke the law
enfranchising the women of that Territory, that, in case they
succeeded, the women would still possess the right to vote under
the XIV. Amendment. Judge Underwood, of Virginia, in noticing the
recent decision of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia,
denying to women the right to vote, under the XIV. Amendment,
says:

If the people of the United States, by amendment of their
Constitution, could expunge, without any explanatory or
assisting legislation, an adjective of five letters from all
State constitutions, and thereby raise millions of our most
ignorant fellow-citizens to all the rights and privileges of
electors, why should not the same people, by the same
Amendment, expunge an adjective of four letters from the
same State constitutions, and thereby raise other millions
of more educated and better informed citizens to equal
rights and privileges, without explanatory or assisting
legislation?

If the XIV. Amendment does not secure to all citizens the right
to vote, for what purpose was that grand old charter of the
fathers lumbered with its unwieldy proportions? The Republican
party, and Judges Howard and Bingham, who drafted the document,
pretended it was to do something for black men; and if that
something was not to secure them in their right to vote and hold
office, what could it have been? For, by the XIII. Amendment,
black men had become people, and hence were entitled to all the
privileges and immunities of the Government, precisely as were
the women of the country and foreign men not naturalized.
According to Associate Justice Washington, they already had the

Protection of the Government, the enjoyment of life and
liberty, with the right to acquire and possess property of
every kind, and to pursue and obtain happiness and safety,
subject to such restraints as the Government may justly
prescribe for the general welfare of the whole; the right of
a citizen of one State to pass through or to reside in any
other State for the purpose of trade, agriculture,
professional pursuit, or otherwise; to claim the benefit of
the writ of habeas corpus, to institute and maintain actions
of any kind in the courts of the State; to take, hold, and
dispose of property, either real or personal, and an
exemption from higher taxes or impositions than are paid by
the other citizens of the State.

Thus, you see, those newly-made freed men were in possession of
every possible right, privilege, and immunity of the Government,
except that of suffrage, and hence, needed no constitutional
amendment for any other purpose. What right, I ask you, has the
Irishman the day after he receives his naturalization papers that
he did not possess the day before, save the right to vote and
hold office? And the Chinamen, now crowding our Pacific coast,
are in precisely the same position. What privilege or immunity
has California or Oregon the constitutional right to deny them,
save that of the ballot? Clearly, then, if the XIV. Amendment was
not to secure to black men their right to vote, it did nothing
for them, since they possessed everything else before. But if it
was meant to be a prohibition of the States to deny or abridge
their right to vote--which I fully believe--then it did the same
for all persons, white women included, born or naturalized in the
United States, for the amendment does not say all male persons of
African descent, but all persons are citizens.

The second section is simply a threat to punish the States, by
reducing their representation on the floor of Congress, should
they disfranchise any class of male citizens, and does not allow
of the inference that the States may disfranchise from any, or
all other causes; nor in anywise weaken or invalidate the
universal guarantee of the first section. What rule of law or
logic would allow the conclusion, that the prohibition of a crime
to one person, on severe pains and penalties, was a sanction of
that crime to any and all other persons save that one? But,
however much the doctors of the law may disagree, as to whether
people and citizens, in the original constitution, were one and
the same, or whether the privileges and immunities in the XIV.
Amendment include the right of suffrage, the question of the
right of the citizen to vote is settled forever by the XV.
Amendment:

The citizen's right to vote shall not be denied by the
United States, nor any State thereof; on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude.

How can the State deny or abridge the right of the citizen, if
the citizen does not possess it? There is no escape from the
conclusion, that to vote is the citizen's right, and the
specifications of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
can, in no way, impair the force of the emphatic assertion, that
the citizen's right to vote shall not be denied or abridged. The
political strategy of the second section of the XIV. Amendment,
failing to coerce the rebel States into enfranchising their
negroes, and the necessities of the Republican party demanding
their votes throughout the South, to insure the re-election of
Grant in 1872, that party was compelled to place this positive
prohibition of the XV. Amendment upon the United States and all
the States thereof.

If we once establish the false principle, that United States
citizenship does not carry with it the right to vote in every
State in this Union, there is no end to the petty freaks and
cunning devices that will be resorted to, to exclude one and
another class of citizens from the right of suffrage. It will not
always be men combining to disfranchise women; native-born men
combining to abridge the rights of naturalized citizens, as in
Rhode Island; it will not always be the rich and educated who may
combine to cut off the poor and ignorant; but we may live to see
the poor, hard-working, uncultivated day laborers, foreign and
native born, learning the power of the ballot and their vast
majority of numbers, combine and amend State constitutions so as
to disfranchise the Vanderbilts and A. T. Stewarts, the Conklings
and Fentons. It is a poor rule that won't work more ways than
one. Establish this precedent, admit the right of the States to
deny suffrage, and there is no power to foresee the confusion,
discord, and disruption that may await us. There is, and can be,
but one safe principle of government--equal rights to all. And
any and every discrimination against any class, whether on
account of color, race, nativity, sex, property, culture, can but
embitter and disaffect that class, and thereby endanger the
safety of the whole people. Clearly, then, the National
government must not only define the rights of citizens, but it
must stretch out its powerful hand and protect them in every
State in this Union.

But if you will insist that the XV. Amendment's emphatic
interdiction against robbing United States citizens of their
right to vote, "on account of race, color, or previous condition
of servitude," is a recognition of the right, either of the
United States or any State, to rob citizens of that right for any
or all other reasons, I will prove to you that the class of
citizens for which I now plead, and to which I belong, may be,
and are, by all the principles of our Government, and many of the
laws of the States, included under the term "previous condition
of servitude."

First.--The married women and their legal status. What is
servitude? "The condition of a slave." What is a slave? "A person
who is robbed of the proceeds of his labor; a person who is
subject to the will of another."

By the law of Georgia, South Carolina, and all the States of the
South, the negro had no right to the custody and control of his
person. He belonged to his master. If he was disobedient, the
master had the right to use correction. If the negro didn't like
the correction, and attempted to run away, the master had a right
to use coercion to bring him back. By the law of every State in
this Union to-day, North as well as South, the married woman has
no right to the custody and control of her person. The wife
belongs to her husband; and if she refuses obedience to his will,
he may use moderate correction, and if she doesn't like his
moderate correction, and attempts to leave his "bed and board,"
the husband may use moderate coercion to bring her back. The
little word "moderate," you see, is the saving clause for the
wife, and would doubtless be overstepped should her offended
husband administer his correction with the "cat-o'-nine-tails,"
or accomplish his coercion with blood-hounds.

Again, the slave had no right to the earnings of his hands, they
belonged to his master; no right to the custody of his children,
they belonged to his master; no right to sue or be sued, or
testify in the courts. If he committed a crime, it was the master
who must sue or be sued. In many of the States there has been
special legislation, giving to married women the right to
property inherited, or received by bequest, or earned by the
pursuit of any avocation outside of the home; also, giving her
the right to sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such
separate property; but _not a single State of this Union has ever
secured the wife in the enjoyment of her right to the joint
ownership of the joint earnings of the marriage copartnership_.
And since, in the nature of things, the vast majority of married
women never earn a dollar by work outside of their families, nor
inherit a dollar from their fathers, it follows that from the day
of their marriage to the day of the death of their husbands, not
one of them ever has a dollar, except it shall please her
husband to let her have it. In some of the States, also, there
have been laws passed giving to the mother a joint right with the
father in the guardianship of the children. But twenty years ago,
when our woman's rights movement commenced, by the laws of the
State of New York, and all the States, the father had the sole
custody and control of the children. No matter if he were a
brutal, drunken libertine, he had the legal right, without the
mother's consent, to apprentice her sons to rumsellers, or her
daughters to brothel keepers. He could even will away an unborn
child, to some other person than the mother. And in many of the
States the law still prevails, and legal mothers are still
utterly powerless under the common law.

I doubt if there is, to-day, a State in this Union where a
married woman can sue or be sued for slander of character, and
until quite recently there was not one in which she could sue or
be sued for injury of person. However damaging to the wife's
reputation any slander may be, she is wholly powerless to
institute legal proceedings against her accuser, unless her
husband shall join with her; and how often have we heard of the
husband conspiring with some outside barbarian to blast the good
name of his wife. A married woman can not testify in the courts
in cases of joint interest with her husband. A good farmer's wife
near Earlville, Ill., who had all the rights she wanted, went to
the dentist of the village, who made her a full set of false
teeth, both upper and under. The dentist pronounced them an
admirable fit, and the wife declared they gave her fits to wear
them; that she could neither chew nor talk with them in her
mouth. The dentist sued the husband; his counsel brought the wife
as witness; the judge ruled her off the stand, saying:

A married woman can not be a witness in matters of joint
interest between herself and her husband.

Think of it, ye good wives, the false teeth in your mouths a
joint interest with your husbands, about which you are legally
incompetent to speak! If in our frequent and shocking railroad
accidents a married woman is injured in her person, in nearly all
of the States, it is her husband who must sue the company, and it
is to her husband that the damages, if there are any, will be
awarded. In Ashfield, Mass., supposed to be the most advanced of
any State in the Union in all things, humanitarian as well as
intellectual, a married woman was severely injured by a defective
sidewalk. Her husband sued the corporation and recovered $13,000
damages. And those $13,000 belong to him _bona fide_; and
whenever that unfortunate wife wishes a dollar of it to supply
her needs she must ask her husband for it; and if the man be of a
narrow, selfish, niggardly nature, she will have to hear him say,
every time:

"What have you done, my dear, with the twenty-five cents I
gave you yesterday?"

Isn't such a position, I ask you, humiliating enough to be called
"servitude"? That husband, as would any other husband, in nearly
every State of this Union, sued and obtained damages for the loss
of the services of his wife, precisely as the master, under the
old slave regime, would have done, had his slave been thus
injured, and precisely as he himself would have done had it been
his ox, cow, or horse instead of his wife. There is an old saying
that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," and I
submit if the deprivation by law of the ownership of one's own
person, wages, property, children, the denial of the right as an
individual, to sue and be sued, and to testify in the courts, is
not a condition of servitude most bitter and absolute, though
under the sacred name of marriage?

Does any lawyer doubt my statement of the legal status of married
women? I will remind him of the fact that the old common law of
England prevails in every State in this Union, except where the
Legislature has enacted special laws annulling it. And I am
ashamed that not one State has yet blotted from its statute books
the old common law of marriage, by which Blackstone, summed up in
the fewest words possible, is made to say: "Husband and wife are
one, and that one is the husband."

Thus may all married women, wives, and widows, by the laws of the
several States, be technically included in the XV. Amendment's
specification of "condition of servitude," present or previous.
And not only married women, but I will also prove to you that by
all the great fundamental principles of our free government, the
entire womanhood of the nation is in a "condition of servitude"
as surely as were our revolutionary fathers, when they rebelled
against old King George. Women are taxed without representation,
governed without their consent, tried, convicted, and punished
without a jury of their peers. And is all this tyranny any less
humiliating and degrading to women under our
democratic-republican government to-day than it was to men under
their aristocratic, monarchical government one hundred years ago?
There is not an utterance of old John Adams, John Hancock, or
Patrick Henry, but finds a living response in the soul of every
intelligent, patriotic woman of the nation. Bring to me a
common-sense woman property holder, and I will show you one whose
soul is fired with all the indignation of 1776, every time the
tax-gatherer presents himself at her door. You will not find one
such but feels her condition of servitude as galling as did James
Otis when he said:

The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not
represented appears to me to be depriving them of one of
their most essential rights, and if continued, seems to be
in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right.
For, what one civil right is worth a rush after a man's
property is subject to be taken from him at pleasure without
his consent? If a man is not his own assessor in person, or
by deputy, his liberty is gone, or he is wholly at the mercy
of others.

What was the three-penny tax on tea, or the paltry tax on paper
and sugar to which our revolutionary fathers were subjected, when
compared with the taxation of the women of this Republic? The
orphaned Pixley sisters, six dollars a day; and even the women
who are proclaiming the tyranny of taxation without
representation, from city to city throughout the country, are
often compelled to pay a tax for the poor privilege of protesting
against the outrage. And again, to show that disfranchisement was
precisely the slavery of which the fathers complained, allow me
to cite to you old Ben. Franklin, who in those olden times was
admitted to be good authority, not merely in domestic economy,
but in political as well:

Every man of the commonalty, except infants, insane persons
and criminals, is, of common right and the law of God, a
freeman and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty. That
liberty or freedom consists in having an actual share in the
appointment of those who are to frame the laws, and who are
to be the guardians of every man's life, property, and
peace. For the all of one man is as dear to him as the all
of another; and the poor man has an equal right, but more
need to have representatives in the Legislature than the
rich one. That they who have no voice or vote in the
electing of representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are
absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and their
representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors
whom other men have set over us, and to be subject to laws
made by the representatives of others, without having had
representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.

Suppose I read it with the feminine gender:

That women who have no voice nor vote in the electing of
representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely
enslaved to men who have votes and their representatives;
for to be enslaved is to have governors whom men have set
over us, and to be subject to the laws made by the
representatives of men, without having representatives of
our own to give consent in our behalf.

And yet one more authority; that of Thomas Paine, than whom not
one of the Revolutionary patriots more ably vindicated the
principles upon which our government is founded:

The right of voting for representatives is the primary right
by which other rights are protected. To take away this right
is to reduce man to a state of slavery; for slavery consists
in being subject to the will of another; and he that has not
a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.
The proposal, therefore, to disfranchise any class of men is
as criminal as the proposal to take away property.

Is anything further needed to prove woman's condition of
servitude sufficiently orthodox to entitle her to the guarantees
of the XV. Amendment? Is there a man who will not agree with me,
that to talk of freedom without the ballot, is mockery--is
slavery--to the women of this Republic, precisely as New
England's orator, Wendell Phillips, at the close of the late war,
declared it to be to the newly emancipated black men?

I admit that prior to the rebellion, by common consent, the right
to enslave, as well as to disfranchise both native and foreign
born citizens, was conceded to the States. But the one grand
principle, settled by the war and the reconstruction legislation,
is the supremacy of National power to protect the citizens of the
United States in their right to freedom and the elective
franchise, against any and every interference on the part of the
several States. And again and again, have the American people
asserted the triumph of this principle, by their overwhelming
majorities for Lincoln and Grant. The one issue of the last two
Presidential elections was, whether the XIV. and XV. Amendments
should be considered the irrevocable will of the people; and the
decision was, they shall be--and that it is not only the right,
but the duty of the National government to protect all United
States citizens in the full enjoyment and free exercise of all
their privileges and immunities against any attempt of any State
to deny or abridge. And in this conclusion Republicans and
Democrats alike agree.

Senator FRELINGHUYSEN said--The heresy of State rights has
been completely buried in these amendments, that as amended,
the Constitution confers not only National but State
citizenship upon all persons born or naturalized within our
limits.

The CALL for the NATIONAL REPUBLICAN Convention said--Equal
suffrage has been engrafted on the National Constitution;
the privileges and immunities of American citizenship have
become a part of the organic law.

The NATIONAL REPUBLICAN Platform said--Complete liberty and
exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political, and
public rights, should be established and maintained
throughout the Union by efficient and appropriate State and
Federal legislation.

If these assertions mean anything, it is that Congress should
pass a law compelling the States to protect women in their equal
political rights, and that the States should enact laws making
it the duty of inspectors of election to receive women's votes on
precisely the same conditions they do those of men.

Judge Stanley Matthews--a substantial Ohio Democrat--in his
preliminary speech at the Cincinnati Convention, said most
emphatically:

The Constitutional Amendments have established the political
equality of all citizens before the law.

President Grant, in his message to Congress March 30, 1870, on
the adoption of the XV. Amendment, said:

A measure which makes at once four millions of people
voters, is indeed a measure of greater importance than any
act of the kind from the foundation of the Government to the
present time.

How could the four million negroes be made voters if the two
million women were not included?

The California State Republican Convention said:

Among the many practical and substantial triumphs of the
principles achieved by the Republican party during the past
twelve years, we may enumerate with pride and pleasure, the
prohibiting of any State from abridging the privileges of
any citizen of the Republic, the declaring the civil and
political equality of every citizen, and the establishing of
all these principles in the Federal Constitution by
amendments thereto, as the permanent law.

Benjamin F. Butler, in a recent letter to me said:

I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that the
Constitution authorizes the right of women to vote,
precisely as it authorizes trial by jury and many other like
rights guaranteed to citizens. And again, It is not laws we
want; there are plenty of laws--good enough, too.
Administrative ability to enforce law is the great want of
the age, in this country especially. Everybody talks of law,
law. If everybody would insist on the enforcement of law,
the government would stand on a firmer basis, and questions
would settle themselves.

And it is upon this just interpretation of the United States
Constitution that our National Woman Suffrage Association, which
celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the woman's rights
movement, in New York on the 6th of May next, has based all its
arguments and action the past three years. We no longer petition
Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote. We appeal
to the women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected
"citizen's right to vote." We appeal to the inspectors of
election everywhere to receive the votes of all United States
citizens, as it is their duty to do. We appeal to United States
commissioners and marshals to arrest the inspectors who reject
the names and votes of United States citizens, as it is their
duty to do, and leave those alone who, like our eighth ward
inspectors, perform their duties faithfully and well. We ask the
juries to fail to return verdicts of "guilty" against honest,
law-abiding, tax-paying United States citizens for offering their
votes at our elections; or against intelligent, worthy young men,
inspectors of election, for receiving and counting such citizens'
votes. We ask the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions
of the law, and wherever there is room for a doubt to give its
benefit on the side of liberty and equality to women, remembering
that

The true rule of interpretation under our National
Constitution, especially since its Amendments, is that
anything for human rights is constitutional, everything
against human rights unconstitutional.

And it is on this line that we propose to fight our battle for
the ballot--peaceably, but nevertheless persistently to complete
triumph, when all United States citizens shall be recognized as
equals before the law.

Miss Anthony's trial opened the morning of the 18th of June. The
lovely village of Canandaigua, with its placid lake reflecting the
soft summer sky, gave no evidence of the great event that was to make
the day and the place memorable in history. All was still, the usual
peaceful atmosphere pervaded that conservative town, and with the
exception of a small group of men and women in earnest conversation at
the hotel, few there were who thought or cared about the great
principles of government involved in the pending trial. When the
tolling of the Court House bell announced that the hour had arrived,
Miss Anthony, her counsel and friends, promptly appeared, and were
soon followed by the District Attorney and Judge, representing the
power of the United States,--Miss Anthony to stand as a criminal
before the bar of her country for having dared to exercise a freeman's
right of self-government, and that country through its Judiciary to
falsify its grand declarations as to the equality of its citizens by a
verdict of guilty because of sex.

On the bench sat Judge Hunt, a small-brained, pale-faced, prim-looking
man, enveloped in a faultless suit of black broadcloth, and a snowy
white neck-tie. This was the first criminal case he had been called on
to try since his appointment, and with remarkable forethought, he had
penned his decision before hearing it. At times by his side sat Judge
Hall, who had declared himself unwilling to try the suit. Within the
bar sat Miss Anthony and counsel, the Hon. Henry R. Selden and Hon.
John Van Voorhis, several of the ladies who had voted,[169] Mrs. Gage,
and the United States District Attorney. Upon the right sat the jury,
while all the remaining space was crowded with curious and anxious
listeners, among whom were many men[170] prominent in public life.

The indictment[171] presented against Miss Anthony will be regarded
by the future historian as a remarkable document to have originated in
a republic against one of its native-born citizens guilty of no crime.

UNITED STATES CIRCUIT COURT. (NORTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK.)

The United States of America _vs._ Susan B. Anthony; Hon. Ward
Hunt, Presiding. Appearances: For the United States: Hon. Richard
Crowley, U. S. District Attorney; For the Defendant: Hon. Henry
R. Selden, John Van Voorhis, Esq.

Tried at Canandaigua, Tuesday and Wednesday, June 17th and 18th,
1873, before Hon. Ward Hunt, and a jury. Jury impaneled at 2:30
P.M.

Mr. Crowley opened the case as follows:

_May it please the Court and Gentlemen of the Jury:_

On the 5th of November, 1872, there was held in this State, as
well as in other States of the Union, a general election for
different officers, and among those, for candidates to represent
several districts of this State in the Congress of the United
States. The defendant, Miss Susan B. Anthony, at that time
resided in the city of Rochester, in the county of Monroe,
Northern District of New York, and upon the 5th day of November,
1872, she voted for a representative in the Congress of the
United States, to represent the 29th Congressional District of
this State, and also for a representative at large for the State
of New York, to represent the State in the Congress of the United
States. At that time she was a woman. I suppose there will be no
question about that. The question in this case, if there be a
question of fact about it at all, will, in my judgment, be
rather a question of law than one of fact. I suppose that there
will be no question of fact, substantially, in the case when all
of the evidence is out, and it will be for you to decide under
the charge for his honor, the Judge, whether or not the defendant
committed the offense of voting for a representative in Congress
upon that occasion. We think, on the part of the Government, that
there is no question about it either one way or the other,
neither a question of fact, nor a question of law, and that
whatever Miss Anthony's intentions may have been--whether they
were good or otherwise--she did not have a right to vote upon
that question, and if she did vote without having a lawful right
to vote, then there is no question but what she is guilty of
violating a law of the United States in that behalf enacted by
the Congress of the United States.

We don't claim in this case, gentlemen, that Miss Anthony is of
that class of people who go about "repeating." We don't claim
that she went from place to place for the purpose of offering her
vote. But we do claim that upon the 5th of November, 1872, she
voted, and whether she believed that she had a right to vote or
not, it being a question of law, that she is within the statute.
Congress in 1870 passed the following statute: (Reads 19th
Section of the Act of 1870, page 144, 16th statutes at large.) It
is not necessary for me, gentlemen, at this stage of the case, to
state all the facts which will be proven on the part of the
Government. I shall leave that to be shown by the evidence and by
the witnesses, and if any question of law shall arise his Honor
will undoubtedly give you instructions as he shall deem proper.
Conceded, that on the 5th day of November, 1872, Miss Susan B.
Anthony was a woman.

Beverly W. Jones, a witness, called in behalf of the United
States, testified as follows: Examined by Mr. Crowley:

_Q._ Mr. Jones, where do you reside? _A._ 8th Ward, Rochester.

_Q._ Where were you living on the 5th of November, 1872? _A._
Same place.

_Q._ Do you know the defendant, Miss Susan B. Anthony? _A._ Yes,
sir.

_Q._ In what capacity were you acting upon that day, if any, in
relation to elections? _A._ Inspector of election.

_Q._ Into how many election districts is the 8th Ward divided, if
it contains more than one? _A._ Two, sir.

_Q._ In what election district were you inspector of elections?
_A._ The first district.

_Q._ Who were inspectors with you? _A._ Edwin T. Marsh and
William B. Hall.

_Q._ Had the Board of Inspectors been regularly organized? _A._
Yes, sir.

_Q._ Upon the 5th day of November, did the defendant, Susan B.
Anthony, vote in the first election district of the 8th Ward of
the city of Rochester?

_A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ Did you see her vote? _A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ Will you state to the jury what tickets she voted, whether
State, Assembly, Congress and Electoral? Objected to as calling
for a conclusion.

_Q._ State what tickets she voted, if you know, Mr. Jones. _A._
If I recollect right she voted the Electoral ticket,
Congressional ticket, State ticket, and Assembly ticket.

_Q._ Was there an election for member of Congress from that
district and for Representative at large in Congress, for the
State of New York, held on the 5th of November, in the city of
Rochester? _A._ I think there was; yes, sir.

_Q._ In what Congressional District was the city of Rochester at
the time? _A._ The 29th.

_Q._ Did you receive the tickets from Miss Anthony? _A._ Yes,
sir.

_Q._ What did you do with them when you received them? _A._ Put
them in the separate boxes where they belonged.

_Q._ State to the jury whether you had separate boxes for the
several tickets voted in that election district? _A._ Yes, sir;
we had.

_Q._ Was Miss Anthony challenged upon that occasion? _A._ Yes,
sir--no; not on that day she wasn't.

_Q._ She was not challenged on the day she voted? _A._ No, sir.

Cross-examination by Judge Selden:

_Q._ Prior to the election, was there a registry of voters in
that district made? _A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ Were you one of the officers engaged in making that
registry? _A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ When the registry was being made did Miss Anthony appear
before the Board of Registry and claim to be registered as a
voter? _A._ She did.

_Q._ Was there any objection made, or any doubt raised as to her
right to vote? _A._ There was.

_Q._ On what ground? _A._ On the ground that the Constitution of
the State of New York did not allow women to vote.

_Q._ What was the defect in her right to vote as a citizen? _A._
She was not a male citizen.

_Q._ That she was a woman? _A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ Did the Board consider that and decide that she was entitled
to register? Objected to. Objection overruled.

_Q._ Did the Board consider the question of her right to
registry, and decide that she was entitled to registry as a
voter? _A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ And she was registered accordingly? _A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ When she offered her vote, was the same objection brought up
in the Board of Inspectors, or question made of her right to vote
as a woman? _A._ She was challenged previous to election day.

_Q._ It was canvassed previous to election day between them? _A._
Yes, sir; she was challenged on the second day of registering
names.

_Q._ At the time of the registry, when her name was registered,
was the Supervisor of Election present at the Board? _A._ He was.

_Q._ Was he consulted upon the question of whether she was
entitled to registry, or did he express an opinion on the subject
to the inspectors?

Mr. CROWLEY.--I submit that it is of no consequence whether he
did or not.

JUDGE SELDEN.--He was the Government Supervisor under this act of
Congress.

Mr. CROWLEY.--The Board of Inspectors, under the State law,
constitute the Board of Registry, and they are the only persons
to pass upon that question.

THE COURT.--You may take it. _A._ Yes, sir; there was a United
States Supervisor of Elections, two of them.

By Judge Selden:

_Q._ Did they advise the registry or did they not? _A._ One of
them did.

_Q._ And on that advice the registry was made with the judgment
of the inspectors? _A._ It had a great deal of weight with the
inspectors, I have no doubt.

Re-direct examination by Mr. CROWLEY:

_Q._ Was Miss Anthony challenged before the Board of Registry?
_A._ Not at the time she offered her name.

_Q._ Was she challenged at any time? _A._ Yes, sir; the second
day of the meeting of the Board.

_Q._ Was the preliminary and the general oath administered? _A._
Yes, sir.

_Q._ Won't you state what Miss Anthony said, if she said
anything, when she came there and offered her name for
registration? _A._ She stated that she did not claim any rights
under the Constitution of the State of New York; she claimed her
right under the Constitution of the United States.

_Q._ Did she name any particular amendment? _A._ Yes, sir; she
cited the XIV. Amendment.

_Q._ Under that she claimed her right to vote? _A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ Did the other Federal Supervisor who was present, state it
as his opinion that she was entitled to vote under that
amendment, or did he protest, claiming that she did not have the
right to vote? _A._ One of them said that there was no way for
the inspectors to get around placing the name upon the register;
the other one, when she came in, left the room.

_Q._ Did this one who said that there was no way to get around
placing the name upon the register, state that she had her right
to register, but did not have the right to vote? _A._ I didn't
hear him make any such statement.

_Q._ You didn't hear any such statement as that? _A._ No, sir.

_Q._ Was there a poll list kept of the voters of the first
election district of the 8th Ward on the day of election? _A._
Yes, sir.

_Q._ (Handing witness two books.) State whether that is the poll
list of voters kept upon the day of election in the first
election district of the 8th Ward, of the city of Rochester? _A._
This is the poll list, and also the register.

_Q._ Turn to the name of Susan B. Anthony, if it is upon that
poll list. _A._ I have it.

_Q._ What number is it? _A._ Number 22.

_Q._ From that poll list what tickets does it purport to show
that she voted upon that occasion? _A._ Electoral, State,
Congress, and Assembly.

United States rests.

Judge SELDEN opened the case in behalf of the defendant, as follows:

_If the Court please, Gentlemen of the Jury:_

This is a case of no ordinary magnitude, although many might
regard it as one of very little importance. The question whether
my client here has done anything to justify her being consigned
to a felon's prison or not, is one that interests her very
essentially, and that interests the people also essentially. I
claim and shall endeavor to establish before you that when she
offered to have her name registered as a voter, and when she
offered her vote for Member of Congress, she was as much entitled
to vote as any man that voted at that election, according to the
Constitution and laws of the Government under which she lives. If
I maintain that proposition, as a matter of course she has
committed no offense, and is entitled to be discharged at your
hands.

But, beyond that, whether she was a legal voter or not, whether
she was entitled to a vote or not, if she sincerely believed that
she had a right to vote, and offered her ballot in good faith,
under that belief, whether right or wrong, by the laws of this
country she is guilty of no crime. I apprehend that that
proposition, when it is discussed, will be maintained with a
clearness and force that shall leave no doubt upon the mind of
the Court or upon your minds as the gentlemen of the jury. If I
maintain that proposition here, then the further question and the
only question which, in my judgment, can come before you to be
passed upon by you as a question of fact is whether or not she
did vote in good faith, believing that she had a right to vote.
The public prosecutor assumes that, however honestly she may have
offered her vote, however sincerely she may have believed that
she had a right to vote, if she was mistaken in that judgment,
her offering her vote and its being received makes a criminal
offense--a proposition to me most abhorrent, as I believe it will
be equally abhorrent to your judgment.

Before the registration, and before this election, Miss Anthony
called upon me for advice upon the question whether, under the
XIV. Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, she had
a right to vote. I had not examined the question. I told her I
would examine it and give her my opinion upon the question of her
legal right. She went away and came again after I had made the
examination. I advised her that she was as lawful a voter as I
am, or as any other man is, and advised her to go and offer her
vote. I may have been mistaken in that, and if I was mistaken, I
believe she acted in good faith. I believe she acted according to
her right as the law and Constitution gave it to her. But whether
she did or not, she acted in the most perfect good faith, and if
she made a mistake, or if I made one, that is not a reason for
committing her to a felon's cell.

For the second time in my life, in my professional practice, I am
under the necessity of offering myself as a witness for my
client.

HENRY R. SELDEN, a witness sworn in behalf of the defendant,
testified as follows: Before the last election, Miss Anthony
called upon me for advice, upon the question whether she was or
was not a legal voter. I examined the question, and gave her my
opinion, unhesitatingly, that the laws and Constitution of the
United States authorized her to vote, as well as they authorize
any man to vote; and I advised her to have her name placed upon
the registry and to vote at the election, if the inspectors
should receive her vote. I gave the advice in good faith,
believing it to be accurate, and I believe it to be accurate
still. [This witness was not cross-examined.]

Judge SELDEN: I propose to call Miss Anthony as to the fact of
her voting--on the question of the intention or belief under
which she voted.

Mr. CROWLEY: She is not competent as a witness in her own behalf.
[The Court so held.] Defendant rests.

JOHN E. POUND, a witness sworn in behalf of the United States,
testified as follows, examined by Mr. CROWLEY:

_Q._ During the months of November and December, 1872, and
January, 1873, were you Assistant United States District Attorney
for the Northern District of New York? _A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ Do you know the defendant, Susan B. Anthony? _A._ Yes, sir.

_Q._ Did you attend an examination before Wm. C. Storrs, a United
States Commissioner, in the city of Rochester, when her case was
examined? _A._ I did.

_Q._ Was she called as a witness in her own behalf upon that
examination? _A._ She was.

_Q._ Was she sworn? _A._ She was.

_Q._ Did she give evidence? _A._ She did.

_Q._ Did you keep minutes of evidence on that occasion? _A._ I
did.

_Q._ (Handing the witness a paper). Please look at the paper now
shown you and see if it contains the minutes you kept upon that
occasion? _A._ It does.

_Q._ Turn to the evidence of Susan B. Anthony? _A._ I have it.

_Q._ Did she, upon that occasion, state that she consulted or
talked with Judge Henry R. Selden, of Rochester, in relation to
her right to vote?

Judge SELDEN: I object to that upon the ground that it is
incompetent, that if they refuse to allow her to be sworn here,
they should be excluded from producing any evidence that she gave
elsewhere, especially when they want to give the version which
the United States officer took of her evidence.

THE COURT: Go on.

By Mr. CROWLEY:

_Q._ State whether she stated on that examination, under oath,
that she had talked or consulted with Judge Henry R. Selden in
relation to her right to vote? _A._ She did.

_Q._ State whether she asked, upon that examination, if the
advice given her by Judge Henry R. Selden would or did make any
difference in her action in voting, or in substance that? _A._
She stated on the cross-examination, "I should have made the same
endeavor to vote that I did had I not consulted Judge Selden. I
didn't consult any one before I registered. I was not influenced
by his advice in the matter at all; have been resolved to vote,
the first time I was at home thirty days, for a number of years."

_Cross-examination by_ Mr. Van VOORHIS:

_Q._ Mr. Pound, was she asked there if she had any doubt about
her right to vote, and did she answer, "Not a particle"? _A._ She
stated, "Had no doubt as to my right to vote," on the direct
examination.

_Q._ There was a stenographic reporter there, was there not? _A._
A reporter was there taking notes.

_Q._ Was not this question put to her, "Did you have any doubt
yourself of your right to vote?" and did she not answer, "Not a
particle"?

THE COURT: Well, he says so, that she had no doubt of her right
to vote.

Judge SELDEN: I beg leave to state, in regard to my own
testimony, Miss Anthony informs me that I was mistaken in the
fact that my advice was before her registry. It was my
recollection that it was on her way to the registry, but she
states to me now that she was registered and came immediately to
my office. In that respect I was under a mistake.

_Evidence closed._

ARGUMENT OF MR. SELDEN FOR THE DEFENDANT.

The defendant is indicted under the 19th section of the Act of
Congress of May 31, 1874 (16 St. at L., 144), for "voting without
having a lawful right to vote." The words of the statute, so far
as they are material in this ease, are as follows:

If at any election for representative or delegate in the
Congress of the United States, any person shall knowingly
... vote without having a lawful right to vote ... every
such person shall be deemed guilty of a crime ... and on
conviction thereof shall be punished by a fine not exceeding
$500, or by imprisonment for a term not exceeding three
years, or by both, in the discretion of the court, and shall
pay the costs of prosecution.

The only alleged ground of illegality of the defendant's vote is
that she is a woman. If the same act had been done by her brother
under the same circumstances, the act would have been not only
innocent, but honorable and laudable; but having been done by a
woman it is said to be a crime. The crime, therefore, consists
not in the act done, but in the simple fact that the person doing
it was a woman and not a man. I believe this is the first
instance in which a woman has been arraigned in a criminal court
merely on account of her sex. If the advocates of female suffrage
had been allowed to choose the point of attack to be made upon
their position, they could not have chosen it more favorably for
themselves; and I am disposed to thank those who have been
instrumental in this proceeding, for presenting it in the form
of a criminal prosecution. Women have the same interest that men
have in the establishment and maintenance of good government;
they are to the same extent as men bound to obey the laws; they
suffer to the same extent by bad laws, and profit to the same
extent by good laws; and upon principles of equal justice, as it
would seem, should be allowed equally with men, to express their
preference in the choice of law-makers and rulers. But however
that may be, no greater absurdity, to use no harsher term, could
be presented, than that of rewarding men and punishing women, for
the same act, without giving to women any voice in the question
which should be rewarded, and which punished.

I am aware, however, that we are here to be governed by the
Constitution and laws as they are, and that if the defendant has
been guilty of violating the law, she must submit to the penalty,
however unjust or absurd the law may be. But courts are not
required to so interpret laws or constitutions as to produce
either absurdity or injustice, so long as they are open to a more
reasonable interpretation. This must be my excuse for what I
design to say in regard to the propriety of female suffrage,
because with that propriety established there is very little
difficulty in finding sufficient warrant in the Constitution for
its exercise. This case, in its legal aspects, presents three
questions, which I purpose to discuss.

1. Was the defendant legally entitled to vote at the election in
question?

2. If she was not entitled to vote, but believed that she was,
and voted in good faith in that belief, did such voting
constitute a crime under the statute before referred to?

3. Did the defendant vote in good faith in that belief?

If the first question be decided in accordance with my views, the
other questions become immaterial; if the second be decided
adversely to my views, the first and third become immaterial. The
first two are questions of law to be decided by the court, the
other is a question for the jury.

The Court suggested that the argument should be confined to
the legal questions, and the argument on the other question
suspended. This suggestion was assented to, and the counsel
proceeded.

My first position is that the defendant had the same right to
vote as any other citizen who voted at that election. Before
proceeding to the discussion of the purely legal question, I
desire, as already intimated, to pay some attention to the
propriety and justice of the rule which I claim to have been
established by the Constitution.

Miss Anthony, and those united with her in demanding the right of
suffrage, claim, and with a strong appearance of justice, that
upon the principles upon which our Government is founded, and
which lie at the basis of all just government, every citizen has
a right to take part, upon equal terms with every other citizen,
in the formation and administration of government. This claim on
the part of the female sex presents a question the magnitude of
which is not well appreciated by the writers and speakers who
treat it with ridicule. Those engaged in the movement are able,
sincere, and earnest women, and they will not be silenced by such
ridicule, nor even by the villainous caricatures of Nast. On the
contrary, they justly place all those things to the account of
the wrongs which they think their sex has suffered. They believe,
with an intensity of feeling which men who have not associated
with them have not yet learned, that their sex has not had, and
has not now, its just and true position in the organization of
government and society. They may be wrong in their position, but
they will not be content until their arguments are fairly,
truthfully, and candidly answered.

In the most celebrated document which has been put forth on this
side of the Atlantic, our ancestors declared that "governments
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed."
Blackstone says:

The lawfulness of punishing such criminals (_i.e._, persons
offending merely against the laws of society) is founded
upon this principle; that the law by which they suffer was
made by their own consent; it is a part of the original
contract into which they entered when first they engaged in
society; it was calculated for and has long contributed to
their own security.

Quotations, to an unlimited extent, containing similar doctrines
from eminent writers, both English and American, on government,
from the time of John Locke to the present day, might be made.
Without adopting this doctrine which bases the rightfulness of
government upon the consent of the governed, I claim that there
is implied in it the narrower and unassailable principle that all
citizens of a State, who are bound by its laws, are entitled to
an equal voice in the making and execution of such laws. The
doctrine is well stated by Godwin in his treatise on "Political
Justice." He says:

The first and most important principle that can be imagined
relative to the form and structure of government, seems to
be this: that as government is a transaction in the name and
for the benefit of the whole, every member of the community
ought to have some share in its administration. Again,
Government is a contrivance instituted for the security of
individuals; and it seems both reasonable that each man
should have a share in providing for his own security, and
probable, that partiality and cabal should by this means be
most effectually excluded. And again, To give each man a
voice in the public concerns comes nearest to that admirable
idea of which we should never lose sight, the uncontrolled
exercise of private judgment. Each man would thus be
inspired with a consciousness of his own importance, and the
slavish feelings that shrink up the soul in the presence of
an imagined superior would be unknown.

The mastery which this doctrine, whether right or wrong, has
acquired over the public mind, has produced as its natural fruit,
the extension of the right of suffrage to all the adult male
population in nearly all the States of the Union; a result which
was well epitomized by President Lincoln, in the expression,
"government by the people for the people." This extension of the
suffrage is regarded by many as a source of danger to the
stability of free government. I believe it furnishes the greatest
security for free government, as it deprives the mass of the
people of all motive for revolution; and that government so based
is most safe, not because the whole people are less liable to
make mistakes in government than a select few, but because they
have no interest which can lead them to such mistakes, or to
prevent their correction when made. On the contrary, the world
has never seen an aristocracy, whether composed of few or many,
powerful enough to control a government, who did not honestly
believe that their interest was identical with the public
interest, and who did not act persistently in accordance with
such belief; and, unfortunately, an aristocracy of sex has not
proved an exception to the rule. The only method yet discovered
of overcoming this tendency to the selfish use of power, whether
consciously or unconsciously, by those possessing it, is the
distribution of the power among all who are its subjects. Short
of this the name free government is a misnomer.

This principle, after long strife, not yet entirely ended has
been, practically at least, very generally recognized on this
side of the Atlantic, as far as relates to men; but when the
attempt is made to extend it to women, political philosophers and
practical politicians, those "inside of politics," two classes
not often found acting in concert, join in denouncing it. It
remains to be determined whether the reasons which have produced
the extension of the franchise to all adult men, do not equally
demand its extension to all adult women. If it be necessary for
men that each should have a share in the administration of
government for his security, and to exclude partiality, as
alleged by Godwin, it would seem to be equally, if not more,
necessary for women, on account of their inferior physical power;
and if, as is persistently alleged by those who sneer at their
claims, they are also inferior in mental power, that fact only
gives additional weight to the argument in their behalf, as one
of the primary objects of government, as acknowledged on all
hands, is the protection of the weak against the power of the
strong.

I can discover no ground consistent with the principle on which
the franchise has been given to all men, upon which it can be
denied to women. The principal argument against such extension,
so far as argument upon that side of the question has fallen
under my observation, is based upon the position that women are
represented in the government by men, and that their rights and
interests are better protected through that indirect
representation than they would be by giving them a direct voice
in the government. The teachings of history in regard to the
condition of women under the care of these self-constituted
protectors, to which I can only briefly allude, show the value of
this argument as applied to past ages; and in demonstration of
its value as applied to more recent times, even at the risk of
being tedious, I will give some examples from my own professional
experience. I do this because nothing adds more to the efficacy
of truth than the translation of the abstract into the concrete.
Withholding names, I will state the facts with fullness and
accuracy.

An educated and refined woman, who had been many years
before deserted by her drunken husband, was living in a
small village of Western New York, securing, by great
economy and intense labor in fine needlework, the means of
living, and of supporting her two daughters at an academy,
the object of her life being to give them such an education
as would enable them to become teachers, and thus secure to
them some degree of independence when she could no longer
provide for them. The daughters were good scholars and
favorites in the school, so long as the mother was able to
maintain them there. A young man, the nephew and clerk of a
wealthy but miserly merchant, became acquainted with the
daughters, and was specially attentive to the older one. The
uncle disapproved of the conduct of his nephew, and failing
to control it by honorable means, resorted to the
circulation of the vilest slanders against mother and
daughters. He was a man of wealth and influence. They were
almost unknown. The mother had but recently come to the
village, her object having been to secure to her daughters
the educational advantages which the academy afforded.
Poverty, as well as perhaps an excusable if not laudable
pride, compelled her to live in obscurity, and consequently
the assault upon their characters fell upon her and her
daughters with crushing force. Her employment mainly ceased,
her daughters were of necessity withdrawn from school, and
all were deprived of the means, from their own exertions, of
sustaining life. Had they been in fact the harlots which the
miserly scoundrel represented them to be, they would not
have been so utterly powerless to resist his assault. The
mother in her despair naturally sought legal redress. But
how was it to be obtained? By the law the wife's rights were
merged in those of the husband. She had in law no individual
existence, and consequently no action could be brought by
her to redress the grievous wrong; indeed, _according to the
law she had suffered no wrong_, but the husband had suffered
all, and was entitled to all the redress. Where he was the
lady did not know; she had not heard from him for many
years. Her counsel, however, ventured to bring an action in
her behalf, joining the husband's name with hers, as the law
required. When the cause came to trial the defendant made no
attempt to sustain the charges which he had made, well
knowing that they were as groundless as they were cruel; but
he introduced and proved a release of the cause of action,
signed by the husband, reciting a consideration of fifty
dollars paid to him. The defendant's counsel had some
difficulty in proving the execution of the release, and was
compelled to introduce as a witness the constable who had
been employed to find the vagabond husband and obtain his
signature. His testimony disclosed the facts that he found
the husband in the forest in one of our north-eastern
counties, engaged in making shingles (presumably stealing
timber from the public lands and converting it into the
means of indulging his habits of drunkenness), and only five
dollars of the fifty mentioned in the release had in fact
been paid. The Court held, was compelled to hold, that the
party injured _in view of the law_, had received full
compensation for the wrong--and the mother and daughters
with no means of redress were left to starve. This was the
act of the _representative_ of the wife and daughters to
whom we are referred, as a better protector of their rights
than they themselves could be. It may properly be added,
that if the action had proceeded to judgment without
interference from the husband, and such amount of damages
had been recovered as a jury might have thought it proper to
award, the money would have belonged to the husband, and the
wife could not lawfully have touched a cent of it. Her
attorney might, and doubtless would have paid it to her, but
he could only have done so at the peril of being compelled
to pay it again to the drunken husband if he had demanded
it.

In another case, two ladies, mother and daughter, some time
prior to 1860 came from an eastern county of New York to
Rochester, where a habeas corpus was obtained for a child of
the daughter less than two years of age. It appeared on the
return of the writ, that the mother of the child had been
previously abandoned by her husband, who had gone to a
Western State to reside, and his wife had returned with the
child to her mother's house, and had resided there after her
desertion. The husband had recently returned from the West,
had succeeded in getting the child into his custody, and was
stopping overnight with it in Rochester on the way to his
Western home. No misconduct on the part of the wife was
pretended, and none on the part of the husband, excepting
that he had gone to the West, leaving his wife and child
behind, no cause appearing, and had returned, and somewhat
clandestinely obtained possession of the child. The Judge,
following Blackstone's views of husbands' rights, remanded
the infant to the custody of the father. He thought the law
required it, and perhaps it did; but if mothers had had a
voice, either in making or administering the law, I think
the result would have been different. The distress of the
mother on being thus separated from her child can be better
imagined than described. The separation proved a final one,
as in less than a year neither father nor mother had any
child on earth to love or care for. Whether the loss to the
little one of a mother's love and watchfulness had any
effect upon the result, can not, of course, be known.

The state of the law a short time since, in other respects, in
regard to the rights of married women, shows what kind of
security had been provided for them by their assumed
representatives. Prior to 1848, all the personal property of
every woman on marriage became the absolute property of the
husband--the use of all her real estate became his during
coverture, and on the birth of a living child, it became his
during his life. He could squander it in dissipation or bestow it
upon harlots, and the wife could not touch or interfere with it.
Prior to 1860, the husband could by will take the custody of his
infant children away from the surviving mother, and give it to
whom he pleased--and he could in like manner dispose of the
control of the children's property, after his death, during their
minority, without the mother's consent. In most of these respects
the state of the law has undergone great changes within the last
twenty-five years. The property, real and personal, which a woman
possesses before marriage, and such as may be given to her during
coverture, remains her own, and is free from the control of her
husband. If a married woman is slandered she can prosecute the
slanderer in her own name, and recover to her own use damages for
the injury. The mother now has an equal claim with the father to
the custody of their minor children, and in case of controversy
on the subject, courts may award the custody to either in their
discretion. The husband can not now by will effectually appoint a
guardian for his infant children without the consent of the
mother, if living. These are certainly great ameliorations of the
law; but how have they been produced? Mainly as the result of the
exertions of a few heroic women, one of the foremost of whom is
she who stands arraigned as a criminal before this Court to-day.
For a thousand years the absurdities and cruelties to which I
have alluded have been imbedded in the common law, and in the
statute books, and men have not touched them, and would not until
the end of time, had they not been goaded to it by the persistent
efforts of the noble women to whom I have alluded.

Much has been done, but much more remains to be done by women. If
they had possessed the elective franchise, the reforms which have
cost them a quarter of a century of labor would have been
accomplished in a year. They are still subject to taxation upon
their property, without any voice as to the levying or
destination of the tax; and are still subject to laws made by
men, which subject them to fine and imprisonment for the same
acts which men do with honor and reward--and when brought to
trial no woman is allowed a place on the bench or in the jury
box, or a voice in her behalf at the bar. They are bound to
suffer the penalty of such laws, made and administered solely by
men, and to be silent under the infliction. Give them the ballot,
and, although I do not suppose that any great revolution will be
produced, or that all political evils will be removed (I am not a
believer in political panaceas), but if I mistake not, valuable
reforms will be introduced which are not now thought of. Schools,
alms-houses, hospitals, drinking saloons, and those worse dens
which are destroying the morals and the constitutions of so many
of the young of both sexes, will feel their influence to an
extent now little dreamed of. At all events women will not be
taxed without an opportunity to be heard, and will not be subject
to fine and imprisonment by laws made exclusively by men for
doing what it is lawful and honorable for men to do.

It may be said in answer to the argument in favor of female
suffrage derived from the cases to which I have referred, that
men, not individually, but collectively, are the natural and
appropriate representatives of women, and that, notwithstanding
cases of individual wrong, the rights of women are, on the whole,
best protected by being left to their care. It must be observed,
however, that the cases which I have stated, and which are only
types of thousands like them, in their cruelty and injustice, are
the result of ages of legislation by these assumed protectors of
women. The wrongs were less in the men than in the laws which
sustained them, and which contained nothing for the protection of
the women. But passing this view, let us look at the matter
historically and on a broader field.

If Chinese women were allowed an equal share with men in shaping
the laws of that great empire, would they subject their female
children to torture with bandaged feet, through the whole period
of childhood and growth, in order that they might be cripples for
the residue of their lives? If Hindoo women could have shaped the
laws of India, would widows for ages have been burned on the
funeral pyres of their deceased husbands? If Jewish women had had
a voice in framing Jewish laws, would the husband, at his own
pleasure, have been allowed to "write his wife a bill of
divorcement and give it in her hand, and send her out of his
house"? Would women in Turkey or Persia have made it a heinous,
if not capital, offense for a wife to be seen abroad with her
face not covered by an impenetrable veil? Would women in England,
however learned, have been for ages subjected to execution for
offenses for which men, who could read, were only subjected to
burning in the hand and a few months imprisonment?

The principle which governs in these cases, or which has done so
hitherto, has been at all times and everywhere the same. Those
who succeed in obtaining power, no matter by what means, will,
with rare exceptions, use it for their exclusive benefit. Often,
perhaps generally, this is done in the honest belief that such
use is for the best good of all who are affected by it. A wrong,
however, to those upon whom it is inflicted, is none the less a
wrong by reason of the good motives of the party by whom it is
inflicted.

The condition of subjection in which women have been held is the
result of this principle; the result of superior strength, not of
superior rights, on the part of men. Superior strength, combined
with ignorance and selfishness, but not with malice. It is a
relic of the barbarism in the shadow of which nations have grown
up. Precisely as nations have receded from barbarism the severity
of that subjection has been relaxed. So long as merely physical
power governed in the affairs of the world, the wrongs done to
women were without the possibility of redress or relief; but
since nations have come to be governed by laws, there is room to
hope, though the process may still be a slow one, that injustice
in all its forms, or at least political injustice, may be
extinguished. No injustice can be greater than to deny to any
class of citizens not guilty of crime, all share in the political
power of a State, that is, all share in the choice of rulers, and
in the making and administration of the laws. Persons to which
such share is denied, are essentially slaves, because they hold
their rights, if they can be said to have any, subject to the
will of those who hold the political power. For this reason it
has been found necessary to give the ballot to the emancipated
slaves. Until this was done their emancipation was far from
complete. Without a share in the political powers of the State,
no class of citizens has any security for its rights, and the
history of nations to which I briefly alluded, shows that women
constitute no exception to the universality of this rule.

Great errors, I think, exist in the minds of both the advocates
and the opponents of this measure in their anticipation of the
immediate effects to be produced by its adoption. On the one hand
it is supposed by some that the character of women would be
radically changed--that they would be unsexed, as it were, by
clothing them with political rights, and that instead of modest,
amiable, and graceful beings, we should have bold, noisy, and
disgusting political demagogues, or something worse, if anything
worse can be imagined. I think those who entertain such opinions
are in error. The innate character of women is the result of
God's laws, not of man's, nor can the laws of man affect that
character beyond a very slight degree. Whatever rights may be
given to them, and whatever duties may be charged upon them by
human laws, their general character will remain unchanged. Their
modesty, their delicacy, and intuitive sense of propriety, will
never desert them, into whatever new positions their added rights
or duties may carry them.

So far as women, without change of character as women, are
qualified to discharge the duties of citizenship, they will
discharge them if called upon to do so, and beyond that they will
not go. Nature has put barriers in the way of any excessive
devotion of women to public affairs, and it is not necessary that
nature's work in that respect should be supplemented by
additional barriers invented by men. Such offices as women are
qualified to fill will be sought by those who do not find other
employment, and others they will not seek, or if they do, will
seek in vain. To aid in removing as far as possible the
disheartening difficulties which women dependent upon their own
exertions encounter, it is, I think, desirable that such official
positions as they can fill should be thrown open to them, and
that they should be given the same power that men have to aid
each other by their votes. I would say, remove all legal barriers
that stand in the way of their finding employment, official or
unofficial, and leave them, as men are left, to depend for
success upon their character and their abilities. As long as men
are allowed to act as milliners, with what propriety can they
exclude women from the post of school commissioners when chosen
to such positions by their neighbors?

To deny them such rights, is to leave them in a condition of
political servitude as absolute as that of the African slaves
before their emancipation. This conclusion is readily to be
deduced from the opinion of Chief-Justice Jay in the case of
Chisholm's Ex'rs _vs._ The State of Georgia (2 Dallas, 419-471),
although the learned Chief-Justice had of course no idea of any
such application as I make of his opinion. The action was
assumpsit by a citizen of the State of South Carolina, and the
question was, whether the United States Court had jurisdiction,
the State of Georgia declining to appear. The Chief-Justice, in
the course of his opinion, after alluding to the feudal idea of
the character of the sovereign in England, and giving some of the
reasons why he was not subject to suit before the courts of the
kingdom, says:

The same feudal ideas run through all their jurisprudence,
and constantly remind us of the distinction between the
prince and the subject. No such ideas obtain here. At the
Revolution the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they
are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are
sovereigns without subjects (unless the African slaves among
us may be so called), and have none to govern but
themselves; the citizens of America are equal as
fellow-citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty.

Now I beg leave to ask, in case this charge against Miss Anthony
can be sustained, what equality and what sovereignty is enjoyed
by the half of the citizens of these United States to which she
belongs? Do they not, in that event, occupy politically exactly
the position which the learned Chief-Justice assigns to the
African slaves? Are they not shown to be subjects of the other
half, who are the sovereigns? And is not their political
subjection as absolute as was that of the African slaves? If that
charge has any basis to rest upon, the learned Chief-Justice was
wrong. The sovereigns of this country, according to the theory of
this prosecution, are not sovereigns without subjects. Though two
or three millions of their subjects have lately ceased to be
such, and have become freemen, they still hold twenty millions of
subjects in absolute political bondage. If it be said that my
language is stronger than the facts warrant, I appeal to the
record in this case for its justification.

As deductions from what has been said, I respectfully insist,
1st, That upon the principles upon which our government is based,
the privileges of the elective franchise can not justly be denied
to women. 2d. That women need it for their protection. 3d. That
the welfare of both sexes will be promoted by granting it to
them.

It would not become me, however clear my own convictions may be
on the subject, to assert the right of women, under our
Constitution and laws as they now are, to vote at Presidential
and Congressional elections, is free from doubt, because very
able men have expressed contrary opinions on that question, and,
so far as I am informed, there has been no authoritative
adjudication upon it; or, at all events, none upon which the
public mind has been content to rest as conclusive. I proceed,
therefore, to offer such suggestions as occur to me, and to refer
to such authorities bearing upon the question, as have fallen
under my observation, hoping to satisfy your honor, not only that
my client has committed no criminal offense, but that she has
done nothing which she had not a legal and Constitutional right
to do. It is not claimed that, under our State Constitution and
the laws made in pursuance of it, women are authorized to vote at
elections, other than those of private corporations, and
consequently the right of Miss Anthony to vote at the election in
question, can only be established by reference to an authority
superior to and sufficient to overcome the provisions of our
State Constitution. Such authority can only be found, and I claim
that it is found in the Constitution of the United States. For
convenience I beg leave to bring together the various provisions
of that Constitution which bear more or less directly upon the
question:

ARTICLE I, Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be
composed of members chosen every second year, by the people
of the several States; and the electors in each State shall
have the qualifications for electors of the most numerous
branch of the State Legislature.

ARTICLE I, Section 3. The Senate of the United States shall
be composed of two senators from each State, chosen by the
Legislature thereof for six years; and each senator shall
have one vote.

ARTICLE II, Section 1. Each State shall appoint in such
manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of
electors equal to the whole number of senators and
representatives to which the State may be entitled in the
Congress.

ARTICLE IV, Section 2. The citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in
the several States.

ARTICLE IV, Section 4. The United States shall guarantee to
every State in the Union a republican form of government.

THIRTEENTH AMENDMENT. (DECEMBER 18, 1865.)

1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a
punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly
convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any
place subject to their jurisdiction.

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

FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. (JULY 28, 1868.)

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United
States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they
reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of
life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the
several States according to their respective numbers,
counting the whole number of persons in each State,
excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at
any election for the choice of electors for President and
Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in
Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or
the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of
the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years
of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way
abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other
crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced
in the proportion which the number of such male citizens
shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one
years of age in such State.

* * * * *

Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by
appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT. (MARCH 30, 1870.)

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 race, color or previous
condition of servitude.

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

By reference to the provisions of the original Constitution, here
recited, it appears that prior to the XIII., if not until the
XIV. Amendment, the whole power over the elective franchise, even
in the choice of Federal officers, rested with the States. The
Constitution contains no definition of the term "citizen," either
of the United States, or of the several States, but contents
itself with the provision that "the citizens of each State shall
be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of
the several States." The States were thus left free to place such
restrictions and limitations upon the "privileges and immunities"
of citizens as they saw fit, so far as is consistent with a
republican form of government, subject only to the condition that
no State could place restrictions upon the "privileges or
immunities" of the citizens of any other State, which would not
be applicable to its own citizens under like circumstances. It
will be seen, therefore, that the whole subject, as to what
should constitute the "privileges and immunities" of the citizen
being left to the States, no question, such as we now present,
could have arisen under the original Constitution of the United
States.

But now, by the XIV. Amendment, the United States have not only
declared what constitutes citizenship, both in the United States
and in the several States, securing the rights of citizens to
"all persons born or naturalized in the United States"; but have
absolutely prohibited the States from making or enforcing "any
law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens
of the United States." By virtue of this provision, I insist that
the act of Miss Anthony in voting was lawful. It has never, since
the adoption of the XIV. Amendment, been questioned, and can not
be questioned, that women as well as men are included in the
terms of its first section, nor that the same "privileges and
immunities of citizens" are equally secured to both.

What, then, are the "privileges and immunities of citizens of the
United States" which are secured against such abridgment, by this
section? I claim that these terms not only include the right of
voting for public officers, but that they include that right as
pre-eminently the most important of all the privileges and
immunities to which the section refers. Among these privileges
and immunities may doubtless be classed the right to life and
liberty, to the acquisition and enjoyment of property, and to the
free pursuit of one's own welfare, so far as such pursuit does
not interfere with the rights and welfare of others; but what
security has any one for the enjoyment of these rights when
denied any voice in the making of the laws, or in the choice of
those who make, and those who administer them? The possession of
this voice, in the making and administration of the laws--this
political right--is what gives security and value to the other
rights, which are merely personal, not political. A person
deprived of political rights is essentially a slave, because he
holds his personal rights subject to the will of those who
possess the political power. This principle constitutes the very
corner-stone of our Government--indeed, of all republican
government. Upon that basis our separation from Great Britain was
justified. "Taxation without representation is tyranny." This
famous aphorism of James Otis, although sufficient for the
occasion when it was put forth, expresses but a fragment of the
principle, because government can be oppressive through means of
many appliances besides that of taxation. The true principle is,
that all government over persons deprived of any voice in such
government, is tyranny. That is the principle of the Declaration
of Independence. We were slow in allowing its application to the
African race, and have been still slower in allowing its
application to women; but it has been done by the XIV. Amendment,
rightly construed, by a definition of "citizenship," which
includes women as well as men, and in the declaration that "the
privileges and immunities of citizens shall not be abridged."

If there is any privilege of the citizen which is paramount to
all others, it is the right of suffrage; and in a constitutional
provision, designed to secure the most valuable rights of the
citizen, the declaration that the privileges and immunities of
the citizen shall not be abridged must, as I conceive, be held to
secure that right before all others. It is obvious, when the
entire language of the section is examined, not only that this
declaration was designed to secure to the citizen this political
right, but that such was its principal, if not its sole object,
those provisions of the section which follow it being devoted to
securing the personal rights of "life, liberty, property, and the
equal protection of the laws." The clause on which we rely, to
wit: "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,"
might be stricken out of the section, and the residue would
secure to the citizen every right which is now secured, excepting
the political rights of voting and holding office. If the clause
in question does not secure those political rights, it is
entirely nugatory, and might as well have been omitted.

If we go to the lexicographers and to the writers upon law, to
learn what are the privileges and immunities of the "citizen" in
a republican government, we shall find that the leading feature
of citizenship is the enjoyment of the right of suffrage. The
definition of the term "citizen" by Bouvier is:

One who under the Constitution and laws of the United
States, has a right to vote for Representatives in Congress,
and other public officers, and who is qualified to fill
offices in the gift of the people.

By Worcester:

An inhabitant of a republic who enjoys the rights of a
freeman, and has a right to vote for public officers.

By Webster:

In the United States, a person, native or naturalized, who
has the privilege of exercising the elective franchise, or
the qualifications which enable him to vote for rulers, and
to purchase and hold real estate.

The meaning of the word "citizen" is directly and plainly
recognized by the latest Amendment of the Constitution, the XV.:

The right of the citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any
State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.

This clause assumes that the right of citizens, as such, to vote,
is an existing right. Mr. Richard Grant White, in his late work
on "Words and their Uses," says of the word citizen:

A citizen is a person who has certain political rights, and
the word is properly used to imply or suggest the possession
of these rights.

Mr. Justice Washington, in the case of Corfield _vs._ Coryell (4
Wash. C. C. Rep. 380), speaking of the "privileges and
immunities" of the citizen, as mentioned in Sec. 2, Art. 4, of
the Constitution, after enumerating the personal rights mentioned
above, and some others, as embraced by those terms, says,

To which may be added the elective franchise, as regulated
and established by the laws or constitution of the State in
which it is to be exercised.

At that time the States had entire control of the subject, and
could abridge this privilege of the citizen at its pleasure; but
the judge recognizes the "elective franchise" as among the
"privileges and immunities" secured, to a qualified extent, to
the citizens of every State by the provisions of the Constitution
last referred to. When, therefore, the States were, by the XIV.
Amendment, absolutely prohibited from abridging the privileges of
the citizen, either by enforcing existing laws, or by the making
of new laws, the right of every "citizen" to the full exercise of
this privilege, as against State action, was absolutely secured.

Chancellor Kent and Judge Story both refer to the opinion of Mr.
Justice Washington, above quoted, with approbation. The Supreme
Court of Kentucky, in the case of Amy, a woman of color, _vs._
Smith (1 Littell's Rep. 326), discussed with great ability the
questions as to what constituted citizenship, and what were the
"privileges and immunities of citizens" which were secured by
Sec. 2, Art. 4, of the Constitution, and they showed, by an
unanswerable argument, that the term "citizens," as there used,
was confined to those who were entitled to the enjoyment of the
elective franchise, and that that was among the highest of the
"privileges and immunities" secured to the citizen by that
section. The court say that,

To be a citizen it is necessary that he should be entitled
to the enjoyment of these privileges and immunities, upon
the same terms upon which they are conferred upon other
citizens; and unless he is so entitled he can not, in the
proper sense of the term, be a citizen.

In the case of Scott _vs._ Sanford (19 How. 404), Chief-Justice
Taney says:

The words "people of the United States," and "citizens," are
synonymous terms, and mean the same thing; they describe the
political body, who according to our republican
institutions, form the sovereignty and hold the power, and
conduct the government through their representatives. They
are what we familiarly call the sovereign people, and every
citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of
this sovereignty.

Mr. Justice Daniel, in the same case (p. 476), says:

Upon the principles of etymology alone, the term citizen, as
derived from _civitas_, conveys the idea of connection or
identification with the State or Government, and a
participation in its functions. But beyond this, there is
not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of writers
on government, or in any actual experiment heretofore tried,
an exposition of the term citizen, which has not been
understood as conferring the actual possession and
enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment
of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political.

Similar references might be made to an indefinite extent, but
enough has been said to show that the term citizen, in the
language of Justice Daniel, conveys the idea "of identification
with the State or Government, and a participation in its
functions." Beyond question, therefore, the first section of the
XIV. Amendment, by placing the citizenship of women upon a par
with that of men, and declaring that the "privileges and
immunities" of the citizen shall not be abridged, has secured to
women, equally with men, the right of suffrage, unless that
conclusion is overthrown by some other provision of the
Constitution.

It is not necessary for the purposes of this argument to claim
that this Amendment prohibits a State from making or enforcing
any law whatever, regulating the elective franchise, or
prescribing the conditions upon which it may be exercised. But we
do claim that in every republic the right of suffrage, in some
form and to some extent, is not only one of the privileges of its
citizens, but is the first, most obvious and most important of
all the privileges they enjoy; that in this respect all citizens
are equal, and that the effect of this Amendment is, to prohibit
the States from enforcing any law which denies this right to any
of its citizens, or which imposes any restrictions upon it, which
are inconsistent with a republican form of government. Within
this limit, it is unnecessary for us to deny that the States may
still regulate and control the exercise of the right.

The only provisions of the Constitution which it can be contended
conflict with the construction which has here been put upon the
first section of the XIV. Amendment, are the XV. Amendment, and
the second section of the XIV. In regard to the XV. Amendment, I
shall only say, that if my interpretation of the XIV. is correct,
there was still an object to be accomplished and which was
accomplished by the XV. The prohibition of any action abridging
the privileges and immunities of citizens, contained in the XIV.
Amendment, applies only to the States, and leaves the United
States Government free to abridge the political privileges and
immunities of citizens of the United States, as such, at its
pleasure. By the XV. Amendment both the United States and the
State governments are prohibited from exercising this power, "on
account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude" of
the citizen.

The first remark to be made upon the second section of the XIV.
Amendment is, that it does not give, and was not designed to give
to the States any power to deny or abridge the right of any
citizen to exercise the elective franchise. So far as it touches
that subject, it was designed to be restrictive upon the States.
It gives to them no power whatever. It takes away no power, and
it gives none; but if the States possess the power to deny or
abridge the right of citizens to vote, it must be derived from
some other provision of the Constitution. I believe none such can
be found, which was not necessarily abrogated by the first
section of this Amendment. It may be conceded that the persons
who prepared this section supposed that, by other parts of the
Constitution, or in some other way, the States would still be
authorized, notwithstanding the provisions of the first section,
to deny to the citizens the privilege of voting, as mentioned in
the second section; but their mistake can not be held to add to,
or to take from the other provisions of the Constitution. It is
very clear that they did not intend, by this section, to give to
the States any such power, but, believing that the States
possessed it, they designed to hold the prospect of a reduction
of their representation in Congress _in terrorem_ over them to
prevent them from exercising it. They seem not to have been able
to emancipate themselves from the influence of the original
Constitution which conceded this power to the States, or to have
realized the fact that the first section of the Amendment, when
adopted, would wholly deprive the States of that power.

But those who prepare constitutions are never those who adopt
them, and consequently the views of those who frame them have
little or no bearing upon their interpretation. The question for
consideration here is, what the people, who, through their
representatives in the legislatures, adopted the Amendments,
understood, or must be presumed to have understood, from their
language. They must be presumed to have known that the
"privileges and immunities" of citizens which were secured to
them by the first section beyond the power of abridgment by the
States, gave them the right to exercise the elective franchise,
and they certainly can not be presumed to have understood that
the second section, which was also designed to be restrictive
upon the States, would be held to confer by implication a power
upon them, which the first section in the most express terms
prohibited.

It has been, and may be again asserted, that the position which I
have taken in regard to the second section is inadmissible,
because it renders the section nugatory. That is, as I hold, an
entire mistake. The leading object of the second section was the
readjustment of the representation of the States in Congress,
rendered necessary by the abolition of chattel slavery [not of
political slavery], effected by the XIII. Amendment. This object
the section accomplishes, and in this respect it remains wholly
untouched, by my construction of it. Neither do I think the
position tenable which has been taken by one tribunal, to which
the consideration of this subject was presented, that the
constitutional provision does not execute itself. The provisions
on which we rely were negative merely, and were designed to
nullify existing as well as any future State legislation
interfering with our rights. This result was accomplished by the
constitution itself. Undoubtedly before we could exercise our
right, it was necessary that there should be a time and place
appointed for holding the election and proper officers to hold
it, with suitable arrangements for receiving and counting the
votes. All this was properly done by existing laws, and our right
being made complete by the Constitution, no further legislation
was required in our behalf. When the State officers attempted to
interpose between us and the ballot-box the State Constitution or
State law, whether ancient or recent, abridging or denying our
equal right to vote with other citizens, we had but to refer to
the United States Constitution, prohibiting the States from
enforcing any such constitutional provision or law, and our
rights were complete; we needed neither Congressional nor State
legislation in aid of them. The opinion of Mr. Justice Bradley,
in a case in the United States Circuit Court in New Orleans (1
Abb. U. S. Rep., 402) would seem to be decisive of this question,
although the right involved in that case was not that of the
elective franchise. The learned Justice says:

It was very ably contended on the part of the defendants
that the XIV. Amendment was intended only to secure to all
citizens equal capacities before the law. That was at first
our view of it. But it does not so read. The language is:
"No State shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States." What are the privileges and
immunities of citizens? Are they capacities merely? Are they
not also rights?

Senator Carpenter, who took part in the discussion of the XIV.
Amendment in the Senate, and aided in its passage, says:

The XIV. Amendment executes itself in every State of the
Union.... It is thus the will of the United States in every
State, and silences every State Constitution, usage, or law
which conflicts with it.... And if this provision does
protect the colored citizen, then it protects every citizen,
black or white, male or female.... And all the privileges
and immunities which I vindicate to a colored citizen, I
vindicate to our mothers, our sisters, and our
daughters.--_Chicago Legal News_, vol. IV., No. 15.

It has been said, with how much or how little truth I do not
know, that the subject of securing to women the elective
franchise was not considered in the preparation or in the
adoption of these Amendments. It is wholly immaterial whether
that was so or not. It is never possible to arrive at the
intention of the people in adopting constitutions, except by
referring to the language used. As is said by Mr. Cooley, "the
intent is to be found in the instrument itself" (p. 55), and to
that I have confined my remarks. It is not a new thing for
constitutional and legislative acts to have an effect beyond the
anticipation of those who framed them. It is undoubtedly true,
that in exacting _Magna Charta_ from King John, the Barons of
England provided better securities for the rights of the common
people than they were aware of at the time, although the rights
of the common people were neither forgotten nor neglected by
them. It has also been said, perhaps with some truth, that the
framers of the original Constitution of the United States
"builded better than they knew;" and it is quite possible that in
framing the Amendments under consideration, those engaged in
doing it have accomplished a much greater work than they were at
the time, aware of. I am quite sure that it will be fortunate for
the country, if this great question of female suffrage, than
which few greater were ever presented for the consideration of
any people, shall be found, almost unexpectedly, to have been put
at rest. The opinion of Mr. Justice Bradley, in regard to this
Amendment, in the case above referred to, if I understand it,
corresponds very nearly with what I have here said. The learned
Judge, in one part of his opinion, says:

It is possible that those who framed the article were not
themselves aware of the far-reaching character of its terms.
They may have had in mind but one particular phase of social
and political wrong, which they desired to redress--yet, if
the Amendment, as framed and expressed, does, in fact, have
a broader meaning, and does extend its protecting shield
over those who were never thought of when it was conceived
and put in form, and does reach such social evils which were
never before prohibited by constitutional amendment, it is
to be presumed that the American people, in giving it their
imprimatur, understood what they were doing, and meant to
decree what has, in fact, been done.... It embraces much
more. The "privileges and immunities" secured by the
original Constitution were only such as each State gave its
own citizens. Each was prohibited from discriminating in
favor of its own citizens, and against the citizens of other
States. But the XIV. Amendment prohibits any State from
abridging the privileges or immunities of the citizens of
the United States, whether its own citizens or any others.
It not merely requires equality of privileges, but it
demands that the privileges and immunities of all citizens
shall be absolutely unabridged, unimpaired. (1 Abbott's U.
S. Rep., 397).

It will doubtless be urged as an objection to my position (that
citizenship carries with it the right to vote) that it would, in
that case, follow that infants and lunatics, who, as well as
adults and persons of sound mind, are citizens, would also have
that right. This objection, which appears to have great weight
with certain classes of persons, is entirely without force. It
takes no note of the familiar fact, that every legislative
provision, whether constitutional or statutory, which confers any
discretionary power, is always confined in its operation to
persons who are _compos mentis_. It is wholly unnecessary to
except idiots and lunatics out of any such statute. They are
excluded from the very nature of the case. The contrary
supposition would be simply absurd. And, in respect to every such
law, infants, during their minority, are in the same class. But
are women, who are not infants, ever included in this category?
Does any such principle of exclusion apply to them? Not at all.
On the contrary, they stand, in this respect, upon the same
footing as men, with the sole exception of the right to vote and
the right to hold office. In every other respect, whatever rights
and powers are conferred upon persons by law may be exercised by
women as well as by men. They may transact any kind of business
for themselves, or as agents or trustees for others; may be
executors and administrators, with the same powers and
responsibilities as men; and it ought not to be a matter of
surprise or regret that they are now placed, by the XIV.
Amendment, in other respects upon a footing of perfect equality.

Although not directly connected with the argument as to the right
secured to women by the Constitution, I deem it not improper to
allude briefly to some of the popular objections against the
propriety of allowing females the privilege of voting. I do this
because I know from past experience that these popular
objections, having no logical bearing upon the subject, are yet,
practically, among the most potent arguments against the
interpretation of the XIV. Amendment, which I consider the only
one that its language fairly admits of.

It is said that women do not desire to vote. Certainly many women
do not but that furnishes no reason for denying the right to
those who do desire to vote. Many men decline to vote. Is that a
reason for denying the right to those who would vote? I believe,
however, that the public mind is greatly in error in regard to
the proportion of female citizens who would vote if their right
to do so were recognized. In England there has been to some
extent a test of that question, with the following result, as
given in the newspapers, the correctness of which, in this
respect, I think there is no reason to doubt:

Woman suffrage is, to a certain extent, established in
England, with the result as detailed in the London
_Examiner_, that in 66 municipal elections, out of every
1,000 women who enjoy equal rights with men on the register,
516 went to the poll, which is but 48 less than the
proportionate number of men. And out of 27,949 women
registered, where a contest occurred, 14,416 voted. Of men
there were 166,781 on the register, and 90,080 at the poll.
The _Examiner_ thereupon draws this conclusion: "Making
allowance for the reluctance of old spinsters to change
their habits, and the more frequent illness of the sex, it
is manifest that women, if they had opportunity, would
exercise the franchise as freely as men. There is an end,
therefore, of the argument that women would not vote if they
had the power."

Our law books furnish, perhaps, more satisfactory evidence of the
earnestness with which women in England are claiming the right to
vote, under the reform act of 1867, aided by Lord Brougham's act
of 1850. The case of Chorlton, appellant, _vs._ Lings,
respondent, came before the Court of Common Pleas in England in
1869. It was an appeal from the decision of the revising
barrister, for the borough of Manchester, to the effect "that
Mary Abbott, being a woman, was not entitled to be placed on the
register." Her right was perfect in all respects excepting that
of sex. The court, after a very full and able discussion of the
subject, sustained the decision of the revising barrister,
denying to women the right to be placed on the register, and
consequently denying their right to vote. The decision rested
upon the peculiar phraseology of several Acts of Parliament, and
the point decided has no applicability here. My object in
referring to the case has been to call attention to the fact
stated by the reporter, that appeals of 5,436 other women were
consolidated and decided with this. No better evidence could be
furnished of the extent and earnestness of the claim of women in
England to exercise the elective franchise.--Law Rep. Com. Pleas,
4-374. I infer, without being able to say how the fact is, that
the votes given by women, as mentioned in the newspapers, were
given at municipal elections merely, and that the cases decided
by the Court of Common Pleas relate to elections for members of
Parliament.

Another objection is, that the right to hold office must attend
the right to vote, and that women are not qualified to discharge
the duties of responsible offices. I beg leave to answer this
objection by asking one or more questions. How many of the male
bipeds who do our voting are qualified to hold high offices? How
many of the large class to whom the right of voting is supposed
to have been secured by the XV. Amendment, are qualified to hold
office? Whenever the qualifications of persons to discharge the
duties of responsible offices is made the test of their right to
vote, and we are to have a competitive examination on that
subject, open to all claimants, my client will be content to
enter the lists, and take her chances among the candidates for
such honors.

But the practice of the world, and our own practice, give the lie
to this objection. Compare the administration of female
sovereigns of great kingdoms, from Semiramis to Victoria, with
the average administration of male sovereigns, and which will
suffer by the comparison? How often have mothers governed large
kingdoms, as regents, during the minority of their sons, and
governed them well? Such offices as the "sovereigns" who rule
them in this country have allowed women to hold (they having no
voice on the subject), they have discharged the duties of with
ever-increasing satisfaction to the public; and Congress has
lately passed an act, making the official bonds of married women
valid, so that they could be appointed to the office of
postmaster.

The case of Olive _vs._ Ingraham (7 Modern Rep. 263) was an
action brought to try the title to an office. On the death of the
sexton of the parish of St. Butolph, the place was to be filled
by election, the voters being the housekeepers who "paid Scot and
lot" in the parish. The widow of the deceased sexton (Sarah Bly)
entered the lists against Olive, the plaintiff in the suit, and
received 169 indisputable votes, and 40 votes given by women who
were "housekeepers, and paid to church and poor." The plaintiff
had 174 indisputable votes, and 22 votes given by such women as
voted for Mrs. Bly. Mrs. Bly was declared elected. The action was
brought to test two questions: 1. Whether women were legal
voters; and 2. Whether a woman was capable of holding the office.
The case was four times argued in the King's Bench, and all the
Judges delivered opinions, holding that the women were competent
voters; that the widow was properly elected, and could hold the
office. In the course of the discussion it was shown that women
had held many offices, those of constable, church warden,
overseer of the poor, keeper of the "gate house" (a public
prison), governess of a house of correction, keeper of castles,
sheriffs of counties, and high constable of England. If women are
legally competent to hold minor offices, I would be glad to have
the rule of law, or of propriety, shown which should exclude them
from higher offices, and which marks the line between those which
they may and those which they may not hold.

Another objection is that women can not serve as soldiers. To
this I answer that capacity for military service has never been
made a test of the right to vote. If it were, young men from
sixteen to twenty-one would be entitled to vote, and old men from
sixty and upward would not. If that were the test, some women
would present much stronger claims than many of the male sex.

Another objection is that engaging in political controversies is
not consistent with the feminine character. Upon that subject,
women themselves are the best judges, and if political duties
should be found inconsistent with female delicacy, we may rest
assured that women will either effect a change in the character
of political contests, or decline to engage in them. This subject
may be safely left to their sense of delicacy and propriety. If
any difficulty on this account should occur, it may not be
impossible to receive the votes of women at their places of
residence. This method of voting was practiced in ancient Rome
under the republic; and it will be remembered that when the votes
of the soldiers who were fighting our battles in the Southern
States were needed to sustain their friends at home, no
difficulty was found in the way of taking their votes at their
respective camps.

I humbly submit to your honor, therefore, that on the
Constitutional grounds to which I have referred, Miss Anthony
had a lawful right to vote; that her vote was properly received
and counted; that the first section of the XIV. Amendment secured
to her that right, and did not need the aid of any further
legislation. But conceding that I may be in error in supposing
that Miss Anthony had a right to vote, she has been guilty of no
crime, if she voted in good faith believing that she had such
right. This proposition appears to me so obvious, that were it
not for the severity to my client of the consequences which may
follow a conviction, I should not deem it necessary to discuss
it.

To make out the offense, it is incumbent on the prosecution to
show affirmatively, not only that the defendant knowingly voted,
but that she so voted knowing that she had no right to vote. That
is, the term "knowingly" applies, not to the fact of voting, but
to the fact of want of right. Any other interpretation of the
language would be absurd. We can not conceive of a case where a
party could vote without knowledge of the fact of voting, and to
apply the term "knowingly" to the mere act of voting, would make
nonsense of the statute. This word was inserted as defining the
essence of the offense, and it limits the criminality to cases
where the voting is not only without right, but where it is done
willfully, with a knowledge that it is without right. Short of
that there is no offense within the statute. This would be so
upon well-established principles, even if the word "knowingly"
had been omitted, but that word was inserted to prevent the
possibility of doubt on the subject, and to furnish security
against the inability of stupid or prejudiced judges or jurors,
to distinguish between willful wrong and innocent mistake. If the
statute had been merely that "if at any election for
representative in Congress any person shall vote without having a
lawful right to vote, such person shall be deemed guilty of a
crime," there could have been justly no conviction under it
without proof that the party voted knowing that he had not a
right to vote. If he voted innocently supposing he had the right
to vote, but had not, it would not be an offense within the
statute. An innocent mistake is not a crime, and no amount of
judicial decisions can make it such. Mr. Bishop says, (I Cr. Law,
§ 205),

There can be no crime unless a culpable intent accompanies
the criminal act. The same author (1 Cr. Prac. § 521),
repeated in other words, the same idea: In order to render a
party criminally responsible, a vicious will must concur
with a wrongful act.

I quote from a more distinguished author:

Felony is always accompanied with an evil intention, and
therefore shall not be imputed to a mere mistake or
misanimadversion, as where persons break open a door, in
order to execute a warrant, which will not justify such
proceeding: _Affectio enim tua nomen imponit operi tuo: item
crimen non contrahitur nisi nocendi, voluntas intercedat_,
which, as I understand, may read: For your violation puts
the name upon your act; and a crime is not committed unless
the will of the offender takes part in it. (1 Hawk. P. C.,
p. 99, Ch. 25, § 3.)

This quotation by Hawkins is, I believe, from Bracton, which
carries the principle back to a very early period in the
existence of the common law. It is a principle, however, which
underlies all law, and must have been recognized at all times,
wherever criminal law has been administered, with even the
slightest reference to the principles of common morality and
justice. I quote again on this subject from Mr. Bishop:

The doctrine of the intent as it prevails in the criminal
law, is necessarily one of the foundation principles of
public justice. There is only one criterion by which the
guilt of man is to be tested. It is whether the mind is
criminal. Criminal law relates only to crime. And neither in
philosophical speculation, nor in religious or moral
sentiment, would any people in any age allow that a man
should be deemed guilty unless his mind was so. It is,
therefore, a principle of our legal system, as probably it
is of every other, that the essence of an offense is the
wrongful intent without which it can not exist. (1 Bishop's
Crim. Law, § 287.)

Again, the same author, writing on the subject of knowledge, as
necessary to establish the intent, says:

It is absolutely necessary to constitute guilt, as in
indictments for uttering forged tokens, or other attempts to
defraud, or for receiving stolen goods, and offenses of a
similar description. (1 Crim. Prac. § 504.)

In regard to the offense of obtaining property by false
pretenses, the author says:

The indictment must allege that the defendant knew the
pretenses to be false. This is necessary upon the general
principles of the law, in order to show an offense, even
though the statute does not contain the word "knowingly." (2
Id. § 172.)

As to a presumed knowledge of the law, where the fact involves a
question of law, the same author says:

The general doctrine laid down in the foregoing sections
(_i.e._, that every man is presumed to know the law, and
that ignorance of the law does not excuse), is plain in
itself and plain in its application. Still, there are cases,
the precise nature and extent of which are not so obvious,
wherein ignorance of the law constitutes, in a sort of
indirect way, not in itself a defense, but a foundation on
which another defense rests. Thus, if the guilt or innocence
of a prisoner depends on the fact to be found by the jury,
of his having been or not, when he did the act, in some
precise mental condition, which mental condition is the gist
of the offense, the jury in determining this question of
mental condition, may take into consideration his ignorance
or misinformation in a matter of law. For example, to
constitute larceny, there must be an intent to steal, which
involves the knowledge that the property taken does not
belong to the taker; yet, if all the facts concerning the
title are known to the accused, and so the question is one
merely of law whether the property is his or not; still he
may show, and the showing will be a defense to him against
the criminal proceeding, that he honestly believed it his
through a misapprehension of the law.

The conclusions of the writer here are correct, but in a part of
the statement the learned author has thrown some obscurity over
his own principles. The doctrines elsewhere enunciated by him,
show with great clearness, that in such cases the state of the
mind constitutes the essence of the offense, and if the state of
the mind which the law condemns does not exist, in connection
with the act, there is no offense. It is immaterial whether its
non-existence be owing to ignorance of law or ignorance of fact,
in either case the fact which the law condemns, the criminal
intent, is wanting. It is not, therefore, in an "indirect way,"
that ignorance of the law in such cases constitutes a defense,
but in the most direct way possible. It is not a fact which
jurors "may take into consideration" or not, at their pleasure,
but which they must take into consideration, because, in case the
ignorance exists, no matter from what cause, the offense which
the statute describes is not committed. In such case, ignorance
of the law is not interposed as a shield to one committing a
criminal act, but merely to show, as it does show, that no
criminal act has been committed. I quote from Sir Matthew Hale on
the subject. Speaking of larceny, the learned author says:

As it is _cepit_ and _asportavit_, so it must be _felonice_,
or _animo furandi_, otherwise it is not felony, for it is
the mind that makes the taking of another's goods to be a
felony, or a bare trespass only; but because the intention
and mind are secret, the intention must be judged of by the
circumstances of the fact, and these circumstances are
various, and may sometimes deceive, yet regularly and
ordinarily these circumstances following direct in the case.
If A., thinking he hath a title to the house of B., seizeth
it as his own ... this regularly makes no felony, but a
trespass only; but yet this may be a trick to color a
felony, and the ordinary discovery of a felonious intent is,
if the party doth it secretly or being charged with the
goods denies it. (1 Hale's P. C, 509.)

I concede, that if Miss Anthony voted, knowing that as a woman
she had no right to vote, she may properly be convicted, and that
if she had dressed herself in men's apparel, and assumed a man's
name, or resorted to any other artifice to deceive the board of
inspectors, the jury might properly regard her claim of right to
be merely colorable, and might, in their judgment, pronounce her
guilty of the offense charged, in case the constitution has not
secured to her the right she claimed. All I claim is, that if she
voted in perfect good faith, believing that it was her right, she
has committed no crime. An innocent mistake, whether of law or
fact, though a wrongful act may be done in pursuance of it, can
not constitute a crime.

[The following cases and authorities were referred to and
commented upon by the counsel, as sustaining his positions:
U. S. _vs._ Conover, 3 McLean's Rep., 573; The State _vs._
McDonald, 4 Harrington, 555; The State _vs._ Homes, 17 Mo.,
379; Rex _vs._ Hall, 3 C. & P., 409 (S. C. 14 Eng., C. L.);
The Queen _vs._ Reed, 1 C. &. M., 306 (S. C. 41 Eng., C.
L.); Lancaster's Case, 3 Leon, 208; Starkie on Ev., Part
IV., Vol. 2, p. 828, 3d Am. Ed.]

The counsel then said, there are some cases which I concede can
not be reconciled with the position which I have endeavored to
maintain, and I am sorry to say that one of them is found in the
reports of this State. As the cases are referred to in that, and
the principle, if they can be said to stand on any principle, is
in all of them the same, it will only be incumbent on me to
notice that one. That case is not only irreconcilable with the
numerous authorities and the fundamental principles of criminal
law to which I have referred, but the enormity of its injustice
is sufficient alone to condemn it. I refer to the case of
Hamilton _vs._ The People (57 Barb., 725). In that case Hamilton
had been convicted of a misdemeanor, in having voted at a general
election, after having been previously convicted of a felony, and
sentenced to two years imprisonment in the State prison, and not
having been pardoned; the conviction having by law deprived him
of citizenship and right to vote, unless pardoned and restored to
citizenship. The case came up before the General Term of the
Supreme Court, on writ of error. It appeared that on the trial
evidence was offered, that before the prisoner was discharged
from the State prison, he and his father applied to the Governor
for a pardon, and that the Governor replied in writing, that on
the ground of the prisoner's being a minor at the time of his
discharge from prison, a pardon would not be necessary, and that
he would be entitled to all the rights of a citizen on his coming
of age. They also applied to two respectable counselors of the
Supreme Court, and they confirmed the Governor's opinion. All
this evidence was rejected. It appeared that the prisoner was
seventeen years old when convicted of the felony, and was
nineteen when discharged from prison. The rejection of the
evidence was approved by the Supreme Court on the ground that the
prisoner was bound to know the law, and was presumed to do so,
and his conviction was accordingly confirmed.

Here a young man, innocent so far as his conduct in this case was
involved, was condemned for acting in good faith upon the advice
(mistaken advice it may be conceded), of one governor and two
lawyers to whom he applied for information as to his rights; and
this condemnation has proceeded upon the assumed ground, conceded
to be false in fact, that he knew the advice given to him was
wrong. On this judicial fiction the young man, in the name of
justice, is sent to prison, punished for a mere mistake, and a
mistake made in pursuance of such advice. It can not be,
consistently with the radical principles of criminal law to which
I have referred, and the numerous authorities which I have
quoted, that this man was guilty of a crime, that his mistake was
a crime, and I think the judges who pronounced his condemnation,
upon their own principles, better than their victim, deserved the
punishment which they inflicted. The condemnation of Miss
Anthony, her good faith being conceded, would do no less violence
to any fair administration of justice.

One other matter will close what I have to say. Miss Anthony
believed, and was advised that she had a right to vote. She may
also have been advised, as was clearly the fact, that the
question as to her right could not be brought before the courts
for trial, without her voting or offering to vote, and if either
was criminal, the one was as much so as the other. Therefore she
stands now arraigned as a criminal, for taking the only step by
which it was possible to bring the great constitutional question
as to her right, before the tribunals of the country for
adjudication. If for thus acting, in the most perfect good faith,
with motives as pure and impulses as noble as any which can find
place in your honor's breast in the administration of justice,
she is by the laws of her country to be condemned a a criminal.
Her condemnation, however, under such circumstances, would only
add another most weighty reason to those which I have already
advanced, to show that women need the aid of the ballot for their
protection.

Upon the remaining question, of the good faith of the defendant,
it is not necessary for me to speak. That she acted in the most
perfect good faith stands conceded.

Thanking your honor for the great patience with which you have
listened to my too extended remarks, I submit the legal questions
which the case involves for your honor's consideration.

District Attorney Crowley followed Judge Selden with an argument two
hours in length. He stated that, in his view, the case simply
presented questions of law, and that his argument, therefore, would be
addressed strictly to the court, leaving the court to give such
instructions to the jury upon the facts as he might deem proper. He
contended that the right to vote was not included in "privileges and
immunities," and was only given by State laws and State constitutions.
He concluded his argument by saying that an honest mistake of the
facts may sometimes excuse, but a mistake of the law never. The COURT
addressed the jury as follows:

_Gentlemen of the Jury:_ I have given this case such
consideration as I have been able to, and, that there might be no
misapprehension about my views, I have made a brief statement in
writing.

The defendant is indicted under the act of Congress of 1870, for
having voted for Representatives in Congress in November, 1872.
Among other things, that Act makes it an offense for any person
knowingly to vote for such Representatives without having a right
to vote. It is charged that the defendant thus voted, she not
having a right to vote because she is a woman. The defendant
insists that she has a right to vote; that the provision of the
Constitution of this State limiting the right to vote to persons
of the male sex is in violation of the XIV. Amendment of the
Constitution of the United States, and is void.

The XIII., XIV., and XV. Amendments were designed mainly for the
protection of the newly emancipated negroes, but full effect must
nevertheless be given to the language employed. The XIII.
Amendment provided that neither slavery nor involuntary servitude
should longer exist in the United States. If honestly received
and fairly applied, this provision would have been enough to
guard the rights of the colored race. In some States it was
attempted to be evaded by enactments cruel and oppressive in
their nature; as that colored persons were forbidden to appear in
the towns except in a menial capacity; that they should reside on
and cultivate the soil without being allowed to own it; that they
were not permitted to give testimony in cases where a white man
was a party. They were excluded from performing particular kinds
of business, profitable and reputable, and they were denied the
right of suffrage. To meet the difficulties arising from this
state of things, the XIV. and XV. Amendments were enacted.

The XIV. Amendment created and defined citizenship of the United
States. It had long been contended, and had been held by many
learned authorities, and had never been judicially decided to the
contrary, that there was no such thing as a citizen of the United
States, except as that condition arose from citizenship of some
State. No mode existed, it was said, of obtaining a citizenship
of the United States except by first becoming a citizen of some
State. This question is now at rest. The XIV. Amendment defines
and declares who shall be citizens of the United States, to wit:
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject
to the jurisdiction thereof." The latter qualification was
intended to exclude the children of foreign representatives and
the like. With this qualification every person born in the United
States or naturalized is declared to be a citizen of the United
States, and of the State wherein he resides.

After creating and defining citizenship of the United States, the
Amendment provides that no State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of a citizen of
the United States. This clause is intended to be a protection,
not to all our rights, but to our rights as citizens of the
United States only; that is, the rights existing or belonging to
that condition or capacity. (The words "or citizen of a State,"
used in the previous paragraph, are carefully omitted here.) In
article 4, paragraph 2, of the Constitution of the United States
it had been already provided in this language, viz: "The citizens
of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and
immunities of the citizens in the several States." The rights of
citizens of the States and of citizens of the United States are
each guarded by these different provisions. That these rights
were separate and distinct, was held in the Slaughter-house
Cases recently decided by the United States Supreme Court at
Washington.

The rights of citizens of the State, as such, are not under
consideration in the XIV. Amendment. They stand as they did
before the adoption of the XIV. Amendment, and are fully
guaranteed by other provisions. The rights of citizens of the
States have been the subject of judicial decision on more than
one occasion. (Corfield _agt._ Coryell, 4 Wash. C. C. R., 371.
Ward _agt._ Maryland, 12 Wall., 430. Paul _agt._ Virginia, 8
Wall., 140.) These are the fundamental privileges and immunities
belonging of right to the citizens of all free governments, such
as the right of life and liberty; the right to acquire and
possess property, to transact business, to pursue happiness in
his own manner, subject to such restraint as the Government may
adjudge to be necessary for the general good. In Cromwell _agt._
Nevada, 6 Wallace, 36, is found a statement of some of the rights
of a citizen of the United States, viz:

To come to the seat of the Government to assert any claim he
may have upon the Government, to transact any business he
may have with it; to seek its protection; to share its
offices; to engage in administering its functions. He has
the right of free access to its seaports through which all
operations of foreign commerce are conducted, to the
sub-treasuries, land offices, and courts of justice in the
several States.

Another privilege of a citizen of the United States, says Miller,
Justice, in the "Slaughter-house" cases, is to demand the care
and protection of the Federal Government over his life, liberty,
and property when on the high seas or within the jurisdiction of
a foreign government. The right to assemble and petition for a
redress of grievances, the privilege of the writ of _habeas
corpus_, he says, are rights of the citizen guaranteed by the
Federal Constitution.

The right of voting, or the privilege of voting, is a right or
privilege arising under the Constitution of the State, and not of
the United States. The qualifications are different in the
different States. Citizenship, age, sex, residence, are variously
required in the different States, or may be so. If the right
belongs to any particular person, it is because such person is
entitled to it by the laws of the State where he offers to
exercise it, and not because of citizenship of the United States.
If the State of New York should provide that no person should
vote until he had reached the age of thirty-one years, or after
he had reached the age of fifty, or that no person having gray
hair, or who had not the use of all his limbs, should be entitled
to vote, I do not see how it could be held to be a violation of
any right derived or held under the Constitution of the United
States. We might say that such regulations were unjust,
tyrannical, unfit for the regulation of an intelligent State; but
if rights of a citizen are thereby violated, they are of that
fundamental class derived from his position as a citizen of the
State, and not those limited rights belonging to him as a citizen
of the United States, and such was the decision in Corfield
_agt._ Coryell, _supra_.

The United States rights appertaining to this subject are those
first under article 1, paragraph 2, of the United States
Constitution, which provides that electors of Representatives in
Congress shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of
the most numerous branch of the State Legislature, and second,
under the XV. Amendment, which provides that the right of a
citizen of the United States to vote shall not be denied or
abridged by the United States or by any State, on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude. If the
Legislature of the State of New York should require a higher
qualification in a voter for a representative in Congress than is
required for a voter for a member of Assembly, this would, I
conceive, be a violation of a right belonging to one as a citizen
of the United States. That right is in relation to a federal
subject or interest, and is guaranteed by the Federal
Constitution. The inability of a State to abridge the right of
voting on account of race, color, or previous condition of
servitude, arises from a federal guaranty. Its violation would be
the denial of a federal right--that is, a right belonging to the
claimant as a citizen of the United States.

This right, however, exists by virtue of the XV. Amendment. If
the XV. Amendment had contained the word "sex," the argument of
the defendant would have been potent. She would have said, an
attempt by a State to deny the right to vote because one is of a
particular sex, is expressly prohibited by that Amendment. The
Amendment, however, does not contain that word. It is limited to
race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The Legislature
of the State of New York has seen fit to say, that the franchise
of voting shall be limited to the male sex. In saying this there
is, in my judgment, no violation of the letter or of the spirit
of the XIV. or of the XV. Amendment.

This view is assumed in the second section of the XIV. Amendment,
which enacts that if the right to vote for Federal officers is
denied by any State to any of the male inhabitants of such State,
except for crime, the basis of representation of such State shall
be reduced in proportion specified. Not only does this section
assume that the right of male inhabitants to vote was the
especial object of its protection, but it assumes and admits the
right of a State, notwithstanding the existence of that clause
under which the defendant claims to the contrary, to deny to
classes or portions of the male inhabitants the right to vote
which is allowed to other male inhabitants. The regulation of the
suffrage is thereby conceded to the States as a State's right.

The case of Myra Bradwell, decided at a recent term of the
Supreme Court of the United States, sustains both the positions
above put forth, viz: First, that the rights referred to in the
XIV. Amendment are those belonging to a person as a citizen of
the United States and not as a citizen of a State; and second,
that a right of the character here involved is not one connected
with citizenship of the United States. Mrs. Bradwell made
application to be admitted to practice as an attorney and
counselor-at-law in the Courts of Illinois. Her application was
denied, and upon appeal to the Supreme Court of the United
States, it was there held that to give jurisdiction under the
XIV. Amendment, the claim must be of a right pertaining to
citizenship of the United States, and that the claim made by her
did not come within that class of cases. Mr. Justice Bradley and
Mr. Justice Field held that a woman was not entitled to a license
to practice law. It does not appear that the other Judges passed
upon that question. The XIV. Amendment gives no right to a woman
to vote, and the voting by Miss Anthony was in violation of the
law.

If she believed she had a right to vote, and voted in reliance
upon that belief, does that relieve her from the penalty? It is
argued that the knowledge referred to in the act relates to her
knowledge of the illegality of the act, and not to the act of
voting; for it is said that she must know that she voted. Two
principles apply here: First, ignorance of the law excuses no
one; second, every person is presumed to understand and to intend
the necessary effects of his own acts. Miss Anthony knew that she
was a woman, and that the Constitution of this State prohibits
her from voting. She intended to violate that provision--intended
to test it, perhaps, but certainly intended to violate it. The
necessary effect of her act was to violate it, and this she is
presumed to have intended. There was no ignorance of any fact,
but all the facts being known, she undertook to settle a
principle in her own person. She takes the risk, and she can not
escape the consequences. It is said, and authorities are cited to
sustain the position, that there can be no crime unless there is
a culpable intent; to render one criminally responsible a vicious
will must be present. A. commits a trespass on the land of B.,
and B., thinking and believing that he has a right to shoot an
intruder on his premises, kills A. on the spot. Does B.'s
misapprehension of his rights justify his act? Would a Judge be
justified in charging the jury that if satisfied that B. supposed
he had a right to shoot A he was justified, and they should find
a verdict of not guilty? No Judge would make such a charge. To
constitute a crime, it is true that there must be a criminal
intent, but it is equally true that knowledge of the facts of the
case is always held to supply this intent. An intentional killing
bears with it evidence of malice in law. Whoever, without
justifiable cause, intentionally kills his neighbor, is guilty of
a crime. The principle is the same in the case before us, and in
all criminal cases. The precise question now before me has been
several times decided, viz: That one illegally voting was bound
and was assumed to know the law, and that a belief that he had a
right to vote gave no defense, if there was no mistake of fact.
(Hamilton against The People, 57th of Barbour, p. 625; State
against Boyet, 10th of Iredell, p. 336; State against Hart, 6th
Jones, 389; McGuire against State, 7 Humphrey, 54; 15th of Iowa
reports, 404.) No system of criminal jurisprudence can be
sustained upon any other principle. Assuming that Miss Anthony
believed she had a right to vote, that fact constitutes no
defense if in truth she had not the right. She voluntarily gave a
vote which was illegal, and thus is subject to the penalty of the
law.

The Judge directed the jury to find a verdict of guilty.

Judge SELDEN: I submit that on the view which your honor has
taken, that the right to vote and the regulation of it is solely
a State matter. That this whole law is out of the jurisdiction of
the United States Courts and of Congress. The whole law upon that
basis, as I understand it, is not within the constitutional power
of the General Government, but is one which applies to the
States. I suppose that it is for the jury to determine whether
the defendant is guilty of a crime or not. And I therefore ask
your honor to submit to the jury these propositions:

First.--If the defendant, at the time of voting, believed that
she had a right to vote and voted in good faith in that belief,
she is not guilty of the offense charged.

Second.--In determining the question whether she did or did not
believe that she had a right to vote, the jury may take into
consideration, as bearing upon that question, the advice which
she received from the counsel to whom she applied.

Third.--That they may also take into consideration, as bearing
upon the same question, the fact that the inspectors considered
the question and came to the conclusion that she had a right to
vote.

Fourth.--That the jury have a right to find a general verdict of
guilty or not guilty as they shall believe that she has or has
not committed the offense described in the statute.

A professional friend sitting by has made this suggestion which I
take leave to avail myself of as bearing upon this question: "The
Court has listened for many hours to an argument in order to
decide whether the defendant has a right to vote. The arguments
show the same question has engaged the best minds of the country
as an open question. Can it be possible that the defendant is to
be convicted for acting upon such advice as she could obtain
while the question is an open and undecided one?"

THE COURT.--You have made a much better argument than that, sir.

JUDGE SELDEN.--As long as it is an open question, I submit that
she has not been guilty of an offense. At all events, it is for
the jury.

THE COURT.--I can not charge these propositions of course. The
question, gentlemen of the jury, in the form it finally takes, is
wholly a question or questions of law, and I have decided as a
question of law, in the first place, that under the XIV.
Amendment, which Miss Anthony claims protects her, she was not
protected in a right to vote. And I have decided also that her
belief and the advice which she took do not protect her in the
act which she committed. If I am right in this, the result must
be a verdict on your part of guilty, and I therefore direct that
you find a verdict of guilty.

JUDGE SELDEN.--That is a direction no Court has power to make in
a criminal case.

THE COURT.--Take the verdict, Mr. Clerk.

THE CLERK.--Gentlemen of the jury, hearken to your verdict as the
Court has recorded it. You say you find the defendant guilty of
the offense whereof she stands indicted, and so say you all?

JUDGE SELDEN.--I don't know whether an exception is available,
but I certainly must except to the refusal of the Court to submit
those propositions, and especially to the direction of the Court
that the jury should find a verdict of guilty. I claim that it is
a power that is not given to any Court in a criminal case. Will
the Clerk poll the jury? THE COURT.--No. Gentlemen of the jury,
you are discharged.

On the next day a motion for a new trial was made and argued by Judge
Selden, as follows:

_May it please the Court:_--The trial of this case commenced with
a question of very great magnitude--whether by the Constitution
of the United States the right of suffrage was secured to female
equally with male citizens. It is likely to close with a question
of much greater magnitude--whether the right of trial by jury is
absolutely secured by the Federal Constitution to persons charged
with crime before the Federal Courts.

I assume, without attempting to produce any authority on the
subject, that this Court has power to grant to the defendant a
new trial in case it should appear that in the haste and in the
lack of opportunity for examination which necessarily attend a
jury trial, any material error should have been committed
prejudicial to the defendant, as otherwise no means whatever are
provided by the law for the correction of such errors.

The defendant was indicted under the nineteenth section of the
act of Congress of May 31, 1870, entitled, "An act to enforce the
right of citizens of the United States to vote in the several
States of this Union, and for other purposes," and was charged
with having knowingly voted, without having a lawful right to
vote, at the Congressional election in the Eighth Ward of the
City of Rochester, in November last; the only ground of
illegality being that the defendant was a woman.

The provisions of the act of Congress, so far as they bear upon
the present case, are as follows:

Section 19. If at any election for representative or
delegate in the Congress of the United States, any person
shall knowingly personate and vote, or attempt to vote, in
the name of any other person, whether living, dead, or
fictitious, or vote more than once at the same election for
any candidate for the same office, or vote at a place where
he may not be lawfully entitled to vote, or vote without
having a lawful right to vote, ... every such person shall
be deemed guilty of a crime, and shall for such crime be
liable to prosecution in any court of the United States, of
competent jurisdiction, and on conviction thereof, shall be
punished by a fine not exceeding $500 or by imprisonment for
a term not exceeding three years, or both, in the discretion
of the Court, and shall pay the costs of prosecution.

It appeared on the trial that before voting the defendant called
upon a respectable lawyer, and asked his opinion whether she had
a right to vote, and he advised her that she had such right, and
the lawyer was examined as a witness in her behalf, and testified
that he gave her such advice, and that he gave it in good faith,
believing that she had such right.

It also appeared that when she offered to vote, the question
whether as a woman she had a right to vote, was raised by the
inspectors, and considered by them in her presence, and they
decided that she had a right to vote, and received her vote
accordingly.

It was also shown on the part of the Government, that on the
examination of the defendant before the commissioner on whose
warrant she was arrested, she stated that she should have voted,
if allowed to vote, without reference to the advice she had
received from the attorney whose opinion she had asked; that she
was not influenced to vote by that opinion; that she had before
determined to offer her vote, and had no doubt about her right to
vote.

At the close of the testimony the defendant's counsel proceeded
to address the jury, and stated that he desired to present for
consideration three propositions, two of law and one of fact:

First.--That the defendant had a lawful right to vote.

Second.--That whether she had a lawful right to vote or not, if
she honestly believed that she had that right and voted in good
faith in that belief, she was guilty of no crime.

Third.--That when she gave her vote she gave it in good faith,
believing that it was her right to do so.

That the first two propositions presented questions for the Court
to decide, and the last for the jury.

When the counsel had proceeded thus far, the Court suggested that
the counsel had better discuss in the first place the questions
of law; which the counsel proceeded to do, and having discussed
the two legal questions at length, asked leave then to say a few
words to the jury on the question of fact. The Court then said to
the counsel that he thought that had better be left until the
views of the Court upon the legal question should be made known.

The District Attorney thereupon addressed the Court at length
upon the legal questions, and at the close of his argument the
Court delivered an opinion adverse to the positions of the
defendant's counsel upon both of the legal questions presented,
holding that the defendant was not entitled to vote; and that if
she voted in good faith in the belief in fact that she had a
right to vote, it would constitute no defense--the grounds of the
decision on the last point being that she was bound to know that
by law she was not a legal voter, and that even if she voted in
good faith in the contrary belief, it constituted no defense to
the crime with which she was charged. The decision of the court
upon these questions was read from a written document.

At the close of the reading, the Court said that the decision of
these questions disposed of the case and left no question of fact
for the jury, and that he should therefore direct the jury to
find a verdict of guilty, and proceeded to say to the jury that
the decision of the Court had disposed of all there was in the
case, and that he directed them to find a verdict of guilty, and
he instructed the clerk to enter a verdict of guilty.

At this point, before any entry had been made by the clerk, the
defendant's counsel asked the Court to submit the case to the
jury, and to give to the jury the following several instructions:
[Here Judge Selden repeated the instructions. See page 665.]

The Court declined to submit the case to the jury upon any
question whatever, and directed them to render a verdict of
guilty against the defendant. The defendant's counsel excepted to
the decision of the Court upon the legal questions--to its
refusal to submit the case to the jury; to its refusal to give
the instructions asked; and to its direction to the jury to find
a verdict of guilty against the defendant--the counsel insisting
that it was a direction which no Court had a right to give in a
criminal case.

The Court then instructed the clerk to take the verdict, and the
clerk said, "Gentlemen of the jury, hearken to the verdict as the
Court hath recorded it. You say you find the defendant guilty of
the offense charged. So say you all." No response whatever was
made by the jury, either by word or sign. They had not consulted
together in their seats or otherwise. None of them had spoken a
word. Nor had they been asked whether they had or had not agreed
upon a verdict. The defendant's counsel then asked that the clerk
be requested to poll the jury. The Court said, "That can not be
allowed. Gentlemen of the jury, you are discharged," and the
jurors left the box. No juror spoke a word during the trial, from
the time they were impaneled to the time of their discharge.

Now I respectfully submit, that in these proceedings the
defendant has been substantially denied her constitutional right
of trial by jury. The jurors composing the panel have been merely
silent spectators of the conviction of the defendant by the
Court. They have had no more share in her trial and conviction
than any other twelve members of the jury summoned to attend this
Court, or any twelve spectators who have sat by during the trial.
If such course is allowable in this case, it must be equally
allowable in all criminal cases, whether the charge be for
treason, murder, or any minor grade of offense which can come
under the jurisdiction of a United States Court; and as I
understand it, if correct, substantially abolishes the right of
trial by jury.

It certainly does so in all those cases where the judge shall be
of the opinion that the facts which he may regard as clearly
proved, lead necessarily to the guilt of the defendant. Of course
by refusing to submit any question to the jury, the judge refuses
to allow counsel to address the jury in the defendant's behalf.
The constitutional provisions which I insist are violated by this
proceeding are the following:

Constitution of the United States, article 3, section 2. The
trial of all crimes, except in cases of impeachment, shall
be by jury.

Amendments to Constitution, article 6. In all criminal
prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy
and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and
District wherein the crime shall have been committed, which
district shall have been previously ascertained by law; and
to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to
be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have
compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and
to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

In accordance with these provisions, I insist that in every
criminal case, where the party has pleaded not guilty, whether
upon the trial the guilt of such party appears to the judge to be
clear or not, the response to the question, guilty or not guilty,
must come from the jury, must be their voluntary act, and can not
be imposed upon them by the Court.

No opportunity has been given me to consult precedents on this
subject, but a friend has referred me to an authority strongly
supporting my position, from which I will quote, though I deem a
reference to precedents unnecessary to sustain the plain
declarations of the Constitution: I refer to the case of the
State _vs._ Shule (10 Iredell, 153), the substance of which is
stated in 2 Graham & Waterman on New Trials, page 363. Before
stating that case I quote from the text of G. & W.

The verdict is to be the result of the deliberation of the
jury upon all the evidence in the case. The Court has no
right to anticipate the verdict by an expression of opinion
calculated so to influence the jury as to take from them
their independence of action.

In the State _vs._ Shule two defendants were indicted for an
affray. The jury remaining out a considerable time, at the
request of the prosecuting attorney they were sent for by
the Court. The Court then charged them that although Jones
(the other defendant) had first commenced a battery on
Shule, yet, if the jury believed the evidence, the
defendant, Shule, was also guilty. Thereupon, one of the
jurors remarked that they had agreed to convict Jones, but
were about to acquit Shule. The Court then charged the jury
again, and told them that they could retire if they thought
proper to do so. The jury consulted together a few minutes
in the court room. The prosecuting attorney directed the
clerk to enter a verdict of guilty as to both defendants.
When the clerk had entered the verdict, the jury were asked
to attend to it, as it was about to be read by the clerk.
The clerk then read the verdict in the hearing of the jury.
The jury, upon being requested, if any of them disagreed to
the verdict to make it known by a nod, seemed to express
their unanimous assent; and no juror expressed his dissent.

In reviewing the case the Court say:

The error complained of is, that before the jury had
announced their verdict, and in fact after they had
intimated an intention to acquit the defendant, Shule, the
Court allowed the clerk to be directed to enter a verdict
finding him guilty, and after the verdict was so entered,
allowing the jury to be asked if any of them disagreed to
the verdict which had been recorded by the clerk. No juror
expressed his dissent; but by a nod which appeared to be
made by each juror, expressed their unanimous assent. The
innovation is, that instead of permitting the jury to give
their verdict, the Court allows a verdict to be entered for
them, such as it is to be presumed the Court thinks they
ought to render, and then they are asked if any of them
disagree to it; thus making a verdict for them, unless they
are bold enough to stand out against a plain intimation of
the opinion of the Court.

A _venire de novo_ was ordered. The principal difference between
this case and the one under consideration is, that in the latter
the Court directed the clerk to enter the verdict, and in the
former he was allowed to do so, and in the latter the Court
denied liberty to the jurors to dissent from the verdict, and in
the former the Court allowed such dissent.

With what jealous care the right of trial by jury in criminal
cases has been guarded by every English-speaking people from the
days of King John, indeed from the days of King Alfred, is known
to every lawyer and to every intelligent layman, and it does not
seem to me that such a limitation of that right as is presented
by the proceedings in this case, can be reconciled either with
constitutional provisions, with the practice of courts, with
public sentiment on the subject, or with safety in the
administration of justice. How the question would be regarded by
the highest Court of this State may fairly be gathered from its
decision in the case of Cancemi, 18 N. Y., 128, where, on a trial
for murder, one juror, some time after the trial commenced, being
necessarily withdrawn, a stipulation was entered into, signed by
the District Attorney, and by the defendant and his council, to
the effect that the trial should proceed before the remaining
eleven jurors, and that their verdict should have the same effect
as the verdict of a full panel would have. A verdict of guilty
having been rendered by the eleven jurors, was set aside and a
new trial ordered by the Court of Appeals, on the ground that the
defendant could not, even by his own consent, be lawfully tried
by a less number of jurors than twelve. It would seem to follow
that he could not waive the entire panel, and effectually consent
to be tried by the Court alone, and still less could the Court,
against his protest, assume the duties of the jury, and
effectually pronounce the verdict of guilty or not guilty in
their stead.

It will doubtless be insisted that there was no disputed question
of fact upon which the jury were required to pass. In regard to
that, I insist that however clear and conclusive the proof of the
facts might appear to be, the response to the question, guilty or
not guilty, must under the Constitution come from the jury and
could not be supplied by the judgment of the court, unless,
indeed, the jury should see fit to render a special verdict,
which they always may, but can never be required to do. It was
the province of the court to instruct the jury as to the law, and
to point out to them how clearly the law, on its view of the
established facts, made out the offense; but it has no authority
to instruct them positively on any question of fact, or to order
them to find any particular verdict. That must be their
spontaneous work.

But there was a question of fact, which constituted the very
essence of the offense, and one on which the jury were not only
entitled to exercise, but were in duty bound to exercise, their
independent judgment. That question of fact was, whether the
defendant, at the time when she voted, knew that she had not a
right to vote. The statute makes this knowledge the very gist of
the offense, without the existence of which, in the mind of the
voter at the time of voting, there is no crime. There is none by
the statute and none in morals. The existence of this knowledge,
in the mind of the voter at the time of voting, is under the
statute, necessarily a fact and nothing but a fact, and one which
the jury was bound to find as a fact, before they could, without
violating the statute, find the defendant guilty. The ruling
which took that question away from the jury, on the ground that
it was a question of law and not of fact, and which declared that
as a question of law, the knowledge existed, was, I respectfully
submit, a most palpable error, both in law and justice. It was an
error in law, because its effect was to deny any force whatever
to the most important word which the statute uses in defining the
offense--the word "knowingly." It was also unjust, because it
makes the law declare a known falsehood as a truth, and then by
force of that judicial falsehood condemns the defendant to such
punishment as she could only lawfully be subject to, if the
falsehood were a truth.

I admit that it is an established legal maxim that every person
(judicial officers excepted) is bound, and must be presumed, to
know the law. The soundness of this maxim, in all the cases to
which it can properly be applied, I have no desire to question;
but it has no applicability whatever to this case. It applies in
every case where a party does an act which the law pronounces
criminal, whether the party knows or does not know that the law
has made the act a crime. That maxim would have applied to this
case, if the defendant had voted, knowing that she had no legal
right to vote; without knowing that the law had made the act of
knowingly voting without a right, a crime. In that case she would
have done the act which the law made a crime, and could not have
shielded herself from the penalty by pleading ignorance of the
law. But in the present case the defendant has not done the act
which the law pronounces a crime. The law has not made the act of
voting without a lawful right to vote, a crime, where it is done
by mistake, and in the belief by the party voting that he has the
lawful right to vote. The crime consists in voting "knowingly,"
without lawful right. Unless the knowledge exists in fact, the
very gist of the offense is wanting. To hold that the law
presumes conclusively that such knowledge exists in all cases
where the legal right is wanting, and to reject all evidence to
the contrary, or to deny to such evidence any effect, as has been
done on this trial, is to strike the word "knowingly" out of the
statute--and to condemn the defendant on the legal fiction that
she was acting in bad faith, it being all the while conceded that
she was in fact acting in good faith. I admit that there are
precedents to sustain such ruling, but they can not be reconciled
with the fundamental principles of criminal law, nor with the
most ordinary rules of justice. Such a ruling can not but shock
the moral sense of all right-minded, unprejudiced men.

No doubt the assumption by the defendant of a belief of her right
to vote might be made use of by her as a mere cover to secure the
privilege of giving a known illegal vote, and of course that
false assumption would constitute no defense to the charge of
illegal voting. If the defendant had dressed herself in male
attire, and had voted as John Anthony, instead of Susan, she
would not be able to protect herself against a charge of voting
with a knowledge that she had no right to vote, by asserting her
belief that she had a right to vote as a woman. The artifice
would no doubt effectually overthrow the assertion of good faith.
No such question, however, is made here. The decision of which I
complain concedes that the defendant voted in good faith, in the
most implicit belief that she had a right to vote, and condemns
her on the strength of the legal fiction, conceded to be in fact
a mere fiction, that she knew the contrary. But if the facts
admitted of a doubt of the defendant's good faith, that was a
question for the jury, and it was clear error for the court to
assume the decision of it.

Again. The denial of the right to poll the jury was most clearly
an error. Under the provisions of the Constitution which have
been cited, the defendant could only be convicted on the verdict
of a jury. The case of Cancemi shows that such jury must consist
of twelve men; and it will not be claimed that anything less than
the unanimous voice of the jury can be received as their verdict.
How then could the defendant be lawfully deprived of the right to
ask every juror if the verdict had his assent? I believe this is
a right which was never before denied to a party against whom a
verdict was rendered in any case, either civil or criminal. The
following cases show, and many others might be cited to the same
effect, that the right to poll the jury is an absolute right in
all cases, civil and criminal. (The People _vs._ Perkins, 1
Wend., 91; Jackson _vs._ Hawks, 2 Wend., 619; Fox _vs._ Smith, 3
Cowen, 23.)

The ground on which the right of the defendant to vote has been
denied, is, as I understood the decision of the Court,

That the rights of the citizens of the State as such were
not under consideration in the XIV. Amendment; that they
stand as they did before that Amendment.... The right of
voting or the privilege of voting is a right or privilege
arising under the Constitution of the State, and not of the
United States. If the right belongs to any particular
person, it is because such person is entitled to it as a
citizen of the State where he offers to exercise it, and not
because of citizenship of the United States.... The
regulation of the suffrage is conceded to the States as a
State right.

If this position be correct, which I am not now disposed to
question, I respectfully insist that the Congress of the United
States had no power to pass the act in question; that by doing so
it has attempted to usurp the rights of States, and that all
proceedings under the act are void.

I claim therefore that the defendant is entitled to a new trial.

First--Because she has been denied her right of trial by jury.

Second--Because she has been denied the right to ask the jury
severally whether they assented to the verdict which the Court
had recorded for them.

Third--Because the Court erroneously held, that the defendant had
not a lawful right to vote.

Fourth--Because the Court erroneously held, that if the
defendant, when she voted, did so in good faith, believing that
she had a right to vote, that fact constituted no defense.

Fifth--Because the Court erroneously held that the question,
whether the defendant at the time of voting knew that she had not
a right to vote, was a question of law to be decided by the
Court, and not a question of fact to be decided by the jury.

Sixth--Because the Court erred in holding that it was a
presumption of law that the defendant knew that she was not a
legal voter, although in fact she had not that knowledge.

Seventh--Because Congress had no Constitutional right to pass the
act under which the defendant was indicted, and the act and all
proceedings under it are void.

Sir, so far as my information in regard to legal proceedings
extends, this is the only court in any country where trial by
jury exists, in which the decisions that are made in the haste
and sometimes confusion of such trials, are not subject to review
before any other tribunal. I believe that to the decisions of
this court, in criminal cases, no review is allowed, except in
the same court in the informal way in which I now ask your honor
to review the decisions made on this trial. This is therefore the
court of last resort, and I hope your honor will give to these,
as they appear to me, grave questions, such careful and
deliberate consideration as is due to them from such final
tribunal.

If a new trial shall be denied to the defendant, it will be no
consolation to her to be dismissed with a slight penalty, leaving
the stigma resting upon her name, of conviction for an offense of
which she claims to be, and I believe is, an innocent as the
purest of the millions of male voters who voted at the same
election, are innocent of crime in so voting. If she is in fact
guilty of the crime with which she stands charged, and of which
she has been convicted by the court, she deserves the utmost
penalty which the court under the law has power to impose; if she
is not guilty she should be acquitted, and not declared upon the
records of this high court guilty of a crime she never committed.

The Court, after listening to an argument from the District Attorney,
denied the motion for a new trial.

The COURT: The prisoner will stand up. Has the prisoner anything
to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?

Miss ANTHONY: Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in
your ordered verdict of guilty, you have trampled underfoot every
vital principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil
rights, my political rights, are all alike ignored. Robbed of the
fundamental privilege of citizenship, I am degraded from the
status of a citizen to that of a subject; and not only myself
individually, but all of my sex, are, by your honor's verdict,
doomed to political subjection under this so-called Republican
government.

Judge HUNT: The Court can not listen to a rehearsal of arguments
the prisoner's counsel has already consumed three hours in
presenting.

Miss ANTHONY: May it please your honor, I am not arguing the
question, but simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, in
justice, be pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen's
right to vote is the denial of my right of consent as one of the
governed, the denial of my right of representation as one of the
taxed, the denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as
an offender against law, therefore, the denial of my sacred
rights to life, liberty, property, and--

Judge HUNT: The Court can not allow the prisoner to go on.

Miss ANTHONY: But your honor will not deny me this one and only
poor privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon
my citizen's rights. May it please the Court to remember that
since the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time
that either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has
been allowed a word of defense before judge or jury--

Judge HUNT: The prisoner must sit down; the Court can not allow
it.

Miss ANTHONY: All my prosecutors, from the 8th Ward corner
grocery politician, who entered the complaint, to the United
States Marshal, Commissioner, District Attorney, District Judge,
your honor on the bench, not one is my peer, but each and all are
my political sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to
the jury, as was clearly your duty, even then I should have had
just cause of protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but,
native or foreign, white or black, rich or poor, educated or
ignorant, awake or asleep, sober or drunk, each and every man of
them was my political superior; hence, in no sense, my peer.
Even, under such circumstances, a commoner of England, tried
before a jury of lords, would have far less cause to complain
than should I, a woman, tried before a jury of men. Even my
counsel, the Hon. Henry R. Selden, who has argued my cause so
ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably before your honor, is my
political sovereign. Precisely as no disfranchised person is
entitled to sit upon a jury, and no woman is entitled to the
franchise, so, none but a regularly admitted lawyer is allowed to
practice in the courts, and no woman can gain admission to the
bar--hence, jury, judge, counsel, must all be of the superior
class.

Judge HUNT: The Court must insist--the prisoner has been tried
according to the established forms of law.

Miss ANTHONY: Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by
men, interpreted by men, administered by men, in favor of men,
and against women; and hence, your honor's ordered verdict of
guilty, against a United States citizen for the exercise of "that
citizen's right to vote," simply because that citizen was a woman
and not a man. But, yesterday, the same man-made forms of law
declared it a crime punishable with $1,000 fine and six months'
imprisonment, for you, or me, or any of us, to give a cup of cold
water, a crust of bread, or a night's shelter to a panting
fugitive as he was tracking his way to Canada. And every man or
woman in whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated
that wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in
so doing. As then the slaves who got their freedom must take it
over, or under, or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so
now must women, to get their right to a voice in this Government,
take it; and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every
possible opportunity.

Judge HUNT: The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will
not allow another word.

Miss ANTHONY: When I was brought before your honor for trial, I
hoped for a broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution
and its recent amendments, that should declare all United States
citizens under its protecting ægis--that should declare equality
of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or
naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this
justice--failing, even, to get a trial by a jury _not_ of my
peers--I ask not leniency at your hands--but rather the full
rigors of the law.

Judge HUNT: The Court must insist-- (Here the prisoner sat
down.)

Judge HUNT: The prisoner will stand up. (Here Miss Anthony arose
again.) The sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of one
hundred dollars and the costs of the prosecution.

Miss ANTHONY: May it please your honor, I shall never pay a
dollar of your unjust penalty. All the stock in trade I possess
is a $10,000 debt, incurred by publishing my paper--_The
Revolution_--four years ago, the sole object of which was to
educate all women to do precisely as I have done, rebel against
your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional forms of law, that tax,
fine, imprison, and hang women, while they deny them the right of
representation in the Government; and I shall work on with might
and main to pay every dollar of that honest debt, but not a penny
shall go to this unjust claim. And I shall earnestly and
persistently continue to urge all women to the practical
recognition of the old revolutionary maxim, that "Resistance to
tyranny is obedience to God."

Judge HUNT: Madam, the Court will not order you committed until
the fine is paid.

Immediately after the verdict, Miss Anthony, her counsel, her friends,
and the jury, passed out together talking over the case. Said Judge
Selden: "The war has abolished something besides slavery, it has
abolished jury trial. The decision of Justice Hunt was most
iniquitous. He had as much right to order me hung to the nearest tree,
as to take the case from the jury and render the decision he did," and
he bowed his head with shame at this prostitution of legal power.

The jury with freedom now to use their tongues, when too late, also
canvassed the trial and the injury done. "The verdict of guilty would
not have been mine, could I have spoken," said one, "nor should I have
been alone. There were others who thought as I did, but we could not
speak."

The decision of Judge Hunt was severely criticised.[172] Even among
those who believed women had no right to vote, and who did not
hesitate to say that Miss Anthony's punishment was inadequate, there
was a wide questioning as to his legal right to take the case from the
jury and enter the verdict of guilty, without permitting them in any
way to indicate their opinion. It was deemed a tyrannical and arrogant
assumption on the part of Judge Hunt, and one which endangered the
rights of the whole people. It was pertinently asked, "If this may be
done in one instance, why not in all?" and "If the courts may thus
arbitrarily direct what verdicts shall be rendered, what becomes of
the right to trial by an impartial jury, which the Constitution
guarantees to all persons alike, whether male or female?" These
questions were of the gravest importance, and the more so because
from this court there was no appeal. To deprive Miss Anthony of the
benefit of jury trial seemed, however, in unison with every step taken
in the cases of women under the XIV. Amendment.

The design of the Government was evidently to crush at once, and
arbitrarily, all efforts of women for equality of rights with men. The
principles of law and justice involved did not, however, apply to
women alone, but to all persons alike. Where the rights of the most
insignificant or humble are outraged those of all are endangered. The
decisions in these cases are the more remarkable since they were based
on the most ultra State Rights doctrine, and yet were rendered in
every instance by members of the Republican party which held its
position by reason of its recent success against the extreme demands
of State sovereignty. The right of women to vote under national
protection was but the logical result of the political guarantees of
the war, and Republican leaders should have been anxious to clinch
their war record by legislative and judicial decisions.

But a more thorough recognition of the State Rights theory never was
presented than in the proceedings of this Judge of the Supreme Court
in his verdict against Miss Anthony, nor a more absolute exhibition of
National power in State affairs than his decision in the case of the
Inspectors, who were State officers, working under State authority and
State laws, and not under authority derived from the Constitution of
the United States, but who were tried by an United States judge, and
punished for what was held as a crime against the State of New York--a
monstrous usurpation of National authority! Each of these trials was,
in its way, an example of authority overriding law, and an evidence of
the danger to the liberties of the people from a practically
irresponsible judiciary. Men need to feel their indebtedness and their
responsibility to those who place them in position; first, in order to
preserve them from despotism; and, second, that they may be removed
when infirmity demands the substitution of a competent person in their
place.

Although for a period little has been said in regard to the
usurpations of the judiciary, a time will come in the history of the
country when the course of Justice Hunt will be recalled as a
dangerous precedent.

It was more than a year after Miss Anthony's trial was completed
before her case received notice in the chief legal journal of the
State of New York. At that time, in an article entitled, "Can a Judge
Direct a Verdict of Guilty?"[173] Judge Hunt's course in refusing to
poll the jury was reviewed and condemned as contrary to justice and
law. To Mrs. Gage's review of this article, the _Law Journal_ said,
"If Mrs. Gage and Miss Anthony are not pleased with our laws, they had
better emigrate." This would make real, in case of woman, Edward
Everett Hale's story of the "Man Without a Country." Women are, by
this advice, assumed to have no country; to be living in the United
States upon sufferance, a species of useful aliens, which possesses no
rights that man is bound to respect, which are not to be permitted to
vote, nor even to protest when the dearest rights are trampled upon.
While admitting that Justice Hunt usurped power in taking the case
from the jury, the Albany _Law Journal_ expressed a desire that it
should have gone to the jury, not on the ground of legal right, but on
the ground that the jury would have brought in a verdict of guilty.

But had the case been allowed to go to the jury, no verdict of guilty
would have been rendered. The _jury_ did not believe the defendant
guilty, but they were not permitted to give their opinion. Their
opinions counted for nothing; they were wronged as well as Miss
Anthony.

It was said of the infamous Lord Jeffries, that when pre-determined
upon a conviction he always wore a red cap. In such cases juries were
useless appendages to his court. Justice Hunt, through this trial,
wore an invisible red cap which only came into view at its close.

The effect of Miss Anthony's prosecution, conviction, and sentence,
was in many ways advantageous to the cause of freedom. Her trial
served to awaken thought, promote discussion, and compel an
investigation of the principles of government. The argument of Judge
Selden, clearly proving woman's constitutional right to vote,
published[174] in all the leading papers, arrested the attention of
legal minds as no popular discussions had done.

Thus the question of the abstract rights of each individual, their
civil and political rights under State and National Constitutions,
were widely discussed. And when the verdict, contrary to law, was
rendered by the Judge, and the jury dismissed without having been
permitted to utter a word, the whole question of woman's rights and
wrongs was brought into new prominence through this infringement of
the sacred right of jury trial.

A _nolle prosequi_ was entered for the women who voted with Miss
Anthony. Immediately after the decision in her case, the trial of the
Inspectors took place before the same court. This was in reality a
continuation of the same question--a citizen's right to vote--and like
that of Miss Anthony's was a legal farce, the decision in this case
evidently having also been pre-determined. The indictment stated that:

Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, Inspectors
of Election in and for said first election district of said
eight ward of said city of Rochester, etc., did then and there
knowingly and willfully register as a voter of said District, one
Susan B. Anthony, she, said Susan B. Anthony, then and there not
being entitled to be registered as a voter of said District in
that she, said Susan B. Anthony was then and there a person of
the female sex, contrary to the form of the statute of the United
States of America in such case made and provided, and against the
peace of the United States of America and their dignity.

Although the above indictment may have been legal in form, it clearly
proved the inadequacy of man alone to frame just laws, holding, as it
did, Susan B. Anthony to be "then and there a person of the female
sex, contrary to the form of the statutes of the United States of
America," etc.

Witnesses were first called on behalf of the United States; during
whose examination it was again conceded that the women named in the
indictment were women on the 5th day of November, 1872, thus again
clearly showing the animus of these trials to be against sex--making
sex a crime in the eye of United States laws. While the right to
testify in her own behalf was denied to Miss Anthony it was granted to
the Inspectors of election.

Beverly W. Jones, and each of the other defendants, was duly sworn as
a witness in his own behalf, and Susan B. Anthony was called as a
witness in behalf of the defendants.

Miss ANTHONY: I would like to know if the testimony of a person
who has been convicted of a crime can be taken?

The COURT: They call you as a witness, madam.

The witness, having been duly affirmed, testified as follows:

_Examined by_ Mr. VAN VOORHIS:

_Q._ Miss Anthony, I want you to state what occurred at the Board
of Registry, when your name was registered? _A._ That would be
very tedious, for it was full an hour.

_Q._ State generally what was done, or what occupied that hour's
time?

Objected to.

_Q._ Well, was the question of your right to be registered a
subject of discussion there? _A._ It was.

_Q._ By and between whom? _A._ Between the supervisors, the
inspectors, and myself.

_Q._ State, if you please, what occurred when you presented
yourself at the polls on election day? _A._ Mr. Hall decidedly
objected--

Mr. CROWLEY: I submit to the Court that unless the counsel
expects to change the version given by the other witnesses, it is
not necessary to take up time.

The COURT: As a matter of discretion, I don't see how it will be
any benefit. It was fully related by the others, and doubtless
correctly.

Mr. CROWLEY: It is not disputed.

The WITNESS: I would like to say, if I might be allowed by the
Court, that the general impression that I swore I was a male
citizen, is an erroneous one.

Mr. VAN VOORHIS: You took the two oaths there, did you? _A._ Yes,
sir.

The COURT: You presented yourself as a female, claiming that you
had a right to vote? _A._ I presented myself not as a female at
all, sir; I presented myself as a citizen of the United States. I
was called to the United States ballot-box by the XIV. Amendment,
not as a female, but as a citizen, and I went there.

Miss Anthony's emphatic reply and intimation that, although a
condemned criminal for having voted, she still believed in her
citizenship as securing that right to her, closed the lips of the
Court, and she was summarily dismissed from the witness-box, and the
case rested.

Mr. Van Voorhis addressed the Court at some length, submitting that
there was no ground whatever to charge these defendants (the
Inspectors) with any criminal offense,

1. Because the women who voted were legal voters. 2. Because they
were challenged and took the oaths which the statute requires of
Electors, and the Inspectors had no right, after such oath, to
reject their votes. 3. Because no malice is shown. Whether the
women were entitled to have their names registered and to vote,
or not, the defendants believed they had such right, and acted in
good faith, according to their best judgment, in allowing the
registry of their names--and in receiving their votes--and
whether they decided right or wrong in point of law, they are not
guilty of any criminal offense.

These points were amplified by the counsel at some length, who closed
by saying, "The defendants should be discharged by the Court." Mr.
Crowley then rose to make his argument, when the Court said:

The COURT: I don't think it is necessary for you to spend time in
argument, Mr. Crowley. I think upon the last authority cited by
the counsel there is no defense in this case. It is entirely
clear that where there is a distinct judicial act, the party
performing the judicial act is not responsible, civilly or
criminally, unless corruption is proven, and in many cases when
corruption is not proven. But where the act is not judicial in
its character--where there is no discretion--then there is no
legal protection. That is the law as laid down in the authority
last quoted, and the authority quoted by Judge Selden in his
opinion. It is undoubtedly good law. They hold expressly in that
case that the inspectors are administrative officers, and not
judicial officers.

Now, this is the point in the case, in my view of it: If there
was any case in which a female was entitled to vote, then it
would be a subject of examination. If a female over the age of
twenty-one was entitled to vote, then it would be within the
judicial authority of the inspectors to examine and determine
whether in the given case the female came within that provision.
If a married woman was entitled to vote, or if a married woman
was not entitled to vote, and a single woman was entitled to
vote, I think the inspectors would have a right in a case before
them, to judge upon the evidence whether the person before them
was married or single. If they decided erroneously, their
judicial character would protect them. But under the law of this
State, as it stands, under no circumstances is a woman entitled
to vote. When Miss Anthony, Mrs. Leyden, and the other ladies
came there and presented themselves for registry, and presented
themselves to offer their votes, when it appeared that they were
women--that they were of the female sex--the power and authority
of the inspectors was at an end. When they act upon a subject
upon which they have no discretion, I think there is no judicial
authority. There is a large range of discretion in regard to the
votes offered by the male sex. If a man offers his vote, there is
a question whether he is a minor--whether he is twenty-one years
of age. The subject is within their jurisdiction. If they decide
correctly, it is well; if they decide erroneously, they act
judicially, and are not liable. If the question is whether the
person presenting his vote is a foreigner or naturalized, or
whether he has been a resident of the State or district for a
sufficient length of time, the subject is all within their
jurisdiction, and they have a right to decide, and are protected
if they decide wrong.

But upon the view which has been taken of this question of the
right of females to vote, by the United States Court at
Washington, and by the adjudication which was made this morning,
upon this subject there is no discretion, and therefore I must
hold that it affords no protection. In that view of the case, is
there anything to go to the jury?

Mr. VAN VOORHIS: Yes, your honor. The COURT: What?

Mr. VAN VOORHIS: The jury must pass upon the whole case, and
particularly as to whether any ballots were received for
representative in Congress, or candidates for representative in
Congress, and whether the defendants acted willfully and
maliciously.

The COURT: It is too plain to argue that. Mr. VAN VOORHIS: There
is nothing but circumstantial evidence.

The COURT: Your own witness testified to it. Mr. VAN VOORHIS: But
"knowingly," your honor, implies knowing that it is a vote for
representative in Congress.

The COURT: That comes within the decision of the question of law.
I don't see that there is anything to go to the jury. Mr. VAN
VOORHIS: I can not take your honor's view of the case, but of
course must submit to it. We ask to go to the jury upon this
whole case, and claim that in this case, as in all criminal
cases, the right of trial by jury is made inviolate by the
Constitution--that the Court has no power to take it from the
jury. The COURT: I am going to submit it to the jury.

_Gentlemen of the Jury:_ This case is now before you upon the
evidence as it stands, and I shall leave the case with you to
decide. Mr. VAN VOORHIS: I claim the right to address the jury.

The COURT: I don't think there is anything upon which you can
legitimately address the jury. _Gentlemen_, the defendants are
charged with knowingly, willfully, and wrongfully receiving the
votes of the ladies whose names are mentioned, in November last,
in the city of Rochester. They are charged in the same indictment
with willfully and improperly registering those ladies. I decided
in the case this morning, which many of you heard, probably, that
under the law as it stands the ladies who offered their votes had
no right to vote whatever. I repeat that decision, and I charge
you that they had no right to offer their votes. They having no
right to offer their votes, the inspectors of election ought not
to receive them. The additional question exists in this case
whether the fact that they acted as inspectors will relieve them
from the charge in this case. You have heard the views which I
have given upon that. I think they are administrative officers. I
charge you that they are administrative and ministerial officers
in this respect, and that they are not judicial officers whose
action protects them, and that therefore they are liable in this
case. But, instead of doing as I did in the case this
morning--directing a verdict--I submit the case to you with these
instructions, and you can decide it here, or you may go out.

Mr. VAN VOORHIS: I ask your honor to instruct the jury that if
they find these inspectors acted honestly, in accordance with
their best judgment, they should be acquitted. The COURT: I have
expressly ruled to the contrary of that, gentlemen; that that
makes no difference.

Mr. VAN VOORHIS: And that in this country--under the laws of this
country--The COURT: That is enough--you need not argue it, Mr.
Van Voorhis.

Mr. VAN VOORHIS: Then. I ask your honor to charge the jury that
they must find the fact that these inspectors received the votes
of these persons knowingly, and that such votes were votes for
some person for member of Congress, there being in the case no
evidence that any man was voted for, for member of Congress, and
there being no evidence except that secret ballots were received;
that the jury have a right to find for the defendants, if they
choose. The COURT: I charge the jury that there is sufficient
evidence to sustain the indictment upon this point.

Mr. VAN VOORHIS: I ask your honor also to charge the jury that
there is sufficient evidence to sustain a verdict of not guilty.
The COURT: I can not charge that.

Mr. VAN VOORHIS: Then why should it go to the jury? The COURT: As
a matter of form.

Mr. VAN VOORHIS: If the jury should find a verdict of not guilty,
could your honor set it aside? The COURT: I will debate that with
you when the occasion arises. Gentlemen, you may deliberate here,
or retire, as you choose.

The jury retired for consultation, and the Court took a recess. The
Court re-convened at 7 o'clock, when the clerk called the jury and
asked them if they had agreed upon their verdict. The foreman replied
in the negative.

The COURT: Is there anything upon which I can give you any advice
gentlemen, or any information? A JUROR: We stand eleven for
conviction, and one opposed.

The COURT: If that gentleman desires to ask any questions in
respect to the questions of law, or the facts in the case, I will
give him any information he desires. [No response from the jury.]
It is quite proper, if any gentleman has doubts about anything,
either as to the law or the facts, that he should state it to the
Court. Counsel are both present, and I can give such information
as is correct. A JUROR: I don't wish to ask any questions.

The COURT: Then you may retire again, gentlemen. The Court will
adjourn until to-morrow morning.

The jury retired, and after an absence of about ten minutes returned
into court. The clerk called the names of the jury.

The CLERK: Gentlemen, have you agreed upon your verdict? The
FOREMAN: We have.

The CLERK: How say you, do you find the prisoners at the bar
guilty of the offense whereof they stand indicted, or not guilty?
The FOREMAN: Guilty.

The CLERK: Hearken to your verdict as it stands recorded by the
court. You say you find the prisoners at the bar guilty of the
offense whereof they stand indicted, and so say you all. Mr. VAN
VOORHIS: I ask that the jury be polled. The clerk polled the
jury, each juror answering in the affirmative to the question,
"Is this your verdict."

On the next day, June 19, 1873, the counsel for the defendants, Mr.
John Van Voorhis, made a motion to the court for a new trial in behalf
of Beverley W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall. The
following are the grounds of the motion:

1. The indictment contains no sufficient statement of any crime
under the Acts of Congress, upon which it is framed. 2. The court
has no jurisdiction of the subject matter of the offense. 3. It
was an error, for which a new trial should be granted, to refuse
the defendants the fundamental right to address the jury through
their counsel. This is a right guaranteed by the United States
Constitution. (See Article VI. of the amendments to the U.S.
Constitution. 1 Graham and Waterman on New Trials, pages 682,
683, and 684.) 4. The defendants were substantially deprived of
the right of jury trial. The instructions of the court to the
jury were imperative. They were equivalent to a direction to find
a verdict of guilty. It was said by the court in the hearing of
the jury, that the case was submitted to the jury "as a matter of
form." The jury was not at liberty to exercise its own judgment
upon the evidence, and without committing a gross discourtesy to
the court, could render no verdict except that of guilty. 5.
Admitting that the defendants acted without malice, or any
corrupt motive, and in accordance with their best judgments, and
in perfect good faith, it was error to charge that that was no
defense. 6. The defendants are admitted to have acted in
accordance with their duty as defined by the laws of New York (1
R. S. Edmonds' Ed., pp. 126-127, sections 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
and 19) as construed by the Court of Appeals. (People _vs._
Pease, 27 N. Y. 45.)

They are administrative officers and bound to regard only the
evidence which the statute prescribes. They are not clothed with
the power to reject the vote of a person who has furnished the
evidence which the law requires of a right to vote, on what they
or either of them might know, as to the truth or falsity of such
evidences. They have no discretion, and must perform their duty,
as it is defined by the laws of New York and the decisions of her
courts. 7. The defendant, William B. Hall, has been tried and
convicted in his absence from the court. This is an error fatal
to the conviction in his case.

The court denied the motion; then asked the defendants if they had
anything to say why sentence should not be pronounced, in response to
which they replied as follows:

BEVERLY W. JONES said: Your honor has pronounced me guilty of
crime; the jury had but little to do with it. In the performance
of my duties as an inspector of election, which position I have
held for the last four years, I acted conscientiously, faithfully
and according to the best of my judgment and ability. I did not
believe that I had the right to reject the ballot of a citizen
who offered to vote, and who took the preliminary and general
oaths; and answered all questions prescribed by law. The
instructions furnished me by the State authorities declared that
I had no such right. As far as the registry of the names is
concerned, they would never have been placed upon the registry if
it had not been for Daniel Warner, the Democratic federal
supervisor of elections, appointed by this court, who not only
advised the registry, but addressed us, saying, "Young men, do
you know the penalty of the law if you refuse to register these
names?" And after discharging my duties faithfully and honestly
and to the best of my ability, if it is to vindicate the law that
I am to be imprisoned, I willingly submit to the penalty.

EDWIN T. MARSH said: In October last, just previous to the time
fixed for the sitting of the Board of Registrars in the first
district of the eighth ward of Rochester, a vacancy occurred. I
was solicited to act, and consenting, I was duly appointed by the
common council. I had never given the matter a thought until
called to the position, and as a consequence knew nothing of the
law. On the morning of the first day of the last session of the
board, Miss Anthony and other women presented themselves and
claimed the right to be registered. So far as I knew, the
question of woman suffrage had never come up in that shape
before. We were in a position where we could take no middle
course. Decide which way me might, we were liable to prosecution.
We devoted all the time to acquiring information on the subject
that our duties as Registrars would allow. We were expected, it
seems, to make an infallible decision, inside of two days, of a
question in regard to which some of the best minds of the country
are divided. The influences by which we were surrounded, were
nearly all in unison with the course we took. I believed then,
and believe now, that we acted lawfully.

I faithfully discharged the duties of my office according to the
best of my ability, in strict compliance with the oath
administered to me. I consider the argument of our counsel
unanswered and unanswerable. The verdict is not the verdict of
the jury. I am not guilty of the charge.

The Court then sentenced the defendants to pay a fine of $25 each, and
the costs of the prosecution.[175]

The following petition was presented in the Senate by Mr. Sargent, the
present (1882) United States Minister to Germany, and in the House by
Mr. Loughridge, of Iowa:

Forty-third Congress, First Session, Senate, Mis. Doc. No. 39. A
petition of Susan B. Anthony praying for the remission of a fine
imposed upon her by the United States Court for the Northern
District of New York, for illegal voting. January 22, 1874.
Referred to the Committee on the Judiciary and ordered to be
printed.

_To the Congress of the United States:_

The petition of Susan B. Anthony, of the city of Rochester, in
the county of Monroe, and State of New York, respectfully
represents: That, prior to the late presidential election, your
petitioner applied to the Board of Registry in the Eighth Ward of
the city of Rochester, in which city she had resided for more
than twenty-five years, to have her name placed upon the register
of voters; and the Board of Registry, after consideration of the
subject, decided that your petitioner was entitled to have her
name placed upon the register, and placed it there accordingly.
On the day of election your petitioner, in common with hundreds
of other American citizens, her neighbors, whose names had also
been registered as voters, offered to the inspectors of election
her ballots for electors of President and Vice-President, and for
members of Congress, which were received and deposited in the
ballot-box by the inspectors. For this act of your petitioner an
indictment was found against her by the grand jury, at the
sitting of the District Court of the United States for the
Northern District of New York, at Albany, charging your
petitioner, under the nineteenth section of the act of Congress
of May 31, 1870, entitled "An act to enforce the rights of
citizens of the United States to vote in the several States of
this Union, and for other purposes," with having "knowingly voted
without having a lawful right to vote."

To that indictment your petitioner pleaded not guilty, and the
trial of the issue thus joined took place at the Circuit Court in
Canandaigua, in the county of Ontario, before the Honorable Ward
Hunt, one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United
States, on the 18th day of June last. Upon that trial the facts
of voting by your petitioner, and that she was a woman, were not
denied; nor was it claimed on the part of the Government than
your petitioner lacked any of the qualifications of a voter,
unless disqualified by reason of her sex. It was shown on behalf
of your petitioner, on the trial, that before voting she called
upon a respectable lawyer and asked his opinion whether she had a
right to vote, and he advised her that she had such right, and
the lawyer was examined as a witness in her behalf, and testified
that he gave her such advice, and that he gave it in good faith,
believing that she had such right. It also appeared that when
she offered to vote, the question whether, as a woman, she had a
right to vote, was raised by the inspectors, and considered by
them in her presence, and they decided that she had a right to
vote, and received her vote accordingly.

It was shown on the part of the Government that, on the
examination of your petitioner before the commissioner on whose
warrant she was arrested, your petitioner stated that she should
have voted if allowed to vote, without reference to the advice of
the attorney whose opinion she asked; that she was not induced to
vote by that opinion; that she had before determined to offer her
vote, and had no doubt about her right to vote. At the close of
the testimony, your petitioner's counsel proceeded to address the
jury, and stated that he desired to present for consideration
three propositions, two of law, and one of fact: 1. That your
petitioner had a lawful right to vote. 2. That whether she had a
right to vote or not, if she honestly believed that she had that
right, and voted in good faith in that belief, she was guilty of
no crime. 3. That when your petitioner gave her vote she gave it
in good faith, believing that it was her right to do so.

That the two first propositions presented questions for the court
to decide, and the last question for the jury. When your
petitioner's counsel had proceeded thus far, the judge suggested
that the counsel had better discuss, in the first place, the
questions of law, which the counsel proceeded to do; and, having
discussed the two legal questions at length, asked then to say a
few words to the jury on the question of fact. The judge then
said to the counsel that he thought that had better be left until
the views of the court upon the legal questions should be made
known.

The district attorney thereupon addressed the court at length
upon the legal questions, and at the close of his argument the
judge delivered an opinion adverse to the positions of your
petitioner's counsel upon both of the legal questions presented,
holding that your petitioner was not entitled to vote; and that
if she voted in good faith in the belief in fact that she had a
right to vote, it would constitute no defense; the ground of the
decision on the last point being that your petitioner was bound
to know that by the law she was not a legal voter, and that even
if she voted in good faith in the contrary belief, it constituted
no defense to the crime with which she was charged.

The decision of the judge upon those questions was read from a
written document, and at the close of the reading the judge said
that the decision of those questions disposed of the case and
left no question of fact for the jury, and that he should
therefore direct the jury to find a verdict of guilty. The judge
then said to the jury that the decision of the court had disposed
of all there was in the case, and that he directed them to find a
verdict of guilty; and he instructed the clerk to enter such a
verdict.

At this time, before any entry had been made by the clerk, your
petitioner's counsel asked the judge to submit the case to the
jury, and to give to the jury the following several instructions.
[See page 680.]

The judge declined to submit the case to the jury upon any
question whatever, and directed them to render a verdict of
guilty against your petitioner. Your petitioner's counsel
excepted to the decision of the judge upon the legal questions,
and to his direction to the jury to find a verdict of guilty,
insisting that it was a direction which no court had a right to
give in any criminal case.

The judge then instructed the clerk to take the verdict, and the
clerk said, "Gentlemen of the jury, hearken to your verdict as
the court hath recorded it. You say you find the defendant guilty
of the offense charged; so say you all." No response whatever was
made by the jury, either by word or sign. They had not consulted
together in their seats or otherwise. Neither of them had spoken
a word, nor had they been asked whether they had or had not
agreed upon a verdict. Your petitioner's counsel then asked that
the clerk be requested to poll the jury. The judge said, "That
can not be allowed. Gentlemen of the jury, you are discharged;"
and the jurors left the box. No juror spoke a word during the
trial, from the time when they were empaneled to the time of
their discharge. After denying a motion for a new trial, the
judge proceeded upon the conviction thus obtained to pass
sentence upon your petitioner, imposing upon her a fine of $100
and the costs of the prosecution.

Your petitioner respectfully submits that, in these proceedings,
she has been denied the rights guaranteed by the Constitution to
all persons accused of crime, the right of trial by jury, and the
right to have the assistance of counsel for their defense. It is
a mockery to call her trial a trial by jury; and unless the
assistance of counsel may be limited to the argument of legal
questions, without the privilege of saying a word to the jury
upon the question of the guilt or innocence in fact of the party
charged, or the privilege of ascertaining from the jury whether
they do or do not agree to the verdict pronounced by the court in
their name, she has been denied the assistance of counsel for her
defense.

Your petitioner also respectfully insists that the decision of
the judge that good faith on the part of your petitioner in
offering her vote did not constitute a defense, was not only a
violation of the deepest and most sacred principle of the
criminal law, that no one can be guilty of crime unless a
criminal intent exists; but was also a palpable violation of the
statute under which the conviction was had; not on the ground
that good faith could, in this, or in any case, justify a
criminal act, but on the ground that bad faith in voting was an
indispensable ingredient in the offense with which your
petitioner was charged. Any other interpretation strikes the word
"knowingly" out of the statute, the word which alone describes
the essence of the offense. The statute means, as your petitioner
is advised, and humbly submits, a knowledge in fact, not a
knowledge falsely imputed by law to a party not possessing it in
fact, as the judge in this case has held. Crimes can not, either
in law or in morals, be established by judicial falsehood. If
there be any crime in the case, your petitioner humbly insists it
is to be found in such an adjudication.

To the decision of the judge upon the question of the right of
your petitioner to vote, she makes no complaint. It was a
question properly belonging to the court to decide, was fully and
fairly submitted to the judge, and of his decision, whether right
or wrong, your petitioner is well aware she can not here
complain. But in regard to her conviction of crime, which she
insists, for the reasons above given, was in violation of the
principles of the common law, of common morality, of the statute
under which she was charged, and of the Constitution--a crime of
which she was as innocent as the judge by whom she was
convicted--she respectfully asks, inasmuch as the law has
provided no means of reviewing the decisions of the judge, or of
correcting his errors, that the fine imposed upon your petitioner
be remitted, as an expression of the sense of this high tribunal
that her conviction was unjust.

Dated January 12, 1874. SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

In the Senate of the United States, June 20, 1874, Mr. Edmunds
submitted the following report:

_The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the bill_
(S. 391) _to enable Susan B. Anthony to pay a fine imposed upon
her by the District Court for the Northern District of New York,
and a petition praying for the remission of said fine, report:_

That they are not satisfied that the action of the Court was such
as represented in the petition, and that, if it were so, the
Senate could not legally take any action in the premises, and
move that the Committee be discharged from the further
consideration of the petition, and that the bill be postponed
indefinitely.

Mr. Carpenter asked, and obtained, leave of the Senate to present the
following as the views of the minority:

_The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the
memorial of_ SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _praying to be relieved from a
certain judgment, rendered against her by the Circuit Court of
the United States for the Northern District of New York:_

* * * * *

The majority of the Committee have determined that inasmuch as
the relief prayed for by the memorial can not be granted, the
Committee will ask to be discharged from its further
consideration, and will not express any opinion as to the
correctness or incorrectness of the course pursued on the trial
of Miss Anthony.

The House of Lords in England or the Senate of the United States
may engage in any investigation looking to legislation, although,
as an incident to, or a result of, such investigation, it may
appear that some officer who is impeachable has been guilty of
conduct for which he might be impeached. Then, surely, in a case
like this, where there is neither suggestion nor suspicion of
corrupt conduct on the part of the estimable judge before whom
the trial was conducted, it can not be improper for a committee
of the Senate to inquire whether, in the trial of a citizen for
alleged violation of the laws of the United States, a precedent
dangerous to the liberties of every citizen has been set. Indeed,
the injurious effect of every judicial departure from sound
principle is in proportion to the eminence and purity of the
judge by whom it is committed. The outrages perpetrated by
Scroggs and Jeffreys in the administration of criminal justice
were grievous upon the individuals unjustly or illegally
convicted, but do no harm as precedents. A vicious precedent, set
by an infamous judge, is harmless; while a similar violation of
the law by a pure and upright magistrate is attended by
far-reaching and detrimental consequences.

It is fashionable, we know, just now to heap contumely upon women
who demand to be allowed to enjoy their civil political rights.
Ridicule is the chief weapon employed against them, and is freely
applied to all who advocate their cause. Gentlemen who would
blush to be thought negligent in the offices of frivolous
gallantry lack the manhood to accord to women their substantial
rights. And, strange to say, ladies dwelling in luxurious ease
join with the fops of society to cast contempt upon the earnest
aspirations of woman for the possession of her just rights. We
have acted upon the doctrines of the Declaration of Independence,
so far as to make all men equal before the law; but women, our
mothers, our wives, our sisters, and our daughters, we condemn to
inequality--many to servitude. But the cry of women, who, in
poverty and want, are driven from the employments of honest
industry to indulgence in vice and to the haunts of shame, is
rising on every hand, and appeals to the heart with as much power
as the wailings of a slave beneath the lash of his master.

The wrongs of Martin Koszta in a foreign land touched the heart
of the nation. But the denial of her rights to Miss Susan B.
Anthony in a court of the Union is thought to be unworthy the
attention of the American Senate. To those who are indifferent
whether a woman be deprived of or be permitted to enjoy even the
rights which are secured to her by the Constitution, it may be
suggested that a bad precedent set in the trial of a woman who
has presumed to express her choice as to those who should make
laws for her, laws by which her rights are to be affected and her
property be taxed, may stand in the way of some man's rights
hereafter. It may yet happen, in the revolutions of time, that
some one of the majority of your committee may be subjected to an
unjust and false accusation, which must be submitted to the
judgment of twelve men in the jury-box or of one man on the
bench; twelve men fresh from the people and warmed with the
instinctive sympathies of humanity, or one man, separated from
the people by his station and by the habits of a life passed in
seclusion and study. A jury-trial must be the same whether a man
or woman be arraigned. And the subject under consideration is
important even to men who are regardless of the rights of women.

I shall, therefore, proceed to inquire, as I think the committee
ought to have done, whether the memorialist has been deprived, as
she alleges, of the right of trial by jury secured to her by the
Constitution of the United States. The memorialist claims that
the court erred in its ruling, and in taking the case from the
jury and directing a verdict against her; and also in refusing to
have the jury polled in regard to their verdict; and she prays
that her fine may be remitted by act of Congress.

The first question is, whether in a criminal trial, plea not
guilty, the jury have a right to render a general verdict
involving questions of law as well as fact, under instructions by
the court upon matters of law; or whether, when the testimony is
not conflicting, the court may take the case from the jury and
direct a verdict of guilty to be entered.

It is the practice in civil causes for the court, if there is no
conflict in the evidence, to direct a verdict for the plaintiff
or for the defendant, because in such case the court may set
aside a verdict and grant a new trial in favor of plaintiff or
defendant. It would, therefore, be a barren form to require the
jury to deliberate and find a verdict in a case where if the
verdict was not one way, the court would set it aside and order a
new trial, and so on, until a verdict should be found that was
satisfactory to the court. So in practice it is usual for the
court to direct the jury to acquit the prisoner in a criminal
case; because, if the jury find against the prisoner, the court
may set the verdict aside and order a new trial, and continue to
do so until a verdict of acquittal shall be rendered; though it
is doubtful whether, even in a civil cause, the court could
refuse to let the jury be polled, or could enter a verdict for
the jury to which they did not agree. The court could direct the
jury what to do, and set aside the verdict if they did otherwise;
but it is not admitted that, even in a civil cause, the court
could enter a verdict against the wishes of the jury.

But at the common law and in the Federal courts it is certain
that where the jury render a verdict of acquittal, even against
the evidence and the instructions of the court on propositions of
law, the court can not set aside the verdict and order another
trial. From this it follows that the court can not take from the
jury this power of acquittal in a criminal case, by directing and
compelling a verdict against the prisoner, and refusing to have
the jury polled. But the importance of this question requires its
examination not only in the light of reason, but of authority.
The Constitution of the United States provides:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the
right to a speedy and a public trial by an impartial jury of
the State and district wherein the crime shall have been
committed, etc.

The Constitution does not define or regulate the trial by jury,
but secures it as it was then known to the common law. This is a
proposition so well settled by judicial determination that I
shall spend no time upon it beyond citing the following
authorities: Norval _vs._ Rice, 2 Wis., 22; May _vs._ R. R. Co.,
3 Wis., 219; Byers & Davis _vs._ Com., 42 Penn. St., 89; United
States _vs._ Lorenzo Dow, Taney Decis., 35; Lamb _et al._ _vs._
Lane, 4 Ohio Stat., 167.

Therefore, if it can be shown that, at the time the Constitution
was adopted, it was well settled that the jury in a criminal
cause might find a general verdict, including both law and fact,
then this right is secured to juries in the Federal courts by the
Constitution itself; and not even an act of Congress could take
it away. What the law was at that time, is mere matter of
historical inquiry, wholly different from another question, which
is so often mistaken for it, whether juries ought to possess the
right.

What, then, was the law upon this subject when the Constitution
was adopted? Mr. Hargrave, in one of his annotations upon Lord
Coke's first Institute, declares that, inasmuch as the jury may,
as often as they think fit, find a general verdict, it was
unquestionable that they might so far decide upon the law as well
as fact, such a verdict necessarily involving both.

In this opinion, says Mr. Hargrave, I have the authority of
Littleton himself, who writes, "that if the inquest will
take upon them the knowledge of the law upon the matter,
they may give their verdict generally."

In People _vs._ Croswell, 3 Johnson's Cases, 336, Chief-Justice
Kent reviewed all the preceding authorities with great care, and
discussed the philosophy of the doctrine under consideration,
with the ability which characterizes his most celebrated
opinions; and his decision in this case stands to this day as one
of the landmarks upon this subject. After reciting the
authorities, he says:

To meet and resist directly this stream of authority is
impossible. But while the power of the jury is admitted, it
is denied that they can rightfully or lawfully exercise it
without compromitting their consciences, and that they are
bound implicitly in all cases to receive the law from the
court. The law must, however, have intended, in granting
this power to a jury, to grant them a lawful and rightful
power, or it would have provided a remedy against the undue
exercise of it. The true criterion of a legal power is its
capacity to produce a definitive effect, liable to neither
censure nor review. And the verdict of not guilty in a
criminal case is, in every respect, absolute and final. The
jury are not liable to punishment, nor the verdict to
control. No attaint lies, nor can a new trial be awarded.
The exercise of this power in the jury has been sanctioned
and upheld in constant activity from the earliest ages. It
was made a question by Bracton (fol. 119, a. b.), who was to
sit in judgment and decide upon points of law on appeals in
capital cases. It could not be the king, he says, for then
he would be both prosecutor and judge; nor his justices, for
they represented him. He thinks, therefore, the _curia_ and
_pares_ were to be judges in all cases of life and limb, or
disherison of heir, where the crown was the prosecutor. And,
indeed, it is probable that in the earliest stages of the
English juridical history the jury, instead of deciding
causes under the direction of the judge, decided all causes
without the assistance of the judge. (Barrington on the
Statutes, 18, 26, 311.)

He then proceeds to review the trial of Lilburn for high treason
in 1549; Bushell's case, Vaughan, 135, and Sir T. Jones, 113;
Algernon Sidney's case, 3 State Trials, 817; Tuchin's case, 5
State Trials, 542, and other cases. Again, he says:

To deny to the jury the right of judging of the intent and
tendency of the act, is to take away the substance, and with
it the value and security of this mode of trial. It is to
transfer the exclusive cognizance of crimes from the jury to
the court, and to give the judge the absolute control of the
press. There is nothing peculiar in the law of libels to
withdraw it from the jurisdiction of the jury. The twelve
judges in their opinion in the House of Lords (April, 1792),
admitted that the general criminal law of England was the
law of libel. And by the general criminal law of England,
the office of the jury is judicial. "They only are the
judges," as Lord Somers observes (Essay on the Power and
Duty of Grand Juries, p. 7), "from whose sentence the
indicted are to expect life or death. Upon their integrity
and understanding the lives of all that are brought into
judgment do ultimately depend. From their verdict there lies
no appeal. They resolve both law and fact, and this has
always been their practice."

And, after referring to the case of Franklin, and other cases
holding a contrary doctrine, he denounces them as innovations,
and adding that the subject underwent a patient investigation and
severe scrutiny upon principle and precedent in Parliament, says:

And a bill declaratory of the right of the jury to give a
general verdict upon the whole matter put in issue, without
being required or directed to find the defendant guilty
merely on the proof of publication and the truth of the
innuendoes, was at length agreed to, and passed with
uncommon unanimity. It is entitled "An act to remove doubts
respecting the functions of juries in cases of libel"; and,
although I admit that a declaratory statute is not to be
received as conclusive evidence of the common law, yet it
must be considered as a very respectable authority in the
case, and especially as the circumstances attending the
passage of this bill reflect the highest honor on the
moderation, the good sense, and the free and independent
spirit of the British Parliament.

And again he says: The result, from this view, is, to my
mind, a firm conviction that this court is not bound by the
decisions of Lord Raymond and his successors. By withdrawing
from the jury the consideration of the essence of the
charge, they render their function nugatory and
contemptible. Those opinions are repugnant to the more
ancient authorities which had given to the jury the power,
and with it the right, to judge of the law and the fact,
when they were blended by the issue, and which rendered
their decisions, in criminal cases, final and conclusive.
The English bar steadily resisted those decisions as
usurpations on the rights of the jury. Some of the judges
treated the doctrine as erroneous, and the Parliament at
last declared it an innovation by restoring the trial by
jury, in cases of libel, to that ancient vigor and
independence by which it had grown so precious to the nation
as the guardian of liberty and life, against the power of
the court, the vindictive persecution of the prosecutor, and
the oppression of the government.

This celebrated opinion may safely be relied upon as a correct
statement of the law as it stood when it was delivered in 1804.
But still more conclusive authority remains to be considered. The
sedition act of 1798, after defining what should be a criminal
libel, and declaring that the defendant might give the truth of
the matter in evidence, provides as follows:

And the jury who shall try the cause shall have a right to
determine the law and the fact, under the direction of the
court, as in other cases. (1 Stat. at L., 507.)

The language of this act, "as in other cases," recognizes the
right here contended for. In the celebrated Callender trial, in
1800, which was a prosecution under this statute, Mr. Justice
Chase, whose general bearing was so unfriendly to the defendant
as to secure his impeachment by the House of Representatives,
admitted this right of the jury. He said:

We all know that juries have the right to decide the law as
well as the fact. (Wharton's State Trials, 710.) And again
he says:

I admit that the jury are to compare the statute with the
facts proved, and then to decide whether the acts done are
prohibited by the law, and whether they amount to the
offense described in the indictment. (_Ib._, p. 713.)

Though, with seeming want of logic, he held that the jury could
not decide whether the statute was constitutional or not. But the
full admission that the jury were judges of the law as well as
the fact, shows the general understanding upon this subject,
though the judge may have erred in applying the principle in the
case before him. In Fries's case, who was tried for treason,
1799-1800, the jury were instructed by Judge Peters as follows:

It is the duty of the court to declare the law; though both
facts and law, which, I fear, are too plain to admit a
reasonable doubt, are subject to your consideration.
(Wharton's State Trials, 587.)

And, in the second trial of Fries, Judge Chase instructed the
jury as follows:

It is the duty of the court in this case, and in all
criminal cases, to state to the jury their opinion of the
law arising on the facts; but the jury are to decide in the
present, and in all criminal cases, both the law and the
facts, on their consideration of the whole case. (2 Chase's
Trial, Appendix 1.)

In the answer of Judge Chase to articles of impeachment against
him, he says:

He well knows that it is the right of juries, in criminal
cases, to give a general verdict of acquittal, which can not
be set aside on account of its being contrary to law, and
that hence results the power of juries to decide on the law
as well as on the facts in all criminal cases. This power he
holds to be a sacred part of our legal privileges, which he
has never attempted, and never will attempt to abridge or
obstruct. (1 Chase's Trial, pp. 5, 34, 35.)

In Georgia _vs._ Brailsford, 3 Dallas, 4, in 1794, Chief-Justice
Jay charged the jury as follows:

It may not be amiss here, gentlemen, to remind you of the
good old rule, that on questions of fact it is the province
of the jury, on questions of law it is the province of the
court, to decide. But it must be observed that by the same
law which recognizes this reasonable distribution of
jurisdiction, you have, nevertheless, a right to take upon
yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as
well as the fact in controversy. On this, and on every other
occasion, however, we have no doubt you will pay that
respect which is due to the opinion of the court; for as, on
the one hand, it is presumed that juries are the best judges
of facts, it is, on the other hand, presumable that the
court are the best judges of law. But still both objects are
lawfully within your power of decision.

This charge was delivered in a jury trial, at the bar of the
Supreme Court, and expressed the unanimous opinion of the judges
of that court, and that, too, in a civil cause. The decision in
Georgia _vs._ Brailsford has never been expressly overruled by
that court; although the practice in civil causes is for the
court to direct a verdict where there is no conflict in regard to
the testimony. In Beavans _vs._ The United States, 13 Wall, 56,
which was an action _ex contractu_, on a receiver's bond, the
court says:

The objection that the jury was instructed to find for the
plaintiffs the amount claimed by the papers given in
evidence (viz, the official settlements), with interest
thereon, is entirely without merit. There was no evidence to
impeach the accounts stated, or to show set-off, release, or
payment. The instruction was, therefore, in accordance with
the legal effect of the evidence, and there were no disputed
facts upon which the jury could pass.

An act of Congress declares that the papers of official
settlement shall be _prima facie_ evidence of the condition of
the accounts. No testimony was offered in this case to impeach
that statement. There was, therefore, no fact in issue; and the
instruction of the court to find a verdict for the plaintiff was,
in substance, ruling upon matters of law only. And the Supreme
Court, in their opinion, recognize, and merely recognize, the
practice which now obtains universally in the trial of civil
causes. And, although it is inconsistent with Georgia _vs._
Brailsford, and substantially overrules it, it does not impair
the value of the decision in that case, as showing the
understanding of the profession and the courts about the time of
the adoption of the Constitution.

In United States _vs._ Wilson (1 Bald., 108), the jury were
instructed as follows:

We have thus stated to you the law of this case under the
solemn duties and obligations imposed on us, under the clear
conviction that in doing so we have presented to you the
true test by which you will apply the evidence to the case;
but you will distinctly understand that you are the judges
both of the law and the fact in a criminal case, and are not
bound by the opinion of the court. You may judge for
yourselves; and if you should feel it your duty to differ
from us, you must find your verdict accordingly. At the same
time, it is our duty to say that it is in perfect accordance
with the spirit of our legal institutions that the courts
should decide questions of law, and the juries of facts. The
nature of the tribunals naturally leads to this division of
powers; and it is better, for the sake of public justice,
that it should be so. When the law is settled by a court
there is more certainty than when done by a jury. It will be
better known and more respected in public opinion. But if
you are prepared to say that the law is different from what
you have heard from us, you are in the exercise of a
constitutional right to do so.

In United States _vs._ Porter (1 Bald., 108), the doctrine was
stated more guardedly, as follows:

In repeating what was said on a former occasion to another
jury, that you have the power to decide on the law as well
as the facts of this case, and are not bound to find
according to our opinion of the law, we feel ourselves
constrained to make some explanations not then deemed
necessary, but now called for from the course of the
defense.

You may find a general verdict of guilty or not guilty as
you think proper, or may find the facts specially, and leave
the guilt or innocence of the prisoner to the judgment of
the court. If your verdict acquits the prisoner, we can not
grant a new trial, however much we may differ with you as to
the law which governs the case; and, in this respect, a jury
are the judges of law if they choose to become so.

In Farmer's trial before the Supreme Court of the State of New
Hampshire in 1821, the Chief-Justice, speaking for the whole
court, told the jury that they were the judges both of the law
and the fact; that

It was the duty of the court to give them proper
instructions and to aid them in forming a correct opinion as
to the law applicable to the case. But if, contrary to his
intentions, any expression should escape him which might
seem to indicate any opinion as to the facts, they must
disregard it; their verdict ought to be according to their
own opinion as to the prisoner's guilt or innocence. (See
Farmer's Trial, p. 68.)

In the trial of William S. Smith for misdemeanor, in the Circuit
Court of the United States for the State of New York, in July,
1806, the jury were instructed as follows:

You have heard much said upon the right of a jury to judge
of the law as well as the fact. Be assured that on this
occasion there is not the least desire to abridge those
rights. I am an advocate for the independence of the jury.
It is the basis of civil liberty; and in this country, I
trust, will ever be a sacred bulwark against oppression and
encroachment upon political freedom. The law is now settled
that this right appertains to a jury in all criminal cases.

On the trial of John Hodges for high treason, before the Circuit
Court of the United States for the District of Maryland, in 1815,
the Court charged the jury as follows:

The court said they were bound to declare the law whenever
they were called upon, in civil or criminal cases. In the
latter, however, it was also their duty to inform the jury
that they were not obliged to take their direction as to the
law. (Hodge's Trial, p. 20.)

The elementary writers declare the same principle. Blackstone, 4
Comm., 361, says:

And such public or open verdict may be either general
(guilty or not guilty) or special, setting forth all the
circumstances of the case, and praying the judgment of the
court, whether, for instance, on the facts stated, it be
murder, manslaughter, or no crime at all. This is where they
doubt the matter of the law, and therefore choose to leave
it to the determination of the court; though they have an
unquestionable right of determining upon all the
circumstances and finding a general verdict, if they think
proper so to hazard a breach of their oaths; and, if their
verdict be notoriously wrong, they may be punished and the
verdict set aside by attaint at the suit of the King, but
not at the suit of the prisoner. But the practice heretofore
in use of fining, imprisoning, or otherwise punishing
jurors, merely at the discretion of the court, for finding
their verdict contrary to the direction of the Judge, was
arbitrary, unconstitutional, and illegal, and is treated as
such by Sir Thomas Smith two hundred years ago, who
accounted "such doings to be very violent, tyrannical, and
contrary to the liberty and custom of the realm of England."
For, as Sir Matthew Hale well observes, it would be a most
unhappy case for the Judge himself if the prisoner's fate
depended upon his directions; unhappy also for the prisoner,
for, if the Judge's opinion must rule the verdict, the trial
by jury would be useless. Yet, in many instances where
contrary to evidence the jury have found the prisoner
guilty, their verdict hath been mercifully set aside and a
new trial granted by the court of King's Bench; for in such
case, as hath been said, it can not be set right by attaint.
But there hath been yet no instance of granting a new trial
where the prisoner was acquitted upon the first.

In Wilson's Lectures, Vol. II., p. 72, the same doctrine is
declared and illustrated; and he says:

The jury must do their duty and their whole duty. They must
decide the law as well as the fact. This doctrine is
peculiarly applicable to criminal cases, and from them,
indeed, derives its peculiar importance.

In Forsyth's Jury Trials, after an examination of the subject, it
is said, p. 265:

It can not therefore be denied that, in all criminal cases,
the jury do virtually possess the power of deciding
questions of law as well as of fact.

The authorities quoted from conclusively show that at the time
the Constitution was adopted, and for nearly a quarter of a
century afterward, juries were understood and declared to possess
the right to pass upon questions of law as well as fact in all
criminal cases; and this is all that need be shown to bring this
right within the protection of the Constitution.

The first case it is believed in which the contrary doctrine
received favor in any American court was in the case of the
United States _vs._ Battiste, 2 Sum., 240, decided in 1835. Mr.
Justice Story, in that case, said:

My opinion is that the jury are no more judges of the law in
a criminal case upon the plea of not guilty than they are in
every civil case tried upon the general issue. In each of
these cases their verdict, when general, is necessarily
compounded of law and of fact, and includes both. In each
they must necessarily determine the law as well as the fact.
In each they have the physical power to disregard the law as
laid down to them by the court. But I deny that in any case,
civil or criminal, they have the moral right to decide the
law according to their own notions or pleasure.

In Commonwealth _vs._ Porter, 10 Met., decided in 1845, the
Supreme Court of Massachusetts followed the decision in
Battiste's case, and held that the jury are under a moral
obligation to decide the case as instructed by the court, and the
court sum up the subject as follows:

On the whole subject, the views of the court may be
summarily expressed in the following propositions: That in
all criminal cases it is competent for the jury, if they see
fit, to decide upon all questions of fact embraced in the
issue, and to refer the law arising thereon to the court in
the form of a special verdict. But it is optional with the
jury thus to return a special verdict or not, and it is
within their legitimate province and power to return a
general verdict if they see fit. In thus rendering a general
verdict, the jury must necessarily pass upon the whole
issue, compounded of the law and of the fact, and they may
thus incidentally pass on questions of law.

The opinion in this case was delivered by Chief-Justice Shaw, and
is rather a discussion of what is a convenient distribution of
powers between the court and jury than an examination into the
actual state of the law; and he neither cites nor refers to a
single authority from the beginning to the end of the opinion.
Again, the conclusions arrived at by the opinion admit the power
of the jury to decide questions of law; and that, in cases where
the jury acquit the defendant, there is no power to reverse or
even to review the finding of the jury. And this opinion holds
that the defendant, in all criminal cases, is entitled to address
the jury upon the questions of law as well as of fact involved in
the case. To maintain that the defendant has the right to address
the jury upon matters which the jury have no right to determine,
and yet that the jury possess the power--the ultimate and final
power--to decide matters of law, and are nevertheless under moral
obligation never to exercise the power, are palpable
inconsistencies.

The Supreme Court of Vermont in State _vs._ Croteau, 23 Ver., 14,
in a very able opinion, review these two cases and other
subsequent decisions which follow their doctrine, and, after an
able and critical examination of all the English and American
cases, repudiate this new doctrine, and declare that in criminal
prosecutions it is the ancient, common-law right of the jury in
favor of the prisoner to determine the whole matter in issue--the
law as well as the fact.

There are some American cases holding a contrary doctrine, but
the current of American as well as of English authorities is
overwhelmingly in favor of the proposition that juries in
criminal causes are judges of the law as well as of the
facts.[176]

In late years there has been considerable discussion, and some
contrariety of judicial opinion, in regard to the moral right of
juries to find a general verdict of not guilty against the
instructions of the court on matters of law. This subject,
however, need not be further discussed, because it is believed
that no reported case can be found denying to juries the power of
determining the law as well as the fact in all criminal cases.
The utmost extent to which any case goes is, that the jury, in
deciding upon the law, are morally bound to adopt the opinion
expressed by the court; but every case admits their power to do
otherwise if they see fit. But admitting the existence of the
distinction between the legal power and the moral right of
juries, still the decision of the court on the trial of Miss
Anthony was erroneous, because the court did not instruct the
jury in regard to the law, and then leave the jury to perform
their duty in the premises. On the contrary, the court took the
case from the jury altogether and directed their verdict; thus
denying to the jury not only the moral right, but even the power
of rendering a verdict of not guilty; and refused the request of
counsel to have the jury polled in regard to their verdict. No
precedent has been shown for this proceeding, and it is believed
none exists. It is altogether a departure from, and a most
dangerous innovation upon, the well-settled method of jury-trial
in criminal cases. Such a doctrine renders the trial by jury a
farce. The memorialist had no jury-trial within the meaning of
the Constitution, and her conviction was therefore erroneous.

But it may be said that the ruling of the court was correct in
point of law, and, had the court submitted the case to the jury,
it would have been the duty of the jury to find the memorialist
guilty; therefore she is not aggrieved by the judgment which the
court pronounced. Should this reasoning be adopted, it would
follow that the memorialist had been tried by the court and by
Congress; but it would still be true that she had been denied
trial by a jury which the Constitution secures to her.

It is not safe thus to trifle with the rights of citizens. The
trial by jury--the judgment of one's peers--is the shield of real
innocence imperiled by legal presumptions. A Judge would charge a
jury that a child who had stolen bread to escape starvation had
committed the crime of larceny, but all the Judges in Christendom
could not induce a jury to convict in such a case. It is the
humane policy of our law, that, before any citizen shall suffer
punishment, he shall be condemned by the verdict of his peers,
who may be expected to judge as they would be judged. To sustain
the judgment in this case, is to strike a fatal blow at this
sacred right.

But the question remains, What relief can be granted? I concur
with the majority of the Committee that Congress can not remit
the judgment; that would be to exercise the pardoning power.
Congress can not grant a new trial; that would be an exercise of
judicial power. There is no Court of the Government which has
jurisdiction to review the case. In Commonwealth _vs._ Austin, 5
Gray, 226, Chief-Justice Shaw says:

Now, when a new statute is passed, and a question of law is
raised by counsel, it must first come before the court,
charged by law with the conduct and superintendence of a
jury trial; and, in any well-ordered system of
jurisprudence, provision is made that it be re-examinable by
the court of last resort. When this question is definitively
adjudged by the tribunal of last resort--the principles on
which it is adjudged being immutable, and the rule of law
adjudged in any one case being equally applicable to every
other case presenting the same facts--the decision is
necessarily conclusive of the law. I do not say how and
after what consideration it maybe considered as definitively
decided. In the first instance it may be misunderstood or
feebly presented. It may have been misapprehended by the
judges, and not considered in all its bearings, or they may
have wanted time and means for a careful and thorough
investigation, and may therefore consent and desire to
reconsider it one or more times. But I only say that, when
thus definitively adjudged, the decision must be deemed
conclusive and stand as a rule of law.

Unfortunately the United States has no "well-ordered system of
jurisprudence." A citizen may be tried, condemned, and put to
death by the erroneous judgment of a single inferior judge, and
no court can grant him relief or a new trial. If a citizen have a
cause involving the title to his farm, if it exceed two thousand
dollars in value, he may bring his cause to the Supreme Court;
but if it involves his liberty or his life, he can not. While we
permit this blemish to exist on our judicial system, it behooves
us to watch carefully the judgments inferior courts may render;
and it is doubly important that we should see to it that twelve
jurors shall concur with the Judge before a citizen shall be
hanged, incarcerated, or otherwise punished.

I concur with the majority of the Committee that Congress can not
grant the precise relief prayed for in the memorial; but I deem
it to be the duty of Congress to declare its disapproval of the
doctrine asserted and the course pursued in the trial of Miss
Anthony; and all the more for the reason that no judicial court
has jurisdiction to review the proceedings therein.

I need not disclaim all purpose to question the motives of the
learned Judge before whom this trial was conducted. The best of
judges may commit the gravest of errors amid the hurry and
confusion of a _nisiprius_ term; and the wrong Miss Anthony has
suffered ought to be charged to the vicious system which denies
to those convicted of offenses against the laws of the United
States a hearing before the court of last resort--a defect it is
equally within the power and the duty of Congress speedily to
remedy.

MATT H. CARPENTER.

Mr. Tremaine, from the House Judiciary Committee, reported adversely
on the prayer of Miss Anthony's Petition, and Benjamin F. Butler
favorably.

Forty-third Congress, 1st Session, House of Representatives,
Report No. 608, Susan B. Anthony, May 25, 1874, recommitted to
the Committee on the Judiciary and ordered to be printed.

Mr. B. F. BUTLER, from the Committee on the Judiciary, submitted
the following Report to accompany bill H. R. 3492:

_The Committee on the Judiciary, to whom was referred the
memorial of Susan B. Anthony, of the city of Rochester, in the
State of New York, praying that a fine alleged to have been
unjustly imposed on the petitioner by a judgment of the Circuit
Court of the United States for the Northern District of New York,
may be remitted, having considered the prayer of the petitioner
and the statement of facts set forth in the memorial,
respectfully beg leave to report_:

* * * * *

Are these positions of the petitioner well founded? By necessary
division there arise two questions: First, has Congress any
power, or is there any precedent for entertaining such petition
for such purpose? And, secondly, are the acts and order of the
judge in accordance with the law of the land, and not in
derogation of the right of the citizen to trial by jury at common
law as guaranteed by the Constitution, as known and practiced in
the courts of the United States? If the first should be answered
in the negative, of course the committee and the House would be
spared the discussion of the second.

It seems to your committee that there are two very noted and
historical cases which may form the precedents for this
application, and favorable action thereon by Congress--in the
proceeding concerning the fines imposed by the courts on Matthew
Lyon and General Jackson.

Lyon was fined by a United States judge for a seditious libel. He
petitioned for a remission of fine upon the ground that the law
was unconstitutional under which he was convicted. That petition
was very fully considered, and, in 1820, a report was presented
to the Senate by Mr. Barbour, of Virginia, which, after
elaborating the considerations, concludes thus:

In this case, therefore, the committee think the Government
is under a moral obligation to indemnify the petitioner.

In this claim of Lyon, after remaining before Congress until
1840, a bill, upon a favorable report of the Committee on the
Judiciary, was passed by the House, restoring the fine with
interest, by a vote of 124 to 15. This case, however, is subject
to the criticism, that in it Congress undertook to do justice to
a citizen suffering from an unconstitutional law which it had
enacted, and thereby distinguishes it from the present
application: but the case of General Jackson, so familiar to all
that its facts need not be recited, covers that point. There was
the remitting of a fine imposed by a judge in excess of his
authority in acting without warrant of law.

Assuming, therefore, that this application is properly before us,
we come to the second question of whether, by the proceedings in
court, the legal rights of the petitioner have been infringed,
from which she has suffered. It would not seem to be germane to
this question to inquire whether or not the petitioner had the
legal right to vote, because that was a question of law fully
within the competency of the judge to decide, and his decision
did not necessarily work a hardship to the defendant, even if
mistaken in judgment. Or, in other words, it was a rightful
execution of a power intrusted to him by law, from which there
was no appeal to this or any other jurisdiction.

We come, therefore, to the great question in this case: whether
the judge erred in withdrawing the case from the jury. Upon this
question it would seem that the judge himself vacillated in the
trial, because he permitted evidence to be gone into on both
sides as a question of fact, tending to show whether the
petitioner did or did not vote, knowing that she had no right so
to do; but afterward withdrew the consideration of that evidence,
upon the fact of intention or guilty knowledge, wholly from the
jury, and ordered a verdict to be entered up upon his own
decision, without allowing the question either to be argued or
submitted to the jury, or the jury to pass upon it.

There certainly can be no graver question affecting the rights of
citizens than this. The whole theory of trial by jury at common
law consists in the fundamental maxim that before any conviction
can be had for a crime it must be passed upon by twelve good and
lawful men, the peers of the accused; and the very oath
prescribed to jurors by the common law most distinctly guaranteed
this right to the accused: "You shall well and truly try and true
deliverance make, between the King and the prisoner at the bar,
according to your evidence;" while at the common law the oath
prescribed in civil cases gave a right to a judge to direct the
jury in the matter of law, and to direct the verdict one way or
the other, as he saw fit, the oath being substantially as
follows: "You shall well and truly try the issue between party
and party according to the law and the evidence given you."

Whatever changes may have been made in the practice of the States
since the time of the earlier amendments to the Constitution,
certain it is that at that time, after a jury had been impaneled,
there was no way that the accused could be put in jeopardy of
life or limb without his cause being submitted to twelve men, and
their unanimous verdict passing upon the fact of his guilt or
innocence. And this right your committee deem is not one lightly
to be sacrificed. Burke once said that the whole English
Constitution and machinery of government--not quoting words--were
only to put into a jury-box twelve honest men. What advantage
could it be to an accused to put twelve honest men into the
jury-box, if the judge, without asking for their opinion, or
without their intervention, can order a verdict of guilty to be
entered up against the accused?

Nothing, therefore, can be of more consequence to the citizen in
troublous times to protect him against the exercise of usurped or
other power for oppression, than the intervention of the judgment
of his peers upon the question whether he has been guilty of a
crime, or alleged offense against the Government. And in the
judgment of your committee, we can not too scrupulously guard, in
the interest of the liberty of the citizen, this great and almost
invaluable right. The friends of liberty under the common-law
system have stood for it and stood by it, strenuously and
assiduously, as the palladium of their liberties and the
impenetrable shield of the people from oppression. By the order
of the judge the defendant was deprived of this right, and if, in
this case of minor consequence so far as regards the punishment
inflicted, this can be done, so in the trial for murder or
treason a judge may order a verdict of the jury without allowing
them to pass upon the fact. It has been sometimes said "Can this
be done?" We are clearly of the opinion that it can not and ought
not to be done. It is sometimes said as a triumphant argument in
favor of the exercise of this power, "Has not the judge the power
to order a verdict of acquittal?" The answer to that, as a matter
of law, is "No; he can only direct the jury that upon the facts
and matter of law he believes the case can not be maintained, but
that it is for the jury to say whether they will follow that
direction;" and his remedy is to set aside that verdict, and that
power has always been exercised at common law in favor of the
prisoner, but he can not set aside the verdict of not guilty.
Sometimes, in the darker hours of English jurisprudence, the
judges fined the jury when they were not the obedient instruments
of their will but persisted in finding the defendants in state
prosecutions not guilty when the judge thought they ought to have
been found guilty; but neither Jeffreys nor Scroggs ever dared to
set aside a verdict of not guilty.

Your committee have been led by the great consequence of this
precedent more carefully and at length to give an examination to
this question to which its importance would not otherwise have
entitled it. But your committee do not find it necessary to
impute any intent of wrong to the learned judge who tried this
case; but the effect of his error was to deprive this petitioner
of a great and beneficent right, guaranteed to her as strongly as
any other by the Constitution of her country, to have the
question of her guilt passed upon by her peers, which error has
had the same effect upon her rights as an intentional assumption
of power would have had, and may have hereafter, in bad times,
wherein corrupt judges, wielding instruments of power, shield
themselves by precedents set by good judges in good times.

Therefore, because the fine has been imposed by a court of the
United States for an offense triable by jury, without the same
being submitted to the jury, and because the court assumed to
itself the right to enter a verdict without submitting the case
to the jury, and in order that the judgment of the House of
Representatives, if it concur with the judgment of the committee,
may, in the most signal and impressive form, mark its
determination to sustain in its integrity the common-law right of
trial by jury, your committee recommend that the prayer of the
petitioner be granted, and to this end report the following bill,
with the recommendation that it do pass.

The Inspectors were counseled to refuse to pay their fines, and take
the consequences.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, Washington, Feb. 22, 1874.

MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--In regard to the Inspectors of Election, I
would not, if I were they, pay, but allow any process to be
served; and I have no doubt the President will remit the fine if
they are pressed too far.

I am yours truly, BENJAMIN F. BUTLER.

On Miss Anthony's return home, February 26, 1874, she found the three
Inspectors lodged in jail. She at once called on Judge Selden, and
after consultation with him as to what could be done for their
protection, telegrams were sent to influential friends in Washington,
to which the following reply was received:

WASHINGTON, D. C., March 2, 1874--12 noon.

TO MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY:--I laid the case of the Inspectors
before the President to-day. He kindly orders their pardon.
Papers are being prepared.

A. A. SARGENT.

An Associated Press dispatch, dated Washington, March 2, 1874, said:

At the written request of Senator Sargent, the President to-day
directed the Attorney-General to prepare the necessary papers to
remit the fine and imprisonment of Hall, Marsh, and others, the
Rochester Election Inspectors, who were tried and convicted in
June, 1873, of registering Susan B. Anthony and other women, and
receiving their votes.

The Rochester _Evening Express_ of Feb. 26, 1874, said:

TYRANNY IN ROCHESTER.--The arrest and imprisonment in our city
jail of the Election Inspectors who received the votes of Susan
B. Anthony and other ladies, at the polls of the Eighth Ward,
some months ago, is a petty but malicious act of tyranny, of
which the officers who are responsible for it will yet be
ashamed. It should be known to the public that these young men
received Miss Anthony's vote by the advice of the best legal
talent that could be procured. The ladies themselves took oath
that they were citizens of the United States and entitled to
vote.... The Court, however, fined these inspectors $25 and
costs, for an offense which at the worst is merely technical, and
now, nearly nine months after conviction, in default of payment,
they are seized and shut up in jail, away from their families and
their business, and subjected to all the inconvenience to say
nothing of the odium of such an incarceration. This is an outrage
which ought not to be tolerated in this country, and we shall be
disappointed if public sentiment does not yet rebuke, in
thunder-tones, the authorities who have perpetrated it. Miss
Anthony is willing to fight her own battles and take the
consequences, but she naturally feels indignant that others
should suffer in this matter through no fault of their own....

The Rochester _Democrat and Chronicle_ of March 26th, said:

AN OUTRAGE.--.... We regard this action on the part of District
Attorney Crowley as an outrage, in that these young men, who, at
the worst, are but accessories in the violation of law, are made
to feel its terrors, while the chief criminal is allowed to defy
the law with impunity. No effort has been made to satisfy the
judgment of the court against Miss Anthony. She contemns the law
which adjudged her guilty, and its duly appointed administrators
are either too timid or too negligent of duty to endeavor to
enforce it.... It is doubtful whether they had the right to
refuse those votes. In any event their offense is venial as
compared with hers. It does not look well for the District
Attorney thus to proceed against the lesser offenders, while the
chief offender snaps her fingers at the law, and dares its
ministers to make her a martyr.... We write in no spirit of
vindictiveness, nor even in one of antagonism toward Miss
Anthony; but in the name of justice we are called upon to protest
against the unseemly proceeding which persecutes those excellent
young men and hesitates to attack this woman, who stands as a
representative of what she regards a great reform, and in its
advocacy shrinks not from any of the terrors the law may have in
store for her. Mr. District Attorney, it is your duty to arrest
Miss Anthony; to cross swords with an antagonist worthy of your
steel. Your present action looks ignoble, and is unworthy of you
or of the office you fill.

More than a week elapsed before the arrival of President Grant's
pardon papers, and during that time hundreds of the people of
Rochester visited the "boys" in jail, and the best of dinners were
furnished them daily by the fourteen women voters of the Eighth Ward.

VIRGINIA L. MINOR'S PETITION

IN THE CIRCUIT COURT OF ST. LOUIS COUNTY, DECEMBER TERM, 1872.

_St. Louis County, ss.:_ Virginia L. Minor and Francis Minor, her
husband, Plaintiffs, _vs._ Reese Happersett, Defendant.

The plaintiff, Virginia L. Minor (with whom is joined her
husband, Francis Minor, as required by the law of Missouri),
states, that under the Constitution and law of Missouri, all
persons wishing to vote at any election, must previously have
been registered in the manner pointed out by law, this being a
condition precedent to the exercise of the elective franchise.

That on the fifteenth day of October, 1872 (one of the days fixed
by law for the registration of voters), and long prior thereto,
she was a native-born, free white citizen of the United States,
and of the State of Missouri, and on the day last mentioned she
was over the age of twenty-one years.

That on said day, the plaintiff was a resident of the thirteenth
election district of the city and county of St. Louis, in the
State of Missouri, and had been so residing in said county and
election district, for the entire period of twelve months and
more, immediately preceding said fifteenth day of October, 1872,
and for more than twenty years had been and is a tax-paying,
law-abiding citizen of the county and State aforesaid.

That on said last mentioned day, the defendant, having been duly
and legally appointed Registrar for said election district, and
having accepted the said office of Registrar and entered upon the
discharge of the duties thereof at the office of registration, to
wit: No. 2004 Market Street, in said city and county of St.
Louis, it became and was then and there his duty to register all
citizens, resident in said district as aforesaid, entitled to the
elective franchise, who might apply to him for that purpose.

The plaintiff further states, that wishing to exercise her
privilege as a citizen of the United States, and vote for
Electors for President and Vice-President of the United States,
and for a Representative in Congress, and for other officers, at
the General Election held in November, 1872: While said defendant
was so acting as Registrar, on said 15th day of October, 1872,
she appeared before him, at his office aforesaid, and then and
there offered to take and subscribe the oath to support the
Constitution of the United States and of the State of Missouri,
as required by the registration law of said State, approved March
10, 1871, and respectfully applied to him to be registered as a
lawful voter, which said defendant then and there refused to do.

The plaintiff further states, that the defendant, well knowing
that she, as a citizen of the United States and of the State of
Missouri, resident as aforesaid, was then and there entitled to
all the privileges and immunities of citizenship, chief among
which is the elective franchise, and as such, was entitled to be
registered, in order to exercise said privilege: yet, unlawfully
intending, contriving, and designing to deprive the plaintiff of
said franchise or privilege, then and there knowingly, willfully,
maliciously, and corruptly refused to place her name upon the
list of registered voters, whereby she was deprived of her right
to vote.

Defendant stated to plaintiff, that she was not entitled to be
registered, or to vote, because she was not a "male" citizen, but
a woman! That by the Constitution of Missouri, Art. II., Sec. 18,
and by the aforesaid registration law of said State, approved
March 10, 1871, it is provided and declared, that only "male
citizens" of the United States, etc., are entitled or permitted
to vote.

But the plaintiff protests against such decision, and she
declares and maintains that said provisions of the Constitution
and registration law of Missouri aforesaid, are in conflict with,
and repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, which is
paramount to State authority; and that they are especially in
conflict with the following articles and clauses of said
Constitution of the United States, to wit:

Art. I. Sec. 9.--Which declares that no Bill of Attainder
shall be passed.

Art. I. Sec. 10.--No State shall pass any Bill of Attainder,
or grant any title of nobility.

Art. IV. Sec. 2.--The citizens of each State shall be
entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the
several States.

Art. IV. Sec. 4.--The United States shall guarantee to every
State a republican form of government.

Art. VI.--This Constitution and the laws of the United
States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, shall be
the supreme law of the land, anything in the Constitutions
or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

AMENDMENTS.

Art. V.--No person shall be ... deprived of life, liberty,
or property without due process of law.

Art. IX.--The enumeration in the Constitution of certain
rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others
retained by the people.

Art. XIV. Sec. 1.--All persons born or naturalized in the
United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they
reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the
United States. Nor shall any State deprive any person of
life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor
deny to any person within its jurisdiction, the equal
protection of the laws.

The plaintiff states, that by reason of the wrongful act of the
defendant as aforesaid, she has been damaged in the sum of ten
thousand dollars, for which she prays judgment.

JOHN M. KRUM, }
FRANCIS MINOR, } _Att'ys for Plffs._
JOHN B. HENDERSON, }

_Demurrer. In the Circuit Court of St. Louis County:_ Virginia L.
Minor and Francis Minor, her husband, Plaintiffs, _vs._ Reese
Happersett.

The defendant, Reese Happersett, demurs to the petition of
plaintiffs, and for cause of demurrer defendant states that said
petition does not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of
action, for the following reasons:

1. Because said Virginia L. Minor, plaintiff, had no right
to vote at the general election held in November, 1872, in
said petition referred to.

2. Because said Virginia L. Minor had no right to be
registered for voting by said defendant, at the time and in
the manner in said petition alleged.

3. Because it was the duty of the defendant to refuse to
place said Virginia L. Minor's name upon the list of
registered voters in said petition referred to.

All of which appears by said petition.

SMITH P. GALT, _Atty for Deft._

The defense, in substance, being based upon the Constitution of
Missouri, which provides (Art. II., Sec. 18) that "every male
citizen of the United States, etc., ... shall be entitled to
vote"; and also upon the registration law of said State, approved
March 10, 1871, which is as follows:

An act to provide for a uniform registration of voters, the
appointment of judges of elections, and repealing all former
acts relating thereto.

_Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of
Missouri, as follows:_

SECTION 1.--Every male citizen of the United States, and
every person of foreign birth who may have declared his
intention to become a citizen of the United States,
according to law, not less than one year nor more than five
years before he offers to vote, who is over the age of
twenty-one years, who has resided in this State one year
next preceding his registration as a voter, and during the
last sixty days of that period shall have resided in the
county, city, or town where he seeks registration as a
voter, who is not convicted of bribery, perjury, or other
infamous crime, nor directly or indirectly interested in any
bet or wager depending upon the result of the election for
which such registration is made, nor serving at the time of
such registration in the regular army or navy of the United
States, shall be entitled to vote at such elections for all
officers, State, county, or municipal, made elective by the
people, or any other election held in pursuance of the laws
of this State; but he shall not vote elsewhere than in the
election district where his name is registered, except as
provided in the twenty-first section of the second article
of the Constitution.

SEC. 2.--The several clerks of the County Courts in this
State shall provide a suitable registration book for each
election district in their several counties, which shall
have written or printed therein the following oath: "We the
undersigned, do solemnly swear or affirm that we will
support the Constitution of the United States and of the
State of Missouri."

SEC. 3.--On or before the 9th day of March, 1871, the
several County Courts in this State shall appoint some
competent person to act as Registrar in each election
district in their respective counties, who shall have the
qualifications of an elector in his election district, and
who shall hold his office until the general election in
1872, and until his successor is elected and qualified. Said
Registrar shall have authority to administer all oaths which
may be necessary in the registration of voters.

SEC. 4.--Any person having the qualification of a voter as
prescribed in the first section of this act, and who shall
take and subscribe the oath required of voters by the second
section of this act, and who applies for registration at the
time and in the manner prescribed by law, and any
naturalized citizen who shall subscribe to a written
statement, under oath, before the Registrar, that he is
naturalized according to the laws of the United States and
of this State, and has resided in this State, according to
the first section of this act, and that his naturalization
papers or evidence of his citizenship have been lost or
destroyed, or that the same are not accessible to him, and
shall state where he was naturalized, shall be accepted by
the registering officer, and duly registered as a qualified
voter.

It is claimed, therefore, that the defendant was justified in
refusing to register the plaintiff on account of her sex. The
plaintiff, however, denies the validity of this clause of the
Missouri Constitution, and the registration act based thereon,
and contends that they are in violation of, and repugnant to, the
Constitution of the United States, and particularly to those
articles and clauses thereof which she has specified in her
petition.

It is admitted, by the pleadings, that the plaintiff is a
native-born, free white citizen of the United States and of the
State of Missouri; that the defendant is a Registrar, qualified
and acting as such; that the plaintiff, in proper time and in
proper form made application to him to be registered, and that
the defendant refused to register the plaintiff solely for the
reason that she is a female (and that she possesses the
qualifications of an elector, in all respects, except as to the
matter of sex, as before stated).

The question is thus broadly presented of a conflict between the
Constitution of the State of Missouri and that of the United
States, as contemplated by the twenty-fifth section of the
judiciary act of 1789, and the supplemental act of February 5,
1867.

ASSIGNMENT OF ERRORS.--And now comes Virginia L. Minor, the
plaintiff in error in the above entitled cause, by her attorneys,
John B. Henderson, John M. Krum, and Francis Minor, and says that
in the records and proceedings in the above entitled cause, in
said Supreme Court of the State of Missouri, there is manifest
error in this, to wit:

1st. Because the said Supreme Court erred in affirming the
judgment of the St. Louis Circuit Court--thereby, in effect,
sustaining the demurrer filed in said Circuit Court by the
defendant to the petition of the plaintiff.

2d. Because the said Supreme Court erred in its judgment
affirming the judgment of the St. Louis Circuit
Court--thereby, in effect, declaring that the plaintiff in
error was not entitled to vote at the election mentioned in
the record.

3. Because the said Supreme Court of Missouri erred in
affirming the judgment of the St. Louis Circuit
Court--thereby, in effect, declaring that the Constitution
and laws of Missouri, before recited, do not conflict with
the Constitution of the United States.

STATEMENT.--This was an action, brought by the plaintiff, against
the defendant, a registering officer, for refusing to register
her as a lawful voter.

The defendant demurred to the petition, the defense, in
substance, being based upon the Constitution of Missouri, which
provides (Art 2, Sec. 18) that "every male citizen of the United
States, etc., ... shall be entitled to vote";--and also upon the
registration law of said State, approved March 10, 1871, to the
same effect; and it was claimed, therefore, that the defendant
was justified in refusing to register the plaintiff on account of
her sex.

The plaintiff, however, denied the validity of this clause of the
Missouri Constitution, and the registration act based thereon,
and contended that they are in violation of, and repugnant to,
the Constitution of the United States, and particularly to those
articles and clauses thereof which she had specified in her
petition.

It was admitted, by the pleadings, that the plaintiff was a
native-born, free, white citizen of the United States, and of the
State of Missouri; that the defendant was a Registrar, qualified
and acting as such; that the plaintiff, in proper time, and in
proper form, made application to him to be registered, and that
the defendant refused to register the plaintiff solely for the
reason that she was a female (and that she possessed the
qualifications of an elector, in all respects, except as to the
matter of sex, as before stated). The question was thus broadly
presented of a conflict between the Constitution of the State of
Missouri and that of the United States, as contemplated by the
25th section of the Judiciary act of 1789, and 5th February,
1867.

* * * * *

ARGUMENT AND BRIEF.--We think the chief difficulty in this case
is one of fact rather than of law. The practice is against the
plaintiff. The States, with one exception, which we shall notice
hereafter more in detail, have uniformly claimed and exercised
the right to act, as to the matter of suffrage, just as they
pleased--to limit or extend it, as they saw proper. And this is
the popular idea on the subject. Men accept it as a matter of
fact, and take for granted it must be right. So in the days of
African slavery, thousands believed it to be right--even a Divine
institution. But this belief has passed away; and, in like
manner, this doctrine of the right of the States to exercise
unlimited and absolute control over the elective franchise of
citizens of the United States, must and will give way to a truer
and better understanding of the subject. The plaintiff's case is
simply one of the means by which this end will ultimately be
reached.

We claim, and presume it will not be disputed, that the elective
franchise is a privilege of citizenship within the meaning of the
Constitution of the United States. In order to get a clearer idea
of the true meaning of this term citizenship, it may be well to
recur for a moment to its first introduction and use in American
law.

Before the colonists asserted their independence they were
politically bound to the sovereign of Great Britain, by what is
termed in English law, "allegiance"; and those from whom this
allegiance was due were termed "subjects." But when these
"bands," as they are termed in the Declaration of Independence,
were dissolved, the political relation became changed, and we no
longer hear in the United States the term "subject" and
"allegiance," except the latter, which is used to express the
paramount duty of our citizens to our own government. The term
citizen was substituted for that of "subject." But this was not a
mere change of name; the men who framed the Constitution of the
United States had all been "subjects" of the English king, and
they well knew the radical change wrought by the revolution.

In the new political sovereignty thus created, the feudal idea of
dependence gave way to that of independence, and the people
became their own sovereigns or rulers in the government of their
own creation. Of this body politic, represented by the
Constitution of the United States, all persons born or
naturalized therein and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are
members; without distinction as to political rights or
privileges, except that the head or chief of the new government
must be native-born--and this exception the more strongly proves
the rule. It is to this Constitution, therefore, we must look for
the limitations, if any, that may be placed upon the political
rights of the people or citizens of the United States. A
limitation not found there, or authorized by that instrument, can
not be legally exercised by any lesser or inferior jurisdiction.

But the subject of suffrage (or the qualifications of electors,
as the Constitution terms it) is simply remitted to the States by
the Constitution, to be regulated by them; not to limit or
restrict the right of suffrage, but to carry the same fully into
effect. It is impossible to believe that anything more than this
was intended. In the first place, it would be inconsistent and at
variance with the idea of the supremacy of the Federal
government; and, next, if the absolute, ultimate, and
unconditional control of the matter had been intended to be given
to the States, it would have been so expressed. It would not have
been left to doubt or implication. In so important a matter as
suffrage, the chief of all political rights or privileges, by
which, indeed, life, liberty, and all others are guarded and
maintained, and without which they would be held completely at
the mercy of others; we repeat, it is impossible to conceive that
this was intended to be left wholly and entirely at the
discretion of the States.

A right so important must not be the subject of implication.[177]
Some positive warrant or authority must be shown for it, and in
the case at bar we challenge its production. There is another
view of the subject that is important to be considered. There can
be no division of citizenship, either of its rights or its
duties. There can be no half-way citizenship. Woman, as a citizen
of the United States, is entitled to all the benefits of that
position, and liable to all its obligations, or to none. Only
citizens are permitted to pre-empt land, obtain passports, etc.,
all of which woman can do; and, on the other hand, she is taxed
(without her "consent") in further recognition of her
citizenship; and yet, as to this chief privilege of all, she is
forbidden to exercise it. We call upon the State to show its
warrant for so doing--for inflicting upon the plaintiff and the
class to which she belongs, the bar of perpetual
disfranchisement, where no crime or offense is alleged or
pretended, and without "due process of law."

We charge it as a "bill of attainder" of the most odious and
oppressive character. The State can no more deprive a citizen of
the United States of one privilege than of another, except by the
"law of the land." There is no security for freedom if this be
denied. To use the language of Mr. Madison, such a course
"violates the vital principle of free government, that those who
are to be bound by laws, ought to have a voice in making them."
(Madison Papers, vol. 3--appendix, p. 12.)

It is sometimes said this is one of the "reserved rights" of the
States. But this can not be, for the simple reason that, as to
the "privileges and immunities" of federal citizenship, they had
no existence prior to the adoption of the Federal Constitution;
how then could they be reserved?

As Mr. Justice Story says: "The States can exercise no powers
whatsoever, which exclusively spring out of the existence of the
National Government, which the Constitution does not delegate to
them.... No State can say that it has reserved what it never
possessed." (Commentaries, §§ 624-627.)

We say, then, that the States may regulate, but they have no
right to prohibit the franchise to citizens of the United States.
They may prescribe the qualifications of the electors. They may
require that they shall be of a certain age, be of sane mind, be
free from crime, etc., because these are conditions for the good
of the whole, and to which all citizens, sooner or later, may
attain. But to single out a class of citizens and say to them,
"Notwithstanding you possess all these qualifications, you shall
never vote, or take part in your government," what is it but a
bill of attainder?

To show that the mere regulation of this matter of suffrage was
left to the States for the purpose we have indicated, and not to
their absolute and ultimate control, we will now quote the
language of one of the framers of the Constitution, to whom,
indeed, has been applied the epithet of "Father of the
Constitution"--James Madison; and this, too, in reply to
questions by Mr. Monroe, who sought an explanation on these very
points. We quote from the debates in the Virginia convention upon
the adoption of the Federal Constitution:

Mr. MONROE wished that the honorable gentleman who had been
in the Federal Convention would give information respecting
the clause concerning elections. He wished to know why
Congress had an ultimate control over the time, place, and
manner of elections of Representatives, and the time and
manner of that of Senators, and also why there was an
exception as to the place of electing Senators.

Mr. MADISON: Mr. Chairman, the reason of the exception was,
that if Congress could fix the place of choosing the
Senators, it might compel the State Legislatures to elect
them in a different place from that of their usual sessions,
which would produce some inconvenience, and was not
necessary for the object of regulating the elections. But it
was necessary to give the General Government a control over
the time and manner of choosing the Senators, to prevent its
own dissolution.

With respect to the other point, it was thought that the
regulation of time, place, and manner of electing the
Representatives should be uniform throughout the continent.
Some States might regulate the elections on the principles
of equality, and others might regulate them otherwise. This
diversity would be obviously unjust. Elections are regulated
now unequally in some States, particularly South Carolina,
with respect to Charleston, which is represented by thirty
members.

Should the people of any State by any means be deprived of
the right of suffrage, it was judged proper that it should
be remedied by the General Government.

It was found impossible to fix the time, place, and manner
of the election of Representatives in the Constitution. It
was found necessary to leave the regulation of these, in the
first place, to the State Government, as being best
acquainted with the situation of the people, subject to the
control of the General Government, in order to enable it to
produce uniformity, and prevent its own dissolution. And,
considering the State Governments and General Government as
distinct bodies, acting in different and independent
capacities for the people, it was thought the particular
regulations should be submitted to the former and the
general regulations to the latter. Were they exclusively
under the control of the State Governments, the General
Government might easily be dissolved. But if they be
regulated properly by the State Legislature, the
Congressional control will very properly never be exercised.
The power appears to me satisfactory, and as unlikely to be
abused as any part of the Constitution. (Elliot's Debates,
vol. 2, pages 276-7.)

It seems to us that nothing can be clearer or plainer than this,
coming to us, as it does, with all the weight and authority of
Mr. Madison himself. But it may be asked: If this be so, why was
not the question sooner raised? We answer, at that very time, and
for nearly twenty years afterward, women did vote, unquestioned
and undisputed, in one of the States (New Jersey). The men who
framed the Constitution were then living--some of them in this
very State; yet we hear no mention of its being unconstitutional,
no objection made to it whatever.

It is true that subsequently this provision was omitted (about
1807) in the revisal of the State Constitution (as we think, very
unjustly), but the fact remains of the unquestioned exercise of
this privilege by women at the very time the Federal Constitution
was adopted, and for years afterward. This fact is worth a
thousand theories. Again, we think that one of the causes of the
popular error on this subject arises from forgetting or
overlooking the dual nature of our citizenship.

We are citizens of a State, as well as of the United States. This
is alluded to in several of the early cases, and its importance
is clearly pointed out. We quote, first, from Talbut _vs._
Jansen, 3 Dallas, Sup. Ct. Rep., 153 (1795), in which Mr. Justice
Patterson says: "The act of the Legislature of Virginia does not
apply. Ballard was a citizen of Virginia, and also of the United
States. If the Legislature of Virginia pass an act specifying the
causes of expatriation and prescribing the manner in which it is
to be effected by the citizens of that State, what can be its
operation on the citizens of the United States?"

If the act of Virginia affects Ballard's citizenship so far as
respects that State, can it touch his citizenship so far as
regards the United States? Allegiance to a particular State is
one thing; allegiance to the United States is another. Will it be
said that the renunciation of allegiance to the former implies or
draws after it a renunciation of allegiance to the latter? The
sovereignties are different; the allegiance is different; the
right, too, may be different. Our situation being new,
unavoidably creates new and intricate questions. We have
sovereignties moving within a sovereignty.

Judge Cabell, also of the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia,
alludes to it briefly in the case of Murray _vs._ McCarty, 2
Munford, 398. He says: "But although the Constitution of the
United States has wisely given to the citizens of each State the
privileges of a citizen of any other State, yet it clearly
recognizes the distinction between the character of a citizen of
the United States and a citizen of any individual State, and also
of citizens of different States," etc. Or, if a still further and
later authority be desired, we have it in the language of
Chief-Justice Taney, who says, in the Dred Scott case:

In discussing this question we must not confound the rights
of citizenship, which a State may confer within its own
limits, and the rights of citizenship as a member of the
Union. It does not by any means follow, because he has all
the rights and privileges of a citizen of a State, that he
must be a citizen of the United States.... But if he rank as
a citizen of the State to which he belongs, within the
meaning of the Constitution of the United States, then,
whenever he goes into another State, the Constitution
clothes him as to the rights of person, with all the
privileges and immunities which belong to citizens of the
State. And if persons of the African race are citizens of a
State, and of the United States, they would be entitled to
all of these privileges and immunities in every State, and
the State could not restrict them; for they would hold these
privileges and immunities under the paramount authority of
the Federal Government, and its courts would be bound to
maintain and enforce them, the Constitution and laws of the
State to the contrary notwithstanding. And if the States
could limit or restrict them, or place the party in an
inferior grade, this clause of the Constitution would be
unmeaning, and could have no operation, and would give no
rights to the citizen when in another State. He would have
none but what the State itself chose to allow him. This is
evidently not the construction or meaning of the clause in
question. It guarantees rights to the citizen, and the State
can not withhold them. (Dred Scott _vs._ Sanford, 19
Howard's Rep., pp. 405 and 422.)

Now, substitute in the above, for "persons of the African race,"
women, who are "citizens of the State and of the United States,"
and you have the key to the whole position. We will now consider
the clauses of the Constitution before recited, somewhat in
detail:

As to "bills of attainder," "due process of law," etc. "No State
shall pass any bill of attainder," etc. A bill of attainder is a
legislative act which inflicts punishment without a judicial
trial. If the punishment be less than death, the act is termed a
bill of pains and penalties. Within the meaning of the
Constitution, bills of attainder include bills of pains and
penalties. In these cases the legislative body, in addition to
its legitimate functions, exercises the powers and office of
judge; it assumes, in the language of the text-book, judicial
magistracy; it pronounces upon the guilt of the party, without
any of the forms or safeguards of trial; it determines the
sufficiency of the proofs produced, whether conformable to the
rules of evidence or otherwise, and it fixes the degree of
punishment in accordance with its own notions of the enormity of
the offense. These bills are generally directed against the
individuals by name, but they may be directed against a whole
class.

The theory upon which our political institutions rest, is, that
all men have certain inalienable rights--that among these are
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and that, in the
pursuit of happiness, all avocations, all honors, all positions
are alike open to every one, and that, in the protection of these
rights, all are equal before the law. Any deprivation or
suspension of any of these rights, for past conduct, is
punishment, and can be in no otherwise defined.

Punishment not being therefore restricted, as contended by
counsel, to the deprivation of life, liberty, or property, but
also embracing deprivation or suspension of political or civil
rights, and the disabilities prescribed by the provisions of the
Missouri Constitution being in effect punishment, we proceed to
consider whether there is any inhibition in the Constitution of
the United States against their enforcement.--(Cummings _vs._ The
State of Missouri, 4 Wallace, 351-323, and _ex parte_
Garland--same volume.)

We are aware that the Supreme Court of Missouri, in the case of
Blair _vs._ Ridgley, hold a different view, but we submit that
the cases differ in a most material point, to wit: In the Blair
case he was merely required to take the oath taken by all voters;
and, by refusing to do so, he virtually disfranchised himself. In
this case, however, the disfranchisement of the plaintiff is
arbitrary and insurmountable; and we further submit, that the
arguments in this case present it in a different, and, we think,
a broader view than was taken in the Blair case. But to show that
we are not unsupported by authority in this matter, we will now
quote from a New York case, very similar to the Blair case, where
the elector was required, but refused to take the oath, etc.

MILLER, J.: This case involves the constitutional validity
of that portion of the act to provide for a convention to
revise and amend the Constitution of this State, which
excludes from the privilege of voting all who refuse to take
the test oath prescribed by the act in question.

I think that the oath in question was unconstitutional and
invalid, for the reasons which I will proceed to state. The
first subdivision of the tenth section of the first article
of the Constitution of the United States provides, that "no
State shall pass any bill of attainder, _ex post facto_ law,
or laws impairing the obligations of contracts, or grant any
title of nobility." The provision of the act which is to be
considered declares, that no person shall vote at the
election for delegates to said convention who will not, if
duly challenged, take and subscribe an oath that he has not
done certain acts mentioned therein, and inflicts the
penalty of political disfranchisement without any
preliminary examination or trial, for a refusal to take said
oath.

By this enactment the citizen is deprived, upon declining to
conform to its mandate, of a right guaranteed to him by the
Constitution and laws of the land, and one of the most
inestimable and invaluable privileges of a free government.
There can be no doubt, I think, that to deprive a citizen of
the privileges of exercising the elective franchise, for any
conduct of which he has previously been guilty, is to
inflict a punishment for the act done.

It imposes upon him a severe penalty, which interferes with
his privileges as a citizen, affects his respectability and
standing in the community, degrades him in the estimation of
his fellow-men, and reduces him below the level of those who
constitute the great body of the people of which the
Government is composed. It moreover inflicts a penalty
which, by the laws of this State, is a part of the
punishment inflicted for a felony, and which follows
conviction for such a crime. It is one of the peculiar
characteristics of our free institutions, that every citizen
is permitted to enjoy certain rights and privileges, which
place him upon an equality with his neighbors. Any law which
takes away or abridges these rights, or suspends their
exercise, is not only an infringement upon their enjoyment,
but an actual punishment. That such is the practical effect
of the test oath required by the act in question, can admit
of no doubt, in my judgment. It arbitrarily and summarily,
and without any of the forms of law, punishes for an offense
created by the law itself. In the formation of our National
Constitution, its framers designed to prevent and guard
against the exercise of the power of the Legislature, by
usurping judicial functions, and for the punishment of
alleged offenses in advance of trial, for offenses unknown
to the law, and by bill of attainder and _ex post facto
enactments_, etc.--(Green _vs._ Shumway, 36 Howard's
Practice Rep., pp. 7, 8.)

On the same subject, we will next quote from a decision by the
Supreme Court of Nevada:

LEWIS, C. J.--The form of the law by which an individual is
deprived of a constitutional right is immaterial. The test
of its constitutionality is, whether it operates to deprive
any person of a right guaranteed or given to him by the
Constitution. If it does, it is a nullity, whatever may be
its form. Surely a law which deprives a person of a right,
by requiring him to take an oath which he can not take, is
no less objectionable than one depriving him of such right
in direct terms.

To make the enjoyment of a right depend upon an impossible
condition, or upon the doing of that which can not legally
be done, is equivalent to an absolute denial of the right
under any condition. The effect, and not the language of the
law, in such case, must determine its constitutionality. It
would not be doubted for a moment that a law expressly
denying the elective franchise to any person upon whom the
Constitution confers it would be unconstitutional. Why,
then, is a law less objectionable which, although not
expressly and directly, yet no less certainly denies the
right, etc.--(Davies _vs._ McKeeby, 5 Nevada Rep. 7,371.)

We quote next from a Tennessee case:

The elective franchise is a right which the law protects and
enforces as jealously as it does property in chattels or
lands. It matters not by what name it is designated--the
right to vote, the elective franchise, or the privilege of
the elective franchise--the person who, under the
Constitution and laws of the State is entitled to it, has a
property in it, which the law maintains and vindicates as
vigorously as it does any right of any kind which men may
have and enjoy.

The rules of law which guard against deprivation or injury, the
rights of persons in corporeal properties, are alike and equally
applicable to the elective franchise, and alike and equally guard
persons invested with it against deprivation of or injury to it.
Persons invested with it can not be deprived of it otherwise than
by "due process of law." See

The State _vs._ Staten, 6 Caldwell's Rep., p. 243. See also
Rison _vs._ Farr, 25 Ark. Rep., p. 173; Winehamer _vs._
People, 13 N. Y., 378; State _vs._ Symonds, 57 Maine, 150,
511; Huber _vs._ Riley, 53 Penn., 112; Cooley's
Constitutional Limitations.

We conclude this list of references with Mr. Webster's celebrated
definition in the Dartmouth College case (4 Wheaton, 581):

By the law of the land is most clearly intended the general
law; a law which hears before it condemns, which proceeds
upon inquiry, and renders judgment only after trial. The
meaning is, that every citizen shall hold his life, liberty,
property, and immunities, under the protection of the
general rules which govern society. Everything which may
pass under the form of an enactment is not, therefore, to be
considered the law of the land. If this were so, acts of
attainder, bills of pains and penalties, acts of
confiscation, acts reversing judgments, and acts directly
transferring one man's estate to another, legislative
judgments, decrees and forfeiture, in all possible forms,
would be the law of the land.

Such a strange construction would render constitutional
provisions of the highest importance completely inoperative
and void. It would tend directly to establish the union of
all powers in the Legislature. There would be no general
permanent law for courts to administer, or for men to live
under. The administration of justice would be an empty
form--an idle ceremony. Judges would sit to execute
legislative judgments and decrees; not to declare the law,
or to administer the justice of the country.

That the elective franchise is a privilege of citizenship, we
have the authority of Judge Washington, for he says:

What are the privileges and immunities of citizens in the
several States? We feel no hesitation in confining these
expressions to those privileges and immunities which are in
their nature fundamental; which belong of right to the
citizens of all free governments; and which have, at all
times, been enjoyed by the citizens of the several States
which compose this Union, from the time of their becoming
free, independent, and sovereign. What those fundamental
principles are, it would perhaps be more tedious than
difficult to enumerate.

They may, however, be all comprehended under the following
general heads: Protection by the Government, the enjoyment
of life and liberty, with the right to acquire and possess
property of every kind, and to pursue and obtain happiness
and safety, subject, nevertheless, to such restraints as the
Government may justly prescribe for the general good of the
whole; the right of a citizen of one State to pass through,
or to reside in any other State for purposes of trade,
agriculture, professional pursuits, or otherwise; to claim
the benefit of the writ of _habeas corpus_; to institute and
maintain actions of every kind in the courts of the State;
to take, hold, and dispose of property, either real or
personal; and an exemption from higher taxes or imposition
than are paid by the citizens of the other State, may be
mentioned as some of the particular privileges and
immunities of citizens, which are clearly embraced by the
general description of privileges deemed to be fundamental;
to which may be added, the elective franchise, as regulated
and established by the laws or Constitution of the State in
which it is to be exercised (Corfield _vs._ Corryell, 4
Wash. C.C., 380). Cited and approved in Dunham _vs._
Lamphere, 3 Gray, 276 (Mass.); Bennett _vs._ Boggs, Baldwin
Rep., 72.

A proper construction of Art. 1, Sec. 2, of the Constitution of
the United States will further demonstrate the proposition we are
endeavoring to uphold. That section is as follows:

ARTICLE 1, Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be
composed of members chosen every second year by the people
of the several States; and the electors in each State shall
have the qualifications for electors of the most numerous
branch of the State Legislature.

This section consists of two clauses, but in neither is there a
word as to the sex of the elector. He, or she, must be one of the
people, or "citizens," as they are designated in the
Constitution, that is all.--(Story's Comms. § 579.)

The "people" are to elect. This clause fixes the class of voters;
the other clause is in subordination to that, and merely
provides, that as touching qualifications, there shall be one and
the same standard for the Federal and for the State elector. Both
are mentioned and neither is or can be excluded by the other.

The right to vote is very different from the qualification
necessary in a voter. A person may have the right to vote, and
yet not possess the necessary qualifications for exercising it.
In this case, the right to vote is derived from the Federal
Constitution, which designates the class of persons who may
exercise it, and provides that the Federal elector shall conform
to the regulations of the State, so far as time, place, and
manner of exercising it are concerned. But it is clear that under
this authority the State has no right to lay down an arbitrary
and impossible rule. As before stated by the Chief-Justice of
Nevada: "To make the enjoyment of a right depend upon an
impossible condition, is equivalent to an absolute denial of it
under any condition."

In conclusion, we will consider, as briefly as possible, the
points made by the Supreme Court of Missouri. We quote from the
opinion:

The question presented then is, whether there is a conflict
between the Constitution of the United States and the
Constitution and laws of the State of Missouri on this
subject. That the different States of the Union had a right,
previous to the adoption of what is known as the XIV.
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to limit
the right to vote at election by their constitutions and
laws to the male sex, I think can not at this day be
questioned.

Undoubtedly the practice in the different States, as we have
before said, is against the claim made by the plaintiff,
although, as we shall show, in the early days of the Republic
this practice was by no means universal. But when the Court
states that the right of the States to do this can not be
questioned, it assumes the very point in controversy, and it
fails to notice the distinction between "the rights of
citizenship which a State may confer within its own limits, and
the rights of citizenship as a member of the Union."
(Chief-Justice Taney in Scott _vs._ Sandford, 19 Howard, 405.)

"The difference," says Judge Cooley (Story on Constitution,
section 1937), "is in a high degree important." And while it may
be true that the voter himself rarely, if ever, thinks of any
difference between his vote for State and for Federal officers,
yet, in law, there is a wide distinction.

In the one case he exercises the franchise under one jurisdiction
or sovereignty, and in the other under a totally different one.
In voting for Federal officers he exercises the freeman's right
to take part in the government of his own creation, and he does
this in contemplation of law, in his character or capacity of a
citizen of the United States, and his right so to vote legally
depends upon such status or character. Clearly, then, the right
of a citizen of the United States to vote for Federal officers
can only be exercised under the authority or sovereignty of the
United States, not under some other authority or sovereignty, and
consequently the citizen of the United States could not justly
have been deprived of such right by the State, even before the
adoption of the XIV. Amendment.

But whatever doubt there may have been as to this, we hold that
the adoption of the XIV. Amendment put an end to it and placed
the matter beyond controversy. The history of that Amendment
shows that it was designed as a limitation on the powers of the
States, in many important particulars, and its language is clear
and unmistakable. "No State shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the
United States." Of course all the citizens of the United States
are by this protected in the enjoyment of their privileges and
immunities. Among the privileges, that of voting is the highest
and greatest. To an American citizen there can be none greater or
more highly to be prized; and the preservation of this privilege
to the citizens of the United States respectively is, by this
Amendment, placed under the immediate supervision and care of the
Government of the United States, who are thus charged with its
fulfillment and guaranty.

By ratifying this Amendment the several States have relinquished
and quit-claimed, so to speak, to the United States, all claim or
right, on their part, to "make or enforce any law which shall
abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United
States." The State of Missouri, therefore, is estopped from
longer claiming this right to limit the franchise to "males," as
a State prerogative; and the Supreme Court of Missouri should
have so declared, and its failure to do so is error; because, by
retaining that word in the State Constitution and laws, not this
plaintiff only, but large numbers of other citizens of the United
States are "abridged" in the exercise of their "privileges and
immunities as citizens of the United States," by being deprived
of their right or privilege to vote for United States officers,
as claimed by the plaintiff in her petition. Not only this, but
we say further, that the ratification of this amendment was, in
intendment of law, a solemn agreement, on the part of the States,
that all existing legislation inconsistent therewith should be
repealed, or considered as repealed, and that none of like
character should take place in the future. The State of Missouri
has acted upon this idea in part, and its subsequent legislation,
on the subject of the ballot, has been as follows: The
ratification of the XV. Amendment (which we do not consider as
having any direct bearing on the point now being considered,
inasmuch as this Amendment is merely prohibitory--not conferring
any right, but treating the ballot in the hands of the negro as
an existing fact, and forbidding his deprivation thereof). Next,
amending the State Constitution and registration law, by simply
omitting the word "white" from the clause "white male citizens."

This constitutes the entire legislation of the State of Missouri
on this subject since the adoption of the XIV. Amendment, and
this omission of the word "white" was designed to make the State
Constitution conform to the Amendment, so far as the negro was
concerned, leaving the women citizens of the United States still
under the ban of "involuntary servitude," in plain violation of
the Amendment.

So that, while the negro votes to-day in Missouri, there is not a
syllable of affirmative legislation by the State conferring the
right upon him. Whence, then, does he derive it? There is but one
reply. The XIV. Amendment conferred upon the negro race in this
country citizenship of the United States, and the ballot followed
as an incident to that condition. Or, to use the more forcible
language of this Court, in the Slaughter-house cases (16 Wall.,
71), "the negro having, by the XIV. Amendment, been declared a
citizen of the United States, is thus made a voter in every State
of the Union." If this be true of the negro citizen of the United
States, it is equally true of the woman citizen. And we invoke
the interposition of of this Court to effect, by its decree, that
which the Supreme Court of Missouri should have done, and declare
that this objectionable word must be omitted, or considered as
omitted from the Constitution and registration law of said State.

It can not be pretended that the Constitution of the United
States makes, or permits to be made, any distinction between its
citizens in their rights and privileges; that the negro has a
right which is denied to the woman. The discrimination,
therefore, made and continued by the State of Missouri, of which
we complain, is an unjustifiable act of arbitrary power, not of
right, and can be designated by no other term.

We proceed with our quotation from the opinion:

In this changed state of affairs, it was thought by those
who originated and adopted this Amendment, that it was
absolutely necessary that these emancipated people should
have the elective franchise, in order to enable them to
protect themselves against unfriendly legislation, in which
they could take no part; that unless these people had the
right to vote, and thus protect themselves against
oppression, their freedom from slavery would be a mockery,
and their condition but little improved. It was to remedy
this that the XIV. Amendment to the Constitution was
adopted. It was to compel the former slave States to give
these freedmen the right of suffrage, and to give them all
of the rights of other citizens of the respective States,
and thus make them equal with other citizens before the law.

It would be impossible for us to give any better reason for
woman's need of the ballot than the court has here given for that
of the negro, except that woman's condition is even more helpless
than his--"unless these people had the right to vote, and thus
protect themselves against oppression, their freedom from slavery
would be a mockery." How an American judge, with the claim of an
American citizen before him, for the protection, which, as he
truly says, this ballot alone can give, could see its lawfulness
and justice in the one case, and not in the other, passes our
comprehension.

We again quote from the opinion:

It was only intended to give the freedmen the same rights
that were secured to all other classes of citizens in the
State, and that if the other male inhabitants of the State
over the age of twenty-one years enjoyed the right of
suffrage, so should the males among the freedmen over the
age of twenty-one years enjoy the same right; it was not
intended that females, or persons under the age of
twenty-one years, should have the right of suffrage
conferred on them.

In reply to this, we might content ourselves with saying that it
is mere assertion, and can hardly be dignified as argument; but
we answer, that if the XIV. Amendment does not secure the ballot
to woman, neither does it to the negro; for it does not in terms
confer the ballot upon any one. As we have already shown, it is
the altered condition of citizenship that secures to the negro
this right; but this plaintiff might well reply, I was born to
that condition, and yet am denied its privileges.

We quote again, and finally, from the opinion:

This is not only shown by the history of the times when the
Amendment was adopted, and the circumstances which produced
it, but by reference to the second section of said
Amendment, it will be seen that the right to restrict the
right of suffrage to the male inhabitants by a State is
clearly recognized. If "the right to vote, etc., is denied
to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being
twenty-one years of age," etc., is the language used. This
clearly recognizes the right, and seems to anticipate the
exercise of the right on the part of the States, to restrict
the right of suffrage to the male inhabitants.

We doubt if an instance can be found of a more complete
misconception of the meaning and intention of the law. So far
from its being a recognition of the right of the States to
restrict the right to suffrage of males, it has an exactly
opposite meaning. It was intended as a punishment on the States
if they did this thing. It is no more a justification or
authorization of the act than is the law punishing larceny an
authority for stealing! Its object was to punish the States as
such, which, but for this provision, could not have been done by
diminishing their representation accordingly; and it was designed
as a still further security for the rights of the colored
population. But, even if it could be held to recognize a right on
the part of the State to disfranchise any one, it would only
extend to "males," not to females. They, as "citizens of the
United States," are embraced in, and protected by, the broad
language of the Amendment; a right that is fundamental, can not
be taken away by implication. But more than this, the XIV.
Amendment was an addition to the organic law of a great nation,
intended to enlarge the area of human freedom, and secure more
firmly individual rights. It is absurd to impute to the
law-makers a design at the same time to restrict those rights.

Although the point is not alluded to by the Supreme Court of
Missouri, yet, as we desire to meet every possible objection, we
think this a proper place to notice an argument sometimes put
forward, based upon the XV. Amendment. It is of the nature of
what is termed in law a negative pregnant, or, the familiar maxim
of "the expression of one thing is the exclusion of another." As
this Amendment says, 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 race, color, or previous
condition of servitude, it is claimed by some that it may be
abridged on other grounds. But, aside from the well-known history
of this Amendment, as shown by the debates in Congress, of which
this court will take notice when necessary, and which show that
the sole object and purpose of this Amendment was to still
further protect the negro race, the IX. Amendment to the
Constitution effectually puts an end to the application of this
principle by declaring that the enumeration in the Constitution
of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage
others retained by the people. And Mr. Justice Story, in his
Commentary says, § 1905:

This clause was manifestly introduced to prevent any
perverse or ingenious misapplication of the well-known
maxim, that an affirmative in particular cases implies a
negative in all others; and, _e converso_, that a negative
in particular cases implies an affirmative in all others.
The maxim, rightly understood, is perfectly sound and safe;
but it has often been forced from its natural meaning into
the support of the most dangerous political heresies. The
Amendment was undoubtedly suggested by the reasoning of the
Federalist on the subject of a general bill of rights and
trial by jury. Federalist No. 83-84.

We ask the court to consider what it is to be disfranchised; not
this plaintiff only, but an entire class of people, utterly
deprived of all voice in the government under which they live! We
say it is to her, and to them, a Despotism, and not a Republic.
What matters it that the tyranny be of many instead of one?
Society shudders at the thought of putting a fraudulent ballot
into the ballot-box! What is the difference between putting a
fraudulent ballot in, and keeping a lawful ballot out? Her
disfranchised condition is a badge of servitude. [Mr. Justice
Bradley in the Grant parish case.] Take one illustration,
evidenced by a recent decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri,
in Clark _vs._ The National Bank of the State of Missouri, 47 Mo.
Rep., 1. We use our own words, but we state it correctly; that a
married woman can not, by the law of Missouri, own a dollar's
worth of personal property, except by the consent of another! it
makes no difference that that other is her husband. This, it is
true, is a State law, a matter exclusively of State legislation;
but we mention it to show how utterly helpless and powerless her
condition is without the ballot.

Either we must give up the principles announced in the
Declaration of Independence, that governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed; and are formed by the
people to protect their rights, not to withhold them; or we must
acknowledge the truth contended for by the plaintiff, that
citizenship carries with it every incident to every citizen
alike. It can not be disputed, that upon this principle of
absolute political equality, our Government is founded. So
thought the Hon. Luther Martin, of Maryland, one of the most
distinguished lawyers of his day, and a member of the convention
that framed our Constitution. We quote his own words. (Elliott's
Debates, Vol. 4.)

This, sir, is the substance of the arguments, if arguments
they may be called, which were used in favor of inequality
of suffrage. Those who advocated the equality of suffrage,
took the matter up on the original principles of government;
they urged that all men considered in a state of nature,
before any government is formed, are equally free and
independent, no one having any right or authority to
exercise power over another, and this, without any regard to
difference in personal strength, understanding, or wealth.
That when such individuals enter into government, they have
each a right to an equal voice in its first formation, and
afterward have each a right to an equal vote in every matter
which relates to their government; that if it could be done
conveniently, they have a right to exercise it in person;
when it can not be done in person but for convenience,
representatives are appointed to act for them; every person
has a right to an equal vote in choosing that representative
who is entrusted to do for the whole, that which the whole,
if they could assemble, might do in person, and in the
transacting of which each would have an equal voice. That if
we were to admit, because a man was more wise, more strong,
or more wealthy, he should be entitled to more votes than
another, it would be inconsistent with the freedom and
liberty of that other, and would reduce him to slavery.
Suppose, for instance, ten individuals in a state of nature
about to enter into government, nine of whom are equally
wise, equally strong, and equally wealthy, the tenth is ten
times as wise, ten times as strong, or ten times as rich; if
for this reason he is to have ten votes for each vote of
either of the others, the nine might as well have no vote at
all; since, though the whole nine might assent to a measure,
yet the vote of the tenth would countervail and set aside
all their votes.

If this tenth approved of what they wished to adopt, it
would be well, but if he disapproved, he could prevent it,
and in the same manner he could carry into execution any
measure he wished, contrary to the opinion of all the
others, he having ten votes, and the others all together but
nine. It is evident that on these principles the nine would
have no will or discretion of their own, but must be totally
dependent on the will and discretion of the tenth; to him
they would be as absolutely slaves as any negro is to his
master; if he did not attempt to carry into execution any
measure injurious to the other nine, it could only be said
that they had a good master; they would not be the less
slaves, because they would be totally dependent on the will
of another, and not on their own will. They might not feel
their chains, but they would notwithstanding wear them, and
whenever their master pleased he might draw them so tight as
to gall them to the bone. Hence it was urged the inequality
of representation, or giving to one man more votes than
another on account of his wealth, etc., was altogether
inconsistent with the principles of liberty, and in the same
proportion as it should be adopted in favor of one or more,
in that proportion are the others enslaved.

These are the words, not lightly uttered, nor to be by us lightly
considered, of one of the framers of the Constitution; and in
complete accord with this principle of entire equality of
individual right, see how those men who had fought through the
War of Independence did their work. Upon what broad and
comprehensive foundations it is laid. Examine the Constitution,
the work of their hands. Do we find any recognition of inequality
of rights? Not a syllable. On the contrary, every safeguard is
thrown around them; "no State shall pass any bill of attainder,"
or "grant any title of nobility." So, too, when it comes to the
practical recognition of these rights at the ballot-box, all are
included. "The House of Representatives shall be composed of
members chosen every second year by the people of the several
States," not by a part--not by the "males"--but simply by "the
people of the several States." The same "people" who ordain and
establish that Constitution as the supreme law of the land, they
are to do the voting, they are to elect. There is not one word as
to sex. The elector, male or female, must be one of the people or
citizens, that is all. But when these electors come to exercise
this right or privilege, then the matter of qualification arises,
the age of the elector, the time, place, and manner of the
exercise of the right, are to be considered, and the convention,
instead of laying down a uniform rule or standard for all the
States, which would have produced change and confusion, thought
it best to leave this feature of it as it already stood in the
several States. But the right itself is secured to the people of
the United States, and in its very nature can not be derived from
any other authority.

We deem it proper, in this connection, to refer to the well-known
fact that women voted in one of the States (New Jersey) down to
the year 1807, when they were unjustly deprived of the right, by
an act of the Legislature of that State. We say unjustly, because
no Legislature can deprive a citizen of a constitutional right,
and the matter has slumbered ever since. The Constitution of New
Jersey, adopted in 1776, used the term "inhabitants" in
describing electors, and under this Constitution women were
recognized as voters, as well as men. In conformity with this
constitutional provision the statute law was so worded as to read
"he or she," in speaking of electors thus affording a
contemporaneous and legislative attestation of the truth of our
statement. This law of 1776 could not, of course, be the source
of authority to any one for voting under a sovereignty not then
in existence, not created until 1789, thirteen years afterward.
Therefore, when the elector, male or female, in New Jersey, voted
for Federal officers in 1789, it was done by virtue of his or her
status of citizenship, under the new and paramount sovereignty,
and not under the law of 1776; and so it has continued ever
since, the elector voting for United States officers by virtue of
his citizenship of the United States, and for State officers as a
citizen of the State. We believe, then, we are justified in the
statement that white women in New Jersey voted, under State
authority, for the members of the Constitutional Convention of
1787. That they next voted, under like authority, for the
ratification of the newly framed Constitution of the United
States; and then, that Constitution having been adopted, as
newly-created citizens of the newly-created sovereignty, the
white women of New Jersey voted at the five succeeding
Presidential elections--for Washington, for Adams, and for
Jefferson. The contest in 1800 was bitter beyond all precedent,
and we are told that all the women of the State entitled to vote
did so. We refer to the Constitution and laws of New Jersey; to a
work entitled _The Historical Magazine_, published in Boston in
1857, Vol. I., p. 361; to the _National Intelligencer_,
Washington, October 3, 1857; to _Notes and Queries_, Vol. VIII.,
p. 171, August, 1853.

But apart from these considerations, which we deem amply
sufficient to sustain our position, an examination into the
nature and character of the right itself will further show that
it is one of which the citizen can not justly be deprived, save
for cause.

The first amendment to the Constitution declares that Congress
shall make no law abridging freedom of speech or of the press,
thus incorporating into the organic law of this country absolute
freedom of thought or opinion. We presume it will not be doubted
that the States are equally bound with Congress by this
prohibition, not only because, as Chief-Justice Taney says, "the
Constitution of the United States, and every article and clause
in it, is a part of the law of every State in the Union, and is
the paramount law" (Prigg _vs._ The Comm., 16 Peters R., 628),
but because, in the very nature of things, freedom of speech or
of thought can not be divided. It is a personal attribute, and
once secured is forever secured. To vote is but one form or
method of expressing this freedom of speech. Speech is a
declaration of thought. A vote is the expression of the will,
preference, or choice. Suffrage is one definition of the word,
while the verb is defined, to choose by suffrage, to elect, to
express or signify the mind, will, or preference, either _viva
voce_, or by ballot. We claim then that the right to vote, or
express one's wish at the polls, is embraced in the spirit, if
not the letter, of the First Amendment, and every citizen is
entitled to the protection it affords. It is the merest mockery
to say to this plaintiff, you may write, print, publish, or
speak your thoughts upon every occasion, except at the polls.
There your lips shall be sealed. It is impossible that this can
be American law!

Again, it is the opinion of some that suffrage is somehow lodged
in the government, whence it is dispensed, or conferred upon the
citizen, thus completely reversing the actual fact. Suffrage is
never conferred by government upon the citizen. He holds it by a
higher title. In this country government is the source of power,
not of rights. These are vested in the individual--are personal
and inalienable. Society can only acquire the authority to
regulate these rights, or declare them forfeited, for cause. The
time, place, and manner of their exercise are under governmental
control, but their origin and source are in the individual
himself.

I shall, therefore, says a writer on government, assume it
as an incontrovertible position, as a first principle, that
the right of private opinion, which is, in fact, no other
than the right of private judgment upon any subject
presented to the mind, is a sacred right, with which society
can, on no pretense, authoritatively interfere, without a
violation of the first principles of the law of nature.
(Chipman on Government, chap. 5.)

Other liberties, says Erskine, are held under governments,
but the liberty of opinion keeps governments themselves in
due subjection to their duties. (Speech in defense of Thomas
Paine.)

But this clause of the Missouri law further violates the XIII.
Amendment, which declares that neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude shall exist in the United States, except for crime,
etc. This Amendment is a copy of the 6th clause of the famous
Ordinance of 1787, which secured freedom for the Northwest
Territory, and has now become the organic law for the entire
Union. This Ordinance was drawn by the Hon. Nathan Dane, of
Massachusetts.[178]

We say that this Missouri law violates this amendment, inasmuch
as it places the plaintiff in a disfranchised condition, which is
none other than a condition of servitude--of "involuntary
servitude," because, although a citizen in the fullest
acceptation of the term--a member of this body politic--one of
the "people"--she has never consented to this law; has never been
permitted to express either consent or dissent, nor given any
opportunity to express her opinion thereon, in the manner pointed
out by law, while at the same time she is taxed, and her property
taken to pay the very men who sat in judgment upon and condemned
her!

Finally--Such is the nature of this privilege--so individual--so
purely personal is its character, that its indefinite extension
detracts not in the slightest degree from those who already enjoy
it, and by an affirmation of the plaintiff's claim all womanhood
would be elevated into that condition of self-respect that
perfect freedom alone can give.

RESUME--(Minor _vs._ Happersett, 21 Wallace Rep., p. 164.)

1st. As a citizen of the United States, the plaintiff is entitled
to any and all the "privileges and immunities" that belong to
such position however defined; and as are held, exercised, and
enjoyed by other citizens of the United States.

2d. The elective franchise is a "privilege" of citizenship, in
the highest sense of the word. It is the privilege preservative
of all rights and privileges; and especially of the right of the
citizen to participate in his or her government.

3d. The denial or abridgment of this privilege, if it exist at
all, must be sought only in the fundamental charter of
government--the Constitution of the United States. If not found
there, no inferior power or jurisdiction can legally claim the
right to exercise it.

4th. But the Constitution of the United States, so far from
recognizing or permitting any denial or abridgment of the
privileges of its citizens, expressly declares that "no State
shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges
or immunities of citizens of the United States."

5th. It follows that the provisions of the Missouri Constitution
and registry law before recited, are in conflict with and must
yield to the paramount authority of the Constitution of the
United States.

A few words more and we have done. The plaintiff has sought, by
this action, for the establishment of a great principle of
fundamental right, applicable not only to herself, but to the
class to which she belongs; for the principles here laid down (as
in the Dred Scott case) extend far beyond the limits of the
particular suit, and embrace the rights of millions of others,
who are thus represented through her. She has a right, therefore,
to be heard for her cause; and in making this plea, she seeks
only to give expression to those principles upon which, as upon a
rock, our Government is founded.

It is impossible that that can be a Republican government in
which one half the citizens thereof are forever disfranchised. A
citizen disfranchised is a citizen attainted; and this, too, in
face of the fact, that you look in vain in the great charter of
government, the Constitution of the United States, for any
warrant or authority for such discrimination. To that instrument
she appeals for protection.

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES. No. 182.--October Term, 1874.
Virginia L. Minor and Francis Minor, her husband, Plaintiffs in
Error, _vs._ Reese Happersett. In error to the Supreme Court of
the State of Missouri.

Mr. Chief Justice Waite delivered the opinion of the court.
(March 29. 1875.)

The question is presented in this case, whether, since the
adoption of the XIV. Amendment, a woman, who is a citizen of the
United States and of the State of Missouri, is a voter in that
State, notwithstanding the provision of the Constitution and laws
of the State, which confine the right of suffrage to men alone.
We might perhaps decide the case upon other grounds, but this
question is fairly made. From the opinion, we find that it was
the only one decided in the court below, and it is the only one
which has been argued here. The case was undoubtedly brought to
this court for the sole purpose of having that question decided
by us, and, in view of the evident propriety there is of having
it settled, so far as it can be by such a decision, we have
concluded to waive all other considerations and proceed at once
to its determination.

It is contended that the provisions of the Constitution and laws
of the State of Missouri, which confine the right of suffrage and
registration therefor to men, are in violation of the
Constitution of the United States, and therefore void. The
argument is, that as a woman, born or naturalized in the United
States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, is a citizen of
the United States and of the State in which she resides, she has
the right of suffrage as one of the privileges and immunities of
her citizenship, which the State can not by its laws or
constitution abridge.

There is no doubt that women may be citizens. They are persons,
and, by the XIV. Amendment, "all persons born or naturalized in
the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" are
expressly declared to be "citizens of the United States and of
the State wherein they reside" But, in our opinion, it did not
need this Amendment to give them that position. Before its
adoption, the Constitution of the United States did not in terms
prescribe who should be citizens of the United States or of the
several States, yet there were necessarily such citizens without
such provision. There can not be a nation without a people. The
very idea of a political community, such as a nation is, implies
an association of persons for the promotion of their general
welfare. Each one of the persons associated becomes a member of
the nation formed by the association. He owes it allegiance, and
is entitled to its protection. Allegiance and protection are in
this connection, reciprocal obligations. The one is a
compensation for the other; allegiance for protection and
protection for allegiance.

For convenience, it has been found necessary to give a name to
this membership. The object is to designate by a title the person
and the relation he bears to the nation. For this purpose the
words "subject," "inhabitant," and "citizen" have been used, and
the choice between them is sometimes made to depend upon the form
of the government. Citizen is now more commonly employed,
however, and as it has been considered better suited to the
description of one living under a republican government, it was
adopted by nearly all of the States upon their separation from
Great Britain, and was afterward adopted in the articles of
confederation and in the Constitution of the United States. When
used in this sense, it is understood as conveying the idea of
membership of a nation, and nothing more.

To determine, then, who were citizens of the United States before
the adoption of the Amendment, it is necessary to ascertain what
persons originally associated themselves together to form the
nation, and what were afterward admitted to membership. Looking
at the Constitution itself, we find that it was ordained and
established by "the people of the United States" (Preamble, 1
Stat., 10), and then, going further back, we find that these were
the people of the several States that had before dissolved the
political bands which connected them with Great Britain and
assumed a separate and equal station among the powers of the
earth (Dec. of Ind., 1 Stat., 1), and that had by articles of
confederation and perpetual union, in which they took the name of
"the United States of America," entered into a firm league of
friendship with each other for their common defense, the security
of their liberties and their mutual and general welfare, binding
themselves to assist each other against all force offered to or
attack made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion,
sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever (Art. Confed.,
sec. 3, 1 Stat. 4).

Whoever then was one of the people of either of these States when
the Constitution of the United States was adopted, became _ipso
facto_ a citizen--a member of the nation created by its adoption.
He was one of the persons associating together to form the
nation, and was, consequently, one of its original citizens. As
to this there has never been a doubt. Disputes have arisen as to
whether or not certain persons or certain classes of persons were
part of the people at the time, but never as to their citizenship
if they were.

Additions might always be made to the citizenship of the United
States in two ways--first by birth and second by naturalization.
This is apparent from the Constitution itself, for it provides
(Art. 2, Sec. 1) that "no person except a natural born citizen,
or a citizen of the United States at the time of the adoption of
the Constitution, shall be eligible to the office of President,"
and (Art. 1, Sec. 8) that Congress shall have power "to establish
a uniform rule of naturalization." Thus, new citizens may be born
or they may be created by naturalization.

The Constitution does not in words say who shall be natural-born
citizens. Resort must be had elsewhere to ascertain that. At
common law, with the nomenclature of which the framers of the
Constitution were familiar, it was never doubted that all
children born in a country of parents who were its citizens
became themselves upon their birth citizens also. These were
natives, or natural-born citizens as distinguished from aliens or
foreigners. Some authorities go further and include as citizens
children born within the jurisdiction, without reference to the
citizenship of their parents. As to this class there have been
doubts, but never as to the first. For the purposes of this case
it is not necessary to solve these doubts. It is sufficient for
everything we have now to consider, that all children born of
citizen parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens.
The words "all children" are certainly as comprehensive when used
in this connection as "all persons," and if females are included
in the last, they must be in the first. That they are included in
the last is not denied. In fact, the whole argument of the
plaintiffs proceeds upon that idea.

Under the power to adopt a uniform system of naturalization,
Congress as early as 1790 provided "that any alien, being a free
white person," might be admitted as a citizen of the United
States, and that the children of such persons so naturalized,
dwelling within the United States, being under twenty-one years
of age at the time of such naturalization, should also be
considered citizens of the United States, and that the children
of citizens of the United States that might be born beyond the
sea, or out of the limits of the United States, should be
considered as natural-born citizens (1 Stat. 103). These
provisions thus enacted have, in substance, been retained in all
the naturalization laws adopted since. In 1855, however, the last
provision was somewhat extended, and all persons theretofore born
or thereafter to be born out of the limits of the jurisdiction of
the United States, whose fathers were, or should be at the time
of their birth, citizens of the United States, were declared to
be citizens also (10 Stat. 604).

As early as 1804 it was enacted by Congress that when any alien,
who had declared his intention to become a citizen in the manner
provided by law, died before he was actually naturalized, his
widow and children should be considered as citizens of the United
States, and entitled to all rights and privileges as such upon
taking the necessary oath (2 Stat., 293); and in 1855 it was
further provided that any woman who might lawfully be naturalized
under the existing laws, married, or who should be married to a
citizen of the United States, should be deemed and taken to be a
citizen (10 Stat., 604). From this it is apparent, that, from the
commencement of the legislation upon this subject, alien women
and alien minors could be made citizens by naturalization; and we
think it will not be contended that this would have been done if
it had not been supposed that native women and native minors were
already citizens by birth.

But if more is necessary to show that women have always been
considered as citizens the same as men, abundant proof is to be
found in the legislative and judicial history of the country.
Thus, by the Constitution, the judicial power of the United
States is made to extend to controversies between citizens of
different States. Under this it has been uniformly held, that the
citizenship necessary to give the courts of the United States
jurisdiction of a cause must be affirmatively shown on the
record. Its existence as a fact may be put in issue and tried. If
found not to exist, the case must be dismissed. Notwithstanding
this, the records of the courts are full of cases in which the
jurisdiction depends upon the citizenship of women, and not one
can be found, we think, in which objection was made on that
account. Certainly none can be found in which it has been held
that women could not sue or be sued in the courts of the United
States. Again, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution,
in many of the States (and in some probably now) aliens could not
inherit or transmit inheritance. There are a multitude of cases
to be found in which the question has been presented whether a
woman was or was not an alien, and as such capable or incapable
of inheritance, but in no one has it been insisted that she was
not a citizen because she was a woman. On the contrary, her right
to citizenship has been in all cases assumed. The only question
has been whether, in the particular ease under consideration, she
had availed herself of the right.

In the legislative department of the Government similar proof
will be found. Thus, in the pre-emption laws (5 Stat., 455, sec.
10), a widow, "being a citizen of the United States," is allowed
to make settlement on the public lands and purchase upon the
terms specified, and women, "being citizens of the United
States," are permitted to avail themselves of the benefit of the
homestead law (12 Stat., 392).

Other proof of like character might be found, but certainly more
can not be necessary to establish the fact that sex has never
been made one of the elements of citizenship in the United
States. In this respect men have never had an advantage over
women. The same laws precisely apply to both. The XIV. Amendment
did not affect the citizenship of women any more than it did of
men. In this particular, therefore, the rights of Mrs. Minor do
not depend upon the Amendment. She has always been a citizen
from her birth, and entitled to all the privileges and immunities
of citizenship. The Amendment prohibited the State, of which she
is a citizen, from abridging any of her privileges and immunities
as a citizen of the United States, but it did not confer
citizenship on her; that she had before its adoption.

The Constitution does not define the privileges and immunities of
citizens. For that definition we must look elsewhere. In this
case we need not determine what they are, but only whether
suffrage is necessarily one of them.

It certainly is nowhere made so in express terms. The United
States has no voters in the States of its own creation. The
elective officers of the United States are all elected directly
or indirectly by State voters. The members of the House of
Representatives are to be chosen by the people of the States, and
the electors in each State must have the qualifications requisite
for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature
(art. 1, sec. 2, Const.) Senators are to be chosen by the
Legislatures of the States, and, necessarily, the members of the
Legislature required to make the choice are elected by the voters
of the State (art. 1, sec. 3). Each State must appoint, in such
manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, the electors to
elect the President and Vice-President (art. 2, sec. 2). The
times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and
Representatives are to be prescribed in each State by the
Legislature thereof; but Congress may at any time by law make or
alter such regulations, except as to the place of choosing
Senators (art. 1, sec. 4). It is not necessary to inquire whether
this power of supervision thus given to Congress is sufficient to
authorize any interference with the State laws prescribing the
qualifications of voters, for no such interference has ever been
attempted. The power of the State in this particular is certainly
supreme until Congress acts.

The Amendment did not add to the privileges and immunities of a
citizen. It simply furnished an additional guaranty for the
protection of such as he already had. No new voters were
necessarily made by it. Indirectly it may have had that effect,
because it may have increased the number of citizens entitled to
suffrage under the Constitution and laws of the States, but it
operates for this purpose, if at all, through the States and the
State laws, and not directly upon the citizen.

It is clear, therefore, we think, that the Constitution has not
added the right of suffrage to the privileges and immunities of
citizenship as they existed at the time it was adopted. This
makes it proper to inquire whether suffrage was co-extensive with
the citizenship of the States at the time of its adoption. If it
was, then it may with force be argued that suffrage was one of
the rights which belonged to citizenship, and in the enjoyment of
which every citizen must be protected. But if it was not, the
contrary may with propriety be assumed.

When the Constitution of the United States was adopted, all the
several States, with the exception of Rhode Island, had
constitutions of their own. Rhode Island continued to act under
its charter from the Crown. Upon an examination of those
constitutions, we find that in no State were all citizens
permitted to vote. Each State determined for itself who should
have that power.

Thus, in New Hampshire, "every male inhabitant of each town
and parish, with town privileges and places unincorporated
in the State, of twenty-one years of age and upwards,
excepting paupers and persons excused from paying taxes at
their own request," were its voters; in Massachusetts,
"every male inhabitant of twenty-one years of age and
upwards, having a freehold estate within the Commonwealth of
the annual income of three pounds, or any estate of the
value of sixty pounds"; in Rhode Island, "such as are
admitted free of the company and society" of the colony; in
Connecticut, such persons as had "maturity in years, quiet
and peaceful behavior, a civil conversation, and forty
shillings freehold or forty pounds personal estate," if so
certified by the selectmen; in New York, "every male
inhabitant of full age, who shall have personally resided
within one of the counties of the State for six months
immediately preceding the day of election, ... if during the
time aforesaid he shall have been a freeholder, possessing a
freehold of the value of twenty pounds within the country,
or have rented a tenement therein of the yearly value of
forty shillings, and been rated and actually paid taxes to
the State"; in New Jersey, all inhabitants ... of full age,
who are worth fifty pounds proclamation money, clear estate
in the same, and have resided in the county in which they
claim a vote for twelve months immediately preceding the
election"; in Pennsylvania, "every freeman at the age of
twenty-one years, having resided in the State two years next
before the election, and within that time paid a State or
county tax which shall have been assessed at least six
months before the election"; in Delaware and Virginia, "as
exercised by law at present"; in Maryland, "all freeman
above twenty-one years of age, having a freehold of fifty
acres of land in the county in which they offer to vote and
residing therein, and all freemen having property in the
State above the value of thirty pounds current money, and
having resided in the county in which they offer to vote one
whole year next preceding the election"; in North Carolina,
for Senators, "all freemen of the age of twenty-one years,
who have been inhabitants of any one county within the State
twelve months immediately preceding the day of election, and
possessed of a freehold within the same county of fifty
acres of land for six months next before and at the day of
election," and for members of the House of Commons, "all
freemen of the age of twenty-one years, who have been
inhabitants in any one county within the State twelve months
immediately preceding the day of any election, and shall
have paid public taxes"; in South Carolina, "every free
white man of the age of twenty-one years, being a citizen of
the State, and having resided therein two years previous to
the day of election, and who hath a freehold of fifty acres
of land, or a town lot of which he hath been legally seized
and possessed at least six months before such election, or
(not having such freehold or town lot), hath been a resident
within the election district in which he offers to give his
vote six months before said election, and hath paid a tax
the preceding year of three shillings sterling toward the
support of the Government"; and, in Georgia, such "citizens
and inhabitants of the State as shall have attained to the
age of twenty-one years, and shall have paid tax for the
year next preceding the election, and shall have resided six
months within the county."

In this condition of the law in respect to suffrage in the
several States, it can not for a moment be doubted that, if it
had been intended to make all citizens of the United States
voters, the framers of the Constitution would not have left it to
implication. So important a change in the condition of
citizenship as it actually existed, if intended, would have been
expressly declared.

But if further proof is necessary to show that no such change was
intended, it can easily be found both in and out of the
Constitution. By article 4, section 2, it is provided that "the
citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges
and immunities of citizens in the several States." If suffrage is
necessarily a part of citizenship, then the citizens of each
State must be entitled to vote in the several States precisely as
their citizens are. This is more than asserting that they may
change their residence and become citizens of the State and thus
be voters. It goes to the extent of insisting that, while
retaining their original citizenship, they may vote in any State.
This, we think, has never been claimed. And again, by the very
terms of the Amendment we have been considering (the XIV).

"Representatives shall be apportioned among the several
States according to their respective numbers, counting the
whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not
taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the
choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the
United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive
and Judicial officers of a State, or the Members of the
Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male
inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age and
citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged,
except for participation in the Rebellion or other crimes,
the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the
proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear
to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age
in such State."

Why this, if it was not in the power of the Legislature to deny
the right of suffrage to some male inhabitants? And if suffrage
was necessarily one of the absolute rights of citizenship, why
confine the operation of the limitation to male inhabitants?
Women and children are, as we have seen, "persons." They are
counted in the enumeration upon which the apportionment is to be
made; but if they were necessarily voters because of their
citizenship unless clearly excluded, why inflict the penalty for
the exclusion of males alone? Clearly, no such form of words
would have been selected to express the idea here indicated if
suffrage was the absolute right of all citizens.

And still again, after the adoption of the XIV. Amendment, it was
deemed necessary to adopt a XV., as follows: "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
race, color, or previous condition of servitude." The XIV.
Amendment had already provided that no State should make or
enforce any law which should abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States. If suffrage was one of these
privileges or immunities, why amend the Constitution to prevent
its being denied on account of race, etc.? Nothing is more
evident than that the greater must include the less; and if all
were already protected, why go through with the form of amending
the Constitution to protect a part?

It is true that the United States guarantees to every State a
republican form of government (art. 4, sec. 4). It is also true
that no State can pass a bill of attainder (art. 1, section 10),
and that no person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property,
without due process of law (Amendment V). All these several
provisions of the Constitution must be construed in connection
with the other parts of the instrument, and in the light of the
surrounding circumstances.

The guaranty is of a republican form of government. No
particular government is designated as republican, neither is
the exact form to be guaranteed, in any manner especially
designated. Here, as in other parts of the instrument, we are
compelled to resort elsewhere to ascertain what was intended. The
guaranty necessarily implies a duty on the part of the States
themselves to provide such a government. All the States had
governments when the Constitution was adopted. In all, the people
participated to some extent through their representatives elected
in the manner specially provided. These governments the
Constitution did not change. They were accepted precisely as they
were, and it is therefore to be presumed that they were such as
it was the duty of the States to provide. Thus, we have
unmistakable evidence of what was republican in form, within the
meaning of that term as employed in the Constitution. As has been
seen, all the citizens of the States were not invested with the
right of suffrage. In all, save perhaps New Jersey, this right
was only bestowed upon men, and not upon all of them. Under these
circumstances, it is certainly now too late to contend that a
Government is not republican within the meaning of this guaranty
in the Constitution because women are not made voters.

The same maybe said of the other provisions just quoted. Women
were excluded from suffrage in nearly all the States by the
express provision of their constitutions and laws. If that had
been equivalent to a bill of attainder, certainly its abrogation
would not have been left to implication. Nothing less than
express language would have been employed to effect so radical a
change. So also of the Amendment which declares that no person
shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; adopted as it was as early as 1791. If suffrage
was intended to be included within its obligations, language
better adapted to express that intent would most certainly have
been employed. The right of suffrage, when granted, will be
protected. He who has it can only be deprived of it by due
process of law; but, in order to claim protection, he must first
show that he has the right. But we have already sufficiently
considered the proof found upon the inside of the Constitution.
That upon the outside is equally effective.

The Constitution was submitted to the States for adoption in
1787, and was ratified by nine States in 1788, and, finally, by
the thirteen original States in 1790. "Vermont was the first new
State admitted to the Union, and it came in under a Constitution
which conferred the right of suffrage only upon men of the full
age of twenty-one years, having resided in the State for the
space of one whole year next before the election, and who were of
quiet and peaceable behavior. This was in 1791. The next year
(1792) Kentucky followed, with a Constitution confining the right
of suffrage to free male citizens of the age of twenty-one years,
who had resided in the State two years, or, in the county in
which they offered to vote, one year next before the election.
Then followed Tennessee in 1796, with voters of freemen of the
age of twenty-one years and upward, possessing a freehold in the
county wherein they may vote, and being inhabitants of the State
or freemen being inhabitants of any one county in the State six
months immediately preceding the day of election. But we need not
particularize further. No new State has ever been admitted to
the Union which has conferred the right of suffrage upon women,
and this has never been considered a valid objection to her
admission. On the contrary, as is claimed in the argument, the
right of suffrage was withdrawn from women as early as 1807 in
the State of New Jersey, without any attempt to obtain the
interference of the United States to prevent it. Since then the
governments of the insurgent States have been reorganized under a
requirement that, before their Representatives could be admitted
to seats in Congress, they must have adopted new Constitutions,
republican in form. In no one of these Constitutions was suffrage
conferred upon women, and yet the States have all been restored
to their original position as States in the Union.

Besides this, citizenship has not in all cases been made a
condition precedent to the enjoyment of the right of suffrage.
Thus, in Missouri, persons of foreign birth, who have declared
their intention to become citizens of the United States, may
under certain circumstances vote. The same provision is to be
found in the Constitutions of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida,
Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota, and Texas.

Certainly if the courts can consider any question settled, this
is one. For near ninety years the people have acted upon the idea
that the Constitution, when it conferred citizenship, did not
necessarily confer the right of suffrage. If uniform practice
long continued can settle the construction of so important an
instrument as the Constitution of the United States confessedly
is, most certainly it has been done here. Our province is to
decide what the law is, not to declare what it should be.

We have given this case the careful consideration its importance
demands. If the law is wrong it ought to be changed, but the
power for that is not with us. The arguments addressed to us
bearing upon such a view of the subject may perhaps be sufficient
to induce those having the power to make the alteration, but they
ought not to be permitted to influence our judgment in
determining the present rights of the parties now litigating
before us. No argument as to woman's need of suffrage can be
considered. We can only act upon her rights as they exist. It is
not for us to look at the hardship of withholding. Our duty is at
an end, if we find it is within the power of a State to withhold.

Being unanimously of the opinion that the Constitution of the
United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one,
and that the Constitutions and laws of the several States which
commit that important trust to men alone are not necessarily
void, we affirm the judgment of the court below.

Soon after the decision on Mrs. Minor's case, Mrs. Gage, in a
convention at Washington, ably reviewed Judge Waite's opinion, showing
that the United States has eight classes of voters. She said:

Chief justice Waite, in rendering the opinion of the Supreme
Court of the United States, in the Minor _vs._ Happersett case,
which was an appeal from the Supreme Court of Missouri, on the
question of woman's right to vote under the provisions of the
XIV. Amendment, decided against this right. The court maintained
that the United States Constitution does not confer the right of
suffrage on any person, and that the matter is regulated by
State Constitutions, and that when provision is made in them
extending the right of suffrage to men only, such provisions are
binding. It also declared that the United States had no voters in
the States of its own creation. But this assertion was false upon
the very face of it.

1st. Every enfranchised male slave had the ballot secured him
under United States law--a law which annulled all State
provisions against color. At the time of ratification of the last
amendments, the State of New York possessed a property
qualification of $250. The moment these amendments were ratified,
that law became dead on the statute book. The New York
Legislature did not repeal it. The United States repealed this
property prohibition, by creating a class of United States voters
out of colored men. So here is one class of United States voters,
and a clear mistake on the part of Chief-Justice Waite and the
Supreme Court. But the United States has often exercised its
power over the ballot more directly than through constitutional
amendments; for,

2d. Every Southern man disfranchised because of having taken part
in the war, and who has since been granted amnesty, has again
been made a voter through United States law; all such men then
became United States voters. Here is a second class of United
States voters, and a second mistake of Chief Justice Waite and
the Supreme Court. It may be answered that the revolted States
were in the condition of Territories at the time of this
disfranchisement, and therefore under direct control of the
National Government. Admitting this, we still know that general
amnesty was granted after reconstruction; after State forms of
government had again been organized, the nation exercised its
power over the ballot by restoring thousands of men to their
political rights--to citizenship. And from the general law of
amnesty for the rank and file, the leaders in the rebellion were
again and again, by special Acts of Congress, re-endowed with the
ballot. No amendment was submitted or expected. The authority of
Congress thus to restore to these men the use of the ballot was
unquestioned.

3d. The naturalized foreigner secures his right to vote under
United States law, and can not vote unless he first becomes an
United States citizen, or announces his intention of so becoming.
In Missouri, Nebraska, and some other States, the declaration of
such intention permits him to vote. This is a State regulation,
but the fact of his United States citizenship must in some form
first exist. In the naturalized man is a third class of United
States voters. With one and the same hand he at the same moment
picks up his naturalization papers and his ballot. It matters not
what the State law may be, the foreigner secures his vote under
United States law. And here is a third class of United States
voters and a third mistake of Chief-Justice Waite and the Supreme
Court.

4th. The Thirty-ninth or Fortieth Congress took a step farther
than this, passing a law that all foreigners who had served in,
and been honorably discharged from the army, should possess the
right to vote, even though they had not previously filed
intention of naturalization, thus again proving that Congress
itself, without an amendment to the Constitution, or the
authorization of States, possessed power over the ballot. If it
has this power of securing the use of the ballot to foreigners
who have never intimated a desire to become citizens, it surely
can enfranchise its own native-born citizens irrespective of
sex. The denial of the ballot to all women by the Supreme Court,
in the person of Virginia L. Minor, under the pretense that the
United States possesses no voters in the States of its own
creation is thus shown to be a false assumption. But this is not
all.

5th and 6th. And oldest of all these classes of United States
voters are those men who vote for members of the House of
Representatives, and for Presidential Electors in the several
States.

NATIONAL CONSTITUTION.--ARTICLE 1, Section 2. The House of
Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every
second year by the people of the several States, and the
electors in each State shall have the qualifications
requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the
State Legislature.

ARTICLE 2, Section 1, Clause 2. Each State shall appoint in
such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number
of electors equal to the whole number of Senators and
Representatives to which the State may be entitled in
Congress.... Clause 3. The Congress may determine the time
of choosing the electors and the day on which they shall
give their votes; which day shall be the same throughout the
United States.

The United States by these articles guarantees: 1st. To every
person who has a right under State action to vote for the most
numerous branch of his State Legislature, the United States right
to vote at a peaceable election for members of Congress. 2d. The
United States directs the appointment of Presidential Electors,
and declares that Congress may not only determine the time of
choosing such electors, but shall also fix the day upon which
such votes shall be given. The United States secures the right,
merely leaving the States to prescribe the qualifications of
voters. This is all, with one exception that woman asks; she
demands that her right shall be recognized and secured by the
United States, which shall then prohibit the States from
prescribing qualifications not within the reach of all citizens.

A 7th class of United States voters are those men who having been
deprived of citizenship through civil offenses against the power
and majesty of the United States are afterward pardoned, or
"restored to citizenship."

Still an 8th class over whom the United States exercises its
authority are deserters from the army--military criminals. An act
of Congress of March 3, 1865, imposed forfeiture of citizenship
and its rights, as an additional penalty for the crime of
desertion. In accordance with this act, the President issued a
proclamation the eleventh of that same month, declaring that all
deserters who failed to report themselves to a Provost Marshal
within sixty days thereafter should be deemed to have forfeited
their rights of citizenship, and should be declared forever
incapable of holding any office of interest or profit under the
United States. This act was passed previous to the submission of
the XIV. Amendment.

Thus at the time of Chief-Justice Waite's decision asserting
National want of power over the ballot, and declaring the United
States possessed no voters of its own creation in the States
(where else would it have them?), the country already possessed
eight classes of voters, or persons whose right to the ballot was
in some form under the control or sanction of the United States.
The black man, the amnestied man, the naturalized man, the
foreigner honorably discharged from the Union army, voters for
the lower House of Congress, voters for Presidential electors,
pardoned civil and military criminals. Further research may bring
still other classes to light.

Thus when woman claims that her right to the use of the ballot
shall be secured by the United States, she has eight
distinguished precedents in favor of her demand for National
protection. No more inconsistent assertion was ever made than
that the United States possesses no control over the suffrage.
While by Circuit Court decisions, Supreme Court decisions, and
decisions of courts of lesser degree, theoretically denying its
control over the suffrage, the United States in many ways besides
those mentioned, practically acknowledges its possession of this
right. In the case of Miss Anthony and the fourteen other women
of Rochester, N. Y., who voted in 1872, the great State of New
York took no action at all in the matter; it was the General
Government which thrust itself forward and took up the question.
If the United States has no control over the suffrage then Miss
Anthony's trial was a clear interference of the United States
with the rights of States. And so great was this interference, it
is believed the judge appointed to try her case left Washington
with his verdict in his pocket already written.

Let none of my audience forget the various great trials of
woman's right to vote under the XIV. Amendment, especially that
of Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, who prosecuted the Inspector of
Election in St. Louis for refusing to receive her vote, and whose
case, coming finally for adjudication to the Supreme Court of the
United States, decision was rendered against her on the plea that
the ballot was under control of the respective States, and that
the United States has no voters in the States of its own
creation; which I have shown to be an ignorant, imbecile, and
false plea. Neither let them forget that of Susan B. Anthony,
decided against her on the ground that she was a woman at the
time she voted. If States have the sole control of the suffrage,
there was interference in the rights of the State of New York by
her trial; and if United States citizens of any class have a
right to be protected in the use of the ballot, then the United
States very flagrantly and tyrannously interfered in Miss
Anthony's individual right as a citizen of the United States.

In the near future these trials of women under the XIV. Amendment
will be looked upon as the great State trials of the world;
trials on which a republic, founded upon the acknowledged rights
of all persons to self-government, through its courts decided
against the right of one half of its citizens on the ground that
sex was a barrier and a crime.

Then let us look at the territory of Wyoming. Much has of late
been said in regard to women not making use of the ballot there.
I care little about that statement one way or the other, as long
as her right to vote is not interfered with. It will be time to
require all women to vote when we have such a law for men; until
then let each voter refrain from voting at his or her own option;
it is not the vital question. But there is a point connected with
woman's voting in Wyoming that is well worthy of our
consideration. That is, the interference of the United States
with the concomitants of this right. For a time the women of
Wyoming sat upon juries, and the fact was heralded over the
country that thieves, gamblers, murderers fled the territory
rather than fall into the hands of these women jurors. The first
conviction for a murder in that territory, not committed in
self-defense, came from a mixed jury.

But of late we have ceased hearing of women jurors. And why?
Because that sacred right has been interfered with by the United
States. The Marshal of the Territory, an officer appointed by
the United States Government, has absolutely refused to place the
names of women on the jury lists. Consequently the women of
Wyoming are denied the exercise of this right by United States
power. Whether the Marshal has been ordered by the National
Government to omit the names of women, we do not know, and it
does not signify. The duty of the United States is none the less
clear; the Territories are in an especial way the wards of the
nation, and should be protected in all territorial rights. The
Territory of Wyoming having secured to women the exercise of
their right to vote, it is the duty of the General Government to
protect them in the exercise of all concomitant rights, of which
the jury is one.

This deprivation of jury rights in Wyoming is not only an United
States interference with woman's political rights, but also an
interference with her industrial rights. It is a well-known fact
that some women earned their first independent dollar by sitting
in the jury box. And whatever interferes with woman's industrial
rights helps to send her down to those depths where want of bread
has forced so many women: into the gutters of shame. This is a
question of morality as well as of industrial and political
rights. Every infringement of a person's political rights,
touches a hundred other rights adversely. Let me show you one
good that has come to woman through her ballot in Wyoming. The
payment of men and women teachers has been equalized by direct
statute, for political power always benefits the parties holding
it.

Let us look at a few other ways in which the United States has
touched the rights of women where protection has been secured her
by legislation outside of itself. One instance that has come to
my knowledge since I have been in your city, is in the case of
pensions for colored women. The United States not only secured
the ballot to the black male citizen outside of State authority,
but it has touched the family relation with its powerful hand. It
has assumed that the woman with whom a colored soldier was living
at the time of his death was his wife, notwithstanding he may
have lived for many years in recognized married relations with
another woman, and become the father of children by her during
this period. In one case coming under the cognizance of our
Washington lawyer, Mrs. Lockwood, a pension was, by United States
authority, thus granted to a woman living with such colored
soldier at the time of his death, although she had no other claim
upon it. This soldier, during the period of slavery, had been
married in his master's house to another woman by a regularly
ordained clergyman, and by that wife had become the father of
five or six children. This woman was his lawful widow, according
to State and church law. These children were his lawful children,
according to State and church law, but the United States stepped
in, and made this married woman an outcast, and left her children
in the world with the brand of illegitimacy. The women of the
Territories of Wyoming and Utah are not secure in their political
rights, because the women of the Nation have none. Scarcely a
session of Congress but some politician introduces a bill to
disfranchise the women of these Territories.

In regard to the religious aspects of this Utah question. I care
for it only so far as it touches woman's political rights,
although I do know that woman's political wrongs and her
religious wrongs have been very closely intermingled in the past.
I recall a Papal Bull of Urban II., in the 12th century, which
compelled priests to discard their wives, making of thousands of
women in England, wives who were not wed; of children, offspring
who had no recognized fathers. We of the National Woman Suffrage
Association have nothing to do with the religious rights of women
in Utah, except in so far as they intermingle with and touch
woman's political rights. But the Utah question, which now comes
up again, is not simply a religious question. The Government is
continuously striving to destroy the political rights of the
women of this Territory. Its Governor is a United States officer,
and in his last report to the Secretary of the Interior, he so
far transcended the duties of his office as to suggest the
disfranchisement of Utah women. Almost every session of Congress
sees some bill of similar import introduced.

The General Government did not confer this right, did not secure
even the exercise of it. The territorial Legislature, the same as
in Wyoming, secured to women the exercise of the right of
suffrage; the United States, according to its own theory, has no
authority to interfere with this right, because, according to
that theory, it has nothing at all to do with the suffrage
question. Yet it proposes to disfranchise those women as a
punishment for their religious belief; it proposes to make social
outcasts of them, as it has already done with the wives of some
of its black soldier voters.

Looking back through history we find no act of the Romish Church
more vile than that which compelled its priests to disown their
wives and legitimate children--none which so utterly demoralized
society, and destroyed its tens of thousands of women. And
although, as a body of reformers, I again say we do not touch
religion except where it, and politics together, infringe upon
the rights of women, I do not hesitate to say for myself
individually, that I have no faith in any form of religion, be it
what it may, Christian, Mohammedan, Buddhist, that receives
revelation only through some man; or farther than that, I will
say, I have no faith in any form of religion that does not place
man and woman on an exact equality of religious rights. Two forms
of religion of the present day which have risen through woman, or
as revelations to her, namely the Shaker and the Spiritual, do
give us equality of religious rights, for man and woman. But I
call your attention to the inconsistency of United States laws,
and their especial injustice to women by interference with those
rights secured them by State or Territorial laws, as in case of
the colored soldier's wife; as in case the assumption that the
United States had a right to prohibit the exercise of the
suffrage by a woman in New York, although New York itself did not
interfere; as in case of the virtual prohibition by the United
States of jury rights to the women of Wyoming; as in case of the
presumptuous suggestion of the Governor of Utah that its women
should be disfranchised; as in case of such bills so often
introduced in Congress.

I know something of the opinion of the women of the Nation, and I
know they intend to be recognized as citizens secured in the
exercise of all the powers and rights of citizens. If this
security has not come under the XIV. Amendment, it must come
under a XVI., for woman intends to possess "equal personal rights
and equal political privileges with all other citizens." She
asks for nothing outside the power of the United States, she asks
for nothing outside the duty of the United States to secure.
Politicians may as well look this fact squarely in the face and
become wise after the wisdom of the world, for in just so far as
they ignore and forget the women of the country, in just so far
will they themselves be ignored and forgotten by future
generations.

The following review of this important case is from the January
number, 1876, of the _Central Law Journal_, St. Louis, Missouri:

WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN ITS LEGAL ASPECT--A REVIEW OF THE CASE OF MINOR
_vs._ HAPPERSETT, 21 WALLACE, U. S. REPORTS.

As a rule, respect should undoubtedly be paid to judicial
decisions. When the court of last resort has considered and
passed upon a question of law, especially if it be one involving
a consideration of constitutional power, as well as of private
right, it is eminently proper that its conclusion should not be
disturbed, unless for reasons of the gravest import. But cases
present themselves at times, in which criticism is not only
justified, but is demanded; and it is only through its aid that
the ultimate truth of any question can be reached and its
principles be correctly established. Nor can courts of justice
take exception to such criticism, since the reports abound with
evidences of the fact that there is no judicial immunity from
error; and we believe that if the glamour of supposed legal
impeccability, that shrouds the judiciary in the eyes of many,
could be removed, a public service would be accomplished. In the
case under consideration an important question of constitutional
law was involved, the construction of which affected not only the
plaintiff therein, but the entire class of persons to which she
belonged, while the decision extends it still further, and makes
it applicable to every citizen of the United States. Thus, while
the particular case may be ended, the entire community has an
interest in the conclusion announced. It is not our purpose to
consider the subject of suffrage as an abstract right; with this
aspect of it we have nothing to do in this article. We shall
treat it solely as a legal right. Under a government of law,
indeed, there are, properly speaking, no abstract rights. All
rights, of person or of property, are legal rights, and it shall
be our purpose to show that the right of Federal suffrage is
recognized in the Constitution of the United States, and
certainly no one will deny its practical exercise during nearly
ninety years. An inspection of the Opinion will show that the
whole matter was summed up in the question, whether suffrage is a
right or privilege appertaining to citizenship of the United
States, for if it be, then the plaintiff's suit was rightly
brought. The opinion, which was delivered by the Chief Justice,
states the matter as follows:

It is contended that the provisions of the Constitution and
laws of the State of Missouri, which confine the right of
suffrage and registration therefor to men, are in violation
of the Constitution of the United States, and therefore
void. The argument is, that as a woman, born or naturalized
in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction
thereof, is a citizen of the United States and of the State
in which she resides, she has the right of suffrage, as one
of the privileges and immunities of her citizenship, which
the State can not by its laws or Constitution abridge.

And on page 170:

If the right of suffrage is one of the necessary privileges
of a citizen of the United States, then the Constitution and
laws of Missouri confining it to men are in violation of the
Constitution of the United States, as amended, and
consequently void. The direct question is therefore
presented, whether all citizens are necessarily voters. The
Constitution does not define the privileges and immunities
of citizens. For that definition we must look elsewhere. In
this case we need not determine what they are, but only
whether suffrage is necessarily one of them. It certainly is
nowhere made so in express terms. The United States has no
voters in the State, of its own creation. The elective
officers of the United States are all elected directly or
indirectly by State voters.

We had supposed that if there was any question that now, at
least, might be regarded as finally settled, both by the late
appeal to arms, and by the Constitutional Amendments, it was that
of the subordination of State to National authority, over any and
all subjects in which the rights and privileges of citizens of
the United States are involved. If the amendments do not cover
this ground, then they are worse than useless. And yet this
decision is a blow at all that constitutes us a Nation. To
declare that the United States has no voters--that its officers
are all elected by State voters, is to completely reverse the
order of things, and subordinate the citizens of the United
States to State authority. It will be observed that this decision
goes far beyond the ground hitherto and ordinarily claimed by the
advocates of what are called "States' Rights."

It has usually been supposed that the States possessed the
authority to regulate the exercise of the franchise by the
Federal voter, but never before was the right itself denied as
appurtenant to Federal citizenship. But now the franchise itself
is declared to be non-existent--Federal officers are elected by
State voters. The subject itself is wholly withdrawn from Federal
supervision and control. Even the amendments can not confer
authority over a matter that has no existence. If, then, the
United States has no voters in the States, it can properly have
nothing to do with the subject of elections. If the citizen of
the United States has no right to vote except as a citizen of a
State, his Federal citizenship is, of course, subordinated to his
State citizenship. It logically follows that much of the recent
legislation on this subject by Congress is destitute of
authority. If members of the House of Representatives are elected
by State voters, as here declared, there is no reason why the
States may not, at their pleasure, recall their representatives,
or refuse to elect them, as in 1860 the Southern States claimed
it to be their right to do; and if a sufficient number can be
united in such a movement, the Federal Government will be
completely at their mercy. It may also well be doubted how far
the Southern States are bound by legislation in which they had no
part. Notwithstanding the provision of the XIV. Amendment, that
neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any
claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; it (as held by
the Supreme Court in two cases in 13th Wallace, Chief Justice
Chase dissenting), contracts for the sale or hire of slaves
effected before emancipation are valid, upon the ground that to
take away the remedy for their enforcement would be to impair
their obligation, how much less can the owner of a slave be
deprived of his property, which forms the subject-matter of that
contract, without compensation? If his contract can not be
impaired, surely the thing to which that contract relates can not
be taken from him, except upon compensation. Chief Justice Chase
was of the opinion that the above quoted provision of the XIV.
Amendment could be sustained only upon the ground that the XIII.
Amendment wiped out everything, contracts as well as slavery. Yet
the Court held all such contracts to be valid. And see, in this
connection, the case of Wilkinson _vs_. Leland, 2d Peters, 657.
It is idle to say that these suppositions are visionary. What has
happened once, may occur again. It can hardly be questioned that
if in 1860 the seceding States could have pointed to a decision
of the Supreme Court of the United States such as this, the whole
face of affairs might have been different, and the "erring
sisters" permitted to "go in peace"! The "lost cause" may not be
"lost," after all.

But to resume: The Court tells us in its opinion in this case,
that "there can not be a Nation without a people," but it seems
there may be a Nation without voters! Now the people of the
United States may not have a very profound knowledge of their
institutions, but their intelligence certainly rises to the level
of comprehending that a republican government can not be
established or maintained without voters. It would be a manifest
absurdity to say that in a government created by the people, they
are not voters. Inasmuch, then, as it is admitted by the Court,
if the right of suffrage be a privilege of the citizen of the
United States, that the State Constitution and laws confining it
to men are in violation of the Constitution of the United States
and, consequently, void; as contended for by the plaintiff in
this case, we have really only to examine this single point: Does
the Constitution of the United States recognize the right of
suffrage as belonging to its citizens?

Future generations will look with astonishment at the fact that
such a question could be asked seriously. Not only was the
subject debated in the convention that framed the instrument, but
one of its ablest members, Alexander Hamilton, in the
fifty-second number of the _Federalist_, says:

The definition of the right of suffrage is very justly
regarded as a fundamental article of republican government.
It was incumbent on the convention, therefore, to define and
establish this right in the Constitution. To have left it
open for the occasional regulation of the Congress, would
have been improper for the reason just mentioned. To have
submitted it to the legislative discretion of the States,
would have been improper for the same reason; and for the
additional reason, that it would have rendered too dependent
on the State Governments that branch of the Federal
Government which ought to be dependent on the people alone.
To have reduced the different qualifications in the
different States to one uniform rule, would probably have
been as dissatisfactory to some of the States as it would
have been difficult to the convention. The provision made by
the convention appears, therefore, to be the best that lay
within their option. It must be satisfactory to every State;
because it is conformable to the standard already
established, or which may be established by the State
itself. It will be safe to the United States; because, being
fixed by the State Constitutions, it is not alterable by the
State Governments, and it can not be feared that the people
of the States will alter this part of their constitutions in
such a manner as to abridge the rights secured to them by
the Federal Constitution.

Again, in the XV. Amendment, suffrage is recognized as an
existing right of Federal citizenship. It is not created by that
Amendment. It was already existing. The language is:

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 race, color, or previous condition of
servitude.

A right must exist before it can be denied. There can be no
denial of a thing that has no existence. If it should be said the
XV. Amendment relates only to the negro, we reply that this would
be no answer, even if true, which may be doubted; but the point
we are now discussing is the statement of the Court that the
United States has no voters in the States of its own creation, or
in other words, that Federal suffrage does not exist; we have
shown that this a mistake, it being recognized in the
Constitution; and as the argument of the Court was based on its
non-existence it consequently falls to the ground. This really
disposes of the case, but we will notice other points. The Court
says:

After the adoption of the XIV. Amendment, it was deemed
necessary to have a XV: ... The XIV. Amendment had already
provided that no State should make or enforce any law which
should abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of
the United States. If suffrage was one of these privileges
or immunities, why amend the Constitution to prevent its
being denied on account of race, etc.? Nothing is more
evident than that the greater must include the less, and if
all were already protected, why go through with the form of
amending the Constitution to protect a part?

It is sometimes perilous in argument to ask questions--we will
answer the Court in its own words. In the Slaughter-house cases,
the Court then said:

A few years' experience satisfied the thoughtful men who had
been the authors of the other two amendments, that,
notwithstanding the restraints of those articles on the
States, and the laws passed under the additional powers
granted to Congress, these were inadequate for the
protection of life, liberty, and property, without which
freedom to the slave was no boon. They were in all those
States denied the right of suffrage. The laws were
administered by the white man alone. It was urged that a
race of men distinctively marked as was the negro, living in
the midst of another and dominant race, could never be fully
secured in their person and their property without the right
of suffrage. Hence the XV. Amendment, which declares that
the right of a citizen of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by any State on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude. The negro having,
by the XIV. Amendment, been declared to be a citizen of the
United States, is thus made a voter in every State of the
Union. (16 Wallace, 71.)

For the present argument, it is immaterial whether this result is
effected by the XIV., or XV. Amendment, or both. The point is,
that the Supreme Court here declares the negro to be a voter in
every State of the Union, by virtue of one or both amendments. He
is made a voter (a Federal voter) by the law of the United
States, and not by the State law. Being made a citizen of the
United States, he is thus made a voter in every State of the
Union. This is the very gist of the matter. The whole principle
is summed up in these few words. The franchise is an incident of
the status, or condition of citizenship. Freedom alone was not
enough. The XIII. Amendment made the negro free, but citizenship
was additionally necessary before he became a voter. As soon as
that was achieved, in that moment the franchise followed; to be
enjoyed, in the same manner as by other citizens. If ever a
suitor was entitled to rely with confidence upon judicial
utterances of great principles of law, Mrs. Minor was thus
entitled, in her case. She was a citizen of the United States by
birth; admitted to be possessed of every qualification but that
of sex. Her counsel appeared before this court and quoted its
very language above given, and asked the court to be consistent
with its own teachings. But no. There was no great and powerful
party to back her demand, as in the case of the negro. She was
merely a private individual, and the court contented itself with
saying that the right of suffrage when granted would be
protected! To which it may be replied, if women ever vote, they
will protect themselves; but, if their right should subsequently
be denied by the State, the Supreme Court, according to its own
rulings in this case, could give no protection, since it declares
the right to be wholly within the control of each State. But why
should the court require the women citizens of the United States
to produce a special grant of the right, when it required nothing
of the kind from the negro? Are there two laws in this country,
one for the negro, and another for woman? Does the Constitution
of the United States recognize or permit class distinctions to be
made between its citizens? Yet by this decision, the negro is
placed above the woman. He is her superior. His position is above
her. For our own part, we decline to accept any such construction
of that instrument, knowing that the time will ultimately come
when some claim similar to that of Mrs. Minor will meet with
proper recognition. To make its inconsistency still greater, the
court in this case declares that "allegiance and protection are
reciprocal obligations. The very idea of a political community,
such as a nation is, implies an association of persons for the
promotion of their general welfare. Each one of the persons
associated becomes a member of the nation formed by the
association. He owes it allegiance and is entitled to its
protection," yet in this case that protection is denied. While
the negro, then, is thus declared to be a voter, by reason of his
citizenship, in every State of the Union, there is no law either
of the State or of the Nation, which in terms or by words confers
the ballot upon him. The XV. Amendment does not confer it, but
treats it as a right already existing, and forbids its
deprivation. Likewise the State law assumes its existence, and
makes no change, except to conform to the new condition of the
negro's citizenship. There is no change in the State laws, except
the omission of a word--the word "white"--from the clause "white
male citizens," in the State Constitution. But who ever heard of
a right being conferred by omission? And yet this change of a
single word by the State was an acknowledgment by it of the
supremacy of Federal law touching this subject; and was designed
to make the State law conform to the Federal law, which declares
(XIV. Amendment) that "no State shall make or enforce any law
which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of
the United States." This conformity extends, however, only so far
as to embrace the negro citizen of the United States, leaving the
far larger class of women citizens of the United States still
under ban of disfranchisement, in plain violation of the
amendment. Under these circumstances, in the case under
consideration, the Supreme Court of the United States was asked
to interpose its authority, and effect by its decree that which
the State should have done, and declare that the word "male" must
be dropped, as well as the word "white."

Had this been done, the State law in its entirety would have
conformed to the paramount law of the United States, while as it
is, it conforms only in part. We are told that slavery was
abolished in Massachusetts, not by an enactment expressly adopted
for the purpose, but by a decision of the Supreme Court in 1781,
that its existence was inconsistent with the declaration in the
Bill of Rights that "all men are born free and equal."
(Bradford's History of Mass., 11, 227; Draper's Civil War, 1,
318; Story on Const., 11, p. 634, note.) So far, however, from
interfering, as it was its plain duty to have done, to protect
this class of United States citizens, the court has gone further
than perhaps it intended, and possibly destroyed the rights of
another class, for the decision, by declaring that the United
States has no voters, virtually renders the XV. Amendment of no
effect. There is nothing upon which it can operate. There being
no voters, there is of course no "right to vote," to be
"protected." So that every citizen of the United States is left
completely at the mercy of the State.

We will now consider that clause of the Constitution of the
United States in which, _as Hamilton said_, the right of suffrage
is defined and established for the citizens of the United States;
which, nevertheless, has most strangely been regarded as
conferring upon the States authority to disfranchise them.
Article 1, sec. 2. "The House of Representatives shall be
composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the
several States; and the electors in each State shall have the
qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch
of the State Legislature." The section, it will be seen, consists
of two clauses, but there _is not a word as to the sex_ of the
elector. He or she must be one of the people, or citizens--that
is all. The "People" elect. They vote in their respective States,
of course; or, to use the words of Chief Justice Marshall, "when
they act, they act in their States." (4 Wheaton, 403.) This first
clause, then, fixes the class of persons to whom belong this
right of suffrage--_Federal suffrage_--not State suffrage. It
would be absurd in the Federal Constitution to undertake to deal
with State suffrage, and it attempts nothing of the kind. The
right of Federal suffrage, then, attaches or belongs to this
class. The subsequent clause is subordinate to this, and relates
not to the right, but to the exercise of it by the voter. In
other words, it prescribes the qualifications of the elector, as
to how he shall exercise the right; the time, place, and manner
of voting, and the age at which the right shall be enjoyed. As to
all these matters, which are included in the subject of
"qualifications," instead of laying down a uniform rule, to be
applicable all over the Union, the convention thought it best to
adopt the regulations on this subject already in force in the
several States. When the Federal elector, therefore, comes to
vote for United States officers, he finds that he must simply
conform to the regulations laid down by the State for State
voters. But this confers upon the State no authority over the
Federal elector's right of suffrage; far less does it give the
State authority to deprive the Federal elector of this right,
under pretense of laying down for its own citizens an arbitrary
and impossible condition. In the nature of things, a republican
government could not part with this right of suffrage. As
Hamilton says, such right is justly regarded as a fundamental
article in such government. To part with it, would be to part
with its chiefest attribute of sovereignty, and nothing of the
kind was done, or intended.

Except so far, then, as this decision makes it so, there is not a
particle of authority vested in the States to deny this right of
Federal suffrage to the citizen of the United States. The
regulation of the exercise of the franchise is within their
control, as above stated, but the right itself is not theirs to
give or to withhold. _The right to vote for Federal officers_ is
wholly distinct from the right to vote for State officers; but
the fact of these two rights being blended in one and the same
person, and being usually exercised at the same time, has given
rise to the whole difficulty. In consequence of the fact of the
election being conducted by State officers, the State providing
all the machinery for voting, etc., we have become accustomed,
from long habit, to associate in our minds the one franchise with
the other, and thus confound rights that are wholly separate and
distinct.

We notice, in conclusion, the remark of the court touching the
non-assertion heretofore of this right by any one of the class
now claiming to be entitled to it, and the intimation, or
insinuation, that if the right really existed, it would have been
claimed before, etc. It is true that Mrs. Minor's case is of
"first impression," in the Supreme Court of the United States;
but we fail to see that this fact has anything to do with the
principle involved, or that there can be any such thing as a
"limitation" of rights that are fundamental. If the right exists,
and has a constitutional recognition, the time of its assertion
has nothing to do with it. Only weak minds will be influenced by
a fallacy like this. Because the women of a former day did not
see and feel the necessity of making this claim, is no reason why
those who do now see and feel that necessity should have that
claim denied. "Time has no more connection with, nor influence
upon principle, than principle has upon time. The wrong which
began a thousand years ago, is as much a wrong as if it began
to-day; and the right which originates to-day, is as much a right
as if it had the sanction of a thousand years. Time, with respect
to principles, is an eternal now. It has no operation upon them,
it changes nothing of their nature and qualities." (Paine's
Political Works, vol. 2, p. 328--Dissertation on Government.)

We are fully conscious that the subject upon which we have
written is by no means exhausted; the point, especially in
reference to bills of attainder, being wholly untouched. But the
limits of a single article will not admit of a full discussion of
the subject. Indeed, a treatise upon suffrage is one of the wants
of the profession. We leave it, however, to the candid judgment
of our readers, if we have not fully demonstrated the right of
Federal suffrage to be a necessary privilege of a citizen of the
United States, and, according to the court's own admission, such
being the case, the plaintiff was entitled to the relief sought.

Thus closed woman's struggle for National protection of her civil and
political rights under the XIV. Amendment. In the case of Myra
Bradwell, which was commenced in September, 1869, two years before the
others, Chief-Justice Chase, one of the best and wisest Judges that
ever honored the American bench, dissented from the opinion of the
Supreme Court: that the fact of United States citizenship did not
secure to woman the right to practice law, and that a married woman
rested under a special disability in regard to her civil rights, thus
sustaining the action of Illinois in refusing to admit Mrs. Bradwell
to the bar of that State.

The decision in the case of Mrs. Minor, that the political rights of
women were wholly under the control of their respective States was
still more emphatic and discouraging. Had Judge Chase lived, we have
every reason to believe that in this case too, he would have
dissented, and that his opinion would have had great weight in the
general discussion. Although defeated at every point, woman's claim as
a citizen of the United States to the Federal franchise is placed upon
record in the highest court of the Nation, and there it will remain
forever. As Milton so grandly says in Paradise Lost:

What though the field be lost?
All is not lost: th' unconquerable will
And courage never to submit or yield!

FOOTNOTES:

[164] The elections in New Hampshire were held in the spring in former
years.

[165] An account of Mrs. Gardner's voting will be found in the
Michigan chapter.

[166] WOMAN SUFFRAGE IN THE COURTS.--SHAKESPEARE REVIVED.

In the case of Hamlet _vs._ Rex, Shakespeare's reports, occurs the
following:

SCENE--CHURCHYARD.--_Enter two clowns with spades._

_First Clown._ Is she to be buried in Christian burial that wilfully
seeks her own salvation?

_Second Clown._ I tell thee, she is; therefore make her grave
straight. The crowner hath set on her and finds it Christian burial.

_First Clown._ How can that be, unless she drowned herself in her own
defense?

_Second Clown._ Why,'tis found so.

_First Clown._ It must be so, _se offendendo_; it can not be else. For
here lies the point. If I drown myself wittingly, it argues an act;
and an act has three branches--it is to act, to do, and to perform.
Argal, she drowned herself wittingly.

_Second Clown._ Nay, but hear you good man, deliver.

_First Clown._ Give me leave. Here lies the water. Good. Here stands
the man. Good. If the man goes to this water and drowns himself, it is
nil he, will he, he goes. Mark you that. But if the water come to him
and drown him, he drowns not himself. Argal, he that is not guilty of
his own death shortens not his own life.

_Second Clown._ But is this law?

_First Clown._ Ay, marry is't, crowner quest law.

It hardly needed any better authority than the above to convince
simple-minded people of the truth of the observation made by
Blackstone that "law is the perfection of human reason." But if law is
great, those who expound it are greater.

The woman suffrage trial came on. The judges endeavored to follow the
arguments as far as possible, and to religiously earn their salaries
by the attention given, if no more. The arguments were finally
finished, and the women of the country waited expectantly to hear
their legal status defined.

It took just one week for the united judicial wisdom of this District
to consider this case in all its bearings, and then the decision came.
It was about as follows:

SCENE--DISTRICT COURT-ROOM.--_Enter Judges with law books._

_First Judge._ Women are voters but they can't vote. Voting is a
privilege and not a natural right, and must be conferred; it has
clearly been conferred by the supreme law of the land, therefore women
can not vote. A little voting is a good thing, but too much voting is
injurious to public interests, as is instanced in our large cities. If
women vote, there would be more voting than at present, consequently
women are not entitled to vote. The Constitution gives women the right
to vote. The organic law of the district does not. The latter, of
course, is void where it conflicts with the former, therefore can not
women vote. Congress has clearly recognized woman's right to the
ballot, wily or nily. But the ballot must come to the woman, not she
to the ballot, or else the law is violated. Congress must go further,
and point out to women how the ballot must come to her, or else will
she not be given Christian reception at the polls who willfully seek
to vote thereat. Therefore can not women vote.

_Second Judge._ Women are men, but men are not women. The former
include the latter, but the latter won't be included. That is to say,
the law regards men as women but not males as females. It is not every
right which can be exercised, as society will not admit of it. The
law, which is above society, says women shall vote, but society has
not acceded, and hence this court can not interfere. Therefore, I
concur that women can not vote.

_Third Judge._ I do not know but that the better way would have been
for Congress to have done otherwise than it did. Why it did as it did
is a question. But it did. It might have done more, or less, or both.
It might have done otherwise. In either case it would have done so.
And then it would have been. But as it is, it is perhaps as well as if
it should have been. Therefore can not women vote.

_Plaintiffs' Attorneys._ But is this law?

_The Three Judges._ Verily is't the law of the Supreme Court of the
District of Columbia.

This parody was written by J. W. Knowlton, son-in-law of Mr. Riddle.

[167] A report of this trial will be found in the California chapter.

[168] WHEREAS, Complaint has this day been made by ---- on oath before
me, William C. Storrs, commissioner, charging that Susan B. Anthony,
on or about the fifth day of November, 1872, at the city of Rochester,
N. Y., at an election held in the eighth ward of the city of Rochester
aforesaid, for a representative in the Congress of the United States,
did then and there vote for representative in Congress in the United
States, without having a lawful right to vote and in violation of
Section 19 of an act of Congress approved May 31, 1870, entitled "An
act to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote in
the several States of this Union and for other purposes."

[169] The following ladies voted: Mrs. Hannah Anthony Mosher, Mrs.
Mary S. Hebard, Mrs. Nancy M. Chapman, Mrs. Jane M. Cogswell, Mrs
Martha N. French, Mrs. Margaret Leyden, Mrs. Lottie Bolles Anthony,
Mrs. Hannah Chatfield, Mrs. Susan M. Hough, Mrs. Sarah Truesdale, Mrs.
Mary Pulver, Mrs. Rhoda De Garmo, Mrs. Guelma Anthony McLean, Miss
Mary S. Anthony, Miss Ellen T. Baker. The following ladies registered
but were not allowed to vote: Mrs. Amy Post, Mrs. Mary Fish Curtis,
Mrs. Dr. Dutton, Mrs. Charlotte Wilbur Griffing, Mrs. Dr. Wheeler,
Mrs. Allen, Mrs. Lathrop.

[170] Ex-President Fillmore, Hon. Charles Sedgwick, Hon. E. G. Lapham,
David Wright, Esq., of Auburn.

[171] INDICTMENT AGAINST SUSAN B. ANTHONY--DISTRICT COURT OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, IN AND FOR THE NORTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW
YORK.--At a stated session of the District Court of the United States
of America, held in and for the Northern District of New York, at the
City Hall, in the city of Albany, in the said Northern District of New
York, on the third Tuesday of January, in the year of our Lord one
thousand eight hundred and seventy-three, before the Honorable Nathan
K. Hall, Judge of the said Court, assigned to keep the peace of the
said United States of America, in and for the said District, and also
to hear and determine divers Felonies, Misdemeanors and other offenses
against the said United States of America, in the said District
committed. Brace Millerd, James D. Wasson, Peter H. Bradt, James
McGinty, Henry A. Davis, Loring W. Osborn, Thomas Whitbeck, John
Mullen, Samuel G. Harris, Ralph Davis, Matthew Fanning, Abram Kimmey,
Derrick B. Van Schoonhoven, Wilhelmus Van Natten, James Kenney, Adam
Winne, James Goold, Samuel S. Fowler, Peter D. R. Johnson, Patrick
Carroll, good and lawful men of the said District, then and there
sworn and charged to inquire for the said United States of America,
and the body of said District, do, upon their oaths, present, that
Susan B. Anthony now or late of Rochester, in the county of Monroe,
with force and arms, etc., to wit: at and in the first election
district of the eighth ward of the city of Rochester, in the county of
Monroe, in said Northern District of New York, and within the
jurisdiction of this Court, heretofore, to wit: on the fifth day of
November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
seventy-two, at an election duly held at and in the first election
district of the said eighth ward of the city of Rochester, in said
county and in said Northern District of New York, which said election
was for Representatives in the Congress of the United States, to wit:
a Representative in the Congress of the United States for the State of
New York at large, and a Representative in the Congress of the United
States for the twenty-ninth Congressional District of the State of New
York, said first election district of said eighth ward of said city of
Rochester, being then and there a part of said twenty-ninth
Congressional District of the State of New York, did knowingly,
wrongfully, and unlawfully vote for a Representative in the Congress
of the United States for the State of New York at large, and for a
Representative in the Congress of the United States for said
twenty-ninth Congressional District, without a lawful right to vote in
said election district (the said Susan B. Anthony being then and there
a person of the female sex), as she, the said Susan B. Anthony then
and there well knew, contrary to the form of the statute of the United
States of America in such case made and provided, and against the
peace of the United States of America and their dignity.

_Second Count_--And the jurors aforesaid upon their oaths aforesaid do
further present that said Susan B. Anthony, now or late of Rochester,
in the county of Monroe, with force and arms, etc., to wit: at and in
the first election district of the eighth ward of the city of
Rochester, in the county of Monroe, in said Northern District of New
York, and within the jurisdiction of this Court, heretofore, to wit:
on the fifth day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and seventy-two, at an election duly held at and in the
first election district of the said eighth ward, of said city of
Rochester, in said county, and in said Northern District of New York,
which said election was for Representatives in the Congress of the
United States, to wit: a Representative in the Congress of the United
States for the State of New York at large, and a Representative in the
Congress of the United States for the twenty-ninth Congressional
District of the State of New York, said first election district of
said eighth ward, of said city of Rochester, being then and there a
part of said twenty-ninth Congressional District of the State of New
York, did knowingly, wrongfully and unlawfully vote for a candidate
for Representative in the Congress of the United States for the State
of New York at large, and for Representative in the Congress of the
United States for said twenty-ninth Congressional District, without
having a lawful right to vote in said election district (the said
Susan B. Anthony being then and there a person of the female sex), as
she, the said Susan B. Anthony then and there well knew, contrary to
the form of the statute of the United States of America in such case
made and provided, and against the peace of the United States of
America and their dignity.

RICHARD CROWLEY,
_Attorney of the United States for the Northern District
of New York._

(Endorsed). Jan. 24, 1873. RICHARD CROWLEY,
Pleads not guilty. _U. S. Attorney_.

[172] See Appendix.

[173] See Appendix.

[174] Thousands of copies were published in pamphlet form, with the
Court report of the trial, and circulated throughout the country.

[175] See Appendix.

[176] To the same effect see former decisions in Massachusetts: Coffin
_vs._ Coffin, 4 Mass., 25; Com. _vs._ Knapp, 10 Pic., 496; and see
also State _vs._ Snow, 18 Maine, 346; Doss _vs._ Com., 1 Grattan, 557;
Peo. _vs._ McFall, 1 Wheeler Crim. Rec., 108, note; Holder _vs._ The
State, 5 Georgia, 443; State _vs._ Allen, 1 McCord, 525; State _vs._
Jones, 5 Alabama, 666; Armstrong _vs._ The State, 4 Blackford, 247;
Patterson _vs._ The State, 2 English, 59.

[177] Gibbons _vs._ Ogden, 9th Wheaton, 221, Ch. J. Marshall. Ogden
_vs._ Saunder, 12 Wheaton, 332, Ch. J. Marshall.

[178] More recent investigation shows that this clause was originated
by Mr. Jefferson in 1784. See _The Nation_ for May 4, 1882, _and
authorities there referred to_. See Bancroft's "History of the United
States." Vol. II, p. 115.

CHAPTER XXVI.

AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.

Circular Letter--Cleveland Convention--Association
Completed--Henry Ward Beecher, President--Convention in Steinway
Hall, New York--George William Curtis Speaks--The First Annual
Meeting held in Cleveland--Mrs. Tracy Cutler, President--Mass
meeting in Steinway Hall, New York, 1871--State Action
Recommended--Moses Coit Tyler Speaks--Mass Meetings in 1871 in
Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Pittsburgh--Memorial to
Congress--Letters from William Lloyd Garrison and others--Hon. G.
F. Hoar Advocates Woman Suffrage--Anniversary celebrated at St.
Louis--Dr. Stone, of Michigan--Thomas Wentworth Higginson,
President, 1872--Convention in Cooper Institute, New York--Two
Hundred Young Women march in. Meeting in Plymouth Church--Letters
from Louise May Alcott and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps--The Annual
Meeting in Detroit--Julia Ward Howe, President--Letter from James
T. Field--Mary F. Eastman Addresses the Convention. Bishop
Gilbert Haven President for 1875--Convention Steinway Hall, New
York--Hon. Charles Bradlaugh Speaks--Centennial Celebration, July
3d--Petition to Congress for a XVI. Amendment--Conventions in
Indianapolis, Cincinnati, Washington, and Louisville.

It was during the summer of 1869 that the initiative steps in the
formation of the American Woman Suffrage Association[179] were taken,
and the following letter circulated:

BOSTON, August 5, 1869.

Many friends of the cause of woman suffrage desire that its
interests may be promoted by the assembling and action of a
convention devised on a truly National and representative basis
for the organization of an American Woman Suffrage Association.

Without depreciating the value of Associations already existing,
it is yet deemed that an organization at once more comprehensive
and more widely representative than any of these is urgently
called for. In this view, the Executive Committee of the New
England Woman Suffrage Association has appointed the undersigned
a Committee of Correspondence to confer by letter with the
friends of woman suffrage throughout the country on the subject
of the proposed convention.

We ask to hear from you in reply, at your earliest convenience.
Our present plan is that the authority of the convention shall be
vested in delegates, to be chosen and accredited by the Woman
Suffrage Associations existing, or about to be formed, in the
several States of the Union. The number of delegates to be sent
by each Association and the precise time of the meeting of the
convention can be determined as soon as we shall have received
such answers to our present application as shall assure us of an
active and generous co-operation in the measure proposed, on the
part of the addressed.

LUCY STONE, CAROLINE M. SEVERANCE,
T. W. HIGGINSON, JULIA WARD HOWE,
GEO. H. VIBBERT.

Soon after, the following call was issued:

The undersigned, being convinced of the necessity for an American
Woman Suffrage Association, which shall embody the deliberate
action of the State organizations, and shall carry with it their
united weight, do hereby respectfully invite such organizations
to be represented in a Delegate Convention, to be held at
Cleveland, Ohio, November 24th and 25th, A.D., 1869.

The proposed basis of this Convention is as follows:

The delegates appointed by existing State organizations shall be
admitted, provided their number does not exceed, in each case,
that of the Congressional delegation of the State. Should it fall
short of that number, additional delegates may be admitted from
local organizations, or from no organization whatever, provided
the applicants be actual residents of the States they represent.
But no votes shall be counted in the Convention except of those
actually admitted as delegates. (Signed)

John Neal, Maine; Nathaniel White, Armenia S. White, William
T. Savage, New Hampshire; James Hutchinson, Jr., Vermont;
William Lloyd Garrison, Lydia Maria Child, David Lee Child,
George F. Hoar, Julia Ward Howe, Gilbert Haven, Caroline M.
Severance, James Freeman Clarke, Abby Kelly Foster, Stephen
S. Foster, Frank B. Sanborn, Phebe A. Hanaford,
Massachusetts; Elizabeth B. Chase, T. W. Higginson, Rowland
G. Hazard, Rhode Island; H. M. Rogers, Seth Rogers, Marianna
Stanton, Connecticut; George William Curtis, Lydia Mott,
Henry Ward Beecher, Frances D. Gage, Samuel J. May, Celia
Burleigh, W. H. Burleigh, Aaron M. Powell, Anna C. Field,
Gerrit Smith, E. S. Bunker, New York; Lucy Stone, Henry B.
Blackwell, John Gage, Portia Gage, Antoinette B. Blackwell,
A. J. Davis, Mary F. Davis, New Jersey; Mary Grew,
Pennsylvania; Thomas Garret, Fielder Israel, Delaware;
Hannah M. Tracy Cutler, A. J. Boyer, Margaret V. Longley, J.
J. Belleville, Miriam M. Cole, S. Bolton, Ohio; Amanda Way,
George W. Julian, Laura Giddings Julian, Lizzie M. Boynton,
Indiana; Mary A. Livermore, C. B. Waite, Myra Bradwell,
James B. Bradwell, Sharon Tyndale, J. P. Weston, Robert
Collyer, Joseph Haven, Illinois; Moses Coit Tyler, James A.
B. Stone, Mrs. H. L. Stone, Michigan; Lilie Peckham, Augusta
J. Chapin, Wisconsin; Amelia Bloomer, Iowa; Mrs. S. B.
Stearns, Minnesota; Charles Robinson, Mrs. C. I. H. Nichols,
John Ekin, D.D., J. P. Root, Kansas; Mrs. W. T. Hazard,
Isaac H. Sturgeon, Mrs. Beverly Allen, James E. Yeatman,
Mary E. Beede, J. C. Orrick, Mrs. George D. Hall, Missouri;
Guy W. Wines, Charles J. Woodbury, Tennessee; Mary Atkins
Lynch, Louisiana; Elizabeth C. Wright, Texas; Grace
Greenwood, Dist. Columbia; A. K. Safford, Arizona; J. A.
Brewster, California: Hon. G. C. Jones, Dowagiac, Hon.
William S. Farmer, Eau Claire, Hon. T. W. Ferry, of Grand
Haven; Hon. S. H. Blackman, Paw Paw, Rev. J. Straub,
Lansing, and S. H. Brigham, editor of the Lansing
_Republican_, Michigan; Mrs. Austin Adams, and Edna T.
Snell, of Dubuque, Miss Mattie E. Griffiths, Prof. and Mrs.
Belle Mansfield, Mt. Pleasant, T. M. Mills, Ed. Des Moines
_State Register_, Ex-Gov. and Mrs. B. F. Gue, and Hon. Mr.
and Mrs. Pomeroy, Ft. Dodge, Iowa; Mrs. J. C. Burbank, Mrs.
Smith (State Librarian), Rev. J. Marvin, and Capt. Russell
Blakely, of St. Paul, Mrs. Elliott, of Minneapolis, Mr. and
Mrs. A. Knight, of St. Peter, Minnesota; Rev. H. Eddy,
pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of Milwaukee,
Wisconsin; Mrs. E. O. G. Willard, of Chicago, Illinois.

The first American Woman Suffrage Convention assembled at Case
Hall, Cleveland, O., on Wednesday morning, November 24th. The
attendance from the city was very large; the vast hall being well
filled, both floor and balcony. The Convention was called to
order by Mrs. Lucy Stone. Twenty-one States were
represented--eighteen by regularly accredited delegates; thus
making it truly National. Great harmony pervaded all the
deliberations of the Committees and the discussions of the
Convention.

On motion of F. B. Sanborn, of Massachusetts, Judge J. B.
Bradwell, of Chicago, was chosen temporary Chairman, and on
motion of Mrs. Lucy Stone, Mrs. Mary F. Davis, of New Jersey, was
elected temporary Secretary. Upon taking the chair, Judge
Bradwell returned his thanks for the honor conferred upon him. It
was unnecessary for him to speak at length in regard to the
object of the meeting; it had been stated in the call read by
Mrs. Stone. He said they were met for the formation of an
American Woman Suffrage Association, which shall be represented
in every State of this great Nation; and not only every State,
but every city, town, and county from the Atlantic to the
Pacific, and from the Gulf of Mexico to Canada. On motion of Mr.
Sanborn a Committee on Credentials[180] was appointed by the
President. All State delegations were requested to report their
names to the Committee, and also to fill any vacancies which
might exist, if persons were present from their respective
States.

Pending the report of the Committee on Credentials, Mrs. Lucy
Stone presented letters from several persons[181] who had been
unable to attend the Convention, but desired to give expression
to their sympathy with its object. In a few preliminary remarks
she expressed the pleasure she felt at the sight of such a large
and intelligent audience at the first session of the Convention,
which many had supposed would be but merely a business meeting.
It was an evidence of the increasing interest which is being felt
upon the subject of woman suffrage. She alluded to the Convention
held in this city sixteen years ago, and was glad to see several
familiar faces which were present on that occasion. Mrs. H. M.
Tracy Cutler, of Cleveland, delivered an eloquent appeal for
women.

Judge Bradwell said that under the laws in some States the right
of woman to a certain degree of citizenship is acknowledged.
Foreign-born women may be naturalized, and even without the
consent of their husbands. In all probability Vermont will soon
confer upon woman the right of suffrage. In that State the women
considerably outnumber the men, and if some of them should move
to the West, they might say, "We voted and were citizens in
Vermont, and, under the XIV. Amendment to the Constitution of the
United States, we claim the right to vote here."

Mrs. C. G. Ames, of California, alluded to a case which occurred
in San Francisco. A woman was informed that she might be
protected through the courtesy of the consul, but that she had no
claim to protection as a citizen of the Government.

The Committee on Credentials presented the names of
delegates[182] who were already present as entitled to seats in
the Convention. Other names were added as they were reported to
the Convention during the session.

There were also in attendance persons from Virginia, Mississippi,
and Nebraska, who conferred with the Chairman of the Committee on
credentials with reference to their admission to the body of
delegates. They were all _bona fide_ residents in the States they
represented, but they seemed so undecided in reference to the
question of woman suffrage, finding it hardly possible to tell
whether they were for it or against it, that it was thought not
best for them to propose themselves as self-constituted
delegates. Near the close of the Convention, those from Nebraska
and Virginia sought the Chairman of the Committee to say that if
another convention were to be held, they could heartily and
conscientiously take seats as delegates; for if they had any
doubts as to the justice and utility of woman suffrage in the
outset, they had been wholly removed by the arguments to which
they had listened. Twenty-one States were thus represented in the
Convention, making it truly National.

On motion of Mr. Blackwell, the President was authorized to
appoint a committee,[183] consisting of one from each State on
the permanent organization of the Convention. Pending the
announcement of the committee, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, of Boston,
delivered an address to the Convention, replete with the noblest
wisdom and the soundest morality. Her utterance was both
prophetic and hortatory. She cautioned women not to do injustice
to others, while seeking justice for themselves; advised them
that they must prepare for the new responsibilities they coveted;
and that they would better learn to command, by learning well how
to serve. She closed her grand and inspiring address with this
sentence: "Oh! of all the names given to us to warn off the demon
and invoke the angel, let us hold fast to this word--service!"

The Convention reassembled at two o'clock, the hall being filled
in every part. Before proceeding to business, the President
invited to seats upon the platform, Stephen S. Foster, Miss Susan
B. Anthony, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Andrew Jackson
Davis, Mrs. Leland, of Wisconsin; Mr. and Mrs. John Gage, of
Vineland, New Jersey, all of whom he designated as faithful
veteran laborers in the good cause. He also invited all officers
of Woman Suffrage Associations, members of the press and the
clergy without distinction of sex or color.

The proceedings were opened with an impressive prayer by Rev.
Antoinette Brown Blackwell, of New Jersey. The Committee on
Permanent Organization reported the list of officers[184] of the
Convention, which was adopted. The announcement of the name of T.
W. Higginson as President was received with loud applause. On
taking the Chair, he spoke substantially as follows:

_Ladies and Gentlemen and Fellow Citizens_: I feel truly grateful
to the members of this Convention for the honor they have done me
by choosing me for this responsible position. I take it not as a
personal compliment to myself, but as a graceful act of courtesy
on the part of the West, which is so largely represented, to the
East, which is but slightly represented--perhaps our California
friends would rather hear us say from the great central Keystone
States of the Nation, to the little border States on the Atlantic
coast. It is eminently fit and proper that this Convention should
select for its place of meeting the great State of Ohio, which
takes the lead in the woman suffrage movement, as well as in
other good things. It was the first to organize a State Woman
Suffrage Association, and the first in which a committee of the
Legislature recommended extending to woman the right of suffrage.
It is befitting, then, that this Convention should desire Ohio as
the stepping stone from which an American Suffrage Association
shall rise into existence.

[Illustration: Lucy Stone.]

My own State is but a small one. At the commencement of the war
it was hardly thought worth while to attempt to raise troops in
Rhode Island, for if they should be able to muster a regiment it
would be necessary to go out of the State to find room to drill.
But regiments were raised and they stood side by side with those
of Ohio during the great struggle, and your record is theirs.
Rhode Island, too, stands shoulder to shoulder with Ohio in the
cause of woman suffrage. The call for this Convention was signed
by the representatives of twenty-five States; that for, the
Woman's Rights Convention, in 1850, was signed by those of but
six, yet Ohio and Rhode Island were two of that number. I do not
blush at the smallness of my State, but I rejoice in its
prominence in this movement. I am glad to claim her as the only
State which stands as a unit in the Senate of the United States
in favor of giving the ballot to woman. Messrs. Sprague and
Anthony, the Senators from that State, agree upon this point,
although if they ever agreed upon any other matter, I never heard
of it.

Fellow-delegates and citizens, we have come together as
supporters of a grand reformatory movement, and there is but one
plain course for us to pursue. Some years ago I attended a
meeting of progressive Friends, in Pennsylvania. The subject of
Woman's Rights came up for discussion, and opinions were
expressed pro and con, when suddenly there came striding up the
aisle an awkward boy, half-witted and about half-drunk. He
stepped to the platform, flung his cap to the floor, and said
that he wanted to give his testimony. "I don't know much about
this subject or any other, but my mother was a woman!" The boys
in the galleries laughed, and the Quakers, sitting with their
hats on their heads, looking as solemn as if the funeral of the
whole human race was being held and they were the chief mourners,
did not relax a muscle of their faces, but thought I to myself,
"That overgrown boy, drunk or sober, has solved the whole
question." Women may doubt and hesitate, uncertain whether they
want to vote or not, but men have only one position to take--to
withdraw their opposition, and leave it to the women to decide
for themselves.

Many intelligent and respectable ladies fear a conspiracy against
their freedom--imagining that at times of elections detachments
of police would seize and rudely drag the weak, fainting sisters
to the polls against their will. They seem to regard the matter
in the same light as a boy who went to the theatre night after
night, but invariably went to sleep. Upon being asked what he
went for, he replied: "Why I've got to go because I've a season
ticket." And so some women seem to think that the right of
suffrage will be like the boy's season ticket, and they must vote
whether they will or not. When we can not drive men to the polls,
when there is no law to compel them to serve or save their
country at the ballot-box, if they stay away from selfishness or
indifference, it is not likely that we will be more successful
with the women. No compulsion is intended. We will lay before
woman the great responsibility that rests upon her, her sacred
duty as a wife and mother, we will open up to her a career of the
highest usefulness in the world, in which she may more perfectly
than ever before fulfill the destiny for which she is created,
and then she may individually accept the ballot or not, according
to the dictates of her own conscience. All men can do is to take
down the barriers and say to her: "Vote, if you please." It is to
give more dignity and sacredness to woman; to enlarge and not
limit her field of usefulness; but not to take her out of her
appropriate sphere. It says to the wife: "Do all you can to save
your sons and husbands at home, strew around them its most
hallowed influences; but if you fail there, you have another
chance at the ballot-box to abolish, by your votes, the
liquor-sellers that are dragging them down to ruin."

I would earnestly recommend to this Convention the importance of
efficient and perfect organization, and not only in this body,
but throughout the country. In the judgment of those who called
this meeting, the great movement for woman suffrage is too far
advanced to be further prosecuted only by local and accidental
organizations. In most of the States, State Associations are of
but recent origin, and in many they do not exist at all. The
efforts hitherto made were all well and useful in their way, but
not enough to meet the demands of the present. It is the aim to
establish this Association on a national representative basis,
embracing all the States in the Union. We seek this because we
need it. The enterprise is too vast to be left to hasty or
accidental organizations only. We want something solid and
permanent. The Congress of the United States rests upon a
narrower basis than does the organization at which we aim. That
represents but half the people of the country while this is for
all. It is eminently needful that we give the greatest care and
deliberations to the work. We must have the counsel of various
minds, laying aside local differences. We are of different habits
and opinions, and do not think alike on all subjects. Upon many
questions we "agree to differ," but on this great question we
are, and must be, all united. Efficient organization will be a
powerful aid in helping forward the grandest reform that was ever
launched upon the human race. With this understanding I accept
the position of President of this Convention, losing my own
individuality as one of its members. In conclusion, I ask your
patience with my short-comings and your co-operation in
conducting its proceedings.

Mrs. Cutler read a courteous communication from H. S. Stevens
Esq., kindly offering to furnish carriages free to those members
of the Convention who may wish to see the city, during their
stay. Col. Higginson said that in the early days of woman
suffrage, he had seen a rivalry among livery stable keepers to
furnish carriages to take persons engaged in the movement out of
town, and he regarded this offer as in singular contrast to that.
On motion of Mrs. Lucy Stone, the Committee on Permanent
Organization of the Convention was also charged with the duty of
preparing a basis of organization, constitution, and by-laws for
a National Woman Suffrage Association, and to report a list of
officers for the same. The President invited all local Woman
Suffrage organizations to make themselves known through their
members present, and to participate in the deliberations of the
Convention. The following resolution, offered by Mrs. Lucy Stone,
was adopted.

_Resolved_, That the members of the Associated Press, now in
session in this city, be invited to attend this Convention
and take part in its proceedings, and that Mr. Boyer, Mr. F.
B. Sanborn, and Mrs. Cole, of Dayton, be a Committee to
convey the invitation to that body.

A telegram was received from GRACE GREENWOOD, as follows:

To T.W. HIGGINSON, _President of the Woman's Suffrage
Convention:_

Kept at home by illness. God speed the cause.

GRACE GREENWOOD.

Brief speeches were made by Rev. Mrs. Hanaford, of Massachusetts;
Mary F. Davis and Lucy Stone, of New Jersey; and Giles B.
Stebbins, of Michigan, who introduced the following resolution,
which was unanimously carried:

_Resolved_, That the National Labor Congress, representing
five hundred thousand of the workingmen of our country, at
its late session at Philadelphia, by recognizing the equal
membership and rights of men and women, of white and colored
alike, showed a spirit of broad and impartial justice worthy
of all commendation, and we hail its action as a proof of
the power of truth over prejudice and oppression, which must
be of signal benefit to its members, in helping that
self-respect, intelligence, and moral culture by which the
fair claims of labor are to be gained and the weaker truly
ennobled and elevated.

Mr. H. B. BLACKWELL presented the following:

CONSTITUTION OF THE AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE ASSOCIATION.

PREAMBLE: The undersigned, friends of woman suffrage,
assembled in delegate Convention in Cleveland, Ohio,
November 24th and 25th, 1869, in response to a call widely
signed and after a public notice duly given, believing that
a truly representative National organization is needed for
the orderly and efficient prosecution of the suffrage
movement in America, which shall embody the deliberate
action of State and local organizations, and shall carry
with it their united weight, do hereby form the American
Woman Suffrage Association.

ARTICLE I.

NAME: This Association shall be known as the American Woman
Suffrage Association.

ARTICLE II.

OBJECT: Its object shall be to concentrate the efforts of
all the advocates of woman, suffrage in the United States
for National purposes only, viz:

SEC. 1. To form auxiliary State Associations in every State
where none such now exist, and to co-operate with those
already existing, which shall declare themselves auxiliary
before the first day of March next, the authority of the
auxiliary Societies being recognized in their respective
localities, and their plan being promoted by every means in
our power.

SEC. 2. To hold an annual meeting of delegates for the
transaction of business and the election of officers for the
ensuing year; also, one or more national conventions for the
advocacy of woman suffrage.

SEC. 3. To publish tracts, documents, and other matter for
the supply of State and local societies and individuals at
actual cost.

SEC. 4. To prepare and circulate petitions to State
Legislatures, to Congress, or to constitutional conventions
in behalf of the legal and political equality of woman; to
employ lecturers and agents, and to take any measures the
Executive Committee may think fit, to forward the objects of
the Association.

ARTICLE III.--ORGANIZATION.

SEC. 1. The officers of this Association shall be a
President, eight Vice-Presidents at Large, Chairman of the
Executive Committee, Foreign Corresponding Secretary, two
Recording Secretaries, and a Treasurer, all of whom shall be
_ex-officio_ members of the Executive Committee from each
State and Territory, and from the District of Columbia, as
hereinafter provided.

SEC. 2. Every President of an auxiliary State society shall
be _ex-officio_ a vice-president of this Association.

SEC. 3. Every chairman of the Executive Committee of an
auxiliary State society shall be _ex-officio_ a member of
the Executive Committee of this Association.

SEC. 4. In cases where no auxiliary State society exists, a
suitable person may be selected by the annual meeting, by
the Executive Committee, as Vice-President or member of the
Executive Committee, to serve only until the organization of
said State Association.

SEC. 5. The Executive Committee may fill all vacancies that
may occur prior to the next annual meeting.

SEC. 6. All officers shall be elected annually at any annual
meeting of delegates, on the basis of the Congressional
representation of the respective States and Territories,
except as above provided.

SEC. 7. No distinction on account of sex shall ever be made
in the membership or in the selection of officers of this
Society; but the general principle shall be that one half of
the officers shall, as nearly as convenient, be men, and one
half women.

SEC. 8. No money shall be paid by the Treasurer except under
such restrictions as the Executive Committee may provide.

SEC. 9. Five members of the Executive Committee, when
convened by the Chairman, after fifteen days written notice
previously mailed to each of its members, shall constitute a
quorum. But no action thus taken shall be final, until such
proceedings shall have been ratified in writing by at least
fifteen members of the Committee.

SEC. 10. The Chairman shall convene a meeting whenever
requested to do so by five members of the Executive
Committee.

ARTICLE IV.

This Association shall have a branch office in every State
in connection with the office of the auxiliary State Society
therein, and shall have a central office at such place as
the Executive Committee may determine.

ARTICLE V.

This Constitution may be amended at any annual meeting, by a
vote of three-fifths of the delegates present therein.

ARTICLE VI.

Any person may become a member of the American Woman
Suffrage Association by signing the Constitution and paying
the sum of $1 annually, or life members by paying the sum of
$10, which membership shall entitle the individual to attend
the business meetings of delegates and participate in their
deliberations.

ARTICLE VII.

Honorary members may be appointed by the annual meeting or
by the Executive Committee, in consideration of services
rendered.

The officers of the Association were then appointed:

_President_--Henry Ward Beecher.

_Vice Presidents at Large_--T. W. Higginson, Mary A.
Livermore, William Lloyd Garrison, Mrs. W. T. Hazard, George
W. Curtis, Celia M. Burleigh, George W. Julian, Margaret V.
Longley.

_Chairman of Executive Committee_--Lucy Stone.

_Foreign Corresponding Secretary_--Julia Ward Howe.

_Corresponding Secretary_--Myra Bradwell.

_Recording Secretaries_--Henry B. Blackwell, Amanda Way.

_Treasurer_--Frank B. Sanborn.

_Vice-Presidents_--Maine, Rev. Amory Battles; New Hampshire,
Armenia S. White; Vermont, Hon. C. W. Willard;
Massachusetts, Caroline M. Severance; Rhode Island, Rowland
G. Hazard; Connecticut, Seth Rogers; New York, Oliver
Johnson; New Jersey, Antoinette Brown Blackwell;
Pennsylvania, Robert Purvis; Delaware, Mrs. Hanson Robinson;
Ohio, Dr. H. M. Tracy Cutler; Indiana, Lizzie M. Boynton;
Illinois, C. B. Waite; Wisconsin, Rev. H. Eddy; Michigan,
Moses Coit Tyler; Minnesota, Mrs. A. Knight; Kansas, Hon.
Charles Robinson; Iowa, Amelia Bloomer; Missouri, Hon. Isaac
H. Sturgeon; Tennessee, Hon. Guy W. Wines; Florida, Alfred
Purdie; Oregon, Mrs. General Rufus Saxton; California, Rev.
Charles G. Ames; Virginia, Hon. J. C. Underwood; Washington
Territory, Hon. Rufus Leighton; Arizona, Hon. A. K. P.
Safford.

_Executive Committee_--Maine, Mrs. Oliver Dennett; New
Hampshire, Hon. Nathaniel White; Vermont, Mrs. James
Hutchinson, Jr.; Massachusetts, Rev. Rowland Connor; Rhode
Island, Elizabeth B. Chace; Connecticut, Rev. Olympia Brown;
New York, Mrs. Theodore Tilton; New Jersey, Mary F. Davis;
Pennsylvania, Mary Grew; Delaware, Dr. John Cameron; Ohio,
Andrew J. Boyer; Indiana, Rev. Charles Marshall; Illinois,
Hon. J. B. Bradwell; Wisconsin, Lilie Peckham; Michigan,
Lucinda H. Stone; Minnesota, Abby J. Spaulding; Kansas, Mrs.
C. I. H. Nichols; Iowa, Belle Mansfield; Missouri, Mrs.
Francis Minor; Tennessee, Rev. Charles J. Woodbury; Florida,
Mrs. Dr. Hawkes; California, Mrs. Mary E. Ames; Virginia,
Hon. A. M. Fretz; District of Columbia, Grace Greenwood.

The addresses of the evening were made by Judge Bradwell and Mary
A. Livermore, of Illinois; Miriam M. Cole, of Ohio; Lilie
Peckham, of Wisconsin; Frank B. Sanborn, editor of the
Springfield, Mass., _Republican_; and Dr. Lees, of Leeds,
England. At the Thursday morning session the attendance was
large, and the interest in the Convention seemed to be
increasing. The forenoon was devoted to a consideration of the
basis of the National organization, its constitution and by-laws.
The discussions[185] were earnest, temperate, in excellent
spirit, every woman keeping within the five minutes' rule, and
speaking to the point--a circumstance commented on pleasantly by
the President. The articles of the Constitution and By-Laws were
discussed _seriatim_, and adopted, and then the Constitution, as
a whole, was adopted. A letter was presented by Mrs. Lucy Stone,
from the proprietor of the Birch House, Water Street, offering to
entertain a few delegates--free. She also read the following:

CLEVELAND, _November 25, 1869_.

_To the Delegates of the Woman's National Convention_:--The
Faculty of the Homeopathic College hereby extend their most
cordial invitation to your honorable body to visit the
College. Conveyances for the same will be in readiness at
any time desired. In this College, now in its twentieth
annual session, woman, with the exception of one winter, has
always been equal with man in privilege and honor, and here
she shall always share an equal privilege and honor, so long
as she is willing to conform to the same standard of
culture.

Yours, most respectfully,
T. P. WILSON, _Dean_.
H. V. BIGGAR, _Registrar_.

Judge BRADWELL offered the following, which was adopted:

_Resolved_, That we urgently request all State and National
Associations, formed for the purpose of aiding in giving
suffrage to woman, to become auxiliary to, or co-operate
with the American Woman's Suffrage Association, believing
that by concert of action on the part of all Societies and
Associations formed in the nation for this purpose, suffrage
will sooner be extended to woman.

Able addresses were made during the afternoon by Rev. Charles
Marshall, pastor of one of the Presbyterian churches of
Indianapolis; Lizzie Boynton and Mrs. Swank, of Indiana; Lucy
Stone, of New Jersey; Ex-Gov. Root, of Kansas; Mary E. Ames, of
California; and Addie Ballou, of Minnesota. Rebecca Rickoff, of
Cleveland, recited an original poem, "The Convict's Mother," with
marked effect. During the entire session the hall was filled to
its utmost limit. The Convention met for the closing session at
an early hour. The hall was densely filled in every part, the man
at the ticket-office having been literally inundated with
"quarters." Mrs. Dr. Cutler occupied the chair. Mrs. STONE
announced that she would go through the audience to get names of
members of the Association, which any one could become on payment
of a dollar.

Brief speeches were made by Mr. Bellville and Mr. Lamphear, of
Ohio; Mr. Henry Blackwell, of New Jersey; and Rev. Rowland
Connor, of Massachusetts, and then Mrs. Julia Ward Howe delivered
a second address of remarkable power and unparalleled beauty. She
spoke the day before as the prophet of the Convention--this
evening, she spoke as its historian. Her address was faultless,
peerless, perfect, and though read from a manuscript, moved the
large audience deeply. Next followed Mrs. Celia Burleigh, of New
York, a woman of rare grace and culture, with an address packed
with thought and wisdom, uttered in the choicest language. Mrs.
Caroline M. Severance, of Boston, succeeded her with another
speech of like polish and impressiveness, and then the great
congregation rose, and closed the interesting meetings of the two
days with the singing of the grand old doxology, "Praise God from
whom all blessings flow," after which the Convention adjourned
_sine die_.

* * * * *

A Mass Convention for the advocacy of Woman Suffrage, under the
auspices of the American Woman Suffrage Association, was held at
Steinway Hall, New York City, May 11th and 12th, 1870. Upon each
of those days three sessions were held, and at each session the
attendance was numerous and enthusiastic. The Convention was
presided over by Rev. Henry Ward Beecher. Upon the platform were
seated many earnest, active supporters, and advocates of the
cause.[186]

The address of Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER was as follows: _Ladies
and Gentlemen_:--It is but a little while ago that the question
whether a woman might, with modesty and propriety, appear upon
the public platform to speak her sentiments upon moral and
philanthropic questions, agitated the whole community. Although I
do not regard myself as excessively conservative, I remember
very well when the appointment of women, by the Anti-Slavery
Society of New England, to act on committees with men, grievously
shocked my prejudices; and I said to myself, "Well, where will
this matter end?" I remember very well that when many persons,
whose names are now quite familiar to the people, first began to
speak on the anti-slavery question, I felt that if the diffidence
and modesty and delicacy of woman had not been sacrificed, it
had, at any rate, been put in peril; and that, although a few
might survive, the perilous example would pervert and destroy the
imitators and followers.

It was in the year 1856 that I first made a profession of my
faith in Woman's Rights. During the Fremont campaign I had so far
had my eyes opened and my understanding enlightened, as to see
that if it is right for the people of Great Britain to put a
politician at the head of their government, and she a woman--if,
in all the civilized nations of the world, it is deemed both
seemly and proper for women to be in public meetings and take
part therein, provided they are duchesses or the ladies of
lords--if it is right, in other words, for aristocracy to give to
their women the right of public speech, then it is right, also,
for democracy to give their women the right of public speech.
Does any one question whether Lucy Stone may speak? or Mrs.
Livermore? or Mrs. Stanton? There is not a city or town in the
nation that does not hail their coming; and there are no persons
so refined, and no persons so conservative as not to listen to
them; and there are none that listen who do not always admit that
women may speak. God does not give such gifts for nothing.

We are in a community that is constantly growing, expanding,
developing. We do not believe that human nature has reached its
limits. There are new combinations, new developments, taking
place. Nor do we believe that men have reached the ultimatum of
their practical efficiency, any more than women have. It is in
the order of things, that having met, tried, and settled this
question--the right of woman to public speech--we should meet the
next question, the right of women to act. She has a right to
think,--has she a right to practice? May she vote, or sit upon
committees in matters pertaining to local or National interests?
It is this question which is under discussion now. It seems wild
and wandering to many, but not more wild and wandering than
fifteen years ago, to the great majority of our citizens, seemed
the question of woman's right to public speech. I venture to say
that within the fifteen years next coming it will seem strange to
the great mass of the people that it should have been considered
of doubtful propriety for woman to exercise the privilege, or, I
should rather say, the duty of suffrage.

And so within the last few years this question has risen up, to
the suppression, I may say, of everything else; for everything
else is conceded. I don't know what advanced step may be next
proposed. If I did, I should propose it to-day--for this reason,
that I notice that each advance becomes the acceptance of the
disputed question immediately in its rear. When the doctrine of
physiognomy--Lavater's doctrine--was first propounded, men
laughed it to scorn, and contemned the idea that there could be
anything true or noble in it, until phrenology came and asserted
that the brain's proportional parts could be known, and that the
mind could be outwardly ascertained, and then men said: "Oh,
this phrenology is a humbug! Physiognomy is rational; we can see
how a man can judge that way; there is something in physiognomy."
So they swallowed physiognomy in order to be strong enough to
combat phrenology. Animal magnetism, I believe, came up next; and
the people ridiculed it as they had ridiculed those that had gone
before. They now thought that there might be some sense in
physiognomy and phrenology, but animal magnetism was
preposterous. Then came mesmerism. "Why," people said, "this is
nothing in the world but animal magnetism, in which, of course,
there is some reason." Then came spiritualism. "Oh," people said,
"that is nothing but mesmerism." So they admitted each anterior
heresy for the sake of refuting the new one. And now, may a woman
be an artist? May she sing in public? May she speak in public?
"Well," said people, "she can sing, if she has the gift; there is
no harm in that; but this delivering an oration, this is not
woman's sphere." Then if we say, "Shall a woman vote?" they say,
"Oh! vote! vote! Let her speak if she wants to speak; but as for
voting, that will never do!"

Therefore, as I have said, if I could but see the next point
ahead, I would immediately proclaim it, because then people would
say, "Let women vote if they want to vote, but that is as far as
we can go." I rejoice in your presence this morning. I, for one,
need not assert that I am from my whole heart and conviction
thoroughly of opinion that the nature of woman, the purity and
sweetness of the family, the integrity and strength of the State,
will all be advantaged when woman shall be, like man, a
participator in public affairs.

* * * * *

Rev. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE said--Ladies and gentlemen:--This is a
very serious question, whichever way we look at it. I do not
suppose that, if the women of the country were to be admitted
to-day to vote, the consequences would appear to-day, or for some
time to come, because women everywhere would vote very much as
those around them are in the habit of voting. Young men growing
up generally vote as their fathers and brothers are in the habit
of voting--those with whom they are in the habit of
communication; so it would be with women. They would probably,
for some time to come, vote very much as their husbands, fathers,
and brothers do now. The ultimate result, however, is of the
greatest consequence; and nobody can tell exactly what it will
be. I, for one, believe that it will be very beneficial, and it
is for that reason that I am here to-day.

I believe, in the first place, that women ought to vote, because
it seems to me that this is in the direction of all human
progress, and in the direction of civilization. Civilization,
thus far, has constantly occupied itself in bringing woman up to,
and putting her by the side of man. In the barbarous stage of
society, woman is the slave and tool of man; in the Asiatic age
she is the plaything and ornament with which man amuses himself;
but in Christendom there is a tendency to place woman side by
side with man in everything, and just as far as it has been done
we find the benefit of it. Woman ought to be made the companion
of man in his great work of government. The reason why people
think politics is a low and vulgar pursuit is that woman has
never been in politics. Where man goes alone he is easily
corrupted. Soldiers in the army are degraded, despite the
patriotic nobleness of their motive, by the absence of woman,
and men are degraded at the polls, as well as everywhere else,
through not having women by their side.

I believe in this movement, not only because it is in the
direction of all modern civilization, but because it is in
accordance with the idea of American government, and the policy
of American institutions. A State is saved by being faithful to
its own idea, or lost by faithlessness to that idea. Now the
American idea is faith in the people. We know perfectly well
there are evils connected with republicanism, as there are with
everything; but we have chosen the good of a republic with this
great, broad basis of universal suffrage. People say, "Well, but
there is no natural right to vote." We knew that very well
before, because there is no voting in a state of nature. Voting
is a social contrivance. Because it is not a natural right, is it
any less unjust to deprive a large part of the people of it?
There are no roads in a state of nature. For that reason, shall
we say to a woman, "You shall not walk in the road?" Wherever the
male and female qualities go together, we are better for it, and
therefore it is our business to put them together in the
government. Put away all the absurd restrictions on woman, and
let her do what God intended her to do. Let us trust nature and
God, and give to woman the opportunity to do whatever she is able
to accomplish.

I have another reason for woman suffrage, and that is, that
nothing can be said against it. Our good friend, Dr. Bushnell,
has written a book in which he says that if woman is allowed to
vote she must be allowed to govern; and, being a subject nature,
she can not govern. In other words, as she is a subject nature,
let her stay at home and govern her household all the time!
People say she ought to influence gently and quietly, and not to
govern by force. Now if there is anything which means influence
and not force, except indirectly and secondarily, it is the
ballot-box! We had an administration two years ago which had all
the force of the country at command, and the people went to the
ballot-box and destroyed it so completely that we have almost
forgotten we ever had so bad a Government as that of Andrew
Johnson.

All the strength and bravery and determination of this world are
not so much confined to the male sex as some ornaments of that
sex would have us believe. We want the women--the wives and
sisters and mothers of the land, to help save our men from
political corruption. It is what God has ordained, and the time
is coming when it shall be effected.

Mrs. M. M. COLE read the following letter:

VINELAND, N. J., May 10, 1870.

MY DEAR FRIENDS: I once had a neighbor who was for years
entirely crippled with rheumatism, and she, when asked, "How
are you to-day?" invariably answered, "Better, I thank you,
to-day than I was yesterday. Hope I shall be right smart
to-morrow." So, friends, I could say, unasked, I am better
this year than I was last, and I hope to keep on in this
line until 1876, and be able then to stand with you once
more upon the platform of equal rights, and shout
"Hallelujahs" over the ratification of the Sixteenth
Amendment; over the crowning of my labors of twenty-five
years, during which time I have not failed to ask for the
right of suffrage for all citizens of this Republic, of sane
mind and adult years, without regard to race, color, or sex.

"The good time coming is almost here."

Yours in faith,

FRANCES D. GAGE.

The President read a letter just received from Mr. Tilton:

NEW YORK, May 11, 1870.

_Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, President of the American Woman
Suffrage Association_: Honored Sir: I am commissioned by the
unanimous voice of the Union Woman Suffrage Society, now
assembled in Apollo Hall, to present to yourself, and
through you to the Association over which you are presiding
in Steinway Hall, our friendly salutations, our hearty good
will, and our sincere wishes for mutual co-operation in the
cause of woman's enfranchisement.

Fraternally yours, THEODORE TILTON,
President of the Union Woman Suffrage Society.

At his own desire the President was unanimously requested to make
reply on the behalf of the American Woman Suffrage Association.
Mr. Beecher remarked, "If there are two general associations for
the same purpose, it is because we mean, in this great work, to
do twice as much labor as one society could possibly do."

Rev. OSCAR CLUTE said: Every favored movement of civilization has
been simply a recognition of the rights and privileges that
inhere in humanity. Take for instance the idea of the divine
right of kings--which has been so thoroughly scouted by our
republicanism. The abandonment of that idea upon the part of our
fathers was a great stride in the path of civilization. And at
this time in almost all parts of the world something is being
done toward giving the masses a clearer idea of those rights
which inhere in them.

In our own country, the object of the woman suffrage reformers
is, not to overturn anything already established that is good and
pure and noble, but to extend to women those rights which inhere
in them as human beings. It is not claimed for women that they
shall have any advantage over men, but simply that they shall
have the right to labor and receive their earnings. That they
shall have such facilities of education as men enjoy. Give woman
equal opportunities. Her sphere is, undoubtedly, to engage in
such labor, to get such culture, and do such good work as she
finds ready to her hands, and to help on in the cause of
humanity. The ballot is the key that opens to woman all the
avenues of labor and of culture. If all the avenues of education
and labor were open to women, we should find them growing up with
higher and nobler ambition than the girls of to-day. The laws at
present in force are detrimental to the interests of women not
only in regard to property, but to marriage itself. Some
provision is necessary by which women themselves can bring their
efforts to bear upon these laws, and the ballot is the only
effective measure for the purpose.

Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE said: My dear friends--Sometimes, when I
begin to speak at conventions for the advocacy of woman suffrage,
I feel self-dismayed in thinking that I ought to educate my
audience all over from beginning to end. But this would require
so much time that no one convention would ever get through with
it; so I content myself with saying, as simply and as strongly as
I can, what happens to be in my mind. That particular thought
which is now uppermost is the great pleasure of our meeting
to-day. We come together here, trusting to see in your kind faces
the reflection of our great hope; and to find in your ears the
echo of that great promise which some of us expected to hear a
long while ago, and which all of us now see growing and
strengthening until its harmony seems to us to fill the world.

We don't come together here to ignore oppositions, but to
reconcile them. Oppositions are divinely appointed. I do believe
that their distance can not be increased with safety to the
economy of the world. But love is the tropical equator. His fiery
currents are able to quicken and vivify the whole globe. They
circulate equally at the arctic and antarctic extremities. The
work that we are doing in common is not unfavorably affected by
oppositions. The poles are God's anointed and stand firm; but
opposition has quickened the currents of love until it has melted
the social ice at the extremities for us, and even the snows
which very prematurely, I do assure you, begin to fall upon the
heads of some of us. I have been speaking and writing on this
subject for a year and a half, and I find the subject always
getting outside of my efforts much more rapidly than my efforts
are able to get outside of it. At every new meeting I find the
speech of the last meeting much too small. Whether the question
grows or the speech shrinks I do not know, but I am inclined to
think the former. I never knew any member of my nursery to
require so much letting out, expanding, as this question. From
all of this I am inclined to think that we have set our hands to
a great work, to a long and hard labor, to a reform of human
society; to a reduplication of human power and well-being.....

MRS. SARA J. LIPPINCOTT, more widely known as "Grace Greenwood,"
stated that she had believed in woman suffrage since she was old
enough to believe in anything that was right and to denounce
anything that was wrong. She was not counted among the
extremists. Indeed, she claimed the right only for three classes
of persons, namely, single women who have property of their own,
married women, and all such other women as may desire it. I am
willing that a property qualification should be exacted. Require,
if you will, that each woman voter shall possess a gold watch,
and keep it wound and up to time--a clothes wringer and a sewing
machine; that she shall be able to concoct a pudding, sew on a
button, and, at a pinch, keep a boarding-house and support a
husband respectably....

The PRESIDENT read the reply which he had prepared to the letter
of Mr. Tilton as follows:

NEW YORK, May 11, 1870.

_To Theodore Tilton, President of the Woman Suffrage Society
Meeting in Apollo Hall_: Dear Sir: Your letter of
congratulation was received with great pleasure by the mass
Convention assembled in Steinway Hall, under the auspices of
the American Woman Suffrage Association, and I am instructed
by their unanimous vote to express their gratification, and
to reciprocate your sentiments of cordial good-will. In this
great work upon which you have entered--the enfranchisement
of woman--we have a common aim and interest, and we shall
rejoice at any success which is achieved by your zeal and
fidelity.

I am, very truly, yours, HENRY WARD BEECHER.

Mrs. MARY F. DAVIS, of New Jersey, read a report from the
executive committee of the New Jersey Woman Suffrage Association.

Col. T. W. HIGGINSON spoke as follows: Mr. President, Ladies and
gentlemen--I was thinking during the brilliant speech of Mrs.
Lippincott, what an awful reflection the existence of that woman
was upon the Government of the country in which we live--that she
should reside in sight of the Capitol of Washington and never get
nearer the interior of that building than the reporter's desk.
Fancy a House of Representatives in which she should have an
opportunity of talking to her fellow-delegates as she has talked
to us this afternoon. Fancy the life, the new interest, the
animation that will come into those desolate debates in Congress
whenever she sets her foot as Senator or Representative within
those halls, and the rest of the women come after her. If she was
there, she might perhaps be met by the old objection, that,
whatever her words may be, she did not have the physical force to
sustain them. The composition of our delegates in both houses of
Congress is not, as a general rule, so formidable as to lead one
to suppose that they were particularly sent there for their
muscle. Bring before you the array of the men whom you send to
represent the nation. See how absurd it is to suppose that they
were chosen for anything but their intellect. Hear this lady
talk, and when you compare what you have heard with the debates
in Congress, it does not seem to me that even intellect was the
main consideration.

I believe that no man ever made use of that hackneyed argument,
that women couldn't vote because they couldn't discharge military
duty, unless there was in that man something that needed the
teaching of womanhood to make him do his military duty, and do it
well. I never heard that argument made that I do not suspect that
there is something amiss in that man's lungs, or his liver, or at
any rate his brain. The military duties of the nation have
nothing to do with the elective franchise. Every soldier who
comes back from military service finds the way to the polls
blocked up by dozens of men who, at the time of the draft,
suddenly developed lamenesses, either of limbs, or of excuses;
men who wanted to see if there wasn't some wound or trouble by
which they could be relieved from the obvious necessity. You
recollect the man that Mr. Clarke spoke to you of this morning,
who, at the sacking of Lawrence, hid himself in the cellar, while
his wife guided with a lantern the border ruffians who were in
search of him. She relied apparently upon the ingenuity of the
husband to hide himself effectively--a reliance in which she was
not disappointed. Not having found him, they decided to set fire
to the house, and then she asked permission to bring out her
household furniture and save it from the flames. To finish up she
dragged out a great roll of carpet. Had anybody sat down on that
roll of carpet they would have heard the ready scream of her
brave but suffering husband. If that man was like multitudes of
men, if he were a man like Horace Greeley in his opinions, the
moment the carpet was unrolled, the carpet knight would step out,
and his first remark to his wife would probably be, "My dear, you
can now return to the kitchen. I will do the voting, because I
have the physical strength to stand by the Government."

Woman, in time of war, has her mission, as man has his. It is
idle to talk about her "sphere"--as her sphere is generally
interpreted. Even in the most disastrous war, the mission of
woman is plainly to be discerned in deeds of self-denial and
self-sacrifice. Women have worked themselves literally to death
through the toils and exposures of war. Of all the semblances of
argument that can be brought against the right of woman to the
suffrage--of all the figments of the brain that men devise, there
is nothing idler than to object to this right on the ground that
suffrage and bearing arms should go together. In times of war the
women of our country did aid and comfort and bless our suffering
armies, and hundreds of returned soldiers owe their restoration
to health and life to the ministering labors and devotedness of
some woman. Such men will not use the argument that woman should
not have the suffrage because she can not bear arms.

The ballot of woman is needed to render our civilization more
complete and harmonious. I knew a lady who rode with the first
party of ladies over the mountains into a mining town of
California. The whole population turned out to see the novel
spectacle. What did they say when the women came among them? Did
they say, "Go away from here; this is no place for women; you
will unsex yourself?" Oh, no! The first sound heard from that
silent and expectant throng of miners was a rough voice calling
out, "Three cheers for the ladies who have come to make us
better!" It is this coming of the new influence--not a purer
influence merely, for doubtless a great part of what is called
the purity of woman is but the purity of ignorance, that rough
contact with the world would seem to endanger--it is not merely
the greater purity, but it is because she is the other part of
the human race; it is because without her we have fathers in the
State, but no mothers; it is because without her in our
legislative halls, we have laws that take from the mother the
right to every child she bears; it is because without her in our
courts, lawyers use foul words that shame the purity of woman.
Until woman takes a place with man in the legislation of the
world, and in the administration of justice, she will suffer, and
man through her will suffer; also, it is not because woman is so
far above man that we claim her rights in this matter. It is
because she is the other half of man and society is imperfect,
and will remain so until she takes her proper place in the labors
of the world. If a pair of scissors be broken in two, and you
have it riveted together, it is not because you concede angelic
superiority to either half, but simply because it takes two
halves to make a whole.

Mrs. CUTLER was the first speaker of the evening session. Ladies
and Gentlemen:--When the cloud of slavery agitation arose--a
cloud at first no bigger than a man's hand, but which at length
became a great tempest, overshadowing all the land, and when the
thunders rolled, and the lightnings flashed, and when we felt
that almost the doom of our nation had come, then we women read,
as one of our number has so grandly expressed it--we read by the
light of a hundred thousand lamps, the judgment of the Almighty
against the institution of slavery. That institution was wrong
because it took away human rights. But what were the rights? The
right to live was not among them--for the slave lived. The right
to bread was not among them--for he was fed and clothed. The
rights that were taken away were the rights inherent in all human
beings to the results of their own labor, to the freedom of the
body and the mind. And when the country once became aroused to
the full significance of this slavery question, the heart of
every mother in the land throbbed in sympathy with the enslaved.
At last War said to us, "These people have not been remembered in
their bonds, and our sons and brothers are now called from us,
and we must offer them upon the altar of sacrifice!" And,
wondering, we read anew the Declaration of Independence, and
swore fealty to its precepts, now to be written with a pen of
iron dipped in the hearts' blood of our sons. It is past, and all
men are free and equal in America.

But there is one thing yet to be done in order that our country
may come fully within the provisions of the well-nigh inspired
expression of our forefathers, "Governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed." The women of America
pay taxes for the support of the Government, and their consent
should be had in matters affecting their welfare and their lives.
We have been making our work known for years, but it has been to
no purpose, and we have come to the conclusion that the only way
to remedy the evil is to get the ballot.... There is nothing to
be asked for now but the ballot. I shall never ask for anything
less than that while I live.

Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER, the President, then addressed the
Convention. Ladies and Gentlemen:--We expect that every great
movement in the community will, from various reasons, meet with
ridicule and depreciation, as well as plain, honest resistance.
Nor are we indisposed to take our share in the merriment that is
made. We are, however, indisposed to have it said that this is a
complaining movement on the part of women. For, although there
may be occasions of single outbursts of this kind, this movement
has no such parentage, and it is progressing under no such
motives. It has long been in the hearts of many that women should
be raised to an equality in civil affairs with men, but that
great discussion which aroused and instructed the conscience of
the nation, and, above all, that issue of war which brought men
down to the very foundations of their belief, has been fruitful
in raising a multitude of questions which are advancing now and
which are to be consummated. Among these is the question, "Are
women equal with men?" You might as well ask, "Are all men equal
to each other?" For you adjudicate no questions in this country
on the ground of superiority or inferiority of classes among men.
It makes no difference, therefore, in regard to this question,
whether women be superior or inferior. The question is simply
this: have they not, before the law, the same rights that men
have, and ought they not to have, in the administration of public
interests, precisely the same power that men have? Now, in
arguing this question--in urging it upon the community, I find a
fear first, lest woman's nature should deteriorate. Kings were
always afraid that if their nobles got power it would make them
dissolute and reckless and grasping, and the nobles were always
afraid of the burgher class, that if they should get political
honor, it would only puff them up and make them unmanageable, and
the burgher class, when they have obtained their political
privileges, were afraid to extend a share in these privileges to
the yeomanry, the peasantry. You never saw one upper class who
held a prerogative that could ever be made to see any reason why
the inferior class should have a share of it. It is the universal
law of the superior class to keep the privileges to themselves,
and the privileges have usually had to be wrested from them.

In the first place, what has been the effect upon woman of
enlarging the sphere of her influence? There can be no question
that from generation to generation since the introduction of
Christianity the sphere of woman has been enlarging. She has been
growing up in the scale of power; has she been going down in the
scale of moral character? You know as well as I do that they are
better, and that, instead of deteriorating their character, it
has improved them and augmented the volume of their being, and
they are women still.

But it is said that "in politics it is different." In what way is
it different? Do you hesitate to say, "Jane, on your way to
school please take these letters and drop them into the
letter-box at the corner," and your daughter does it. There is
much more trouble in doing that than to drop a ballot in the
ballot-box. Nobody thinks anything of it, although there are men
there, too. Is a woman demeaned by dropping her ballot into the
box? Does the act injure her? "Oh, no; it is not the act--it is
the scenes that she would have to meet. Go to the polls, and see
what voting means." Yes; go and see what bachelor voting means.
It is exactly the thing that we want to improve. Did you ever see
a crowd of men, the rudest in the world, who, when a lady walked
among them, did not open spontaneously and let her pass through
as if she was an angel? It is asked sometimes, "Would you like to
have your wife or daughter go to the polls and vote?" Yes--on my
arm; yes. I venture to say that there is not a precinct in the
city where well-bred ladies will not only be allowed to vote
themselves, but would carry peace in the exercise of the right to
others. "Would you have a woman participate in the scenes
preliminary to an election?" I will tell you that the moment that
women begin to vote there will be no scenes "preliminary" in
which women may not appear. It is this very jointure of the
family influence that we look to as a part of the influence that
should bring reformation into our politics; for if our politics
are to be masculine forever I despair of the republic. No!
whatever thing on God's earth a woman's conscience tells her to
do, she can do it, though she stood in the gates of hell, and be
every particle a woman just as much. Is there anything in this
world that has so great a reputation for lawlessness as a camp?
And yet, when our armies went into this conflict, how many
hundreds of women went, not as companions, but to minister to the
boys. They went down into the camps, and through the whole war
consorted with the rudest of men, and not one single syllable did
they ever hear from the lips of those men that a pure ear should
not hear. They ate the soldiers' fare--they performed the most
menial services; but it was love that inspired and sustained them
in their toils. And will any man say that after these four years
had passed, and these ministers of mercy came back again, that
because they had been mixed up with this rabble crew, they were
the less women? Were they not the more women? These are sisters
of charity--these are heroines without a record in any human
literature. Have they been injured by mixing with the rude
affairs of war in camps and among soldiers? When women take upon
themselves such necessary duties they take vulgarity from
vulgarity, and coarseness becomes refined, for it is the heart of
woman that brings life among men, and restores Paradise.

But it is said that it would do women no good to have the vote,
because they would vote as their husbands would. Well, I am very
glad to hear that you are all so happily mated. I have a pretty
large flock, and my observation has been that there was not such
perfect unanimity. The tidings brought to me are that there are
women who have minds of their own, and I don't think a woman
would make up her mind to vote with her husband unless she
conscientiously believed that he voted the right way. It is said
again that it would introduce division into the family, and that
a division about politics is the most bitter thing in the world.
No; there is one thing in which a difference is more bitter than
politics. What? Religion. There is no such diverging influence in
this world as a difference in religion. Yet when I look into
these matters I find that families all through the community are
divided on the subject of religion. I have known scores and
scores of families in which there were Baptists and persons of
other denominations, and they found no trouble in getting along.
You will always find where husband and wife can not agree, they
will peaceably differ. There is no danger of their ever
disturbing the family relations by that.

We are still holding, it seems, the old barbaric notion of the
inferiority of woman. Every higher class preaches, preaches,
preaches--about the inferiority of everything and everybody below
it. All the world believes that the nation in which the man is
born is the highest nation in the world. Why, we believe that we
Americans are the biggest people in the world, the Englishman
believes the English people to be the highest in the world. There
is not the least doubt in the mind of a Frenchman that he was God
Almighty's first favorite, and so on, nation by nation. So it is
with classes. So, also, it seems to be with man. All the men in
the world join hands together and agree that whatever may be the
classification as between man and man, all men are infinitely
superior to woman. Now I hold that in some things woman is
inferior to man, and in some things greatly superior to man, and
that in the general average she is fully his equal. A woman is
God's chief engineer in the home. She ought to have a clear eye
and a deep heart and a wide understanding. You can't make a woman
too broad, too strong, too high, too deep in all generous
enthusiasm for the purposes of the family, for it takes strong
women to bring up strong men and strong women. In regard to this
matter I wonder that people should attempt to separate so much by
guess. Hear people say, "What will be the effect?" As if this
thing was not already demonstrated--as if history was not already
a picture of what the result will be. Will you be good enough to
tell me which woman you think to-day is the superior? There is
the problem: the Asiatic woman is the woman we hear tell about;
just look at her--a do-nothing, a know-nothing woman! The
European woman is the woman that has been cultured. Which is the
superior to-day? which commands most respect?

Delicacy in woman is sentiment, not appearance, not enamel, not
languishing airs. But it is asked, why make this disturbance? Why
not let a woman, if it is desired that she should be a student,
inquire of her husband? Suppose she hasn't got one. Young
gentlemen that are so fond of talking about the matter say, let
the women stay at home and take care of their families. Let me
ask you if you will agree to give every woman a family that
hasn't got one? If you will not, then hold your tongue. But even
taking the question in the way they put it, how would these young
men like their fathers to say, "Tom, Bill, you are both
Republicans. You have gone away from my notions; I am a good,
stanch, old-fashioned Democrat; and my advice to you, boys, is
that you stay at home and read, and think these matters over, and
I will go and vote for you,"--how would the boys like that?
Everybody is willing to be above everybody else, and this thing
of one man assuming that he is the superior of another, and
asking that other to knuckle down to him, is not popular. You
don't like it. And women don't like it any better than you
do--and they ought not to like it, either. Women can have all the
benefit of holding an opinion, but they shall not have the power
of expressing it. They go through all the labor and trouble of
loading, but can't fire off. Now, I affirm, that it is wrong to
give women the responsibilities of public life without giving
them the safety of public life, too.

But what practical use will the ballot be to women? Tell me what
practical use the ballot will be to men; then I will tell you of
what use it will be to women. A man that denies the right of
woman to the ballot must deny it to any body and all bodies. I
affirm another thing. I affirm that the ballot is a natural
right. To say that voting is an artificial thing is merely an
evasion. If there is any such thing as natural rights in the
world, it is the right of every person to have a voice in the
government that he shall live under, and in the electing of the
magistrate who shall make the laws by which he is to be governed.
But they say women don't want to vote. Well, I didn't want to
learn my letters, but I had to, and, on the whole, I am not sorry
for it. If men say women don't want the ballot, my reply is, they
need it, at any rate. In behalf of the poor and needy, I plead
for suffrage. They are the persons who are in just that place
where the hail of misfortune plays pitilessly upon them. I plead
for suffrage for women, not because the rich and refined need
it--they have already more than their heart could wish--but for
the great sisterhood of common women.

But, it is said, is it not subverting the order of the Bible; is
it not subverting those sound Christian maxims in respect to the
subordination of woman to man? Well, if you think it is, let the
husband vote first and the wife vote after; that settles that
point. I have looked through the Ten Commandments, and although I
find a great many things that you shall not do, I don't find
anywhere it says that you shall not vote; and I don't think that
there is a place in the Bible where it says that a woman shall
not vote; nor, since it pleased God to make thousands and
thousands of women that are superior to men, I don't believe that
he ever wrote a line to say that a woman who was superior should
be inferior. My friends, the true rendering of Scripture is this:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, mind, soul,
and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself. In the kingdom of love
there is neither high nor low. Love knows no distinctions. It is
all equal in the kingdom of God; and wherever the human family
are supremely possessed by that one supreme, beneficent feeling
of love, there never can arise these disturbing elements.

* * * * *

Mrs. LIVERMORE said: _Ladies and Gentlemen_--Mr. Beecher very
pertinently said that women are allowed to _know_, but not to
_say_; they may make all the preparations necessary to
intelligent voting, but that they shall not vote. That is exactly
what is doing a vast deal of mischief the world over. If they are
not allowed to vote, and express their opinions upon the laws by
which they are to be governed, and if they are not to have opened
to them all proper fields of labor, they will turn their
attention to dressmaking, and to millinery, and to all the other
hot-beds of our fast modern life. It is doing great harm; and
that is one reason I earnestly plead in their behalf for the
ballot. Men say women shall not have the ballot. They must
petition and beg for it. Have not petitions been already made?
Have not 200,000 names been sent in to Congress already? Then
they say you must "organize;" and when that is done, and they
find the country rocked as by a traveling volcano, they then
say, "All women do not want to vote; all the women in the country
should ask for it, and beg for it, and petition for it."

Let me relate an incident that occurred in Boston at the office
of Chief Justice Chapman, four or five weeks ago. A man, a
guardian, came there with a writ of _habeas corpus_, which placed
in his charge two children in no wise related to him, and he
asked that he might have the control of the children, in
opposition to the claim of their mother, who desired to keep
them. The facts were briefly these: the woman had been happily
married; her husband died and left her a widow with two young
children. By the laws of the State of Massachusetts at that time,
she was not allowed to be their guardian, nor the guardian of any
body else's children. So the Judge of Probate appointed a
guardian for the children, who magnanimously allowed them to
remain in their mother's care. After two or three years she
committed the unpardonable crime of marrying again, a thing that
no man was ever guilty of. The marriage was perfectly acceptable
to her former husband's relatives, but the guardian was so
displeased with it, that he got out a writ of _habeas corpus_,
and demanded of Chief Justice Chapman that the children be
remanded to his custody. We are apt to boast of Massachusetts and
its laws, but here was a case in which the Chief Justice, after
hearing the case, actually remanded these children to the
possession of that man. The court-room was crowded; the
excitement was intense; the poor mother sank down in a deadly
faint. I say such laws are an outrage upon womanhood, and they
arise simply and solely from a deep contempt for womanhood. This
contempt is palpable throughout all the entire code of laws.

Another argument that is frequently made against the extension of
the suffrage to woman is this: "If women go to the polls it is
going to take them away from their homes and families." These
arguments are urged with as much pertinacity as if the polls were
open three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, and
twenty-four hours each day, and that all that people did was to
lie around the polls and vote, and vote, and vote, and vote.

Another statement is, that it is because women have been kept out
of politics that they are pure and good. Well, now, it is a poor
rule that won't work both ways, and if disfranchisement has made
such angels of women, suppose you try it a little on men. I have
a firm belief that the men need, infinitely more than the women
do, the influence that woman will bring with her to the ballot;
not because woman is better, but because she is the other half of
humanity. It reminds me of the account of the battle of
Gettysburg, given by a colonel of a Western regiment. His
regiment was placed among the reserves, on an eminence, where
they could see the battle as it went on. "There we stood," said
the colonel; "our brave men trying to serve their country; able
to do it, and anxious to do it. Yet we were kept the whole of the
first day watching the fight go on. On the second day another
regiment, which had been much associated with ours, was called
into action. We saw them marching, their guns aslant, as if there
was no battle being carried on, or deeds of death and
destruction--and all the while, as they marched, the grape, and
the canister, and the shot, and the shell, tore their ranks
terribly; and men fell dead in all directions; and still those
who yet remained carried their guns in the same position, and
kept time, and closed up, and closed up, until my agitation
became so unendurable that I forgot all else, and cried out,
'Oh, God! why don't they call the reserves into action? We could
help them.'"

Gentlemen, very few of us are very young women. We have forty,
fifty, some of us seventy years of life behind us. We have stood
on this eminence where you in your mistaken kindness and
gallantry placed us, and we have been all this time looking down
upon the battle-field of life where you have been engaged,
single-handed and alone. Those of us who have had half a century
have seen the ranks of men who started out in life with us
shortened one half as they have gone. Here is a husband, there a
brother or a father, men as dear to us as drops of our own
heart's blood. We have seen them steadily sacrificed by means
more appalling than those of Gettysburg, men literally
slaughtered by licentiousness and drunkenness, and all the while
we have looked on and been able to do nothing, and our agony has
become so great that we exclaim, "Oh, God! why don't these
brothers of ours call us, the reserves, into action? We could
help them."

When I look back to the days of our great war, I remember that
women sprang up every day all over the country--women of whom it
was not before believed there was any patriotic blood in their
veins. We all came together by one common instinct--saying, "What
shall we do?" I could tell you of women who have died from
exposure and suffering in the war. Hundreds of the very best
women of the Northwest went down voluntarily as nurses, and in
other capacities, and assisted suffering and dying men, until
they themselves were almost at death's door. "When women do
military duty, they shall vote!" We _did_ do military duty. We
did not cease our labors till all the soldiers had come home,
wearied with their services. We have earned recognition at the
hands of this government, and we ought to have it. Knowing, then,
the qualities of woman and her courage and bravery under trials,
I can never cease to demand that she shall have just as large a
sphere as man has. All we want is, that you shall leave us free
to act.

Mrs. LIVERMORE then spoke of the attempts of men to define the
sphere of women. Let the sphere of woman be tested by the
aspiration and ability of their own minds, and let it be limited
only by what we are able to do. Don't fear that women will not
marry and make good wives if allowed legal equality with men.
They even now make as good wives as men do husbands. Trust God.
This talk of woman getting out of her sphere is sheer lack of
faith in God. He has given us our natures. The gentlest woman is
transformed into a tigress when you go between her and her baby.
There's no sense, therefore, in the fear that the paltry lures of
politicians will draw women from the home circle. There is no
necessity to enact laws to keep women women. Woman's sphere is
that which she can fill, whether it be sea-captain, merchant,
school-teacher, or wife and mother.

Only two millions of women are among the producers of the
country--five millions are wives and mothers, and eight millions
are rusting out in idleness and frivolity. Take eight millions of
men from the world of commerce and productive work; the deficit
will be immediately felt. Add to the producers of the world eight
millions of skilled women, and the quickening would be felt
everywhere. Mrs. Livermore also urged the admission of women to
political life from considerations drawn from the increase of the
foreign element. East and West is a huge, ignorant,
semi-barbarous mass, brought hither from European and Asiatic
shores, needing the enlightenment and the quickening that would
come from the addition of educated women to the polls.

The Thursday morning session was called to order by the
PRESIDENT, Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER. Mr. Henry B. Blackwell, the
Secretary, read, on behalf of the Business Committee, the
resolutions.[187]

Mr. BLACKWELL moved their acceptance, and, in support of his
motion, said: _Mr. Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen_: We have so
often heard of the great step that was taken in the war of the
Revolution--when our connection with Great Britain was
severed--that I fear we have lost sight of the fact that there
have been two great revolutions since that day--revolutions
which, to my mind, are immeasurably more important than the
first. For, when the war of the Revolution ended, a republic in
the present sense of the term did not exist in these United
States. In almost every State there was a property qualification
for voting. It was a government like the government of Great
Britain to-day--like the government of other countries--it was an
aristocracy of wealth, the privilege of voting being based upon a
property qualification. But hardly had the guns of the Revolution
ceased action, before the Democratic party of that day, under the
lead of Mr. Jefferson, demanded suffrage for poor men as a
natural right. The Federal party opposed the change. The
Democratic party were a unit in its favor. They advocated
suffrage for poor men on the same ground that the Republicans
have advocated it more recently for the negro--on the same ground
upon which Mr. Beecher advocated it last night for women--_as a
natural right_. They said, "All men have equal natural rights to
life, liberty, and property; if so, they have a natural right of
self-defense in the enjoyment of these rights. Now, in a state of
nature, self-defense takes the form of individual violence--of
the pistol or the club; but in a state of civilization men appeal
to the law, and government is nothing but an organized system of
self-defense for the benefit of the individual citizen." The old
Democratic party said, "Poor men have rights of life, liberty,
and property, poor men have a natural right of self-defense;
therefore, in a state of society they have a right to the ballot
which is the organized weapon of self-defense for the individual
citizen." What was the result? The Democratic party swept the
Union on that platform. They obtained a majority in the
government of the States and in the Federal Government. For more
than a generation they ruled this country as the poor man's
party. That result followed inevitably from their principles,
because parties, like individuals, are sure to obtain their
deserts in the long run. When any party appeals to that fine
sense of justice which is in the heart of every human being,
sooner or later its success is certain. The Democratic party
obtained the control of the Government for two generations
because it appealed to that sense of justice? But what was the
result to the country? America became known all over the world as
the country of the poor man. In America alone the masses had the
ballot. That was what brought from the shores of Europe this
great influx of foreign labor which has felled our forests, and
fenced our prairies, and built up the waste places of our
continent. There are to-day in Russia hundreds of thousands of
acres of land as good as any in the world, which have never been
cultivated, and yet Europeans, by thousands, turn their backs on
Russia, coming to America and going far into the interior to make
their homes, not because our land is better, or our climate more
genial, but because our Government is established upon the basis
of equal rights for every human being. The child of the poor man
becomes educated, he acquires property, he becomes a member of
the commonwealth, he does his own thinking, and, thank God, his
own voting, too.

But the Democratic party has lost power. To-day the Republicans
control three-fourths of the States of this Union. There was a
reason for these reverses. Before the abolition of slavery, a
certain race was denied the advantages of the Democratic
principle. It was a "white man's government." In the course of
time the inevitable collision came. Slavery was abolished, and
the Republican party attempted a new application of the
Jeffersonian principle. It demanded suffrage for the negro and
the Chinese. The principles of justice again prevailed. The
sentiment of liberty came to the support of the Republican party;
manhood suffrage is forever fixed in the Constitution of the
country, and to-day every man, whether learned or ignorant, rich
or poor, white, yellow, or black, whether he can read the English
language or not, is by the Constitution of the United States
forever made a voter. Now, ladies and gentlemen, every argument
through which an extension of the suffrage has been already
accomplished, applies with still greater force in the case of
women. The extension of the suffrage to woman, will be the last
crowning step in political progress, the final application of the
principles of Christianity and human brotherhood to the political
structure.

We do not advocate a new principle. We only desire to make a
wider application of our admitted American principles. That
application is sure to be made. I do not know what party is going
to accomplish it, but this widening of the political basis is as
certain as the rising of the sun or the flowing of the tide. Woe
be to the party that works against it! I know not whether the
Republicans or the Democrats, or the good men of both parties, or
an altogether new party, will take it up; but this I do know,
that the political party which takes up woman suffrage, and
unfolds its banner to the breeze, holds in its hand the key to
political success on this continent.

I appeal to every man and woman in this audience to go to work
for the great object we have at heart. Let Republicans go to
their primary meetings, and offer woman suffrage resolutions
there. Let Democrats go and do likewise. Let every woman take
tracts bearing on the subject and give her influence and labor to
the work. Let us all stand up as faithful representatives of a
great idea. Sooner or later, we shall see a noble reform party in
this country--I care not what its name--which will sweep away
forever the dens of immorality and drunkenness by which we are
surrounded, which will build up a Christian commonwealth--and
rule over it--not because it is powerful in numbers, but because
it is based upon the principles of the Declaration of
Independence, of universal justice and of impartial liberty.

Rev. HENRY WARD BEECHER said: I heartily concur with every word
spoken by Mr. Blackwell, and while on this point I wish to call
your attention to an argument used as against woman suffrage, by
men who perhaps might otherwise be with us. They argue that
universal suffrage is itself not a good but an evil, and that to
add to the evil is not to correct it. "It is bad," say they,
"that every white man shall vote," and it had to be pledged, for
political reasons, to give the ballot to 800,000 ignorant blacks;
but two bad things are not to be made right by now extending the
vote to women, a great majority of whom are in the lower walks of
life, and are not supposed to be competent to inform themselves.
This is a most plausible argument to those who are under the
unconscious influence of Pharisaism, to those who think that
wisdom lives and dies with them. It is a strong argument, too; I
don't know that you can put any stronger; but I am bold to make
the statement that, low and bad as human nature may be in some of
its phases, there is nothing in this world that is so safe to
trust or to believe in. And though governments may grow, and gain
experience here and there with perpetually shifting dynasties and
times, yet after all it is human nature that keeps governments up
and gives to the world its laws. The great underlying force is
genuine human nature with all its mistakes. We have recently had
a great illustration of this. I wish to call your attention to
one fact. If there was anything in this world that the mass of
the Northern people were unprepared for it was to take up arms
for the purpose of going to war with the South. Yet when the time
came, and it was flashed over the country that an attack was made
at the life of the Government, take notice that while the South
grew weaker and weaker in furnishing material for the army, the
North grew stronger and stronger, and had only got to its full
strength at the close of the war. Now during that time, by the
votes of the people, with a great party to back up the
opposition, with all the old predilections in favor of the South,
and the natural unwillingness of men to burden themselves with
taxation, this country, in which there was substantially a
universal manhood suffrage, voted to burden itself until three
thousand millions of debt was rolled up. There is an instance of
what men will do with universal suffrage. Yes, and that among the
common people; for the large copperhead element was to be found
among capitalists, not among the masses. "Well, but," it may be
said, "sober second thought will come; wait until the people come
to pay the debt, when currency depreciates and greenbacks become
scarce!" Now as they had gone to the war for a sentiment, a
patriotic sentiment, not because they had received material
damage or expected any pecuniary damage from the South, but
purely from the glorious sentiment of a united country, as they
fought through four years of the war backed up by votes at home,
so when the question came up, "Will you sustain the honor of the
Government? Will you pay the debt that has been incurred?" look
at the answer. Never did trap of dishonesty, so concealed in its
interior structure, present so tempting a bit of cheese to
humanity. Yet when the question came, after full discussion and
trial in all the States of the North successively, by majorities
that no man will choose now to gainsay or resist, by overwhelming
majorities, they said, "The debt shall be paid, every penny of
it!" The North so voted. It was the common people that voted it;
men that live on wages. By that experiment two things were shown;
one that when the whole people are appealed to, they do stand up
to the interests of the States better than educated classes do;
and the other, that when it comes to the question of sentiment or
National integrity, the common people are to be trusted; and it
is not the day, in the face of the magnificent disclosures of
that trying time, to say that it is unsafe to trust the welfare
of a country in the hands of such people. I say there is no man
that comes to years of discretion who is not fit for the
responsibilities of citizenship. Women will also improve when we
welcome them to the open air of liberty.

The sum of all these remarks is simply this, "Amen" to Brother
Blackwell.

LUCY STONE came forward and reminded the audience that a bill is
now before Congress which provides that the employees in the
Government departments at Washington and in both Houses of
Congress shall be equally paid irrespective of sex, and that
petitions should be sent to Congress advocating the passage of
the bill; that blanks for the purpose would be found in the hall,
and she hoped the friends of the cause would sign them. She read
a letter from Mr. Giles B. Stebbins regretting his inability to
be present, and expressing confidence in the ultimate triumphant
success of the cause.

Mr. POWELL, of the _Anti-Slavery Standard_, was introduced:
Ladies and gentlemen--My first feeling this morning was one of
congratulation in view of the encouraging auspices under which we
meet here to advocate the enfranchisement of women. I regard this
movement to-day as just entering upon its earliest efficient
practical work. The era of curiosity and novelty is past. There
is no longer in the public mind that feeling which has hitherto
manifested itself in connection with the discussion of the
proposition that women should vote. We have now to contend with
the more difficult and solid portion of the problem. The right of
woman to speak has been argued and settled; the right of woman to
the ballot has been quite generally admitted--indeed, almost
universally so--as it must be by any one who observes carefully
the arguments used to justify the extension of the ballot to men.
By the ratification of the XV. Amendment the question has been
finally settled in regard to all men, excepting perhaps the
Indians and Chinese, who may, however, be interpreted by and by
as having citizenship under this amendment. Logically and
inevitably, therefore, we come at this time to the consideration
of Mr. Julian's XVI. Amendment, as something which, if we were
not arguing for it, somebody else would be. It is the logical
sequence of what has gone before in the way of the experiment of
republican government in this country. There is no one--either
American or foreign-born--who has observed the workings of our
institutions and the progress of our country, who will say that
we must stand still. We must either go forward in our work of
extending suffrage until we finally reach universal suffrage, or
go back to a one-man power. The victims of the slave power are
to-day standing erect in the possession of equal citizenship on
the basis of absolute legal equality with the white men of the
country. Therefore, with slavery abolished, with our free-school
system, with newspapers scattered all over like snow-flakes
throughout the country, with free thought and free education,
there is not such a thing probable or possible as our going
backward to the system of one-man power. The question now to be
decided is the enfranchisement of women. And this question is at
last fairly before the world--not in newspapers alone, but in
State Legislatures, and even in Congress. Propositions are
pending in Washington for the enfranchisement of the women of the
District of Columbia, and for the enfranchisement by
Congressional authority of the women of the Territories. There is
also a Constitutional amendment proposed, which, if successful,
will abolish all political proscription on account of sex
everywhere throughout the country. My advice would be to
concentrate directly our chief energy on the larger part of the
problem. I believe in State action. I think it would be well to
go to Albany and to the Massachusetts Legislature and to the Ohio
Legislature, and to the Legislatures of all the States, and to
urge that the States take the initiative and enfranchise their
women. But I do not expect that any one State, whatever may be
the political opinion of that State, will go much in advance of
the nation at large. It seems to me that no political party
existing in any one State can establish the precedent of woman's
enfranchisement much in advance of the National Government. I
think it therefore the part of wisdom to concentrate directly
upon the National Legislature. I believe that one object of this
Convention to-day should be to concentrate its voice in an
emphatic resolution, asking that Mr. Julian's amendment be not
allowed to slumber into the hot weather of July, and then be
passed over entirely. I think we should make the voice of this
Association felt as a power for immediate effective work in the
direction I have indicated; and, if we speak earnestly, we shall
be felt and heard. Let us concentrate first upon the XVI.
Amendment and the proposition to enfranchise the women of the
District of Columbia. I hold that that District should be the
first battle-ground for the women of America to a national
precedent, as it was in the prior struggle for the abolition of
slavery. The District is immediately under the supervision of
your Representatives and mine, and members of Congress are to be
held personally responsible for the government which prevails
there. Let us then demand of Congress--demand, I say, because
that is the language of earnest reform--that it give us
forthwith, before the adjournment of the present session, a law
of equal suffrage for the women of the District of Columbia. In
the light of the recent action of the British Parliament, is this
asking too much? Should not we Americans be up to the level of a
test vote on this question--which has never yet been reached
either in the Senate or House of Representatives?

The President introduced GRACE GREENWOOD, who said: "I rise to a
personal explanation," as we say in Washington. When Colonel
Higginson yesterday overwhelmed me with his compliment, by the
proposition that I should belong to the Congress of the United
States, I wanted to say--had I not been so overwhelmed--in order
to set myself "right before the country," that there had been no
previous understanding between Colonel Higginson and myself; and
that as I didn't want to encourage any false hopes, and in fact
didn't want to go, I should decline the nomination. I prefer the
position he referred to--absolutely prefer my place in the
reporters' gallery. I know that a white reporter is as good as a
colored Senator, if he or she behaves himself or herself. I like
to look down upon that scene of legislation and feel that I am
out of it; though sometimes I feel like echoing Coldstream's
opinion in looking into Vesuvius, "There is nothing in it." I
like to sit in the gallery of the House and watch our few true
men. When women sit there, there will be justice done to them;
and, while I have the honor of reporting for the _Tribune_, there
will be justice done to women when any question concerning her
interests comes up in Washington. And here I would like to refer,
as others who have spoken have already referred, to the work to
be done in the Church. I think that many of our earnest,
eloquent, high-minded, religious women should make for the
pulpit. I have always felt that there was great point in the
doctrine of the orthodox Church on the birth of Christ. We have a
greater share in Him than men can have, as He received His
humanity--His sweet, tender, suffering humanity--wholly from
woman. And yet we have been made to keep silence in the house of
our Father even on such festivals as Christmas and Thanksgiving.
How would it seem if on these occasions the sons only were
allowed to thank our heavenly Father for His care and love, and
the daughters were allowed to sit quiet? But woman's piety, you
know, is a very good thing for home consumption, and is supposed
to consist in her quietly sitting at home and praying for her
husband and sons. Goodness knows, she always has enough to pray
for! There is an anecdote told of a loving son who once spoke of
the inestimable blessing of a fine mother. He was a preacher in
Illinois, and he said to his congregation, "Oh, my friends, I
have such a mother. I remember when I was a little lad, standing
by my mother's side on a Sabbath afternoon, as she sat with her
Bible open before her, how she turned from the blessed Word to
lay her hand upon my sunny head, and pray that I might grow up to
be a minister of the Gospel and a great man; and, brethren and
sisters, I stand before you to-day a living example of the
efficacy of that prayer." While Mrs. Livermore was speaking so
gloriously last night out of her mother's heart, of mothers
robbed by the law of their little ones, what mother's heart
didn't stir within her? My little one--she is about my height
now--but I never have been able to get rid of the sweet weight of
that baby head on my breast! My arms always have the feel of the
baby in them yet; and I can not express to you the horror--the
almost rage--with which I hear every story of such outrages on
the maternal heart. It was this feature of mother-robbery in the
system of slavery that always enraged me most against it. It was
just at that point that the system dipped deepest into hell.
Though slavery is gone, however, there are many evils yet
remaining in the laws which should be remedied, and not the least
of them is that which gives the father the entire control of the
children instead of the mother. Some fathers, however, are quite
willing to relinquish that control. I remember a colored woman in
Washington, in whose kitchen I once happened to be for a moment,
and, seeing several dark olive branches around, I said to her,
"Are these your children?" She said, "Yes." "How many have you?"
She said, "Seven, and all to support." I said to her, "Have you
no husband?" "Oh, yes," she said, "I have a husband; I was
married by a Methodist minister down South." "Well," said I, "why
don't he support the children?" "Oh," she said, "he's done gone
away." "Why has he left you?" "Oh, he was a very bright man," she
said (meaning that he was light in color), "and he thought that I
was too black." "But," I said, "didn't he know how black you were
before he married you?" "That is just what old Missus said--she
said, 'Why, you know'd she was black when you married her,' and
he said, 'Yes, but den she didn't have so many relations about
her.'" "What relations?" "Children!" Her children, of course, and
his, too. "He doesn't want so many of my relations about, so he's
done gone off." When a man doesn't want to go, the children are
his "property"; when he wants to desert his wife, they are her
"relations." I would be willing to have the strictest morality
enjoined as a qualification for the ballot. But, as it is a poor
rule that would not work both ways, if that test were applied to
the male voters, what a frightful disfranchisement would take
place. The Democratic party would be well-nigh annihilated, and
the Republican party would be in a fit state to condole with it.
I think, however, that all these things will adjust themselves
when they come. All bugbears seem much more terrible at a
distance than when they are close enough to be grappled with.

Mr. OLIVER JOHNSON was then introduced. He said that the true
germ of the present woman suffrage agitation was to be found in
the foundation of the Anti-slavery Society. At the time that
Society was founded, the question arose as to whether women were
persons, in the sense in which that word was used in the
constitution of that Society. The question gave rise to much
discussion, and it was finally decided by a majority of the
members that the word "person" did include women; and it was
therefore determined that, in the Society, women should have all
the rights that men had. And when thirty years ago the
anniversary of the Society was held, it became the duty of the
presiding officer on that occasion to appoint a business
committee, and, in announcing the names of that committee, he
included that of Abby Kelly--more lately known as that of Abby
Kelly Foster--a Quaker woman of excellent character, and a
devoted friend of the anti-slavery cause. The announcement of her
name was the signal for much tumult, and the withdrawal for the
time being of not less than one hundred and fifty clergymen, who,
led by an eminent citizen, left that meeting and went down into
the basement of the church and formed a new anti-slavery
society, solely because a woman was permitted to serve on a
committee. Mr. Johnson said that he had always had a profound
belief in the triumph of the anti-slavery cause. So also did he
believe in the success of the woman suffrage movement.

Mrs. Hazlett, of Michigan, was the next speaker. God, she said,
says to America to-day, take now the next step in the path of
national progress; then come and take thy place as the highest
nation of the earth. Will America obey heaven's voice, or does
republicanism exist only in name? Men of America! let the stars
and stripes wave over a land true to its principles. It is not
because we want to usurp power that we want the ballot. We want
justice, for the sake of liberty. But, above all, gentlemen, we
hold the welfare of this country our birthright as well as yours.
We wish the vote because it is our right and our duty to have it.
We have duties in life, in society, in the church--duties to
ourselves and to our families which can not be discharged without
the ballot.

When the Convention re-assembled, Mrs. Celia Burleigh, in the
absence of the President, took the chair.

Miss CATHERINE E. BEECHER, who was now introduced, requested the
Secretary, Mr. Blackwell, to read a paper which she had written,
containing her objections to woman suffrage, to which objections
Mrs. Cutler, of Ohio, would reply. Mr. Blackwell read the
following:

I will first state to what I am not opposed. And, first, I
am not opposed to women speaking in public to any who are
willing to hear, nor do I object to women's preaching,
sanctioned as it is by a prophetic apostle--as one of the
millennial results. It is true that no women were appointed
among the first twelve, or the seventy disciples sent out by
the Lord, nor were women appointed to be apostles or bishops
or elders. But they were not forbidden to teach or preach,
except in places where it violated a custom that made a
woman appear as one of a base and degraded class if she thus
violated custom.

Nor am I opposed to a woman earning her own independence in
any lawful calling, and wish many more were open to her
which are now closed.

Nor am I opposed to the agitation and organization of women,
as women, to set forth the wrongs suffered by great
multitudes of our sex, which are multiform and most
humiliating. Nor am I opposed to women's undertaking to
govern both boys and men--they always have done it, and
always will. The most absolute and cruel tyrants I have ever
known were selfish, obstinate, unreasonable women to whom
were chained men of delicacy, honor, and piety, whose only
alternatives were helpless submission, or ceaseless and
disgraceful broils.

Nor am I opposed to the claim that women have equal rights
with men. I rather claim that they have the sacred, superior
rights that God and good men accord to the weak and
defenseless, by which they have the easiest work, the most
safe and comfortable places, and the largest share of all
the most agreeable and desirable enjoyments of this life. My
main objection to the woman suffrage organizations is mainly
this, that a wrong mode is employed to gain a right object.

The "right object" sought is to remedy the wrongs and
relieve the sufferings of great multitudes of our sex. The
"wrong mode" is that which aims to enforce by law instead of
by love. It is one which assumes that man is the author and
abetter of all these wrongs, and that he must be restrained
and regulated by constitutions and laws, as the chief and
most trustworthy method.

In opposition to this, I hold that the fault is as much, or
more, with women than with men, inasmuch as that we have all
the power we need to remedy all wrongs and sufferings
complained of, and yet we do not use it for that end. It is
my deep conviction that all reasonable and conscientious men
of our age, and especially of our country, are not only
willing, but anxious to provide for the best good of our
sex, and that they will gladly bestow all that is just,
reasonable, and kind, whenever we unite in asking in the
proper spirit and manner. It is because we do not ask, or
"because we ask amiss," that we do not receive all we need
both from God and men. Let me illustrate my meaning by a
brief narrative of my own experience. To begin with my
earliest: I can not remember a time when I did not find a
father's heart so tender that it was always easier for him
to give anything I asked than to deny me. Of my seven
brothers, I know not one who would not take as much or more
care of my interests than I should myself. The brother who
presides is here because it is so hard for him to say "No"
to any woman seeking his aid.

It is half a century this very spring since I began to work
for the education and relief of my sex, and I have succeeded
so largely by first convincing intelligent and benevolent
women that what I aimed at was right and desirable, and then
securing their influence with their fathers, brothers, and
husbands; and always with success. American women have only
to unite in asking for whatever is just and reasonable, in a
proper spirit and manner, in order to secure all that they
need.

Here, then, I urge my greatest objections to the plan of
female suffrage; for my countrywomen are seeking it only as
an instrument for redressing wrongs and relieving wants by
laws and civil influences. Now, I ask, why not take a
shorter course, and ask to have the men do for us what we
might do for ourselves if we had the ballot? Suppose we
point out to our State Legislatures and to Congress the
evils that it is supposed the ballot would remedy, and draw
up petitions for these remedial measures, would not these
petitions be granted much sooner and with far less
irritation and conflict than must ensue before we gain the
ballot? And in such petitions thousands of women would unite
who now deem that female suffrage would prove a curse rather
than a benefit.

And here I will close with my final objection to woman
suffrage, and that is that it will prove a measure of
injustice and oppression to the women who oppose it. Most of
such women believe that the greatest cause of the evils
suffered by our sex is that the true profession of woman, in
many of its most important departments, is not respected;
that women are not trained either to the science or the
practice of domestic duties as they need to be, and that, as
the consequence, the chief labors of the family state pass
to ignorant foreigners, and by cultivated women are avoided
as disgraceful.

They believe the true remedy is to make woman's work
honorable and remunerative, and that the suffrage agitation
does not tend to this, but rather to drain off the higher
classes of cultivated women from those more important duties
to take charge of political and civil affairs that are more
suitable for men.

Now if women are all made voters, it will be their duty to
vote, and also to qualify themselves for this duty. But
already women have more than they can do well in all that
appropriately belongs to women, and to add the civil and
political duties of men would be deemed a measure of
injustice and oppression.

Mrs. H. M. T. CUTLER, of Ohio, then rose to reply. She said: I
account myself happy to be allowed to stand here to reply to the
objections of my friend, Miss Beecher. There is one point where I
feel that her argument is not as strong as most of her arguments
are. We enjoy things of privilege, if privileges are granted; but
we enjoy things of right, because they are right--not otherwise.
All that she says of good men, and of what good men will do for
women, only goes to show what everybody has already known, that
she had for a father one of the first Christian gentlemen in the
United States or in the world; and for brothers seven men of
princely virtue, and highest and noblest Christian attainments.
If the world was made up of all such people, there would be no
need of laws. Miss Beecher may well speak for such men as they,
and they may well speak for such women as she. If I make a
petition for something, and that petition does not clearly
express a right that is due me, but instead, asks for something
that may be withheld without moral guilt, that is a privilege;
but when I come and demand that which is a right, the condition
is altogether changed. I claim the right because it is God-given.
We have in the advanced age of Christianity, those who do not
believe in the use of physical force on any account whatever.
They are non-resistants; but it will not be said that the vicious
can be controlled by moral suasion. Society is not yet
sufficiently Christianized for men not to demand of each other
guarantees for the safety of each other's rights. Shall we who
are in some sense the weaker sex have no guarantee for our
rights?

Miss Beecher makes the point that men will give, if we ask them
properly. The first asking of American women was not for
themselves--not for their own account. They forgot themselves in
their anxiety for poor oppressed slaves. They didn't know what
they had lost through long ages, from not having exerted their
own powers, and established their own responsibilities. But when
they came to do that, they then asked themselves, "Where are our
good right hands?" I sent petitions to Congress again and again,
which I had gathered from my neighbors, in regard to the
abolishment of slavery in the District of Columbia and in the
territories; and I have sent numbers of them in regard to this
question of woman suffrage. I sent many of them to Horace
Greeley, and he sent me back word, "The only good that these
things will do in Congress is to help the janitor to light the
fires. They do good to the people perhaps, but they do no good
otherwise." We might have petitioned until the crack of doom,
before Congress would have broken the chain. Why should we not
demand our right to the vote, when we reflect that one vote, cast
in the State of Indiana, was the means of electing a man whose
vote in Congress turned the scale, and enacted the "Fugitive
Slave Law"--that law which put the collar upon every bondsman's
neck, and branded him the property of every Southern master.

I admit the great responsibility of the ballot, and if we are
true women, we shall assume it with a full appreciation of that
responsibility, and a determination to do our whole duty in its
exercise. The argument that many women do not desire the ballot
reminds me of an old colored woman whom I met soon after the war.
I said to her, "Some people say they think your people are really
almost sorry that they have been made free; that they were more
comfortable as slaves." She said, "Is it possible that any person
thinks like that? Can it be that any colored person feels like
that?" I said, "I have heard people say so." "Then," said she,
"if anybody feels like that they deserve to be slaves--doubly
slaves--slaves in this world and slaves in the next." The woman
that is not willing to assume the responsibility of casting a
vote upon a question that may decide whether in her individual
neighborhood or precinct there shall be grog-shops and houses of
prostitution open, and there shall be no proper care of the poor
and needy and infirm--I say that if there is any woman who is not
willing to assume such responsibilities, it seems to me that she
must feel that it is a judgment on her, should her own husband or
son or the daughter of her heart, or all of them, become
sufferers in consequence of the evil that she might have stayed
had she been willing to uphold the exercise of that right.

We ask only for the same right that is accorded to the poorest
man landing on our shores. Is the giving of the ballot to a
foreigner who comes among us a burden so great that he should not
have it imposed upon him? And shall an American woman shrink
from her duty when there is so much power in her hands for good?
I know that a great many women have not been educated up to a
condition that would teach them fully how to act. Like the slave,
they have had too much thinking and acting done for them, until
now they feel incompetent to discharge these duties for
themselves. Our great duty, then, which we who know better should
consider imposed upon us, is that of educating women up to the
proper standard. Shall we be beggars for that which is, of right,
ours? Shall there not be one law for the brothers and the
daughters throughout this entire country? As Mr. Beecher has well
said, women have borne their full share of martyrdom; and it
strikes me that it is now about time for her redemption from the
evils of her position. If she has to suffer from the evils of a
defective or vicious system of laws, put in her hands the power
to protect herself, to mitigate the sufferings of her sex, to
preserve and defend the right and to suppress the wrong.

Mrs. MIRIAM M. COLE spoke at some length. The spirit of '76, she
said, influenced Mrs. John Adams to write to her husband to
inquire if it were generous in American men to keep their wives
in thraldom, when they were emancipating the whole earth. Had the
spirit of that letter animated the wife of Mr. Lincoln when his
emancipation proclamation was issued, how pertinently could she
have made the same inquiry! The laws regarding women were written
down so plain that those may run who read, and they who read had
better run.

Mrs. CELIA BURLEIGH said: Several references have been made to
the work of women in the church. I am glad to be able to
introduce to you now the pastor of one of the most popular
churches of New Haven, and whose church, I am happy to say, is
crowded every Sunday--Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford.

Mrs. HANAFORD said: Speaking with Horace Greeley a few weeks ago,
he replied to my query why he was not in favor of woman suffrage,
by saying that he did not think women would gain the opportunity
of suffrage or improve the opportunity if they had it, until they
should come to consider suffrage a duty, and he declared that he
had never known any one to advocate woman suffrage on the ground
of duty.

I was amazed at his assertion in the face of all the speeches and
lectures which such women as Lucretia Mott and her conscientious
co-laborers had made and delivered during the last twenty years.
The very next night, I heard Anna Dickinson in the largest hall
in New Haven, and before nearly 3,000 people, urge the women
present to consider their duty to this vast Republic in which we
dwell, and whose starry banner is as dear to women as to men. The
keynote of her bugle-call to the rescue was the idea of duty, and
that is the idea which inspires the women on this platform
to-day, while thousands of hearts throughout our Union respond,
with the same sentiment, to their appeals from the platform, the
pulpit, and the press.

Leading reformers of the world are telling us in clarion notes,
and in thunder tones, with the voice of warning or of appeal,
that woman owes service to the State, and that it is her duty to
strive earnestly that she may have that ballot in her own hand
which shall be at once her educator and protector, her sceptre
and her sword. But I have heard the Master's voice, speaking
through Lucy Stone and her co-workers, and speaking in my own
soul also, declaring that I, in common with every other woman in
this grand Republic, have a duty to the State that must not be
ignored. In the home, and in the church, most women acknowledge
they have duties--but as to the State they hesitate. Oh, if they
would but "gather into the stillness," as the Friends say, and
listen reverently to the voice within, I think they would often
hear the solemn utterance, "These ought ye to have done, and not
to leave the other undone." Every woman who has tried to do her
whole duty in the family, tried faithfully to make home a
foretaste of heaven, with its abounding peace and love, tried
with a mother's prayers, a mother's tears, a mother's unselfish,
self-denying love, to train her darlings for the skies--every
such woman deserves the gratitude of humanity, and that sweetest
of rewards to a mother's heart, viz; that "her children shall
rise up, and call her blessed;" while every woman who superadds
to this unselfish devotion to home and children, a lifelong
fidelity to the church in which she was reared, or has adopted;
every woman who has worshiped devoutly at the shrine her own soul
has accepted, following meekly in the footsteps of Him who went
about doing good--every such woman deserves the wreath of
immortal amaranths which angel hands are weaving for her
brow--but more than all, she who crowns her home work and her
religious endeavors with a service to the State, which of
necessity touches the great questions of reform, and aids in the
settling of vast problems wherein the weal or woe of a nation is
concerned--that woman, from the centre of her individual
responsibility, reaches out to the circumference of her
individual influence, and desires to receive from the lips of the
dear Lord himself, the "Well done, thou good and faithful
servant, enter thou into the joy of thy Lord"--the joy of a
completed mission. The recording angel will write such a woman's
name with that of Abou Ben Adhem, who loved his fellows, and in
serving humanity served God.

The single point which I wish to present to the women before me
at this hour and in these brief remarks is this, then; that it is
your solemn, sacred duty, as you love God and the truth, and
human welfare, to seek the ballot, and, having obtained it, to
use it in purifying our statute-books and making them read more
like the oracles of God--the eleven Commandments, and the Golden
Rule.

Mrs. MARY F. DAVIS, of New Jersey, observed that in a court room
of New York, a lawyer--she understood--recently stated that
according to law the husband of a woman has such control over her
as to "own" her; that man was made for God and woman for man! She
asked if those present accepted that law [A voice, No!] Do you,
said she, own your own persons, according to the law of God, or
do you not? Our brothers tell us that women would be contaminated
by going into the court rooms and sitting on juries; that women
must be kept from these places because it would impair their
delicacy. Well, if women were wholly excluded from our court
rooms the case would be different. But when in the mornings we
take up the daily papers, how frequently do we read of some poor
young creature who has been arrested and taken to the court room,
to be tried by a jury of men; and carried perhaps from there to a
place of imprisonment, with no pitying woman's eye or heart or
hand to give her a ray of comfort. And these poor, forlorn
creatures shall be deprived of our sympathy and left to perish
because we are too "delicate" to come to their assistance! These
may be daughters of good people, and may once have been good and
pure as any. They might be your daughters or mine. Brothers, they
might be your sisters or your daughters! Oh! change the laws that
bear so hard on women. Give us such laws as will allow your wives
and mothers--those in whom you have confidence and whom you
love--to come, with a mother's heart, and help rescue these
deserted and fallen and miserable ones.

LUCY STONE here read a letter of regret from William Lloyd
Garrison, in which he stated that he was ill and confined to his
bed, and therefore unable to be present. She read, also, a letter
from Mrs. Haskell, of California, expressing earnest and hearty
sympathy in all that is done at the East for woman suffrage, and
the assurance that on the Pacific slope the good work is becoming
daily stronger and more hopeful.

Mrs. TAPPAN gave an interesting account of some of the Indian
tribes in Mexico and California, who, she thought, had in one
sense a higher idea of the capacity of woman than their more
civilized brethren. The Navajos, on one occasion, when a United
States Commission composed of General Sherman, General Terry, and
other officers of the army, went to them to treat with them on
behalf of the Government, refused to enter the officer's quarters
for the purpose of discussion or decision of their difficulties,
unless their squaws were permitted to participate in the
deliberations, and the officers were obliged to allow the women
to come in.

The evening session of the convention was called to order by LUCY
STONE. Steinway Hall was filled with an earnest and interested
assembly, numbering about a thousand persons.

Mrs. CHURCHILL, of Providence, R. I., was the first speaker. She
spoke at some length, and asserted the undoubted right of women
to the suffrage. She referred to the fear which men entertained,
or pretended to entertain, of women neglecting every other duty
attaching to them simply because they should get suffrage. Men do
not find voting so exceedingly incompatible with the other duties
of life that they should have such fear of woman suffrage. Women
are not asking for _bon-bons_ in this matter. They are demanding
that which belongs to them. They are not children, nor idiots,
and they ought to have the same right of action as is accorded to
sane men.

The address of Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE was as follows: This mighty
edifice of the ideal society has many mansions, whose doors open
one after the other in the ruins of the ages. When Providence has
removed the mysterious seal from one of these doors those who
know the signs of the times gladly enter. And soon the halt and
the lame and the blind hear of the new refuge, the new
benefaction, and make haste to crowd its halls and parlors.
America itself was at first such a refuge. The derided Puritans
rode there nobly across the highway of the ocean. By and by it
leaked out that civil and religious liberty had made a good thing
of it, and then the Old World began to sneak over into the
spacious domain of the New. And now it comes with such a tide
that we can scarcely build cities and railroads fast enough for
its accommodation. America is to the nations a house of God--a
divinely appointed city of refuge. Poorly have we administered
that house of God, because we ourselves were undivine. But we
have improved a little--we have learned some lessons--we have
opened some doors. And every lesson that we have learned has
shown us more and more of the grand but terrible labor which lies
before us. What one should be, and know, and intend, in order to
come up to the standard of an American, that is something which
as yet puts most of us to the blush, not for being so much, but
so little children of the New World; for this may the Old World
deride us.

[Illustration: Julia Ward Howe.]

I can not see this New World as it ought to be, in my remotest
vision, without many changes in what it is. Looking towards this
great aim of building a Christian state, I see the position of
woman as wrong and harmful. Wrong to herself since she is pushed
one remove further from the divine than man--she, born of the
same humanity and divinity with himself. Wrong to society since
she, with special gifts and powers for its aid and advancement,
is forcibly restrained to the functions which man deigns to allow
her; her attitude to law, labor and life being determined by him
through the old principle of barbarism, the predominance of
physical force.

Which shall I treat first, the wrong done to the individual or
that done to society? I will start with the individual. And from
the start I will say that the very instinct of secondariness, so
often postulated as a reason for the social subjection of women,
is, on the part of those who urge it, either an invention or an
error. The instinct, as I understand it, is all the other way.
The little girl does not know in herself any inferiority to the
boy. He can perhaps beat her, but while he may consider this a
mark of superiority, she is too wise to accept it as such. In
their lessons she flies where he walks. She cries for his
floggings oftener than he can laugh at her failures. She needs
less machinery than he to arrive at the same mental and moral
results. Nature has given him a mental hammer, but it has given
her a mental needle, and she has embroidered the rainbow before
he has forged the thunder. How does he overtake her swift steps?
How tame and bind her fiery soul?

Now I confess that he has an accomplice greater than himself. The
girl, coming upon the full consciousness of womanhood, comes also
upon that of its opposite. The primal divine unity of the race
makes itself felt in her dreamy bosom. She is but half of the
ideal--the perfect human being--the other half is not yet hers;
she must seek diligently till she find it. Do not laugh. The
pilgrimage of Psyche is performed by every maiden soul; but love,
the supreme god, in the little child is not always found. So far,
so good. The woman often finds a mate; sometimes has quite a
selection of mates offered her. If she finds the complement of
her incomplete being, what more can she want? What wrong is done
her? This simply. If her single life was incomplete, that of her
partner without her was no less so. The need of marriage was
equal with both. Nay, but for the aid of vices to which the male
part of society give system and culture, the need of marriage on
his part will be more imperative than on hers. Its natural
burdens fall with fivefold force on her. She must bear the
children. She must give the flower of her life to services full
of weariness and of anguish. Now, however the matter may stand
between man and woman, the State's need of marriage is
imperative. And as the State commands marriage, and as the woman
contracts marriage as an obligation to the State, the State is
bound by every sacred obligation of justice to render the
contract an equal one. And here comes up again the barbaric
element--the predominance of physical force. "Shall this softer,
gentler, more fragile creature be the equal of the ruder, stouter
man?" "Yes," says your Christianity, "She is a divine
institution, as you are; she desires the same culture, the same
respect, the same authority." "No," says your barbarism, "I can
oppress her, and I will. We won't call it oppression, if you
please. We'll call it protection. I'll keep her money, and her
children, and her body, and her soul. I'll keep them all for her.
She can ask me for what she wants. I shall always know whether it
is best for her to have it or no."

Now, here it is true physical ascendency of the man which renders
the assumption of this position possible. Great as this power is,
he has taken pains to increase it by an immense array of aids and
appliances. He has kept the woman ignorant of all the
technologies of the world. Fatal renewal of the Hebrew myth, he
has eaten of the tree of knowledge, has kept the fruit for
himself. Society can not be governed without law and logic. The
use of these the man has monopolized, encouraging in the woman
the natural gifts and accomplishments which give him most
delight--dress and dance, and the sweet voice and graceful
manner, and, above all the ready acquiescence in his sovereign
pleasure. But let her ask him for the methods by which she may
analyze his actions and his intuitions, and he says, "No." No
college door shall open for her, no nursery of law, medicine or
theology. Philosophy, the science of sciences--which Dictrina
taught to Socrates, who teaches it to the world to-day--that
would give her the key to all the rest. She may get it, if she
can.

We have brought our theoretical woman up to the period of
marriage and maternity. Here the intensity of personal feeling
and interest monopolize her. Her nursery is full of pains and
pleasures, but its delights predominate, and though she will need
more than ever the help of outside culture and sympathy, she is
yet tied by her affections even more than by her duties to a
centre of feeling too intense to generate a wide circle. Here,
too, the enforced inequality of institutions pursues her. The
children, born at such cost of suffering, are not hers in the eye
of the law. The right to them which nature puts primarily in the
mother, society has long vested almost absolutely in the father.
In case of any difference between them he will say, "I am the
father--my will must be obeyed." And what he will say in private
the law will say in public. Mrs. Stone records a piteous case in
which an unborn child was willed by its dying father to relatives
in a foreign country in which the widowed mother suffered the
pains of childbirth, that other hearts than hers might be
gladdened by her dearly-bought treasure. This young woman was
described as in a maze of bewilderment at the presence on the
statute-book of a law so miraculously wicked. We all hope that in
such laws there comes a great deal of dead letter, but the dead
letter itself stinks and is corrupt. The book of justice should
be purged of such unhallowed corpses.

In the nursery the mother is called upon to set forward the same
injustice which presided over her own education. "Preaching down
a daughter's heart," the beautiful phrase of Tennyson, becomes
the duty of every woman who finds in her daughter saliency of
intellect and individuality of will. Mediocrity is the standard!
"Seek not, my child, to go beyond it. Thou hast thy little
allotments. The French must be thy classics, the house accounts
thy mathematics. Patchwork, cooking, and sweeping thy mechanics;
dress and embroidery thy fine arts. See how small the spheres. Do
not venture outside of it, nor teach thy daughters, when thou
shalt have such to do so."

And so we women, from generation to generation, are drilled to be
the apes of an artificial standard, made for us and imposed upon
us by an outsider; a being who, in this attitude, becomes our
natural enemy.

Mrs. LUCY STONE said: There have always been good and able men
ready to second us, and to say their best words for our cause.
Among the first of these is Mr. George William Curtis, whom I
have now the pleasure to introduce.

_Ladies and Gentlemen:_--It is pleasant to see this large
assembly, and this generous spirit, for it is by precisely such
meetings as this that public opinion is first awakened, and
public action is at last secured. Our question is essentially an
American question. It is a demand for equal rights, and will
therefore be heard. Whenever a free and intelligent people asks
any question involving human rights or liberty or development, it
will ask louder and louder until it is answered. The conscience
of this nation sits in the way like a sphinx, proposing its
riddle of true democracy. Presidents and parties, conventions,
caucuses, and candidates, failing to guess it, are remorselessly
consumed. Forty years ago that conscience asked, "Do men have
fair play in this country?" A burst of contemptuous laughter was
the reply. Louder and louder grew that question, until it was one
great thunderburst, absorbing all other questions; and then the
country saw that its very life was bound up in the answer; and,
springing to its feet, alive in every nerve, with one hand it
snapped the slave's chain, and with the other welded the Union
into a Nation--the pledge of equal liberty.

That same conscience sits in the way to-day. It asks another
question, "Do women have fair play in this country?" As before, a
sneer or a smile of derision may ripple from one end of the land
to the other; but that question will swell louder and louder,
until it is answered by the ballot in the hands of every citizen,
and by the perfect vindication of the fundamental principle, that
"governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed." By its very nature, however, the progress of this
reform will differ from every other political movement. Behind
every demand for the enlargement of the suffrage, hitherto there
was always a threat. It involved possible anarchy and blood. But
this reform hides no menace. It lies wholly in the sphere of
reason. It is a demand for justice, as the best political policy;
an appeal for equality of rights among citizens as the best
security of the common welfare. It is a plea for the introduction
of all the mental and moral forces of society into the work of
government. It is an assertion that in the regulation of society,
no class and no interest can be safely spared from a direct
responsibility. It encounters, indeed, the most ancient
traditions, the most subtle sophistry of men's passions and
prejudices. But there was never any great wrong righted that was
not intrenched in sophistry--that did not plead an immemorial
antiquity, and what it called the universal consent and
"instinct" of mankind.

I say that the movement is a plea for justice, and I assert that
the equal rights of women, not as citizens, but as human beings,
have never been acknowledged. There is no audacity so insolent,
no tyranny so wanton, no inhumanity so revolting, as the spirit
which says to any human being, or to any class of human beings,
"You shall be developed just as far as we choose, and as fast as
we choose, and your mental and moral life shall be subject to our
pleasure!"

Edward Lear, the artist, traveling in Greece, says that "he was
one day jogging along with an Albanian peasant, who said to him,
'Women are really better than donkeys for carrying burdens, but
not so good as mules.'" This was the honest opinion of
barbarism--the honest feeling of Greece to-day.

You say that the peasant was uncivilized. Very well. Go back to
the age of Pericles; it is the high noon of Greek civilization.
It is Athens--"the eye of Greece--the mother of art." There
stands the great orator--himself incarnate Greece--speaking the
oration over the Peloponnesian dead. "The greatest glory of
woman," he said, "is to be the least talked of among men;" so
said Pericles, when he lived. Had Pericles lived to-day he would
have agreed that to be talked of among men as Miss Martineau and
Florence Nightingale are, as Mrs. Somerville and Maria Mitchell
are, is as great a glory as to be the mother of the Gracchi.
Women in Greece, the mothers of Greece, were an inferior and
degraded class. And Grote sums up their whole condition when he
says, "Every thing which concerned their lives, their happiness,
or their rights, was determined for them by male relatives, and
they seem to have been destitute of all mental culture and
refinement."

These were the old Greeks. Will you have Rome? The chief monument
of Roman civilization is its law--which underlies our own; and
Buckle quotes the great commentator on that law as saying that it
was the distinction of the Roman law that it treated women not as
persons, but as things. Or go to the most ancient civilization;
to China, which was old when Greece and Rome were young. The
famous French Jesuit missionary, Abbé Huc, mentions one of the
most tragical facts recorded--that there is in China a class of
women who hold that if they are only true to certain bonds during
this life, they shall, as a reward, change their form after death
and return to earth as men. This distinguished traveler also says
that he was one day talking with a certain Master Ting, a very
shrewd Chinaman, whom he was endeavoring to convert. "But," said
Ting, "what is the special object of your preaching
Christianity?" "Why, to convert you, and save your soul," said
the Abbé. "Well, then, why do you try to convert the women?"
asked Master Ting. "To save their souls," said the missionary.
"But women have no souls," said Master Ting; "you can't expect to
make Christians of women,"--and he was so delighted with the idea
that he went out shouting, "Hi! hi! now I shall go home and tell
my wife she has a soul, and I guess she will laugh as loudly as I
do!"

Such were the three old civilizations. Do you think we can
disembarrass ourselves of history? Our civilization grows upon
roots that spring from the remotest past; and our life, proud as
we are of it, is bound up with that of Greece and Rome. Do you
think the spirit of our society is wholly different? Let us see.
It was my good fortune, only a few weeks ago, to be invited to
address the students of Vassar College at Poughkeepsie; which
you will remember is devoted exclusively to the higher education
of women. As I stood in those ample halls, and thought of that
studious household, of the observatory and its occupants, it
seemed to me that, like the German naturalist, who, wandering in
the valley of the Amazon, came suddenly upon the _Victoria
Regia_, so there, in the valley of the Hudson, I had come upon
one of the finest flowers of our civilization. But in the midst
of my enthusiasm I was told by the President that this was the
first fully endowed college for women in the world; and from that
moment I was alarmed. From behind every door, every tree, I
expected to see good Master Ting springing out with his "Hi! hi!
you laugh at us Chinese barbarians; you call yourselves in
America the head of civilization; you claim that the glory of
your civilization is your estimate of women; you sneer at us
Chinese for belittling women's souls and squeezing their feet.
Who belittle their capacities? Who squeeze their minds?" We must
confess it. The old theory of the subservience of women still
taints our civilization.

You open your morning paper and read that on the previous evening
there was a meeting of intelligent and experienced women, with
some that were not so, which is true of all general meetings of
men and women; and these persons demanded the same liberty of
choice, and an equal opportunity with all other members of
society. But the report of the meeting is received with a shout
of derisive laughter that echoes through the press and through
private conversation. Gulliver did not take the Lilliputians on
his hands and look at them with more utter contempt than the
political class of this country, to which the men in this hall
belong, take up these women and look at them with infinite,
amused disdain. But in the very next column of the same morning
paper we find another report, describing a public dinner, at
which men only were present. And we read that after the great
orators had made their great speeches, in the course of which
they complimented woman so prettily, to the delight of the few
privileged ladies who stood behind the screens, or looked over
the balcony, or peeped in through the cracks of the windows and
doors; and when the great orators had retired with the President,
amid universal applause, the first Vice-President took the head
of the table and punch was brought in. And well toward morning,
when the "army" and "navy" and the "press" and the "Common
Council" had been toasted and drank, with three times three, and
Richard Swiveller, Esq., had sung his celebrated song, "Queen of
my soul!" the last regular toast was proposed--"Woman--heaven's
last, best gift to man," which was received with tumultuous
enthusiasm, the whole company rising and cheering, the band
playing "Will ye come to Kelvin Grove, bonnie lassie, O?" and in
response to a unanimous call, some gallant and chivalric editor
replied in a strain of pathetic and humorous eloquence, during
which many of the company were observed to shed tears or laugh,
or embrace their neighbors; after which those of the company who
were able rose from the table, and hallooing, "We won't go home
till morning!" they hiccoughed their way home. This report is not
read with great derision or laughter. It is not felt that by this
performance women have been insulted and degraded.

Here, at this moment, in this audience, I have no doubt there is
many a man who is exclaiming with fervor--"Home, the
heaven-appointed sphere of woman." Very well. I don't deny it,
but how do you know it? How can you know it? There is but one law
by which any sphere can be determined, and that is perfect
liberty of development. I look into history and the society
around me, and I see that the position of women which is most
agreeable upon the whole to men is that which they call the
"heaven-appointed sphere" of woman. It may or may not be so; all
that I can see thus far is that men choose to have it so. A
gentleman remarks that it is a beautiful ordinance of Providence
that pear-trees should grow like vines. And when I say, "Is it
so?" he takes me into his garden, and shows me a poor, tortured
pear-tree, trained upon a trellis. Then I see that it is the
beautiful design of Providence that pear-trees should grow like
vines, precisely as Providence ordains that Chinese women shall
have small feet; and that the powdered sugar we buy at the
grocer's shall be half ground rice. These philosophers might as
wisely inform us that Providence ordains Christian saints to be
chops and steaks; and then point us to St. Lawrence upon his
gridiron.

Has nature ordained that the lark shall rise fluttering and
singing to the sun in the spring? But how should we ever know it,
if he were prisoned in a cage with wires of gold never so
delicate, or tied with a silken string however slight and soft?
Is it the nature of flowers to open to the south wind? How could
we know it but that, unconstrained by art, their winking eyes
respond to that soft breath? In like manner, what determines the
sphere of any morally responsible being, but perfect liberty of
choice and liberty of development? Take those away, and you have
taken away the possibility of determining the sphere. How do I
know my sphere as a man, but by repelling everything that would
arbitrarily restrict my choice? How can you know yours as women,
but by obedience to the same law?

It is not the business of either sex to theorize about the sphere
of the other. It is the duty of each to secure the liberty of
both. Give women, for instance, every opportunity of education
that men have. If there are some branches of knowledge improper
for them to acquire--some which are in their nature
unwomanly--they will know it a thousandfold better than men. And
if, having opened the college, there be some woman in whom the
love of learning extinguishes all other love, then the
heaven-appointed sphere of that woman is not the nursery. It may
be the laboratory, the library, the observatory; it may be the
platform or the Senate. And if it be either of these, shall we
say that education has unsphered and unsexed her? On the
contrary, it has enabled that woman to ascertain so far exactly
what God meant her to do.

The woman's rights movement is the simple claim, that the same
opportunity and liberty that a man has in civilized society shall
be extended to the woman who stands at his side--equal or unequal
in special powers, but an equal member of society. She must prove
her power as he proves his.

And so when Joan of Arc follows God and leads the army; when the
Maid of Saragossa loads and fires the cannon; when Mrs. Stowe
makes her pen the heaven-appealing tongue of an outraged race;
when Grace Darling and Ida Lewis, pulling their boats through the
pitiless waves, save fellow-creatures from drowning; when Mrs.
Patten, the captain's wife, at sea--her husband lying helplessly
ill in his cabin--puts everybody aside, and herself steers the
ship to port, do you ask me whether these are not exceptional
women? I am a man and you are women; but Florence Nightingale,
demanding supplies for the sick soldiers in the Crimea, and when
they are delayed by red tape, ordering a file of soldiers to
break down the doors and bring them, which they do--for the brave
love bravery--seems to me quite as womanly as the loveliest girl
in the land, dancing at the gayest ball in a dress of which the
embroidery is the pinched lines of starvation in another girl's
face. Jenny Lind enchanting the heart of a nation; Anna Dickinson
pleading for the equal liberty of her sex; Lucretia Mott,
publicly bearing her testimony against the sin of slavery, are
doing what God, by His great gifts of eloquence and song,
appointed them to do. And whatever generous and noble duty,
either in a private or a public sphere, God gives any woman the
will and the power to do, that, and that only, for her, is
feminine.

But have women, then, no sphere as women? Undoubtedly they have,
as men have a sphere as men. If a woman is a mother, God gives
her certain affections, and cares springing from them, which we
may be very sure she will not forget, and to which, just in the
degree that she is a true woman, she will be fondly faithful. We
need not think that it is necessary to fence her in, nor to
suppose that she would try to evade these duties and
responsibilities, if perfect liberty were given her. As Sydney
Smith said of education, we need not fear that if girls study
Greek and mathematics, mothers will desert their infants for
quadratic equations, or verbs in _mi_.

But the sphere of the family is not the sole sphere either of men
or women. They are not only parents, they are human beings, with
genius, talents, aspirations, ambition. They are also members of
the State, and from the very equality of the parental function
which perpetuates the State, they are equally interested in its
welfare.

Is it said that she influences the man now? Very well; do you
object to that? And if not, is there any reason why she should
not do directly what she does indirectly? If it is proper that
her opinion should influence a man's vote, is there any good
reason why it should not be independently expressed? Or is it
said that she is represented by men? Excuse me; I belong to a
country which said, with James Otis in the forum, and with George
Washington in the field, that there is no such thing as virtual
representation. The guarantee of equal opportunity in modern
society is the ballot. It may be a clumsy contrivance, but it is
the best we have yet found. In our system a man without a vote is
but half a man. So long as women are forbidden political
equality, the laws and feelings of society will be unjust to
them.

I have no more superstitious notions about the ballot than about
any other method of social improvement and progress. But all
experience shows that my neighbor's ballot is no protection for
me. We see that voters may be bribed, dazzled, coerced; and,
where there is practically universal suffrage among men, we often
see, indeed, corruption, waste, and bad laws. But we nowhere see
that those who once have the ballot are willing to relinquish it,
and many of those who most warmly oppose the voting of women also
most earnestly advocate the unconditional restoration of
political rights to the guiltiest of the late rebel leaders,
because they know that to deprive them of the ballot places them
at a terrible disadvantage. If then it is what I may call an
American political instinct, that any class of men which
monopolizes the political power will be unjust to other classes
of men, how much truer is it that one sex as a class will be
unjust to the other.

I know, as every man knows, many a woman of the noblest
character, of the highest intelligence, of the purest purpose,
the owner of property, the mother of children, devoted to her
family and to all her duties, and for that reason profoundly
interested in public affairs. And when this woman says to me,
"You are one of the governing class. Your Government is founded
upon the principle of expressed consent of all as the best
security of all. I have as much stake in it as you--perhaps more
than you, because I am a parent--and wish more than many of my
neighbors to express my opinion and assert my influence by a
ballot. I am a better judge than you or any man can be of my own
responsibilities and powers. I am willing to bear my equal share
of every burden of the Government in such manner as we shall all
equally decide to be best. By what right, then, except that of
mere force, do you deny me a voice in the laws which I am forced
to obey?" What shall I say? What can I say? Shall I tell her that
she is "owned" by some living man, or is some dead man's
"relict," as the old phrase was? Shall I tell her that she ought
to be ashamed of herself for wishing to be unsexed; that God has
given her the nursery, the ball-room, the opera, and that, if
these fail, He has graciously provided the kitchen, the wash-tub,
and the needle? Or shall I tell her that she is a lute, a
moonbeam, a rosebud; and touch my guitar, and weave flowers in
her hair, and sing:

"Gay without toil and lovely without art,
They spring to cheer the sense and glad the heart;
Nor blush, my fair, to own you copy these,
Your best, your sweetest empire is to please"?

No, no. At least, I will not insult her. I can say nothing. I
hang my head before that woman, as when in foreign lands I was
asked, "You are an American. That is the nation that forever
boasts of the equal liberty of all its citizens, and is the only
great nation in the world that traffics in human flesh!"

The very moment women passed out of the degradation of the Greek
household and the contempt of the Roman law, they began their
long and slow ascent through prejudice, sophistry, and passion to
their perfect equality of choice and opportunity as human beings;
and the assertion that when a majority of women ask for equal
political rights they will be granted, is a confession that there
is no conclusive reason against their sharing them. And if that
be so, how can their admission rightfully depend upon the
majority? Why should the woman who does not care to vote prevent
the voting of her neighbor who does? Why should a hundred fools
who are content to be dolls and do what Mrs. Grundy expects,
prejudice the choice of a single one who wishes to be a woman and
do what her conscience requires? You tell me that the great mass
of women are uninterested, indifferent, and, upon the whole,
hostile to the movement. You say what of course you can not know,
but even if it were so, what then? There are some of the noblest
and best of women, both in this country and in England, who are
not indifferent. They are the women who have thought for
themselves upon the subject. The others (the great multitude) are
those who have not thought at all; who have acquiesced in the
old order, and who have accepted the prejudices of men. Shall
their unthinking acquiescence or the intelligent wish of their
thoughtful sisters decide the question?

We can be patient. Our fathers won their independence of England
by the logic of English ideas. We will persuade America by the
eloquence of American principles. In one of the fierce Western
battles among the mountains, General Thomas was watching a body
of his troops painfully pushing their way up a steep hill against
a withering fire. Victory seemed impossible, and the
General--even he a rock of valor and patriotism--exclaimed, "They
can't do it; they'll never reach the top!" His chief-of-staff,
watching the struggle with equal earnestness, placed his hand on
his commander's arm and said softly, "Time, time, General; give
them time;" and presently the moist eyes of the brave leader saw
his soldiers victorious upon the summit. They were American
soldiers. So are we. They were fighting our American battle. So
are we. They were climbing a precipice. So are we. The great
heart of their General gave them time and they conquered. The
great heart of our country will give us time and we shall
triumph.

Mrs. LUCY STONE then introduced Hon. George W. Julian, member of
Congress from Indiana. "His name," she said, "will always be held
in grateful remembrance by good women as the author of the XVI.
Amendment."

Mr. JULIAN said that, as a thorough-going radical in politics and
a sincere believer in democracy as a principle, he could not see
how he was to argue the question of woman suffrage, even if he
had the time. Woman's rights, to his mind, rested upon precisely
the same grounds upon which men's rights rest; and to argue the
question of woman's rights is to argue the question of human
rights. Subscribing as he did to the great primal truth of the
sacredness of human rights, the same logic which held him to that
compelled him--it is inexorable logic--to stand by the legitimate
results to which it leads. The issue was between aristocracy and
privilege on one side, and democracy and equality of inherent
right on the other. Speaking of the XVI. Amendment, he said:
"Believing as I do in democracy in the large and proper and full
sense of the term, and being unwilling to write myself down a
hypocrite or liar by refusing to women equal participation in
rights which I insist upon for myself as a citizen of the United
States, I thought it was my duty to introduce into the Congress
of the United States a XVI. Amendment to the Constitution
proposing to give to one half of our citizens who are to-day
disfranchised a voice in the system of laws and government by
which the other half of the citizens now govern them. Should it
succeed, you will have a true and real democracy in this land; a
Government emphatically of the people, for the people, and by the
people.

Mrs. CELIA BURLEIGH was then introduced, and said: Ladies and
gentlemen, I am not generally in favor of compromises, but I come
before you to-night to propose a compromise. I had written a
speech for the occasion, and--a--I assure you it was a very good
speech. As I am compassionate, however, if you will take my word
for it that it is a very good speech I will not inflict it upon
you.

These remarks brought such thunders of applause, that in response
to the manifest desire of the audience, Mrs. Burleigh again came
forward, and delivered a highly interesting and eloquent address
upon the general subject of woman's improvement, under the
epigrammatic title of "Woman's Right to be a Woman." An extract
or two will show the spirit with which she treats the question.

"I appeal to every true man before me if he has not looked into
the faces of well-dressed men so sensual and brutal in their
expression, that he would sooner a hundredfold see a sister or
daughter laid in her grave than entrusted to the guardianship of
such a man. Will you not give to every woman the power to
maintain the integrity of her womanhood--the ownership of
herself? What means the right of the drunkard's wife to be a
woman? It means the power to protect herself from his drunken
hate and his more frightful drunken love. It means that she be
armed with a vote to repress the horrid traffic that has made her
husband a brute, or, failing to save him, that she escape with
untarnished honor from his polluting arms. What signifies the
right to be a woman to her who must endure the daily contact of a
social villain, if it be not to have all human virtue as her ally
when she snaps the tie that binds her to him, and vindicates the
Divine validity of marriage by breaking the fetters of the fatal
sham? What is involved in the right of the Magdalen to be a woman
redeemed and disenthralled from the bondage of sin? What but the
entire reconstruction of society with purity for a law and
charity for the executive; with more of the divine mother in man,
more of manly courage and self-respecting dignity in woman; in
both more reverence for humanity and a more abiding faith in the
indestructible possibilities of good in every human soul."

The Convention then adjourned _sine die_.

THE FIRST ANNUAL MEETING OF THE AMERICAN WOMAN SUFFRAGE
ASSOCIATION was held in Cleveland, Ohio, Nov. 22 and 23, 1870.

Col. T. W. HIGGINSON, first Vice-President, called the meeting to
order, and addressed the audience substantially as follows:

REMARKS OF COLONEL HIGGINSON.

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: I heartily congratulate you that you are
again called together in this goodly city of Cleveland.

We stand to-day at the cradle of the Association, a child one
year old, to celebrate its first birthday. There is nothing in
the record of the past year that we have to blush for, or that we
have to undo. If our work has been limited in its success, it has
been because we have been limited in means. If we have not
transformed the entire world it has been because the world has
not poured its money into our coffers. But the great fact
remains, as much as if we had accomplished a work ten times as
large, that we have a great central organization, to which ten
States have given a cordial and hearty support. Congress at
Washington is but a small body. The amount it annually does and
spends is nothing to that done and spent by the State
governments. It is the keystone of our great national arch, the
string upon which all State governments are strung. And so this
Association is the keystone upon which all the auxiliary State
organizations depend.

We meet here to-day, in a delegate meeting, for full and free
discussion; none are proscribed, none prescribed. If there is
anything new to be done, now is the time to do it; if anything
wrong was done last year, now is the time to rectify it. This is
the great, golden opportunity of this Association. It is especial
cause for rejoicing that it is organized for a specific purpose,
to secure the ballot to women, everything else being held for the
time in abeyance. Early in the movement in behalf of women the
broad platform of "woman's rights" was adopted. This was all
proper and right then, but the progress of reform has developed
the fact that suffrage for woman is the great key that will
unlock to her the doors of social and political equality. This
should be the first point of concentrated attack. Suffrage is not
the only object, but it is the first, to be attained. When we
gave our Association that name we escaped a vast deal of
discussion and argument, for its object can not be misunderstood.
But after that is gained there will be worlds yet to conquer. If
the conservatives think that because it is called the Woman
Suffrage Association it has no further object, they are greatly
mistaken. Its purpose and aim are to equalize the sexes in all
the relations of life; to reduce the inequalities that now exist
in matters of education, in social life and in the
professions--to make them equal in all respects, before the law,
society, and the world. With this burden upon our shoulders we
can not carry all the other ills of the world in addition, we
must take one thing at a time. Suffrage for woman gained, and all
else will speedily follow.

H. B. Blackwell, Chairman of the Committee on Credentials,
presented the report of delegates present.[188]

On motion of Mrs. Dr. Ferguson, seconded by Judge Bradwell, each
delegation was authorized to cast the full vote of the State it
represents. The number of votes to which each State was entitled
was declared to be that of its Congressional representation.

Mrs. LUCY STONE, Chairman of the Executive Committee, read the

REPORT OF THE EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.

_Annual Report of the Chairman of the Executive Committee of
the American Woman Suffrage Association:_

The American Woman Suffrage Association was formed in this
city one year ago under the most favorable auspices. Its one
great object is to secure the ballot for woman. Through the
power this will give, she may take her true place, free to
use every gift and faculty she possesses, subject only to
the law of benevolence. This organization has been vastly
influential in securing public sympathy and respect for our
ideas. The very names of its officers gave confidence, and
through their confidence the cause has received large
accessions of strength. We have already nine auxiliary State
societies. Each of these has held conventions. Some have
employed lecturers, some have organized county and local
societies. All have circulated tracts and petitions. Ohio,
Indiana, and Massachusetts have been especially abundant in
labor. Ohio has thirty-one local societies, Indiana
twenty-five, and Massachusetts five. These States have had a
force of excellent speakers in the field, who, with rare
self-forgetting, have worked as only those can who work with
whole-hearted faith for immortal principles.

Under the auspices of this Association, a canvass was made
in the State of Vermont. The sole reason which induced the
Executive Committee to undertake this special work was that
the Council of Censors had submitted a proposition that
"henceforth women may vote, and with no other restrictions
than are prescribed for men." A Vermont State Woman Suffrage
Association was organized, auxiliary to the American
Society.

The speech of Mr. Curtis at our May mass meeting, so
admirable in style and substance we have published in a
tract entitled "Fair Play for Women." Thousands of copies
have been sent to all parts of the United States. It is
doing its silent work by quiet firesides, where hard-working
men and women, who can never attend a convention, can find
time to read. We have published seven tracts, which had
previously been sold at $5.00 a hundred, at the actual cost
of $2.00 per hundred, and keep them constantly for sale at
these low prices. They have been scattered broadcast, and
the good seed thus sown will bear fruit in due season.

There has been steady progress in our ideas during the whole
year. The _Woman's Journal_, established last January, and
since consolidated with the _Woman's Advocate_, of Ohio, is
constantly increasing its circulation, more than a thousand
new subscribers having been added within a single month.

One of the most significant signs of progress is found in
the recent action of the Republican party in Massachusetts.
Their State Convention unanimously admitted Mary A.
Livermore and Lucy Stone, who were regularly accredited
delegates from the towns of Melrose and West Brookfield. A
resolution in favor of making woman suffrage part of the
platform was reported by the Committee on Resolutions. A
change of only 29 votes out of 331 would have made woman
suffrage this year a part of the Republican platform of
Massachusetts. Thus women have been admitted to represent
men in a political State Convention. The next step will be
that women will represent themselves.

With all these cheering indications, we have only to keep
our question of woman's right to the ballot clear and
unmixed with other issues, and the growing public sympathy
will soon carry our cause to a successful issue.

Judge Bradwell, of Chicago, presented the following letter to the
Chair, which was read to the Association:

_To the American Woman Suffrage Association;_

FRIENDS AND CO-WORKERS: We, the undersigned, a committee
appointed by the Union Woman Suffrage Society in New York,
May, 1870, to confer with you on the subject of merging the
two organizations into one, respectfully announce:

1st. That in our judgment no difference exists between the
objects and methods of the two societies, nor any good
reason for keeping them apart.

2d. That the society we represent has invested us with full
power to arrange with you a union of both under a single
constitution and executive.

3d. That we ask you to appoint a committee of equal number
and authority with our own, to consummate if possible this
happy result.

Yours, in the common cause of woman's enfranchisement,

LAURA CURTIS BULLARD, ISABELLA BEECHER HOOKER,
GERRIT SMITH, SAMUEL J. MAY,
SARAH PUGH, CHARLOTTE E. WILBOUR,
FREDERICK DOUGLASS, JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING,
MATTIE GRIFFITH BROWN, THEODORE TILTON, _ex officio_.
JAMES W. STILLMAN,

Judge BRADWELL made a few remarks on the subject of the letter,
advocating the union of the two organizations, and proposing the
following resolution:

_Whereas_, In Article II. of the Constitution of the
American Woman Suffrage Association it is stated, "Its
object shall be to concentrate the efforts of all the
advocates of woman suffrage in the United States," and
whereas the Union Woman Suffrage Association, of which
Theodore Tilton is President, has appointed a committee of
eleven persons with full power to agree upon a basis for the
union of the two national associations, now, therefore, be
it

_Resolved_, That the convention for the purpose of carrying
out the object of said association, as expressed in said
Article II., and concentrating the efforts of all the
friends of woman suffrage throughout the Union for national
purposes, do hereby appoint.... who, with the eleven persons
heretofore appointed by said Woman Suffrage Society, shall
compose a joint committee with full power to form a union of
the American Woman Suffrage Association and the Union Woman
Suffrage Society under one constitution and one set of
officers. It is further provided, after notice to all, that
a majority of said joint committee shall have power to act.

The above was referred to the Committee on Resolutions.

At the afternoon session Vice-President Higginson invited the
Vice-Presidents of the associations of different States to seats
upon the platform.

Mrs. LUCY STONE was introduced, and gave an interesting account
of the course pursued by her and Mrs. Livermore in a
Massachusetts convention. Here the two ladies were received as
delegates, took their places among the regular delegates of the
convention, and voted with them. After that they urged their lady
friends to attend the ward meetings. The women of Massachusetts,
she said, paid taxes on $100,000,000 of property, the women of
Boston on $40,000,000. She thought it good policy to work inside
the parties.

Mrs. Dr. FERGUSON, of Indiana, thought it necessary to begin by
sowing the seeds of the doctrine. Meetings had been held in
different parts of the State. One was held on the sidewalk, was
well attended, and was followed by a large meeting. Soon after,
conventions were held, and though many women were afraid to take
hold of the subject, others advocated it with full force. We have
organized fourteen local societies. Some of these are sending out
their lecturers.

Col. T. W. HIGGINSON reported that the Rhode Island Society was
endeavoring to obtain the appointment of women as superintendents
of reform institutions. We should have matrons in all the prisons
where women are confined. I would therefore urge upon all women
in their respective cities to labor in this direction. Men will
vote for placing women upon all these boards.

Judge BRADWELL, of Chicago, made a short report on the condition
of the suffrage party in his State.

Dr. CHILD, of Pennsylvania, said: The suggestions of our
President are very important. Woman should have a position by the
side of man in all public institutions. I am happy to say that in
the city of Philadelphia, founded by William Penn, and to a
considerable extent still under the influence of Friends, women
do participate largely in our benevolent institutions and
prisons. Our State organization was formed on the 22d of December
last, and is auxiliary to the American Association. Our principal
labor has been to increase the circulation of the _Woman's
Journal_ and circulate tracts.

Rev. OSCAR CLUTE, of New Jersey, thought that his State had done
more for the cause of woman suffrage than many others. Mary F.
Davis and others had resided there.

Mrs. M. V. LONGLEY reported that in Ohio desirable progress was
manifested, and that if the coming year was as successful as the
past the cause would progress well. Societies, some thirty-two in
number, had been organized, and everywhere the work went on well.

Mr. HENRY B. BLACKWELL made a report for New Hampshire, where he
was assured by Mrs. White and Pipher, now present, that the cause
had never been so strong before.

Owing to the exceedingly inclement weather, the attendance upon
the evening session of the Convention was light.

All the States represented having reported except Missouri, Mrs.
Hazard, one of the delegates from that State, spoke briefly,
showing that the movement is making satisfactory advance.

Judge WHITEHEAD, New Jersey, regarded the woman suffrage question
as the most important topic before the American people. The only
question to be asked in connection with this movement is, is it
right, is it just?--not, is it expedient? With regard to the
legal and constitutional conditions of this question, he said
that he believed that women had a right to vote without any
change in the organic law of the Nation. The speaker proceeded to
discuss this question at some length, with the purpose of
demonstrating that in virtue of the principle and practice of the
Government of the United States in securing the ballot to men,
the right to vote equally belonged to women. The speaker
continued at length in advocacy of the ballot for woman as a
necessity for securing her rights and remedying her wrongs.

The PRESIDENT, with some prefatory remarks, introduced Miss Rice,
of Antioch College. Miss Rice announced as the theme of her
address, "Woman's Work," and said that the work proper for woman
is whatever she has the ability and opportunity to do. Miss Rice
embraced in the discussion of her topic, considerations as to the
duty of parents in rearing and teaching their children, demanding
that the same principle under which boys were reared should be
applied to girls, and the duty of society, which must recognize
the necessity of women being instructed and taught in all that
man has access to. She deprecated as one of the worst evils of
our civilization that men and women were being all the time more
widely separated. They must be brought nearer together.

Mrs. M. M. COLE said: That we are still so far from
enfranchisement is mainly the fault of women themselves. Home
talks, not Mrs. Caudle's fault-finding lectures, will do more
toward convincing men of the righteousness of their demand, than
all the public harangues to which they can listen. Comparatively
speaking, there are few men who do not listen and heed the
counsels of a good wife, few who will not yield a willing or
reluctant assent to her requests. For every exception, there may
be found a wife who has never given evidence of candid,
far-reaching thought; and when a man is in possession of such a
one, he is not to be censured for wishing to keep the reins in
his own hand.

When all women ask for the ballot, they shall have it, say many
politicians. In all probability, the wives of these men have
never asked it--indeed, they may have refused outright to use
it, if granted. And so, blind to the interests of all, deaf to
the entreaties of many, they refuse the request, making, in fact,
their wives the arbiter of all women. That is not statesmanship,
but partisanship, and a partisan is not one likely to comprehend
a question in its broadest meaning. Husbands and wives who are
not as far apart as the poles, are apt to think alike on all
questions except religion and temperance, perhaps I ought to add
finance. Social problems they solve by the same rule, public
officers they weigh in the same balance, party measures criticise
and pronounce wise or unwise with the same verdict. I know of a
few advocates of woman suffrage whose husbands, fathers,
brothers, or some one dearer, do not directly or indirectly aid
them. So far from alienating the married pair, so far from
creating domestic disturbance, the discussion of this question
has called into activity faculties men never dreamed woman
possessed. She has shown more fixedness of purpose, sagacity, and
sound judgment, than have ever been attributed to her. Excepting
the religion of Christ, which first broke the chains binding
woman to a mere animal existence, and sent gleams of love and
hope through the darkness in which she groped, there has been
nothing which has given such an impetus to her life as the
present one, set in motion by her demand for freedom. Never
before in the history of the human race, have women stood so high
in the estimation of men as they stand to-day.

There is but one answer to give to woman-worshipers, and that is,
Take away all responsibility from me, shield me from the terrors
of war, intemperance and licentiousness, and be my vicarious
sacrifice in the world to come, and I'll be the thing you would
have me--the echo--the reflection--the soulless divinity.

Is this an extreme view? What! can there be an extreme view, when
one is considering individual freedom? Set bounds to the
political, social, or religious liberty of a man, and what
figures of speech would he employ? The advocates of the XV.
Amendment put words into our mouths, and they must answer for
them if they seem too extravagant. There is nothing under the sun
that will so arouse man or woman as the fact that another, as
needy, as finite as himself, sets stakes in the path of his
progress, and says, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther." It
is this assumption of men, most grievous to be borne, that has
compelled woman to ask that the stakes be removed, and she be
permitted to go where she wills to go.

Mrs. HANNAH B. CLARKE spoke as follows: When I am satisfied that
a majority of the women of this country desire the ballot, I
shall be in favor of granting the same, says the man of to-day of
average ability and culture. Oh! my friend, we shall not allow
you to take out a patent for magnanimity on the strength of that
confession. When all the women, or even the majority of the
women, shall unite in one solemn, earnest appeal for a voice in
the framing of the laws which they are compelled to obey, the
turf will be green over that political statesmanship which
supposes that a question of right, of principle, is a question of
majorities. While I do not believe that the fewness of the women
in any community who really desire the ballot furnishes any man
good ground for throwing his influence in the opposite scale, I
do believe that the most serious hindrance to the immediate
success of our cause is the opposition of women themselves.

It is one of the saddest, the most discouraging, features of any
reform to find its worst foes are they of its own household. But
the woman movement is not unique in this particular. Other
reforms have presented the self-same characteristic. He who is
familiar with the history of labor-saving machinery in this
country knows that its introduction was fought inch by inch by
that very class whose condition it was especially designed to
ameliorate. If the Jews were the first to crucify instead of
receive their Messiah, we know that the bad precedent which they
established has not been lost upon succeeding generations. My
friends, every reform begets a vast amount of ignorant opposition
before which its advocates must simply possess their souls in
patience.

This opposition among women shows itself in two distinct ways.
The first kind manifests itself in holding meetings, framing
petitions, and soliciting signatures, asking Congress to withhold
the right of suffrage from the women of the land. I make no
quarrel with that kind of opposition, nay, more, I entertain for
it a certain kind of regard, for two reasons: First, because any
decision that is candid and the result of reflection, entitles
the holder to respect, but secondly and mainly, because it is no
opposition at all. These persons are our friends, doing just what
we are, no more and no less. For, mind you, it is not the mere
dropping of the ballot once or twice a year on the part of woman
to which public opinion is such a dead set. It is that which
follows the ballot, that which the ballot involves. It is the
office holding, the introduction of woman into public life, this
stepping outside of what has always been considered her
particular sphere. And so these women, who are memorializing
Legislatures to deny their sisters the ballot, are doing our
work, in that they are breaking the crust of that bitter
prejudice which says that a woman's business is to keep house and
tend babies, utterly regardless of the fact that every community
contains scores of women who have neither houses to keep, nor
babies to tend; doing our work in their own way, to be sure, in a
way that reflects little credit on their good sense, but we shall
not be particular about that if they are not. My verdict for such
women is, let them alone. We shall be the losers if they ever
find out their mistake.

But that kind of opposition which we dread the most, which takes
the courage out of the most courageous, and the heart out of the
most earnest, is the opposition of utter insensibility, of stolid
indifference, which the mass of women exhibit, not only to this
question, but to any question that does not touch their immediate
personal interests. If I had a cause, of whatever kind, to
advocate on its merits alone, one argument to make that appealed
to a reasonable intellect, a discriminating judgment, I should
want an audience not of women. It is a sad, a humiliating fact
that the great mass of women are not thinkers.

* * * * *

At the morning session Colonel HIGGINSON read a letter from Henry
Ward Beecher.

BROOKLYN, N. Y., Nov. 18, 1870.

MRS. LUCY STONE:--My Dear Madam--You were kind enough to ask
me to allow my name to be used again in connection with the
presidency of the American Woman Suffrage Association. But,
after reflection, I am persuaded that it will be better to
put in nomination some one who can give more time to the
affairs of the society than I can and who can at least
attend its meetings, which I find it impossible to do. But,
while I detach myself from the mere machinery of the
society, I do not withdraw from the cause, nor abate my
hopes of its success and my conviction of the justice of its
aims. On the contrary, with every year I feel increasing
confidence that the ultimate forms of civilized society will
surely include women in its political management. I am not
so sanguine of the nearness of the day when a woman's vote
must be calculated by political assemblies as many are, but
little by little the cause will gain and ultimately the
result is certain. I wish you an enthusiastic meeting, a
harmonious adjustment of all affairs, and a prosperous
future.

I am very truly yours, HENRY WARD BEECHER.

The Committee on Resolutions[189] reported later. The first four
resolutions were unanimously adopted, the fifth, after full
discussion, was rejected by a vote of 112 1-3 to 47 2-3.

MR. HENRY B. BLACKWELL offered the following resolution:

_Resolved_, That the American Woman Suffrage Association
heartily invites the cooperation of all individuals and all
State societies who feel the need of a truly National
Association on a delegated basis, which shall avoid side
issues, and devote itself to the main question of suffrage.
Adopted unanimously.

The American Woman Suffrage Association held its semi-annual
meeting in Steinway Hall, New York, May 10, 1871. A large
audience had already gathered when the Convention was called to
order, which was constantly increased during the morning session,
until between 800 and 1,000 persons were in attendance. In the
absence of the President of the Association, Mrs. H. M. Tracy
Cutler, Mrs. M. A. Livermore was called to the chair. She read
the following letter from Mrs. Cutler:

_To the American Woman Suffrage Association, Steinway Hall
New York:_

With much self-denial on my part, I remain far from your
semi-annual gathering. But in heart I am with you, partaking
in your deliberations, and recounting the advances since our
meeting one year ago. Mrs. Dr. Patten, wife of the editor of
the _Advance_, who believes and does far better than he
would make us believe through his paper, is president of a
society for sending women as missionaries to India for the
express purpose of educating Brahman women. They will deny
any belief in the woman suffrage movement, but they are
teaching women the alphabet, and that is the first step
toward the fullest possession of self, which will yet claim
and vindicate all human rights. Among the most significant
signs of the influence of this agitation, is the change in
the laws of the different States in regard to the rights of
women. Conversing with a member of the committee charged
with the revision of the laws of California, he said to me:
"The most important part of my work is the revisions of the
statutes concerning marriage and divorce and the rights of
property and of guardianship for married women."

The action of Congress shows us clearly, that as soon as
there is sufficient pressure from without, it will give a
light by which to read the XIV. and XV. Amendments, or it
will inspire the passage of a XVI., so that our cause will
be won. Knowing that your deliberations will be wise, and
that the inspiring spirit will be purity and harmony, I
shall the less regret that I am compelled to be absent in
person, though present in spirit.

H. M. T. CUTLER.

The Rev. Dr. EDWARD EGGLESTON, of the _Independent_, said: One
can not show one's interest in the cause better than by speaking
in this opening moment of the Convention. I think every
individual in the country should have a voice in the making of
the laws. Here is a large and increasing class of women in the
country who need the suffrage, and men feel that they need women
in politics. A great many people never think of the effect of
suffrage on woman without a shudder. I am not one who believes
that women are adapted to every kind of work to which a man is. I
do not believe that a woman's mind is just like a man's, but the
most shameful proscription of all is that which prevents women
from doing the work for which they are adapted. It is not
necessary for a woman to be a man in order to vote. We want a
woman's vote to be a woman's vote, and not a man's vote. It is a
singular old heresy that to be able to vote you must be able to
be a soldier. The purpose of the ballot-box is not to be
bolstered by bullets. It is intended that public sentiment shall
make law; and I think women can make public sentiment faster than
men. I would back a New England sewing society against any town
meeting. If women can not make war, they can at least do
something to stop war. There is nothing in the world so absurd as
regarding womanhood as some delicate flower that should be shut
up in some glass jar for fear it may be injured by contact with
the air. The ballot opens the door for every true and needed
reform for women, because the ballot is the great educating
power. A true, right-feeling woman does not want to be dependent,
and the ballot will educate them to independence, because it
brings duties and responsibilities to them.

Resolutions[190] were presented by H. B. Blackwell, chairman of
the Committee on Resolutions.

Mrs. LUCY STONE then addressed the Convention as follows: The
ideas which underlie the question of woman suffrage have reached
the last stage of discussion before their final acceptance. They
have grown up first through the period of indifference, then that
of scorn, and then that of moral agitation; and now they are
ushered into politics. In nearly every Northern and Western
State, such discussions have been had, and action has been taken
upon the subject in some form. Even in South Carolina it has
voted itself, with the Governor of the State for its ally. Under
the XIV. and XV. Amendments, several women in Washington
attempted to vote, but were refused. They are now trying the
question in the United States Courts. In Congress 55 votes were
cast in our favor at the last session. Politicians know perfectly
well that our success is a foregone conclusion. No coming event
ever cast its shadow before it more clearly than does this--that
women will vote. It is only a question of time, say all. It is
important for us, then, to-day, to suggest such measures as shall
win us sympathy, co-operation, and success; and for the first
time give to the world an example of true republicanism--a
government of the people, by the people, and for the people--man
and woman.

If neither of the existing parties takes up our cause, then the
best men from both will form a new party, which will win for
itself sympathy, support, power, and supremacy, because it gave
itself to the service of those who needed justice. I care for any
party only as it serves principles, and secures great National
needs. But the Republican party made itself a power by doing
justice to the negro. When the war was over and the
reconstruction of the South became necessary, the Republican
party was in the full tide of power, and had its choice of
methods and means. It was the golden hour that statesmanship
should have seized to reconstruct the Government on the basis of
the consent of the governed, without distinction of sex, race, or
color.

Mr. BLACKWELL addressed the Convention as follows:

He enumerated the different methods which have been proposed in
order to secure the suffrage for women, as follows: By a XVI.
Amendment to the Constitution, as suggested by the Hon. George W.
Julian; by an Act of Congress enfranchising women in the District
of Columbia, as advised by Hon. Henry Wilson; by Amendments to
the various State Constitutions, and by litigation for a broader
construction of the XIV. and XV. Amendments to the Constitution.
Mr. Blackwell said that all these methods are worth trying, but
thought there was a swifter and easier method, viz: to induce the
State Legislatures to direct that the votes of all adult native
and naturalized citizens shall be received and counted in the
Presidential election of 1872. This can be done, in Mr.
Blackwell's opinion, under the first section of the second
article of the Constitution, which says:

Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature
thereof may direct, a number of electors equal to the whole
number of Senators and Representatives to which the State
may be entitled in the Congress.

The great underlying mass of ignorance is always conservative.
Hence the difficulty of making constitutional amendments, and the
importance of employing an easier method. Let every man or woman
who believes in woman suffrage organize within their respective
States and endeavor to obtain such an act from their respective
Legislatures next winter, and let it be understood that the votes
of the woman suffrage party, both men and women, will be cast as
a unit within each State for the party which does this great act
of political justice.

GILES B. STEBBINS said: It has been stated that women don't want
the ballot. Well, suppose they don't. That is the very strongest
argument why they should be taught that they do. Fred. Douglass
said, "Show me a contented slave, and I will show you a depraved
man." We want duties and responsibilities shared equally by all,
that man may be more manly and woman more womanly.

Mrs. ELIZABETH K. CHURCHILL, of Providence, said: Can there be an
aristocracy meaner and more tyrannical than that of sex, by which
a wise, cultured, intelligent woman is made the inferior (for
that is what the denial of the ballot implies), the inferior of a
base, brutal, degraded man? The divine right of kings is an
exploded notion; it is time for the divine right of sex to follow
it. The chief value of the ballot is the educational power. He
who feels an interest in men and measures will soon feel a
responsibility. Everybody knows that women are no better than
men. They are no angels floating in an ethereal atmosphere. It is
the fashion sometimes to call them "angels," but I observe they
are no longer angels when they get aged. I don't know a more
unpleasant rôle to play than that of an aged angel. If it is said
that woman can't know enough to vote, I can only reply that God
made them to match men. But no standard of education was ever
fixed for the ballot; and if there had been one, it never could
exclude woman, any more than it could negroes.

Mrs. LIVERMORE left the chair for a short time to read a note
from a lady inquiring whether, if she thought the woman suffrage
movement was condemned in the New Testament, she would abandon
the movement. I think she said, that it is not the proper way to
put the question. If the question were put to me, If I thought
the woman's reform contrary to Christianity, would I throw it
overboard? I should answer, Yes, unhesitatingly; I should desire,
for one, to stop it; I should renounce it forever. What is it
that the woman's reform asks for woman? We ask for the ballot,
and we ask it simply 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 men before the law. The
very moment we obtain it the work of this association is done,
and it must get out of the way. Then new associations must be
formed to take the new work that will come before us, for when
the ballot is given to woman then the great work will begin. Then
comes the tug of war. For the obtaining of the ballot by woman is
but stepping up the first round of the ladder, whose topmost
round takes hold of perfection.

OLIVER JOHNSON moved that the resolutions reported in the morning
be voted on. The motion was carried, and the resolutions having
been separately read, passed unanimously with little discussion
till the last two were reached.

Mr. KILGORE, of Philadelphia, objected to the seventh resolution,
and said, if you don't want to cover this purpose with doubt and
uncertainty, which is always an evidence of weakness, claim your
right to vote under the XIV. and XV. Amendments to the
Constitution.

Mrs. LUCY STONE replied that we all believed we had a right to
vote under the original Constitution, as well as under these
amendments, but since there was great doubt whether woman
suffrage should be reached through these, she thought it best to
seek also for a XVI. Amendment.

OLIVER JOHNSON said he didn't want to be included in Mrs.
Blackwell's remark that the Constitution gives women the ballot.
He thought it not wise to agitate this question. The right to
vote under the Constitution can be reached only under a decision
of the courts, and while waiting for that you are diverting the
public mind from the true point at issue. Slavery had been put
down in such a way that it can never be reconstructed; but if it
had been put aside by a decision of the Supreme Court, a triumph
of the Democratic party might change the character of the Supreme
Court and reinstate it. He thought it wise to have the
resolutions as they were, so that persons of all shades of
opinions may vote for them.

Dr. MARY WALKER said that the fact of women attempting to vote in
Washington had done more for woman suffrage than all the
Conventions ever held. We want a declaratory law, she said,
passed by the Congress of the United States, giving women the
right to vote. This was the only way to save an immense amount of
labor in the different States.

DAVID PLUMB, of New York, advocated the seventh resolution. We
need a XVI. Amendment to settle woman suffrage on a firm basis.
After considerable debate the resolution was unanimously adopted.

The eighth resolution was then discussed, to which Mr. KILGORE
also objected, offering a motion that all the resolution coming
after the words "special social theories," be stricken out. He
was opposed, especially, to the introduction of the words "free
love." What was meant by them?

Mr. BLACKWELL said the Convention meant by the use of that phrase
exactly what the New York _Tribune_ of that morning meant, in its
statement that the woman suffrage movement was one for free love.

The PRESIDENT said this great movement was not responsible for
the freaks and follies of individuals. The resolutions simply
denied that this association indorsed free love, which certain
papers charged them with. After considerable discussion, the
resolution was adopted by the strong, decided and united voices
of nearly a thousand people, voting in the affirmative. At the
evening session of the Convention the great hall was filled
completely, not a seat on the lower floor being unoccupied, and
all the desirable seats in the gallery being taken.

MOSES COIT TYLER, Professor in the Michigan State University at
Ann Arbor, was the first speaker: The seaboard is the natural
seat of liberty. Coming to you from the inland, where the salt
breath of the Atlantic is exchanged for the sweet vapors of the
lakes, I say to you, look well to your laurels! What are you
seaboard people doing to vindicate your honor? We, in the
interior, have at least one National university which opens its
gates to the sex which has the misfortune to be that of Mrs.
Livermore, Mrs. Howe, and others. One of the keenest and
brightest minds of the law in the West animates the head of a
woman. In my own State of Michigan, at least two women have
succeeded in getting their votes into the ballot-box. These are
strifes in which good people may engage, and of the trophies won
in such a contest every modest man may boast. This deep,
national, resolute demand for a great right withheld, means that
woman is really a person, and not merely a lovely shadow. If you
can convince the majority of American men, and what is more, the
majority of American women, that woman is a person, you will have
the ballot to-morrow. We call woman an angel, and it is very easy
to do that, because the Constitution of the United States don't
take any account of angels. If all citizens who are masculine
have the right to vote, it is not because they are males, but
because they are persons who are members of the Nation. Therefore
women should likewise be given this right because they are also
members of the nation, and it is the right of every member to
vote. But, after all, we men are rather bashful, you know, and
the business is new to us. We have a sort of "Barkis is willin'"
feeling, and don't want to be the first to speak. We are like the
rustic young man who escorted a young lady home for the first
time. Says she, as they reached the garden-gate: "Now, Jake,
don't tell any one you beau'd me home." "No," he replied, "I am
as much ashamed of it as you be!" [Laughter.] Now, it would have
been much better if the young lady had said something more
exhilarating, more encouraging. So we are new to the business of
escorting women to the ballot, and they must come forward, and,
overcoming their natural timidity, meet us half way and speak for
themselves.

MARY GREW, of Philadelphia, was the next speaker: When I am asked
to give arguments for the cause of woman suffrage, it seems like
the old times when we were asked to give arguments for the
freedom of the slave. It is enough for me to know that the
charter of our Nation states that "taxation without
representation is tyranny," and that "all just government is
founded on the consent of the governed." No woman wrote those
words. They were written by men. I stood recently at a woman
suffrage meeting in Boston, and I heard a gentleman say, "I am
willing, on certain conditions, that women shall vote. When women
shall suppress intemperance, I am willing they shall have the
ballot." I don't know how he was going to ascertain whether they
would suppress it or not. I know that men who have held the
ballot all their lives have not suppressed it; and I don't think
there is any one here who would say that women would suppress it.
What is woman going to do with the ballot? I don't know; I don't
care; and it is of no consequence. Their right to the ballot does
not rest on the way in which they vote. This, however, must be
admitted, and that is, that there are women in this country who
will vote much more wisely than some men in New York and
Philadelphia. You, my brothers, claim the right to vote because
you are taxed, because you are one of the governed; and you know
if an attempt was made to touch your right to vote, you would
sacrifice everything to defend it. What would money be worth to
you without it? You call it the symbol of your citizenship; and
without it you would be slaves--not free. Listen, then, when a
woman tells you that her freedom is but nominal without it. And
when you ask what women are going to do with it, ask yourselves
what you want it for and what you are going to do with it. There
never was a class of people able to take care of the rights of
another class....

Mrs. LUCY STONE next addressed the meeting briefly: If you have a
man, said she, who is a fool or a felon, you put him over the
line alongside of your mother. Every man of you before he sleeps
should go on his knees to his mother, and beg her pardon, and you
should tell her you are ashamed of yourselves.

The Rev. WASHINGTON GLADDEN, one of the editors of the
_Independent_, rose to answer Mrs. Grew's question--why the
_Tribune_ does not inquire about these ignorant men who are
abusing the franchise? He could inform her. It is because they
can not afford to. They are all politicians there. They want
votes. They can not afford to tell the truth about these ignorant
and vicious voters. He proceeded to give a sad picture of the
political world at present and to show how little conscience,
culture, or common honesty finds its way to the ballot-box. He
didn't think the ballot had done anything for the education of
the ignorant foreigner who had come to this country; he doubted
whether it would do anything for the education of woman. He
didn't wish to be classed with the opposers to woman suffrage,
and yet he didn't see his way clear to espouse it as others on
the platform did. He believed in impartial suffrage--impartial
for men and women, but not universal. He would have men and women
fitted for the suffrage before they exercised it.

GRACE GREENWOOD gave a sketch of society in Washington.

Mrs. LIVERMORE, referring to Mr. Gladden's remarks, said there
was nothing so painful to her as the lack of faith in
republicanism among cultivated American gentlemen. Political
atheism seemed to be rife among them. What wonder that political
corruption exists to such an extent, when the clergymen, the
doctors, professors of colleges, members of churches, the
educated and cultivated, refuse to exercise the rights of
citizenship by going to the polls to vote--when intelligence and
morality are to so great a degree eliminated from public affairs?
At a late Presidential election in Massachusetts it was
ascertained that but 54 per cent. of the legal voters actually
went to the polls. Among the 46 per cent. who staid away were the
clergymen, the physicians, and the professional men. There was a
fearful political apathy among the educated classes in reference
to the discharge of their political duties. If educated and good
men, as a body, would interest themselves in the primary meetings
and the caucuses, politics would be improved, even before women
got the suffrage.

It was proposed that the Convention should adjourn by singing the
doxology, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." The great
audience rose and joined as with one voice in singing the grand
centuries-old doxology, and then adjourned, many urging that the
Convention should hold over another day.

In the autumn of 1871 the American Woman Suffrage Association
held conventions at Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, and
Pittsburgh. The annual meeting in Philadelphia was held in
National Hall, and presided over by Mrs. Tracy Cutler, who made
the opening address. The number of the delegates to this
Convention was sixty-two, representing fourteen States.

Mrs. LUCY STONE, Chairman of the Executive Committee, read her
report, in which, among other things, she said--Petitions from
each of our auxiliary State societies, asking for the ballot,
were sent to their respective State Legislatures, and a hearing
granted whenever it was asked. This is a great gain upon some
previous years, when, as once in Rhode Island, our petitions were
referred to "a committee on burial grounds."

The following letter was read from WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON:

BOSTON, November 18, 1871.

DEAR MR. BLACKWELL--Lest some persons might be disappointed
at my non-attendance, I regretted to see myself positively
announced among the speakers at the annual meeting of the
American Woman Suffrage Association, to be held at
Philadelphia next week. I certainly desired and hoped to be
present, even to the last moment; but circumstances oblige
me to remain at home, and I can do no more (and assuredly no
less) than to send a word of cheer by letter. Though I was
careful not to commit myself as to my personal presence at
the meeting, I am willing to be everywhere known as
committed to the cause of Woman Suffrage, with all my
understanding, heart, and soul. I regard its claims to be as
reasonable, just, and valid as any ever presented in behalf
of any portion of the human race, suffering from the
exercise of usurped powers. Until it can be shown that women
have not, by nature and destiny, the same common rights and
interests as men--have not as much at stake in all matters
pertaining to an impartial administration of government as
men--are not held to the same allegiance as men--and are not
made amenable to the same penal laws, even to the extent of
being hanged, as men--their right to the ballot, and to an
equal participation in all municipal, judicial, and
legislative proceedings can not be sensibly denied. The mere
statement of the case is its strongest argument, furnishing
as it does a self-evident proposition. It is a disgrace to
our democratic professions that there is yet a portion--ay,
one half of our population, legally discrowned and outraged
on account of a natural and necessary distinction of sex,
which alters nothing in regard to moral obligations and
duties, or to political rights and privileges, in the courts
of justice and common sense.

It is amazing to see what insulting flings are made, what
ridiculous things are uttered, in derogation of the claim of
women to an equal voice in making and administering the laws
of the land, in quarters where we had a right to look for
perfect courtesy, fair treatment, and an intelligent
understanding; to say nothing of the nonsense and ribaldry
proceeding from haunts of vice and "lewd fellows of the
baser sort." But what great reformatory movement was ever
treated any better at the outset? Still, it requires a large
stock of patience to be calm under such trying provocations;
and the consideration that, after all, they are
indispensable to the success of the righteous object sought,
can alone impart serenity.

What is the question? Not whether many or few women are
demanding political enfranchisement; not whether the
marriage institution, as now regulated, is right or wrong;
not whether this woman, or that, advocates "free love," so
called, or anything else; not whether a wife will continue
to be true to her marriage vows, or a mother faithful to her
maternal instincts; not whether the cradle will be rocked,
the pot boiled, and household affairs dutifully looked
after; not whether women are better or worse than men; not
whether they will vote wisely or foolishly, if allowed the
ballot. These and a thousand similarly absurd issues are but
mockeries. The one question to be settled is, shall the
principles and doctrines of the Declaration of Independence
be reduced to practice, so that taxation and representation
shall go hand in hand, and the grand truth be made
practically, as well as theoretically valid, that all are
equally endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable
rights, and that all governments derive their just powers
from the consent of the governed?

Yours for equal rights, WM. LLOYD GARRISON.

Letters were also read from George W. Julian, Frances D. Gage,
and Oliver Johnson. The Committee on Business then reported the
resolutions,[191] which were unanimously adopted, after a short
speech by Col. T. W. Higginson.

Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE referred to the organization of the
association and the necessity for it. We had felt that existing
associations had failed to represent the methods and convictions
which belonged to our way of thinking. No right of a free society
is more valuable than the right of free association, in virtue of
which those who are able and willing to work can choose their own
fellow-workers and adopt the center of activity which best
corresponds with their feeling and with their homes. The
experience of two years has confirmed our opinion of the
propriety of the measures then adopted. We made no attempt to
cajole or allure those who did not belong to us.

I am sure that as our work in common has gone on we have grown in
good-will. We are fighting our battle still, but do not see our
victory yet. We are not opposing men and women, but the enemies
of men and women--ignorance, prejudice, and injustice. Many
people bring into a new movement the whole intensity and unreason
of their personal desires and discontents, and the train of
progress must carry all this luggage along with it. Woman
suffrage means equality in and out of marriage.

Mrs. Howe referred to the fact that women had been educated not
to depend upon themselves, and drew a graphic picture of their
condition should the tide of prosperity ebb from under them.
Remember, too, I pray you, that power to do ill can not be denied
without including the power to do good. The question as to
whether men, in case that women should vote, would be less polite
to women, was touched upon. The speaker said, "that if ladies
wish to retain this deference, they certainly pay a dear price
for it." The speaker was opposed to arguing that the right of
woman suffrage was guaranteed in the XIV. and XV. Amendments. I
go further back and find the spirit of all liberality in every
liberal clause, and the spirit of all freedom.

ROBERT DALE OWEN followed, and said woman suffrage was the only
means of rectifying the injustice of the laws. His attention was
first called to the value of suffrage when he endeavored to get a
modification of the property laws for married women in 1836. As a
member of the Indiana Legislature, he tried three successive
years in vain to obtain for wives a right to their own earnings.
He was fifteen years in effecting it. When the law was passed
securing married women in their earnings, one of his
fellow-members solemnly warned him that homes would be broken up
and family happiness ruined, and that for all this unmeasured
misery he would hereafter be held responsible. But the law still
stood upon the statute book of Indiana, and homes were not
destroyed.

The Rev. Mrs. CELIA BURLEIGH was the next speaker. She pictured,
in a witty, epigrammatic manner, the progress of freedom in
womankind. The picture drawn was of an Asiatic seraglio, where
the spirit of revolution crept in, and the ladies commenced their
incendiarism by walking abroad, and then followed up the direful
unsexing of themselves by gradually removing the inviolable veil
first from one eye and then the other--and last and most
horrible of all--from the nose. But it made her none the less
lovely.

Mr. EDWARD M. DAVIS then spoke briefly, and was followed by Mrs.
LUCRETIA MOTT, who gave some interesting reminiscences of the
contempt for women manifested by the World's Convention in 1840,
from which women delegates were excluded, and of which William
Lloyd Garrison, in consequence, refused to become a member.

The President, Mrs. CUTLER, said: It seems clear to me that the
XIV. and XV. Amendments recognize our rights. The XIV. Amendment
was passed in the interest of a special class, but we must not
forget that the passage of a general law for a particular class
also guarantees whatever rights can be found to come under that
same general idea. [Applause.] First, we have the definition of
citizenship, which applies to us fairly and squarely under the
phrase all "persons." Then comes the right to vote. Some say it
is not a right but a privilege. I maintain the contrary. I say it
is an inalienable right. You can not maintain a republican form
of government and deny to half the population its right to vote.
This may not be settled to-day or to-morrow, but the truth, like
a mighty rock, stands there impregnable against all assault. We
do not need to be in too much haste. Let the matter be sifted
thoroughly. I do not object, therefore, to the phraseology of the
resolution.

Mr. CHARLES BURLEIGH said: I have never yet been able to see that
the right of voting is secured legally to women under any
instrument which is recognized as having the force of law. A
republican form of government does not mean universal suffrage.
We know that the framers of the Constitution never dreamed that
the idea of a republic would include even all the males of the
country. If this is not a correct idea I answer that when you
make an affirmation you must accept that affirmation as the
makers of it understood it. I hold we have no right to go to any
use of legal quibbling in the matter. If we stand on simple
right, let us stand there; if on constitutional authority, we
have no right to warp that authority. So with the question of
citizenship. It does not imply a voice in the government, by any
means, to be a citizen.

Mr. BLACKWELL, on behalf of the Business Committee, offered some
resolutions.[192]

Dr. H. T. CHILD spoke upon the second resolution. As a peace man
and as a temperance man he was in favor of the resolution.

Colonel HIGGINSON said: If the resolution that has just been read
commits this body to the peace, temperance, or any other
movement, I would oppose it. Every great moral movement must
stand by itself. Napoleon said that the next worse thing to a bad
general was two good generals. I do not oppose it as an
intemperate man, nor as a war man, for I served too long in the
army not to wish for peace. I simply want my wife to vote, and
how she votes can be dictated by her conscience. I don't believe
in hitching the woman question to anything. Emerson said if you
want to succeed you must hitch your wagon to a star, but two
stars will only cause confusion.

Mr. EDWARD M. DAVIS opposed the temperance, etc., resolutions. We
had better not, he said, pass anything but suffrage on this
platform.

Mrs. GOUGH said the resolution did not indorse the peace and
temperance movements. It simply opens up a channel of education.
Woman needs the growth and development coming from the exercise
of higher powers than she now possesses. The resolutions were
then unanimously adopted.

At the afternoon session the officers for the next year were
elected. The presidency was accorded to Mrs. Lucy Stone. The
speakers at this meeting were Dr. Stone, of Michigan; Mrs. Lillie
Devereux Blake, of New York; John Cameron, of Delaware; John
Ritchie, of Kansas; Mrs. Margaret V. Longley, Mrs. M. W. Coggins,
Miss Matilda Hindman, Mrs. Cutler, Miss Mary Grew, Mrs. Lucas,
sister of John Bright, and others.

Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE, at the evening session offered resolutions
of thanks for the hospitality extended to the members of the
Association by the citizens of Philadelphia, and also for the
able and impartial manner in which the proceedings of the
Association had been reported by the press of the city. In a
brief address, Mrs. HOWE then summed up the proceedings of the
Association, saying that she had never attended a convention
where such entire harmony had prevailed, and where such an amount
of good work had been accomplished. Every one, she was sure,
would go away happy and contented.

The President, Mrs. CUTLER, then made the valedictory address,
complimenting the audience for the attention they had shown and
the interest they had manifested in the proceedings. She alluded
to the fight for freedom in the days gone by--a fight in which
nearly all present had taken a part, and prophesied that as they
had won that fight they would win the fight in which they were
now engaged. In conclusion she said that in the name of justice,
in the name of humanity, in the name of love, she demanded that
the rights which woman desired should be accorded to her. The
Convention then adjourned.

The following extract is from an editorial in the _Woman's
Journal_:

The Convention of the American Woman Suffrage Association in
Washington [1871] was in every sense a success.

It made a calm, deliberate statement of the reasons that
make the exercise of suffrage woman's right and duty. It
made a strong and earnest appeal to the intellect and
conscience of the country in behalf of equal rights for all.
The speakers were selected beforehand, and came prepared to
do justice to their subject. Accordingly the proceedings
were orderly, harmonious, and effective, and the influence
exerted was serious and impressive. The resolution adopted
at the annual meeting in Philadelphia, a fortnight before,
affirming that woman suffrage, which means equality in the
home, means also greater purity, constancy, and permanence
in marriage, was reaffirmed.

Hon. Geo. F. Hoar made an admirable argument in behalf of
suffrage at the closing session. A large number of Senators
and Representatives attended the meetings. Many of these,
among others Senators Morton and Wilson, assured us of their
hearty sympathy with our movement. The most kindly and
genial hospitality was extended to the speakers by the
citizens of Washington, and nothing occurred to mar the
pleasure or diminish the influence of the meetings, which
were very largely attended, the audiences averaging one
thousand.

We have just reason to complain of the spirit of the
Washington press, as manifested in their reports of the
Convention. The sole exception was the _Daily Chronicle_,
which was fair and friendly. The other reports amounted to
little more than a burlesque, and the editorial comments
consisted chiefly of denunciation and ridicule. The N.Y.
_Tribune_, finding nothing to ridicule in our proceedings,
suppressed all mention of the Convention, not publishing
even the brief notices of the Associated Press. Having
charged woman suffrage with hostility to marriage, the
_Tribune_ has carefully refrained from informing its readers
that the American Woman Suffrage Association, representing
thirteen organized State societies, has held for the first
time a Convention in Washington, solely to urge the claim of
woman to legal and political equality. We wait to see
whether the _Tribune_ will be equally reticent, hereafter.
But neither the silence nor the misrepresentations of our
opponents will check the steady growth and progress of the
woman suffrage movement.

H. B. B.

The following is a short extract from the able address of Hon. G.
F. Hoar, Representative from Massachusetts, who said:

He would prefer the subject left to the leaders on the
platform and only be a follower in the ranks, but on command
of those having the matter in hand he had come to show his
colors. As he understood the subject, it was to assure the
American people that it was right to admit women to
participate in the affairs of government. They were using
the best minds and brains to draw out the arguments on this
subject, and some of our wisest fellow-citizens have been
unable to see any favorable argument for granting this
privilege. He then proceeded to give the ideas entertained
by citizens of the different foreign countries as to what
was the object of the republic, and said that this country
was made up of the aggregate personal worth of the people.
There could not be in a State a man having the right to
compel another to be subject to him without being unjust.
Therefore it is said that all men are created equal. Is it
right and safe that the women of this country should have a
voice in its administration? The only way to find out would
be by having the understanding of those persons who are to
accomplish it and carry it into effect. If there was
anything in which woman excelled man it was her penetration
and correct judgment of persons at first sight. It by no
means follows that because woman has the right to vote, that
entitles her to hold office. That right is vested in the
judgment of our fellow-citizens, who, if they regard us as
worthy and capable, will elect us to the offices.

Upon the Convention held in Baltimore, the following editorial
appeared in the _Woman's Journal_:

In no one State of the Union has there been a more rapid
advance in public sentiment, during the last ten years, upon
all public questions, than in the State of Maryland. In 1861
a woman suffrage meeting in Baltimore would have been a
failure. In 1871 the Convention of the American Woman
Suffrage Association has proved the very reverse. Two
evening sessions and two intermediate day sessions were well
attended. The speakers were Lucy Stone, Margaret W.
Campbell, Elizabeth K. Churchill, and Henry B. Blackwell.

Notwithstanding the disappointment felt by the audience at
the unexpected absence of Mrs. Julia Ward Howe and Rev.
James Freeman Clarke, great interest was manifested, and the
newspapers of the city gave the meetings candid and
respectful notices. We were more than gratified by the
unusual fairness and courtesy displayed by the press of
Baltimore. Indeed, to this and especially to the generous
aid of that admirable paper, the Baltimore _American_, are
largely due the success of our meetings. We feel all the
more bound to notice this frank and generous treatment of a
new and unpopular movement by the press of Maryland because
we have felt it our duty to condemn the striking contrast
exhibited in other quarters. In Baltimore competent
reporters made a conscientious abstract of the speeches they
professed to report. When this is done in New York and
Washington, the woman suffrage cause will have less
difficulty in enlisting public attention.

We were also exceedingly gratified to find that the laws of
Maryland for wives, mothers, and widows, though still far
from equitable, are greatly in advance of those of
Massachusetts and of most Northern States. We are promised
by one of the most eminent lawyers of Baltimore a full
statement of the legal status of married women in Maryland.
We shall publish it in the _Woman's Journal_, as an evidence
that equity and liberality are not bounded by "Mason and
Dixon" or any other geographical line.

H. B. B.

A mass convention of the American Woman Suffrage Association at
Apollo Hall, New York, on the 9th of May, 1872, was an
interesting and successful meeting. Mrs. LUCY STONE presided, and
made the opening address. Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Charlotte B.
Wilbour, Mary F. Eastman, Rev. Edward Eggleston, Helen M.
Jenkins, Henry B. Blackwell, Amanda Deyo, and others addressed
the Convention.

Some disappointment was felt at the unavoidable absence of Mr.
Garrison, Mrs. Bowles, and Mrs. Livermore, the two former being
detained by severe indisposition. In consequence of an error of
dates on the part of the proprietors of Steinway Hall, the
meeting was held at an unusual place; nevertheless, the number of
persons in attendance at the three sessions averaged seven
hundred, and was composed, for the most part, of substantial,
reliable friends of the movement. The notices of the Press were
brief, but respectful. The Convention declined to take any
separate political action, arraigned the so-called "Liberal
Republicans" for their illiberal exclusion of women, and appealed
to the approaching National Conventions at Philadelphia and
Baltimore for a recognition of the rightful claims of woman to
legal and political equality.

The American Woman Suffrage Association held in 1872 its fourth
annual meeting, and celebrated its third anniversary at St.
Louis.

Dr. STONE, of Michigan, said: Friends of the cause of universal
suffrage--We live in an era of common sense. Sir William
Hamilton, who was a great philosopher, and who investigated all
the systems of philosophy from Aristotle down to Descartes and
Kant, who went to the lowest depths of philosophy, dived deep for
pearls, sometimes bringing up also mud and clams, declared after
all his survey of the various schools of philosophy, that the
great regulating power of the human mind was common sense; that
of all the faculties, that which controlled all others was common
sense. That was the basis of his system of philosophy. Now it is
just as appropriate as friends of social and political reform,
that we should rely upon common sense, as it was for this great
philosopher, and it is this on which we purpose to rely. Wherever
there is a battle to be fought, they who make the best use and
most continued exercise of common sense are sure to win. This is
not only true in moral contests, in the strife of mind with mind,
but it is true in those material contests such as we have
recently had. It was true in the great contest between Germany
and France. It was this the crusaders lacked, and the reason why
they spent so many ages in doing nothing was that they did not
exercise their common sense. When the Jews, by their follies, by
their obduracy, had destroyed themselves, and the Almighty wished
to bring them to their senses, he said, "Come, let us reason
together." For he knew if they would exercise their common sense
they would no longer be rebellious as they had been. And it is
true at the present time. I think if we can succeed in inducing
those who differ from us to reason--I mean to exercise that
regulating power which the common mind as well as the philosophic
mind possesses, if they would exercise their common sense, the
battle would be fought and the victory would be won. Sometimes
circumstances unexpectedly bring men to their senses in these
matters. We know there has been a great deal of discussion on the
subject of slavery, and we needed a Dred Scott decision to bring
men to their senses. When they contemplated that in all its
bearings and ultimate results, common sense said: It can never be
endured; we have had enough of this going on. Let us come
directly to the point. Is a negro a man? Is he a rational,
accountable man or not? If a beast has rights we are bound to
respect, and if a man for abusing it may be thrown into the
penitentiary, is it possible that he who is made in the image of
God is without rights? Does not common sense teach that we have
some rights, and if our laws contradict such a decision as this
it is time we have better laws, and such as common sense will
approve. We want some one to rise in the cause of suffrage to cut
the Gordian knot that binds the community, that binds churches,
that binds good men everywhere, as well as those who are willing
to be mistaken. A single word from Gen. Butler, who, whatever may
have been charged against him, is not lacking in common sense,
the single word "contraband," wrought a revolution in the midst
of our rebellion, and to that we owe to a great extent our
success in the war. We want such a gleam of light to burst upon
the minds of the community, upon the great American people who
are interested in the subject. The field is ours for the next
four years, and we will strive to impress the doctrines of common
sense upon all men and all women everywhere, until the atmosphere
shall be full of it and all shall take it in by absorption.

Mrs. LONGLEY, of Cincinnati, said--_Ladies and Gentlemen_: In a
country where "No taxation without representation" is a
watchword, and where it is held that "all just governments derive
their powers from the consent of the governed," it should be
unnecessary to plead for the recognition of the right of half its
people to participate in making the laws by which they are taxed
and governed. The justice of woman's claim to the ballot is so
self-evident, and so entirely in accord with the spirit of our
institutions and the fundamental principles upon which they are
based, that I often feel as though it were offering an insult to
American men to undertake to argue the question. But, every
election day reminds us that these fundamental principles which
our forefathers fought to establish are outraged. "We, the
people," they said, yet nearly a century finds half the people
ignored, half the people taxed without being represented, and
governed without their consent. I know it is held that the
expression "the people" in the Constitution does not include
women, and should not be interpreted literally; but it appears to
me that if we engage in this method of interpretation of
constitutions and laws we shall soon get things mixed. If the
expression does not include women in the sense of voters it does
not include them in the sense of tax-payers, nor in the sense of
criminals, nor does it even include them as being entitled to
the enjoyment of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness"--as the Declaration of Independence declares "a
people" to be entitled to these.

Surely it will not be said that the rights of half the people of
the United States were ignored by the men who framed the
Constitution of the United States. It was evidently the object of
the Constitution to secure equal rights to all. The Constitution
of the United States recognizes the great principle of human
equality, and the rights of women can not be delegated to or
represented by their husbands. Women who believe that they are
responsible to God only, are not willing to be circumscribed by
men.

Mrs. HANNAH M. TRACY CUTLER said that this was a progressive, a
growing, and a glorious country. All people came here and found
protection under its generous shelter, more or less. We had been
digging away at this suffrage question until, in her opinion, we
are getting pretty near the foundation of government. We are
pulling up the old ideas and throwing them out of the way and
making room for the grand tree of liberty to grow. That tree has
already grown to considerable size, and flourished more or less
under the generous protection of our institutions--less a good
deal, the negro said a few years ago, though now he begins to
realize that it is more.

We women are quite well protected. Sometimes we are protected a
great deal more than we want to be. [Several ladies in the
audience, "That's so!" and laughter.] The American men are the
best men under the sun. Each one of them is a prince of the blood
royal. That's a reasonably good compliment. Now, gentlemen, turn
round and say to the women of America, "You are each and every
one of you a princess by divine right, and we will give you even
the half of our kingdom." That is all we ask. But they say, "Show
us the precedent. The thing never has been done before. The women
have been ignored in government from the earliest days until
now," etc. Why, gentlemen, away back in the remote ages of
history--so far that the memory of man runneth not distinctly
thereto--we find that women not only lived and gave men to the
world, but that they lived and gave laws to the world.

Mrs. STONE, the President, said she would like to speak to the
delegates and friends, because she knew those who were here had
been working in this cause for years. They are short of time, but
all give it that deep, earnest baptism of work for the principles
that underlie republican institutions. They would work until that
end is achieved, or until death relieved them from their labor.
She felt cheered on seeing the progress they had made. It was
about twenty years since the speaker came to this city to deliver
a course of lectures for woman's rights. They called it woman's
rights in those days. They did not use the word suffrage at all;
and, as she stood there now, her mind ran back over a score of
years. When she counted the gains they had made, it seemed as if
she had been in some fairy palace, and by charms the old wrongs
had dropped away and new good had sprung up. They had fought for
woman's rights, and had taken hold of the hands of little girls
growing out of girlhood into womanhood--girls who must stand on
their own feet and earn a living for themselves. When there was
no father's hand or brother's arm to help, what could woman do?
She looked out into the great thoroughfares of industry open to
all men, and almost all were shut against her. Woman was a
teacher at a dollar a day, and had to board round. She was a
seamstress with still smaller pay, or she was a housekeeper at
her own house or somebody's else, where, so far as material gains
were concerned, the results were small. Other industries were
shut to her. The world is as full of women as men. They have to
eat, drink, and be clothed, and, until other opportunities are
obtained, their supplies are infinitely smaller than those
offered to men. Why should women, whose supple fingers can set
type--why should not they be type-setters? The printers joined
together in bands and swore by all the gods they knew that women
should not be printers. They joined together in a body and
printed in a book that they would not work for any man who
employed women as printers. They thought it would degrade the
labor of man. The reformers asked for what was honest, good, and
true, and found a response in the business interest of men, and
the way was opened for women printers. Instead of brothers
talking of supporting their sisters and making themselves poor
they now worked side by side. A paper which they would have here
for subscription--the _Woman's Journal_--came from an office
where all the printers, with two exceptions, were girls; and the
man who managed the office said it was an advantage, because the
girls are always sober and never go on a spree. He could always
be sure of having the paper out at the right time. The steady,
honest, little women printers are always there. They asked why
the women could not go into the stores and sell shoes, cloth, and
dry goods, and why should not men build cities and sail ships and
do what larger muscles fit them for? and they quoted the words of
King Solomon, who spoke of a good wife sending out ships and
dealing in merchandise. Women entered stores and became not only
clerks but merchants, and some of the best stores she knew to-day
were owned by women, who do not look to the time when they are to
go to the workhouse or some worse place even, but were laying by
some means to give them comfortable maintenance in their old age.
Fathers who had daughters looked forward with more courage,
because there were more avenues for woman's industry and better
pay to reward it.

When Chicago was burned, the telegraphic dispatches most promptly
forwarded and accurately worded were sent by women, and a
generous public appreciated the fact. In medical matters they
said, "Here is a department--here is a field for which women are
peculiarly adapted, and to which they would be welcomed in the
hour of peril." They were laughed at and called "she doctors" by
those who thought women would be scared by their vulgarity; and
some young doctors threw stones and mud, literally, and tried to
prevent women being physicians. But gentlemen who had wives and
daughters looked in the faces of those half-bearded boys mocking
at women wishing to study medicine, and asked, "Are these the
fellows who wish to come to our homes and practice?" And when
those boys knew they would not be welcome to those houses, they
smoothed down their anger, went back to their studies, and have
behaved better ever since. The speaker mentioned the case of a
sister of the Fowlers who kept a horse and carriage, and a man to
drive. She has a large practice, with $15,000 a year. They next
asked that there should be women lawyers. She believed the day
was not far off when women would as worthily fill that as any
other profession. What they asked was, that woman should have a
wider sphere of activity.

The speaker next alluded to the fact that the captain of a ship
going to California had fallen sick and died. The captain's wife,
who had been on many voyages, asked the sailors over the dead
body of her husband to be as loyal to her as they had been to
him, and every man swore fealty to the woman, whom they knew to
be worthy of command. When she brought the ship safe to port, the
grateful underwriters made up a purse for the woman who had saved
the ship.

After relating a similar anecdote in relation to a ship that
sailed from China, the speaker narrated the progress made by
women in being admitted to the Christian ministry. When they had
so many rights, they were sure they could earn their own bread;
and they must have the right to vote in this Government, where
they were taxed, and where their sons could be sent to fight in
war. In a republican government they were entitled to vote; and
now the Republican party--the great Republican party that had
swept the country by such a magnificent vote--had made the cause
its own and could carry them on to triumph; giving them the
suffrage as it had given it to the negroes. The Convention at
Philadelphia listened respectfully to their claim, and the
Republican party of the State of Massachusetts had put it in
their platform. In the last campaign the suffragists won five
hundred thousand votes of men who were bound to vote for them by
and by, and they were sure to win. She believed the final hour of
victory could not be far away.

Mrs. HOWE, chairman of the Executive Committee, gave a long and
deeply interesting report. Mr. BLACKWELL read the following
letters:

MRS. LUCY STONE:--_Dear Madam_--I should be glad to meet
with you at St. Louis and to add my testimony to that of the
noble band, who, after so long a conflict for another step
in the advance of humanity, seem on the eve of seeing their
wishes fulfilled. I have never been sanguine as to the near
and rapid accomplishment of the admission of women to the
right and duty of suffrage, but I have never doubted of its
ultimate accomplishment, because I believe that every
movement, founded in justice and wisdom, will at length
prevail. The cause of woman suffrage never seemed to me more
worthy of the consideration of thoughtful men than now. What
it has suffered, all causes that strike at deep principles
must expect to suffer in their early history. And it has
been relieved of its hindrances sooner than might have been
expected. The action of political conventions, State and
National, has been significant. If the articles on suffrage
are vague as to principle, they are striking as the record
of the conclusions of observant politicians in respect to
the currents and tendencies of the public mind. They felt
the need of saying something, and if they did it
reluctantly, it is all the more significant. While then I
can not be with you personally, I am with you in sympathy,
and in the firm faith of the justice of your cause and of
its final victory. Very truly yours,

BROOKLYN, _November 9, 1872_. HENRY WARD BEECHER.

_My Dear_ MRS. HOWE _and_ LUCY STONE:--I am sorry that I
must decline your kind invitation to attend the annual
meeting of the American Woman Suffrage Association at St.
Louis. I am too old (approaching seventy-six) and infirm to
make long journeys. Let woman be of good cheer. She will not
have to wait for the ballot much longer. The arguments are
unanswerable and will soon be crowned with success. Allow me
to send you the enclosed twenty-five dollars toward
defraying the expenses of the meeting. With great regard,
Your friend,

PETERBORO, N. Y., _November 15, 1872_. GERRIT SMITH.

DEAR LUCY:--I am glad to hear that the American Woman
Suffrage Association is to meet at St. Louis this month. The
more women are brought to think on this subject, the more
they will be convinced that their spiritual growth has been
stinted by customs and opinions which have no real
foundation in nature and truth; and the frank, free West is
more courageous than the East in carrying its convictions
promptly into practice. I rejoiced in the recent political
action of women in Massachusetts and elsewhere--first,
because it was salutary for women themselves as all things
are which promote the activity of their minds on important
subjects; and, secondly, because the promptness and
earnestness with which they almost universally took the
right side has greatly helped to convince those who needed
convincing that women are competent to examine into affairs
of National interest and to form rational conclusions
therefrom.

Although I feel grateful to the Republican party for
treating our claims with more respectful consideration than
any other party has done, yet my principal reason for
earnestly desiring its continuance in power is, that it is
essentially the party of progress. It owes its existence to
progress, and its vitality has been preserved by its
practical support of progressive ideas. It embodies a very
large portion of the culture, the conscientiousness, and the
enlightened good sense of the nation, and its elements are
so harmonized as to produce a safe medium between old
fogyism and radical rashness. It is natural for such a party
to respect our claims, because they have become accustomed
to respect what is founded on principles of justice. It was
the learning of that lesson which originally made them a
powerful party, and they can not be false to ideas of true
progress without committing suicide. Of course, with
changing events, party names will change; but I hope women
will carefully notice what principles underlie these
changes, and will conscientiously give their influence to
whatever party proves itself most friendly to the largest
freedom regulated by wise and equal laws.

With a cordial greeting to our sisters of the West and to
our brothers also, I wish you God-speed on your mission of
enfranchisement to half the human race.

WAYLAND, _November 12, 1872_. L. MARIA CHILD.

The Business Committee reported resolutions,[193] which after
much discussion were adopted. Officers[194] for the ensuing year
were then proposed and elected.

Miss EASTMAN was announced. As she stepped to the front she was
received with applause. She gave an able address, answering the
questions, "What is to be gained and what is to be lost, by
giving women the ballot?" She confined her attention to the
latter question principally, by reviewing the condition of women
in the past, and their condition in foreign countries. She
answered the charge that women are unfit to use the ballot. There
was quite an array of facts in her discourse, and extreme beauty
in her language, though the latter covered at times exquisite
sarcasm that was relished by all. She made a decided impression
upon the audience, and concluded amid demonstrations of applause.

LUCY STONE made the closing speech, and said that after the
golden words to which we had been listening, silence was most
fitting; what she had to say, therefore, would be brief and
without preliminary. The distinctions which are made on account
of sex are so utterly without reason, that a mere statement of
them ought to be sufficient to secure their immediate correction.

For example, here are twins, a baby boy and girl; they rock in
the same cradle; the same breast blesses their baby lips; the
same hand guides their first tottering steps. A little later they
play the same plays, recite the same lessons and hold the same
rank as scholars. They ask admission to Harvard college. The boy
is received, and the girl refused. Can any one tell me a good
reason why? At twenty-one their father gives them each a house.
They both pay taxes on this real estate, but the young man has a
voice, both in the amount of tax and its use, all of which is
denied to the young woman. Can any one tell a good reason why?

They assume the marriage relation. The young husband can sell his
house, give a good title, convey his stocks, will his property
according to his pleasure, have the guardianship and control of
his children. The young wife can not sell her house, or give a
valid title; can not convey her stocks, or make a will of her
property with the same freedom that the husband can, has no equal
right to the control and guardianship of her children. Can any
one tell a good reason why?

The man becomes a widower, but the house, the land, the
furniture, and the children are all undisturbed. The woman
becomes a widow. The property is divided in fractions, the
contents of the cupboards and closets counted, valued, divided,
and the widow's thirds (commonly known as the widow's
incumbrance), are left to this woman. Can any one give a good
reason why there should be such a difference between the rights
of the widow and the widower? or why woman as a student, a wife,
a mother, a widow, and a citizen, should be held at such a
disadvantage?

The mere statement of the case shows the injustice, and the wrong
which needs to be righted. There is only one way to remove this,
and that is for woman to use her right to the ballot, and through
it, protect herself. Oh, men of St. Louis! will you not use the
power you hold, and the opportunity to make the application of
our theory of government sure as far as in you lies, to each
man's mother, sister, and daughter?

On motion of Mr. Blackwell, it was

_Resolved_, That the thanks of this Convention are extended
to the citizens of St. Louis for the kind hospitality they
have extended to the delegates of this Convention. Also to
the representatives of the press for the candid and
respectful reports which have appeared in the daily papers
of the city.

The American Woman Suffrage Association held an introductory
anniversary meeting Monday, October 13, 1873, in the large hall
of the Cooper Institute. A fine audience attended, the hall being
nearly filled. Fully two-thirds of this audience were men.
Colonel T. W. HIGGINSON, the President of the Association, said:

This is my last service as President of this association. Unlike
other bodies, it only has a man for that office every other year,
and this is the end of the other year. We meet here as a family,
men and women, each ready to do his or her share of the talk. We
stand here to speak neither for one nor the other, but for that
great movement which is to sweep through the land and arouse one
sex to its rights and the other to its duties. Not to arouse man
against woman, but in favor of the civilization which is to come.
It is more than twenty years since the Woman Suffrage Association
came up in an organized form. We entered into this movement with
no ideas of immediate success. We had behind us only a few years
of agitation after long centuries of prejudice and distrust.
Look through the long record of the great reforms of the world,
and what a series of delays and discouragements you find! It is a
history of defeats before victories. Men sometimes come to us
with sympathy because we have been defeated in this Legislature
or that convention. Sympathy! We thank heaven that it had got
there to be defeated; that we are strong enough to be in a
minority! Defeat is victory afterward. We have been defeated
again and again, and again, and each time we find ourselves
growing stronger.

Miss MARY F. EASTMAN, in an able address, stated the progress of
the movement in different States, and insisted on the right of
women to the exercise of the franchise, as a consequence of the
Declaration of Independence. The elective franchise was the
greatest blessing enjoyed by a free people, and the inability of
any class to exercise it indicated a description of servitude.
She said that the person was trying to erase God's finger mark
upon the human soul who would prevent anybody, man or woman, from
following natural bent and ability in any avocation. In the
founding of Harvard and other early colleges, some provision was
made for the education of Indians, but none for women. Already at
Yale and West Point colored men have a fair chance, not yet the
women. Miss Eastman thought that suffrage was the highway to all
other reforms.

Mrs. LUCY STONE said: _Mr. President, Fellow-workers, Ladies, and
Gentlemen:_--Our cause is half won when we find that people are
willing to hear it, as you seem to be willing to hear it now. One
of the best things we can have in meetings like this is to create
a discontent that women are not permitted to enjoy all their
rights. To-night while we are here, there are gathered in
Plymouth Church, women who are laying plans to take part in the
celebration of the Centennial, in 1876. At this point in the
speaker's remarks, some confusion arose from the entry into the
hall of about 200 young women.

Mr. DENNIS GRIFFIN rose and said these women were not the Cooper
Institute class; they were parasol-makers who had been forced out
of employment by their employers, and they had come, not as women
suffragists but as women suffering, to ask of the audience their
sympathetic support, and if when the lady had finished her speech
the audience would permit the President of this Association of
working women to speak from the platform, she would explain their
grievances.

Mrs. STONE then proceeded, saying that if one thing was surer
than another, it was that woman suffrage would help every
suffering sewing woman. It had been said that the ballot was
worth fifty cents a day to a man; and, if so, it was worth just
as much to a woman. All over the Union, as this night in Plymouth
Church, women were preparing to take part in the coming
Centennial to celebrate the Fourth of July, 1876. When she heard
this she asked herself what part women had in such a celebration?
Just as men were oppressed previous to 1776, so were women
oppressed to-day. I say that women should resolve to take no part
in it. Let them shut their doors and darken their windows on that
day, and let a few of the most matronly women dress themselves in
black and stand at the corners of the streets where the largest
procession is to pass, bearing banners inscribed, "We are
governed without our consent; we are taxed without
representation." The Declaration of Independence belonged to
men. Let them have their masculine celebration and masculine
glory all to themselves, and let the women, wherever they can get
a church, go there and hold solemn service and toll the bell. "It
will give us a chance for moral protest," she continued, "such as
we shall never have again, for before another hundred years it
must surely be that the growth of public sentiment will sweep
away all distinctions based solely on sex."

At the close of Mrs. Stone's remarks, the Chairman invited the
representative of the parasol-makers to state her case,
introducing her as Miss Leonard, of New York, President of the
parasol-makers.

Miss LEONARD advanced to the front of the platform, and appeared
to be much embarrassed at fronting so large an audience. The
hearty applause with which she was greeted assuring her of a
kindly reception, she became a little more at ease, and in a low
tone of voice spoke as follows:

_My Worthy Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen:_ I was not
prepared to meet an audience like this. In consequence of
being oppressed by our employers we were obliged to leave
their employ, because we can not earn our bread.
Consequently we held a meeting up stairs to-night, and
knowing that you were here we thought we would let you know
that there are hundreds of women suffering, not for the
ballot but for bread. I have never wanted the ballot. I
believe it belongs to the men who have it; but I come to ask
you in the name of humanity if there can be any society
organized that will repress the unscrupulous employers and
let the public know they are oppressing the poor girls. Men
are strong; they can get together and ask what they want;
they can organize in large bodies, but the working women are
the most oppressed race in the United States. I am thankful
to you, gentlemen and ladies (I should have put the ladies
first), for giving me your attention. I don't intend to
detain you long, because your meeting is here for a
different purpose, but I hope you will give me your
sympathies. I can not make you an eloquent speech, for I, as
a working woman, have had to labor eighteen hours a day for
my bread, and therefore have had no time to educate myself
as an orator.

HENRY B. BLACKWELL said: This audience is composed mostly of men.
I have a word to say to men especially. Why is it that labor is
oppressed and that working women and working men are in some
respects worse off than ever before? I answer; because our
Government is Republican only in name. It is not even
representative of men. The primary meetings which nominate the
candidates and control the policy of parties are neglected by the
voters. Not one man in fifty attends them. They are controlled in
every locality by rings of trading politicians.

Now there is only one remedy for this. You must somehow contrive
to interest the mass of the people in public business. You must
reform the primary meetings by securing an attendance of the
intelligent classes of the community. There is only one way to do
this. The same way you have already adopted in the churches, in
charitable associations, in society, everywhere except in
politics, you must enlist the sympathy and co-operation of women.
Then the men who now stay away will go with their wives and
sisters. The reason the better class of men neglect to attend the
primaries is this--civilized and refined men spend their evenings
in the society of women; they go with them to church meetings, to
concerts, to lectures. They do not break off these engagements to
go down to some liquor saloon, or other unattractive locality,
there, amid the fumes of tobacco and whisky, to find everything
already cut and dried beforehand. They try it once or twice and
then retire for life disgusted. We ask suffrage for women because
they are different from men. Not better nor wiser on the whole,
but better and wiser in certain respects. They are more
temperate, more chaste, more economical. Their presence will
appeal to the self-respect of men. Thus both will be improved,
and politics will be redeemed and purified.

The second session of this Convention was held in Brooklyn, in
Plymouth Church. At this meeting the Chairman of the Executive
Committee, Mrs. Lucy Stone read her annual report, and then the
delegates from the different States gave accounts of the cause in
all parts of the Union, as carried on by means of the State
societies. At the opening of the afternoon session Col. HIGGINSON
read the following letters:

ANDOVER, MASS., Sept. 29, 1873.

MY DEAR MRS. STONE:--My regret at not being able to attend
the meetings of the American Suffrage Association this year,
is not consoled by the pleasure of expressing, by letter, my
warmest sympathy with their objects; but, if we can not do
the thing we would, we must do the next best thing to it.

To say that I believe in womanhood suffrage with my whole
head and heart, is very imperfectly to express the eagerness
with which I hope for it, and the confidence with which I
expect it. It will come, as other right things come, because
it is right. But those forces which "make for righteousness"
make haste slowly. Do we not often trip up ourselves in our
pilgrimage toward truth, by attributing our own sense of
hunger and hurry and heat to the fullness and leisure and
calm in which the object of our passionate search moves
forward to meet us? There is something very significant to
the student of progress, in the history of the forerunners
of revolutions. Their eager confidence in their own
immediate success, their pathetic bewilderment at the
mystery of their apparent failures, are rich with suggestion
to any one who means work for an unpopular cause. No reform
marches evenly to its consummation. If it does not meet
apparent overthrow, it must step at times with the
uneasiness of what George Eliot would call its "growing
pains." But growing pains are not death-throes. In the name
of growth and decay let us be exact in our diagnosis!

I have fallen into this train of thought, because there
seems to have been a concerted and deliberate attempt, this
past year, on the part of certain of those opposed to the
thorough elevation of women, to assert that our influence is
distinctly losing ground. Irresponsible assertion is the
last refuge of the force whose arguments have fallen off in
the fray, and "unconscious annihilation" is as yet a very
agreeable condition. It might be replied, in the language of
the hymn-book:

"If this be death,
'Tis sweet to die!"

Perhaps to the onlookers this has not been one of our fast
years. No one actually engaged in the struggle to improve
the condition of women can for an instant doubt that it has
been a strong one. A silent, sure awakening of women to
their own needs is taking place on every hand; and it is
becoming evident that until the masses of women are thus
awakened, the movement to enfranchise them must not
anticipate any very vivid successes. Let us be content if
our strength runs for a time to the making of muscle, not to
the trial of speed.

I am, Madam, very sincerely, ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS.

CONCORD, Oct. 1, 1873.

DEAR MRS. STONE:--I am so busy just now proving "woman's
right to labor," that I have no time to help prove "woman's
right to vote."

When I read your note aloud to the family, asking "What
shall I say to Mrs. Stone?" a voice from the transcendental
mist which usually surrounds my honored father instantly
replied, "Tell her you are ready to follow her as leader,
sure that you could not have a better one." My brave old
mother, with the ardor of many unquenchable Mays shining in
her face, cried out, "Tell her I am seventy three, but I
mean to go to the polls before I die, even if my three
daughters have to carry me." And two little men, already
mustered in, added the cheering words, "Go ahead, Aunt
Weedy, we will let you vote as much as ever you like."

Such being the temper of the small Convention of which I am
now president, I can not hesitate to say that though I may
not be with you in body, I shall be in spirit, and am as
ever, hopefully and heartily yours,

LOUISA MAY ALCOTT.

Letters from William Lloyd Garrison and Lydia Maria Child were
also read, expressing deep sympathy and hope for the cause.

Mr. BLACKWELL, as Chairman of the Business Committee, reported
the resolutions, of which the last was:

6. _Resolved_, That the woman suffrage movement, like every
other reform of the age, laments the loss and honors the
memory of its most powerful advocate, John Stuart Mill.

MATILDA J. HINDMAN, of Pittsburgh, made an address explaining the
origin of the movement for woman suffrage, asserting its verity
and necessity. She gave many reasons for woman's needing the
ballot.

Mrs. LUCY STONE gave instances of oppressive laws with reference
to statutes relative to widows which are in force in some New
England States, and which bear very hard upon women because they
can not vote.

Mrs. ABBA G. WOOLSON, of Massachusetts, author of "Woman in
American Society," gave an exceedingly interesting description of
her tour through Wyoming, her hour and a half conversation in the
cars with Gov. Campbell, whose testimony was positive in favor of
all the new privileges given to women, by which Wyoming has
distinguished herself. Mrs. Woolson came home happy to have for
the first time set her foot on Republican soil; "for," said she,
"no State in the Union is a republic, but it is to me an absolute
monarchy."

Rev. CELIA BURLEIGH, demonstrated that this Government is not a
republic, but an aristocracy so long as the suffrage is denied to
woman.

Mrs. MARY A. LIVERMORE found much encouragement for the cause in
various signs of the times. She would have women act as if they
already bore the responsibilities of voters; would have them put
off frivolity and every other cause of offense to opponents, and
put on a soberness of spirit and a gracious gravity of mien as
behooved those in whose hearts a great work lay. She exhorted
them to remember that they were not arrayed against men as foes,
but that they were working with fathers, brothers, husbands and
sons for the best interests of the whole race.

An audience of at least 1,200 persons was present at the closing
session.

The following letter from Miriam M. Cole was read:

OTTERBEIN UNIVERSITY, WESTERVILLE, O., Oct. 4, 1873.

DEAR MR. BLACKWELL--Much as I wish to be with you the 13th
and 14th, I can not. My work in the University can not be
given to another, and I have no right to leave it undone. I
hope your meeting will be profitable and successful. It is
said, "Interest in woman suffrage is dying out." This is not
true, so far as I know. There is more sober, candid talk on
the subject in private circles, here in Ohio, than ever
before. Our students in the University are asking questions,
with a desire for intelligent answers, and at home, in
Sydney, before I left, many experienced politicians
confessed it to be the one thing needful. I am sure it is
gaining ground among our quiet, sensible people. The stir
may not be so demonstrative in cities as formerly, but
through the country there is a general awakening. If we can
only have patience to wait, we shall not be disappointed.
Right, sooner or later, will come into its kingdom. Women
are no longer children to be frightened by imaginary bears,
neither will they be satisfied with playthings, who ask for
better. The distance between men and women is lessening
every year. Colleges are bringing them on to the same plane,
and the agitation of this question of woman's right to a
voice in the government, has given and is giving men new
ideas respecting the strength of woman's intellect and her
determination to be more than a doll in this busy world.

Whether we are made voting citizens or not, let no man
beguile himself with the thought that the old order of
things will be restored. They who step into light and
freedom will not retrace their steps. This end is equality,
civil, religious and political--there is no stopping-place
this side of that. My best wishes are with you and yours.

MIRIAM M. COLE.

Miss HULDAH B. LOUD, of East Abington, Mass., was the first
speaker: Scorned by the Democrats and fawned upon by the
Republicans, who profess but to betray, under these circumstances
we come again to the fight. We believe in liberty in the highest
degree, such liberty as our fathers fought for, and this struggle
will go on until that liberty is gained; liberty is the pursuit
of life, health, and happiness. We look in vain for honesty in
political life. We turn in disgust from the meaningless
platitudes of the Republican Convention at Worcester, from the
incidental admission of a plank in the platform which means
nothing.

If we would be recognized as a power by political parties, every
suffragist should withhold his ballot, and thus politicians would
be brought to their senses. If we labor for anything, if we mean
anything, we mean woman suffrage, and let us not give a moral or
material support, politically, to the man who is not in harmony
with the principle of free suffrage in its broadest significance.

We are called unwomanly for our advocacy of this priceless boon
to women. We are willing that our womanly character should stand
by the side of those who oppose this movement. Do you call Lucy
Stone, the woman reformer of the world, with her eloquence, her
soft voice, her matchless, unwearied work for all that is good,
with her motherly appearance, do you call such a woman unwomanly?
Or Margaret Fuller, or Julia Ward Howe, do you call these women
unwomanly? Then let us take our place by them, cast in our lot
with them and be called unwomanly. It is said, and it is sadly
true, that many women do not want the ballot; and it is no less
sadly true that many of our most bitter opponents are our sister
women. But if they do not want the ballot, if you deprive me of
the right you do me a grievous wrong. It is said that if we were
given the privilege of the ballot, we would not use it. Is it any
reason if I do not choose to avail myself of my rights that I
should be deprived of them? Why do you consult women if this
right shall be given them? You did not consult the slave in
regard to his freedom, but you said he was wanted for the
salvation of the country, and you took him and forced freedom
upon him.

Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE and Mrs. MARY A. LIVERMORE spoke alike with
great force and earnestness upon the moral and religious phases
of the movement.

Mrs. FRANCES WATKINS HARPER, of Philadelphia, made the closing
speech. She showed that much as white women need the ballot,
colored women need it more. Although the women of her race are no
longer sold on the auction block, they are subjected to the legal
authority of ignorant and often degraded men. She rejoiced in the
progress already made, but pleaded for equal rights and equal
education for the colored women of the land.

The PRESIDENT said--Ladies and gentlemen, the letters have been
read, the reports accepted, the resolutions adopted, the
officers[195] for the ensuing year chosen, and there being no
further business before the Convention, it is moved and seconded
that we adjourn _sine die_.

* * * * *

The Sixth Annual Meeting of the American Woman Suffrage
Association assembled at the Opera House in Detroit, Tuesday
morning, Oct. 13, 1874.

Col. W. M. FERRY, of Grand Haven, Chairman of the State Executive
Committee of the Michigan Suffrage Association, called the
meeting to order, and made a brief address of welcome. He spoke
of the pleasure the Convention afforded many of the advocates of
woman suffrage in this city who have the cause deeply at heart.
He then alluded to the authoress of the well-known hymn, "The
Battle Hymn of the Republic," Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, and
introduced her as the President of the American Woman Suffrage
Association.

The Rev. Mrs. GILLETTE, of Rochester, Mich., opened the meeting
with prayer.

The President, Mrs. HOWE, then delivered the Annual Address:

_Ladies and Gentlemen of the American Woman Suffrage
Convention:_

It is my office on the present occasion to welcome you to
this scene of our happy and harmonious meeting. In this
great country many families do not gather their members
together oftener than once in a year. When they accomplish
this they ordain a festival, and call it Thanksgiving Day.
This Association is in some sense a family, whose members
are widely scattered. East, West, North and South claim and
contain us. But when the sacred call for our Annual Meeting
is issued, distances are forgotten, business and pleasures
are interrupted. Like the wave of a magician's wand, the
touch of a common sympathy summons us and keeps us in sight.
Our first feeling, I suppose, is one of great pleasure at
looking each other in the face again. This is our Suffrage
Thanksgiving, and we hope to keep it right cordially.
Welcome, dear friends, faithful sisters and brothers.
Welcome, one and all. In this world of death we still live.
In this world of doubt we still believe in even-handed
justice, and in pure law. So, with one breath, we give God
thanks for our continued life and faith, and wish each other
and our great cause Godspeed.

But we are met for something more than a mere expression of
feeling, however cordial and timely that might be. We meet
here to take counsel for the spiritual welfare to which each
one of us stands pledged. How goes the good fight? Let each
department of our little army tell. What victories have been
achieved, what defeats suffered with patience? How shall we
improve the one? What shall we learn from the other? Oh! let
us feel that these rare moments of our meeting are precious.
Here we must compare notes and learn what has been done.
Here, too, we must briefly survey what is yet to do and how
it is to be done. May no moment in this too brief season be
wasted! May we all speak and act in view of great
necessities and of high hopes. We may take for our text the
words: "Now is our salvation nearer than when we believed."
But we must also acknowledge that the end is not yet.

Every year that sees us banded together in pursuit of our
present object sees a wonderful growth in its prominence and
recognized importance. Opposition has grown with our
efforts. People at first said, "Nobody will resist you."
This was when people thought we were in fun. But when it
appeared that we were in sad and bitter earnest, opposition
was not wanting. Wherever we came to plead the cause of
human freedom, the enemies of human freedom met and
withstood us. All the professions have befriended--all,
too, have opposed us. We have stood before powers and
dignitaries to maintain what we believe; and while we have
asked that the right of suffrage be recognized in the
persons of women, women learned and unlearned have stood up
to ask that our petition should not be granted. We need not
say that for one woman who has done this, hundreds and
thousands have risen up to bless the woman suffrage cause
and its champions. And for every doctor, lawyer and priest
who has shrieked forth or set forth our presumptive
disabilities, a tenfold number of men in all of these
callings have arisen to do battle for the right, and to tell
us on the authority of their special knowledge and
experience, that the reform we ask for is congenial to
nature and founded on right. Goldwin Smith, a man knowing
naught of woman, airs his irrational views in the English
_Fortnightly_, and Frances Power Cobbe and Prof. Cairnes,
and a host of others, unravel the net of his flimsy
statements. Drs. Clarke and Maudsley dogmatize from their
male view of the female constitution; and from men and women
throughout the country an indignant protest rises up. Men
and women say alike: "It is not education that demoralizes
and diseases our women. It is want of education, want of
object, want of right knowledge of ends and methods." And
how shall we acquire this unless we are taught? And how
shall we be taught unless provision is made for us? And how
shall provision be made for us unless we make it ourselves
by voting for it?

Some mention is due to the place in which we meet. We are in
the State of Michigan, a State in which the question of
impartial suffrage has been carefully canvassed and
presented during the past year. Within a short distance from
us is the University of Michigan, liberal to men and to
women, whose scholarly claims and merits its Professors and
its President openly and earnestly attest. We claim that
institution as our potent ally. It furnishes the remedy to
all that we complain of. Equal education for the sexes is
the true preparation for equality in civil and social
ordinances. Even at this distance we breathe something of
that pure air in which the woman grows to her full
intellectual stature, untrammeled by artificial limitation
of object and of method. We boast our own Boston, its
culture and its conscience, but while Harvard persistently
closes its doors to women, we blush too for New England, and
sorrowfully wish it better enlightenment and better
behavior.

Having spoken of the East and the West, let me say how
welcome to us of the East are occasions which make us better
acquainted with our fellow-workers and believers of the
West. The late Mr. Seward once said that slavery was
sectional and freedom National. This was true in a larger
sense than that in which he said it. All that is slavish
tends to keep up sectional prejudice and isolation. All that
is liberal tends to sympathy and union. East and West are
the two hands of this mighty country--let the harmony of the
present occasion show that they have but one heart between
them. Are not all our chief possessions held in common? We
gave you Sumner and you gave us Lincoln. We fought together
the war of our late enfranchisement, and when God shall give
us impartial suffrage as an established fact, it will be
hard to discriminate between our work and yours. But the two
hands will then be clasped, and the one heart uplifted with
a throb of thankfulness that shall make our whole Nation
one, and that forever. For the present moment, while we
workers for woman suffrage can make no boast as to the final
adoption of our method, we can yet rejoice in the results
which already crown our work. Christ, in the very infancy of
his mission, looked abroad and saw the fields already white
with the harvest.

The different agencies employed by this and kindred
associations have plowed and furrowed the land far and near.
They have dropped everywhere the seed of a true word, of a
right feeling. How small a thing may this dropping of a seed
seem to a careless observer! Yet it is the very life of the
world which the patient farmer sows and reaps. So, our
laborious meetings and small measures; our speeches, soon
forgotten; our writings, soon dismissed; our petitions to
Legislatures, never entertained; all these seem small things
to do. The world says: "Why do you not labor to build up
fortunes and reputations for yourselves if you will labor?
Why do you waste your time and efforts on this ungrateful
soil?" But we may reply that we have the joy of Christ in
our hearts. In every furrow, some seed springs up; from
every effort, some sympathy, some conviction results. When
we look about us and see the number of suffrage associations
formed in the different States, we too can say that the
fields are white already to harvest.

White already. Yet centuries of martyrdom lay between the
sowing of Christ and the harvest which we reap to-day. All
of those centuries brought and took away faithful souls who
continued the work, who gathered and reaped and sowed again.
And we, too, know not what years of patient endeavor may yet
be in store for us before we see the end of our suffrage
work. We know not whether most of us shall not taste of
death before we do see it, passing away on the borders of
the promised land, with its fair regions still unknown to
us. And yet we see the end as by faith. By faith we can
prophesy of what shall come. The new state, in which for the
first time ideal justice shall be crowned and recognized;
the new church, in which there shall be neither male nor
female; but the new creature that shall represent on either
side free and perfect humanity. Like a bride coming down
from Heaven, like a resurrection coming out of the earth, it
shall appear and abide. And we, whether we shall see it as
living souls or as quickening spirits, shall rejoice in it.

Miss EASTMAN read the following letter:

LARAMIE CITY, W. T., Sept. 22, 1874.

Mrs. LUCY STONE, _Chairman of the Executive
Committee:_--Your favor of the 12th inst. is received. I
wish I could be with you at your meeting in Detroit next
month, but I am so crowded with engagements here that I do
not think I can get away. We have just had another election,
and at no time have we had so full a vote. Our women have
taken a lively interest, and have voted quite as universally
as the men. Their influence has been felt more than ever and
generally on the side of the best men. Several candidates
have been defeated on account of their want of good
characters, who expected success on party grounds. It is the
general sentiment with us now that it will not do to
nominate men for whom the women will not vote. Is not this a
great step in advance? When candidates for office must come
with a character that will stand the criticism of the women
or be sure of defeat, we shall have a higher tone of
political morals.

I hear it urged abroad that woman suffrage is not popular in
Wyoming, but I hear nothing of the kind here. All parties
now favor it. Those who once opposed it oppose it no longer,
while its friends are more and more attached to it, as they
see its practical benefits and feel its capacity for good.
No one that I hear of wishes it abolished, and no one would
dare propose its repeal. The women are beginning to feel
their power and influence, and are growing up to a wider and
stronger exertion of it. I think I can see a conscious
appreciation of this in a higher dignity and a better
self-respect among them. They talk and think of graver
subjects and of responsibilities which ennoble them. A woman
will not consent to be a butterfly when she can of her own
choice become an eagle! Let her enjoy the ambitions of life;
let her be able to secure its honors, its riches, its high
places, and she will not consent to be its toy or its simple
ornament.

Very respectfully, J. W. KINGMAN.

Miss EASTMAN said that this letter presented just the evidence on
the result and experience of woman suffrage that was wanted. She
said that women were very inconsiderate and indifferent to this
question. Women, until they are brought to think upon the matter,
generally say they do not want to vote. She spoke of the laws of
some States which allow the taking away from a mother of her
children, by a person who had been appointed as their guardian,
in place of her dead husband, and of the laws severe in other
respects which States have made in relation to women. She wished
all persons had the question put to them conscientiously whether
woman had all the power she wanted. We do want, she said, every
legitimate power, and we shall never be content with a tithe less
than we can command.

Gen. A. C. VORIS, of Ohio, read letters from the following
persons, regretting their inability to attend the Convention:
Bishop Gilbert Haven, D.D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church;
from Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Judge Wm. H. West, of Ohio; Hon.
C. W. Willard, of Vermont; Hon. G. W. Julian, of Indiana; Hon. D.
H. Chamberlain, of South Carolina; William Lloyd Garrison, George
William Curtis, the Smith sisters, Richard Fiske, Jr.

Rev. Mrs. GILLETTE, of Rochester, Mich., said every woman as well
as every man should speak for what she believes to be necessary
for her own well-being and for the well-being of the community.
Charles Sumner once said that a woman's reason was the reason of
the heart. She would give a few womanly reasons why she wanted
the voters of Michigan to give the ballot to women. The want of
the ballot prevents woman from possessing knowledge and power. If
a woman performs the most menial services for the sake of her
children, to eke out for them a subsistence, she does not do it
because the law demands it, but because there is no other way
open to her to obtain a livelihood. She did not ask for the
ballot because the laws of the State are barbarous. She did not
believe that men can make laws that will answer to the needs of
women. Only when men and women together make laws can they be
just and equal, and for that reason there should be both men and
women in the Legislature.

Mrs. BLACKWELL read some additional resolutions[196] to those
that had been adopted at an earlier stage of the Convention.

At the first evening session Mrs. Lucy Stone presiding, Mrs.
JULIA WARD HOWE, of Boston, was the first speaker. In opening she
spoke of the silent weary work, of the results of which the
afternoon's reports told, and showed that the equal suffragists'
labor is not comprised in facing pleasant audiences and listening
to the applause which so many say is the one thing for which the
women in this movement work. Her entire speech was in a tone that
could not fail to convince all, that she, at least, works for
something higher.

Mrs. STONE said that in every time of need, wherever the womanly
workers for woman go, they find men to whom their gratitude flows
as the rivers flow to the sea--they are the men who stand up to
speak in woman's name in behalf of woman's rights. As one of
these men she introduced Gen. Voris, of Ohio, the champion of
equal suffrage in the Ohio Constitutional Convention. The speech
of Gen. Voris was a close, logical argument. It reviewed the
entire question of suffrage, and bristled with points. He was so
frequently interrupted by applause that he was obliged to ask the
audience to withhold their tokens of approbation till he got
through, but it was to little purpose, for enthusiastic
suffragists couldn't help letting their hands tell their ears how
good the General's hard hits at the anti-suffragists made them
feel, and the applause would still break out once in a while.

Mrs. MARY A. LIVERMORE was next introduced. She was greeted with
applause, and commenced by an allusion to the Scandinavian origin
of our race, and their characteristic bravery, vigor, and love of
freedom. The Scandinavians were distinguished from other races by
their regard for their wives. With them the woman stood nearer to
heaven than the man. She was in some sense a priest, a law-giver,
and a physician, and she was worthy of the position. Is it
strange that with such foremothers we should love liberty?
Something of this spirit has always marked the race. And now
women ask for the right of suffrage, not because they are abused,
but because they are half of humanity--the other half of man.
They want simply equality, not superiority. She spoke of laws in
the statute-books which do absolute injustice to men, and asked
whether if the men could not legislate better than that for
themselves, it was not a little ridiculous for them to assume to
legislate for themselves and the women too? Mrs. Livermore spoke
of some of the injustice of the law to women. The law is not for
you, gentlemen, who are a law to yourselves, and who care for
your wives so that they forget the injustice of the law. They are
for the poor and down-trodden women, the wives of drunkards and
wife-beaters. Make them what they should be. But the main claim
of women to the ballot is that it is the symbol of equality.
Women can never be made men. There is no danger of woman losing
her womanhood. In fact we do not dream yet what womanhood can be.
Women are now obsequious. Many who want to vote, in awe of
husbands, fathers, sons, the pulpit, the press, ruled by men, do
not say so. They have been taught through all the centuries that
patience is the highest attribute of woman. She spoke of the
division of masculine and feminine attributes. They complement
each other, and together make the perfect whole. The assertion
that women are slaves is nonsense. The great reason for woman
suffrage is that it will aid a higher and grander civilization.

The following letter was read:

BOSTON, 148 Charles Street, October 10, 1874.

H. B. BLACKWELL, Esq.: My dear sir--I am sorry my first
letter never reached you, for I said in that just what I
wanted to express of my own convictions touching suffrage
for women. My opinion will go for very little, but whenever
an opportunity occurs I wish to say just this if nothing
more. It is my firm conviction that all who oppose so just a
cause as woman suffrage know not what they do; and, if they
are not dead within five years, will repent their opposition
in deep and mortifying self-reproach.

"The seed of the thistle," says Tyndall, "always produces
the thistle," and our opponents will have a prickly time of
it with their own consciences, when the day dawns in
righteousness over the American ballot-box. God prosper the
struggle and give you heart and hope, for your triumph is
sure as sunrise, and will win that final mastery which
heaven unfailingly accords to everlasting truth. Cordially
yours,

JAMES T. FIELDS.

Short speeches were then made by Giles B. Stebbins, Mrs.
Blakeman, Miss Strickland, Miss Patridge, and Mrs. Dr. Mary F.
Thomas. Mr. BLACKWELL reported the list of officers[197] for the
ensuing year.

Afterward addresses were made by Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Elizabeth R.
Churchill, Mrs. Samm, Miss M. Adele Hazlett, and Gen. Voris.

Mrs. MARGARET W. CAMPBELL, of Chicago, said she came before the
audience to speak upon the most important question of the day,
important to one half, and through them to the other half of the
community. This movement is no crusade of women against men, but
an honest effort of both men and women to make one sex equal in
all respects with the other. When our forefathers attempted to
secure their own liberty they adopted the principle that all men
are created free and equal, and are endowed with certain
inalienable rights. Notwithstanding this, the Government allowed
the maintenance of slavery for over three-quarters of a century.
Rights are God-given. If any man can tell where a man gets his
right to vote, he will find that woman obtained hers in the same
place. The ballot, she claimed, was a means of educating the
class who exercise the power of such ballot.

Mrs. MARGARET V. LONGLEY, of Ohio, said this question of woman
suffrage was one that was claiming the attention of the best
minds of Europe and America. Women think they have as good a
right to the ballot as men, and this right they want to exercise.
Lunatics and idiots are deprived of the ballot because they do
not know how to use it. Criminals are denied it because they are
outcasts of society and have proved themselves unworthy of it.
Women are deprived of it because of their womanhood. The sexes,
she said, were never made to be antagonistic. Experience proves
that what is of interest to women is of interest to men. There is
no branch of business or of industry in which concession is
granted to women on account of their sex. Nobody will pay more to
a woman for any work than they will to men for the same work, and
in the making of a suit of clothes it is seen that they pay a man
more than double the amount they will to a woman for the same
work.

Prof. ESTABROOK said that he was a recent convert to this
movement. He had read the Bible, Bushnell, and Fairchild, and
some others, and was convinced that women ought not to vote. When
the question was submitted to the people by the Legislature, he
commenced to read the Bible and Bushnell and others again. He
found that Bushnell proved too much, and that the objections
urged against women voting were equally good against nine-tenths
of the men. The question of propriety--whether women should go to
the polls--was another question which he considered. He did not
now see why it was improper for woman to go where her husband or
her son must go; and if the polls are not good places, decent men
ought not to go there. He had all his life debated the question
whether the University should be opened to ladies, and his first
vote, cast as a Regent of the University, was in favor of the
admission of women to the University. He was then opposed to
their entering the medical department. But they next applied for
admission to the law department, and he voted for that, and then,
when they applied for admission to the medical department, he had
to vote for that. He had never found out what right a man
possesses to the ballot that a woman has not; and if anybody
could convince him that the right of woman to vote did not come
from the same source as man's right came from, he would be glad
to have it done.

Miss MARY F. EASTMAN said it was a hard thing to stand and demand
a right to which we were all born. It has been said by Dr. Chapin
that woman's obligations compel her to demand her rights. There
is a great cry going up from humanity, and only woman's nature
can answer it. As she recently stood at the corner of the five
streets which make the Five Points of New York, and looked at the
crowd of miserable people about her, she was aghast. But she took
courage when she learned that the mission-house and the long
block of tenement houses on one side of the street were built by
women, who daily feed 400 poor children, and that this was done
by women, who took up the work after the Methodist Church had
made a vain effort to do something to ameliorate the condition of
those poor starving creatures.

On motion of Mr. H. B. Blackwell a vote of thanks was tendered to
the citizens of Detroit, to the Detroit Suffrage Association and
to the press of the city for favors and courtesies shown to the
Association and its members during its meeting in this city, and
for the full and fair reports of the Convention. The Association
then adjourned.

* * * * *

The seventh Annual Meeting of the American Woman Suffrage
Association was held at New York, in 1875. There was a large
audience,[198] not less than 1,000 persons were present.

Bishop GILBERT HAVEN, President of the Society, took the chair,
and called upon Rev. Dr. THOMPSON, of Brooklyn, to open the
meeting with prayer. After which Mr. HAVEN said: In appearing
before you to-night as the official head, for a very few hours,
of the society which holds its annual meeting here, I deem it
proper to burden you before you get at the richness of the feast
that will follow, with a few thoughts that are in my own mind
connected with this reform. The inevitable effect of every true
idea is that it shakes off everything that hinders it and rises
far superior to all associations. Woman suffrage has reached that
development, and the public of America and England are beginning
to appreciate it. Now, what is this idea? It is simply this--that
the right of suffrage has no limitation with the male portion of
the human race; that it belongs alike to the whole human family.
I am a Democrat, a Jeffersonian Democrat, and I believe in the
right of every man to have a voice in public affairs. It is a
right that belongs to the very system of our government.
Monarchical governments recognize the nation as belonging to a
family; but the democratic system recognizes a government by the
people and for the people, and, if this be the government, every
person in the nation has a right to participate in its
administration. There is no partiality possible in such a
conception of the system of government under which we live.

Charles Sumner said that "equality of rights is the first of
rights," and this will reveal itself in every department of
citizenship. Our Government requires the expression of the views
of the whole people upon every national question; it is a human
right belonging to the political status of every individual, the
woman as well as the man. The history of Christianity has been a
history of the gradual enlarging of the sphere of woman; and this
meeting to-night is one of the effects of Christianity. We stand
now at the beginning of a new century; the last has been one of
great development, and yet the very root fact of our national
being lies in the first line of the Declaration. When we declared
ourselves to be a Nation, we declared equality for all men, and
we never meant by that, equality simply for all males. Jefferson
never had that narrow view of human nature. He knew it meant all
the people of America. Every one had a right to life, liberty,
and the pursuit of happiness, the woman as well as the man.

It is said women can not rule. Not rule! look through history.
Where are Cleopatra and Semiramis, and Zenobia and Catharine, and
Elizabeth and Victoria? Not rule? Did not Joan of Arc save France
when the king had fled, and the armies were scattered, and
English soldiers did their will in all that land? So Elizabeth
picked up a prostrate nation, lowest of the low, despised of
emperor, king, and Pope, and made it the sovereign power of
Europe. So Victoria held back Palmerston and Russell and
Gladstone and Derby, who would have plunged England into war with
us, and left us free to subdue our enemy. Had not a woman ruled
England we should have had a harder task than we did by far.
Christianity has lifted woman to a level with man. It has given
her liberty of movement, of faith, of life. It also demands her
political deliberation. May this beginning of our second
Centennial see the perfection of our political system, in this
admission of woman to all the rights and duties of citizenship.
It has worked well in Wyoming. It will everywhere. Let it come.

Rev. ANTOINETTE BROWN BLACKWELL, of Somerville, N. J., said: A
few days ago, in one of the New York dailies, I saw the
announcement that one subject which now occupies the minds of the
American people can never be settled till it is settled right.
Knowing that this Convention was just at hand, I mentally
exclaimed, "It is certainly woman suffrage!" But no! it was the
question of the National currency. Well, the currency question
did suggest great moral issues, and it was vital enough in
character to justify the editorial claim. I believe it never can
be settled till it is settled right. But what is the currency
problem to a direct question of human rights, involving the
highest moral and civil interests not only of all the women in
the country, but of all the men likewise? This suffrage question
never can be settled till it is settled right. So surely as the
law of justice must yet prevail, it will continue to vex and
trouble the whole nation continually.

Because the sexes are so unlike in their natures and in all their
relations to the State, there is imperative need of
representation for both. Women in beleaguered cities have again
and again stood heroically side by side with men, suffering
danger and privation without a murmur, ready to endure hunger
and every form of personal discomfort rather than surrender to
the enemy. What women have done in the past they would willingly
do again in the future in like circumstances. They are everywhere
as patriotic as men, and as willing to make sacrifices for their
country.

But their relations to the government in war are of necessity
widely unlike. If men as good citizens are bound to peril their
lives and to endure hardships to aid the country in its hour of
need, yet women peril their lives and devote their time and
energy in giving to the country all its citizens, whether for
peace or war. And if the liberties of the nation were in real
peril, they would freely devote their all for its salvation. In
any just warfare it is fitting that the young men should first
march to battle, and if all these were swept away, then the old
men and the old women might fitly go out together side by side,
and, last of all, the young mothers, leaving their little
children to the very aged and to the sick, should be and would be
ready in their turn to go also, if need be, even to the
battle-field rather than suffer the overthrow of a righteous
government. But woman's relations to war are intrinsically unlike
man's. Her natural attitude toward law and order and toward all
public interests must always differ from his. Women would never
be the producers of wealth to the same extent with men. The time
devoted by the one class to earning money would be given by the
other to rearing children. Yes, this question touches too many
vital interests ever to be settled till it is settled right. We
mean to live, to keep well and strong, and to continue to trouble
the whole country until it is settled and settled to stay. There
can be no rest from agitation till this is done.

LUCY STONE spoke particularly of the need of using the
opportunity the Centennial gives, to show that, if it was wrong
for George III. to govern the colonies a hundred years ago
without their consent, it is just as wrong now to govern women
without their consent; that if taxation without representation
was tyranny then it is tyranny now, and no less tyranny because
it is done to women than if it were done to men; that the
usurpation of the rights of women is as high-handed a crime as
was the usurpation of the rights of the colonists by the British
Parliament, and will be so regarded a hundred years hence. She
claimed that this occasion ought to be used to show men that the
deeds of their ancestors, of which they are so proud, are worthy
of their own imitation; she urged women to refrain from joining
in the Centennial, and to show no more respect for the power
which governs them without their consent, than did their brave
ancestors a century ago.

The PRESIDENT said--I understand there is among the audience the
famous Democrat of England, CHARLES BRADLAUGH, and I will call
upon him to say a few words.

Mr. BRADLAUGH at once came forward from the rear of the hall,
where he had been sitting, and mounting the platform, said: I
only came forward in obedience to a call which it would be
impertinence to refuse here to-night. I came to be a listener and
with no sort of intention of making any speech at all, and the
only right I should have upon this platform is, that for the last
twenty-five years of my short life I have pleaded for those
rights which you plead for to-night. The woman question is no
American question, no national question; it is a question for the
whole world, and the best men of every country and of every age
have held one view upon it, and the worst men have naturally held
the other view. It is not a question of mere taxation; it is a
question of thorough humanity; a question not of mere
geographical limitation, not of America, not of England, not of
France, not of Italy, not of Spain; but, were it a question in
any of these countries, a woman would stand up to show you that
woman can do woman's work of making man truer and purer; and
there is no age of the world in which you can not find some woman
who has shone out in the darkness of night to show you that,
though other stars were obscured, she could still shine; and
whenever woman suffrage is debated, my voice is at their service,
for the grander woman is made, the purer will man be.

At the next session the report of the Executive Committee was
made by the Chairman, Mrs. Lucy Stone. After which letters were
read from Lydia Maria Child, Mrs. H. M. Tracy Cutler, Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps, Hon. H. A. Voris, and Miss Lavinia Goodell. The
Committee on Resolutions[199] reported a long list of stirring
appeals to those who have the real interests of humanity at
heart. Their adoption was urged in an able speech by Mr.
Blackwell. The following session was principally devoted to the
hearing of the reports from the auxiliary societies. The
delegates, 159 in number, represented twelve States.

Rev. CHARLES G. AMES, of Pennsylvania, in reply to Mrs. Stone,
said he thought it both impolitic and unreasonable to come into
collision with the awakening spirit of the country in the matter
of the Centennial. The American Revolution did great things for
us all, woman included; and although it did not give her a
political status, yet it established organic principles which
make woman suffrage possible, logical and ultimately certain. No
event has yet brought suffrage to woman; shall she therefore
regard all history up to date as a failure, as if there were
nothing in it worth celebrating? Rather may we rejoice that all
the past is a series of steps leading up to the present; and
still we mount! Woman suffrage is present in the institutions of
our country as a germ; it is growing. In not affirming it the
fathers did no conscious or intentional wrong; and only a few
cultivated women of the Revolutionary period, like Mrs. Adams and
a lady friend of Richard Henry Lee, felt the inconsistency of
affirming the equality of all human beings and then ignoring half
of them. But in days of war and slavery, Mr. Seward said,
"Liberty is in the Union"; so we may say, Suffrage is in the
Union. The negroes who fought for the Union, while it was only a
white man's Union, were winning their own enfranchisement; the
women who celebrate American Independence are doing honor to
principles which will some day bring justice to all the
inhabitants of the land.

The discussions on this subject of suffrage have disclosed to the
American people their own low estimate of the ballot, as a coarse
and uncertain instrument for procuring only coarse and doubtful
benefits. They ought to thank us for bringing to light this
dangerous skepticism, and for compelling attention to those
deeper principles of justice and equality which alone can work
the timely cure. To refuse to follow those principles when their
new application becomes obvious, is to give up the Republic.

Yet there has been a relative decline of politics. The "powers
that be," or the ruling forces of the country are not seated
alone at Washington and the State capitals; new and mightier
lawgivers have arisen. Civilization has come to include and
employ other than political agents for the maintenance of order
and the promotion of welfare. The power of opinion as generated
by education, literature, religion, business or social life, and
as announced through the press, and propagated in the widening
circles of personal influence--this rules the rulers and masters
the country. Thus, within the nation and fostered by its freedom,
there has grown up a grander republic of thought and sentiment,
which has also blossomed into many a fair institution. Of this
more glorious republic, woman is a welcome and unquestioned
citizen. Her opportunities for self-help and for helping others,
her share in the common burdens and her dividend of the common
benefits, must be far larger, in our country and now, than in any
other land or time. All this, the thoughtful friends of suffrage
will gladly admit.

But does this concession belittle the importance of woman's
political rights? Exactly not! A part in the government becomes
important to any class in proportion as they become large
stockholders in common affairs and as they become aware of their
own interests and their own powers. The ballot is of little
value to an unawakened, unaspiring people; their masters will
look after matters. But American women are not unawakened or
unaspiring. To many of them, life has grown painful, because
their advancing ideal is dishonored by a sense of violated
justice. Along with large freedom has come developed faculty,
awakened desire, conscious power and public spirit. Precisely
because their actual freedom is so large and sweet, they are
galled by every rusty link of the old political chain. Not the
mere handling of a ballot do they crave, but the position of
unchallenged and unqualified equality, and the removal of the old
brand of inferiority, which weakens alike their self-respect and
their hold on the respect of others.

At present, the position of woman in the State is false,
contradictory and uncomfortable. She has ceased to be a nobody;
but she is not yet conceded to be a somebody. As she has gained
many rights which were once denied, the old theory which made her
a slave is overthrown; as she has not gained the absolute and
chartered right of self-government, the new theory of her
equality is not yet established. Of that equality suffrage is the
symbol, as in this country it is now the symbol for men. She
demands to be the custodian of her own affairs, and not to hold
them by sufferance. She demands to be equal behind the law and in
the law, as well as before the law.

The Committee on Nominations reported the list of officers[200]
for the ensuing year.

Miss EASTMAN said: There are many questions of profound interest
occupying the minds of the community, and people come together to
unravel if possible the complications of business and human
obligations; questions of railroads, of tariffs, of the
protection of dumb animals, and, most important of all, of the
delicate relations of society to the unfortunate classes, and of
equity between man and man. All these need the consideration
which is made possible by the accumulated wisdom of centuries and
the insight which eighteen hundred years' study of Christian
principles have developed. But I shall never get over a sense of
anachronism, of being out of time, in arguing at this late day a
claim for so fundamental a thing as human freedom. I rub my eyes
to make sure that I have not been in a Rip Van Winkle slumber for
a few centuries, and am not coming before a nineteenth century
audience with an untimely protest against a wrong long since
abolished, and of which children only hear nowadays in their
study of history, or when their parents draw a picture of the sad
old times when an injustice prevailed against one half the
people, and these the mothers, wives, and daughters. But no! we
have none of us been permitted to betake ourselves to a mount of
delight and to rest in enchanted slumber while the great wrongs
righted themselves. We are here on the hither side of the
conflict and must put our puny human strength into the work.
Though this is the nineteenth century after Christ, we are
here--in the most civilized, or perhaps I should better say, the
least uncivilized country on the face of the globe--to urge the
right of one half the human race to the same personal freedom and
voice in the control of its own and the general interests as are
possessed by the other half.

Mrs. FRANCES WATKINS HARPER was the last speaker. She said that
she had often known women who wished they had been born men, but
had known only one man who wished he had been born a woman, and
that was during the war when he was in danger of being drafted
into the army. He then not only expressed the wish that he had
been born a girl, but even went further, and longed to be a
girl-baby at that. Mrs. Harper gave a touching description of the
disabilities to which women, and especially colored women, are
subjected, and looked forward to their enfranchisement as the
dawn of a better era alike for men and for women. At the
conclusion of Mrs. Harper's address the Convention adjourned
_sine die_.

* * * * *

The anniversary of the recognition of the equal political rights
of women by the Constitutional Convention of New Jersey, July 2,
1776, celebrated in 1876 by the American Woman Suffrage
Association, was as bright and beautiful as the fact it
commemorated. Notwithstanding the heat of the weather and the
varied attractions of the Exhibition and the great procession, an
intelligent audience assembled at Philadelphia in Horticultural
Hall. It contained many representatives of Pennsylvania, but was
mainly composed of several hundred friends of woman suffrage from
all parts of the country. The meeting was called to order by
Henry B. Blackwell, Secretary of the Society, who read the call
and introduced Mrs. LUCY STONE as Chairman of the meeting. Mrs.
Stone prefaced her address by a historical statement of the
interesting facts of woman's enfranchisement and disfranchisement
in New Jersey.[201]

The HUTCHINSON family sang with thrilling power and sweetness
"The Prophecy of Woman's Future."

Mr. BLACKWELL said: The Philadelphia newspapers are discussing
the question whether the second or the fourth day of July is the
real anniversary of American Independence. I give my vote for the
second of July for a reason which has not been generally named.
On this day the men of New Jersey, for the first time in the
world's history, organized a State upon the principles of
absolute justice. For the first time, they established equal
political rights for men and women. This was a greater event than
the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration only announced
the principle that "governments derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed," but the men of New Jersey applied the
principle alike to women and negroes. By as much as practice is
worth more than theory and life more than raiment, by so much is
the event we celebrate more glorious than any other in the annals
of the Revolution. It was the prophecy and the guarantee of our
national future.

Some people say that we celebrate a failure, because thirty-one
years later the franchise was taken away from the women of New
Jersey. But the generation which enacted woman suffrage did not
repeal it. New Jersey was first settled by the Puritans and
Quakers--educated and intelligent, full of the spirit of liberty.
Soon after the State was organized, this population was
overwhelmed by an ignorant immigration from Continental Europe.
Slavery became a power. Free schools did not exist. Another body
of men supplanted the intelligent founders of the State and
lowered its institutions to meet the lower level of character and
purpose.

Another lesson we should never forget is, that the women of New
Jersey lost the franchise because they voted against extending
this right to others. The women were generally Federalists. They
were said to have given the electoral votes of the State to John
Adams against Thomas Jefferson in 1800. The Democratic party was
bent upon enfranchising the poor white men who were excluded by a
property-qualification. The women, then as now conservative in
character, opposed this extension of suffrage. In 1807, when the
Democrats got possession of the State Government, they put out
the women and colored men and introduced the poor white men. With
this warning before us, let us rejoice that American women have
taken so warm an interest in the emancipation and enfranchisement
of the slaves--that every colored delegate whom I met at the
National Republican Conventions of 1872 and 1876 recognized the
women as their friends, and were ready to help put a woman
suffrage plank into the platform.

Also, let me congratulate you that the Prohibitionists and
Republicans have each adopted our principle of equal rights for
women in their party creeds, and that in the nomination of
Rutherford B. Hayes, a woman suffragist, we have a man whose
first public reputation was won as the champion of a wronged and
friendless woman.

The HUTCHINSONS gave a spirited song. Mr. RAPER, of England, was
then called, and gave an interesting sketch of the progress of
woman suffrage in England. The afternoon meeting was opened by a
song, "One Hundred Years Hence," by the HUTCHINSONS.

CHARLES G. AMES said: This meeting stands for something good and
necessary--better than anything we can say. The advocates of
impartial suffrage are the most consistent friends of the
principles upon which our institutions are founded, because they
alone propose to apply them. All others shrink from this
application. They distrust human nature. They are afraid to move
for fear of what may follow. They are like the Frenchman, who,
being a little drunk, had dropped his hat and apostrophized it
thus: "If I try to pick you up, I shall myself fall down. If I
fall down, you can not pick me up. Therefore I will go on without
you." But woman's enfranchisement will open every college door
and every avenue of employment. Every woman will be cared for, as
every man is now cared for. A government without justice is
tyranny, piracy, and despotism. A society without justice would
be a hell. The lower elements of appetite and passion exist in
society. They must be overcome by the higher elements of justice.
With justice will come heavenliness, purity, and peace. Thus, in
opening the proceedings of this afternoon, we represent in 1876
the principles of 1776--the principles which will triumph more
clearly and gloriously in 1976.

Mrs. HOWE said: Heaven gives each of us two human hands. One is
meant to receive the gifts of Providence, and one is meant to
give largely of what we receive to others. Ignorant, selfish
human beings too often hold out but the one hand. They receive,
and are satisfied with that; but they do not give. They seem to
say to divine Providence, "What is yours is mine, and what is
mine is my own." Nevertheless, in the order of this same
Providence, what we give is as important to our happiness as what
we receive. The rich man who has done nothing to enrich the
community in which he lives, has really profited very little by
the wealth he has amassed and inherited. Himself commanding the
means of refinement and luxury, he lives surrounded by poverty,
barbarism, and crime; and these, from the beginning of his career
to the end, poison the very sources of his life. As much worse is
it with those who receive liberty and do not give it, as liberty
is better than money. "Give me liberty or give me death!" says
Patrick Henry. He receives it. Does he give it to his slave? No.
To his wife? Still less. What does he have of it, then? Only one
half--the selfish half of possession, not the joyous and generous
side of sympathy and participation.

These Jerseyites, it seems, were wiser than any in their day and
generation. They saw the anomaly, the contradiction between a
free manhood and an enslaved womanhood. They saw it taking effect
at the sacred hearth, beside the tender cradle. And they saw
their way out of it. What they received and valued as the
greatest of God's gifts, they gave to their women, rational,
human creatures like themselves, bone of their bone and flesh of
their flesh, only made to exemplify that peaceable and loving
side of human nature whose beauty has been always felt, and whose
triumph is written among the eternal prophecies which time only
fulfills. Honor then, to-day, to those truly brave and generous
men who, with their own hands unbound, were not afraid to unbind
the hands of their wives and mothers! Honor, too, to the women
who were intelligent enough to appreciate the gift, and wise and
brave enough to use it. No scandal accompanied its exercise.
There was no talk in that time of the women deserting their
household fires, their tender children, to fulfill their duty to
the State. In that State, in those women, culminated the success
and significance of the American Revolution. Remember the other
States did not think so, neither did the men or the women who
planned the International Exhibition of to-day think so. But it
was so, none the less. And we to-day must light our torches at
that very topmost flame of freedom, or they will smoke instead of
burning.

Mrs. ANTOINETTE L. BROWN BLACKWELL said she came as a
representative from New Jersey, her adopted State, whose unique
suffrage endowment, one hundred years ago, we are here to
celebrate. The ebb and flow which is the law of all progress, has
temporarily deprived our women of the franchise. But it will be
restored in the near future. "I have neighbors, whose mothers and
grandmothers voted, and who are beginning to recall the fact with
pride and satisfaction." Ex-Governor Bullock, of Massachusetts,
has well said that "Historically, woman, in America, is now at
the acme of her power." But at our next Centennial, men and women
will stand together, acknowledged peers, at the acme of human
achievement.

Mrs. ELIZABETH K. CHURCHILL said: The right of suffrage is always
either inherited or earned. The women of America have earned
their right by their work in the Revolution and in the Civil War.
The inertia of women themselves is the greatest obstacle of our
movement. But, in order to perform the duties which fall upon
them in humane and charitable work, women need that their rights
should be guaranteed by the franchise.

Miss HINDMAN urged the importance of suffragists working inside
the churches. Here is where the sympathies of society center. We
have eight million professed Christians, church-members;
three-fourths of these are women. Miss Hindman gave very
encouraging accounts of success in enlisting the pastors and
women of the churches in the suffrage work, also of the growth of
woman suffrage sentiment among the temperance women of the West.

The HUTCHINSONS sang "The Star Spangled Banner," the audience
joining in the chorus.

Mrs. STONE uttered her dissent for the words and spirit of the
song so long as women are without political rights. In conclusion
she offered the following resolutions:

1. _Resolved_, That on this Centennial Anniversary of
American Freedom, we re-affirm the principle that
"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of
the governed"--and that "Taxation without representation is
tyranny." Yet women are governed without consent, and taxed
without representation.

2. _Resolved_, That we celebrate the establishment of woman
suffrage in New Jersey, a hundred years ago, as the prophecy
and forerunner of the American future. We point with pride
to the existence of woman suffrage in Wyoming and Utah, and
we declare that as the first century of Independence has
achieved equal rights and impartial suffrage for men, so the
next century will achieve equal rights for all American
citizens irrespective of sex.

The resolutions were unanimously adopted, and the meeting
adjourned.

* * * * *

The Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Woman Suffrage
Association commenced on October 2, 1876, at Handel and Haydn
Hall, Philadelphia. Mrs. MARY A. LIVERMORE presided and made the
opening address.

The Committee on Credentials made a partial report, showing one
hundred and three delegates present, representing twenty-three
States and Territories. Two other States reported themselves at
the close of the morning meeting, making in all twenty-five
States and Territories[202] represented. Brief addresses were
made by Mrs. Howe and Mrs. Frances W. Harper. Letters were read
from William Lloyd Garrison, and J. W. Kingman, of Wyoming. The
Chairman of the Committee on Resolutions reported the following,
which were accepted for separate consideration:

The American Woman Suffrage Association affirms: That
woman's right to vote already exists in theory under a
government based upon the consent of the governed; that her
right to vote implies her right to take part in the
nomination of her representatives in the primary meetings of
the parties, and that this right can be granted at any time,
by the State Convention of any party, without any change of
constitution or laws.

We therefore recommend the suffragists of each State to
address a memorial to every political convention, asking for
the adoption of a resolution. "That hereafter, women who are
identified in principle with the party, and who possess the
qualifications of age and residence required of male voters,
are invited to take part in its primary meetings, with an
equal voice and vote in the nomination of candidates and the
transaction of business."

_Resolved_, That we congratulate the National Prohibitory
Reform party upon its adoption of woman suffrage in its
platform, and upon the similar action recently taken by that
party in several States; also upon the admission of women to
the Prohibitory caucuses of Massachusetts by the unanimous
invitation of its State Convention, and upon the subsequent
nomination of the same candidates by the woman suffragists
of that State.

_Resolved_, That we rejoice at the beneficent results of
woman suffrage in Wyoming, and at its successful
establishment in the Granges, in the Good Templar Lodges,
and in other co-operative organizations.

WHEREAS, The Constitution of Colorado provides that the
question of extending suffrage to women shall be submitted
to the voters; therefore,

_Resolved_, That the American Woman Suffrage Association
will extend to the Association of Colorado all the aid
possible to secure the desired result.

Rev. B. F. BOWLES, of Philadelphia, was opposed to the adoption,
of the first resolution on the ground that the attempt to obtain
for women a voice and vote in the party caucuses was unwise and
impracticable. Until women were voters no such right should be
demanded. To do so was to begin at the wrong end. A caucus was
and ought to be a conference of voters.

Dr. JOHN CAMERON, of Delaware, doubted the propriety of the
action recommended in the first resolution. Mr. BLACKWELL spoke
briefly in its support.

Mrs. SMITH, of Pittsburgh, stated that as a member of the
Prohibition party of Pennsylvania, she had repeatedly taken part
in the caucuses, and that the same was true elsewhere. By general
consent the further discussion was postponed. Dr. CAMERON, of
Delaware, at the evening session, said that on a more careful
consideration he was convinced that the action proposed was
right, and he should vote in its favor.

Mrs. ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY supported it by a story of the mice
who planned to bell the cat.

Mr. BLACKWELL spoke at length in favor of making a concerted
effort to secure the admission of women to the nominating
caucuses, and predicted the success of any party which should
adopt that measure, and all the resolutions were then adopted.

Mrs. JULIA WARD HOWE spoke of the determination which exists in
the present age for investigating everything to its utmost
extent, but questioned, however, whether this system of
investigation was not carried too far, when woman suffrage was
refused on the ground that it was not known what women would do
with it when they had it. She said that John Bright was opposed
to woman suffrage, but he did not show any reason why it was not
a good object.

It was said that his opposition arose from the fact that he had
married a woman who was opposed to woman's rights, and if this
were the case, it was an additional reason why women should work
among their own sex in promotion of this object. One important
feature of the British Parliament is, that if the men of the
country are dissatisfied with its action, they have the power to
put the Government out of office, but the women of the country
had only to sit passively by if they are not satisfied with the
administration. Freedom with its concomitants does not promote
despotism in either sex. The ignorant women of to-day, left in
their ignorance, will continue to bring forth slavery, and to
educate their children as the tools of despotism. It was said
that inequality of property is complained of among women, but
that it exists just as much among men. But what is complained of
among women is not inequality of property, but absence of
representation.

Addresses were made by Rev. John Snyder, of St. Louis; Lucy
Stone; Mrs. Duniway, of Oregon, and Mrs. Livermore; after which
the audience rose and united in singing the doxology, and the
meeting adjourned.

In November, 1877, the American Woman Suffrage Association issued
the following:

TO WOMAN SUFFRAGISTS.--We mail to every subscriber of the
_Woman's Journal_ a blank petition to Congress for a XVI.
Amendment. Also, in the same envelope, a woman suffrage
petition to your own State Legislature--Please offer both
petitions together for signature. Thus, with the same amount
of labor, both objects will be accomplished.

Respectfully, LUCY STONE,
_Chairman Ex. Com., Am. Woman Suffrage Assoc._

BOSTON, Nov. 24, 1877.

Later appeared in the _Woman's Journal_ a paragraph to the
effect:

Every subscriber has received from us, by mail, two forms of
petitions; the one addressed to the State Legislature, the
other to Congress. We consider State action the more
important, but signatures to both petitions can be obtained
at the same time.

These petitions should be circulated at once, and sent back
to No. 4 Park St., Boston, by the middle of January. We hope
for more signers than ever before. Friends of woman
suffrage, circulate the petitions!

The result was a petition, sent by the Executive Committee of the
American Woman Suffrage Association into Congress, enrolling
6,000 names.

* * * * *

The Ninth Annual Meeting of the American Woman Suffrage
Association assembled in Masonic Hall at Indianapolis, in 1878.
There was a full attendance of delegates. The evening before the
convention an informal reception was held at the residence of Mr.
and Mrs. M. H. McKay. Among those who called in the course of the
evening to pay their respects, may be named: Judge Martindale,
Mr. and Mrs. George W. Julian, Mr. and Mrs. Addison Harris, Mrs.
Henry Bowan, Governor and Mrs. Baker, Professor and Mrs. Benton,
Professor Brown, and Professor Bell.

The convention was called to order by Mrs. Dr. Thomas, of
Richmond, President of the State Suffrage Association. The
services of the day were formally opened with prayer by Dr. J. H.
Bayliss, of Roberts Park Church. The resolutions[203] were
presented by the Business Committee.

Mrs. I. C. FALES, of Brooklyn: What is needed is an amelioration
of the nature and conditions of man by a powerful moral influence
brought to bear upon all classes and conditions so that the
conscience and the intellect may both be quickened to perceive
and redress the wrongs, with their consequent sufferings, which
inhere in the social structure. The moral sentiment must go into
harness and be thoroughly trained in order to do its work
effectually. The corruptions of to-day are the legitimate results
of the want of woman's influence in the formation of public
opinion. That influence is comparatively ineffectual because it
is narrowed to the small sphere of domestic life. No one can
suppose that an opinion unsupported by authority can have weight
enough to grapple with evils which have their root in the lawless
part of man's uneducated, undeveloped nature. The most that such
a sentiment can do is to enlarge itself by discussion, and every
other available method, until it is strong enough to incorporate
itself into legislative enactments, from whence it may shape and
modify daily life.

While much can be done in molding and directing public opinion,
the consummating force of legislation must be brought into play.
If woman possessed the elective franchise, her influence would be
greatly strengthened by her political power. The desire of reform
would naturally express itself in the selection of candidates who
would embody those ideas. Legislators chosen by men and women
together, would represent a higher level of thought, and would
tend to legislate more directly in favor of reform than if chosen
by men alone, for woman represents the moral principle, even as
man the intellectual, and knowing that the tone of legislation
rarely, if ever, rises higher than the moral level of the people
by whom the legislators are chosen, we insist upon the absolute
necessity of that principle being allowed to officially express
itself. Maudsley justly remarks "that great as is the intellect,
the moral nature is greater still;" that "the impulses of
evolution which move the world come not from the intellect, but
from the heart."

Long and cordial letters were read from William Lloyd Garrison
and Mrs. Frances D. Gage. At the first evening session addresses
were made by Mr. Blackwell, Mrs. Stone, and Mrs. Campbell, of
Maine. The reports from the different State societies were
listened to the next morning. After the report from Massachusetts
had been given by Mr. Blackwell, Miss LELIA PATRIDGE, of
Pennsylvania, spoke as follows: To one advocating this matter of
equal suffrage, one of the noticeable things is the monotony of
the objections brought against it, although each one is brought
forward as if just evolved from the inner consciousness of the
objector and never thought of before. One of these most commonly
heard is that women do not want to vote. Suppose they do not,
gentlemen; that is no excuse for you, for it is a matter out of
their jurisdiction--a thing which you control, and as they have
no power, they have no responsibility, and you can not shift it
thus from your shoulders. But they do want it; the best, most
intelligent, thoughtful women--those of whom we are proud--do
want it, and it is only those who are either ignorant or selfish
who say, "I have all the rights I want." This sounds hard, but it
is true. Because a woman is so shut in, protected and happy that
she does not feel the need of the ballot for herself, it is sadly
selfish for her to fail to consider that all women are not so
fortunate. But if she could once experience the great gain which
woman suffrage would be to all the great questions of morals and
reform which have seemed to belong particularly to those who are
wives, mothers and sisters, she would hesitate no longer, but
hasten to join that grand army of noble women who are pleading
for equal political rights. There is hardly a large-brained,
large-hearted woman either in this country or England who is not
a pronounced suffragist. How can women who are indifferent upon
this subject, so keep back the coming of right and justice to
their sex, when such women as Lucy Stone and others are giving
their lives to the cause? She is no more a woman than we. Some
men say, with the one in Colorado: "Now, I'm agin suffrage. I
believe that the Almighty made one spear for wimmin and one spear
for men, and I b'l'eve that the wimmin orter keep to her'n, and
the men ort to keep to his'n;" and I agree. But who shall decide
as to "spears?" Are the men alone to say?

At the afternoon session LUCY STONE presented to the audience
Prof. R. T. BROWN, who has never failed to lift his voice in
favor of the recognition of woman's equal right to a collegiate
education, and who received the public thanks of many ladies of
this city recently, as a testimonial of their appreciation of the
step taken by him in resigning his chair in the Medical College
Faculty, because women were to be henceforth debarred entrance
thereto.

Dr. BROWN said: I have been engaged in this work for forty years.
When I began, I stood absolutely alone. I worked ten years and
made only one proselyte, and that was my wife. All mathematicians
know that if they can establish one or two points in a curve,
they can project that curve to its completion. In this way we
have established several points in our great work of suffrage,
and now we can see how to complete it. The work must go on. Truth
is immortal and will prevail. From the boasted civilization of
ancient Greece and Rome, which was nothing but an aristocracy, we
trace the gradual development of woman up to the present time.
During all that time the right of suffrage has been extended, and
now we have a male oligarchy. And we call this a republic! This
is not a popular government, as it has been called. Only one half
its citizens have a voice in its management. Now, we are trying
to make this a strictly popular government, and, to do this, the
right of suffrage must be extended to woman. The great object of
all government is the higher development of its citizens. The
government can not be an entire success until women have the same
rights as men.

Mrs. Dr. MARY F. THOMAS, of Indiana, said: In behalf of the woman
doctors of the State, I will say that Prof. Brown has stood up
for their advancement for the last twenty-five years. A few years
ago the women of Indiana petitioned for a local-option temperance
law. To-day I believe that they demand a prohibitory law, and
nothing short of that will satisfy them. I am in favor of woman
suffrage. To secure to us this right we must work for it. What
women can do when they try, was shown by the women's exhibit at
the late State Fair. Public sentiment is increasing on our side,
and we intend to show our power at the next Legislature.

Mrs. H. M. TRACY CUTLER said: Many of us have grown old in this
work, and yet some people say, "Why do you still work in a
hopeless cause?" The cause is not hopeless. Great reforms develop
slowly, but truth will prevail, and the work that we have been
doing for thirty years has paid as well as any work that has ever
been done for humanity. The only hope of a nation's salvation
from miserable demagogy lies in woman suffrage. With the
advancement in education and civilization, I say to myself--the
glory of the Lord is shining on women. With the advance in
womanhood there will be an advance in manhood, and this will be
one of the grand results of equal suffrage.

A long argument was then made by Hon. George W. Julian. After the
Convention was called to order at the evening session, the
Committee on Nominations[204] reported.

Miss MARY F. EASTMAN, of Massachusetts, spoke as follows: It has
been said that the greatest study of mankind is man. I do not
know but we shall all believe, before we get through the three
days' session of this congress, that the greatest study of
womankind is woman! Indeed, from being a good deal overlooked in
various ways, she has come to be almost the topic of the age, and
strangely enough is she considered. According to the standpoint
of the observer, woman is a riddle to be solved, a conundrum to
be guessed, a puzzle to be interpreted, a mystery to be
explained, a problem to be studied, a paradox to be reconciled.
She is a toy or a drudge, a mistress or a servant, a queen or a
slave, as circumstances may decide. She is at once an
irresponsible being, who must accept the destiny which comes to
her with as little power of resistance as the thistle-down upon
the wind, or the sea-weed which the tide leaves to bleach on the
rocks or sucks back to engulf in its own unfathomed depth--or she
is responsible for everything, from Adam's eating of the apple in
Paradise to the financial confusion which agitates us to-day; the
first because she coveted so much knowledge, the second because
she wants so many clothes. I wish we could, as speedily as
possible without a general crash, lay aside this nonsense
(regardless of the great loss of sirens and angels, which really
never seemed to me exactly adapted to earthly conditions), and
learn to regard woman as simply a human being, plus the powers
and gifts peculiar to her sex, just as man is a human being, plus
the powers and gifts peculiar to his sex. Here is a common basis
of likeness sufficient to give community of interests and
pursuits, with a variation which makes them mutually attractive
and serviceable, each recognizing in the other the complement of
himself and herself....

Speeches were also delivered by Mrs. S. E. Franklin, Rev. Fred.
A. Hinckley, and Mrs. J. Ellen Foster. The Rev. John Snyder, of
St. Louis, the last speaker of the evening, although the hour was
late, highly entertained the audience with an address on the
rights of all humanity.

* * * * *

The Tenth Annual Meeting of the American Woman Suffrage
Association was held at Cincinnati, November 4th and 5th, 1879.
The hall had been tastefully decorated. Over the platform in
large letters were inscribed, "Equal Work;" "Equal Wages;"
"Welcome;" while around the entire hall ran evergreens in loops
and circles. Elias Longley, the constant and true friend of
suffrage for women, had taken charge of the advertising, and it
was most effectively done. The newspapers showed good will in
advance by pleasant local notices. Mrs. Margeret V. Longley, who
has been a member of the American Association from the time it
was organized, who is clear-eyed and true-hearted, took charge of
arrangements for entertainment and hospitality. She was aided in
this by Mrs. E. A. Latta, who has come later to the work, but who
has brought her heart and conscience to it, and in her church
and out of it she remembers the rights of women; Mrs. Morse, of
Walnut Hills, and other ladies co-operated, so that as delegates
arrived they were assigned to pleasant homes. At the appointed
hour on Tuesday evening a full hall greeted the speakers. The
Cincinnati _Gazette_ said:

The first meeting of the American Woman Suffrage Association
at the Melodeon Hall last evening, was one that would do
credit to any cause. The large hall was nearly filled with
people who would rank high in intelligence and good standing
in this cultured community. And the fact that the larger
portion were women meets the objection often made to this
movement, that the women themselves are not in favor of
suffrage for themselves.

Rev. W. C. WENDTE, the first speaker of the evening, said: Woman
should not only be allowed a fair chance so far as business and
the administration of an estate is concerned; every woman ought
to have the ballot. Many will say, I believe woman ought to have
the right to equal education, wages, carry on business, and
choose any vocation she wants, but doubt after all whether it is
best to put upon her the responsibility of the ballot. We have
not a very exalted opinion of our right to vote, and this
objection is often made with a kindly, honest, and earnest fear
that she will drag herself down to the low filth of politics.
Leave out the ballot, and woman's rights is like a pyramid
without the apex, or, better still, like building a temple
without the corner stone. I have no Utopian notions concerning
the immediate effect of woman's voting. I do not think the
millennium is coming when she can vote. But if women could vote
it would not be possible for those disreputable shows on Vine
street, the foulest and filthiest that ever disgraced a Christian
city, to continue one day longer. They would be put down by the
overwhelming power of moral sentiment of the mothers, sisters,
wives, and sweethearts, expressed at the ballot-box; and the men
who are now so derelict, careless and indolent, will be wakened
up to some earnestness against those exhibitions.

I will say, in conclusion, that I most heartily welcome these
women among us, some of whom, like Mrs. Lucy Stone, have labored
long and faithfully. I would say that you may come up like Moses
of old, and see the promised land, and unlike him, unless all
signs fail, you shall enter and receive the just reward of all
your toil. The time is coming when women will have the ballot.
State after State is wheeling into the line. In Massachusetts
they have the right of the ballot for school committee. Step by
step they are climbing up, and soon the time will come when the
American people will rise up in new-found manhood and say: "My
sister, we will not ask you to receive the ballot from our hands
as a condescending privilege, but will ask you to go forward and
take it as your inalienable right."

Mrs. REBECCA N. HAZARD, of St. Louis, President of the
Association, spoke as follows: As one after another the
milestones are reached which mark the progress of our cause, we
pause to examine the ground upon which we stand. If to our
impatient vision in looking forward the journey seems long, we
have only to look back to see how much of the way has been left
behind. To those who have borne the burdens of this undertaking
the work may appear to move slowly. But this is always the case
where enduring principles are to be planted. "What the ancients
said of the avenging gods, that they are shod with wool," says
Lieber, "is true of great ideas in history. They approach softly.
Great truths always dwell a long time in small minorities."
Growing in unobserved places, they take root and become strong
before their spreading branches attract the public gaze.

To many the pursuit of an abstract principle under so many
difficulties seems an absurdity. They therefore impute motives
more or less unworthy to those who are willing to immolate
themselves for an idea. There are always at least two ways of
looking at any question, and I have sometimes placed myself in
the position of those who take an unfavorable view of woman
suffrage, and who reason in this wise: "These women are
discontented. They must have been unfortunate. They seek to
overstep the limits which nature and circumstance have placed
about them. Not content with the round of domestic duties which
has hitherto constituted the sum total of woman's life, they seek
to perform the functions which custom has allotted to man. They
desire to be independent, self-sustaining--strong, while the more
attractive ideal woman is fragile, clinging, dependent. Why
should they desire to overturn the existing order of things? The
world gets on pleasantly enough, why introduce these disquieting
questions, when by patient acquiescence we might have
tranquillity, and, perhaps, more of the pleasant things of life?"
or as I once heard it formulated by a lady: "Why should Mrs. A.
want to vote when she has such an indulgent husband." This is one
view of the subject and there are times in the life of every
woman when such reasoning has more or less weight.

But there is another side to this question, and how changed the
picture. The whole scope and meaning of this wonderful woman's
movement here dawns upon us. We find a new order of things
indeed. We behold amid the changing dynasties of the world a new
government arise--a republic based, not upon the will of the
strongest, not upon property, but upon the rights of the
individual. With a code of political ethics more perfect than any
the world has yet seen, we find it still hesitating to put these
principles to the test. As a consequence it struggles in the
waves of political disorder like a ship without ballast.
Recognizing as vital doctrines the equality of the race, and the
value of the family as the political unit, we find the woman
principle, the mother element, subdued, subjected, deprived of
any fair expression in the conduct of the government. As a result
we have corruption in high places, fraud, public distrust, and
their host of accompanying evils. We find forces at work which
threaten the security of our homes, the manhood of our sons, the
purity of our daughters; in a word, the whole social structure of
society. Reflecting on these things we begin to understand the
meaning of the ballot for woman. Scrutinizing closely, we find
that it means justice, integrity, peace, purity, temperance,
sweeter manners, wiser laws.

Lucy Stone made the next and last speech of the evening, on "The
Meaning of the Woman Suffrage Movement, the What and the How."

The session of Wednesday morning was devoted to business, the
election of officers,[205] and hearing of reports of the
auxiliary societies. At the afternoon session, Dr. Mary F.
Thomas, of Indiana, Dr. Hannah Tracy Cutler, of Illinois, Rev.
Thomas J. Vater, of Ohio, and Rev. Sarah M. Perkins, of Vermont,
made earnest and able addresses. Mrs. Perkins had come fresh from
the Women's Christian Temperance Union in Indianapolis, baptized
with its earnest spirit of work. Rev. T. J. Vater appealed to the
women to strive for solid excellence, leaving forever the tinsel
and the show which have been held as appropriate to woman. His
speech excited discussion, and added much interest to the
afternoon session. The Business Committee reported the following
resolutions:

_Resolved_, That in the death of Wm. Lloyd Garrison, who
signed the "Call" for the meeting which formed this
Association, who was an officer in it from the beginning,
and its President last year, the cause of equal rights has
suffered an irreparable loss.

_Resolved_, That suffragists everywhere owe a debt of
gratitude to the memory of Angelina Grimke Weld, lately
deceased, who as one of the first women speakers, prepared
the way and opened wide the door for all other women to be
heard in their own defense.

Dr. Mary F. Thomas and Lucy Stone spoke feelingly to these
resolutions, which were adopted by a standing vote of the
meeting. At the last evening, Mrs. Cutler read a letter from Mrs.
Frances D. Gage.

_Friends of the American Woman Suffrage Association, of my
dear native State, Ohio:_

WITH what joy and gladness I would lift my heart to the
All-good, All-true, and All-beautiful, if I could be with
you to-day, and speak my emphatic yes and amen in the behalf
of all true efforts for woman suffrage. But what word can I
speak that will not be better spoken? What argument is not
already familiar to the reading and thinking mind? Are not
"the truths as self-evident" to-day to the intelligent
public as they were a century ago? That all people, "not men
only," are born equal and endowed by the Creator with
inalienable rights, among which are those to life, liberty,
and pursuit of happiness. Has the human race ever been made
more miserable for one progressive step toward liberty since
the days when Christ was hung upon the cross for daring to
say, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you do ye
the same unto them." What else does woman suffrage mean?
What else is needed but this principle to settle the vexed
question of "Solid North" or "Solid South"? What else but
its recognition to drive every liquor-saloon from the land,
making temperance universal? What but this to bring about
the great system of social morality--making it as heinous a
crime for man to do wrong as for woman....

FRANCIS D. GAGE.

_Bunker Hill, McCoupin Co., Ill., Oct. 23, 1879._

Mrs. Cutler continued in a pertinent speech. Miss Hindman
followed with an able argument to show why and where women need
the ballot. Mrs. E. Dickerson, of St. Louis, Dr. Wilson, of
Cincinnati, and Lucy Stone followed. Each of these in their
special way showed how to secure justice to women. Mrs. Dickerson
answered objections, and put phases of the law as applied to
women in fine contrast with the law as applied to men. Dr.
Wilson, in a wide-awake lively speech, advised women to try a new
method, and starve out the men who would not concede their
rights. He said, "Give them no coffee for breakfast, nor steak
for dinner, and nothing good for supper until they put the ballot
in your hands." He gave deserved blame to women for not being
more active in their own behalf. This breezy speech was often
applauded, and good-natured criticism followed, putting the
heaviest duty on the shoulders of men who have the power to free
women, but still do not do it. The last speech of the evening was
made by Lucy Stone, who showed the dreary helplessness implied in
disfranchisement, and who sought to arouse women to a proper
resentment against such degradation of position. Then was sung,
"Praise God, from whom all blessings flow," and thus closed the
tenth annual meeting of the American Woman Suffrage Association.

* * * * *

The Eleventh Annual Meeting of the American Woman Suffrage
Association held its sessions in 1880 at Washington, D. C.
Delegates were present from Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode
Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ohio,
Indiana, Missouri, and Iowa. A large and intelligent audience
nearly filled the body and galleries of the large hall. The
meeting was called to order by the President, HENRY B. BLACKWELL,
who said: Fellow-citizens, Ladies and Gentlemen: The Annual
Meeting of the American Woman Suffrage Association is not a mere
mass meeting of individuals. It is a body of delegates from State
and local societies assembled in a representative capacity, and
as such I welcome you to-night. We meet for the first time in
this capital city of the republic, to promote a great social and
political change. We propose to substitute for the existing
political aristocracy of men alone, a government founded upon the
united suffrages of men and women. We urge the enfranchisement of
women, not in a spirit of antagonism between man and woman, but
as the common interest of both. We urge the enfranchisement of
woman as an act of political justice, and also as a measure of
the highest expediency. Women need the ballot for their own
protection and self-respect. Men equally need the votes of women
as an added power for order, temperance, purity, and peace.

Mr. BLACKWELL read a dispatch from Gov. Hoyt, of Wyoming
Territory:

GREEN RIVER, W. T., Dec. 15, 1880.

_To the Committee on Woman Suffrage_:--Your kind invitation
was delayed, so that my acceptance is impossible.
Understand, however, that I fully recognize the justice of
the cause you represent, and wish you and your co-laborers
God-speed in the great work of its furtherance.

JOHN W. HOYT.

Mrs. LUCY STONE was the last speaker. She spoke with a quiet
earnestness that showed the depth of her convictions, and how
greatly her heart was in her work. Her address was an entirely
argumentative one, abundant illustrations being used to clinch
her statements. She said that she felt keenly the degradation of
being disfranchised. To bring about a change in the present state
of affairs, she would have every mother impress upon her
children, when they were as young as nine years of age, that
women have as much right to govern as their fathers; then the
boys would grow up on the side of their mothers and the girls
would become advocates of the cause. Personally she cared more
for woman suffrage than anything else under the sun. In
conclusion, she urged the people of Washington to help them in
obtaining from Congress a XVI. Amendment to the Constitution,
giving women the right to vote, and for the enactment of a law
giving women suffrage in the Territories.

The following letter was read:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 5, 1880.

MY DEAR MRS. HOWE:--My time is to be so crowded with
occupations for the next ten days that I must decline your
courteous invitation to speak at the annual meeting of the
American Woman Suffrage Association.

I shall be very glad to take some fitting opportunity
publicly to reaffirm my conviction, which grows stronger
with every year's experience, that the admission of woman to
her full and equal share in the Government is essential to a
perfect republic.

I am, yours very truly, GEO. F. HOAR.

Letters were read from W. G. Elliot, President of the University
of Missouri, Lorepiza Haynes, Frances D. Gage, Emma C. Bascom,
Mrs. Mary F. Henderson, and George B. Loring.

Mrs. HELEN M. GOUGAR, of Lafayette, Ind., read a carefully
prepared statement of objections, and answered them with force
and spirit. Her address was happily conceived and gracefully
delivered. Her voice is a clear soprano, distinct, well
modulated, with not a little melody in its pure, soft tones.

Miss EASTMAN read a form of memorial which had been prepared to
be presented to Congress to-day. It was adopted.

Miss GREW moved that the President of the association be
requested to take steps to present it at once. Adopted.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress
assembled:_--The American Woman Suffrage Association at its
annual meeting of delegates, convened in Washington, Dec.
16, 1880, respectfully pray your honorable bodies to enact a
law securing to women, citizens of the United States,
resident in the Territories, the same political rights as
are exercised by the male citizens of the United States
resident therein.

(Signed) H. B. BLACKWELL, _President_.
LUCY STONE, _Chairman Ex. Com._
MATILDA HINDMAN, _Secretary_.

(The names of the Executive Committee, thirty in number,
were also added).

Mrs. LUCY STONE, chairman of the Executive Committee, read the
tenth annual report of the American Woman Suffrage Association.
After which reports from the different States were given. At the
afternoon session, after a statement by Mrs. STONE, in regard to
the finances of the meeting, an invitation was extended to become
members of the Association by the payment of $1. Mrs. Antoinette
Brown Blackwell, of Somerville, N. J., made an address upon the
right and necessity of granting woman suffrage. Mrs. Blackwell
read from her manuscript, and made a quiet but effective appeal
for the cause.

Miss MARY GREW, of Pennsylvania, was the next speaker. She
maintained that the chief reason women were disfranchised was
that men did not think about it, and the women did not either.
She urged her hearers hereafter to think about it. This right
should be conferred on women in accordance with the principles of
this Government. But it is asked: What do you want of the ballot?
And the speaker said that she wanted it to do with it the same as
men did, and for the protection of her rights and those of other
women. She could not say how women would vote if they got the
ballot, but she supposed they would use it much as other citizens
had done.

At the evening session, before the regular programme of speeches
was begun, the resolutions[206] were read and adopted.

As the last resolution was put, Mrs. Lucy Stone arose and paid
very graceful and eloquent tributes to the memories of Lucretia
Mott, Mrs. Child, and Mr. Nathaniel White.

Marshal DOUGLASS was then introduced, and said he was not there
to make a speech, but to show his sympathy with the cause. He was
so entirely in love with it that he thought it deserved the
highest eloquence and the profoundest earnestness it could
command to advance it. He knew of no reason why a man should vote
and a woman not. The republic needed the good qualities of its
citizens to help it, and recognizing the intelligence and heart
of women he was in favor of opening every avenue by which their
moral worth could be utilized for the benefit of the country. It
was an injury to keep any person in this country from the ballot
when suffrage was universal. It was a degradation. If you want to
keep a man out of the mud, black his boots. If you want to
develop woman's best qualities, give her the ballot.

Mrs. MARY E. HAGGART, of Indiana, followed with a bold and
brilliant argument, presenting the claims of her sex to the
ballot.

Mrs. MARY A. LIVERMORE asked how it was that women to-day are
exposed to a hotter fire than ever before. Women are not as much
toasted at banquets or flattered with extravagant compliments as
a few years ago. She warned her hearers that if woman continued
to make of herself a peg to hang millinery goods on, she would be
riddled with the shafts of ridicule. If she entered the sphere of
man, and sought, by the cultivation of her intellect, to elevate
both herself and man, she would equally expose herself to satire.
The times were different now from the past. The question of woman
suffrage in one form or another was constantly coming up
everywhere.

Officers[207] were elected for the ensuing year.

Mrs. LIVERMORE said, as this was a political meeting of men and
women, she hoped it would be closed after the usual fashion, by
singing the doxology. The whole audience rose and sang it, and
the Convention adjourned.

A memorial, signed by the officers of the American Woman Suffrage
Association, asking Congress to establish suffrage for women in
the Territories, was presented to the Senate by Hon. George F.
Hoar, and referred to the Committee on Territories, which was to
give a hearing to a committee from the Suffrage Association. But
no quorum of the Senate Committee came together, and the
opportunity was lost.

On Friday afternoon Mrs. Hayes received the members of the
Suffrage Association with a cordiality and grace most becoming
to her, and most delightful to us; our hearty sympathy with her
good stand for temperance opened the way for conversation, and a
very pleasant two hours were spent at the White House. Mrs. Hayes
took us through the large conservatories, which, she said, had
few flowers, as she "had most of them cut off for the Children's
Hospital Fair." But there were a great many rare and beautiful
flowers remaining. She cut and distributed some among us, and
showed us the private family rooms, the new china ordered for the
White House, and the writing desk made from the wreck of the ship
that went in search of Sir John Franklin, which was presented by
Queen Victoria to the President of the United States. In
numberless ways she showed herself a fine hostess, as well as an
accomplished lady. When at last we separated it was to carry away
the memory of this pleasant visit, and of an excellent meeting.

* * * * *

Nothing could have been finer than the reception given by
Louisville to the American Woman Suffrage Association, which met
in that city October, 1881. The need of extending the outposts,
and of winning new friends to the cause, had decided the
executive committee of the Association to hold its Twelfth Annual
Meeting in Louisville. It was an experiment which the result more
than justified. Success was due in a great degree to the fairness
and friendliness of the press. Mr. Watterson, of the
_Courier-Journal_, said in advance that his paper would give full
and accurate reports. Mr. Clark, of the _Commercial_, personally
expressed his purpose to deal justly by the proceedings of the
meetings. This was all that was needed. Any true statement of the
claim of suffragists is sure to command the respect of right
minded people.

The first session was for business. It was thinly attended by the
citizens of Louisville, there being not more than a hundred and
fifty or two hundred people present. But each succeeding session
increased in numbers until on the last evening, the Grand Opera
House had not seats to hold the great and sympathetic audience,
which completely filled the body and galleries of the house, and
left rows of men and women standing all around against the walls.
The _Courier-Journal_ gave nine columns of verbatim report of the
first day and evening, together with philosophic and friendly
editorials. The _Commercial_, not so large in size, and hence
with less space to use, yet did editorially and by its reports
excellent service, by giving to its readers a true idea of the
work which was sought to be done.

Delegates had come with encouraging reports in most cases, of the
work in twelve States by auxiliary societies. Local societies in
towns sent letters, and letters from individuals--a very large
number--came to hand, all showing how widely woman suffrage ideas
are spreading, and how earnestly its advocates strive to advance
their cause. All these reports the Louisville _Courier-Journal_
published entire, together with the letters of Gov. Long, Gov.
St. John, John G. Whittier, Wendell Phillips, President Bascom,
President Eliot, and others, along with full reports of each
session to the last, and crowned the whole by friendly editorials
the morning after the close of the meetings.

Col. J. W. Ward, of Louisville, had kindly attended to
preliminary arrangements, seconded by Mrs. Sylvia Goddard and
Mrs. Col. Carr. At the opening session, Col. Ward called the
meeting to order, and introduced Dr. Mary F. Thomas, of Indiana,
the President of the association. Rev. Mr. Jones opened the
meeting with prayer. The speaking was excellent; the tone of the
meeting just what we should desire. Col. Ward, Mrs. Mary B. Clay,
and Miss Laura Clay, daughters of Cassius M. Clay, took part. The
two first-named arraigned the laws of Kentucky for their
injustice to women. The old Common Law to a great extent prevails
there still. Dr. T. S. Bell, one of the oldest and most justly
celebrated physicians of Louisville, sat on the platform,
supporting the cause by his presence. People from New Albany and
Evansville, Indiana, crossed the river to attend the sessions.
Lawyers, physicians, clergymen, the educated, the wealthy and the
plain people made up the audiences which crowded the Opera House,
where the earlier and the later advocates of this sacred cause
united to forward it in this new field. At the last of the six
sessions, Rev. Mr. Ashill, in a brief speech, indorsed our
principles, and after prayer by Rev. Mr. Fyler, and the singing
of the doxology, the meeting, which had been one of the most
successful ever held, adjourned, having elected for its president
next year, Hon. Erasmus M. Correll, of Nebraska, who so nobly
championed the suffrage amendment in the State Legislature last
winter, and who now, by speech and pen, devotes himself to secure
its final success.

The seed sown had fallen on good ground--as appears in the fact
that at the last session an invitation was given to all who
desired to form a woman suffrage society to meet in adjoining
rooms the next morning at nine o'clock. At the appointed time, a
fine group of men and women came together, who proceeded at once
to the organization of a "Kentucky Woman Suffrage Society." A
constitution was adopted, which was subscribed to by every person
present, with a dollar membership. Miss Mary B. Clay was chosen
president, and the society made auxiliary to the American Woman
Suffrage Association. The formation of this strong and live
society is of great value, as the organized beginning of the
movement at the South.

The citizens and public institutions of Louisville extended
unsolicited courtesy to the members of the association, who were
officially invited to the Home for the Widows and Orphans of
Masons, the only home of the kind in the United States; to the
House of Refuge; to the Hospital for Women and Children; and to
the High School. Not the least pleasant thing was an interview
with Henry Watterson, the morning after the close of the
meetings. His friendly attitude, his comprehensive view of the
whole situation and question, with his position of large
influence as editor of the _Courier-Journal_, made even those who
have grown old in the service of this cause hopeful of living to
see it victorious. Another mile stone is passed, and the end of
this long bloodless strife comes daily nearer. Let us thank God
and take courage.

FOOTNOTES:

[179] The history of this Association from its formation is compiled
by Harriot E. Stanton, from reports in _The Agitator_ and _Woman's
Journal._

[180] Mrs. Mary A. Livermore, of Chicago; Mrs. Caroline M. Severance,
of Boston; A. J. Boyer, of Dayton; Mrs. H. T. Hazard, of Missouri;
Mrs. C. G. Ames, of California; and H. B. Blackwell, of New Jersey.

[181] Mrs. Frances D. Gage, of N. J.; George W. Curtis, of N. Y.;
George F. Downing, of the District of Columbia; Rev. Henry Blanchard,
of Indianapolis; William Lloyd Garrison, of Boston; Mattie M.
Griffith, of Iowa; Rev. R. Fisk, Canton, N. Y.; A. N. Fretz, of
Virginia; Rev. Edward Eggleston, of Chicago; Hon. Sharon Tyndale, and
Hon. George Fisher, of Illinois.

[182] New Hampshire--Nathaniel White, Armenia S. White, Miss Dr. Hunt,
of Concord; Miss H. A. Simons, of Manchester. Massachusetts--Julia
Ward Howe, Rev. Rowland Connor, Boston; Mrs. Caroline M. Severance, T.
C. Severance, West Newton; Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Reading; Stephen S.
Foster, Worcester; Rev. A. Bronson Olcott, Concord; Miss Ellen E.
Miles, Waltham; F. B. Sanborn, Springfield. Rhode Island--Col. T. W.
Higginson, Newport. New York--Mrs. Celia Burleigh, Mrs. Anna C. Field,
A. E. Bradley, Miss Mary Hillard, Mrs. A. E. Bradley, N. Y. City; Mrs.
Jennie F. Culver, Syracuse; Ira E. Davenport, Buffalo. New
Jersey--Mrs. Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Newark; Mary F. Davis,
Andrew Jackson Davis, Orange; Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Somerville;
John Gage, Portia Gage, Vineland. Pennsylvania--John K. Wildman and
Mrs. Charles Pierce, Philadelphia. Delaware--Dr. John Cameron,
Isabella H. Cameron, and Samuel D. Forbes, Wilmington. Ohio--Dr.
Hannah M. Tracy Cutler, Mrs. D. R. Tilden, Miss Edwards, Mrs. Dr.
Merrick, Mrs. H. H. Little, Miss Deane, Cleveland; Mrs. M. V. Longley,
Miss Helen J. Wolfe, Cincinnati; A. J. Boyer, Dayton; Mrs. M. M. Cole,
Sydney; Jane O. DeForest, Findlay; Rev. H. J. McConnel, Yellow
Springs; Mrs. Joshua R. Giddings, Ashtabula; Mrs. Esther Walters,
Oberlin; Mrs. Lucinda Poole, Brownville; Rev. G. S. Abbott,
Willoughby; Mrs. Jennie R. M. Eagleson, Cadiz; Mrs. Mercy B. Lane,
Braceville; Mrs. C. T. Crain, J. J. Belville, Dayton; Mrs. E. D.
Stewart, Springfield; Mrs. Lyon Jefferson. Indiana--Amanda M. Way,
Rev. Charles H. Marshall, Mrs. Emi Swank, Indianapolis; J. T. Sage,
Danville; Miss Lizzie M. Boynton, Crawfordsville; Dr. Alice B.
Stockham, Lafayette; Nettie M. Pease, New Albany. Illinois--Myra
Bradwell, Hon. James B. Bradwell, Mrs. E. J. Loomis, Mary A.
Livermore, Chicago; Rev. J. B. Harrison, Bloomington; Mrs. A. Steward,
Plano; Mrs. M. S. Severance, Dixon. Michigan--Rev. Dr. J. B. Stone,
Mrs. L. H. Stone, W. S. Blakeman, Mrs. D. C. Blakeman, Kalamazoo;
Giles B. Stebbins, Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Mrs. Dr. S. L. Jones,
Mrs. Booth, Detroit; Mr. and Mrs. T. J. Sanford, Ann Arbor.
Wisconsin--Lillie Peckham, Julia Ford, Milwaukee; E. L. Cassels, Lone
Rock; Harriet Leland, Elkhorn. Minnesota--Mrs. Addie L. Ballou.
Iowa--Capt. Judson N. Cross, Lyons. Missouri--Mrs. W. S. Hazard, Mrs.
Ida S. Fialla, Miss Ellen Palmer, St. Louis. Florida--Henry S.
Campbell, St. Augustine. Kansas--Gov. J. P. Root, Lawrence.
California--Mrs. C. G. Ames and Mrs. Jennie B. Ritter.

[183] From Ohio--Dr. Hannah M. Tracy Cutler, Chairman. Florida--Henry
T. Campbell. Indiana--Amanda M. Way. Illinois--Mary A. Livermore.
Massachusetts--F. W. Sanborn. Rhode Island--Colonel T. W. Higginson.
New York--Celia Burleigh. New Jersey--Henry B. Blackwell.
Pennsylvania--Mrs. C. Pierce. Michigan--Rev. Dr. Stone.
Wisconsin--Lilie Peckham. Minnesota--Addie L. Ballou. Missouri--Mrs.
W. T. Hazard. California--Mrs. C. G. Ames. New Hampshire--Mrs. A.
White. Delaware--Dr. John Cameron.

[184] _President_--Thomas Wentworth Higginson, of Rhode Island.

_Secretaries_--Mrs. Myra Bradwell, of Illinois; Mrs. Mary F. Davis, of
New York.

_Vice-President_--Hon. Nathaniel White, of New Hampshire; Mrs.
Caroline M. Severance, of Massachusetts; Mrs. Annie C. Field, of New
York; Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, of New Jersey; John K. Wildman,
of Pennsylvania; Dr. John Cameron, of Delaware; Rev. Charles H.
Marshall, of Indiana; Hon. James B. Bradwell, of Illinois; Rev. H. K.
McConnell, of Ohio; Mrs. Addie L. Ballou, of Minnesota; Miss Lilie
Peckham, of Wisconsin; Dr. L. H. Jones, of Michigan; Mrs. Ida Fialla,
of Mississippi; Mrs. Ritter, of California; Captain Judson F. Cross,
of Iowa; Mrs. Henry F. Campbell, of Florida.

_Treasurer_--William N. Hudson, of the Cleveland _Leader_.

[185] The discussions were participated in by Rev. Antoinette Brown
Blackwell, A. Bronson Alcott, Messrs. Bellville, Foster, Gage,
Blackwell, Marshall, Connor, McConnell, Mesdames Ames, Howe,
Livermore, Cutler, Stone, and Hanaford.

[186] Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Rev. Oscar Clute, Mrs. and Miss
Beecher, Lucy Stone, Henry B. Blackwell, Julia Ward Howe, T. W.
Higginson, Mary A. Livermore, Rev. Phebe A. Hanaford, Celia Burleigh,
Antoinette B. Blackwell, Miriam M. Cole, Margaret V. Longley,
Elizabeth K. Churchill, Margaret Campbell, Mrs. Oscar Clute, Agnes
Kemp, Mary F. Davis, Andrew Jackson Davis, G. B. Stebbins, H. M. Tracy
Cutler, Oliver Johnson, A. J. Boyer, Aaron M. Powell, Hon. George W.
Julian, "Grace Greenwood," and others.

[187] WHEREAS, the Democratic party, in the days of Jefferson,
abolished the political aristocracy of wealth and established "a white
man's government;" and

WHEREAS, the Republicans have recently abolished the political
aristocracy of race and established "manhood suffrage;" therefore

_Resolved_, That the progressive tendencies of the age demand the
abolition of the political aristocracy of sex by a XVI. Amendment to
the Federal Constitution, extending suffrage to women.

_Resolved_, That pending the adoption of the XVI. Amendment, we urge
the friends of woman to work in their respective States for the
establishment of this reform by State legislation, especially as the
ratification of any Constitutional Amendment must finally depend upon
the State Legislatures.

_Resolved_, That the American Woman Suffrage Association seeks a
thorough organization of the friends of the cause throughout the
country by the following method, viz.: A central organization (already
existing), organized by delegates from State societies; they in turn
being organized by delegates from local societies, and the whole
originating in primary meetings of the friends of woman suffrage in
every locality.

_Resolved_, That we remonstrate against the proposition now pending in
the Senate of the United States to disfranchise the women of Utah, as
a movement in aid of polygamy, against justice, and a flagrant
violation of a vested right.

_Resolved_, That we congratulate the friends of woman suffrage upon
the unexampled progress of the cause during the past year; upon the
enfranchisement of women in Wyoming and Utah; upon the submission of
the question in Vermont; upon its discussion in eleven State
Legislatures, in numerous public meetings and in newspapers; upon the
introduction of the XVI. Amendment in Congress; upon the extension of
municipal suffrage to the women of Great Britain, and the passage of a
bill to a second reading in Parliament removing all political
disabilities on account of sex, and upon the rapid growth of public
opinion in favor of woman's equality throughout the civilized world.

[188] Ohio--Mrs. M. V. Longley, Mrs. M. M. Cole, Mrs. J. O. De Forest,
Mrs. R. A. S. Janney, Mrs. Mary Graham, Mrs. Harvey Sharpe, Mrs. Mary
L. Strong, J. J. Belville, Mrs. H. M. Little, Miss Rebecca Rice, Mrs.
Currier Brown, Mrs. Emmett, Mrs. Esther Wattles, Mrs. S. E. Newton,
Mrs. E. Calt, Mary A. Currier, Olive C. Atkinson, Rebecca Ream, A. J.
Boyer, Mrs. Hannah M. Clarke, Mrs. Agnes Cook; New York--Mrs. Celia
Burleigh, Mrs. Rogers; Massachusetts--Margaret W. Campbell, Mrs.
Hewitt, Lucy Stone, H. B. Blackwell; Rhode Island--T. W. Higginson;
New Hampshire--Armenia S. White, Mrs. S. C. Pipher; New Jersey--Judge
Whitehead, John Gage, Rev. Oscar Clute, Miss E. L. Bush;
Missouri--Mrs. W. T. Hazard, Fanny Holy; Pennsylvania--John K.
Wildman, Gulielma M. Jones, Dr. H. T. Child, Mrs. Ellen M. Child,
Sarah Pearce, Miss M. W. Abbott, Mrs. E. S. Chapel, John Finlayson;
Indiana--Mrs. Dr. Ellen B. Ferguson, Miss M. F. Burlingame, Miss
Amanda M. Way; Michigan--Catharine A. F. Stebbins, Sarah C. Owen;
Illinois--Hon. J. B. Bradwell, William D. Babbitt, Mrs. E. O. G.
Willard, George M. Campbell; Delaware--S. D. Forbes, Mrs Forbes;
Louisiana--Laura L. D. Jacobs; Nevada--Mary C. Hart. Total number of
States represented, fourteen.

[189] 1. _Resolved_, That the ballot in government means power and
freedom for all; that adult citizens in this republican country can
not be free without it, or be properly clothed with the necessary
means for their own protection; that woman needs this power and
freedom, and therefore should be enfranchised.

2. _Resolved_, That the primary object of the American Woman Suffrage
Association is to secure the ballot for woman, and its general object
includes the establishment of her equality of rights in all
directions.

3. _Resolved_, That the officers of this Association and of each of
the auxiliary State Associations be requested to memorialize Congress
for a XVI. Amendment to the Federal Constitution, prohibiting
political distinction on account of sex. Also, that each State society
be requested to memorialize its Legislature for a change in the
organic law, so as to secure the extension of suffrage to women.

4. _Resolved_, That the ballot for woman means stability for the
marriage relations, stability for the home, and stability for our
republican form of government.

5. _Resolved_, That we recommend the appointment of a Committee of
Conference, of like number with the one appointed by the Union
Suffrage Association, with a view to the union of both organizations.

[190] 3. _Resolved_, That it is the duty of every woman to resent the
cowardly indignity which classes educated, virtuous women as the
political inferiors of the meanest and most degraded men; and that she
should demand the ballot in order to help to make good laws and elect
worthy representatives.

5. _Resolved_, That we recommend a concerted effort on the part of the
woman suffragists to obtain from their respective Legislatures an act
authorizing women to vote at the next Presidential election under the
authority conferred by the first section of the second article of the
Constitution of the United States.

6. _Resolved_, That we cordially approve of the effort to obtain
suffrage for women in the District of Columbia, in Michigan, and
elsewhere, under the provisions of the XIV. and XV. Amendments.

7. _Resolved_, That we urge upon Congress the passage of a XVI.
Amendment, prohibiting political distinctions on account of sex, and
also of a law conferring legal and political equality.

8. _Resolved_, That the claim of woman to participate in making the
laws she is required to obey, and to equality of rights in all
directions, has nothing to do with special social theories, and that
the recent attempts in this city and elsewhere to associate the woman
suffrage cause with the doctrines of free love, and to hold it
responsible for the crimes and follies of individuals, is an outrage
upon common sense and decency, and a slander upon the virtue and
intelligence of the women of America.

[191] 8. _Resolved_, That the Executive Committee be instructed to
address memorials in behalf of woman suffrage to Congress, and to the
national conventions of every political party.

[192] _Resolved_, That suffrage means equality in the home, and
therefore means greater constancy and greater permanency in marriage.

_Resolved_, That the agitation of the peace, temperance, and other
reforms of the day is valuable as a means of creating a public
sentiment in favor of woman suffrage, not only by convincing the men
engaged in them of the necessity of co-operation at the ballot-box,
but by educating woman to a sense of her obligation to avail herself
of every power to secure their consummation.

_Resolved_, That the Executive Committee of the American Woman
Suffrage Association be requested to appoint a deputation to address
the Legislatures of the several States on the subject of woman
suffrage, with the co-operation of the State societies.

[193] 3. WHEREAS women, as a class, have special interests to protect
and special wrongs to remedy, and, as individuals, have peculiar
feminine characteristics and developments in which they differ from
man; therefore,

_Resolved_, That a government of men alone is neither republican nor
representative, but is an aristocracy of sex inconsistent alike with
the highest welfare of man, of woman, and of society.

4. And WHEREAS, The National Republican platform of 1872 affirms that
the admission of woman to wider spheres of usefulness is viewed with
satisfaction, and the honest demand of woman for additional rights
should receive respectful consideration; and

WHEREAS, The Republicans have a large majority in both houses of
Congress; therefore,

_Resolved_, That we call upon Congress to enact a law establishing
impartial suffrage for all citizens irrespective of sex, in the
District of Columbia and the Territories; also to declare woman
eligible to all offices under Government, with equal pay for equal
work: also to submit a XVI. Constitutional Amendment prohibiting
political distinctions on account of sex.

5. _Resolved_, That we demand from the State Legislatures laws
establishing equal suffrage for women in choosing electors of
President and Vice-President of the United States, also in choosing
municipal and State officers, in every case where the qualifications
of voters are not restricted by the State Constitutions; also to amend
the State Constitutions so as to establish equal rights for all.

6. And WHEREAS, many women have recently applied for registration as
voters, and in some cases, have actually voted, and are now being
prosecuted on the charge of having voted illegally; therefore,

_Resolved_, That we call upon the State and Federal courts to
interpret all legal provisions that will admit of such a construction
in favor of the equality of women.

8. _Resolved_, That the Executive Committee be instructed to address
memorials to Congress, and State Legislatures, and National
Conventions of every political party, in behalf of the legal and
political equality of woman.

9. _Resolved_, That we rejoice at the recognition of the rights of
woman in the National Republican platform, and at the explicit
indorsement of woman suffrage by the Republican Convention of
Massachusetts; we congratulate the Republican party upon having
enlisted the heart and intellect and conscience of woman in its
support, and we call upon the party, in this hour of victory, to
consolidate its supremacy by establishing impartial suffrage for all
citizens, irrespective of sex.

[194] _President_--Thos. Wentworth Higginson, R. I.

_Vice-Presidents at Large_--Julia Ward Howe, Hon. Henry Wilson, Mary
A. Livermore, Wm. Lloyd Garrison, Mass.; Hannah M. Tracy Cutler, Ill.;
Geo. Wm. Curtis, N. Y.; Mrs. M. T. Hazard, Missouri; Margaret V.
Longley, Ohio.

_Chairman of Executive Committee_--Lucy Stone, Mass.

_Foreign Corresponding Secretary_--Kate N. Doggett, Ill.

_Corresponding Secretary_--Henry B. Blackwell, Mass.

_Treasurer_--John K. Wildman, Pa.

_Recording Secretaries_--Mary Grew, Pa.; Amanda Way, Kansas.

_Vice Presidents Ex Officio_--Mrs. Oliver Dennett, Me.; Armenia S.
White, N. H.; Hon. C. W. Willard, Vt.; Jas. Freeman Clarke, Mass.;
Elizabeth B. Chace, R. I.; Celia Burleigh, Conn.; Oliver Johnson, N.
Y.; John Whitehead, N. J.; Passmore Williamson, Pa.; Mrs. Elizabeth
Smith, Del.; Miriam M. Cole, Ohio; Mary F. Thomas, M.D., Ind.; Robert
Collyer, Ill.; Augusta J. Chapin, Wis.; Stephen L. Brigham, Mich.;
Mrs. A. Knight, Minn.; Mrs. Helen E. Starrett, Kansas; Amelia Bloomer,
Iowa; Mrs. Beverly Allen, Mo.; Hon. Guy W. Wines, Tenn.; Seth Rogers,
Fla.; Gen. Rufus Saxton, Oregon; Rev. Charles G. Ames, Cal.; Hon. John
C. Underwood, Va.; Rufus Leighton, Wash. Ter.; A. K. P. Safford,
Arizona; Sarah Jane Lippincott (Grace Greenwood), D. C.; Hon. D. K.
Chamberlain, S. C.

_Executive Committee Ex Officio_--Mrs. T. B. Hussey, Me.; Hon.
Nathaniel White, N. H.; Albert Clarke, Vt.; Margaret W. Campbell,
Mass.; Mary F. Doyle, R. I.; Phebe A. Hanaford, Conn.; Anna C. Field,
N. Y.; Mrs. C. C. Hussey, N. J.; Annie Shoemaker, Pa.; John Cameron,
Del.; Mrs. Rebecca A. S. Janney, O.; Martha N. McKaye, Ind.; Myra
Bradwell, Ill.; Mrs. Frank Leland, Wis.; Lucinda H. Stone, Mich.; Abby
J. Spaulding, Minn.; Hon. Isaac H. Sturgeon, Mo.; John Ritchie, Kan.;
Mrs Lizzie B. Read, Iowa; Rev. Charles G. Woodbury, Tenn.; Miss Lottie
Rollin, S. C.; Fannie B. Ames, Cal.; Col. Edward Daniels, Va.; Mrs.
Matilda G. Saxton, Oregon; Rev. Frederick Hinckley, D. C.; Mrs. C. I.
H. Nichols, Cal.; Hon. John A. Campbell, Wyoming.

[195] Mrs. Howe was elected President.

[196] _Resolved_, That our thanks are due to the twenty-two United
States Senators who, at the last session of Congress, voted and paired
in favor of woman suffrage in the Territory of Pembina, and we rejoice
at the submission of woman suffrage to the people by the Legislatures
of Michigan and Iowa, as acts of enlightened statesmanship, which can
not fail, whatever may be the immediate result, to hasten the day of
woman's enfranchisement.

_Resolved_, That the recent indorsement of woman suffrage by the
Methodist Convention of Michigan, by the Conferences of Iowa, and by
various other religious bodies of these and other States, is evidence
that the value of woman's work in the churches begins to be
recognized, and in view of the fact that three-fourths of American
church members are women, we cordially invite the aid of Christians of
all denominations in securing woman's enfranchisement.

_Resolved_, That the recognition of the right of women to vote and
hold office, by the Patrons of Husbandry in their Granges, by the
Sovereigns of Industry in their Councils, and by the Good Templars in
their Lodges, entitles us to regard these societies as practical
auxiliaries of the woman suffrage movement.

_Resolved_, That we protest against the appropriation by Congress or
by State Legislatures of one dollar of the public money, which is paid
in part by women who are taxed without consent, for the purpose of
celebrating the Centennial anniversary of a political independence in
which women are not allowed to participate.

[197] President--Bishop Gilbert Haven, D.D.

[198] Among those on the platform were Bishop Gilbert Haven, Mrs. Lucy
Stone, Miss Mary F. Eastman, Mrs. S. R. Hewitt, Mrs. Maria F. Walling,
Thomas J. Lothrop, and H. B. Blackwell, of Mass.; Mrs. Rebecca Morse,
Mrs. Margaret E. Winchester, Mrs. Halleck, Mrs. Frances D. Gage, Rev.
Dr. Thompson, of New York; Mrs. Mary F. Davis, Rev. Antoinette Brown
Blackwell, Mrs. Henrietta W. Johnson, of New Jersey; Mrs. Margaret V.
Longley and Miss Jane O. De Forest, of Ohio; Mrs. Emma Malloy, of
Indiana; Lelia E. Patridge and C. C. Burleigh, of Pa.; Mrs. Armenia S.
White and Hon. Nathaniel White, of New Hampshire; Mrs. Frances E. W.
Harper, of Md.; S. D. Forbes, of Delaware; and Charles Bradlaugh, of
England.

[199] 1. The American Woman Suffrage Association, in its seventh
annual meeting assembled, re-affirm the great self-evident principle
of equal rights for women, and demand its practical application in the
public and private life of the nation. We declare that women who obey
laws should have a voice in their enactment; that women who pay taxes
should have a voice in their expenditure. We protest against the
subjection and disenfranchisement of woman as injurious to society,
destructive of morals, corrupting to politics, and a reproach to
civilization. We attribute the alarming increase of insults and
personal outrages inflicted upon women to a public sentiment hostile
to their individuality and equality of rights. We affirm that a
Government of the people, by the people, for the people, must be a
Government composed impartially of men and women, and that the
co-operation of the sexes is essential alike to a happy home, a
refined Society, a Christian Church, and a Republican State.

2. In view of the approaching Presidential election, in which a great
party will struggle to retain possession of power, while all the
elements of opposition are organizing for its overthrow, we urge our
friends in each State to petition their Legislature for the enactment,
next winter, of a law enabling women to vote in the Presidential
election of 1876.

3. In view of the evident disintegration of parties, we rejoice at the
steady growth of the new issue of woman suffrage, at its successful
establishment in Wyoming and Utah, in England, Holland, Austria, and
Sweden, and at the recent promise of the Republicans of Massachusetts,
at their State Convention, that they "will support all measures
regarding the promotion of equal rights for all American citizens,
irrespective of sex."

And whereas, on the second day of July, 1776 (two days before the
Declaration of Independence), the Provincial Congress of New Jersey,
assembled at Burlington, extended suffrage to all inhabitants, men and
women; therefore,

_Resolved_, That in commemoration of that notable event we hold a
woman suffrage Centennial celebration at Burlington, N. J., on the 2d
day of July, 1876, or at such other place as the Executive Committee
may select.

_Resolved_, That heroic deeds done for justice and human rights
deserve and should receive commemorative tribute from all those who
love justice and respect human rights; that a Centennial celebration
on the Fourth of July next, of the one-hundredth Anniversary of the
Independence of the United States is in the highest degree proper, and
is due to the brave dead who periled all they had to secure the right
to govern themselves; nevertheless,

_Resolved_, That men who use their political and personal power to
deprive women of their right to govern themselves, can not with
consistency have any share in that Centennial celebration.

[200] President: Mrs. Mary A. Livermore.

[201] These facts are given in the chapter on New Jersey, Vol. I.

[202] Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island,
Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland,
West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Illinois, Missouri, Texas,
Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, Colorado, California, Oregon, District of
Columbia.

[203] WHEREAS, The United States Courts have affirmed that the
regulation of suffrage belongs exclusively to the States, and that
"women are citizens and, as such, may be made voters by appropriate
State legislation;" and,

WHEREAS, A sixteenth amendment to the Federal constitution abolishing
political distinctions on account of sex, although just and necessary,
can be more easily obtained when several States have set the example;
therefore,

3. _Resolved_, That we urge every existing State association to
renewed effort upon the next and each following State Legislature; and
in every State where no such association exists, we urge individual
effort and the immediate formation of a State Society.

[204] President--Mrs. Rebecca N. Hazard, of Missouri.

[205] The President chosen for the ensuing year was Henry B.
Blackwell.

[206] 1. _Resolved_, That we urge upon Congress the performance of
three important duties in behalf of the women of America--

First, To enact a law giving women citizens of the United States,
resident in the Territories, the same political rights as are
exercised by the male citizens of the United States resident therein.

Second, To reform the laws affecting the rights of married women in
the District of Columbia and the Territories.

Third, To submit to the States a constitutional amendment prohibiting
political distinction on account of sex.

2. _Resolved_, That we advise our auxiliary State societies to
petition their respective Legislatures to enact a law this winter
conferring suffrage on women in Presidential elections under Section
2, Article 2, of the Federal Constitution.

WHEREAS, Since the last annual meeting of the Association, three
eminent advocates of the claim of women for equal political rights
have passed away--Lucretia Mott, Lydia Maria Child, and Nathaniel
White--therefore,

3. _Resolved_, That the American Woman Suffrage Association records
its grateful appreciation of their invaluable service and its sense of
irreparable loss, now that the eloquent voice is silent, the ready pen
dropped, and the generous hand is cold in death. In the wealth of
their matured character and great achievement they have left us the
permanent inspiration of a noble example.

[207] President, Dr. Mary F. Thomas, of Indiana.

APPENDIX.

CHAPTER XVI.

WOMAN'S PATRIOTISM IN THE WAR.

_House of Representatives_ (_46th Congress_, _3d Session_. Report No.
386).

ANNA ELLA CARROLL.

_March 3, 1881._--Committed to the Committee of the Whole House, and
ordered to be printed.

Mr. Bragg, from the Committee on Military Affairs, submitted the
following Report (to accompany bill H. R. 7,256):

_The Committee on Military Affairs, to whom the memorial of Anna Ella
Carroll was referred, asking national recognition and reward for
services rendered the United States during the war between the States,
after careful consideration of the same, submit the following:_

In the autumn of 1861 the great question as to whether the Union could
be saved, or whether it was hopelessly subverted, depended on the
ability of the Government to open the Mississippi and deliver a fatal
blow upon the resources of the Confederate power. The original plan
was to reduce the formidable fortifications by descending this river,
aided by the gun-boat fleet, then in preparation for that object.

President Lincoln had reserved to himself the special direction of
this expedition, but before it was prepared to move he became
convinced that the obstacles to be encountered were too grave and
serious for the success which the exigencies of the crisis demanded,
and the plan was then abandoned, and the armies diverted up the
Tennessee River, and thence southward to the center of the Confederate
power.

The evidence before this Committee completely establishes that Miss
Anna Ella Carroll was the author of this change of plan, which
involved a transfer of the National forces to their new base in North
Mississippi and Alabama, in command of the Memphis and Charleston
Railroad; that she devoted time and money in the autumn of 1861 to the
investigation of its feasibility is established by the sworn testimony
of L. D. Evans, Chief-Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas, to the
Military Committee of the United States Senate in the 42d Congress
(see pp. 40, 41 of memorial); that after that investigation she
submitted her plan in writing to the War Department at Washington,
placing it in the hands of Thomas A. Scott, Assistant Secretary of
War, as is confirmed by his statement (see p. 38 of memorial), also
confirmed by the statement of Hon. B. F. Wade, Chairman of the
Committee on the Conduct of the War, made to the same Committee (see
p. 38), and of President Lincoln and Secretary Stanton (see p. 39 of
memorial); also by Hon. O. H. Browning, of Illinois, Senator during
the war, in confidential relations with President Lincoln and
Secretary Stanton (see p. 39, memorial); also that of Hon. Elisha
Whittlesey, Comptroller of the Treasury (see p. 41, memorial); also by
Hon. Thomas H. Hicks, Governor of Maryland, and by Hon. Frederick
Feckey's affidavit, Comptroller of the Public Works of Maryland (see
p. 127 of memorial); by Hon. Reverdy Johnson (see pp. 26 and 41,
memorial); Hon. George Vickers, United States Senator from Maryland
(see p. 41, memorial); again by Hon. B. F. Wade (see p. 41, memorial);
Hon. J. T. Headley (see p. 43, memorial); Rev. Dr. R. J. Breckinridge
on services (see p. 47, memorial); Prof. Joseph Henry, Rev. Dr.
Hodge, of Theological Seminary at Princeton (see p. 30, memorial);
remarkable interviews and correspondence of Judge B. F. Wade (see pp.
23-26 of memorial).

That this campaign prevented the recognition of Southern independence
by its fatal effects on the Confederate States is shown by letters
from Hon. C. M. Clay (see pp. 40-43 of memorial), and by his letters
from St. Petersburgh; also those of Mr. Adams and Mr. Dayton from
London and Paris (see pp. 100-102 of memorial).

That the campaign defeated National bankruptcy, then imminent, and
opened the way for the system of finance to defend the Federal cause,
is shown by the debates of the period in both Houses of Congress (see
utterances of Mr. Spalding, Mr. Diven, Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, Mr.
Roscoe Conkling, Mr. John Sherman, Mr. Henry Wilson, Mr. Fessenden,
Mr. Trumbull, Mr. Foster, Mr. Garrett Davis, Mr. John J. Crittendon,
etc., found for convenient reference in appendix to memorial, pp.
47-59. Also therein the opinion of the English press as to why the
Union could not be restored).

The condition of the struggle can best be realized as depicted by the
leading statesmen in Congress previous to the execution of these
military movements (see synopsis of debates from _Congressional
Globe_, pp. 21, 22 of memorial).

The effect of this campaign upon the country and the anxiety to find
out and reward the author are evidenced by the resolution of Mr.
Roscoe Conkling, in the House of Representatives 24th of February,
1862 (see debates on the origin of the campaign, pp. 39-63 of
memorial). But it was deemed prudent to make no public claim as to
authorship while the war lasted (see Colonel Scott's view, p. 32 of
memorial).

The wisdom of the plan was proven, not only by the absolute advantages
which resulted, giving the mastery of the conflict to the National
arms and evermore assuring their success even against the powers of
all Europe should they have combined, but it was likewise proven by
the failures to open the Mississippi or win any decided success on the
plan first devised by the Government.

It is further conclusively shown that no plan, order, letter,
telegram, or suggestion of the Tennessee River as the line of invasion
has ever been produced, except in the paper submitted by Miss Carroll
on the 30th of November, 1861, and her subsequent letters to the
Government as the campaign progressed.

It is further shown to this Committee that the able and patriotic
publications of memorialist, in pamphlets and newspapers, with her
high social influence, not only largely contributed to the cause of
the Union in her own State, Maryland (see Governor Hicks' letters, p.
27, memorial), but exerted a wide and salutary influence on all the
Border States (see Howard's report, p. 33 and p. 75 of memorial).

These publications were used by the Government as war measures, and
the debate in Congress shows that she was the first writer on the war
powers of the Government (see p. 45 of memorial). Leading statesmen
and jurists bore testimony to their value, including President
Lincoln, Secretaries Chase, Stanton, Seward, Welles, Smith,
Attorney-General Bates, Senators Browning, Doolittle, Collamer, Cowan,
Reverdy Johnson, and Hicks, Hon. Horace Binney, Hon. Benjamin H.
Brewster, Hon. William M. Meredith, Hon. Robert J. Walker, Hon.
Charles O'Conor, Hon. Edwards Pierrepont, Hon. Edward Everett, Hon.
Thomas Corwin, Hon. Francis Thomas, of Maryland, and many others found
in memorial.

The Military Committee, through Senator Howard, in the Forty-first
Congress, third session, document No. 337, unanimously reported that
Miss Carroll did cause the change of the military expedition from the
Mississippi to the Tennessee River, etc.; and the aforesaid Committee,
in the Forty-second Congress, second session, document No. 167, as
found in memorial, reported, through the Hon. Henry Wilson, the
evidence and bill in support of this claim.

Again, in the Forty-fourth Congress, the Military Committee of the
House favorably considered this claim, and General A. S. Williams was
prepared to report, and being prevented by want of time, placed on
record that this claim is incontestably established, and that the
country owes to Miss Carroll a large and honest compensation, both in
money and honors, for her services in the National crisis.

In view of all the facts, this Committee believe that the thanks of
the nation are due Miss Carroll, and that they are fully justified in
recommending that she be placed on the pension rolls of the
Government, as a partial measure of recognition for her public
service, and report herewith a bill for such purpose and recommend its
passage.

Hon. E. M. Stanton came into the War Department, in 1862, pledged to
execute the Tennessee campaign.

_Statement from Hon. B. F. Wade, Chairman of the Committee on the
Conduct of the War, April 4, 1876._

DEAR MISS CARROLL:--I had no part in getting up the committee; the
first intimation to me was that I had been made the head of it. But I
never shirked a public duty, and at once went to work to do all that
was possible to save the country. We went fully into the examination
of the several plans for military operations then known to the
Government, and we saw plainly enough that the time it must take to
execute any of them would make it fatal to the Union.

We were in the deepest despair, until just at this time Colonel Scott
informed me that there was a plan already devised that if executed
with secrecy would open the Tennessee and save the National cause. I
went immediately to Mr. Lincoln and talked the whole matter over. He
said he did not himself doubt that the plan was feasible, but said
there was one difficulty in the way, that no military or naval man had
any idea of such a movement, it being the work of a _civilian_, and
none of them would believe it safe to make such an advance upon only a
navigable river with no protection but a gun-boat fleet, and they
would not want to take the risk. He said it was devised by Miss
Carroll, and military men were extremely jealous of all outside
interference. I plead earnestly with him, for I found there were
influences in his Cabinet then averse to his taking the
responsibility, and wanted everything done in deference to the views
of McClellan and Halleck. I said to Mr. Lincoln, "You know we are now
in the last extremity, and you have to choose between adopting and at
once executing a plan that you believe to be the right one, and save
the country, or defer to the opinions of military men in command, and
lose the country." He finally decided he would take the initiative,
but there was Mr. Bates, who had suggested the gun-boat fleet, and
wanted to advance down the Mississippi, as originally designed, but
after a little he came to see no result could be achieved on that mode
of attack, and he united with us in favor of the change of expedition
as you recommended.

After repeated talks with Mr. Stanton, I was entirely convinced that
if placed at the head of the War Department he would have your plan
executed vigorously, as he fully believed it was the only means of
safety, as I did.

Mr. Lincoln, on my suggesting Stanton, asked me how the leading
Republicans would take it--that Stanton was so fresh from the Buchanan
Cabinet, and so many things said of him. I insisted he was our man
withal, and brought him and Lincoln into communication, and Lincoln
was entirely satisfied; but so soon as it got out, the doubters came
to the front, Senators and Members called on me, I sent them to
Stanton and told them to decide for themselves. The gun-boats were
then nearly ready for the Mississippi expedition, and Mr. Lincoln
agreed, as soon as they were, to start the Tennessee movement. It was
determined that as soon as Mr. Stanton came in the Department, that
Col. Scott should go out to the western armies and make ready for the
campaign in pursuance of your plan, as he has testified before
committees.

It was a great work to get the matter started; you have no idea of it.
We almost fought for it. If ever there was a righteous claim on earth,
you have one. I have often been sorry that, knowing all this, as I did
then, I had not publicly declared you as the author. But we were fully
alive to the importance of absolute secrecy. I trusted but few of our
people; but to pacify the country, I announced from the Senate that
the armies were about to move, and inaction was no longer to be
tolerated, and Mr. Fessenden, head of the Finance Committee, who had
been told of the proposed advance, also stated in the Senate that what
would be achieved in a few more days would satisfy the country and
astound the world.

As the expedition advanced, Mr. Lincoln, Mr. Stanton, and myself,
frequently alluded to your extraordinary sagacity and unselfish
patriotism, but all agreed that you should be recognized for your most
noble service, and properly rewarded for the same. The last time I saw
Mr. Stanton he was on his death-bed; he was then most earnest in his
desire to have you come before Congress, as I told you soon after,
and said if he lived he would see that justice was awarded you. This I
have told you often since, and I believe the truth in this matter will
finally prevail.

B. F. WADE.

FROM HON. ELISHA WHITTLESEY.

_Found among his private papers, and transmitted to Miss Carroll in
1874._

TREASURY DEPARTMENT, COMPTROLLER'S OFFICE, }
_February 20, 1862_. }

This will accompany copies of two letters written by Miss Anna Ella
Carroll to the War Department.

Having informed me of the contents of the letters, I requested her to
permit me to copy her duplicates. When she brought them to me she
enjoined prudence in their use. They are very extraordinary papers as
verified by the result. So far as I know or believe, our unparalleled
victories on the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers may be traced to her
sagacious observations and intelligence. Her views were as broad and
sagacious as the field to be occupied. In selecting the Tennessee and
Cumberland Rivers instead of the Mississippi, she set at naught the
opinions of civilians, of military and naval men.

Justice should be done her patriotic discernment. She labors for her
country and her whole country.

ELISHA WHITTLESEY.

LETTERS TO MISS CARROLL FROM HON. BENJAMIN F. WADE.

Hon. Benjamin F. Wade, who during the war was Chairman of the
Committee on the Conduct of the War, and during the last period of his
services, after the assassination of President Lincoln had elevated
Andrew Johnson to the Presidency, was acting Vice-President and
President of the Senate, was a friend of Miss Carroll. He addressed
the following letter to her in 1869, just before the close of his last
Congressional session:

WASHINGTON, _March 1, 1869_.

MISS CARROLL:--I can not take leave of my public life without
expressing my deep sense of your services to the country during the
whole period of our National troubles. Although a citizen of a State
almost unanimously disloyal and deeply sympathizing with secession,
especially the wealthy and aristocratic class of her people, to which
you belonged, yet, in the midst of such surroundings, you emancipated
your own slaves at a great sacrifice of personal interest, and with
your powerful pen defended the cause of the Union and loyalty as ably
and effectively as it has ever yet been defended.

From my position on the Committee on the Conduct of the War, I know
that some of the most successful expeditions of the war were suggested
by you, among which I might instance the expedition up the Tennessee
River.

The powerful support you gave Governor Hicks during the darkest hour
of your State's history, prompted him to take and maintain the stand
he did, and thereby saved your State from secession and consequent
ruin.

All those things, as well as your unremitted labors in the cause of
reconstruction, I doubt not, are well known and remembered by the
members of Congress at that period.

I also well know in what high estimation your services were held by
President Lincoln: and I can not leave the subject without sincerely
hoping that the Government may yet confer on you some token of
acknowledgment for all these services and sacrifices.

Very sincerely, your friend, B. F. WADE.

On the 28th of February, 1873, three years after his leaving public
life, Judge Wade addressed the following letter:

_To the Chairman of the Military Committee of the United States
Senate:_

DEAR SIR:--I have been requested to make a brief statement of what I
can recollect concerning the claim of Miss Carroll, now before
Congress. From my position as Chairman of the Committee on the Conduct
of the War, it came to my knowledge that the expedition that was
preparing, under the special direction of President Lincoln, to
descend the Mississippi River, was abandoned, and the Tennessee
expedition was adopted by the Government in pursuance of information
and a plan presented to the Secretary of War, I think the latter part
of November, 1861, by Miss Carroll. A copy of this plan was put into
my hands immediately after the fall of Forts Henry and Donelson. With
the knowledge of its author I interrogated witnesses before the
Committee to ascertain how far military men were cognizant of the
fact. Subsequently President Lincoln informed me that the merit of
this plan was due to Miss Carroll; that the transfer of the armies
from Cairo and the northern part of Kentucky to the Memphis and
Charleston Railroad was her conception, and was afterwards carried out
generally, and very much in detail, according to her suggestions.
Secretary Stanton also conversed with me on the matter, and fully
recognized Miss Carroll's service to the Union in the organization of
this campaign. Indeed, both Mr. Lincoln and Mr. Stanton, the latter
only a few weeks before his death, expressed to me their high
appreciation of this service, and all the other services she was
enabled to render the country by her influence and ability as a
writer, and they both expressed the wish that the Government would
reward her liberally for the same, in which wish I most fully concur.

B. F. WADE.

We give extracts from letters written Miss Carroll by Judge Wade,
after his retirement from public life:

JEFFERSON, OHIO, _Sept. 9, 1874_.

This Congress may be mean enough to refuse to remunerate you for your
services, but thank heaven they can not deprive you of the honor and
consciousness of having done greater and more efficient services for
the country in the time of her greatest peril than any other person in
the Republic, and a knowledge of this can not long be suppressed,
though I do not underrate the mighty powers that may be arrayed
against you.

B. F. WADE.

JEFFERSON, OHIO, _Aug. 14, 1876_.

I rejoice that you are to have the testimony in your case published by
Congress, as I can not but believe that Congress, when they have the
facts properly before them, will be shamed into doing you justice,
though late.

I fully appreciate and deeply regret the injustice done you as though
the case were my own. The country almost in her last extremity was
saved by your sagacity and unremitted labor; indeed your services were
so great that it is hard to make the world believe it. Many have been
most generously rewarded for services having no more proportion to
yours than a mole hill to a mountain--and that all this great work
should be brought about by a woman is inconceivable to vulgar minds,
but I hope and believe that justice will triumph at last.

B. F. WADE.

JEFFERSON, OHIO, _Oct. 3, 1876_.

The truth is, your services were so great that they can not be
comprehended by the ordinary capacity of our public men, and then
again your services were of such a character that they threw a shadow
over the reputation of some of our would-be great men. No doubt great
pains has been taken in the business of trying to defeat you; but it
has been an article of faith with me that truth and justice must
ultimately triumph.

Ever yours truly, B. F. WADE.

FROM REVERDY JOHNSON.

WESTMINSTER PALACE HOTEL, }
LONDON, _Nov. 29, 1875_. }

MY DEAR MISS CARROLL:--I remember very well that you were the first to
advise the campaign on the Tennessee River in November, 1861. This I
have never heard doubted, and the great events which followed it
demonstrate the value of your suggestions. That this will be
recognized by the Government sooner or later I can not doubt....

Sincerely your friend, REVERDY JOHNSON.

FROM ORESTES H. BROWNSON.

QUINCY, ILL., _Sept. 17, 1873_.

MISS A. E. CARROLL:--During the progress of the war of the rebellion,
from 1861 to 1865, I had frequent conversations with President Lincoln
and Secretary Stanton in regard to the able and efficient part you had
taken in behalf of the country, in all of which they expressed their
admiration and gratitude for the patriotic and valuable services you
had rendered the cause of the Union. In the hope that you would be
adequately recompensed by Congress....

I am your obedient servant, O. H. BROWNSON.

LETTER OF HON. THOMAS A. SCOTT TO HON. JACOB M. HOWARD, Chairman of
the Senate Military Committee upon Miss Carroll's claim for a pension
after the close of the war:

HON. JACOB M. HOWARD, UNITED STATES SENATE:--On or about the 30th
of November, 1861, Miss Carroll, as stated in her memorial,
called on me as Assistant Secretary of War, and suggested the
propriety of abandoning the expedition which was then preparing
to descend the Mississippi River, and to adopt instead the
Tennessee River, and handed me the plan of the campaign as
appended to her memorial, which plan I submitted to the Secretary
of War, and its general ideas were adopted. On my return from the
South-west in 1862, I informed Miss Carroll, as she states in her
memorial, that through the adoption of this plan, the country had
been saved millions, and that it entitled her to the kind
consideration of Congress.

THOS. A. SCOTT.

LETTER OF HON. THOMAS A. SCOTT TO HON. HENRY WILSON, Chairman of the
Military Committee, United States Senate:

PHILADELPHIA, _May 1, 1872_.

MY DEAR SIR:--I take pleasure in stating that the plan presented by
Miss Carroll, in November, 1861, for a campaign up the Tennessee River
and thence southerly, was submitted to the Secretary of War and
President. And, after Secretary Stanton's appointment, I was directed
to go to the western armies and arrange to increase their effective
force as rapidly as possible. A part of the duty assigned to me was
the organization and consolidation into regiments of all the troops
then being recruited in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, for the
purpose of carrying through _this campaign_, then inaugurated.

This work was vigorously prosecuted by the army, and as the valuable
suggestions of Miss Carroll, made to the Department some months
before, _were substantially carried out through the campaigns in that
section_, great successes followed, and the country was largely
benefited in the saving of time and expenditure.

I hope Congress will reward Miss Carroll liberally for her patriotic
efforts and services.

Very truly yours, THOMAS A. SCOTT.

HON. HENRY WILSON,
_Chairman of the Military Committee, United States Senate_.

LETTER FROM HON. THOMAS A. SCOTT TO MRS. GAGE.

NO. 233 SOUTH FOURTH ST., }
PHILADELPHIA, _Mar. 29, 1880_. }

DEAR MADAM:--I have your letter of March 25th in regard to Miss
Carroll's matter, and beg to say in reply that I do not know whether
the old papers are on file in the War Department or not; I presume the
only way to ascertain would be to apply to the Department direct. I
have done all that I feel I can do in this matter, having given my
evidence before the Committee in the most concise and direct form
possible. I hope that Congress will do something for Miss Carroll, but
with their present economical habits, I doubt very much whether they
will.

Hoping that the Committee in charge of the matter may have success,

I am, very truly yours, THOMAS A. SCOTT.

Editorial from the _National Citizen_ (Syracuse, N. Y.), September,
1881:

THE CONTRAST.--"Look on this picture and on that." While President
James A. Garfield lay dying, another American citizen, one to whom the
country owes far more than it did to him, was stricken with an
incurable disease. But in this case no telegram heralded the fact; no
messages were cabled abroad; few newspapers made comment, and yet had
it not been for the wisdom of this person whom the country forgets, we
should have possessed no country to-day.

Anna Ella Carroll lies at her home near Baltimore, stricken with
paralysis--perhaps already beyond the river. As the readers of the
_National Citizen_ well know, when the nation was in its hour of
extreme peril, with a nearly depleted treasury, with England and
France waiting with large fleets for a few more evil days in order to
raise the blockade, with President, Congress, and people nearly
helpless and despairing, there arose this woman, who with strategic
science far in advance of any military or naval officer on land or
sea, pointed out the way to victory, sending her plans and maps to the
War Department, which adopted them. Thus the tide of battle was
turned, victory perched on the Union banner, and in accordance with
the President's proclamation, the country united in a day of public
thanksgiving.

But that woman never received recognition from the country for her
services. The Military Committee of various Congresses has reported in
her favor, but no bill securing her even a pension has ever been
passed, and now she is dying or dead.

In another column will be found the report of the Military Committee
of the Forty-sixth Congress, in her favor, March, 1881, which as a
matter of important history we give in full, hoping no reader will
pass it by. Under the circumstances we shall be pardoned for giving an
extract from a letter of Miss Carroll to the editor of the _National
Citizen_, accompanied by a copy of this report.

Miss Carroll says: "I am sure you retain your kind interest in the
matter, and will be gratified by the last action of Congress, which is
a complete recognition of my public service, on the part of military
men; both Confederate and Union brigadiers belonging to the Military
Committee."

While this bill was in no sense commensurable with the services
rendered by Miss Carroll to the country, yet as the main point was
conceded, it was believed it would secure one more consonant with
justice at the next session of Congress.

The nation is mourning Garfield with the adulation generally given
monarchs; General Grant is decorating his New York "palace" with
countless costly gifts from home and abroad; yet a greater than both
has fallen, and _because she was a woman_, she has gone to her great
reward on high, unrecognized and unrewarded by the country she saved.
Had it not been for her work, the names of James A. Garfield and of
Ulysses S. Grant would never have emerged from obscurity. Women,
remember that to one of your own sex the salvation of the country is
due, and never forget to hold deep in your hearts, and to train your
children to hold with reverence the name of ANNA ELLA CARROLL.

* * * * *

WOMEN AS SOLDIERS.

A FEMALE SOLDIER.

There is a female here appealing for five months' back pay due her as
a soldier in the army. Her name is Mary E. Wise. She is an orphan,
without a blood relative in the world, and was a resident of Jefferson
Township, Huntington County, Indiana, where she enlisted in the 34th
Indiana Volunteers under the name of William Wise. She served two
years and eighteen days as a private, participating in six of the
heaviest engagements in the West, was wounded at Chicamauga and
Lookout Mountain, at the latter place severely in the side. Upon the
discovery of her sex, through her last wound, she was sent to her home
in Indiana. When she arrived there, her step-mother refused her
shelter, or to assist her in any way. Having five months' pay due from
the Government, she started for Washington, in the hope of collecting
it, arriving in this city on the 4th instant. Here her troubles have
only increased. She can not get her pay. Her colonel probably, under
the circumstances, not deeming it necessary, failed to give her a
proper or formal discharge, with the necessary papers. In her
difficulties she has, repeatedly, endeavored to refer her case to the
President, but, not having influential friends to back her, she has
been disappointed in all her efforts to see him, and the Department
can pay her only upon proper or formal discharge papers, etc. So she
is here, without friends or means, wholly dependent upon the bounty of
the Sanitary Commission.

NATIONAL FREEDMAN'S AID ASSOCIATION.

JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.

WASHINGTON, _April 15, 1870_.

LUCRETIA MOTT--MY DEAR FRIEND:--Feeling that the exact condition of
the worn-out slaves now in this District could be better understood by
a little explanation that I can make, and knowing that you desire the
truth in this matter of life-long interest to you, I desire to refer
to the following facts, which I trust you will present to the meeting
of Friends (Quakers) in Philadelphia who sympathize with you.

In the year 1864, when urging upon Senator Sumner and our friends in
Congress, the necessity of a bureau that could afford special aid to
the emancipated slaves, the great fact that the old people were
suddenly turned out of the possibility of a subsistence, was
recognized by all. Mr. Sumner, in his first speech putting the bill in
passage, urged this as sufficient ground alone, if no other existed,
which was not the case. From the time of the organization of the
Bureau till now, their special claim has been recognized by Congress,
and notwithstanding they received, in common with all the freed people
of this District, an allowance made to each in rations, blankets,
clothes, fuel, Government buildings, medical treatment, and monthly
visitation; they also have each year received from Congress special
aid in an appropriation because of their age and infirmity, many of
them being helpless as infants, and all too far spent in slavery to
labor for a support.

In providing for the able-bodied freed people, only partial support
was intended by the Bureau, to bridge over the transition from slavery
to freedom. Then education and the ballot, added to their own
industrial resources, came in, and furnished them a basis for
self-support and citizenship. The Bureau was no longer a necessary
department in the Government for THIS CLASS, and was abolished,
without a substitute for the aged and worn-out slaves, though they
were now older and more infirm, and had lost in this change houses,
food, fuel, clothing, medical treatment, and, excepting myself,
visiting agents.

Since the discontinuance of the Bureau, I have acted, as before its
creation, as "best friend" and as agent of the National Freedman's
Relief Association of this District, in the care of the old, crippled,
blind, and broken-down, of whom I have at this time in number _eleven
hundred_, not one of whom is able to earn for himself the necessaries
of life. At this moment, at least one hundred and fifty broken-down
slaves are at this office, covering all the porches, sitting on all
the stairs, forming an almost impassable barrier to the entrances--all
with a story of want in their _faces_; in fact of want, from "the
crown of the head to the sole of the half-naked feet," and all eager
to say, "We has nobody to go 'pon." An old woman ninety-one, sat on
the steps just after the sun rose this morning, so _tired_, she looked
a pitying sight for angels. "Can you let me stay anywhere?" she said.
"I'se had no home dis winter; dey let me stay in de wash-room last
night, but der wasn't any blanket, and 'pears I got chilled through."
Upon investigation I found it was true she had no friend or relative,
and had been going on the outskirts of the city begging among the
colored people (poor as herself, except in shelter) _a lodging_, and
often doing with almost nothing to eat for two or three days at a
time. Perfectly disabled for life by weakness (so common among the old
women of slavery) and the infirmities of ninety years of hard life.
Through the noble efforts of Rachel W. M. Townsend in behalf of these
poor human beings, I was able to give her a bedtick and twenty-five
cents for straw to fill it, a comforter, and a place to stay in the
house with two others of the same class, for whom we have all winter
paid rental. What less than _this_ would the loving Saviour of men
have done for one like her? What less would _you_, who have battled
half a century for her freedom, have done in a case like that? She has
now a bed and comforter, _no pillow_, nor bedstead, and _not one_
garment to change with the ragged and filthy ones that have served for
day and night apparel, for bed and outdoor wrappings, the last three
months. She has no resource for bread, _in herself_, and none but God
to whom she can say, "Give" me "this day" my "daily bread". This woman
represents at least two hundred persons in every way as destitute, who
look to me for help. Another class of two hundred are in a similar
state of destitution, with this exception, they are sheltered by a
fellow-servant or distant relative, and sometimes furnished a bed, but
nothing more, and none of these can _labor_.

Two hundred more are equally destitute and as helpless, many of them
as young children, needing the personal care that patients in our
hospitals do, not excepting medical treatment and bathing. Add to
these five hundred, who under the most favorable circumstances _may_,
though do not generally, furnish their bread three months in the
summer, by picking up bones and rags in the alleys and gutters, I
believe I may safely say that out of the eleven hundred there are not
one hundred who can do this, and pay _house-rent_ beside. And it must
be remembered that none of these old people own a foot of ground in
the city, or have a home they can call their own. A few of these only
live with children, some of whom are also very old. Fanny Miner, one
hundred and thirteen, lives with a daughter seventy-two. William
Dennis, ninety-nine, lives with a daughter seventy-four. Anna Sauxter,
one hundred and one, with a consumptive son of sixty, and has slept on
an old table through the winter _watching_, as she says, two days and
a night at one time, _with no food at all_. She was one of the slaves
of Washington. Anna Ferguson, another of his slaves, emancipated when
young, lives in a wretched garret, and has no one to give her a cup of
water. She sent a child to me to-day, who said she went in to borrow
some fire of "old auntie," and found her very sick, groaning with
dreadful pain, with the message that she was perishing for something
to eat; could I send her an Irish potato? She added in her message,
"Tell her to come and see me, I'll not be here long."

I have just now returned from a visit on "the Island," where I have
seen twenty-seven of these helpless persons, a few cases of which
(could you see them) would leave no doubt in your mind in reference to
the necessity of a change from the present state of things. I saw
enough in this visit to fill a book, and could tongue or pen describe
it--to convince the mind of a savage--of terrible inhumanity and lack
of all charity. The morning was sunny and clear, and old Aunt Clara
and Uncle John sat on broken chairs, under the rude perch of a
miserable shanty. He, tall and athletic, his long white beard and
snow-white head, impressive as the type of venerable age, was putting
Aunt Clara's foot into a soft shoe as carefully as though it was the
last time it could be dressed. She 74, neat and velvet-faced, was
stone blind, and so paralyzed that the slightest touch on the arm or
hand made her spring and cry like a child. The shock put out both her
eyes, and made her as helpless as an infant in all particulars.

For one year she has been unable to feed herself, undress, or to do
anything to relieve the monotony of utter helplessness. He had brought
her out in the sun, there was no window in their room, and had spread
a cloth on her lap, as she said, hoping somebody would come along who
would comb her hair. Uncle John was 14, he says, when _Washington
died_. Not a child or a friend to go to them, _there they stay_. They
said they had nothing to eat last night, and were often two days
without a pint of meal, and nothing like food in the house, for the
old man said, "When mamma has her 'poor turns', I never leaves her,
and nobody ever feeds her but me, or dresses or undresses her." I
shall not forget how the tears dropped from her face, as she told the
story of her life. "A _woman once_, but _nobody_ now, comfort all
gone, and hungry and cold the rest of my days." Her mind was
unimpaired, and her faith unwavering.

Henry and Milly Lang were two squares away; persons between sixty and
seventy, living in a shanty used in time of the war as a stable. For
five years they have lived there, paying, in all but the last two
months, _four dollars a month_ rent. Milly is also stone blind, and
_sick_ and helpless. They were in great distress, had no food in the
house, for Henry has hip disease, and for eleven weeks has not walked
a step. On every side I could look through the open boards, and when
the last storms came, they said the rain came down on the whole floor,
covering it, so they sat on the pallet all day. The landlord has
ordered them _to leave the house_ in five days, _to put in a cow_
instead! Friendless, homeless, penniless!!! and yet _must_ eat or die.
Three of those I saw were over one hundred--one had five children,
when Washington died, lived in his county. Sixteen were over seventy.
Not one of them had a child in this city. Five were over 80; and all
of these whom I saw were as dependent as infants.

Johnny Scraper sat in rags, paralyzed from the top of his head to the
soles of his feet, alone in a six-by-ten-foot room, unable to walk a
step, yet is left entirely alone, sometimes for three days. If he has
anything brought in to eat, he thanks God; if not, he must do without
it. Tuesday and Saturday night he says a fellow-servant, living in a
distant part of the city, came to see him, and sometimes brought a
piece of fish or meat; this is all the chance he has for anything,
except a little meal or dry bread. Every one of these old people
complained that they were _dying_ for some meat--were so weak. Aunt
Dinah said that she went out on the street last week and begged of the
school children, who gave her seven cents, and she went into a grocery
to buy a piece of meat, and received there five cents more. "Oh!"
said she, "how that strengthened me, it lasted me _three days_."

I might go on and fill the sheet with incidents of these extremely
aged pilgrims and strangers in this city, for whom nobody cares. But I
should fail to convey to you any just idea of what they suffer,
because you can see there is no parallel to their status. In no city
on the globe can you find a people to whom the words of Wood (I think
it is) so well apply--"_paupers_ whom nobody owns." You must see them
_as they are to believe_.

The Government says, "They _need provisions_, let the _city_ be
taxed." The city says, "We care for the multitude of legitimate
paupers of the Government--pensioners, who die waiting for their
claims, _but these are special wards_, brought to the capital by
special legislation, not any of them voluntary residents. We are
unable to provide for this surplus of poor." Turning to the people of
the country, they say, "We have given them their freedom, let them
take care of themselves!" To the Abolitionists, and they rebuke us for
listening to their cry, and say, "It is no more than must be expected;
let them alone and they will die off." Even the loudest professors
have said to me, "As long as you _will_ take care of these poor old
creatures, so long you may; there are plenty of others to come." So
turn which way we may, we are met with coldness and distrust.

I come now to you, and ask what is our _duty_ to these worn-out
slaves, whose labor we have enjoyed in the general prosperity, and
whose destiny on earth we have fixed by legislation, over which they
could have no control? In old age we have taken from their homes these
people, and calling them "free," we have said to them, "Be ye warmed
and clothed," and then gone on our way. Had I, like most others, have
been so fortunate as not to have met these old people, on the day of
arrival here as they came out from slavery, nor have listened to the
thousand witnesses, that have each day testified to utter inability to
live without charity, as a practical relief, I might as easily as
they, perhaps, satisfy my conscience by the above reasoning; but one
thing is sure, whoever stands in my place will find no half-way
measure will answer. They can not look these people in the face, as
they come, averaging under the present arrangements of the Secretary
of War _two hundred a day_, to ask for _bread and wood_, and clothes
and shoes and shelter, and bed and blanket and medicine, not one of
whom can be satisfied without _food_.

One of the most distressing days we have seen was last Tuesday, when
two hundred and fifty all broken down, _stood and sat_, three long
hours, waiting and hoping that the Commissary would send bread or
rations, but none came, and we could get only _twenty-five loaves for
them_. Many came from the suburbs of the town, some from over the
river, not less than five miles away, and had left an aged companion
and orphan grandchildren on the alert for their return, with something
for a dinner or a meal. But nothing came; and yet, as they left with
sorrow in their faces, that almost breaks my heart to think of, in
their meek way one after another said, "You'se done all you could,
Honey, we'll do the _best we_ can, and come again to-morrow."

You see, _these people must eat_. Bread must be furnished every day,
rain or shine, hot or cold. I ask what is our duty? Will God perform a
miracle to feed this multitude? I can not ask you, "Is it safe to
leave them in the hands of the Government or the city?" I have for six
years _plead_, as for the life of them, with both. None but God knows
how earnestly I have laid their claims before officials in the highest
departments. By the _greatest_ efforts, and with the sympathy of a
small number of friends, who in Congress see with us, and have from
the beginning, that the repudiation of this claim _must_ call down
upon the Nation the just judgments of heaven, we have secured the
special appropriations up to this time.

The history of the past warns us that unless the people, their
constituents at home, recognize this duty, and work with us more
earnestly by organized effort, and generous heartfelt contributions,
the Government will ignore their claim altogether. Indeed I trembled
at the prospect of this immediate result. Excepting the few noble men
and women whose sympathy and aid I would have, and ever pronounce
unparalleled in the history of benevolent work--_but for these_,
Congress might well say, "The people do not demand it. They _do
nothing_, why should we?" If you say, "Provision must be made for
them, they must not be left to starve and die, like Andersonville
prisoners," then let us agree upon the best measures to relieve them,
and put an end to the system of slow starvation under which so many
have this winter suffered and died.

We need and _must_ have a hospital-home building to gather in the
scattered, helpless ones, who now live alone, and in distant
localities. With such an institution we could with far greater economy
than ever before, provide for them all. But I have trespassed too long
upon your patience. I thank you and all the friends in Philadelphia
for timely aid during the past winter, and trust you will lay this
before your yearly meeting soon to convene, as an appeal for help in
the future. Hoping to hear what you think is our duty in this
emergency,

Faithfully and lovingly, JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.

ROADSIDE, NEAR PHILADA. 5mo. 1st. '70.

MY DEAR JOSEPHINE:--Thy several sheets were duly received and read
with heartfelt and thrilling attention. It may seem neglectful that no
acknowledgment has been made before.

I have waited hoping to have more than a _mere_ acknowledgment. I took
the letter to our meeting, and added somewhat to the appeal made the
week before, by our earnest, truly sympathetic R. W. M. Townsend.

Just at this time the approach of our yearly meeting, the claims of
the Indians under the care of our Friends, the freedmen's schools at
the South, also under our care--for whom thousands have been
raised--and the Swarthmore College, just reporting its great need to
pay off a debt, etc. All these pressing their claims, of course make
it more difficult to collect beyond _our_ city poor, who are ever
appealing to us--many of whom also suffering from the effects of cruel
slavery. Still thy account was too harrowing to be cast aside, and a
few men took hold of it and called a meeting. So I will enclose the
small sum of $20, which thou doubtless will find use for.

I was sorry not to have time to speak to thee before leaving that
Fifth Avenue Woman Suffrage Meeting. My daughter, fearing we should
miss the cars to take us twelve miles to her children at Orange,
rather hurried me away.

I can not be in New York again now. Our yearly meeting occurs in
Anniversary Week. My son, Edward M. Davis, took thy letter to have a
copy taken before returning it to thee. He thought he might make some
use of it for the benefit of those poor, aged sufferers.

Thine in haste and affectionately, LUCRETIA MOTT.

LETTERS TO MRS. STEBBINS.

Emily Robinson, of Salem, Ohio, writes me that Mrs. Griffing "was for
several years the honored, loved, and trusted agent of the Western
Anti-Slavery Society. The fact is indelibly graven on my heart that
she was one of the most faithful and indefatigable laborers in the
Anti-Slavery cause; she brought a great mother-heart to the work.
Under fearful discouragement, she was ever strong and persevering. I
do hope that you knew her, even better than I did, and that the
history will be a success. Be sure of my heartiest and kindliest
sympathy. It is a beautiful work--the effort to preserve and embalm
the memories of the sweet-souled moral heroes in special reforms,
those in which we have been pioneers, though scores go out of life
without, in the book of God's remembrance they are gathered, and their
work will bear harvest forever and ever."

Mrs. Griffing's daughter says in a letter: "Mother lived till Feb. 18,
1872, and no one can ever know how faithfully she worked for every one
but herself. Her very last words were, as she dropped her tired arms
by her side, 'I have done the best I could,' and we knew she had."

DEATH OF MRS. JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.--Yesterday morning, at two
o'clock, Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing departed to a higher life. A woman
of rare beauty of character, of uncommon executive capacity and
judgment, and ever inspired by a beautiful and self-sacrificing
charity, she had warm friends among the best men and women, eminent in
character, influence, and position, and a host of devoted friends also
among the poor and aged freed people, to whom for years she has been a
daily angel of mercy. Accomplished and cultivated, she has devoted
herself to the wants of the poorest of the poor, visiting their homes
and ministering to their wants with her own hands. She has disbursed
many thousands of dollars and a large amount of food and clothing
furnished by the Government and by private benevolence, and done all
wisely and well and for long periods of time without material fee or
reward.

Rarely, indeed, do we find such tender charity, such ability for
continuous labor, and such spiritual beauty of life as hers, and
her departure is no doubt the result of her too severe and
self-sacrificing career of good works.

From 10 A.M. to 4 P.M. to-day the remains may be seen by her many
friends at her late home, on Capitol Hill, and to-night her daughters
go with all that is mortal of a most tender and loving mother to the
family burial-place in her native town of Hebron, Conn.--_Washington
Chronicle._

MRS. GRIFFING TO CATHARINE F. STEBBINS.

WASHINGTON, _June 27, 1870_.

MY DEAR MRS. STEBBINS:--Yours so kind and interesting came duly, and I
thank you. I am sure you have seen how some _genius_, greater, more
powerful than myself control me and forbids me to seek enjoyment in
human friendships. If you comprehend my life, you will pardon long
silence of the _lips_, and join me in the prayer, that the poor all
taken into "Abraham's bosom," I may _enjoy_ those I love, in heaven. I
am pained when I think that not only _you_, but my dear father in his
affliction, has been neglected, for it is now four long weeks since I
have written a word of love and consolation to him. But the days are
so full of work, and the nights of thinking, that all my vitality
seems to be in requisition, and I sometimes think there is no reserve
force left in me. Oh, how I wish our Christianity would be true to
itself, and take to its heart the great questions of humanity, then
would I turn over a precious few of the starving old people now
calling upon God and me for their support, to churches, and enter the
field for woman.

How grandly the tide is lashing the shore on both sides of the
Atlantic, and its voice is the voice of God, commanding once more that
ye "let my people go, that they may serve me." Only the foam and the
surge are seen to-day--"Woman and the Ballot." But there is
overturning and upheaving below, and the great depths shall ere long
become the surface, and what is now seen in the social realm and
believed in, as a _religious creed_, must enter into the formation,
geologically conforming to fossilization and decay; so the last shall
be first, and the first last. The last half century is a grand
prophecy. How _slavery_ went down, carrying away social and religious
systems with it! There they lie, like dust and ashes in the rear. None
are found so poor and benighted as to do homage at their shrine. It
was the moral agitation that gave spiritual birth to the race
enslaved. I remember to have felt great impatience at the tardy and
conservative elements that entered into the struggle side by side with
the radical leaders of 1845, when to me the issue was not with the
Constitution, nor even with the pulpit, nor the Bible, but with
Justice. It was man to man, stripped of all but the Divine within him.
The lessons of moral and political formation in its slow but certain
work, come to strengthen me now. To my mind the issue of to-day in the
woman cause is clearly not what Paul taught and thought, nor what God
has settled upon her as her dower, nor what the marriage contract
makes her, but it is woman as a beneficent genius, next to the angels,
against woman below the beasts, in human society under the heel of the
Law, in the arms of brute force, crushed to death with passion and
lust. Lucy Stone has made it obvious to the world that six plates, six
teacups and saucers, and a guardian for her children, at the time of
her husband's death, are not her only legitimate property. Mrs.
Stanton goes further, and declares that not alone is her property
sacred, and must be restored to her, but that _personal freedom_,
subject to the Moral Law, not to the law of Society, nor of
Government, if those powers contravene or interfere with God's Law as
it is written in her own constitution.

In so much as woman is endowed by the Creator with the most loving and
beneficent genius or nature capable of enduring the agonies of many
deaths, to give life to many souls, in so much she is entitled to
command, not left to obey. So says Mrs. Stanton; I agree with her.
Both Lucy Stone and Mrs. Stanton are skilled workmen. Both
representative women; representing the two wings in the cause of
woman's freedom.

You speak of Mrs. Stanton's view in the McFarland-Richardson case. I
knew but little of the real character of Mrs. Richardson, but if what
is acknowledged to be true of his,--I do agree with Mrs. S. in
declaring this case a forcible argument--not against _marriage_,--such
a thing can not be--but against the marriage _contract_, as
interpreted in the courts. What a burlesque upon insanity! Poor Minnie
Gaines, the colored girl who shot her seducer the other day, in my
neighborhood, was cleared upon as doubtful insanity as McFarland's,
and she enjoys the benefit of the doubt in the insane asylum, where
she will remain unquestionably for a term of years; why does this _man
"go at large"_? Neither of the Associations, nor journals, are ready
to assume the high ground that Mrs. Stanton standing alone and
leading, as she always has on this question, can and will do. With all
my heart, I pray that true women and the angels will stand by and
sustain her in this noble daring.

Our work (the Freedman's work) is as usual, every day painfully
interesting and compensating. _No money comes yet_, and I have to
raise some $2,000 soon, or lose our delightful home. (Yes, it is
delightful). We have a bad city government, the colored people begin
to feel the old rebel spirit. Hundreds thrown out of work, and I have
nothing to hope from the City Council to compensate for my work. Some
good friend said a few days since, that Congress would, if persons of
influence would ask it, pay me. Now would Mr. Ward with Mr. Wade, do
this, and so let me breathe and live? or not?

We can not go out of the city this summer. You will be in Philadelphia
at the Decade meeting I hope, and I shall rejoice to be there too. You
see the Peace Society is in "hot water" over the McFarland-Richardson
discussion in the _Band of Peace_.

Thermometer stood at 107° yesterday, and very hot to-day. Write when
you can, and believe me ever your attached friend,

J. S. GRIFFING.

* * * * *

THE WOMAN'S LOYAL LEAGUE.

LETTERS IN RESPONSE TO THE CALL FOR MEETING OF THE LOYAL WOMEN OF THE
COUNTRY.

NEW HAMPSHIRE.

HAMPTON, N. H., _May 4, 1863_.

MISS ANTHONY--DEAR MADAM:--I cheerfully respond to the call, published
in _The Liberator_, to the loyal women of the North, to meet on the
14th inst. I am sensible that you will have responses from many whose
words will be more potent, and who can do braver deeds than I can do.
But I want to add my feeble testimony, notwithstanding, to encourage
this first effort of American women, in a national capacity, to
sustain the Government, and help guide it through the perils which
threaten its existence, thus demonstrating not only their loyalty, but
their ability to understand its genius; the quickness of their
perception of the cause and also of the remedies of the dangers which
imperil the nation; and also their fitness to be admitted to take part
in its deliberations. Not long since, men here at the North--loyal
men--men who were not in favor of slavery, denied that they had any
responsibility in regard to its existence. Marvelous, that they could
not see that slavery is a moral pestilence, poisoning all the
fountains of society, spreading infections over all the nation. Now
the war teaches them that they have a responsibility, and that it
would have been better had they seen it earlier. The right to take any
responsibility in regard to it was denied to woman; it was out of her
sphere; it ran into politics, which were unfit for woman, and into
governmental affairs, which she was supposed incompetent to
comprehend. But this painful hour of warfare crowds home upon us the
conviction that woman's interests equally with man's are
imperiled--private as well as public, individual as well as social.
She must not only consent to the sacrifice of husbands and sons
falling in their blood on the enemy's ground; but failing to conquer
them there, these enemies are eager to change the scene of action,
transfer the battle-field to our own doors, spread death and
devastation, and then establish slavery as a legacy to us. Yes, let it
be shown and sent home to the hearts of those who shall meet, that
woman is equally interested and responsible with man in the final
settlement of this problem of self-government.

Wishing that the women of every State may be largely represented by
earnest and faithful representatives, able to give wise counsel and
efficient action, I am very cordially with you in spirit,

CLARISSA G. OLDS.

BRADFORD, N. H., _May 10, 1863_.

MRS. STANTON--MY DEAR MADAM:--I thank you for myself, and for
thousands of women in our State, who may perhaps remain silent, for
the clarion call you have rung through the land for a convention of
the loyal women of the nation, to be held at New York on the 14th of
the present month. God bless you for the rallying cry, and may there
be such a gathering of patriotic women as the times demand. I trust
the women of our State will be well and largely represented. I must
believe that the women nurtured among our granite hills are ready for
all earnest work and brave self-sacrifice, to help bear up and on the
banner of freedom, till it waves in victory over all our beloved
country. I wish you a hearty God-speed in all noble and patriotic
efforts.

Truly yours, MARY J. TAPPAN.

DEBRY, N. H.

We rejoice in your call to the women of our country to do something,
in the great hour of her peril. They are generally too indifferent to
her success or failure, lack zeal and earnestness, and need
enlightenment on the true state of this contest. It is not a mere
matter of triumph of arms, but of principle, which will affect us and
future generations.

H. T. and M. ADAMS.

VERMONT.

RANDOLPH, Vt., _May 9, A.D. 1863_.

_The Ladies of Randolph to the Loyal Ladies assembled at New York,
send Greeting:_--

Thrillingly interested in all that concerns the great cause in which
we, who love the inheritance our fathers bought for us at such a price
of life and treasure, are now all embarked, the ladies of our
Association desire, on this occasion, to manifest their _oneness_ of
_spirit_ with you for everything that may promote loyal devotion to
our country.

We who have offered up on her altars what is dearer to us than
life--our fathers, husbands, sons, and brothers--so that almost every
home has made its sacrifice, and the blood of many from among us has
already been shed, while others come back crippled for life--need
hardly tell you that we are of one heart and mind with them, and ready
to be bound and offered up too.

May the God of our fathers hear our cry, and save our beloved country
from those who would destroy all her liberties.

Very truly yours, MRS. R. PARKINSON.

In behalf of the Ladies' Aid Society.

MASSACHUSETTS.

PITTSFIELD, _May 12, 1863_.

MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY--DEAR MADAM:--In response to the thrilling and
patriotic address of Mrs. "E. C. Stanton on behalf of the Women's
Central Committee," accompanying the "Call for a Meeting of the Loyal
Women of the Nation on the 14th inst.," I beg leave to say that my
heart is with you in the great work of crushing the rebellion.

Our strength, clearly, is not "to sit still" at a time like the
present. Although much has already been done by the women at the
North, in their subordinate sphere, for the relief and comfort of the
soldiers, yet the supineness of many of our sex has exposed us all to
rebukes.

We hear of the enthusiasm of women at the South in aid of the
Slave-holders' Rebellion, and can form some estimate of the
"fierceness of their wrath"; but, God be thanked, the days approach
when their mad passions will recoil upon themselves--the days approach
when their evil cause must die. Let us unitedly pledge ourselves to
stand by the Government, in our legitimate sphere, and _out of it_, if
needs be. Let us, with womanly zeal, help to crush the power of its
iniquitous assailants, remembering that the name of woman is in the
list with those who "subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained
promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire,
escaped the edge of the sword, out of weakness were made strong, waxed
valiant in fight, turned to flight the armies of the aliens."

Shall we not, in this "crisis of our country's destiny," imitate the
example of these heroic worthies, if "hereunto we are called"?

Very truly yours, MRS. SARAH R. BARNES.

WORCESTER, _April 20, 1863_.

DEAR SUSAN:--I see your call to the loyal women. Will you let me know
distinctly if you propose to commit yourselves to the idea of loyalty
to the present Government? I can not believe you do. But to me there
is something equivocal in the call, if it does not mean that. I am
sorry it is not explicit on that point.

You and I believe if the present Administration had done its duty, the
rebellion would have been put down long ago. Hence, we hold it with
its supporters responsible for the terrible waste of treasure and of
blood thus far, and for that which is to follow. It needs strong
rebuke instead of unqualified sympathy and support.

Hastily, yours as ever, ABBY KELLY FOSTER.

NATICK, _May 8, 1863_.

Every loyal woman in America has a part to perform in this great
struggle for the preservation of the nation. I trust that the coming
meeting in the city of New York will inspire the women of the loyal
States with new zeal and patriotism, and enable them to serve more
efficiently their once prosperous, but now distracted, country.

Yours respectfully, MRS. HENRY WILSON.

CONNECTICUT.

_The Loyal Women of Manchester, Ct., to the Meeting of Loyal Women in
New York, Greeting:_--Patriotism in this town is in the ascendant.
Impelled by the conduct of traitors, dupes, and cowards, the loyal
women of Manchester formed themselves into a League, in which they
resolved to be unconditionally loyal to the Government and its
institutions; to abhor treason and cowardice in every form, and under
every disguise; to encourage and sustain our brave soldiers by
constant tokens of interest; to study carefully the great principles
of civil liberty, which constitute the spirit and life of our
Republican Government; and to publicly wear as the badge of the Loyal
League the Union colors, until the day of our national triumph. We
mean by this to occupy no doubtful position, and to express ourselves
in no ambiguous words. We believe in the Union, one and inseparable,
and stick to the motto, "_E Pluribus Unum_."

We find nothing to justify the rebellion, and have no sympathy with
those who do. We long for peace, but believe in war as the only
legitimate way to reach it; therefore hail the advance of our armies,
and rejoice in every Union victory with unspeakable joy.

We believe, moreover, in the natural rights of man, and intend to
stand by our President in his Emancipation Proclamation. We regard
negro-hate and disloyalty as near akin, and feel that those who would
not employ the black man to save the country are not over-anxious to
save it themselves.

The Loyal League of Manchester numbers some five hundred members, and
we mean by all within our power to cast our influence on the side of
the Union, and its brave defenders.

In true sympathy with all who stand by the Government and repel its
enemies, in behalf of the Executive Committee and members,

MRS. S. M. DORMAN.

NEW YORK.

WATERLOO, N. Y.

I have read Mrs. Stanton's call to the loyal women of America, and can
not resist telling you how valuable such a suggestion appears. For
what is more meet, than that those upon whom fall the direst agonies
of the war should with one voice cry out, "Give us a nation for whose
preservation we may joyfully surrender our heart's dearest treasure;
but swear by the green graves of our slaughtered brethren, that this
sacrifice shall seal the doom of every trafficker in human flesh?"

SARAH HUNT.

UTICA, N. Y., _April 19, 1863_.

We write to assure you that we appreciate the address of Elizabeth
Cady Stanton, published in _The Tribune_ of the 18th. We have long
expected such a call, and regard it as the external manifestation of a
wide-spread demand among women.

MARY DEAN, and Seven other Women.

WATERLOO, _May 4, 1863_.

MY DEAR FRIEND:--I read with great pleasure the "Call for a meeting of
the Loyal Women of the nation." I think such a gathering can not fail
of great and good results. I hope you will have a correct and full
report of the proceedings for the benefit of those who can not be
present to see and hear for themselves.

Sincerely yours, PHEBE B. DEAN.

FREY CHAPEL, _May 1, 1863_.

TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY--DEAR MADAM:--In response to the call for a
meeting of the loyal women of the nation in the City of New York, on
Thursday, the 14th of May, the undersigned wish to be represented at
the ten o'clock session.

HARRIET GRAHAM, EMILY FREY, and 88 others.

NEW JERSEY.

OLD BRIDGE, MIDDLESEX COUNTY, N. J.

MRS. E. C. STANTON:--Being unable to attend in person in answer to
your stirring appeal to the loyal women of the nation, and feeling a
deep interest in this cause, we can not forbear answering it in this
manner at least. We do not believe there is a lack of enthusiasm in
the mass of the women of the North; all we want is a common channel in
which to pour it out. Do this, only point us the way, and you will
find our efforts as irresistible as the tides of the ocean.

We believe now, if ever, Halleck's lines apply:

"Strike, till the last armed foe expires,
Strike, for our altars and our fires;
Strike for the green graves of our sires,
God, and our native land."

Hoping God may so direct you that our dear bleeding country may be
cheered through the storm and darkness to a glorious peace, with our
starry flag floating as of old from the Bay of Fundy to the far shores
of the Pacific, and believing that freedom, truth, and right must
prevail,

We are, for ourselves and numerous friends,

Respectfully and truly yours,

MARY E. DISDROW, MARGARET M. WILLIS.

PENNSYLVANIA.

COLUMBIA, PA., _May 8, 1863_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY--DEAR MADAM:--I beg that my name may be recorded with
those of the Loyal Women of the Nation. Though we walk in darkness,
tears, and blood all the days of this generation, let us not shrink;
we have to do the most blessed duty ever laid upon a people. Though we
see not the end, our deed shall be blessed. Let us rejoice that upon
us is laid _the glory of suffering for the good of mankind_. Though
all our dearest fall, though we are wrapt in woe, let us not flinch to
the bitterest end. Right shall triumph. God shall cause the wrath of
man to praise Him. Upon Northern traitors be unutterable and
everlasting contempt. Highest honors, tenderest glory to our heroes,
immortal in the heart of the nation.

SOPHIA LYMAN SMITH.

We wish to obtain the documents of the Ladies' National Union League,
that we may be "transformed into the same image"; and also desire to
wear the same badge.

Yours fraternally, MARY R. H. HAYNES,
_President Richwood Ladies' Union League_.

PENNSYLVANIA STATE NORMAL SCHOOL,
MILLERSVILLE, _May 11, 1863_.

_To the National Convention of Loyal Women_:

LADIES:--I beg leave to introduce to you Miss Fannie W. Willard and
Mrs. Annie V. Mumford, who have been elected by the ladies of this
institution as delegates to represent them in your Convention. Hoping
that, by word and work, your Convention may add strength to the arm
that is now raised in defense of the nation's life, I am,

Yours truly, J. P. WICKERSHAM, _Principal_.

GREEN GROVE, LUZERNE CO., PA., _May 8, 1863_.

DEAR MADAM:--With pleasure I read the "Call," and gladly would respond
to it in person, but must be content with sending my name.
Prospectively I see the places of meeting filled to overflowing,
every eye kindling with enthusiasm, every heart swelling with
patriotism, all determined to aid in preserving our sacred legacy of
liberty. The woman who is not truly loyal is unworthy the protection
of our dear old flag.

May God bless all the efforts made in sustaining the best Government
on earth!

Yours sincerely, SARAH J. VOSBURGH.

_From the Loyal Ladies of Stevensville, Pa., to the Ladies assembled
in Convention in New York_:

DEAR SISTERS:--Although unable to co-operate with you in your noble
efforts in behalf of our country by attending your Convention, we dare
not remain silent when treason is in our very midst, and thousands,
with blind fury, are trying to uproot the fair tree of Liberty which
our fathers planted and watered with their blood. We have already sent
our fathers, husbands, brothers, and sons to defend our country, and
are willing to make still greater sacrifices if necessary. We heartily
sustain the President in every effort he has made to put down the
rebellion, and hope that the war may be prosecuted with renewed vigor,
until every traitor, North or South, shall be subdued. We would
express our sympathy for the brave soldiers in the field and for those
who are languishing in prisons and hospitals, and pray that their
sacrifices and sufferings may not be in vain. May the angel of Peace
soon spread her wings over our unhappy country, is the prayer of your
loyal sisters,

MRS. ANGIE E. L. STEVENS,
_And Twenty-five other Women of Stevensville, Pa_.

WEST AUBURN, PA., _May 9, 1863_.

In compliance with the call for a meeting of the Loyal Women, we, the
undersigned, take this method to manifest our approbation of the
President's Proclamation. Thinking we comprehend the principles
involved in the nation's struggle for existence, we believe it the
duty of every loyal woman to pledge herself to co-operate, in word and
deed, for the benefit and encouragement of our brave men in the field,
until our country is Free.

LUCY A. SEELY,
_And Thirty-five other Women of West Auburn, Pa_.

KENNETT SQUARE, PA.

DEAR MRS. STANTON:--The deep interest I feel in the subject to be
considered in your Convention, prompts me to an expression of my
sympathy in the movement. May you be able to speak God's truth in
tones that shall arouse a nation's heart to a prompt performance of a
nation's duty, will be the earnest prayer of many who are not
privileged to meet with you in solemn convention.

HANNAH M. DARLINGTON.

COLUMBIA, PA.

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Let me have the happiness of giving my name where
are my heart and soul, with the loyal women of the nation.

MRS. F. BOARDMAN WELLS.

OHIO.

_To the Loyal Women, assembled in National Meeting in New York, the
Loyal Women of Wilmington, Ohio, send Greeting_:

We have heard your earnest call for a National Meeting of women, and
our hearts respond as one to the call, and our hands willing to do
more than has yet been done. Here, as everywhere in the North, we have
formed societies and united our efforts in contributing what we might
to soothe, encourage, and cheer. But we would not speak of what we
have done, for it is but a mite compared to the need, and a drop among
the millions that have been given our brave ones who are so gloriously
defending our homes. But the wide future with its great destiny is
before us, and we hope after earnest counseling you will decide what
more can be done, and we will gladly work with you as sisters, as
daughters of our kind All-Father, as children of our common country
for the good of all.

We shall be glad to hear of the decision of your meeting, and doubt
not it will waken many who are slumbering to a sense of the duty of
immediate action in a cause so just, and fraught with untold interest,
not only to our own beloved country, but to the whole world.

LOUISE MCGREGOR, Secretary.

MARTINSBURG, OHIO, _May 7, 1863_.

To SUSAN B. ANTHONY:--I was rejoiced and encouraged on reading your
call for an assembly of the loyal women of the nation, and feel
constrained to address you a word. For although I may not be able to
elucidate the principles on which a free government is founded, with
the force and clearness of many others who will doubtless respond to
your call, nor awake enthusiasm with that magic power that some of the
anti-slavery women of the North possess in so high a degree, I shall
at least give to Ohio and my country one more voice in favor of a
united and free republic; and certainly no voice should be silent when
called to speak for liberty.

It was fit that the first work of the women of the North should be for
the comfort of those who are enduring the hardships of the camp,
exposed to sickness, and to the deadly horrors of the battle-field, in
their defence.

But this is not all that should be done by intelligent women living
under a free government, when that government is in danger of being
overthrown by wicked conspirators. Every power and influence granted
us under the social and political regulations of our country should be
unreservedly laid upon the altar of liberty and right. It is necessary
that we fully understand the nature of the conflict in which we are
engaged. Enthusiasm can elevate and sustain but for a moment, unless
upheld by the power of a great principle. Not only is our welfare as a
great nation at stake, but the oppressed of the world look anxiously
and hopefully to us as holding the key to their prison doors, which we
may unlock if we will.

In view of the greatness of the trust committed to us, let us not flag
in our efforts to free our land from slavery and the rebellion
inaugurated by its minions, that they might establish it on a firmer
base.

By meeting as you are about to do, and giving expression to sentiments
in favor of the perpetuation of our Government, and in behalf of those
of our citizens who are denied the rights and privileges of
citizenship, you will strengthen the hearts and hands of all among our
rulers who are endeavoring to execute judgment and justice, and to
save our Government under the guidance of Him who controls the
destinies of nations.

Trusting that this is but the beginning of a good work among the true
women of the nation, I subscribe myself, Yours for the interest of our
common country,

LIZZIE WELSH.

MEDINA COUNTY, OHIO, _May 12, 1863_.

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--This is no time to be idle now. Every _true woman_
must do her whole duty, and buckle on the strong armor of Faith, to
meet the enemy face to face. Let the traitors of the country hear our
voices, and let Southern tyrants tremble in their high places. Let the
prayers of the loyal women ascend to the throne on high. I trust you
may have a decidedly good meeting--one, too, that will be remembered
in future ages, when war and bloodshed shall have passed forever away,
and sweet peace shall reign again in our beautiful land. We long for
our brave brothers to return to their homes, but not till the Union is
restored, and the traitors receive their just punishment. My heart is
deeply engaged in the cause of human liberty and justice, and I have
given my all in the struggle.

I remain, yours respectfully, EMMA C. HARD.

RICHWOOD, _May 9, 1863_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY--DEAR MADAM:--In _The New York Tribune_ of April 25,
1863, we observed that a National Convention of the Ladies' Union
League is to be held in the city of New York, on the 14th day of May.
We were truly gratified with this intelligence, and should be very
happy to be present on that occasion; but as that is among the
impossibilities, we deem it a great privilege to represent the
Richwood Ladies' Union League through epistolary correspondence. The
cause is glorious, and is calculated to elevate woman to a higher
sphere. Louder voices and holier motives urge us to duty as never
before. At the time _our_ Ladies' Union League was organized, we knew
not that there was another in the world, or that there ever would be.
Its infancy was feeble, as we must advance cautiously, if we would
surely; but it was as a city set on a hill. The good work is still
progressing.

INDIANA.

ANGOLA. IND., _May 6, 1863_.

MISS ANTHONY:--The call for a Convention in New York to express the
feelings of woman in view of the condition of the country, is timely.
I regret that I can not be present to share the inspiration of the
occasion, and as far as possible to aid in making an impression worthy
of the hour. We call this an alarming crisis because it is a struggle
involving our lives, our liberty, and our happiness. It must be borne
in mind that this nation is great not simply from the number of States
it has held in union, but from its creative genius. We are told that
this is the best expression of a republican form of government. It is
so because it is self-sustaining, self-reliant, and therefore may be
self-governing. The stern, smooth-faced Puritan fled from religious
persecution in the Old World to find room for an idea in the New; and
the planting of one religious idea has yielded a rich harvest of
sects, each an improvement on the last.

Yesterday politics had its center in a party; to-day, in the nation;
to-morrow, it will find an equilibrium in the individual. This is a
stern work, wearing furrows in the cheeks of statesmen, shaking the
frame-work of the Government, letting the blood and drinking the
treasure of the nation. It can not be avoided. God has said, "And unto
you a child is born," and his name shall be called Liberty, Equality,
Fraternity, the Holy of Holies, the Universal Republic. And as God
rested after the first creation, so shall this nation find its Sabbath
of rest when this struggle for freedom is over, and from the little
child to the bowed-down man, all shall breathe through the new
Constitution a fresher, more glorious life. Viewed from the daily
papers, the battle is long, terrific, and uncertain. Go to the
stricken hearthstones, and we exclaim, "Oh, that this cup might pass
from us!" Visit the solemn battle-field, and in anguish we murmur, "My
God, why hast Thou forsaken us?" Retiring to the high mountain of our
faith, we see in this painful view the magnitude of our cause, and
that slowly but surely this contest will end triumphantly. From this
point we mark the milestones that show we have made indelible
foot-prints toward Liberty and Union.

The choice by the people of a Republican President, the firing on
Sumter, the defeat at Manassas, the recognition of Hayti, the treaty
with England for the suppression of the foreign slave-trade, the
abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, the decision of
Attorney-General Bates in favor of universal citizenship, the
conversion to the anti-slavery sentiment of Dickinson and Butler, the
President's Proclamation, and the arming of the blacks, are signs in
the political zodiac, showing our revolution certain as that of the
rolling suns in the material heavens. Only Liberty can be our
watchword henceforth! To this standard alone will the country, both
North and South, rally when a few more days of leadership are over.
God saw to this in the frame-work of every living thing, when He made
his wants to be a blessing with freedom and a curse without it. Open
the cage-door to the pining fox, loathing his master's beef and
pudding, and see if his instincts are not true as the needle to the
pole. Lay the sweet babe before the starved lion, and his want will
not bow to your compassion. So in slaves; it matters not whether
slaves to rebellion or to aristocracy. So in all men and in all women,
the want of liberty, as the want of bread, is a vital principle in the
blood. It is the motive power. Without it man is but a log, and is
suited to rule over frogs only; or, like the silent water, becomes a
loathsome stagnation. You may suppress, but you can not appease or
destroy this divine inheritance in man. On this uniform idea the laws
of society depend, and union can have no other. Raise the banner of
freedom to all, and you have an imperishable Constitution, supported
by the gushing blood of the millions, and immortalized in the spirit
of the nation. This is our work: To comprehend liberty, to establish a
constitution, and perpetuate union. We began at union, the right-hand
figure, borrowing ten, as in mathematics, from the next higher order,
observing the rule of maintaining an equal difference by paying what
is borrowed.

We saw that fighting for union and slavery left us just what we began
with. So we borrowed from the Constitution Fremont's Proclamation, and
carried the popular response to the next Congress, and under the
second period we wrote the liberty of three millions! We have now to
work out the main principle or highest order, to test the virtue of
the people, to see whether, when rebellion is put down, the nation can
survive; and there is now left us no escape from death or disgrace
except in the announcement of freedom as a principle. Do this, and you
have enlisted new recruits from men who will nobly dare to die, but
never will retreat. Do this, and the mothers of the country will
continue to lay their precious sons upon the altar, not as "Union
soldiers," as before, but as heroes of a new republic. Do this, and
woman, the subtle architect of society, will teach you how to walk the
very verge of death with an unflinching hope of life; her faith will
separate your light from darkness, truth from error, liberty from
slavery. She will demonstrate for you that self-reliance is the
condition of all creations, that as "the flower looks to no power
outside itself to unfold its tendrils and accomplish its mission," so
this nation is self-sufficient. In its warm beating heart lies its
folded banner, and each man and woman must unfurl it as the seaman
unfurls his sail. Nail Freedom to your banner, and it shall bring a
prostrate nation to its staff, and together with their loud applause,
"the morning stars shall sing, and all the sons of God shall shout for
joy."

JOSEPHINE S. GRIFFING.

_To the Meeting of Loyal Women to be held in New York the 14th of
May:_

MISS S. B. ANTHONY:--Not being able to attend your meeting, I desire
to convey to you personally my heartfelt appreciation of your work.
If, as the call implies, your object is to help create and keep alive
a loyal public sentiment, it is truly praiseworthy. This is what we
need--a public sentiment that will not tolerate disloyalty anywhere.
We want the rebel sympathizer to feel the society of intelligent women
a constant rebuke to their unfaithfulness; we want to go still
further, and make them feel that they can not be admitted to the
social circle of loyal women; we want to make them feel that we will
not patronize them in business relations; in short, that we will hold
no communion with them whatever, except it may be to reform them as
fallen brethren. As the Spartan mothers of old, as the mothers of the
Revolution, did not shrink from whatever of trial, of sacrifice, and
of toil was theirs to endure, so may we of the XIXth century, the
mothers of the soldiers of freedom, grasp heroically the sword of
truth, and wield it with a power that shall make the tyrant tremble.
It is not enough that we scrape lint, make hospital stores, knit
socks, make shirts, etc., etc.; all this we should do by all means,
but we have also other duties connected with this war. Let us endeavor
to perform them all faithfully. As the war is working out for woman a
higher and nobler life, while it is destined in the providence of God
to free the slave, it will also bring about in a great measure the
enfranchisement of woman. Let us prove that women are intellectually
and morally capable of laboring side by side with our brothers in the
great struggle, and heaven will bless our efforts.

Yours in the great work, MARY F. THOMAS.
RICHMOND, Ind., May 11, 1863.

PECOR, WABASH VALLEY, IND.

To the "Call for a meeting of the Loyal Women of the Nation," we most
heartily respond. It is precisely what is needed at this time. There
is a lack of enthusiasm here as elsewhere--not that our "Aid
Societies" are not quite flourishing: but that we do after the manner
of Miss Ophelia, "from a sense of duty." A lady says to me, "What more
can be expected of women if men fail to some extent in our military
affairs?" Well, they can arouse the smouldering fires of patriotism,
help to raise the trailing banner, and stand devotedly by the dear old
flag. If they enter into the work heart and soul, good results will
follow. There is here a strong secession element; copperheads abound;
the sky looks dark and threatening; but Gov. Morton's vigorous policy
and Gen. Burnside's "Order No. 38," will show the traitors that we
have a government--a strong one, too--that will bring them straight up
to the mark.

Those who are disposed to criticise your meeting, who have a word to
say about women taking part in political or public affairs, should
have their memories refreshed a little. From a great many who have
ruled in affairs of State, I select one who lived a long time ago. The
record is from the highest authority. Deborah, the wife of Lapidoth,
who judged Israel, had her canopy of State under the palm-tree in
Mount Ephraim. At this time the children of Egypt had been mightily
oppressed for twenty years by Jabin, King of Canaan. Hope is almost
extinguished in Israel; not one man scarcely seems awake to his
country's wrongs; patriotism is slumbering in every manly breast, yet
glows brightly in the heart of woman; and as the tribunal of judgment
is deserted by manly virtue, ability, and zeal, Deborah takes the
place, not by usurpation, but divine appointment. She instructs the
people in the law and testimony of the living God, and inspires them
with more than a common enthusiasm to go with Barak against the mighty
host of Canaan. They go forth, and are victorious, completely routing
the enemy. Sisera, the commander-in-chief of the great army of Jabin,
is slain by the hand of woman! The mighty arm of the Lord of Hosts is
seen in this conflict, for JEHOVAH HAS NO ATTRIBUTE THAT WILL TAKE
SIDES WITH THE OPPRESSOR!

Would it not be well for the women of to-day to emulate Deborah in her
zeal and love of country? I trust your meeting will be productive of
great good in arousing us to more correct views of our duties and
responsibilities as members of the Republic. As Burke says, "_I love
agitation when there is a cause for it_." The alarm-bell which
startles the inhabitants of a city from their midnight slumbers, saves
them from destruction.

May 11, 1863. Truly yours, ELIZA B. TERRELL.

E. M. WILKINSON, on behalf of the Soldiers' Aid Society in Laporte
County, Ind., writes:

"We will labor with all our might, mind, and strength for a free
country, where there shall be neither slavery nor involuntary
servitude. As our mothers stood by the Government in the Revolution,
so we, like them, will stand by the present Administration. We believe
the sin of slavery to be the cause of this horrid war, therefore we
hailed with gladness the ninth section of the Confiscation law, and
the Proclamation of Freedom by the President."

ILLINOIS.

ROSEMOND, CHRISTIAN COUNTY, ILL., _May 5, 1863_.

MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY--_My Dear Christian Friend:_--I observed with
deep interest, in _The Independent_ of April 16th, an article on
"Women and the War," stating that meetings would be held in your city
on the 14th of May, "to consider how woman's services may be more
effectually engaged in promoting the war, supporting the Government,
and advancing the cause of Freedom and the Union."

At that meeting I shall be most cordially present in _spirit_, while I
am necessarily in body far from you; and for the result of your
deliberations there I shall watch with eager interest. _What can woman
do?_ has been with me from the beginning of this war a question of the
uppermost importance. I have asked it with tears again and again, and
have watched every intimation upon this point in our journals, and
from soldier friends, with a willing heart and ready hand; though I
have sometimes observed with pain, that those who had given least for
this great cause were least solicitous on this question, and less
disposed to do, and to continue to do, than those very ones who, as
they would say, had surely done enough, when they had given up husband
or son, father or brother, or all of these, for the bloody conflict.
But no, it is those who like me have given up their all, and perhaps
like me are left by this war widowed and alone, helpless and in feeble
health; such it is that cry, What can woman yet do for this sacred
cause? Such may silently bear their lonely anxiety and sorrow,
patiently toil and struggle to take care of themselves, and of those
dependent upon them, as best they can, uncomplaining, asking not aid
or sympathy, and all the while cheering their beloved ones yet spared
in the conflict, and holding up their hands by words of encouragement
and blessing. But such can not sit still, and feel that they have done
enough. Such can not look with indifference upon the flowing tide of
blood all around us; upon the thousands of hearths and homes as
desolate as their own; upon the hardships and sufferings of our brave
soldiers in field, or hospital, or camp; upon the hundreds of
thousands of those poor freedmen, women and children, that have just
begun to emerge from the house of their bondage, and come out empty,
ignorant, and degraded, yet seeking liberty, protection, instruction,
and offering their strong right arms for the defense of that wise and
beneficent Government that has bid them go free. Methinks, every
mother and every teacher should now take special care to instill into
the minds of those committed to their instruction a holy and devoted
patriotism; the sacred principles of liberty; liberty for all; the
inestimable value of our free institutions; and the perpetuation of
these as an end worthy of their highest ambition. Teach them to honor
the name of soldier, and to cherish sacredly the memory of those who
have given their life's blood for the cementing and maintenance of
this Union, and to be ready to stand up bravely for the right, when
their turn may come.

I have written from the fullness of my heart, yet in much weakness and
sorrow. My own beloved and noble husband was among the very first to
offer his services at his country's call, and in less than one short
year his sacrifice was owned of God, to whom he had early consecrated
his life, and from the strife of the battle-field (at Donelson, in
February, 1862) he was called up higher to rest in peace. In feeble
health, I have returned to the asylum of a father's house, to which
one beloved brother has just returned with his discharge, having
wasted nearly to a skeleton in Southern hospitals, and two brothers
are yet in the army. Should you have any printed circular of the
result of your meetings, a copy would be very gratefully received; and
if there is any way in which ladies at so great a distance can
co-operate with you, in measures you may devise, you may be sure that
this little town of Rosemond will furnish her full share of loyal
women. I will almost venture to say, no other can be found here.

In behalf of all that makes our country

"The land of the free and the home of the brave,"

I am, yours very cordially, E. P. WEEKS.

AURORA, ILL., _May 8, 1863_.

There never was a time in the world's history when the strength and
efforts of women, as well as men, were so imperatively demanded as
now. Never before in the annals of time has there been a struggle of
such momentous import, not only at home, but abroad, as this. The eye
of every principality and power on the face of the earth is upon us,
anxiously watching and awaiting the success or defeat of our armies to
prove or disprove the practicability of a republican form of
government. Let us work for the right and true

"All we can,
Every woman, every man."

For Freedom and Union, ELLEN BEARD HARMAN.

WASHINGTON, TAZEWELL COUNTY, ILL., _May 12, 1863_.

LADIES:--Quickened by a call from our national metropolis, and
prompted by the same loyalty that issued the call, a few of the women
of this place have organized themselves into a Union League, for the
maintenance of our Government and the encouragement and succor of our
soldiers in the field. Our organization occurred too late, we fear, to
enable us to report ourselves to the National Committee at the
appointed meeting; but having opened, we propose to go forward,
soliciting the co-operation of every individual woman of the place, so
long as our Government is in peril and rebellion utters its voice in
the nation.

Yours in the same cause,

MRS. S. W. FISH, Sec'y. MRS. H. N. KELLOGG, Pres't.

ASBURY, LASALLE COUNTY, ILL., _May 8, 1863_.

MADAM ANTHONY:--I call myself a loyal woman, and am glad that there is
about to be made some extra effort by woman for the strengthening and
upholding of our common Government in this present rebellion. For my
own part, I should rather work hard and fare poor for a number of
years, that the Government may have a share of my industry, than that
we fail in this present war. Drops form the ocean; and if we all can
be made to feel the greatness of small things added together, we can
present a truly strengthening arm in this struggle; and I would
suggest that we all lay aside our vanity and love of extravagance in
dress, and save the money from some of our intended purchases for a
war fund. Almost every person can spare five, ten, or twenty dollars.
Let some one take the lead in every city and village by stimulating
the people to a little self-denial, and I think we can raise a grand
sum, to be applied where it is most needed. Just set this ball in
motion in New York, and it may roll all over the North.

I do not wonder that woman lacks enthusiasm in matters of Government,
for our laws, though they may be nearly just to white men, are very
oppressive to women, particularly those that deprive married women of
the right to hold property and do business themselves. I think that
man and woman both would live more happily if the laws were more
equal; but as they are, they are a shame to this enlightened age. They
make a married woman a beggar all her life, although she may have a
rich husband, and a most pitiable one, if he is poor. Wipe out the law
entirely that gives us a third of our husband's property; we can make
better bargains than that ourselves with our husbands. The one-third
law does us not a mite of good, unless our husband dies, and we do not
all of us want to part with them, although the laws do make them our
oppressors. But notwithstanding the mean position that we are
compelled to occupy, I feel like upholding the Government as the best
that is, feeling quite sure that the kindness and good sense of our
rulers will give us something a little more like justice after a
while.

MARIAM H. FISH

WISCONSIN.

_To the Meeting of Loyal Women in the City of New York, Greeting:_

It is now nearly three months since the loyal women of Madison, Wis.,
desiring to express their equal interest in the preservation of the
Union and Government, and their abhorrence of all who by word and deed
encourage the unholy rebellion which has filled our land with
mourning, organized the first Ladies' Union League in the country, and
pledged themselves, during the continuance of the war, to such
individual persistent effort and self-sacrifice as should prove to our
soldiers and their families that we have made common cause with them.
Without delay we issued our preamble and constitution in the form of a
circular-letter, inviting the co-operation of all loyal women of the
State in the formation of similar organizations. Copies of this
circular, inviting a full expression of feeling, and statement of
cases of individual necessity, were sent to every company of infantry,
artillery, and cavalry that have gone from the State; and the most
gratifying letters from the army have proved the value which they put
upon our efforts. We organized visiting committees, renewed every
week, who examine into and report upon all cases of want in soldiers'
families, many of whom have been cared for and relieved through the
agency of these committees, thus obviating one of the most productive
causes of discontent in the army. The ignorant woman who does not know
what are the proper steps to take in securing her bounty, allotment,
and pension; the discouraged wife who hears the low murmurs of treason
to the Government on every side, whose appeals to her soldier in the
field increase when they do not create the same feeling, are alike the
objects of our care.

In addition to, and of more importance even than these home efforts,
are those we make in encouraging the soldiers by correspondence. Does
some officer distinguish himself by an act of personal bravery in the
army of the West? we save the newspaper notices, cut these out, and
inclose them, with a few hearty, earnest words, to some member of the
army of the Potomac, and thus become a medium for the diffusion of all
that can stimulate and inspire courage and loyalty.

We have deemed this brief statement of our organization and mode of
operation the best expression of our sympathy with your meeting. We
joyfully hail the formation of such associations in the great centers
of influence, and believe that a cause to which the women of the
country as _one soul_ devote their time, their energies, and all they
love best, will stand vindicated as the cause of God, of justice and
humanity, before the whole world.

MRS. W. A. P. MORRIS, _President_.
MRS. E. S. CARR, _Secretary_.
MADISON, WIS., _May 9, 1863_.

CASSVILLE, WIS., _May 4, 1863_.

Lately noticing in the _New York Tribune_ a call for a meeting of the
loyal women of this nation, and believing woman as responsible for its
destiny as man, I feel it my duty to make known to you my most sincere
wishes for its success. As loyal women, and being under so much
responsibility, it seems necessary that some effort should be made to
exchange our views and form resolutions on this subject. Let us
remember then our duty; let us unite ourselves by associations, that
we may act in concert in our country's cause. We must not forget that
knowledge is power, and that the minds of this country are molded and
governed by the press; let us therefore, in whatever sphere we move,
aid and encourage the reading and circulation of loyal newspapers and
public speakers of both sexes that labor for our country (the best
diplomatists of Europe have confessed that the State papers of the
Revolution did almost, if not quite as much, for us as our soldiery);
and let us at the same time discountenance all disloyal reading, all
disloyal sentiments, and all disloyal persons of whatever standing or
relation, and let our object be our country, our whole country, and
nothing but our country.

MRS. URSULA LARNED.

BARABOO, WIS., _May 11, 1863_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY--_Dear Madam:_--I can not tell you with what joy I
received through the _Anti-Slavery Standard_ the account of the
formation of the "Loyal Women's League of Hartford, Ct." I forthwith
communicated with the women met for sanitary purposes, and we
organized a "Loyal Women's League" here. Forty women signed at once,
and others now are constantly added. All over this region the women
seem to be waiting, longing for some soul to animate the body of work
with which we have been so long and lovingly busying ourselves. We
shall do what we can to encourage and inspire our soldiers, to comfort
and cheer their families, and to make our influence tell on the right
side at home and wherever it is felt. Our organization is auxiliary to
the Madison League. We have adopted mainly their Constitution. We
would be glad to be represented in person in the National Convention,
where the true woman's heart of the nation will utter itself; but this
may not be so. We send you this our pledge. The bells are ringing and
guns firing for joy for our military victories. Thank God for them.
But our woman's work of educating the children into the idea and
practice of true and universal justice is ever to be done. Oh that we
may be wise and faithful In our work, till our priceless heritage of
liberty be enjoyed by every human being in our land.

Cordially yours, MARIA P. CODDING.

IOWA.

COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA.

Most gladly does my heart respond to the call, and most earnestly do I
hope that the deliberations on that occasion will result in much good
to women and to the cause you meet to promote. The women of the North
are charged by the press with a lack of zeal and enthusiasm in the
war. This charge may be true to some extent. Though for the most part
they are loyal to their Government, and in favor of sustaining its
every measure for putting down the rebellion; yet they do not, I fear,
enter fully into the spirit of the women of the Revolution. There are
many women in whose hearts the love of country and of justice is
strong, and who are willing to incur any loss, and make almost any
sacrifice, rather than the rebellion should succeed and the chains of
the bondman be more firmly rivetted. If they manifest less enthusiasm
than their patriotic brothers, it is because they have not so great
opportunity for its exercise. The customs of society do not permit any
strong or noisy demonstration of feeling on the part of woman; but the
blood of Revolutionary sires flows as purely in her veins, and she can
feel as deeply, suffer as intensely, and endure as bravely as her more
favored brothers. But I would have her do more than suffer and endure;
I would that she should not only resolve to stand by the Government in
its work of defeating the schemes of its enemies, but that she should
let her voice go forth in clear and unmistakable tones against any
peace with rebels, except upon the basis of entire submission to the
authority of the Government. Against the schemes and plans of the
Peace party in the North, let loyal women everywhere protest. That
your deliberations may be characterized by good judgment, sound
wisdom, and true patriotism, is my heartfelt prayer.

AMELIA BLOOMER.

MINNESOTA.

HOKAH, HOUSTON CO., MINN., _May 13, 1863_.

To SUSAN B. ANTHONY--_Dear Madam:_-- ... While the women of the South,
with a heroism and self-denial worthy a better cause, have no doubt
aided in fanning the flame of rebellion, it appears to me eminently
proper that the loyal women of the North should meet in council to
express their sentiments in regard to the great principles of humanity
and justice. Many of us have sons and brothers on the tented field,
and while we deplore the stern necessity that drew them from the
endearments of home; while we tremble with anxiety lest the mournful
tidings that have saddened so many hearts should fall with crushing
weight on ourselves, a voice from the army comes to us with thrilling
earnestness that awakens with redoubled vigor the feeling of
patriotism within us. Our noble soldiery are taking a stand on the
broad platform of universal liberty and justice. With scathing words
they have rebuked the traitors in our midst; and they now breathe out
threatenings and slaughter to the _miscreants_ who would rend the fair
heritage transmitted to us by the heroes of the Revolution.

May every patriotic woman in the land do her utmost to uphold and
strengthen the holy purpose that inspires the loyal heart of the army.
For myself, I regard no sacrifice too great that will conduct to the
comfort of the brave men who are risking life and limb in the sacred
cause of freedom; and I am proud to say that this is the sentiment of
every lady within the circle of my acquaintance. I most sincerely hope
that some lady in your Convention will offer a resolution touching a
great wrong that has been practiced toward our sick and wounded
soldiers in some of the hospitals, namely, the neglect of the proper
officers to affix their signatures to discharges made out, in many
instances for a long time, until the hope of once more seeing the dear
ones at home has faded from the heart of the poor soldier, and he has
laid him down to die among strangers, when but for this cruel neglect
his life might, perhaps, have been spared to bless the dear ones at
home, or at least have given them the great boon of smoothing his
passage to the grave. I believe this thing has done much to discourage
enlistments. Is there no remedy? I leave it to those of more influence
and superior judgment to decide.

With sentiments of respect, I subscribe myself a loyal woman,

MARY C. POUND.

KANSAS.

QUINDARO, KANSAS, _May 4, 1863_.

MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Your call to the loyal women of the nation
meets my hearty response. I have been feeling for months that their
activities, in the crisis which is upon us, should not be limited to
the scraping of lint and concocting of delicacies for our brave and
suffering soldiers. Women, equally with men, should address themselves
to the removing of the wicked cause of all this terrible sacrifice of
life and its loving, peaceful issues. It is their privilege to profit
by the lessons being taught at such a fearful cost. And discerning
clearly the mistakes of the past, it is their duty to apply themselves
cheerfully and perseveringly to the eradication of every wrong and the
restoration of every right, as affecting directly or indirectly the
progress of the race toward the divine standard of human intelligence
and goodness. _No sacrifice of right, no conservation of wrong_,
should be the rally-call of mothers whose sons must vindicate the one
and expiate the other in blood! Negro slavery is but one of the
protean forms of disfranchised humanity. Class legislation is the one
great fountain of national and domestic antagonisms. Every ignoring of
inherent rights, every transfer of inherent interest, from the first
organization of communities, has been the license of power to robbery
and murder, itself the embodiment of a thievish and murderous
selfishness.

That the disenfranchisement of the women of '76 destroyed the moral
guarantee of a pure republic, or that their enfranchisement would
early have broken the chains of the slave, I may not now discuss. Yet
it may be well to note that ever since freedom and slavery joined
issue in this Government, the women of the free States have been a
conceded majority, almost a unit, against slavery, as if verifying the
declaration of God in the garden, "I will put enmity between thee
(Satan) and the woman." Every legal invasion of rights, forming a
precedent and source of infinite series of resultant wrongs, makes it
the duty of woman to persist in demanding the right, that she may
abate the wrong--and first her own enfranchisement. The national life
is in peril, and woman is constitutionally disabled from rushing to
her country's rescue. Robbery and arson invade her home; and though
man is powerless to protect, she may not save it by appeals to the
ballot-box.

A hundred thousand loyal voters of Illinois are grappling with the
traitors of the South. If the hundred thousand loyal women left in
their homes had been armed with ballots, copperhead treason would not
have wrested the influence of that State to the aid and comfort of
the rebellion. If the women of Iowa had been legally empowered to meet
treason at home, the wasteful expense of canvassing distant
battle-fields for the soldiers' votes might have been saved. And it
would have been easier for these women to vote than to pay their
proportion of the tax incurred. Yankee thrift and shrewdness would
have been vindicated if Connecticut had provided for the
enfranchisement of her women by constitutional amendment, instead of
wasting her money and butting her dignity against judicial vetoes in
legislating for the absent soldiers' vote.

This war is adding a vast army of widows and orphans to this already
large class of unrepresented humanity. Shall the women who have been
judged worthy and capable to discharge the duties of both parents to
their children, be longer denied the legal and political rights held
necessary to the successful discharge of a part even of these duties
by men? With these few hasty suggestions, and an earnest prayer for
the highest wisdom and purest love to guide and vitalize your
deliberations, sisters, I bid you farewell.

C. I. H. NICHOLS.

BUSINESS MEETING.

_New York Tribune's Report of the Adjourned Business Meeting of the
Woman's Loyal National League, held Friday Afternoon, May 15, 1863._

The Business Committee of the Loyal League of Women, with a number of
ladies who take an interest in the formation of such a society, met
yesterday afternoon in the Lecture-Room of the Church of the Puritans,
for the purpose of agreeing upon some definite platform, and of
determining the future operations of the League.

MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY, as President of the Business Committee, took
the chair, and at 3 o'clock called the meeting to order.

Mrs. ELIZABETH CADY STANTON rose to decline accepting the nomination
she had received on Thursday, as President of the League. She
could not pledge herself to unconditional loyalty to the
Government--certainly not if the Government took any retrogressive
step. As President of the National League, many might object to her on
account of what they termed her _isms_, her radical Anti-Slavery and
Woman's Rights, her demand for liberty and equality for women and
negroes. She desired the vote by which she had been made President
might be reconsidered.

Miss ANTHONY thought there were fears of the Government retrogressing
in the policy of Freedom. The question is every day discussed in the
papers as to what terms the South shall be received back again. She
could not be Secretary of a League which was pledged to unconditional
loyalty to the Government, until the Government was pledged to
unconditional loyalty to Freedom. Miss Anthony then read the following
pledge and resolutions, which had, on Thursday, been partially agreed
to:

THE PLEDGE.

We, the undersigned women of the nation, do hereby pledge ourselves
loyal to justice and humanity, and to the Government in so far as it
makes the war a war for freedom.

RESOLUTIONS.

_Resolved_, That we rejoice in the local Women's Leagues already
formed, and earnestly recommend their organization throughout the
country; and that we urge the women everywhere to take the highest
ground of patriotism--OUR COUNTRY RIGHT, not wrong.

_Resolved_, That we hail the Conscription Act as necessary for the
salvation of the country, and cheerfully resign to it our husbands,
lovers, brothers, and sons.

_Resolved_, That inasmuch as this war must bring freedom to the black
man, it is but just that he should share in the glory and hardships of
the struggle.

Miss ANTHONY explained what a National League was, and what business
and pecuniary responsibilities it entailed.

Mrs. ANGELINA G. WELD suggested that before entering on other matters,
the question of officers should be settled.

Miss ANTHONY:--Will some one put the motion?

Mrs. LOVELAND took the floor. She stated that she had come there the
day before with one idea--only one--and that she retained that one
idea still, and that was that the women of the nation should pledge
themselves to stand by the Conscription Act. Mrs. Loveland trusted
that the League would co-operate with the laws of the land, and
strengthen the hands of the President in his efforts to vigorous
prosecute the war. She thought the Government had made great advances
in the path of progress. If the pledge required the war to be waged
for freedom, that was all that was necessary. It would be desirable to
secure the experience and ability of Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony in
the offices to which they have been elected, she did not believe their
isms would do any hurt. They were earnest and efficient workers, and
the League needed them.

Miss WILLARD, of Pa., thought there was a way to get over the
difficulty. The pledge is conditional to the extent of requiring the
war to be a war for freedom. Miss Willard said she was a true patriot.
She loved her country. She had borne with its defects, though she
confessed she had sometimes desired to remove them. She believed in
sustaining the Government, though if Vallandigham should chance to be
elected President, she really didn't know what she should do.

Miss WILLARD seemed to think that the pledge offered would do under
the existing Administration. When there is a change, we can have
another League. She believed if the President was slow he was sure,
and that he was the Moses who was to lead this people to their
promised land of freedom.

Several desultory remarks were made in the audience. Presently an
elderly lady--a Mrs. Maginley--arose and expressed her opinions. She
had confidence in Mr. Lincoln, but denounced Gen. Banks, who, she
said, was a hero in one place and a slave-driver in another. As next
President, we may get a ditch-digger--(Mrs. M. evidently intended this
as a sly allusion to a distinguished military chieftain)--and then
what are we to do? She wished to know who, loving the black man, could
take this pledge?

Miss ANTHONY read the pledge over previous to putting it on its
passage. It was adopted without opposition.

Miss ANTHONY read the resolutions again.

Mrs. SPENCE asked if the Government had acted in a way to inspire
confidence. She was not satisfied with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Mrs. STANTON had faith that the Government was moving in the right
direction.

Mrs. SPENCE objected to Mr. Lincoln's grounds for issuing the
Proclamation.

Mrs. WELD stated that he said he did it on the ground of justice.

Miss WILLARD believed Mr. Lincoln was working as fast as he could. A
man going a journey of a mile did not do it all in one jump. He had to
get over the ground step by step. Just so with the President. We must
not expect him to do all at once.

The first resolution was unanimously passed. The resolution in regard
to the Conscription Act was then taken up.

Mrs. SPENCE asked (for information) whether they were willing to
receive the Conscription law as it was? What did they think of the
$300 clause about substitutes? Some lovers (Mrs. Spence said lovers,
not husbands) would certainly buy themselves off.

Mrs. STANTON would accept the Conscription law because it was
necessary--not because it was just in all its provisions.

Mrs. SPENCE: If your husbands propose to pay three hundred dollars,
would you urge them to go themselves?

Mrs. STANTON: We shall urge them to go as to the post of glory.

Mrs. LOVELAND would urge her husband. She was very severe on the
skedaddlers to Canada and Europe. Still, all the European conscription
laws permitted some kind of substitution. Her idea was that as the men
must go to the war now, the women should give tone to its music.

A LADY: If the men would give themselves, why not freely? Is a
conscription itself consistent with freedom?

Miss WILLARD, while believing in certain cases of exemption, liked the
conscription because it would take in the copperheads. (Applause).

The LADY: What kind of soldiers would copperheads make?

Mrs. LOVELAND: Good soldiers! Men who have the courage they have to
brave public opinion, would make good soldiers if put in the ranks
with bayonets behind them. (Applause).

Mr. GILES B. STEBBINS, of Rochester, reported, as information, the
mistake lately made in _The New York Times_ that the $300
substitution indemnity was in the discretion of the Secretary of War.

The resolution was thereupon moved by Miss Willard, seconded by Mrs.
Stanton, and passed unanimously.

An address to the soldiers, prepared by Angelina Grimké Weld, was then
read.

_Soldiers of our Second Revolution--Brethren_:--A thousand of your
sisters, in a convention representing the Loyal Women of the Nation,
greet you with profound gratitude. Your struggles, sufferings, daring,
heroic self-devotion, and sublime achievements, we exult in them all.

To you, especially, whose terms of service have expired, or are soon
to expire, we desire to speak of the shifting scenes now acting in the
nation's tragedy. This war of slavery against freedom did not begin
with the first shot at Sumter, it did not begin when the slaveocracy
broke up the Charleston Convention, in order to secure the election of
Mr. Lincoln, and thus palm upon the Southern masses a false pretense
for rebellion. It did not begin with nullification in 1832, nor in the
Convention that framed the Federal Constitution; nor yet in that which
adopted the Articles of Confederation; but it began in 1620, when the
_Mayflower_ landed our fathers on Plymouth Rock, and the first
slave-ship landed its human cargo in Virginia. Then, for the first
time, liberty and slavery stood face to face on this continent. From
then till now, these antagonisms have struggled in incessant conflict.
Two years since, the slaveocracy, true to their instincts of violence,
after long and secret plotting, crowned their perfidy by perjury, by
piratical seizures of Government property that cost $100,000,000, and
then burst into open rebellion.

This war is not, as the South falsely pretends, a war of races, nor of
sections, nor of political parties, but a war of _Principles_; a war
upon the working-classes, whether white or black; a war against _Man_,
the world over. In this war, the black man was the first victim; the
workingman of whatever color the next; and now _all_ who contend for
the rights of labor, for free speech, free schools, free suffrage, and
a free government, securing to _all_ life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness, are driven to do battle in defense of these or to fall with
them, victims of the same violence that for two centuries has held the
black man a prisoner of war. While the South has waged this war
against human rights, the North has stood by holding the garments of
those who were stoning liberty to death. It was in vain that a few at
the North denounced the system, and called the people to repentance.
In vain did they point to the progress of the slave power, and warn
the people that their own liberties were being cloven down. The North
still went on, throwing sop after sop to the Cerberus of slavery that
hounded her through the wilderness of concession and compromise, until
the crash of Sumter taught her that with the slaveocracy _no_ rights
are sacred. The Government, attacked by assassins, was forced to fight
for its own life. The progress of the war has proved that slavery is
the life-blood of the rebellion. Hence the necessity of the
President's Proclamation of Freedom to the slaves.

The nation is in a death-struggle. It must either become one vast
slaveocracy of petty tyrants, or wholly the land of the free. The
traitors boast that they have swept from the national firmament
one-third of its stars, but they have only darkened them with clouds,
which the sun of liberty will scatter, revealing behind them the
eternal pillars of Justice, emblazoned with liberty, equality,
fraternity.

Soldiers of this revolution, to your hands is committed the sacred
duty of carrying out in these latter days the ideal of our fathers,
which was to secure to ALL "life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness," and to every State "a republican form of government." To
break the power of this rebellion, calls for every available force.
You know how extensively black men are now being armed. Some regiments
are already in the field; twenty more are now under drill. Will you
not, in this hour of national peril, gratefully welcome the aid which
they so eagerly proffer, to overthrow that slave power which has so
long ruled the North, and now, that you spurn its sway, is bent on
crushing YOU? Will you not abjure that vulgar hate which has conspired
with slavery against liberty in our land, and thus roll from the
sepulcher, where they have buried it alive, the stone which has so
long imprisoned their victim? The army of the North will thus become
the angel of deliverance, rescuing the nation from the shifting sands
of compromise, and refounding it upon the rock of justice.

Some of you have been mustered out of service; many more are soon to
return to your homes. All hail to you! Honor and gratitude for what
you have done and suffered! Enough _if_ you have only been fighting
for the Union as it _was_. But is it enough, if the work for which the
war is _now_ prosecuted is not accomplished? Your country needs your
power of soldierly endurance and accomplishment, your hard-earned
experience, your varied tact and trained skill, your practiced eye and
hand--in a word, all that makes you veterans, ripe in discipline and
educated power. Raw recruits _can not_ fill your places. Brave men!
your mission, though far advanced, is _not_ accomplished. You will
not, can not, abide at home, while your brethren in arms carry victory
and liberty down to the Gulf.

With joy and admiration we greet you on your homeward way, while your
loved ones await your coming with mingled delight and pride. When,
after a brief sojourn, you go back again, convoyed by the grateful
acclaim and God-speed of millions, to consummate at Freedom's call her
holy work, the mightiest of all time, and now so near its end, with
exultant shouts your brothers in the field will hail your coming to
share with them the glory of the final victory. It will be the victory
of free government, sacred rights, justice, liberty, and law, over the
perfidies, perjuries, lying pretenses, and frantic revelries in
innocent blood, of the foulest national crime that ever reeked to
heaven--the overthrow of the most atrocious yet the meanest despotism
that ever tortured the groaning earth.

In behalf of the Women's National Loyal League.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary._ E. CADY STANTON, _President._

Mrs. STANTON: I suppose it is known to all present that Angelina
Grimké Weld is the representative from South Carolina. Contrast her
eloquent pleadings for freedom, throughout the sittings of our
Convention, with the voice of South Carolina, when, at the framing of
the Constitution, slavery, with its cruel creeds and codes, was
fastened on the Republic just struggling into life. Here, for the
first time in our history, have the women of the nation assembled to
discuss the political questions of the day, and to decide where and
how to throw the weight of their influence. I am proud to feel that
from this meeting goes forth a united demand for freedom to all, for a
TRUE REPUBLIC, in which the rights of every citizen shall be
recognized and protected.

THE PLATFORM OF THE LEAGUE.

_Resolved_, That our work as a National League is to educate the
nation into the true idea of a Christian Republic.

This is the resolve finally adopted. Considerable preliminary debate,
in which many ladies joined, took place on details of form and
phraseology. The resolve as it stands was constructed by Mrs. Stanton,
with the exception of the word "Christian."

There was an earnest discussion on the introduction of the word
Christian; some argued that a _true Republic_, where every human
being's rights were recognized, could but be Christian. A Mrs.
McFarland seemed to settle the question, by stating a fact of history,
that in olden times there were Pagan Republics.

Miss ANTHONY said: No matter if it were a mere tautology: it required
repetition to make this nation, so steeped in crime against humanity,
understand. She then spoke of the awful lie of this nation, in naming
itself Civilized, Republican, Christian, while it had made barter of
men and women, bought and sold children of the Good Father, and paid
their price to send missionaries to the Fejee Islands and the remotest
corners of the earth, while it stood bound to fine and imprison any
man or woman who should teach any one of _four millions_ of its own
citizens at home to read the letters that spell the word God. It would
take long years to educate this nation into the idea and _practice_ of
a true, Christian Republic. It was a momentous work the women of this
National Loyal League had undertaken. And she hoped one and all would
take in its full import, and dedicate themselves fully and earnestly
to the work.

OFFICERS OF THE WOMEN'S LOYAL NATIONAL LEAGUE.--President, Mrs. E.
Cady Stanton; Vice-Presidents, Mrs. Col. A. B. Eaton, Mrs. Edward S.
Bates, Mrs. Mary S. Hall; Secretary, Susan B. Anthony; Corresponding
Secretary, S. E. Draper; Treasurer, Mrs. H. F. Conrad; Executive
Committee, Miss Mattie Griffith, Miss R. K. Shepherd Mrs. B. Peters,
Mrs. C. S. Lozier, M.D., Mrs. Mary A. Halsted, Mrs. Laura M. Ward,
M.D., Mrs. Mary F. Gilbert.

PLAN OF WORK ADOPTED BY THE WOMEN'S LOYAL NATIONAL LEAGUE.--At a
meeting of the Women's Loyal National League, held at their office,
room 20, Cooper Institute, May 29, the following resolutions were
adopted:

_Resolved_, That the following be the official title and the pledge of
the League--the pledge to be signed by all applicants for membership:
"Women's Loyal National League, organized in the city of New York, May
14, 1863."

We, the undersigned, women of the United States, agree to become
members of the Women's Loyal National League, hereby pledging our most
earnest influence in support of the Government in its prosecution of
the war for freedom and for the restoration of the national unity.

_Resolved_, That for the present this League will concentrate all its
efforts upon the single object of procuring to be signed by one
million women and upward, and of preparing for presentation to
Congress, within the first week of its next session, a petition in the
following words, to wit:

"_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States_:
The undersigned, women of the United States, above the age of eighteen
years, earnestly pray that your honorable body will pass, at the
earliest practicable day, an act emancipating all persons of African
descent held to involuntary service or labor in the United States."

_Resolved_, That in furtherance of the above object the Executive
Committee of this League be instructed to cause to be prepared and
stereotyped a pamphlet, not exceeding four printed octavo pages,
briefly and plainly setting forth the importance of such a movement at
the present juncture--a copy of the said pamphlet to be placed in the
hands of each person who may undertake to procure signatures to the
above petition, and for such further distribution as may be ordered by
the said Executive Committee.

_Resolved_, That to a committee of nine, to be hereafter appointed by
the President and Secretary of this League, be intrusted the duty of
procuring subscriptions to defray the expenses connected with the
preparation, and signature, and presentation of the said petition.

JUNE 5.

_Resolved_, That all bills be submitted for approval to the Executive
Committee, and if approved, shall be certified as such by the Chairman
of that Committee.

_Resolved_, That for the amount of each bill so approved the Secretary
shall draw on the Treasurer in favor of the person presenting such
bill.

JUNE 12.

_Resolved_, That as nearly the same labor and expense are required to
obtain signatures of women alone as of both men and women, the
Secretary be requested to prepare and circulate petitions for men
also.

JUNE 26.

_Resolved_, That the probable expense of preparing, circulating, and
presenting our petitions, will amount to not less than one cent for
each name; therefore,

_Resolved_, That we request those who circulate the petition, to
solicit of each person signing a contribution of one cent, and forward
the same with petition and signatures to our Secretary, Susan B.
Anthony, Room No. 20, Cooper Institute, New York.

_Resolved_, That the Central League in New York will bestow their
badge and membership, as a gift, upon each boy or girl, under
eighteen, who shall collect and forward to them fifty or more names,
and as many cents.

_Resolved_, also, That the Central League will bestow a handsomely
bound copy of each of the celebrated and recently published works of
Augustin Cochin on Slavery and Emancipation, on the person who shall
collect and forward the largest number of signatures from any city of
the Union having a population of twenty-five thousand; also, on the
person who shall collect the largest number of names in any of the
States, _outside_ of said cities.

_Resolved_, That each lady to whom the pledge and petition blanks are
inclosed be requested to bring them to the notice of the clergymen and
teachers in her vicinity, with a request that they shall take some
action in the matter.

_Resolved_, That such ladies are earnestly requested to organize
Auxiliary Leagues in their towns and neighborhoods, for the purposes
of correspondence with the Central League, and of collecting and
forwarding with facility names and money for the furtherance of the
grand object in view; also, for holding meetings to discuss and
elucidate the necessity of our demand for an act of Universal
Emancipation.

A hearty co-operation from our women in all parts of the loyal States
is most earnestly invited. We would urge upon them the formation of
auxiliary Leagues, which shall receive from us blanks for petitions,
and pledges, as well as any information or advice they may need. We
ask them not only to form Leagues in their own towns and
neighborhoods, but to send us up long lists of names as members of the
Grand Central League.

We beg them also to solicit and send contributions, small and large,
as they may be able, for the promotion of the object of the League,
viz: to end this fearful war by the removal of its exciting
cause--Slavery.

In making this call upon loyal women, we feel sure of meeting with a
warm response from those whose hearts and energies have already so
nobly sprung to meet their country's need in her hour of trial.

E. CADY STANTON, _President of the League_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary_.

COMMENTS OF THE PRESS.

The _New York Tribune_ thus speaks of this enterprise:

A VAST ENTERPRISE PROPOSED BY WOMEN.

The "Women's Loyal National League," recently organized in this city,
at a meeting held by them yesterday at the Cooper Institute, adopted
the following resolutions:

_Resolved_, That for the present this League will concentrate all its
efforts upon the single object of procuring to be signed by one
million women and upward, and of preparing for presentation to
Congress within the first week of its next session, a petition in the
following words, to wit:

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States:_ The
undersigned, women of the United States, above the age of eighteen
years, earnestly pray that your honorable body will pass, at the
earliest practicable day, an act emancipating all persons of African
descent held to involuntary service or labor in the United States.

The women of the League have shown practical wisdom in restricting
their efforts to one object, the most important, perhaps, which any
Society can aim at; and great courage in undertaking to do what, so
far as we remember, has never been done in the world before, namely,
to obtain ONE MILLION of names to a petition. If they succeed, the
moral influence on Congress ought and can not fail to be great. The
passage by the next Congress of an act of general emancipation would
do more than any one thing for the suppression of the rebellion. As
things now stand with slaves declared free in eight States of the
Union, with two more States (Virginia and Louisiana) partly free and
partly slave, and with the Border States still slave, we have a state
of affairs resulting in interminable confusion, and which, in the very
nature of things, can not continue to exist. Congress may find a way
out of such confusion by an act of Compensated Emancipation, with the
consent of these States and parts of States. God speed the circulation
and signatures of the Women's Petition! The pledge of the League is
commendably brief and to the point, reading as follows:

"We, the undersigned, women of the United States, agree to become
members of the 'Women's Loyal National League,' hereby pledging our
most earnest influence in support of the Government in its prosecution
of the war for freedom and for the restoration of the national unity."

The office of the League is Room No. 20, Cooper Institute. Let all
loyal women, friendly to Emancipation, join their ranks, and devote
what spare time they may have to this noble work.

_The New York Times_ published the following:

A MONSTER PETITION PROPOSED.

_To the Editor of the New York Times:_

Until the advent of the present struggle, the word _loyalty_ was
hardly known among us, and though we often spoke of the Union, we
seldom used the term national unity. With new phases of society new
terms come into vogue. We have now, springing up everywhere, Loyal
National Leagues, and great good they are doing. They have, so far,
been chiefly set on foot by men, but women are now bestirring
themselves in the same direction. Quite recently, a Woman's Loyal
National League has been organized in this city....

The prudence of the members of this League is to be commended, first,
in selecting a single object on which to concentrate their exertions,
and secondly, in selecting as that object the of procuring an act of
Congress declaring general emancipation, than which nothing is more
needed at the present time, not only as an endorsement of the
President's Proclamation, but also as a remedy for the utter confusion
produced by the present state of affairs, under which it would puzzle
the shrewdest lawyer to determine who, among the fugitives that are
daily flocking to us across the lines, is free, and who still a slave.
As a permanent arrangement, no one believes that a few counties in one
State, and a few parishes in another, can remain slave, while all
around them emancipation has been accomplished; nor that slavery can
endure, except for a brief season, along a narrow border-strip,
bounded North and South by freedom.

Whether these ladies will succeed in the task of procuring _one
million_ of names to their petition, depends chiefly on their business
talent in organizing the machinery of so great an undertaking. R.

_The New York Evening Post_ says:

AN IMPORTANT UNDERTAKING.

It has sometimes been made a reproach to the women of the Northern
States, that while their sisters of the South are the very life of the
rebellion, exceeding the men in zeal and devotion and self-sacrifice,
they, with a noble cause against a base one, show less zeal, less
earnestness, do less to animate and inspire the combatants; in short,
are less active in maintaining the Union than the ladies of the Slave
States in working to destroy it.

If, however, the members of the "Women's Loyal National League," an
association recently commenced in this city, succeed in what they have
just undertaken, it will go far to show that there is neither
lukewarmness nor lack of energy in the women of the North; and that,
in practical industry exerted in aid of the war and the Government,
they are not to be outmatched by the zeal of the fair mischief-makers
who oppose both....

We learn that the League has already obtained several thousand names
and addresses of persons and societies throughout the Northern and
Border States who are favorable to emancipation, to whom they propose
to address their circulars; and that they are organizing, after a
business fashion, the machinery necessary to effect their object in
the six months still intervening before the meeting of Congress. It is
a great undertaking, this obtaining of one million signatures, such an
undertaking as has seldom if ever been carried out before. If it
succeeds it will obtain record in the history of the time as an
enterprise most honorable to the sex which conceived and completed it.

The pledge of the League is well worded and judicious....

Such Leagues ought to be, and we trust will be, organized all over the
country, in aid of the mammoth petition. Without having made any
accurate calculation, we doubt whether less than four stout men could
carry the roll comprising a million names into the House to which it
is addressed.

_The Philadelphia Press_ says:

SPIRIT OF NORTHERN WOMEN.

It is a great country, this of ours. Great events occur in it. Great
things are to be found in it. Where shall we find another Niagara?
Where a cave of dimensions equal to those of the Mammoth Cave of
Kentucky? Since California has been added we have her gigantic pines,
towering above all other trees in the world. We can not make war, but
we must carry it on upon a scale unknown since the days of Xerxes. Our
women, too, it would seem, catch the spirit of the country. Until now
they have chiefly been known, throughout the great national struggle,
in the capacity of sisters of mercy, tenders in hospitals, collectors
of comforts and of little luxuries for our sick and wounded. We find
them laboring now in a new field. They, called the weaker sex, and
properly so called, if thews and sinews constitute strength, have
undertaken to do more than to care for the sick and wounded. They seek
to aid in striking at the root of the evil whence has arisen the
strife which causes the sickness of the hospital and the wounds of the
battle-field. They have undertaken a task beyond that which the sturdy
Chartists of England performed. The Chartist Petition, if we remember
aright, had seven or eight hundred thousand names--the largest number
ever obtained to a petition. But our Northern women have undertaken to
procure _one million_ of names to a Petition for Emancipation, and to
complete their task in the next six months. The article from _The
Tribune_, elsewhere, will be read with interest.

_The National Anti-Slavery Standard_ comments:

THE WOMEN'S LOYAL LEAGUE--MAMMOTH PETITION TO CONGRESS.

The Women's Loyal National League, at a meeting held at their Room in
the Cooper Institute on Friday, the 29th ult., changed the form of
their pledge, so that it now reads as follows:

This, it strikes us, is a much happier wording than that of the former
pledge....

The women of the League have embarked in an enterprise worthy of their
energy and devotion, and we will not allow ourselves to doubt that
they will meet with complete success. It will require some money and a
great deal of hard work, but their courage and patience will be found
adequate to the task. They will find a helper in every woman who loves
justice and humanity, and realizes that there can be no permanent
peace for the country until slavery is exterminated root and branch.
The moral influence upon Congress and the nation of such a petition,
signed by a MILLION of women, will be incalculable; while the
agitation attending the effort will be of the greatest benefit.

Women willing to aid in circulating the petition should send their
address at once to Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of the League, 20
Cooper Institute, New York.

OFFICE OF THE WOMEN'S LOYAL NATIONAL LEAGUE, }
Room No. 20, Cooper Institute, New York, _January 25, 1864_. }

_The Women's Loyal National League, to the Women of the Republic:_--We
ask you to sign and circulate this petition for the entire abolition
of slavery. We have now one hundred thousand signatures, but we want a
million before Congress adjourns. Remember the President's
Proclamation reaches only the slaves of rebels. The jails of loyal
Kentucky are to-day "crammed" with Georgia, Mississippi, and Alabama
slaves, advertised to be sold for their jail fees "according to law,"
precisely as before the war! While slavery exists anywhere there can
be freedom nowhere. There must be a law abolishing slavery. We have
undertaken to canvass the nation for freedom. Women, you can not vote
or fight for your country. Your only way to be a power in the
Government is through the exercise of this, one, sacred,
constitutional "right of petition"; and we ask you to use it now to
the utmost. Go to the rich, the poor, the high, the low, the soldier,
the civilian, the white, the black--gather up the names of all who
hate slavery--all who love liberty, and would have it the law of the
land--and lay them at the feet of Congress, your silent but potent
vote for human freedom guarded by law.

You have shown true courage and self-sacrifice from the beginning of
the war. You have been angels of mercy to our sick and dying soldiers
in camp and hospital, and on the battle field. But let it not be said
that the women of the republic, absorbed in ministering to the outward
alone, saw not the philosophy of the revolution through which they
passed; understood not the moral struggle that convulsed the
nation--the irrepressible conflict between liberty and slavery.
Remember the angels of mercy and justice are twin-sisters, and ever
walk hand in hand. While you give yourselves so generously to the
Sanitary and Freemen's Commissions forget not to hold up the eternal
principles on which our republic rests. Slavery once abolished, our
brothers, husbands, and sons will never again, for its sake, be called
to die on the battle-field, starve in rebel prisons, or return to us
crippled for life; but our country, free from the one blot that has
always marred its fair escutcheon, will be an example to all the world
that "righteousness exalteth a nation." The God of Justice is with us,
and our word, our work--our prayer for freedom--will not, can not be
in vain.

E. CADY STANTON, _President_.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary_ W. L. N. League,
Room 20, Cooper Institute, N. Y.

OFFICE OF THE WOMEN'S LOYAL NATIONAL LEAGUE, }
Room No. 20, Cooper Institute, N. Y., _April 7, 1864_. }

_Dear Friend:_--With this you will receive a Form of a Petition to
Congress, the object of which you can not mistake nor regard with
indifference. To procure on it the largest possible number of adult
names, at the earliest practicable moment, it is hoped you will regard
as less a duty than a pleasure. Already we have sent one installment
of our petition forward, signed by one hundred thousand persons; the
presentation of which, by Senator Sumner, produced a marked effect on
both Congress and the country. We hope to send a million before the
adjournment of Congress, which we shall easily do and even more, if
you and the twenty thousand others to whom we have sent petitions will
promptly, generously co-operate with us. For nearly three years has
the scourge of war desolated us; sweeping away at least three hundred
thousand of the strength, bloom, and beauty of our nation. And the
war-chariot still rolls onward, its iron wheels deep in human blood!
The God, at whose justice Jefferson long ago trembled, has awaked to
the woes of the bondmen.

"For the sighing of the oppressed, and for the crying of the needy,
now will I arise, saith the Lord." The redemption of that pledge we
now behold in this dread Apocalypse of war. Nor should we expect or
hope the calamity will cease while the fearful cause of it remains.
Slavery has long been our national sin. War is its natural and just
retribution. But the war has made it the constitutional right of the
Government, as it always has been the moral duty of the people, to
abolish slavery. We are, therefore, without excuse, if the solemn duty
be not now performed. With us, the people, is the power to achieve the
work by our agents in Congress. On us, therefore, rests the momentous
responsibility. Shall we not all join then in one loud, earnest,
effectual prayer to Congress, which will swell on its ear like the
voice of many waters, that this bloody, desolating war shall be
arrested and ended, by the immediate and final removal, by Statute Law
and amended Constitution, of that crime and curse which alone has
brought it upon us? Now surely is our accepted time. On our own heads
will be the blood of our thousands slain, if, with the power in our
own hands, we do not end that system forever, which is so plainly
autographed all over with the Divine displeasure. In the name of
justice and of freedom then let us rise and decree the destruction of
our destroyer. Let us with myriad voice _compel_ Congress to

"Consign it to remorseless fire!
Watch till the last faint spark expire;
Then strew its ashes on the wind,
Nor leave one atom wreck behind."

In behalf of the Women's League, SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary_.

FORM OF PETITION.

_To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in
Congress assembled:_

The undersigned, citizens of ----, believing slavery the great cause
of the present rebellion, and an institution fatal to the life of
Republican Government, earnestly pray your Honorable Bodies to
immediately abolish it throughout the United States; and to adopt
measures for so amending the Constitution, as forever to prohibit its
existence in any portion of our common country.

MEN. | WOMEN.

_Anniversary Meeting, May 14, 1864._--The adjourned meeting convened
in the lecture-room of the Church of the Puritans, Saturday P.M., May
14th. The President in the chair.

The Secretary read the report of the Executive Committee, which was
unanimously adopted. The resolutions were then read, and motion taken
to act upon them separately. The 2d, 7th, and 8th elicited a long and
earnest discussion, but were at last adopted, with but one or two
dissenting votes.

The Committee then presented a list of women to serve as officers the
coming year, who were unanimously elected.

Officers of the Women's National League:--_President_, Elizabeth Cady
Stanton; _Vice-Presidents_, L. M. Brownson, Mary Bates, Mrs. Col. A.
B. Eaton, S. A. Fayerweather; _Corresponding Secretary_, Charlotte B.
Wilbour; _Recording Secretaries_, Susan B. Anthony, Elvira Lane;
_Treasurer_, Mary F. Gilbert; _Executive Committee_, Mrs. L. M.
Brownson, Mrs. H. M. Jacobs, Mary O. Gale, Mattie Griffith, Redelia
Bates, Rebecca K. Shepherd, Frances V. Halleck, Mrs. C. S. Lozier,
M.D.; Laura M. Ward, M.D.; Malvina A. Lane.

_The Women's National League to its Members and Friends_:--The
folding, directing, and sending out 20,000 petitions, then the
assorting, counting, and rolling up, each State by itself, 300,000
signatures, has been an herculean task, that only those who have
witnessed it could fully appreciate. Remember that paper, printing,
postage, office, and clerks, all require money. At the last meeting of
the Executive Committee we resolved to ask each of our 5,000 members
to send us the small sum of fifty cents to carry on the work.

Let the petitions be thoroughly circulated during the summer,
throughout the country, that the people may speak in thunder-tones to
our next Congress at its earliest sittings. Neither the Emancipation
or Amendment bill has yet passed the House, and the recent vote on the
Montana question shows the animus of the Administration. If the
majority of our voters propose to re-elect such men to rule over us,
those who believe in free institutions must begin the work of
educating the nation into the idea that a stable government must be
founded on justice--that freedom and equality are rights that belong
to every citizen of a republic.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Secretary_, 20 Cooper Institute.

_Amend the Constitution._--The Women's National League have just sent
out, all through the States, fifteen thousand petitions, with an
appeal to have them filled up and returned as speedily as possible.
The bill to amend the Constitution so as to prohibit the holding of
slaves in any part of the country has passed the Senate. Now comes the
struggle in the House. If every one of the fifteen thousand
persons--at least ten thousand of them ministers--will but gather up
one hundred or more names, _a million-voiced petition_ may yet pour
into the Representatives' Hall; and such a voice from _the people_ can
not but make sure the vote, and leave the bill ready for the
President's signature, and Congress disposed to recommend that a
special session of each State Legislature be called immediately to act
upon the question; and thus the hateful thing--Slavery--be buried out
of sight before the opening of the Presidential campaign. Let the
petitions be mailed to Washington, direct, to some member, or to Hon.
Thomas D. Eliot, Chairman of Committee on Slavery and Freedmen. There
is not a day to be lost. Let all work.--_The National Anti-Slavery
Standard_, May 28, 1864.

_The World._

NEW YORK CITY, _July 25, 1864_.

WOMEN'S LOYAL NATIONAL LEAGUE.

_The Necessity for Funds--The Delinquency of the Friends of the
Negro--Miss Anthony on the Constitution--Fighting, a Barbaric way of
Settling Questions._--About fifteen ladies and half a dozen gentlemen
were present at the meeting of the Woman's League, yesterday. Although
more than one of the speakers bewailed the delinquency of the "friends
of the negro" in failing to supply the League with the necessary
funds, yet the piles of post-paid circulars on the tables, ready for
the mail, were larger than ever. There was also a bundle of tracts on
emancipation as the only means of peace.

The meeting being called to order, a committee reported a series of
resolutions, the gist of which was that, whereas the League is
continually receiving from its friends to whom it applies for
pecuniary assistance communications stating that the day for petition
and discussion is past, and that the bullet and bayonet are now
working out the stern logic of events; nevertheless the League
considers that such day is not past, and it urges the friends of the
negro to come forward boldly and pour out of their abundance liberally
for its aid.

SPEECH BY MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

Miss Susan B. Anthony made a speech arguing that the decision of the
anti-slavery question should not be left to the "stern logic of
events" which is wrought by the bullet and the bayonet. More knowledge
is needed. The eyes and the ears of the whole public are now open. It
should be the earnest work of every lover of freedom to give those
eyes the right thing to see and those ears the right thing to hear. It
pains her to receive in answer to a call for assistance and funds,
letters saying that the day for discussion and petition is past. It
looks as if we had returned to the old condition of barbarism, where
no way is known of settling questions except by fighting. Women, who
are noted for having control of the moral department of society and
for lifting the other half of the race into a higher moral condition,
should not relapse into the idea that the status of any human being is
to be settled merely by the sword. Miss Anthony then spoke of the
constitutional right of Congress to pass an emancipation law. She read
a letter from a lady who, on receiving documents from the League,
first doubted the power of Congress to pass such a law; then she
thought perhaps it had; then she compared the petition and the
Constitution; then she thought it had no such power, and finally she
concluded to circulate the petition anyhow. Miss Anthony proceeded at
some length to expound the Constitution, showing that it does not say
that slaves shall not be emancipated, and therefore concluding that
they may. But if Congress can not emancipate slaves constitutionally,
it should do so unconstitutionally. She does not believe in this
red-tapism that can not find a law to suppress the wrong, but always
finds one to oppress the innocent. If she was a mayor, or a governor,
or a legislator, and there was no law to punish mobocrats, she thought
she should go to work to make one pretty quick. She requested the
opinion of some gentleman.

A gentleman present related a number of touching incidents about the
recent mobbing of negroes in this city, most of which have already
appeared in print in this and other papers. Miss Anthony held up two
photographs to the view of the audience. One represented "Sojourner
Truth," the heroine of one of Mrs. H. B. Stowe's tales, and the other
the bare back of a Louisiana slave. Many of the audience were affected
to tears. "Sojourner Truth" had lost three fingers of one hand, and
the Louisiana slave's back bore scars of whipping. She asked every one
to suppose that woman was her mother, and that man her father. In that
case would they think the time past for discussion and petition? The
resolutions were at once unanimously passed. The meeting adjourned.

MISS ANTHONY IN CHICAGO.

Miss Susan B. Anthony is now on her homeward way from Kansas, where
she has been spending several of the past months, and where she has
performed much excellent service in the cause of the freedmen of the
country generally. She has recently visited Chicago and given a
lecture, which is highly commended by the _Tribune_ and _Republican_
of that city, the latter giving an extended report of it in its
columns, besides pronouncing upon it very flattering encomiums,
concluding with these words: "The audience dwelt with thoughtful and
marked interest upon her words, and when occasionally her remarks
called forth an irrepressible burst of feeling, the applause was
marked and emphatic, without descending to a noisy disturbance." Of
the lecture in general, the Chicago _Tribune_ thus speaks:

Last evening Miss Susan B. Anthony, of Rochester, N. Y., addressed an
audience composed chiefly of colored people, in Quinn's Chapel. Her
subject was "Universal Suffrage." Mrs. Jones, the President of the
Ladies' Aid Society, in introducing her, said: "She was one of their
old and firm friends; not one who had believed in sitting down to the
communion first, and letting the negro come last. She was not one who
needed to have her father or brothers starved in Southern prisons, to
make her aware of the humanity of the black man."

Miss Anthony is a clear, logical speaker, earnest and truthful, and
has long considered the questions of the day. Few _men_ in this or any
other city could more ably present the subject, or more closely chain
the audience that listened to her noble utterances, and one could not
but wish that she had spoken to thousands rather than hundreds. Miss
A. is recently from Leavenworth, Kansas, where she has been spending
some months past, aiding as she had opportunity, in the elevation of
the freed people, and occasionally by lectures, contributing to form a
true public sentiment in that new State. Consequently, she speaks from
absolute knowledge of the present state of the freedmen. Her criticism
of the theories of reconstruction was masterly, showing that the
fundamental principles of this Government are set aside and really
endanger all that we have seemed to gain by the war, and that nothing
but the admission of the black man to the franchise can save the
nation from future disgrace and ultimate ruin.--_National Anti-Slavery
Standard_, August, 1865.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XVIII.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS, 1866 AND 1867.

_Report made to the Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention._

BY CAROLINE H. DALL.

For the last five years the women of the United States have held few
public discussions. They have done wisely. Circumstances have proved
their friend. Nothing ever had done, nothing ever will do again, so
great a service to woman in so short a time, as this dreadful war out
of which we are so slowly emerging. Respect for woman came only with
the absolute need of her, and so many women of distinguished ability
made themselves of service to the Government, that we had no single
woman to honor as England had honored Florence Nightingale. With us
her name was _legion_. But with the prospect of peace comes the old
duty of agitation, and we find ourselves again summoned to a
Convention, and again anxiously awaiting its results--_anxiously_, for
a convention of women is an object which still attracts the gaze of
the curious, and the smallest indiscretion on the part of a single
speaker has a retrograde effect which few women seem able to measure.

Our reform is unlike all others, for it must begin in the family, at
the very heart of society. If it be not kindly, temperately, and
thoughtfully conducted, men everywhere will be able to justify their
remonstrances. Let us rather justify ourselves. My last report to any
Convention was made to those called in Boston in 1859 and 1860.
Between that time and 1863 I printed five volumes, which are nothing
but reports upon the various interests significant to our cause.
During the last four years I have watched the development of American
industry in its relation to women, and have, through the newspapers,
aroused public feeling in their behalf. My labor is naturally classed
under the three heads of Education, Labor, and Law. A proper education
must prepare woman for labor, skilled or manual; and the experience of
a laborer should introduce her to citizenship, for it provides her
with rights to protect, privileges to secure, and property to be
taxed. If she is a laborer, she must have an interest in the laws
which control labor. In considering our position in these three
respects, it is impossible to offer you a digest of all that has
occurred during the last six years. What I have to say will refer
chiefly to the events of the last two.

EDUCATION.

I wish it were in my power to furnish you with reports of the present
condition of all the female colleges in the United States; but, while
I receive from various foreign sources such reports, and am promptly
informed of any educational movement in Europe, it never seems to
occur to the government of such institutions in the United States that
there is any necessary connection between them and the interests which
this Convention represents. We are, consequently, dependent upon
newspapers for our information.

The most important educational movement of the last year has been the
formation of an American Social Science Association, with four
departments, and two women on its Board of Directors. Subsequently,
the Boston Social Science Association was organized, with seven
departments, and seven women on its Board of Directors, one woman
being assigned to each department, including that of law. Any woman in
the United States can become a member of this Association. If the
opportunities it offers are not seized, it will be the fault of women
themselves.

During the past winter the Lowell Institute, in Boston, in connection
with the government of the Massachusetts Technological Institute, took
a step which deserves our public mention. They advertised classes for
both sexes, under the most eligible professors, for instruction in
French, mathematics, and natural science. As the training was to be
thorough, the number of pupils was limited, and the _women_ who
applied would have filled the seats many times over. These classes
have been wholly free, and have added to the obligation which the free
Art School for women had already conferred.

Elmira College showed its enterprise last summer by a visit to
Massachusetts, and Vassar College was organized and commenced its
operations in September, with Miss Mitchell in the Chair of
Mathematics, and Miss Avery in that of Physiology. I attempted to
visit this institution last summer for the purpose of investigating
the facilities its buildings and proposed courses might offer to
foreign students. The reluctance of the Trustees to subject it to
observation so early in its career interfered with my plan, but I have
since received a letter from Miss Mitchell speaking of it in the most
encouraging terms. "I have a class," she says, "of seventeen pupils,
between the ages of 16 and 22. They come to me for fifty minutes every
day. I allow them great freedom in questioning, and I am puzzled by
them daily. They show more mathematical ability and more originality
of thought than I had expected. I doubt whether young men would show
as deep an interest. Are there seventeen students in Harvard College
who take mathematical astronomy, do you think?" So Mr. Vassar's
magnificent donation is drawing interest at last.

On the 25th of June, 1865, the Ripley College, at Poultney, Vermont,
celebrated its commencement. Seventeen young ladies were graduated.
Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered the literary address, and two days were
devoted to the examination of incoming pupils. Feeling very little
satisfaction in the success of Colleges intended for the separate
sexes, I take more pleasure in speaking of the Baker University in
Kansas, which was chartered by the Legislature of that State in 1857
as a University for both sexes. It has now been in active operation
for seven years. A little more than a year ago Miss Martha Baldwin, a
graduate of the Baldwin University at Berea, Ohio, was appointed to
the chair of Greek and Latin. She is but twenty-one years of age, but
was elected by the government to make the address for the Faculty at
the opening of the commencement exercises, and seems to have given
entire satisfaction during her professors' year. In France, the
Imperial Geographical Society, which is in a certain sense a college,
has lately admitted to membership Madame Dora D'Istra as the successor
to Madame Pfeiffer. Madame D'Istra had distinguished herself by
researches in the Morea.

On the 26th of October, 1864, a a Workingwomen's College was opened in
London, with an address from Miss F. R. Malleson. It is governed by a
council of teachers. In addition to the ordinary branches, it offers
instruction in Botany, Physiology, and Drawing. Its fee is four
shillings a year, and the coffee and reading-room, about which its
social life centres, is open every evening from 7 to 11. But by far
the most interesting educational movement is Miss Nightingale's
"Training-school for Nurses," which has been in operation for three
years in Liverpool. It was founded after a correspondence with her, in
strict conformity to her counsel. As a training-school it may be said
to be self-supporting, but it is also a beneficent institution, and in
that regard is sustained by donations. A most admirable system of
district nursing is provided under its auspices for the whole city of
Liverpool, all of whose suffering sick become, in this way, the
recipients of intelligent care and of valuable instruction in cooking
and all sanitary matters. It is too tempting an experiment to dwell
upon, unless we could follow it into its details. Its Report occupies
101 pages.

As regards medical education, we know of two colleges, or rather of
one college and one hospital, in Boston, where education is given.
There is one in Springfield and one in Philadelphia. We should be glad
to get more statistics of this kind, for Cleveland, where Dr.
Zakrzewska took her degree, is no longer open to female students, and
Geneva is contenting herself with the honor of having graduated Dr.
Blackwell. There is a female Medical Society in London. This society
wishes to open the way for thorough medical instruction, which will
entitle its graduates to a degree from Apothecaries' Hall, and it
offered lectures from competent persons in 1864, upon Obstetrics and
General Medical Science. Madame Aillot's Hospital of the Maternity in
Paris, still offers its great advantages to women, of which two of our
countrywomen, Miss Helen Morton and Miss Lucy E. Sewall have taken
creditable advantage. They are both of them Massachusetts girls. Miss
Morton is retained in Paris, and Miss Sewall is the resident physician
of the Hospital for Women and Children in Boston.

A very great interest has been felt in this country in the success of
Miss Garrett in obtaining her degree from Apothecaries' Hall, after it
had been refused to her by the medical colleges. We regret to say that
this fact does not show any real advance in the public opinion of
Great Britain, nor does it secure any permanent advantage for women.
When the Apothecaries' Hall refused her, Miss Garrett looked up its
charter. She found the old Latin word indicating to whom degrees were
to be granted clearly _indeterminate_. Langues told her that the Hall
must grant her a degree or surrender its charter. She was wealthy and
in earnest. She pushed her advantage. The Apothecaries' Hall
prescribed certain courses of instruction to be pursued and certified
before the degree could be granted. These she attended in private,
paying the most exorbitant fees to her teachers. In one instance, in
which a man's fee would have been _five_ guineas she paid _fifty_! I
am credibly informed that the round cost of these preparatory steps
must have been £2,000. All honor to Miss Garrett. Should her genius as
a physician equal her energy and her wealth, she may yet gain
something for the cause she has espoused. Apart from this, she may be
said to have gained nothing. Bribery is not possible to ordinary
mortals, and the conditions of the degree make it generally
impracticable until the lecture-rooms are opened to students. At
present, to obtain thorough instruction in any branch, women are
obliged to pay exorbitant prices, and receive as the results of their
training but half wages. In Boston Dr. Zakrzewska has again
unsuccessfully asked permission to become a member of the
Massachusetts Medical Society. Many physicians, however, extend the
fellowship which the institution denies, and the _Medical Journal_
expresses itself courteously on this point.

In 1863 there existed in St. Petersburg a stringent regulation which
prohibited women from following the University courses. A Miss K., who
had a decided taste for medicine without the means to pay for
instruction, applied for such instruction to the authorities of
Orenburg. Orenburg is partly in Europe and partly in Asia, and its
territory includes the Cossack races of the Ural. These people have a
superstitious prejudice against male physicians, and are chiefly
attended in illness by sorceresses. Miss K. offered to put her medical
knowledge at the service of the Cossacks, and received permission to
attend the Academy of Medicine. The Cossacks promised her an annual
stipend of 28 roubles, but when she passed the half-yearly examination
as well as the male students, they sent her 300 roubles as a token of
good will.

In France, a Mlle. Reugger, from Algeria, lately passed a brilliant
examination, and received the degree of Bachelor of Letters. She
appealed to the Dean of the Faculty at Montpellier for permission to
follow the regular course, and was refused on account of her sex. She
then turned to the Minister of Public Instruction, who granted it on
condition that she should pledge herself to practice only in Algeria,
where the Arabs, like the Cossacks, refuse the attendance of male
physicians. Unlike our Russian friend, she refused to give the pledge.
She threw herself upon her rights, and appealed in person to the
Emperor. This was in December last, and I have not been able to find
his decision. It was doubtless given in her behalf, for Louis Napoleon
will always yield as a favor what he would stubbornly refuse as a
right. The physicians of this country have been occupied this winter
in discussing the discovery by one of their number of the active
infectant in fever and ague. It has been found in the dust-like spores
of a marsh plant--the Pamella. In Paris, at the same time, a woman of
rank claims to have discovered the cause of cholera in a microscopic
insect, developed in low and filthy localities. Her details were so
minute, that the Academy of Science, which began by laughing at the
introduction of the matter, has been compelled to listen, and the
subject is now under investigation.

THE PULPIT.

In spite of the bitter words of warning which John Ruskin has thought
it his duty to speak to such women as enter upon theological studies,
a good many women in Great Britain and this country have engaged in
what is properly the work of the Christian ministry. The only ordained
minister whose work has come under our notice since the marriage of
Antoinette Blackwell, is the Rev. Olympia Brown, settled over the
Universalist Society at Weymouth Landing, Mass. Her ministry has been
highly successful, and is to be mentioned here chiefly on account of a
legal decision to which it has given rise. The church at Weymouth
Landing made an appeal to the Legislature last winter as to the
legality of marriages solemnized by her. The Legislature gave the same
general construction to the masculine relatives in the enactment which
the English law gave to the old Latin word in the Charter of
Apothecaries' Hall, deciding that marriages so solemnized are legal,
and no further legislation necessary.

LABOR.

The advance of women, as regards all sorts of labor, in the United
States, has been such as might be expected by watchful eyes, and yet
reports on the general question will not read very differently from
those published ten years ago. In New York, women are still reported
as making shirts at 75 cents a dozen, and overalls at 50 cents. These
women have two protective unions of their own, not connected with the
workingmen's union, and most of them have naturally enough sympathized
with the eight-hour movement, not foreseeing, apparently, that the
necessary first result of that movement would be a decrease of wages
proportioned to the limitation of time. Ever since the beginning of
the war, women have been employed in the public departments North and
South. It has been a matter of necessity, rather than choice. The same
causes combined to drive women into field labor and printing-offices.
All through Minnesota and the surrounding regions, women voluntarily
assumed the whole charge of the farms, in order to send their husbands
to the field. A very interesting account has been recently published
of a farm in Dongola, Ill., consisting of two thousand acres, managed
by a highly educated woman, whose husband was a cavalry officer. It
was a great pecuniary success. In New Hampshire, last summer, I was
shown open-air graperies wholly managed by women, in several different
localities, and was very happy to be told that my own influence had
largely contributed to the experiment. In England field labor is now
recommended to women by Lord Houghton, better known as Mr. Monckton
Milnes, who considers it a healthful resource against the terrible
abuses of factory life. At a meeting of the British Association last
fall, he produced a well-written letter from a woman engaged in
brick-making. This letter claimed that brick-making paid three times
better than factory labor, and ten times better than domestic service.
In addition to persons heretofore mentioned in this country as
employing women in out-door work, I would name Mr. Knox, the great
fruit-grower, who, on his place near Pittsburg, Pa., employs two or
three hundred. I have seen it stated that, during the last four years,
twenty thousand women have entered printing-offices. I do not know the
basis of this calculation, but judging from my local statistics, I
should think it must be nearly correct. To the Committee of the
Massachusetts Legislature, on the eight-hour movement, the following
towns report concerning the wages and labor of women:

Boston--Glass Co., wages from $4 to $8 a week. Domestics, from $1.50
to $3 per week; seamstresses, $1 a day; Makers of fancy goods, 40 to
50 cents a day. Brookline--Washerwomen, $1 a day. Charlestown and New
Bedford are ashamed to name the wages, but humbly confess that they
are very low. Chicopee--Pays women 90 per cent the wages of men.
Concord--Pays from 8 to 10 cents an hour. Fairhaven--Gives to female
photographers one-third the wages of men. Hadley--Pays three-fourths.
To domestics, one-third; seamstresses, one-quarter to one-third.
Holyoke--In its paper mills, offers one-third to one-half.
Lancaster--Pays for pocket-book making from 50 to 75 cents a day.
Lee--Pays in the paper mills one-half the wages of men. Lowell--The
Manufacturing Co. averages 90 cents a day. The Baldwin Mills pay 60 to
75 cents a day. Newton--Pays its washerwomen 75 cents a day, or 10
cents an hour. North Becket--Pays to women one-third the wages of men.
Northampton--Pays $5 a week. Salisbury--For sewing hats, $1 a day.
South Reading--On rattan and shoe work, $5 to $10 a week. South
Yarmouth--Half the wages of men, or less. Taunton--One-third to
two-thirds the wages of men. Walpole--Pays two thirds the wages of
men. Wareham--Pays to its domestics from 18 to 30 cents a day; to
seamstresses, 50 cents to $1. Wilmington--Pays two-thirds the wages of
men. Winchester--Pays dressmakers $1 a day; washerwomen, 12 cents an
hour. Woburn--Keeps its women at work from 11 to 13 hours, and pays
them two-thirds the wages of men.

On the better side of the question, Fall River testifies that women,
in competition, earn nearly as much as men.

Lawrence--From the Pacific Mills, that the women are _liberally_ paid.
We should like to see the figures. The Washington Mills pays from $1
to $2 a day. Stoneham--Gives them $1.50 per week. Waltham--Reports the
wages of the watch factory as very _remunerative_. In 1860 I reported
this factory as paying from $2.50 to $4 a week. Here, also, we should
prefer figures to a general statement. Boston--Has now many
manufactories of paper collars. Each girl is expected to turn out
1,800 daily. The wages are $7 a week. In the paper-box factory, more
than 200 girls are employed, but I can not ascertain their wages, and
therefore suppose them to be low. I know individuals who earn here $6
a week, but that must be _above_ the average.

The best looking body of factory operatives that I have ever seen are
those employed in the silk and ribbon mills on Boston Neck, lately
under the charge of Mr. J. H. Stephenson, and those at the Florence
Silk Mills in Northampton, owned by Mr. S. L. Hill. The classes,
libraries, and privileges appertaining to these mills, make them the
best examples I know, and this is shown in the faces and bearing of
the women. We are always referred to political economy, when we speak
of the low wages of women, but a little investigation will show that
other causes co-operate with those, which can be but gradually
reached, to determine their rates.

1. The willfulness of women themselves, which when I see them in
positions I have helped to open to them, fills me with shame and
indignation.

2. The unfair competition proceeding from the voluntary labor, in
mechanical ways, of women well to do.

For the first, we can not greatly blame the women whom employers
chiefly choose for their _good looks_, for expecting to earn their
wages through them, rather than by the proper discharge of their
duties. Their conduct is not the less shameful on that account, but I
seem to see that only time and death and ruin will educate them.

For the second, we must strive to develop a public sentiment which,
while it continues to hold labor honorable, will stamp with ignominy
any women who, in comfortable country homes, compete with the
workwomen of great cities. There are thousands of wealthy farmers'
wives to-day, who just as much drive other women to sin and death, as
if they led them with their own hands to the houses in which they are
ultimately compelled to take refuge. Still further it has come to be
known to me that in Boston, and I am told in New York also, wealthy
women who do not even do their own sewing, have the control of the
finer kinds of fancy-work, dealing with the stores which sell such
work under various disguises. I can not prove these words, but they
will strike conviction to the hearts of the women themselves, and I
wish them to have some significance for men, for if these women had
the pocket-money which their taste and position require, they would
never dream of such competition. One thing these men should know, that
such women are generally known to their employers, and their domestic
relations are judged accordingly.

The recent investigations into factory labor in England concern rather
the condition than the wages of women. At flower-making, 11,000 girls
are employed from fourteen to eighteen hours daily. In hardware shops
and factories, they work, from six years of age, fourteen hours daily.
In glass factories, 5,000 women are employed from nine years of age
and upwards, eighteen hours daily. In tobacco factories, 7,000 women
are employed under conditions of great physical suffering. As
knitters, from six years old, they work fourteen hours daily for 1s.
3d. a week! This terrible state of things is partly owing to
competition with the labor of French machinery. A great deal of
ignorant prejudice against machines is one of its results. In
Sheffield files are still made by _hand_, while here in America we
make watches by _machinery_. The disposition of the whole community,
both here and in Great Britain, towards this labor question is kindly.
It has become a momentous social problem. During the fifteen years
that my attention has been riveted to this subject, I have seen a
great change in public feeling.

I have received the Sixth Annual Report of the Society for the
Employment of Women, of which the Earl of Shaftesbury is President,
and Mr. Gladstone a Vice-President. This Society has trained some
hair-dressers, clerks, glass engravers, book-keepers, and telegraph
operators, but its greatest service consists in the constant issue of
tracts, to bias developing public opinion. Such an association should
be started in New York. I should have been glad to inaugurate in
Boston, during the last six years, several important industrial
movements. The war checked the enthusiasm I had succeeded in rousing,
and I have not been able to pause in my special work of collecting and
observing facts, to stimulate it afresh or to solicit personally the
necessary means. How easy it would be for a few wealthy women to test
these experiments. I would first establish a Mending-School, and
having taught women how to darn and patch in a proper manner, I would
scatter them through the country to open shops of their own. As it is,
I do not know a city in which a place exists to which a housekeeper
could send a week's wash, sure that it would be returned with every
button-hole, button, hem, gusset and stay in proper condition. These
mending-shops should take on apprentices, who should be sent to the
house to do every sort of repairing with a needle. I would open
another school to train women to every kind of trivial service, now
clumsily or inadequately performed by men. If, for instance, you now
send to an upholsterer to have an old window-blind or blind fixture
repaired, his apprentice will replace the entire thing, at a
proportionate cost, leaving the old screw-holes to gape at the gazer.
I would train women to wash, repair, and replace in part, and to carry
in their pockets little vials of white or red lead to fill the gaping
holes. Full employment could be found for such apprentices.

LAW.

The number of laws passed the last six years affecting the condition
of women has been very small. The New York Assembly in February, 1865,
passed a law putting the legal evidence of a married woman on the same
basis as if she were a "femme sole." The Massachusetts Legislature
have legalized marriage ceremonies performed by an ordained woman, and
in January, 1866, Mr. Peckham, of Worcester, moved for a joint Special
Committee "to consider in what way a more just and equal compensation
shall be awarded to female labor." On the 4th of April just passed
Samuel E. Sewall and others petitioned for leave to appoint women on
School Committees. It is difficult to conceive on what ground such
petitioners had leave to withdraw. These things are only valuable as
indicating that public attention is still alive. Some remarkable
illustrations of the absurdity of old laws might be recorded. One of
these is to be found in the family history of Mad. de Bedout, recently
dead at Paris.

A very important convention came together at Leipsic, in September,
1865. One hundred and fifty women assembled, pledged to assert the
right to labor, and to bridge the gulf between the compensations of
the two sexes. Madame Louise Otto Peters opened the conference in an
able speech. She stated that there were five millions of women in
Germany who could each earn, if allowed, three thalers a week. A
thousand women might find employment as chemists, on salaries of one
hundred and fifty thalers a year, exclusive of board and lodging.
Another thousand might be employed as boot-closers. The foundation of
industrial and commercial schools was urged. The weak point of the
speech as reported, appeared to be, that it took no cognizance of the
fact that an influx of five millions of laborers must necessarily
lower the current rate of wages she proposed. I mention this
convention in a legal connection, believing that it was intended to
remove some local legal barriers.

SUFFRAGE.

Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Sarah E. Wall, and a few other women, have
continued their annual protests without intermission. In somewhat the
same way have petitions recently been sent to Congress in behalf of
Universal Suffrage. We had no expectation that any favorable reception
would await such petitions, but it was a duty to put them on record.
What fate they met in Congress, you have so recently heard that I have
no occasion to record it. Minnesota, New York, and other States, have
petitioned their Legislatures to the same effect.

PROGRESS.

The real gain of a reform, starting from the heart of the family, must
necessarily be very slow. I remember that some years ago, when I
printed my book on labor, one of my kindest critics congratulated the
public that of my nine lectures, I had published only these. He
thought it was useless to contend for more book-learning for women,
and the subject of Civil Rights still disgusted his sensitive ear. The
common sense of the book on labor ought to have shown him how I should
treat the subject of education. He could not understand how the woman
who gets an education which does not make her a "bread-winner," is
essentially defrauded, nor how a woman well paid for her labor is
essentially wronged, when she is denied the privilege of protecting it
by her vote. There is, however, a surely growing sense of this shown
in the substantial advance of her civil rights.

In the early part of 1865, the people of Victoria, in Australia,
assembled to elect a member of Parliament, were surprised to find the
whole female population voting. Some quick-sighted woman had
discovered that the letter of the new law permitted it, and their
votes were accepted and wisely given. _The London Times_, in the month
of May, says that, in a _country like Australia_, it can easily
believe that such an extension of the franchise will be a _marked
improvement_, and thinks that the precedent will stand! The Government
of Moravia has also, within the past year, granted the municipal
franchise to widows who pay taxes. In January, 1864, the Court of
Queen's Bench in Dublin, Ireland, restored to woman the _old right_ of
voting for Town Commissioners. The Justice (Fitzgerald) desired to
state that ladies were entitled to sit as Town Commissioners as well
as to vote for them, and the Chief Justice took pains to make it clear
that there was nothing in either duty repugnant to womanly habits.

The inhabitants of Ain (or Aisne) in France, lately chose nine women
into their municipal council. At Bergeres, they elected the whole
council, and the Mayor, not being prepared for such good fortune,
resigned his office. A very remarkable autograph note of the Queen of
England attracted my attention in 1865. It expressed to Lord John
Russell the Queen's dissatisfaction with Lord Palmerston. It was a
very distinct assertion of her regal prerogative, and as such Lord
Palmerston submitted to it.

Our cause has found able advocates in John Stuart Mill, _The New York
Evening Post_, and Theodore Tilton. If I were asked whether, in
connection with this gain, we have lost any ground, I should reply
that we have decidedly lost it in connection with the daily press. I
do not know any newspaper, if I except _The Boston Commonwealth_,
which will print a letter touching civil rights from any woman,
precisely as it is written. I think what we need most is to purchase
the right to a daily use of half a column of _The New York Tribune_.

RECORD AND OBITUARIES.

I have been accustomed to connect with reports of this kind, some
honorable mention of distinguished women recently dead. I can not do
this at any length after a pause of so many years, but a few names
must be mentioned, a few facts recorded. I had occasion, some years
ago, to commemorate the services of Maria Sybilla Merian, painter,
engraver, linguist, and traveler, who published, at Amsterdam, two
volumes of engravings of insects and sixty magnificent plates,
illustrating the metamorphoses of the insects of Surinam. I did not at
that time know that some of her statements had been held open to
suspicion. In the first place, she asserted that a certain fly, the
Fulgoria Lantanaria, emitted so much light that she could read her
books by its aid. Still further, that one of the large spiders called
Mygale, entered the nests of the humming-bird in Surinam, sucked its
eggs and snared the birds. To all the contention which arose over
these statements, Madame Merian could oppose only her word. Men who
knew that her statements in regard to Europe were indisputable,
decided that her word could not be taken in Asia. A very common folly;
but two hundred years have passed, 1866 arrives, and her justification
with it. An English traveler named Bates, has recently rescued quite
large finches from the Mygale, and poisoned himself with its saliva in
preparing them for his cabinet.

I do not know how many years Madame Baring, the mother of the great
banker, has been dead. It is only recently that I have ascertained
that to her prudence, activity, and business habits, the family
attribute the sure foundation of their habits. Matthew Baring came to
Larkbeare, near Exeter, from Bremen. His wife superintended in his
day, the long rows of "burlers," or women who picked over the woolen
cloth he made. Her sons, John and Francis, sought a wider field for
the fortune their father left, but did not forget to erect a monument
to their mother's industry.

When I first investigated the labor of woman, I was told that the
great manufacturing interest, represented by the button factories at
Easthampton, Mass., had its origin in the persevering industry of a
woman. Last summer I went personally to see the factories and their
proprietor, and it was a pleasant surprise to find the woman of whom I
had heard still living. Samuel Williston told me that he did not
usually gratify the curiosity of his visitors, but added that if I
thought it would be any stimulus to the industry of other women, he
should be glad to tell me the story. About forty years ago he had been
an unsuccessful speculator in Merino sheep, and his wife strained
every nerve to help her family. On going one day to the country store
for a supply of knitting, she expressed so much disappointment on
being told that there was none for her, that a tailor in the
establishment asked her if she would cover some buttons for him. She
soon found that certain kinds of buttons were in steady demand. They
were then made wholly by hand. She provided herself with materials,
took the farmers' daughters for apprentices, and her husband went to
Boston, Hartford, and New York to solicit orders. From this small
beginning arose one of the most lucrative industries of Massachusetts.

About a year since Eliza W. Farnham laid down her weary head. I did
not know her, nor did I sympathize in her theories. They were
sustained by her imagination rather than her reason; by her impulses
rather than any practical judgment. No moral superiority can justly be
conferred on either sex of a being possessed of intellect and
conscience. God has conferred no such superiority; yet I gladly name
Mrs. Farnham here as a woman whose life--a bitter disappointment to
herself--was useful to all women, and whose books, published since her
death, show a marvelous mental range. I name her with sympathy and
admiration. During the last year Madam Charles Lemonnier has died in
Paris. She devoted her life to the professional education of women.
For six years she found it so difficult to raise the necessary funds,
that she had to content herself with sending her pupils to
institutions in Germany. In 1862 the Society for the Professional
Instruction of Women was at last constituted, and opened a school in
the Rue de Perle. Two other schools have since been opened; one in the
Rue de Val Sainte Catherine, the other in the Rue Roche. The morning
is occupied in these schools with general studies, the afternoon with
industrial drawing, wood engraving, the making up of garments, linen,
etc. She died after initiating a thoroughly successful work.

In July, 1865, there died at Corfu a Dr. Barry, attached to the
Medical Staff of the British Army. He was remarkable for skill,
firmness, decision, and great rapidity in difficult operations. He had
entered the army in 1813, and had served in all quarters of the globe
with such distinction, as to insure promotion without interest. He was
clever and agreeable, but excessively plain, weak in stature, and
with a squeaking voice which provoked ridicule. He had an irritable
temper, and answered some jesting on this topic by calling out the
offender and shooting him through the lungs. In 1840 he was made
Medical Inspector, and transferred from the Cape to Malta. He went
from Malta to Corfu, and when the English Government ceded the Ionian
Islands to Greece, resigned his position in the army and remained at
Corfu. There he died last summer, forbidding, with his latest breath,
any interference with his remains. The women who attended him regarded
this request with the shameless indifference now so common, and unable
to believe that an officer who had been forty-five years in the
British service, had received a diploma, fought a duel, and been
celebrated as a brilliant operator, was not only a woman, but at some
period in her life a _mother_; they called in a medical commission to
establish these facts. A sad, sad picture which those of us, who
inquire into the fortunes of women, can readily understand.

Last November deprived us of Lady Theresa Lewes and Mrs. Gaskell. Mrs.
Gaskell has perhaps done more than any woman of this century, not
confessedly devoted to our cause, to elevate the condition of her sex,
and disseminate liberal ideas as to their needs and culture. The first
part of her career was one of those brilliant successes which startle
us into surprise and admiration. It was checked midway by the
publication of her life of Charlotte Bronte, the best and noblest of
her works. Checked, because condemned, in that instance, without a
hearing. She could never afterward feel the elastic pleasure, which
was natural to her, in composing and printing, and for three long
years afterward never touched her pen. I would not allude to this
subject if every notice of her since her death had not done so,
repeating the old censure, as a matter of course. Here in America we
may exculpate her. The public was wrong in the first place, inasmuch
as it has come to demand biography before biography is possible. The
publisher was wrong in the second, for he ought to have known, and
could easily have ascertained, how plain a statement the English law
would permit. The public was still further wrong when it attributed
misapprehension and carelessness to a woman whom it very well knew to
be incapable of either. I, for one, shall never forgive nor forget the
officious censure of the _Westminster Review_--censure given by one
who must have known that the legal apology tendered in Mrs. Gaskell's
absence to protect her pecuniary interests, had the unfortunate effect
to put her in a position where explanation and self-defence were alike
impossible. Mrs. Gaskell had deserved the steady confidence of the
public.

In Paris, recently, died Mrs. Severn Newton. She was the daughter of
the artist Severn, the friend of Keats, and now British Consul at
Rome. About five years since she married Charles Newton,
Superintendent of Greek Antiquities at the British Museum. She was a
person in whom power and delicacy were singularly blended. Ary
Schæffer was accustomed to hold up her work as a model for his pupils.
Her renderings of classic sculpture were so true that they were termed
translations, and she had recently devoted herself to oil painting
with great success. She died of brain fever at the early age of
thirty-three, the most honored of female English artists.

I have kept till the last the name of Fredrika Bremer, whose good
fortune it was to secure lasting benefits to her sex. God sent to her
early years dark trials and privations. Her father's tyrannical hand
crushed all power and loveliness out of her life. At first she
rebelled against her sufferings, but when he died in her girlhood she
was able to see that they lent strength to her efforts for her sex. It
was the rumor of what we were doing in this country for women that
first drew her hither. It is not the fashion for Miss Bremer's friends
fully to recognize her position in this respect. I owe my own
convictions on the subject of suffrage to the reflections she
awakened. When I told her that my mind was undecided on this point,
she showed her disappointment so plainly, that I was forced to
reconsider the whole subject. Miss Bremer did not hurry her work. She
had a serene confidence that she should be permitted to finish what
she had begun. She secured popularity by her cheerful humor, her
genuine feeling, her true appreciation of men, and her insight into
the conditions of family happiness, before she made any direct appeal
against existing laws. Those who will read her novels thoughtfully,
however, will see that she was from the first intent upon making such
an effort possible. From the beginning she pleaded for the social
independence of wives; asked for them a separate purse; showed that
woman could not even give her love freely, until she was independent
of him to whom she owed it. To a just state of society, to noble
family relations, entire freedom is essential.

Under her influence females had been admitted to the Musical Academy.
The Directors of the Industrial School at Stockholm had attempted to
form a class, and Professor Quarnstromm had opened his classes at the
Academy of Fine Arts to women. Cheered by her sympathy, a female
surgeon had sustained herself in Stockholm, and Bishop Argardh
indorsed the darkest picture she had ever drawn, when he pleaded with
the state to establish a girls' school. It was at this juncture that
Miss Bremer published Hertha. This book was a direct blow aimed at the
laws of Sweden concerning women. By this time she had herself become
in Sweden what we might fitly call a "crowned head." She was
everywhere treated with distinction, and her sudden appearance in any
place was greeted with the enthusiasm usually shown by such nations
only to their princes. She said of her new book: "I have poured into
it more of my heart and life than into anything which I have ever
written," and, verily, she had her reward. She was at Rome, two years
after, in 1858, when the glad news reached her that King Oscar, at the
opening of the Diet, had proposed a bill entitling women to hold
independent property at the age of twenty-five. All Sweden had read
the book which moved the heart of the King, and the assembled
representatives rent the air with their acclamations.

In the following spring the old University town of Upsala, where her
friend Bergfalk occupies a chair, granted the _right of suffrage_ to
fifty women owning real estate, and to thirty-one doing business on
their own account. The representative their votes went to elect was to
sit in the House of Burgesses. Miss Bremer was not ashamed to shed
happy tears when this news reached her. If she had ever reproached
Providence with the bitter sorrow of her early years, she was penitent
and grateful now. Then was fulfilled the prophecy which she had
uttered, as she left our shores: "The nation which was first among
Scandinavians to liberate its slaves shall also be the first to
emancipate its women!"

BOSTON, _April 26, 1866_. CAROLINE H. DALL.

P. S.--To add one word to this deeply interesting and able report may
seem presumptuous, but it is fitting that something be said of those
women in our own country in whom we feel a proper pride. In
literature, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Lydia Maria Child are
unsurpassed by any writers of our day. The former is remarkable for
her descriptive powers, intuition of character, and rare common sense;
the latter for patient research, sound reason, and high moral tone. No
country has produced a woman of such oratorical powers as our peerless
Anna Dickinson. Young, beautiful, and always on the right side of
every question, her influence on the politics of this country for the
last four years has been as powerful as beneficent. She has more
invitations to speak before the first-class lyceums of the country, at
two hundred dollars an evening, than she can accept, and draws crowded
houses wherever she goes.

PHYSICAL CULTURE.

A friend who had visited Vassar College, after mentioning the fact of
its two women professors--Miss Mitchell and Miss Avery--informed us
that Elizabeth M. Powell is teacher of gymnastics there, and wonders
whether success may not win for Miss Powell a place in the Faculty.
There are literary societies in which the girls write and read essays,
and give recitations, and have discussions, and President Raymond
drills them in elocution or public entertainments. And yet, our friend
says, "I dare say that it would be pronounced a very improper thing
for women to speak in public, if the Faculty were to vote on the
question." The influences of Vassar are altogether conservative.

Miss Mitchell is a woman of great force of character, the very soul of
integrity, and entirely independent in her religious views. She thinks
the theory of Woman's Rights all right, but her tastes are all against
it. She dreads to be in the least conspicuous.

Miss Avery is a woman of great dignity and strength, and her presence
and lectures can not fail to stimulate the girls to a noble womanhood.
She tells them work is the necessity of the soul.

Miss Powell, a remarkably earnest young woman of rare moral and
intellectual worth, has a grand field, and opens her work with good
promise. Her first aim is to do away with tight-dressing. She believes
that when women have deeper breathing they will have higher
aspirations. That when women will apply conscience to their dress,
they will be prepared for more important truths.

In the great attention given to gymnasiums everywhere, we see the dawn
of a new day of physical and mental power in woman. Mrs. Plumb's
institution in this city, where hundreds of girls are trained every
year, is a complete success.

EQUAL EDUCATION.

ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY, CANTON, N. Y., _May 4, 1866_.

MISS ANTHONY:--Your letter came into my hands after some delay. I
hasten to reply to your inquiries. Our college is young yet. The first
class of two graduated last year. Two young ladies are to graduate at
the close of this term.

We receive ladies and gentlemen on the same terms and conditions; take
them together into the recitation-room, where they recite side by
side; require them to pursue the same course of study; and, when
satisfactorily completed, give them degrees of the same rank and
honor--Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts to gentlemen, Laureate
of Science and Laureate of Arts to ladies. Both sexes are required to
pursue the same course of study, with the exception of civil
engineering and political economy, which are merely optional studies
with the ladies.

We have two departments--Academical and Collegiate. The sexes are
about equal in number in each department. We have only about twenty in
the Collegiate Department. Half of these are ladies, among whom are
some of our best in Mathematics, Languages, and Natural Sciences.

We have also a Theological Department, to which ladies have access. We
have received applications from only two yet. One, Miss Olympia Brown,
is pastor of a Society in Weymouth, Mass., and is succeeding very
well. She is a graduate of Antioch College as well of our Theological
department. The other is now here.

Lombard University, Galesburgh, Ill., receives ladies, and takes them
through the same course as gentlemen, and gives them equal degrees. I
deeply sympathize with you in your efforts to raise the character and
improve the condition of woman, though, perhaps, I should not be quite
so radical as some in your Convention. Your cause is a good one, and I
pray Heaven that it do good.

J. S. LEE,
_Principal of the Collegiate Department St. Lawrence University_.

Genesee College at Lima, New York--a Methodist institution--opens its
doors equally to women, and has graduated several young ladies. Then
we must never forget to mention and bless Oberlin for its pioneer work
in the equal education of women. It was Oberlin that gave us Lucy
Stone, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Sallie Holley, and Frances
Ellen Watkins Harper, to speak early and brave words for woman and the
slave. And Antioch College that graduated the Rev. Olympia Brown.
Mention too should be made of Rev. Lydia A. Jenkins, who has been a
successful preacher among the Universalists for the last eight or ten
years, and is now settled at Binghamton, New York.

Of the MEDICAL PROFESSION it should be stated for the encouragement of
the young, that there are over three hundred graduates from the
several medical colleges for women, and that there is scarcely a
village throughout the country but has its woman physician of greater
or less skill. In New York city there are many successful physicians
besides the Drs. Blackwell. Dr. Clemence S. Lozier has a practice of
$15,000 a year, and owns two fine houses, all the proceeds of her own
perseverance. In Orange, New Jersey, Dr. Almira L. Fowler is very
popular, with a paying practice of $5,000 per year, besides a large
gratuitous service. In Philadelphia are Dr. Hannah E. Longshore, with
a $10,000 per annum practice, then there are Drs. Ann Preston, R.
Tressel, H. J. Sartain, E. Cleveland, J. Myres, and others, with
practices ranging from $5,000 to $2,000. In Utica, New York, Dr.
Pamelia Bronson is a successful physician. In Albion, is Dr. Vail. In
Weedsport, Dr. Harriet E. Seeley. In Rochester, Dr. Sarah R. A. Dolley
numbers among her patrons many persons of wealth and fashion, who but
a few years ago ridiculed the idea of a "lady doctor." Mrs. Dolley's
practice brings her fully $3,000 a year. In a letter to one of our
Committee Mrs. Dolley says, "May your labors be prospered, that the
women of our country may have a _sphere_ rather than a _hemi_sphere!
Dr. R. B. Glasson, of Elmira, Dr. S. Ivison, of Ithaca, New York, and
Dr. Green, late of Clifton Springs, who has opened a water-cure
somewhere in Western New York, all do a large amount of practice, and
with the greatest acceptance to those who favor Hydropathic treatment.
Dr. Ross, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has a large practice, and commands
the respect of the profession. And, as Mrs. Dall says of the many
noble women who served efficiently in our armies during the war
without even sounding the name of the wonderful Clara Barton, so we
have to say of our woman physicians, "their name is legion."

The following is an item from the Boston _Commonwealth_:

FURTHER PROGRESS IN WOMAN'S RIGHTS.--Miss Stebbins, of Chickasaw
County, Iowa, has received an appointment as Notary Public for that
county. She is the first female ever having received such a
commission, and is represented as eminently competent.

This from the National Anti-Slavery _Standard_:

WOMAN'S RIGHTS IN HUNGARY.--A curious petition has been presented to
the Hungarian Diet. It is signed by a number of widows and other women
who are landed proprietors, and asks for them the same equality of
political rights with the male inhabitants of the country as they
possessed in 1848. These ladies represent that they have much more
difficulty in bringing up their children and attending to their
estates than men; that they have to bear the same State burdens; that
they are not allowed to take part in the communal elections; and that,
although many of them possess much more ground than the male electors,
they have no political rights.

There is one point in the report open to objection. It is not fair to
say that Mrs. Farnham's life "was a bitter disappointment to herself."
Who does realize in life all that in starting was looked for? Who has
nothing to regret? With a heart so generous and sympathizing as
hers--a mind so disciplined and stored with general information--a
life so rich in practical usefulness, she was not only a blessing to
others, but she must have had a more than an ordinary share of that
peace and happiness that gladdens every Christian life. I have just
read her last great work. I took it up with prejudice, not believing
her theory of the superiority of woman. I lay it down with a higher
idea of woman's destiny, and a profound reverence for the author of
the glorious thoughts that thrill my heart. I never met Mrs. Farnham
on earth, but I know and honor and love her now, and from the
celestial shores feel the pulsations of a true and noble soul.

E. C. S.

* * * * *

LETTERS.

WAYLAND, _April 28_.

DEAR MRS. STANTON:-- ... What I most wish for women is that they
should go right ahead, and do whatever they can do well, without
talking about it. But the false position in which they are placed by
the laws and customs of society, renders it almost impossible that
they should be sufficiently independent to do whatever they can do
well, unless the world approves of it. They need a great deal of
talking to, to make them aware that they are in fetters. Therefore I
say, success to your Convention, and to all similar ones!...

I am very cordially yours, LYDIA MARIA CHILD.

NEW CASTLE, DEL., _April 21, 1866_.

DEAR MRS. STANTON:-- ... I am with you in heart and sympathy,
rejecting with contempt the antiquated idea that woman is only fit for
a plaything or a household drudge. Nor can I see how it is less
dignified to go to a public building to deposit a vote than to
frequent the concert-room, whirl through the waltz in happy repose on
some roue's bosom, or mingle in any public crowd which is, in modern
times, quite admissible in polite society. Dethrone the idol and raise
the soul to its true and noble elevation, supported on a foundation of
undying principle, and woman becomes a thing of life and beauty--then
only fit to raise sons to be rulers. Justice requires your success,
and I hope the age will prove itself sufficiently enlightened to mete
out to you the reward of your years of toil.

Yours sincerely, JANE VOORHEES LESLIE.

MONDAY, _April 22_.

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--What I enclose is not much for the work you have
to do, but it is all I can proportion out for it just now. You are
quite right in relying on my regard for you, although I can not see
the subject as you do, and I was pleased to get your note saying so. I
am sure you take great interest in following Mr. Gladstone's bill for
the extension of suffrage in England. His speech upon it is in great
contrast to the shallow nonsense talked by many Americans against our
democratic form of government.

Very sincerely yours, JESSIE BENTON FREMONT.

13 CHESTNUT ST., BOSTON, _April 19, 1866_.

DEAR MRS. STANTON:--I have received yours of 14th inst., making
eloquent and friendly appeal to me for the expression of my sympathy,
written or spoken, in behalf of your forthcoming "Woman's Rights
Convention." Surely you need not my assurance that I most heartily
indorse all the claims and objects of your Association; that I
earnestly advocate whatever would advance or insure the rights of
humanity, whether for man or woman; that I as earnestly protest
against any and all prejudices, limitations, or legislations which
would interfere with those rights; that I claim for woman as ample
social and civil privileges as are conceded to man, whether in the
exercise of the franchise, the domain of our legislatures, or in the
sphere of the professions. We are no true men if we deny or would
barricade the exercise or the claim of those privileges, and have just
so much less of manhood as we dare to question or infringe them. I
agree with you, most fully, that the woman element is greatly needed
in the present crisis of our affairs for the right reconstruction of
our suffering Government. We have had, and still have, not men but too
many brutes making a very "bear garden" of our congressional halls,
rending and tearing this poor "body politic" of ours till, like the
raving demoniacs of old, it is now foaming and wandering crazily
around its own preconstructed tomb! while at the head of the
Government we have only a surly, self-conceited despot in embryo! "The
nation needs (as you say) at this hour the highest thought and
inspiration of a true womanhood infused into every vein and artery of
its life." There is no gainsaying your arguments on that head, for
just so far, and only so far as the refining influence of that womanly
element is so infused and felt in all our social and civil relations,
will the consummation of our national peace and prosperity be
effected.

Yours truly, J. T. SARGENT.

WEST NEWTON, _May 6, 1866_.

E. C. STANTON, _President Executive Committee Women's Rights
Association_:

MY DEAR MRS. S.:--I had hoped to be present at this, our eleventh
anniversary, but find it impossible. And so, at the last moment, I
hasten to express my earnest conviction that now, as never before, we
are called upon for vigorous, united action--that we are left no
alternative but an unflinching protest against the strange legislation
by which a Republican Congress, so-called, assumes to engraft upon our
national Constitution, as "amendments!" clauses which not only allow
rebels to disfranchise loyal soldiers, who have borne the flag of the
Republic victoriously against their treason and rebellion, but to keep
the ballot from the hands of all women!

If not moved by an enlightened appreciation of the first principles of
political economy and social justice in legislation touching them
heretofore, we could scarcely believe that after the record made by
both the proscribed classes during our late fearful struggle, our
legislators could gravely stoop to brand them anew as "aliens" and
outlaws! It is an act as discreditable to their hearts and their moral
sense as to their statesmanship. And upon their shoulders must rest
the responsibility of an agitation to which we are thus forced--an
agitation which we have hesitated to arouse while so many vital
questions touching the future of the negro were awaiting settlement,
and in which we are acting strictly on the defensive. Under the
magnificent utterance of our brave Senator Sumner--which was an
inspiration and a prophecy--we looked to see all faltering and
compromise, so fatal in all our past, so fatal always and everywhere,
swept like dew before the sun. But the old fears and falterings return
sevenfold reinforced to renew a puerile and patch-work legislation,
which, while asserting the truth, submits to, nay, invites a fresh
struggle over each separate application of the same "self-evident
truth." What remains for us, then, but to turn from a Congress from
which we had hoped so much, which might have dared anything in the
interest of loyalty and justice, as our brave brethren turned, from a
recreant President to the people, whom he and Congress have not dared
to trust, and resolve to do our utmost to awaken a public sentiment
which only slumbers, but is not dead, and which shall make impossible
such burlesques, such infamous "amendments" to our organic law. With
undiminished hope and faith, yours,

CAROLINE M. SEVERANCE.

HARTFORD, _April 22, 1866_.

DEAR MADAM:--I learn by a circular I have received that a Woman's
Rights Convention is to be held in New York in May. I can not have the
pleasure of attending it, but I would like to take this opportunity of
telling you I am with you, heart and soul, in this cause--of thanking
you, and those with whom you are associated, for the noble work you
have done, and are doing, in the cause of universal suffrage. There
never was a more opportune time for calling a convention of this kind
than the present, when it is evident that the United States
Constitution is about to undergo some repairs--when all the so-called
radicals in Congress are trying to have it so altered as to insure the
disfranchisement of one-half the nation. They have so strangely
perverted the meaning of the term "universal suffrage," that it is a
misnomer as at present used by them. It is rather significant of the
"universality" of the suffrage intended, that every one of these
special guardians of freedom refused to present Congress a petition
for woman's enfranchisement; that the Massachusetts Senator who leads
the van of freedom's host, did, finally, most reluctantly present it
with one hand, while taking good care to deal it a blow with the other
that would prove a most effectual quietus to it; that a representative
[Mr. Boutwell], after repeating the self-evident truth that "there can
be no just government without the consent of the governed," says that
"man is endowed by nature with the priority of right to the vote
rather than woman or child;" that the two Senators from Massachusetts
have each proposed amendments to the Constitution holding out
inducements to the States to enfranchise all male inhabitants, but
none to enfranchise women, when they could have included them by
omitting one word; that that light of freedom, Mr. Greeley, of the
_Tribune_, states that "men express the public sense as fully as if
women voted" [speech in Suffield, Conn., last June]. These are a few
of the straws pointing to that sham labeled "universal suffrage."

The conservatives of the slave-driving school have had an odious
enough reputation, but I never heard of any of them taking measures to
so amend the Constitution as to insure the perpetuation of the
disfranchisement of sixteen millions of the nation, as would the
proposed amendments of Messrs. Sumner and Wilson. And these
Massachusetts Senators are called the foremost workers in the ranks of
liberty's grand army. If these are the foremost, Heaven save us from
those in the rear! Why does Mr. Boutwell try to make it appear that he
believes that governments, to be founded on justice, should obtain
"the consent of the governed," when he believes the consent of only
one-half the governed should be obtained? when he classes adults as
fully capable of exercising an enlightened judgment as himself with
infants? If Mr. Greeley thinks it right for one-half the people to
represent the wants, and speak as they may think best for the other
half, that other half having no choice in the matter, he must admit,
if he have a tithe of the sense of justice attributed to him, that it
would be only fair to let each half take their turn--the men
expressing the public sense a part of the time, then the women--thus
alternating between the two, in order to balance the scales of justice
with perfect equilibrium.

It seems rather a difficult matter for men to appreciate the fact that
women are ordinary human beings, with the wants and reasoning
faculties of the same. If women lived on the plane where sword and
cannon are resorted to for the procuring of justice, men might then
see the necessity of establishing equality of rights for all. But the
power of women lies in spiritual, not in brute force; therefore men
have failed to comprehend them, or to see the necessity of granting
rights that are not contested at the point of the bayonet. Add to this
the ambitious but weak love of power--of having some one to
rule--inherent in the natures of most men, and the causes of woman's
bondage are pretty clear. In the light of the developments of
the past few months it is plain that the most thorough faced
abolitionists--those who wax eloquent for the negro--are as much in
favor of continuing the slavery of women as were Southern planters of
continuing negro slavery. There are a few exceptions to this, and but
a few.

Even the Boston _Commonwealth_, perhaps as radical a paper as any now
published, and which favors suffrage for women, is a good illustration
of the difficulty of the most liberal-minded men seeing this question
in its true light; for, in its issue of February 24, it says that
"suffrage for women is not a political necessity of a republican
government."

The _Nation_ thinks women ought to be deprived of the franchise
because they do not, as a general thing, express a wish for it,
stating at the same time that they have as good a right to it as men.
Remarkable logic this, to deprive the whole class of the power to
obtain their dues because they do not _en masse_ express a wish for
them. There are men who do not care enough about the franchise to make
use of it; therefore, according to this argument, they should be
immediately disfranchised.

There is no compulsion in exercising the right to the vote--all can
let it alone who choose; and did every woman in the land choose to let
it alone, it would be no argument for withholding from her the power
to make use of it whenever disposed. But the statement that they are
opposed to it is untrue. No woman--whether teacher, or telegraph
operator, or government clerk, or dry-goods clerk, all the way down to
the poor needle-woman who lives under a reign of oppression as
frightful as that in the manufacturing districts of England--is paid
more than half or a third what she earns, or what a man would be paid
performing the same services, and performing them no better, in many
cases not so well; and the needle-women are paid no more than a tenth
part of what they earn. And yet women do not rise up against the
oppression that denies them the just compensation; therefore these
logicians of the _Nation's_ school must, to be consistent, argue that
women do not wish to have just wages paid them, and they should not
have just wages offered them--the right of accepting or refusing being
at their own option.

It seems to be full time for the women of this country to demand a
settlement of the question whether they are still to be treated as
infants or as intelligent adults. If the former treatment is to be
continued it would be very appropriate to present Congress with a
protest against having one-half the basis of representation composed
of those who are to remain in a state of perpetual infancy (which
needs and can have representation; whose government must be as
absolute as that of the Czar's, the very word "representative"
implying a substitute chosen by another)--a protest that if they are
too good--as often stated, too divine--to have any voice in such
earthly matters as governments, they are also too good to be thrust
just so far into the body politic as to swell the basis of
representation one-half, merely for the furtherance of the interests
of ambitious politicians, and then to be put one side and utterly
ignored when the voice of a free intelligent being is required.

It seems to be full time for women to take soundings of the depth of
the professions, and make calculations of the latitude and longitude
of the party to which alone they have looked for redemption from the
slavery in which they have ever been held, when the chief ones of that
party--now that there is any possibility of attaining that
object--utterly refuse all efforts in that direction, and, worse than
that, give indications of taking positive measures in the opposite
direction. It is important that Congress be flooded with petitions on
this matter--that it be allowed no rest from them; and, in addition to
petitions, a bill is needed excluding women from the basis of
representation so long as they shall be excluded from the
franchise--excluding them from the list of taxable persons and from
those who are by law liable to the death-penalty.

Should such a bill be tabled by Congress; should they refuse all
action on it that would place them in their true light, showing that
they look upon this question the same as the Southern Congress under
Polk, Pierce, and Buchanan looked upon the anti-slavery
movement--very much afraid of having the subject agitated; should they
give it a decided veto, that would place them in their true
light--greatly opposed to universal suffrage, although it is their
policy to sail under that banner, like the pirate who sometimes finds
an advantage in substituting for his own black flag some more
respectable one. Should they pass such a bill it would place them in a
better light than they have ever had the fortune to be in before,
while it would make it for the interest of the States to have this
bill followed up by another, giving women the franchise; and it is
very doubtful whether we will ever obtain it in any other way than
from motives of self-interest on the part of legislators--motives of
pure justice and right occupying a secondary place.

The statutes of the land present a remarkable conglomeration of
inconsistencies and injustice in regard to women, and show the utter
failure of the plan of having one class govern another class without
any consent or participation in the matter on the part of the class so
governed. The law ought not in certain cases to treat women as infants
and wholly irresponsible beings, merely to foster a weak ambition and
love of power, and in other cases as wholly responsible adults. The
infant regimen should be enforced thoroughly from the day of their
birth to the day of their death, whether it be in one year or a
hundred, or they should come, in all respects, under a system adapted
to responsible, intelligent adults. Infants should not pay taxes and
they should not be hung. It is the general opinion that the infant
Surrat committed crimes equal in magnitude to those of any of the
conspirators who were hung with her, but her state of infancy should
have afforded her legal protection from the gallows. If this
government is too weak to decide the qualifications of voters; too
weak to extend freedom from the northern coast of Maine to the
southern coast of Florida; too weak to prevent any State
disfranchising its inhabitants; too weak to make ignorance,
criminality, and non-age the only political limitations for man or
woman, be they black or white, or a combination of all the hues of the
rainbow; too weak to send tyranny to the wall and make liberty the
universal rule for this broad land; then a party must and will arise
of sufficient metal to infuse into it the requisite strength--a party
that will "strengthen its weak hands and confirm its feeble knees."

Concentration of power for the establishment and extension of liberty
is not a tendency to despotism. Despotisms are never built out of that
material. But that is a despotism as bad as Austria that allows
one-half its citizens to govern the other half without any consent of
theirs; and it is none the less a despotism for being divided up into
petty State despotisms than if carried on by the general government,
so long as they are all agreed on disfranchising one-half the people.
Thirty-six despotisms make a pretty good sized one taken in the
aggregate. The party to inaugurate the reign of freedom must
inevitably arise, for the elements to bring it into power are at work.
Morally, it will tower as far above the present republican party as
that did above the old ones--whig and democratic. There are true
souls, women and men, in the Old World and the New, faithfully working
and watching for its advent.

Some months ago we got word from over the water that John Stuart Mill
had been elected to that formidable body of conservatism--the British
Parliament. Another significant fact, but this time significant of
good. The writings of Mill are illumined by the sun-clear radiance of
that liberty for which he appeals--a liberty that shines with the
steady light of a fixed star--and which I have watched for in vain in
the writings and speeches of the most noted reformers on this
continent. When men like him come into power I think we have good
ground for taking fresh courage. I have written more than I intended,
but the subject is one on which I do not feel like restricting myself,
especially when writing to one who fully appreciates the situation.
Sincerely hoping you may never weary in your good work.

Yours respectfully, F. ELLEN BURR.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

ALBANY, _April 9, 1866_.

MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--It will be out of my power to speak at your
Convention--my health will not permit my attendance--but I cordially
concur in your efforts to restore to woman her civil and political
rights, and for her emancipation from slavery, her actual, undeniable
status at present in the Government. I can suggest no plan to effect
this great object, except that of agitation and discussion, everywhere
throughout the land. Whenever the public mind shall become
sufficiently enlightened, and women themselves shall seriously and
earnestly demand, on their own behalf, equal rights and equal laws,
they will be accorded; and then we shall have, what the world has
never yet had or seen, a true republican system of government. Excuse
these hasty thoughts.

Truly yours, A. J. COLVIN.

_To the President and Members of the Eleventh National Woman's Rights
Convention in New York assembled_:

LADIES:--I notice with pleasure the call for your annual convention
The hour is pregnant with events, and this period is opportune for
opening and pressing upon the public attention the questions with
which you are occupied. As the claims of the slave in past years have
furnished to so many espousing them the occasion of manifold and large
emancipations little thought by them at first, so the claims of the
emerging freedman will lay open the way to the study and solution of
the gravest and widest social questions. The great problems of social
order: government, its fit aims and happiest methods, the nature and
just basis of suffrage, etc., are to be studied anew and brought to
true adjustment; false barriers and artificial distinctions must be
swept away, no child of Adam must be inhibited from wielding those
prerogatives which by birthright or attainment he may be entitled to.
The more obvious abuses, the flagrantly gratuitous distinctions,
involving very gross inequalities and oppressions, will be the first
to be exposed and abolished.

The natural and just basis of the right of suffrage is doubtless
qualification, wisdom, and substantial honesty. The right to wield the
ballot is not in the strict sense an inborn and original right, coeval
with our being, except as any right to which we may by culture attain
is of this character. It is ours potentially. It belongs to attainment
and possession, as the right, for instance, in a particular case to
survey land, or instruct minds. It is a right I am to rise to through
intelligence, discipline, manhood. It is conditioned upon discernment
and true faithfulness. Those too ignorant or uncaring to distinguish
between rule and misrule, government and lawlessness, science and a
juggle, supernal and infernal--those especially so profligate, who
seek only to reach through government the sanction of law, the baptism
of social order for their wickedness and misdeeds, have no business at
any ballot-box, save that of recorded resolution to amend and repent.
To put the ballot into the hands of the reckless, the besotted, and
the profligate, is the sheerest abuse possible, and suicidal to all
just protection and rule.

It may be a long day ere suffrage shall be adjusted carefully and
strictly to the normal basis. But before this the Gospel must be
preached to all nations, the rough places must be made smooth and the
paths straight for the coming of the Most High. Whatever unjust
barriers or factitious discrimination there may be against any must be
abolished, and equality must be for all. Wisdom or virtue is not the
monopoly of any class or sex or race. By all the proprieties of
nature, woman should have with man a voice in the enactment of laws
and the administration of government. She is the complement of man,
essential for the due poise, the right wisdom, and conduct in family,
in neighborhood, in Church or in State. Sharing in civil government,
she will be a redemptive agency for society in many ways little
thought at present. And agitation and overturning shall not cease
until the final realization is reached. Society shall yet be rewrought
and born again. All rule shall be justice, and obedience liberty.
Government shall be the reflection of the infinite kingdom, the
incarnation of truth, wisdom, benignity, power, the protector and help
of all, inviting and assisting each to full realization of the utmost
possibilities of attainment and strength for the individual soul,
building to perfect freedom, building also to perfect unity. Service,
sacrament, supreme reverence--this shall be the motto and norm of the
world, all society become a church and all life worship, the broad
anthem of souls. For this high consummation let us look and labor,
trusting and working on to the perfect end.

Yours sincerely, CHAS. D. B. MILLS.

DWIGHT, ILL., _April 30, 1866_.

MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--Your kind letter inviting me to attend the
Convention on the 10th of May, was duly received. I should be
extremely happy to be with you in your deliberations, but so much of
my time has of late been occupied in the work of the American Union
Commission, that I can hardly spare a moment for even your good work.
I, however, feel only selfish regrets, for I should be but a listener
and partaker of the rich mental feasts that will there be freely
offered to all who will partake. The great arguments have all been
made by our opponents, and they concede all that we ask, save that
they substitute expediency for principle. They have yet to learn that
God will not be dethroned; that when He decrees a human soul, He
surrounds it with all the dignity of free will and consequent
responsibility. He therefore endows the soul with rights, the exercise
and protection of which are the crown of humanity. We ask no new code
of rights. We simply ask to be included in the general method of
asserting and protecting them, which even the shadowy-browed children
of bondage are now perceived to claim without presumption. It has been
with no small degree of interest that I have seen that our wisest
statesmen begin to so far see and feel the importance of the issue
that lies inevitably in their path, that they stop to explain and
apologize; but they dare not deny, lest the logic they use should be
turned against themselves.

The great Christian doctrine of the equality of all before God, who is
declared to be no respecter of persons, is the axe laid at the root of
the tree of prejudice, which has for such long ages brought forth
injustice and oppression in a multitude of forms. Our good and great
men are reading with anointed eyes the declaration, "There is neither
Jew nor Greek, neither bond nor free," and we may hope they will soon
read the final assertion, "Neither male nor female, for ye are all one
in Christ Jesus." In this full and broad assertion lies the completion
of the great Christian scheme, not limited to any number of parts, but
embracing the great whole, thus recognizing the fatherhood of God and
the brotherhood of man. What our cause now needs is the Christian
advocacy of good and wise men and women. Legally, our position is
conceded, so far as the logical sequences are concerned; but the
pulpit, on which woman is prone to lean for all her opinions on
questions of morality, has, with a few rare exceptions, been silent.
Henry Ward Beecher has dared to speak out in a manly, Christian way;
but even he has not laid upon the women of the Church that burden of
responsibility concerning government that they ought to be made to
feel. For what, let me ask, is to excuse them, if their want of
intelligence and activity should lead to a thorough corruption of
political morals such as we have seen in portions of our country
during a few years past. Will they not be among those who hide their
Lord's talent in the earth, and by and by come back with the little
morsel carefully wrapped up in a napkin, all beautifully embroidered,
it may be, and tender it back, saying, "Lo! there is thine own, take
it!" In this religious aspect women must come to consider the question
before it will become vital. Political action may give it a body, but
God only can breathe into it the breath of life that will constitute
it a living soul. Hence we see that without the best religious
sanction, little progress can really be assured. I am conscious that
my views are not identical with those of many who have reached the
same general conclusions; but as many are disposed to regard the
question from this standpoint, I have thought it best to express
myself with great frankness. With many regrets that I can not partake
in your deliberations,

I remain, truly yours, MRS. H. M. TRACY CUTLER.

1710 LOCUST STREET, PHILADELPHIA, _May 10, 1866_.

MY VERY DEAR SUSAN ANTHONY:--I fully intended coming to the
meetings--gave up Washington, made all my arrangements, packed my
bag--and stayed at home. Circumstances which I could not control, and
which I can't very well explain, put utterly out of my power the duty
and pleasure of coming. There's no use in saying how sorry I am, for
it would waste paper and time to state all my regrets. Suffice it to
declare that I have rarely been so extremely sorry and disappointed.

Affectionately and truly thine, ANNA E. DICKINSON.

OFFICE OF CORRESPONDENCE WITH THE FRIENDS OF THE MISSING MEN OF }
UNITED STATES ARMY, WASHINGTON, D. C.; _April 3, 1866_. }

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--I am glad that my too kind and partial friends
have set me "right on the record." I am "with you," and with all who
labor for the advancement of humanity and the world through the
proper channels--the elevation of woman. You have my heart, my
sympathies (if needed), my prayers, and, best of all, my hopes, for
the success of your every endeavor; and my poor words you should have,
if they could add either strength or interest, but neither nature nor
art have contributed me anything in this direction. I sometimes work a
little, but it seems to me to be in the most common manner, and I am
sure I could not speak at all. But no one knows how happy I should be
to be present and listen to those who can; and if not prevented by
duties of a very pressing and positive nature, I shall indulge myself
so far. With assurances of the highest regard, believe me your friend,

CLARA BARTON.

NEWPORT, R. I., _May 14, 1866_.

MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY--_Dear Friend_:--It has proved impossible for me
to attend the Convention; and I hope it is unnecessary, so far as my
own position is concerned, for me to renew my allegiance to the Equal
Rights movement. It seems to me the most glaring of logical
absurdities to apply the name of Universal Suffrage to any system
which does not include both sexes. It seems, in this point of view, a
righteous retribution upon American men, that the disfranchisement of
woman has put such a weapon into the hands of those who would
disfranchise the negro also. I must say, however, that a still greater
share of this responsibility rests upon American women, for it is
their unwillingness to ask for their rights which chiefly renders our
legislators unwilling to concede them.

Cordially yours, THOMAS WENTWORTH HIGGINSON.

A letter declining to speak at the Boston Equal Rights meeting, says:
"There has been a time when no one could do any better than I, to
speak in favor of women physicians, and then I was willing to come
forward and do my best. At present there are so many able and
eloquent, however, on the platform to advocate what we need--political
franchise--that I would appear presumptuous should I attempt to add
myself to the list. There is no other right which I want besides the
elective franchise, because the right to work on equality with man we
can obtain, with nothing but energy and firm will. My own case as a
physician illustrates that; while I am paying very nearly $400 taxes
(State and national), without the right to vote. These enormous taxes
come from money earned, dollar by dollar, on equality with men, and
yet there are all round me here many physicians of the stronger sex,
who do not pay half this amount of taxes, who vote and rule. I hope
before long a republic in the true sense of the word will be our share
in this glorious country. With sincere wishes for the best of results
in your present movement,

I am truly yours, M. E. ZAKRZEWSKA.

FREDERICK DOUGLASS,

In a letter, saying it would be impossible for him to attend the
Boston Equal Rights meeting on the 31st of May, says, "My best and
most earnest wishes for the success of your noble Convention. The
cause which it aims to subserve is the cause of the whole human
family, in a sense the broadest and most striking ever hit upon by any
other association."

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON,

In a letter stating that ill health prevented him from attending the
National Woman's Rights Convention in New York, says: "In some way I
will try to express my warm and hearty approval of the Equal Rights
movement at the approaching meeting in Boston. I hail it with
gladness, and as of far-reaching importance. The time has fully come
to drop the phrase "Woman's Rights" for that of "Equal Rights."

The following appeal, written by Parker Pillsbury, was issued in
behalf of the American Equal Rights Association in the autumn of 1866:

APPEAL FOR UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.

In restoring the foundations of the Government, Justice, as the chief
corner-stone, can alone secure a permanence of Peace and Prosperity.
The eighteenth century gave the World the Declaration of Independence,
the war of the Revolution, and the Constitution of the United States;
but only in the light of the nineteenth are these sublime phenomena
to be interpreted to us. From the Government, the civilization, and
religion of Great Britain, we derived our chattel slave system; but it
survived the pen of Jefferson, the sword of Washington, and the
wisdom, humanity, and statesmanship of the founders and framers of the
Government; and until far louder thunders than Bunker Hill and
Saratoga dashed it to the ground, and almost whelmed the Government
itself with it in a common ruin. And the terrible lessons of the late
war will all be in vain, should we now attempt to relay our
foundations in injustice and oppression. Out of the jaws of rebellion
and treason was the nation snatched by the hand of negro valor. And
thus, surely, has that race earned the right of full citizenship and
equality in the State. Even Jefferson declared, more than half a
century ago, that whoever "fights and pays taxes" has the right of
suffrage against the world. But the right of humanity, of manhood, is
older and of higher and diviner appointment than any other. If the
right of liberty and the pursuit of happiness be the gift and
endowment of the Creator, then surely is the right to the ballot the
only possible or conceivable assurance and guaranty of it in
republican governments. And on this ground the claim of woman is no
less than that of man. But base and degrading as has been the position
of the negro in the Government, that of woman is far lower. At no
price within human power to pay, can she arrive at equality in the
Government she is compelled to support and obey. In the making or
executing of no law, however deeply her womanly interest or happiness
may be involved, can she bear a part. She is found guilty, not of a
crime, not of a color, but of a sex; and all her appeals to courts or
communities for equality and justice, are in vain, even in this
democratic and Christian Republic. She is a native, free-born citizen,
a property-holder, taxpayer, loyal and patriotic. She supports
herself, and in proportionable part, the schools, colleges,
universities, churches, poor-houses, jails, prisons, the army, the
navy, the whole machinery of government; and yet she has no vote at
the polls, no voice in the national councils. She has guided great
movements of philanthropy and charity; has founded and sustained
churches; established missions; edited journals; written and published
invaluable treatises on history and economy, political, social, and
moral, and on philosophy in all its departments; filled honorably
professors' chairs; governed nations; led armies; commanded ships;
discovered and described new planets; practiced creditably in the
liberal professions; and patiently explored the whole realm of
scientific research; and yet, because in life's allotment she is
_female_, not male, _woman_, not man, the curse of inferiority cleaves
to her through all her generations. Eden's anathema was to be removed
on the coming of the second Adam; and in the new dispensation there
was to be neither male nor female. Jewish outlawry from all the
nations, continuing through almost twenty centuries, is repealed by
common consent among all civilized governments. Nor does the curse of
eternal attainder longer blast the Ethiopian race to degradation and
slavery, through Canaan's sin and shame. But where shall woman look
for her redemption in this auspicious hour, when new dawnings of
liberty, new sunrises of human enfranchisement are illumining the
world? A man once said, "where liberty is, there is my country." But
on what continent or island, or in what vast wilderness shall woman
find a nationality where she shall be taxed to support no government
she did not aid in making, obey no law she did not help to enact, nor
suffer any penalty until adjudged, by a jury, in part at least, of her
peers? True, her privileges in some States have been, after long
struggle and conflict, enlarged and increased. Like the Southern
freedmen, she has had her Civil Rights bill. But all this is
compatible with the Dred Scott decision itself. The power that gives
can take away; but of that power woman is no part. Mr. Sumner says,
"The ballot is the one thing needful to the emancipated slave."
Without it, he declares, his liberty is but an illusion, a
jack-o'lantern which he will pursue in vain. Without the ballot, he
reiterates, the slave becomes only sacrifice. And shall it not also be
pre-eminently so with woman? Formed by Almighty power a little lower
than the angels, her ruling lords and masters have, by legislative
proscription, plunged her not a little but immeasurably below myriads
of the human race, whose only boast or claim is, that for some
inscrutable reason they were so constituted as to stand _men_ in the
tables of the census.

In the American Equal Rights Association, it is determined to
prosecute an agitation which shall wake the nation to new
consciousness of the injustice long inflicted and still suffered
through proscriptive distinctions on account of sex and complexion. To
the industrial, hard-toiling, property-producing, family-supporting
women, this appeal is made to come to the rescue of their own
long-lost rights. In New York the angel of a Constitutional Convention
is soon to stir the waters. Let all who need healing hasten to the
baptism. Nor is it one of the least cheering signs that multitudes of
the intelligent women of the country are fast waking to a full
consciousness of the wrongs they suffer. Even the war has taught
invaluable lessons on the dignity and worth of woman in a thousand new
spheres. Our Florence Nightingales have not been one, but many, yea
thousands. Woman as well as the freedman saved the nation in its hour
of peril, and invested herself with new dignity demanding new
distinction. Now emphatically is her hour. But no comparison need be
instituted, none surely should be urged, as to whose is the paramount
claim. The great clock of humanity has struck the hour, and its tones
are ringing across the continents, reverberating as well among the
Alps as the Alleghanies, and mingling sweet music in both the
hemispheres. We are coming to the rescue of justice and right, girded
with the panoply of a divine and holy cause, and Omnipotence is
pledged in our behalf. We propose to organize Equal Rights clubs or
committees in every city, town, and village; to hold meetings for
discussions and lectures; to circulate tracts and petitions, and to
raise funds to enable the Association to carry forward its work for
educating the popular sentiment. We shall endeavor to enlist the
pulpit and the press. Truth, justice, reason, humanity, must and will
triumph. Already a host is on our side, and our principles can never
be defeated. The prospect before us is full of encouragement, and we
confidently submit our enterprise to the heart and hand of a waiting
and expectant people.

LETTERS TO THE MAY ANNIVERSARY OF 1867.

LAWRENCE, KANSAS, _May 6, 1867_.

MY DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--I hope your Convention will not fail to set in
its true light the position of those editors in New York who are
branding as the "infamous thirteen" the men who, in the New Jersey
Legislature, voted against negro suffrage, while they themselves give
the whole weight of their journals against woman's right to vote. They
use the terms "universal and impartial suffrage," when they mean only
negro suffrage; and they do it to hide a dark skin and an unpopular
client. They know that a "lie will keep its throne a whole age longer
if it skulks behind the shadow of some fair seeming name." In New
Jersey a negro father is legally entitled to his children, but no
mother in New Jersey, black or white, has any legal right to her
children. In New Jersey a widow may live forty days in the house of
her deceased husband without paying rent, but the negro widower, just
like the white widower, may remain in undisturbed possession of house
and property. A negro man can sell his real estate and make a valid
deed, but no wife in that State can do so without her husband's
consent. A negro man in New Jersey may will all his property as he
pleases, but no wife in the State can will her personal property at
all, and if she will her real estate with her husband's consent, he
may revoke that consent any time before the will is admitted to
probate, and thus render her will null and void. The women of New
Jersey went to the Legislature last winter on their own petition, for
the right of suffrage. Twenty-three members voted for them, thirty-two
voted against them. But the editors who now find unmeasured words to
express their contempt for the "infamous thirteen" who voted against
the negro, were as dumb as death when this vote was cast against
woman. The Washington correspondent of the New York _Tribune_ says
that Charles Sumner and Thaddeus Stevens give it as their opinion that
New Jersey will not have a republican form of government until they
put the word "white" out of their Constitution. Do these gentlemen
mean to say that when New Jersey has given her 8,000 negro men the
vote she will have a republican form of government, while 134,000
women of that State are still without it? and not only without it, but
blasted by laws which are a disgrace to the civilization of the age;
and of these laws not one afflicts or affects the negro man. The
rebels who starved our brave boys in Andersonville, and made ornaments
of their bones, these men, traitors, guilty of the highest crime known
to our laws, are to be punished by having their right to vote taken
away. Of what crime are American women guilty that they are to be
compelled to stand on a political platform with such men as these? Let
no man dream that national prosperity and peace can be secured by
merely giving suffrage to colored men, while that sacred right is
denied to millions of American women. That scanty shred of justice,
good as far it goes, is utterly inadequate to meet the emergency of
this hour. Men of every race and color may vote, but if the women are
excluded our legislation will still lack that moral tone, for want of
which the nation is to-day drifting toward ruin. There is no other
name given by which the country can be saved but that of woman.
"Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed." Women are governed, negroes are governed, and should give
their consent. Will men never learn that a principle which God has
made true He has also made it safe to apply? Aye, more, that a
principle He has made true, it is not safe not to apply? The problem
for the American statesmen to-day is no narrow question of races, but
how to embody in our institutions a guarantee for the rights of every
citizen. The solution is easy. Base government on the consent of the
governed, and each class will protect itself. Put this one great
principle of universal suffrage, irrespective of sex or color, into
the foundation of our temple of liberty, and it will rise in fair and
beautiful proportions, "without the sound of a hammer or the noise of
any instrument," to stand at last "perfect and entire, wanting
nothing." Omit it, and only "He who sees the end from the beginning"
knows through what other national woes we must be driven, before we
learn that the path of justice is the only path of peace and safety.

LUCY STONE.

BOSTON, _May 5, 1867_.

_To the American Equal Rights Association_:

Although not permitted to be present with you, yet, in spirit, I join
you in all your efforts to secure justice and equality to all the
children of God. I have so long felt deeply upon the subjects before
you, that I wish to add my word to the voices of those who are more
fortunate in being present. Since I was old enough to think upon
important subjects, I have constantly felt the pressure of injustice
that has borne so heavily upon my sex. At sixteen I earnestly desired
to enter some college, that I might have the benefit of those helps to
learning which were open to all boys, and I deeply felt the cruelty
and injustice that closed the doors of the universities to me, who was
longing and thirsting for knowledge, while they were invitingly open
to the youth of the other sex, who often only used them to waste their
time and give them the name of educated men. I could see no reason for
this exclusion, nor could I imagine how it would harm any one to allow
girls who desired to learn the privilege of going to the universities.

My next personal experience of the injustice done to women by the laws
was, when a widow, I buried one of my little daughters, and found that
I, who had borne her and nursed her and provided for all her wants,
was not her heir, but her little sister, who had done nothing for her,
and was still dependent on me for care, etc. This I felt very keenly,
not on account of the property involved, for it was but little, but on
account of the great injustice done to my maternal heart. My next
personal lesson in the law's iniquity was, when about to marry the
second time, both myself and husband desired to secure to me the
property I possessed. I employed a great lawyer in Maine, Gov.
Fessenden, the father of one of our senators, to make an instrument
that would secure that end. After thinking on the subject a week, and
doing the best he could, he handed me the paper, saying, "I have done
my best; but I can not assure you that this instrument will secure to
you your property if your husband should ever become insolvent!" This
surely astonished me. The law not only did not protect women in their
property rights, but did so much to prevent their getting or keeping
them, that an able lawyer could not frame an instrument that would
secure them even when signed by their intended husbands before
marriage! This was more than thirty years ago, and some improvements
have since been made in the laws in reference to women.

The next great wrong that pressed heavily upon me was when I again
became a widow. I found myself yearly taxed for State and county, and
later for revenue, without a voice in anything that concerned the
raising of money, or in any of the elections to office in the great
struggle that our country was passing through. With all the deep
feeling of my brethren, a clear appreciation of the all-important
issues at stake, and an intensely painful knowledge of the sin of
slavery and its concomitant evils, I could not cast a vote in favor
of the right, but must look on with folded hands, and give my money to
support the Government, without a chance of giving it an impetus,
however slight, in the direction of justice and liberty! In view of
all these wrongs, I felt that the women of America had as just cause
for rebellion against the Government as our fathers had against the
British Government when they resisted, on the ground that taxation and
representation were one and inseparable. The three great desires of my
life have been: That the halls of learning should be universally open
to all souls who desire to enter them; that the property rights of
all, without regard to sex, color, or race, should stand on the same
foundation, and be equal; that every person twenty-one years old, who
is a citizen of the United States, should have the ballot, unless
disfranchised by crime, idiocy, or insanity. When these three things
are granted, all else will follow in due time. But until these things
are assured to the citizens of America, our Government presents the
anomaly of being professedly founded upon the consent of the governed,
and yet shutting out two-thirds of its citizens from all voice in it.

* * * * *

MERCY B. JACKSON, M.D.

CHICAGO, _March 22, 1867_.

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--I feel that I must do something for the "Woman's
Suffrage" movement in the West. There is much interest here
concerning it, but no movement is yet made. Matters are being
prepared, and when the movement is made in the West, it will
sweep onward majestically. Kansas and Iowa will first give women the
right to vote before any other States, East or West. "Man proposes,
but God disposes." I have always had a theory of my own concerning
this suffrage question. Ever since I began to think of it, and that
has been since Dr. Harriot Hunt's first protest against woman being
taxed when she had no representation, I have believed that, in my day,
woman would vote. But I have thought they would first obtain the right
to work and wages, and that the right to vote would naturally follow.
For woman's right to work and wages I have labored indefatigably. But
I see that my plan is not God's plan. The right to vote is to come
first, and work and wages afterwards, and easily. I "stumped" the
Northwest during the war. Two women of us, Mrs. Hoge and myself,
organized over 1,000 Aid Societies, and raised, in money and supplies,
nearly $100,000 for the soldiers; and to do it, we were compelled to
get people together in masses, and tell our story and our plans, and
make our appeals to hundreds at a time. So I can talk here, and can
help you here, when you are ready to lead. In the meanwhile, I have
begun to work for the cause through my husband's weekly paper, which
has a large circulation in the Northwest. I have announced myself as
henceforth committed to the cause of woman suffrage, and have become
involved, instanter, in a controversy on the subject. I am associate
editor of the paper, and have been these dozen years. I have just
completed a reply to an objector to the doctrine, which goes into this
week's issue. In my way, I am working with you. I have always believed
in the ballot for woman at some future time--always, since reading
Margaret Fuller's "Woman in the Nineteenth Century," which set me to
thinking a quarter of a century ago. Boston is my native city, and I
lived there till my marriage, and had one or two talks with Theodore
Parker which helped me wonderfully.

Yours truly, MARY A. LIVERMORE.

TOPEKA, KANSAS, _April 5, 1867_.

DEAR MADAM:--We are now arranging for a thorough canvass of our State
for impartial suffrage, without regard to sex or color. We are
satisfied that an argument in favor of colored suffrage is an argument
in favor of woman suffrage. Both are based upon the same principle. It
is the doctrine of our fathers "that governments derive their just
powers from the consent of the governed." We "white men" have no right
to ask privileges or demand rights for ourselves that we are unwilling
to grant to the whole human family. There never has been, and never
can be, an argument, based upon principle, against colored or woman
suffrage. Sneers and attempts at ridicule are not arguments. Henry B.
Blackwell, of New Jersey, and Mrs. Lucy Stone, are now canvassing our
State for impartial suffrage. Some of the most eminent men and women
of the United States have been invited, and promised to visit our
State this summer and fall; and we shall succeed. Kansas will be
free, and occupy the proudest place, in all time to come, in the
history of the world.

We desire to extend our meetings to every neighborhood in Kansas;
reach, if possible, the ear of every voter. For this purpose we must
enlist every home speaker possible. We shall arrange series of
meetings in all parts of the State, commencing about September 1st,
and running through September and October. We desire speakers to
advocate the broad doctrine of impartial suffrage, but welcome those
who advocate either. Those who desire colored suffrage alone, are
invited to take the field; also those who favor only female suffrage.
Each help the other. I am instructed by the State Impartial Suffrage
Executive Committee to ask you to aid us, and speak at as many of our
meetings as possible. Please answer at once, and let us know how much
time you can spend in the campaign, and what part of the State you
prefer to speak in.

Yours truly, S. N. WOOD,
_Cor. Sec'y Kansas Impartial Suffrage Association_.

BANGOR, ME., _May 9, 1867_.

DEAR MISS ANTHONY:--I should be truly glad to attend the Annual
Meeting; but, as you see, I am far from New York. Mr. Davis and I are
at work in another part of the great field of progress. While you and
your noble friend, Mrs. Stanton, are endeavoring to move the adult
population of our nation to just and righteous action, we are striving
to establish on earth the beginning of the kingdom of heaven, by
instituting a new and true method of moral and spiritual or religious
education for the children and youth of the New Dispensation.
Spiritualism, as a religious movement, has done more than any previous
dispensation to give woman an equal career with man; and we trust
that, through the influence of the "Children's Progressive Lyceums,"
the youth in our midst, rapidly advancing to the stage of action, will
form a powerful phalanx on the side of "Equal Rights" and the
elevation of humanity.

Yours fraternally, MARY F. DAVIS.

BUFFALO, _April 14, 1867_.

DEAR MRS. STANTON:--I thank you for your kind note.... I pray that God
will bless you in the noble work you are in, and that woman will soon
be admitted to her proper place where God intended she should be, and
from which to exclude her must, like any other great wrong, bring
misery and sorrow to the race.

Sincerely your friend, RUFUS SAXTON.

148 MADISON AVENUE, SUNDAY EVE., _April 14, 1867_.

MY DEAR MRS. STANTON:--your invitation to me to lift my voice at your
Annual Convention in behalf of the cause for which you have worked so
faithfully and so long, and, let me add, so efficiently, was duly
received; but I have an universal excuse for neglect of duty in the
multitudinous professional engagements that absorb my life and
strength. Believing in the justice of your cause, and that better laws
and better order would bless our race could they be submitted to the
arbitrament of woman, I yet am not able, individually, to give the
time to it now which would be requisite for an adequate public
presentation of its claims, but must content myself with only such
passing words of cheer as the moment calls forth in the daily
intercourse of life. I am grateful that you thought me competent to
advocate so great a principle; but he would be a bold man who would
attempt to add anything to the masterly effort of Mr. Beecher at the
last Convention.

I am, as of old, your friend, LUTHER R. MARSH.

148 MADISON AVENUE, _April 14, 1867_.

DEAR MRS. STANTON:--Please accept the trifle enclosed, $20, as a token
of my friendship to the good cause, whose mighty burden of
enlightenment is to hold the growth of future cycles with an
all-controlling destiny. I am glad to see that those who have been
willing to wear the sackcloth and ashes are beginning to receive the
crowns of the olive and the bay upon their consecrated heads. Many
will find it very agreeable, now, to sail in upon the sunny and ardent
tide of the rippling river, forgetting that once it was a darksome,
sluggish stream, not pleasant to launch forth upon. My father's[208]
early championship of a despised cause taught me to hold very sacred
those pioneers in holy efforts, which to embrace was to suffer the
pangs of a daily martyrdom.

Your friend, as of old, JEANNIE MARSH.

_May 29, 1867._

It is foolish to say that the advocates of the "Woman Movement" demand
"special legislation" for woman, or desire to array her in hostility
to man. It is the enemies of this movement who have made special
legislation necessary, since they declare woman not to be the equal of
man. We desire nothing but one common law alike for each, with woman
holding the ballot, not as the enemy, but as the peer and friend of
man.

ANNA E. DICKINSON.

KENOSHA, WIS., _May 1, 1868_.

I saw your notice of the meeting of the American Equal Rights
Association in that banner of freedom, the Boston _Investigator_. A
thousand times I wish you success. We, in this State, intend to make a
determined fight next year for female suffrage. The resolution
submitting it to the people passed the Assembly and Senate by more
than two to one (57 against 24. and 19 against 9); yet you must not
suppose that our cause is so favorable as that. I send a few extracts,
copied from the Racine _Advocate_; and to that number I am pleased to
add the Milwaukee _News_, the leading Democratic paper of the State.
Mr. Sholes, one of the leading Republicans of the State (elector on
the last Presidential ticket), is warmly in support of your cause.
Certainly the great car of progress is under motion, and no bigoted,
conservative fogyism can long stay its progress. In the meantime, I
really hope to see some of your best speakers in the Wisconsin field
before the election of 1868. Where can I get some pamphlets containing
the best arguments for universal suffrage? Go bravely on. Let not the
scoffs and sneers of the low, mean, and vulgar intimidate, defeat, or
discourage you.

Most respectfully, R. F. MILLS.

* * * * *

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

_Receipts at the Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention, held in
New York, May 10, 1866._

Abby Hutchinson Patton $50 00
Jessie Benton Fremont 50 00
Mrs. C. Lozier, M.D. 20 00
James and Lucretia Mott 10 00
Anna Densmore, M.D. 10 00
Margaret E. Winchester 5 00
Eliza Wright Osborn 5 00
Martha C. Wright 8 00
Gerrit and Nancy Smith 10 00
Elizabeth Smith Miller 5 00
C. C. Williams 2 00
S. R. Ferris 50
Mrs. L. M. Ward. M.D. 2 00
M. P. Allen 1 00
M. A. Halsted 1 00
Mrs. J. B. Mix 1 00
H. Phelps 1 00
J. H. Smith 1 00
Frances V. Hallock 1 00
Ella M. Clymer 1 00
Sarah S. White 1 00
Cordelia Curtis 1 00
Mrs. D. T. Tompkins 1 00
Josephine S. Griffing 1 00
Mrs. F. Knapp 1 00
Mary M. Bingham 1 00
Harriet Clisby 1 00
Sarah E. Payson 1 00
Christiana T. Wallace 1 00
D. J. H. Wilcox 1 00
Albert O. Wilcox 1 00
J. H. H. Wilcox 1 00
Frances D. Gage 1 00
Louisa Humphrey 1 00
A. M. Odell 1 00
Dr. J. E. Snodgrass 1 00
Gustavus Muller 1 00
Charles Lenox Remond 1 00
Mary Curtis 1 00
Jane P. Thurston 1 00
Martha T. Ketchum 1 00
Sarah H. Hallock 1 00
Elizabeth Barton 1 00
Mrs. Geo. C. White 1 00
A. Raymond 1 00
Susan M. Davis 1 00
A. M. Powell 1 00
General collection 46 50

_Receipts at the Equal Rights Convention, held at Boston, May 27,
1866._

Anna E. Dickinson $100 00
E. D. and Anna F. Draper 50 00
Geo. J. and Mary B. H. Adams 20 00
Mr. and Mrs. A. M. McPhail 20 00
Anna Davis Hallowell 10 00
C. Prince 5 00
Mrs. M. P. Snow 5 00
Caroline M. Severance 5 00
R. H. Ober 4 00
Mrs. L. Prang 1 00
A. E. Heywood 2 00
Parker Pillsbury 1 00
Mrs. E. D. Cheney 1 00
L. H. Ober 1 00
Mrs. M. H. Prince 3 00
John T. Sargent 2 00
R. P. Hallowell 2 00
Mrs. C. A. Baker 1 00
E. H. Merrill 1 00
Maria S. Page 2 00
Mary C. Shannon 50
N. Allen 1 00
S. Reynolds 50
R. T. Greene 50
M. Halliburton 50
Harriet A. Foster 2 00
A. B. Morey 50
C. S. Perry 50
A. S. Sisson 50
S. Boynton 50
Henry Abbott 2 00
Lewis Ford 1 00
Sarah J. Nowell 1 00
Friend 35
Col. Wm. B. Green 5 00
R. H. Morrill 2 00
Mrs. M. A. Dotcher 1 00
M. C. Wolson 1 00
Mary Willey 50
Cash 1 15
Abby H. Stephenson 5 00
Lewis McLaughlin 1 00
Mrs. S. D. Young 3 25
Sarah H. Young, M.D. 5 00
M. E. Woods 1 00
M. E. Jameson 1 00
C. F. Haywood 1 00
H. A. Comly 2 00
Anna R. Southwick 1 00
H. E. Sawyer 1 00
Richard Plummer 1 00
R. Howland 1 00
S. R. Duzen 1 00
F. A. Green 5 00
D. B. Morey 1 00
J. Wetherbe 1 00
Isaac H. Marshall 1 00
Maria B. Clapp 1 00
J. E. Bruce 50
A. J. Patterson 50
Cash 3 05
T. B. Rice 50
Cash 1 00
Frances H. Drake 1 00
Kate C. Atkinson 50
Wilmot Wilson 1 00
Cash 50
Mary C. Sawyer 2 00
Elizabeth Mendum 5 00
H. W. Carter 50
L. F. Lalve, M.D. 50
K. E. Walker 50
Charles K. Whipple 1 00
Ruth Buffum 1 00
S. Cheney 50
K. C. Atkins 50
Elizabeth M. F. Denton 5 00
H. N. Green 50
M. E. Steward 1 00
Margaret N. Wood 1 00
Cash 2 50
Kate Reynolds 2 00
John L. Whiting 1 00
Universal Suffrage 1 00
M. E. Darey 1 00
General collection 41 00

_Receipts from June 1, 1866, to May 1, 1867._

Levi Coates $1 00
Mrs. A. C. L. Hyde 1 00
Jane Voorhees 25 00
Harriet V. Rice 10 00
Mary F. Gilbert 1 00
F. A. Hinckley 1 50
Louisa Frost 2 00
M. B. Linton 10 00
Olympia Brown 5 00
Mary E. Ranks 1 00
Mary E. Deuls 2 00
Sarah H. Hallock 50
Dansville E. R. Association (per James
C. Jackson, M.D.) 105 00
Gerrit Smith 100 00
James and Lucretia Mott 53 00
C. S. Lozier, M.D. 50 00
Samuel E. Sewall 40 00
Sinclair Tousey 10 00
G. P. Lowrey 10 00
Dr. Dio Lewis 5 00
Martha C. Wright 5 00
Eliza W. Osborn 5 00
E. V. Dickey 6 00
Edward M. Davis 5 00
Matilda E. J. Gage 5 00
E. D. Hudson 5 00
Job Parker 5 00
Aaron Stedman 1 00
Mrs. B. P. Markham 50
Mrs. D. F. Rogers 50
Emily Rogers 50
Maggie Clemmer 25
James Eaton 1 00
Addison B. Tuttle 1 00
Anna H. McAvoy 25
Isadore Harrison 25
Joseph A. Sherman 1 00
Frank Conway 25
Mary Jackson 25
J. D. Cook 50
J. G. Howe 2 00
R. Lippis 50
H. W. Hale 25
William Litch 50
Sarah Willis 1 00
Mrs. E. B. Judson 10 00
S. J. May 5 00
Joseph Savage 5 00
H. Delano 5 00
T. G. White 3 00
Dr. H. S. Sparks 2 00
Mr. and Mrs. L. Spalding 2 00
J. M. Wieting 2 00
Mrs. W. H. Williams 5 00
Anna Willets 5 00
Emily Jaques 5 00
Sarah E. Wall 5 00
James Freeman Clarke 5 00
Parker Pillsbury 4 00
Mrs. S. M. Doty 3 00
Mary Grew 2 00
Sarah Pugh 2 00
Margaret J. Burleigh 2 00
Geo. H. Sisson 3 00
E. G. Folsom 2 00
Joseph Carpenter 2 00
Susan Ormsby 1 00
Frances Ellen Burr 1 00
J. D. Stephenson 1 00
Paulina Gerry 1 00
J. H. Root 1 00
Mrs. Avery 1 00
Martha Pierce 1 00
James Pierce 1 00
A Friend 1 00
Equal Rights 1 00
Mrs. C. S. Lozier, M.D. 10 00
Mrs. E. Sanderson 5 00
Isaac Sherwood 5 00
Mrs. P. L. Upham 5 00
John B. Bassett 2 00
H. T. Douley 1 00
Sarah F. Rice, M.D. 1 00
Joseph Post 1 00
Huldah S. Warrington 1 00
Mary Styles 1 00
M. Parish 25
Mrs. Field 50
Martha Hudson 1 00
Sarah E. Johonnet 1 00
John Lancaster 1 00
Dr. and Mrs. A. L. Ward 2 00
Frances E. Smith 1 00
Mrs. Whitley 1 00
Mrs. D. B. Hontz 50
J. Sinclair 50
Anna Rice Powell 1 00
Mrs. Mix, M.D. 50
Alice Hall 50
Ella Clymer 1 00
Linda Dietz 1 00
Mrs. Dietz 50
Dr. James Burson 25
L. A. Van Cort 25
William Russel 1 00
Sarah B. Perry 50
D. H. Hoffman 50
P. A. Neale 50
Edward Kingsley 2 00
Fanny M. Callow 2 00
L. Jenny Kellogg 1 00
Caroline H. Sherwood 1 00
Delia A. Barker 1 00
Gustavus Muller 3 00
William L. Jaycox 25
E. P. Bailey 50
M. Newth 1 00
Cynthia DeLong 5 00
John Castor 25
W. R. and M. H. Hallowell 5 00
Mary B. F. Curtis 5 00
Sarah Smith 1 00
J. N. Holmes 1 00
M. Merrick 1 00
Charles D. B. Mills 1 00
A. P. Brown 50
Mrs. F. L. Brown 50
E. C. Lewis 1 00
Mrs. L. H. Hinsdale 50
Mrs. B. Brook 25
C. A. Abbott 25
Fayette Clark 50
Priscilla Clark 50
Louisa J. Phelps 1 00
Lydia P. Savage 1 00
Mrs. Charles B. Sedgwick 1 00
Mary A. Horton 25
J. T. Williams 25
Mrs. G. G. Sperry 50
A. D. Waters 25
S. Brewer 50
H. C. Todd 25
C. G. Alton 50
Mrs. L. A. Strowbridge 3 00
Martha C. Wright 5 00
Eliza W. Osborn 5 00
Mrs. Dr. Hall 1 00
Abby Thayer Chase 50
Philadelphia E. R. Convention 28 00
Esther Cole 1 00
L. Kelsey 1 00
J. S. Northrup 2 00
Mrs. A. Leaton 1 00
Samuel Sutton 50
Caroline Thompson 2 00
Elizabeth M. Atwell 2 00
Jacob and Eliza Powell 10 00
Zenus Brackett 10 00
Mrs. Judge Owen 1 00
Margaret Vanderpool 75
James McEntee 5 00
H. M. Crane 3 00
James G. Lindsley 1 00
Walter B. Crane 1 00
Horatio Falks 1 00
J. E. Lasher 1 00
Mrs. Vantassell 1 00
Jonathan Buffum 10 00
Luther Melendy 5 00
Anson Lapham 40 00
Mary S. Moses 3 00
Mrs. Oliver Dennett 10 00
Mr. Armstrong 5 00
Elisabeth J. Vail, M.D. 1 00
Matilda T. Saxton 5 00
Rosanna Thompson 2 00
Helen Philleo 1 00
James Halleck 1 10
P. H. Boyce 50
Ellis Ellis 1 00
Charlotte M. Schofield 25
John Cadawalder 10
David Perry 25
Le Grand Marvin 1 00
J. Van Vleck 1 00
Cyrus P. Lee 1 00
Aaron R. Vail 2 00
E. Cumming 31
Mrs. J. Watson 5 00

_Receipts at the First Anniversary, May 9 and 10, 1867._

Elizabeth B. Chace $25 00
Parker Pillsbury 25 00
Mrs. Luther Marsh 20 00
Lydia Mott 25 00
Mrs. P. H. and M. Jones 25 00
Susan B. Anthony 50 00
Cora A. Syme 10 00
Two Ladies, $5 each 10 00
Frances D. Gage 13 00
Samuel J. May 10 00
L. Francis 10 00
Westchester E. R. Association (per
E. A. Studwell) 15 00
Jane Clegg 15 00
Joseph and Mary Post 10 00
Charlotte D. Lozier, M.D. 5 00
Elizabeth W. Brown 5 00
Oliver Johnson 5 00
A. O. Willcox 5 00
J. K. H. Wilcox 5 00
E. Cummings 5 00
Mary C. Sawyer 5 00
J. C. Fergusson 5 00
Fred. H. Hernan 5 00
Harry H. Hall 5 00
Charles P. Somerby 5 00
Robert J. Johnston 5 00
Mrs. S. M. Chickering 5 00
J. Miller McKim 5 00
Sarah E. Wall 3 00
R. F. Hudson 2 00
Mrs. Gayno 2 00
Mrs. Dodge 2 00
Mrs. L. Francis 2 00
Mrs. Elmer Stone 2 00
Hannah W. Bell 2 00
S. S. Foster 1 00
Mrs. Brown 5 00
T. W. Higginson 1 00
S. D. White 1 00
Cash 1 00
A. Noble, Sr. 1 00
C. B. Halsart 1 00
E. Underhill 1 00
A. M. Powell 1 00
J. E. Snodgrass 1 00
Mrs. Hibbard 1 00
Nellie Lord 1 00
D. B. and A. Morey 1 00
R. Salmon 1 00
Adolphus O. Johnson 1 00
Levi K. Joslin 1 00
Mary F. Davis 1 00
Wm. P. Bolles 1 00
Cash 1 00
E. Ostrander 1 00
Esther Titus 1 00
L. B. Humphrey 1 00
Martha Hudson 1 00
Susan M. Davis 1 00
Sojourner Truth 1 00
T. M. Newbold 1 00
M. E. Woodson 50
Mrs. M. Johnson 50
Ann Ellsworth Hunt 50
L. Blake 50
J. L. Langworthy 50
T. B. Pierce 50
Esther C. Pierce 50
E. Campbell 50
M. H. McKinnon 50
Mrs. J. B. Mix, M.D. 50
Samuel D. Moore 25
M. P. Allen 25
R. Williams 25
P. E. Kipp 25

_Pledges._

Anna E. Dickinson $100 00
Margaret E. Winchester 100 00
A. O. Wilcox 55 00
C. and M. H. Prince 25 00
Gillis, Harney & Co. 25 00
H. Hart 20 00
D. B. and A. B. Morey 20 00
John Smith 10 00
C. F. Wallace 5 00
C. E. Reason 5 00
Mrs. C. E. Collins 5 00
Euphemia Cochrane 5 00
Melissa Johnson 5 00
W. F. Douley 2 00
Mrs. H. P. Baldwin 1 00
Dr. Chavau 1 00
S. A. Turner 1 00
Dio Lewis, M.D. 50 00
R. C. Browning 30 00
George H. Taylor, M.D. 5 00

* * * * *

SOJOURNER TRUTH ON THE PRESS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE WORLD:--We have had the pleasure of entertaining
Mrs. Stowe's "Lybian Sybil" at our home for the last week, and can
bear our testimony to the marvelous wisdom and goodness of this
remarkable woman. She was a slave in this State for forty years, and
has devoted forty years of freedom to the best interests of her race.
Though eighty years of age, she is as active and clear-sighted as
ever, and "understands the whole question of reconstruction, all its
'quagmires and pitfalls,' as she says, as well as any man does."

The morning after the Equal Rights Convention, as the daily journals
one by one made their appearance, turning to the youngsters of the
household, she said: "Children, as there is no school to-day, will you
read Sojourner the reports of the Convention? I want to see whether
these young sprigs of the press do me justice. You know, children, I
don't read such small stuff as letters, I read men and nations. I can
see through a millstone, though I can't see through a spelling-book.
What a narrow idea a reading qualification is for a voter! I know and
do what is right better than many big men who read. And there's that
property qualification! just as bad. As if men and women themselves,
who made money, were not of more value than the thing they made. If I
were a delegate to the Constitutional Convention I could make
suffrage as clear as daylight; but I am afraid these Republicans will
'purty, purty' about all manner of small things week out and week in,
and never settle this foundation question after all." Sojourner then
gathered up her bag and shawl, and walked into the parlor in a stately
manner, and there, surrounded by the children, the papers were duly
read and considered. The _Express_, the _Post_, the _Commercial
Advertiser_, the _World_, the _Times_, the _Herald_, the _Tribune_,
and the _Sun_, all passed in review. The _World_ seemed to please
Sojourner more than any other journal. She said she liked the wit of
the _World's_ reporter; all the little texts running through the
speeches, such as "Sojourner on Popping Up," "No Grumbling," "Digging
Stumps," "Biz," to show what is coming, so that one can get ready to
cry or laugh, as the case may be--a kind of sign-board, a milestone,
to tell where we are going, and how fast we go. The readers then call
her attention to the solid columns of the other papers, and the
versification of the _World_. She said she did not like the dead calm.
She liked the breaking up into verses, like her songs. That is a good
thing; it gives the reporter time to take breath and sharpen his pen,
and think of some witty thing to say; for life is a hard battle
anyway, and if we can laugh and sing a little as we fight the good
fight of freedom, it makes it all go easier. "But, children, why did
you not send for some of those wicked Democratic papers that abuse all
good people and good things." "They are all here," said the readers in
chorus. "We have read you all the Republicans and the Democrats say."
"Why, children, I can't tell one from the other. The millennium must
be here, when one can't tell saints from sinners, Republicans from
Democrats. Is the _World_ Horace Greeley's paper?" "Oh, no; the
_World_ is Democratic!" "Democratic! Why, children, the _World_ does
move! But there is one thing I don't exactly see; if the Democrats are
all ready to give equal rights to all, what are the Republicans making
such a fuss about? Mr. Greeley was ready for this twenty years ago; if
he had gone on as fast as the Democrats he should have been on the
platform, at the conventions, making speeches, and writing
resolutions, long ago." "Oh," said some one of larger growth, "Mr.
Greeley is busy with tariffs and protective duties. What do you think,
Sojourner, of free trade? Do you not think if England and France have
more dry-goods than they want that they had better send them to us,
and we in turn send them our fruits and flowers and grains; our
timber, iron, fish, and ice?" "Yes, I go for everything free. Let
nature, like individuals, make the most of what God has given them,
have their neighbors to do the same, and then do all they can to serve
each other. There is no use in one man, or one nation, to try to do or
be everything. It is a good thing to be dependent on each other for
something, it makes us civil and peaceable. But," said Sojourner,
"where is Theodore Tilton's paper?" "Oh, the _Independent_ is a
weekly, it came out before the Convention." "But Theodore is not a
weekly; why did he not come to the Convention and tell us what he
thought?" "Well, here is his last paper, with a grand editorial," and
Sojourner listened to the end with interest. "That's good," said she,
"but he don't say woman." "Oh, he is talking about sectarianism, not
suffrage; the Church, not the State." "No matter, the Church wrongs
woman as much as the State. 'Wives, obey your husbands,' is as bad as
the common law. 'The husband and wife are one, and that one the
husband.' I am afraid Theodore and Horace are playing bo-peep with
their shadows. Did you tell me that Mr. Greeley is a delegate to the
Constitutional Convention?" Yes, and I hope that he will soon wake up
to the fact that the Democrats are going ahead of him, and instead of
writing articles on 'Democracy run mad,' on tariffs and mining
interests, it behooves him to be studying what genuine republicanism
is, and whether we are to realize it in the Empire State this very
year or not. "Speaking of shadows," said Sojourner, "I wish the
_World_ to know that when I go among fashionable people in the Church
of the Puritans, I do not carry 'rations' in my bag; I keep my shadow
there. I have good friends enough to give me clothes and rations. I
stand on principle, always in one place, so everybody knows where to
find Sojourner, and I don't want my shadow even to be dogging about
here and there and everywhere, so I keep it in this bag." "I think,"
said one of the group, "the press should hereafter speak of you as
Mrs. Stowe's Lybian Sybil, and not as 'old church woman.'" "Oh, child,
that's good enough. The _Herald_ used to call me 'old black nigger,'
so this sounds respectable. Have you read the _Herald_ too, children?
Is that born again? Well, we are all walking the right way together.
I'll tell you what I'm thinking. My speeches in the Convention read
well. I should like to have the substance put together, improved a
little, and published in tract form, headed 'Sojourner Truth on
Suffrage;' for if these timid men, like Greeley, knew that Sojourner
was out for 'universal suffrage,' they would not be so afraid to
handle the question. Yes, children, I am going to rouse the people on
equality. I must sojourn once to the ballot-box before I die. I hear
the ballot-box is a beautiful glass globe, so you can see all the
votes as they go in. Now, the first time I vote I'll see if a woman's
vote looks any different from the rest--if it makes any stir or
commotion. If it don't inside, it need not outside. That good speech
of Henry Ward Beecher's made my heart leap for joy; he just hit the
nail right on the head when he said you never lost anything by asking
everything; if you bait the suffrage-hook with a woman you will
certainly catch a black man. There is a great deal in that philosophy,
children. Now I must go and take a smoke!" I tell you in confidence,
Mr. Editor, Sojourner smokes!

Yours respectfully, E. C. S.

P. S.--She says she has been sent into the smoking-car so often she
smoked in self-defense--she would rather swallow her own smoke than
another's.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIX.

THE KANSAS CAMPAIGN, 1867.

IMPARTIAL SUFFRAGE IN KANSAS--A VIGOROUS CANVASS ANTICIPATED.

ST. LOUIS, April 3.

The _Democrat's_ Topeka, Kansas, special says: "A large convention of
those in favor of impartial suffrage is in session in this city. Lucy
Stone and Dr. Blackwell, and delegates from different parts of the
State are in attendance.

"An association has been formed for the purpose of canvassing the
State thoroughly and distributing documents. The object is to carry
the female suffrage clause as well as the negro. The officers of the
association are Gov. Crawford, for President; Lieut. Gov. Green, for
Vice-President; Judge S. N. Wood, for Corresponding Secretary; and an
Executive Committee of fourteen, including such men as Chas. Robinson,
J. P. Root, J. B. Abbot, Col. Moonlight, all the members of the
Supreme Court, and other leading men of the State. Arrangements are
made to have the most prominent advocates of impartial suffrage from
the East to stump the State. Money will be raised to conduct the fall
campaign, which will probably be the most vigorously conducted of any
which has yet taken place."

The _State Record_, Kansas, says: "The opponents of woman suffrage use
the argument very freely that its advocates are not in favor of negro
suffrage. This is wickedly and wilfully false. The most earnest and
influential supporters of woman suffrage in the State are equally
anxious to give the negro his rights, and Republicans, generally, will
vote for both propositions. We hope none will be deceived by these
false charges made by those who write and speak in the interest of
saloons, and who to turn expect to be elevated to office through their
agency. The most bitter and relentless and united efforts now making
against woman suffrage, are by those who are devoting their lives to
degrading men and women too, and we are sorry to see a few respectable
men keeping them company, under the foolish impression that the
movement originated and is carried on by those who aim to defeat negro
suffrage. We earnestly hope the day is near at hand when all men and
women everywhere will be allowed to exercise their political rights."

Extract from a letter written by Mrs. S. N. Wood for the Lawrence
_Tribune_, May, 1867: "The women of Cottonwood Falls have passed
through this horrid furnace of an election, and come out unscathed.
Our laws require that a majority of all the legal voters in the
district must vote to issue bonds to build a school-house, before
bonds can be issued. As women were legal voters, to stay at home was
to vote against bonds. The election had to be conducted exactly as
other elections. It was a busy time; none of our men liked to leave
their work to spend the day at the polls, so three women were chosen
and qualified to act as judges. No guardians of the ballot-box ever
acted with more ability or behaved with more propriety and dignity
than they. There was not the least rudeness among the men; no brawling
or swearing. Not a woman there lost a particle of refinement, or
became a grain coarser, or neglected her family. Not one of the
misguided women whose bad influences Mr. Reynolds, of the _Journal_,
so much dreads, came to the polls. That kind of women, I judge, are
literally opposed to women demoralizing themselves by voting. But if
such lived in our district, and had offered to vote, I trust their
votes would have been received and counted just the same as the votes
of the men who support and encourage them in their wicked career. I
never knew what men meant when talking about bonds, until I learned
that I must vote on the subject. I wanted to vote intelligently;
sought the requisite information; and I went to the polls feeling
stronger and safer for that little knowledge gained. When I came home
my little ones hailed me as lovingly as ever, and the same mother-love
guided my hands for their comfort.

"In 1858, a 'woman's rights' man, in Kansas, believing that there
should be a perfect equality as to property rights between men and
women, wrote to Gerrit Smith, Wm. Goodell, Lucy Stone, and other
advocates of woman's rights, asking them to send him a form of a law
that would secure that object. Among others he received the framework
of a law written by Lucy Stone. He wrote it over according to her
pattern, and Lyman Allen introduced it into the Legislature. It became
a law in February, 1859. The original in Lucy Stone's handwriting is
yet in existence. The law is virtually the one that, to-day, on our
statute book testifies to the honest sense of justice that their
conflict with tyranny nurtured in our men in the early days of Kansas.
It testifies to Lucy Stone's zeal in behalf of her sex."

The following address to the Southern people was largely circulated in
Kansas during the spring campaign, by Mr. Blackwell.

WHAT THE SOUTH CAN DO.

HOW THE SOUTHERN STATES CAN MAKE THEMSELVES MASTERS OF THE SITUATION.

TO THE LEGISLATURES OF THE SOUTHERN STATES:--I write to you as the
intellectual leaders of the Southern people--men who should be able
and willing to transcend the prejudices of section--to suggest the
only ground of settlement between North and South which, in my
judgment, can be successfully adopted.

Let me state the political situation. The radical principles of the
North are immovably fixed upon negro suffrage as a condition of
Southern State reconstruction. The proposed Constitutional Amendment
is not regarded as a finality. It satisfies nobody, not even its
authors. In the minds of the Northern people the negroes are now
associated with the idea of loyalty to the Union. They are considered
citizens. They are respected as "our allies." It is believed in the
North that a majority of the white people of the South are at heart
the enemies of the Union. The advocates of negro suffrage daily grow
stronger and more numerous.

On the other hand, a majority of the Southern white population are
inflexibly opposed to negro suffrage in any form, universal or
qualified, and are prepared to resist its introduction by every means
in their power. In alliance with the President and the Northern
Democracy, they protest against any and all terms of reconstruction,
demand unconditional readmission, and await in gloomy silence the
Republican initiative.

This absolute and growing antagonism can only end, if continued, in
one of two results, either in a renewal of civil war, or in a
concession by the South of political equality to the negro. But in
case of war, the South can not possibly succeed. The North is to-day
far stronger in men and money, in farms and factories, than she was in
1860. She is now trained to war, conscious of overwhelming strength,
flushed with victory, and respected, as never before, by the nations
of Europe. Moreover, she is much more united in political sentiment.
Do not again deceive yourselves. If you should resort to arms, the
North would be practically unanimous. The President would instantly be
impeached and a radical successor appointed. The South has lost social
unity with the loss of slavery. She can not fight better than before.
And the braver her action, the more terrible would be her fate.

Gentlemen, these are facts--not theories. Wise men try to see things
as they are, uncolored by opinion or preference. The interest of both
North and South, since they must live together, is peace, harmony, and
real fraternity. No adjustment can fully succeed unless it is
acceptable to both sections. Therefore the statesman and patriot must
find a common ground as a basis of permanent reconciliation.

Now the radicalism of the North is actual, organic, and progressive.
Recognize the fact. But if "governments derive their just powers from
the consent of the governed"--if "taxation without representation is
tyranny"--and "on these two commandments hang all the (Republican) law
and the prophets"--then these propositions are as applicable to women
as to negroes. "Consistency is a jewel." The principle is so broad
that, if you accept it in its entirety, you can afford to lead--not
follow.

The population of the late slave States is about 12,000,000; 8,000,000
white, 4,000,000 black. The radicals demand suffrage for the black men
on the ground named above. Very good. Say to them, as Mr. Cowan said
to the advocates of negro male suffrage in the District, "Apply your
principle! Give suffrage to all men and women of mature age and sound
mind, and we will accept it as the basis of State and National
reconstruction."

Consider the result from the Southern standpoint. Your 4,000,000 of
Southern white women will counterbalance your 4,000,000 of negro men
and women, and thus the political supremacy of your white race will
remain unchanged.

Think well of this. It is a calculation of the relative political
influences of white women and of negroes which perhaps your people
have not yet considered. Let us make the statement in figures.
Estimating one male voter to every five persons, your present vote is:

White males 1,600,000
Add white females 1,600,000
---------
Total white voters 3,200,000

Negro males 800,000
Negro females 800,000
---------
Total negro voters 1,600,000

Suppose all the negroes vote one way and all the whites the other,
your white majority would be 1,600,000--equal to your present total
vote. Thus you would control your own State legislation. Meanwhile,
your influence in the councils of the nation will be greater than ever
before, because your emancipated slaves will be counted in the basis
of representation, instead of as formerly, in the ratio of five for
three. In the light of the history of your Confederacy, can any
Southerner fear to trust the women of the South with the ballot?

But the propriety of your making the proposal lies deeper than any
consideration of sectional expediency. If you must try the Republican
experiment, try it fully and fairly. Since you are compelled to union
with the North, remove every seed of future controversy. If you are to
share the future government of your States with a race you deem
naturally and hopelessly inferior, avert the social chaos, which seems
to you so imminent, by utilizing the intelligence and patriotism of
the wives and daughters of the South. Plant yourselves upon the
logical Northern principle. Then no new demands can ever be made upon
you. No future inroads of fanaticism can renew sectional discord.

The effect upon the North would be to revolutionize political parties.
"Justice satisfies everybody." The negro, thus protected against
oppression by possessing the ballot, would cease to be the prominent
object of philanthropic interest. Northern distrust, disarmed by
Southern magnanimity, would give place to the liveliest sentiments of
confidence and regard. The great political desideratum would be
attained. The negro question would be forever removed from the
political arena. National parties would again crystallize upon
legitimate questions of National interest--questions of tariff,
finance, and foreign relations. The disastrous conflict between
Federal and State jurisdiction would cease. North and South, no
longer hammer and anvil, would forget and forgive the past.
School-houses and churches would be our fortifications and
intrenchments. Capital and population would flow, like the
Mississippi, toward the Gulf. The black race would gravitate by the
law of nature toward the tropics. The memory and spirit of Washington
would be cherished; and every deed of genuine gallantry and humanity
would be treasured as the common glory of the republic.

Do you say that Northern Republicans would not accept such a
proposition? They can not avoid it. The matter is in your own hands.

In New Jersey (then a slave State) from 1776 to 1807, a period of
thirty-one years, women and negroes voted on precisely the same
footing as white men. No catastrophe, social or political, ensued. The
following is an extract from the New Jersey election law of 1797:

"SEC. 9. Every voter shall openly and in full view deliver his or her
ballot, which shall be a single written ticket containing the names of
the person, or persons, for whom he or she votes," etc.

Your Southern Legislatures can extend suffrage on equal terms to "all
inhabitants," as the New Jersey State Convention did in 1776. Then let
the Republicans in Congress refuse to admit your Senators and
Representatives, if they dare. If so, they will go under. Upon that
issue fairly made up, the men of positive convictions would rally
round the new and consistent Democratic party. The very element which
has destroyed slavery would side with the victorious South, and "out
of the nettle danger you would pluck the flower safety."

Respectfully yours, HENRY B. BLACKWELL.

NEW YORK, January 15, 1867.

* * * * *

SUPPRESSED PROCEEDINGS.

The Republican State Central Committee met last week in Leavenworth.
The Leavenworth papers published or pretended to publish the
proceedings of the Committee, but suppressed an important portion.
Fortunately, Mr. Taylor, the honest and able editor of the Wyandotte
_Gazette_, is a member of the Committee, and was present at the
meeting. From his paper we get the following that was for some cause
or other suppressed:

"Mr. Taylor offered the following resolution:

"_Resolved_, That the Republican State Central Committee do not
indorse, but distinctly repudiate, as speakers, in behalf and under
the auspices of the Republican party, such persons as have defamed, or
do hereafter defame, in their public addresses, the women of Kansas,
or those ladies who have been urging upon the people of Kansas the
propriety of enfranchising the women of the State.

"Whiting moved to lay the resolution on the table.

"_Ayes_--Whiting, Eskridge--2.

"_Noes_--Taylor--1.

"Taylor moved to strike the name of I. S. Kalloch from the list of
speakers in the Republican State Canvass.

"_Ayes_--Taylor--1.

"_Noes_--Whiting, Eskridge--2.

PROTEST OF MR. TAYLOR.

"The undersigned, a member of the Republican State Central Committee
of Kansas, protests against the action of the Committee this day had
so far as relates to the placing of the names of I. S. Kalloch, C. V.
Eskridge, and P. B. Plumb, on the list of speakers to canvass the
State in behalf of Republican principles, for the reason that they
have within the last few weeks, in public addresses, published
articles, used ungentlemanly, indecent, and infamously defamatory
language, when alluding to a large and respectable portion of the
women of Kansas, or to women now engaged in canvassing the State in
favor of impartial suffrage.

"R. B. TAYLOR.

"LEAVENWORTH, Sept. 18, 1867.

_Address by the Women's Impartial Suffrage Association of Lawrence,
Kansas._

TO THE WOMEN OF KANSAS:--At the coming election on the 5th of
November, questions of the greatest importance to every citizen of
Kansas, whether man or woman, will be presented for the action of the
people. Shall the right of suffrage be extended to negroes? Shall the
right of suffrage be extended to women?

The question of the enfranchisement of the negro now mainly occupies
the attention of the Republican party. Upon the same principle, viz:
that of equal rights and equal justice to all, we ask the ballot for
woman, and expect to obtain it.

One great obstacle that the advocates of female suffrage have to
contend with is the declaration on the part of many good and
intelligent women that they do not want to vote. They say they are
contented with their present condition; they have all the rights they
want, and do not need the ballot; and they will take no interest in
the matter, except to deprecate its agitation by women. Women of
Kansas, let us reason together for a little concerning this matter.

Honored wives and mothers, dwelling at ease in the comfortable homes
your husbands provide for you, declare you do not want to vote, and
would consider it almost a reflection on your husbands to desire such
a thing, do you consider yourselves capable of forming a correct
judgment in reference to any matter of public interest? You read the
newspapers and are familiar with the literature of the day, and pride
yourselves upon your general information and intelligence; can you
then form a judgment as to the justness of any law, or the character
of any candidate for office? Were any one to assert that you were not
capable of this, you would resent it as an insult.

But, say you, we feel no interest in public measures, laws,
candidates, etc.; our sphere, cares, and duties are at home. So
thought thousands of American women five years ago; but war, as the
result of public measures, laws and candidates, called from the
hearthstones and hearts of these same women, husbands, brothers, sons,
and slew them on the field of battle--in crowded hospitals--in rebel
prisons. Think you the women of America then had no interest in public
measures? Can it be that any woman who has given one of her household
to save our country will declare that she takes no interest in the
government and affairs of that country? Consider a moment whether you
have any interest in matters more immediately pressing upon our
attention. Is it of any importance to you whether the dram-shops be
closed or not? Perhaps your husbands are safe--above suspicion or fear
of temptation; but those little sons playing around your knee, that
young brother who is about to leave the paternal roof, when the hour
comes that they shall go forth into the world, is it of any concern to
you whether temptation meet them at every corner? Said a rumseller who
is bitterly opposed to female suffrage, "What more do you want? a man
can not now get license to sell liquor without the names of a majority
of all the women of the ward upon his petition." Very true, but mark
this, unless the women of Kansas obtain the ballot, that law will soon
be blotted from the statute book.

Again: the women of Kansas now vote on questions concerning the
erection of school-houses and matters pertaining to the facilities for
the education of their children. Where has this provision wrought
anything but good? How many school districts now have commodious
school-houses because the women of the district, who were mothers and
wanted schools for their children, outnumbered the men, who, though
large landholders, are not residents or had no children and did not
want schools? Can it be that any woman who has felt and wielded the
power for good that the ballot gave her, in this respect, will yet
declare that she does not want to vote?

If, then, you are capable of forming opinions on matters of public
interest, and if you admit that you are in some degree liable to be
affected by public affairs, in the name of Heaven, of Right, of
Home--in the name of Husband, Brothers, Sons, can you not--will you
not, give your voice in favor of right, and against wrong? Begin now,
if you have never done so before, to inquire into the character of our
law-makers, the justness of our laws, the regard our country pays to
the rights of all. If you do not feel the need of so doing for
yourselves, yet for the sake of generations yet to come, interest
yourselves, "that our officers may be peace and our exactors
righteousness." If you are in circumstances of ease and comfort,
because shielded from every rude wind by noble protectors--father
husband, son--yet listen to the cry of thousands of women less favored
than yourselves, whose natural protectors, as we style them, the
licensed dram-shop transforms into abusive tyrants, from whom they
must be protected, or who, being deprived of husband and father, cry
aloud of the injustice inflicted upon them in their dependent
condition by laws framed in unrighteousness. Listen, we say, to their
cry, and will you not desire, yea will you not demand the right to
give your voice on all these questions in the only way in which you
can effectually do so--the use of the ballot? Why, it would seem that
every earnest, philanthropic woman would desire to do so, even were
she obliged to go to the polls in their present condition instead of
the reformed and purified state that will inevitably result from the
enfranchisement of women.

The women of Kansas who, next to the Pilgrim mothers of America, have
endured more privations and taken a more active part in public affairs
than any other women of America, should of all others have a voice in
controlling the affairs of State and framing the laws by which they
shall be governed. Say some opposers, "the good and true women would
not vote, but only the ignorant and vicious." What a monstrous libel
upon the intelligence and public spirit of the women of Kansas! and
just so certainly as women obtain the ballot, as far as the
intelligent and virtuous outnumber the ignorant and abandoned, will
the vote of women swell the majority for just and righteous
measures--for the moral and upright man--the man who has never imbrued
his hands in blood--who has never robbed woman of her virtue--whose
senses are never drowned in the intoxicating bowl. Why! this is the
great moral question of the day! It is not that the prominent opposers
of this measure fear that it will drag women down; it is because they
fear, and justly, that women will lift suffrage so far into the realm
of purity and morality that they can never be able even to offer
themselves as candidates for office. Then will the destinies of our
country be no more decided at drunken orgies, amid scenes that our
opponents say it would degrade us to witness, but all questions of
public weal will be decided in the hearts and at the firesides of
pure-hearted men and women, surrounded by those whose destinies are
dearer than life, and that decision shall be enforced when men and
women shall together go up to the temple of justice to deposit their
ballots.

Whatever, then, may be the opinion of fair ladies who dwell in ceiled
houses in our older Eastern States and cities, who like lilies,
neither toil nor spin, whose fair hands would gather close their
silken apparel at the thought of touching the homelier garments of
many a heroine of Kansas--whatever they may say in reference to this
question, we, the women of the Spartan State, declare, we want to
vote.

By order of the Executive Committee.

MRS. HON. E. G. ROSS, MRS. GRIFFITH,
MRS. EX GOV. ROBINSON, MRS. R. S. TENNEY,
MRS. JUDGE THACHER, MRS. REV. W. A. STARRETT,
MRS. JUDGE MILLER, MRS. REV. R. CORDLEY,
MRS. JUDGE BURNETT, MRS. REV. G. S. DEARBORN,
MRS. JUDGE HENDRY, MRS. REV. J. S. BROWN,
MRS. H. M. SIMPSON, MRS. REV. GEORGE MEYER,
MRS. ROBT. MORROW, MRS. J. H. LANE,
MRS. MAJOR PLATT, MRS. JAMES HORTON,
MRS. MAJOR WHITNEY, MRS. F. W. SPARR,
MRS. S. DENMAN, MRS. JANE B. ARCHIBALD,
MRS. HENDERSEN, MRS. CONE,
MRS. J. O. ADAMS, MRS. WELSH,
MRS. MARY WHITCOMB, MRS. MARSH,
MRS. THERMUTIUS SUTHERLAND,

LAWRENCE, Sept. 24, 1867. _Committee on Address._

N. B.--Friends wishing tracts on the subject of equal rights, should
address Equal Rights Office, 77 Massachusetts Street, Lawrence,
Kansas.

THE HUTCHINSONS' KANSAS SUFFRAGE SONG.

Words By P. P. Fowler and J. W. H.

As sung at the meetings and concerts during ther grand campaign on the
suffrage issue the season of 1867 in Kansas, and at the polls in
Leavenworth, by the Tribe of John, on the day of election.

O, say what thrilling songs of fairies,
Wafted o'er the Kansas prairies,
Charm the ear while zephyrs speed 'em!
Woman's pleading for her freedom.

CHORUS--Clear the way, the songs are floating;
Clear the way, the world is noting;
Prepare the way, the right promoting,
And ballots, too, for woman's voting.

We frankly say to fathers, brothers,
Husbands, too, and several others,
We're bound to win our right of voting,
Don't you hear the music floating?

We come to take with you our station,
Brave defenders of the nation,
And aim by noble, just endeavor
To elevate our sex forever.

By this vote we'll rid our nation
Of its vile intoxication.
Can't get rum? Oh, what a pity!
_Dram-shops_ closed in every city.

Fear not, we'll darn each worthy stocking,
Duly keep the cradle rocking,
And beg you heed the words we utter,
The ballot wins our bread and butter.

All hail, brave Kansas! first in duty,
Yours, the meed of praise and beauty,
You'll nobly crown your deeds of daring,
Freedom to our sex declaring.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XXV.

TRIALS AND DECISIONS.

LETTER FROM MISS ANTHONY ANNOUNCING HER HAVING VOTED.

ROCHESTER, November 5, 1872.

DEAR MRS. STANTON: Well, I have been and gone and done it! positively
voted the Republican ticket--straight--this A.M. at seven o'clock, and
_swore my vote in, at that_; was registered on Friday and fifteen
other women followed suit in this ward, then in sundry other wards
some twenty or thirty women _tried_ to _register_, but all save two
were refused. All my three sisters voted--Rhoda De Garmo, too. Amy
Post was rejected, and she will immediately bring action against the
registrars; then another woman who was registered, but vote refused,
will bring action for that--similar to the Washington action. Hon.
Henry R. Selden will be our counsel; he has read up the law and all of
our arguments, and is satisfied that we are right, and ditto Judge
Samuel Selden, his elder brother. So we are in for a fine agitation in
Rochester on this question.

I hope the morning telegrams will tell of many women all over the
country trying to vote. It is splendid that without any concert of
action so many should have moved here.

Thanks for the Hartford papers. What a magnificent meeting you had!
Splendid climax of the campaign--the two ablest and most eloquent
women on one platform and the Governor of the State by your side. I
was with you in spirit that evening; the chairman of the Committee had
both telegraphed and written me all about the arrangements.

Haven't we wedged ourselves into the work pretty fairly and fully, and
now that the Republicans have taken our votes--for it _is the
Republican members_ of the board; the Democratic paper is out _against
us strong_, and that scared the Democrats on the registry boards.

How I wish you were here to write up the funny things said and done.
Rhoda De Garmo told them she wouldn't swear nor affirm, "but would
tell them the truth," and they accepted that. When the Democrats said
that my vote should _not_ go in the box, one Republican said to the
other, "What do you say, Marsh?" "I say put it in." "So do I," said
Jones; "and we'll fight it out on this line if it takes all winter."
Mary Hallowell was just here. She and Sarah Willis tried to register,
but were refused; also Mrs. Mann, the Unitarian minister's wife, and
Mary Curtis, sister of Catharine Stebbins. Not a jeer, not a word, not
a look disrespectful has met a single woman.

If only now _all the Woman Suffrage women_ would work to _this_ end of
_enforcing the existing Constitutional supremacy of National law_ over
State law, what strides we might make this very winter! But I'm
awfully tired; for five days I have been on the constant run, but to
splendid purpose; so all right. I hope you voted too.

Affectionately, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

* * * * *

JUDGE SELDEN TO MISS ANTHONY.

ROCHESTER, November 27, 1872.

MISS ANTHONY--DEAR MADAM: The District Attorney says he can not attend
to your case on any day but Friday. So it will be indispensable for
you to be ready Friday morning, and I will do the best I can to attend
to it.

I suppose the Commissioner will, as a matter of course, hold you for
trial at the Circuit Court, _whatever your rights may be in the
matter_.

In my opinion, however, the idea that you can be charged with a
_crime_ on account of voting, or offering to vote, when you honestly
believed yourself to be a voter, is simply preposterous, whether your
belief _was right or wrong_.

However, the learned (!) gentlemen engaged in this movement seem to
suppose they can make a crime out of your honest deposit of your
ballot, and _perhaps_ they can find a respectable court or jury that
will be of their opinion. If they do so I shall be greatly
disappointed.

Yours, truly, H. R. SELDEN.

(_Boston Transcript._)

The last work came on the New York Calender; a person is discovered to
have voted who had no right to; this is believed to be the first case
of the kind ever heard of in New York, and its heinousness is perhaps
aggravated by the fact that the perpetrator is a woman, who, in the
vigorous language of the Court, "must have known when she did it that
she was a woman." We await in breathless suspense the impending
sentence.

The Rochester _Evening Express_ of Friday, May 23, 1873, under the
heading of "An Amiable Consideration of Miss Anthony's Case," said:
United States District Attorney Crowley is a gallant gentleman, as
gallant indeed as District Attorneys can afford to be, but he
confesses himself no match for Miss Anthony. That lady has stumped
Monroe County in behalf of impartial suffrage, and it appears that the
Government very prudently declines to give her case to the jury in
this county. The fact is, it is morally certain that no jury could be
obtained in Monroe that would convict the lady of wrongdoing in
voting, while it is highly probable that four juries out of five would
acquit her. It is understood, of course, that the Court and
prosecuting officers are merely fulfilling their official functions in
recognizing this departure from ordinary practice at the polls, but
would feel as deeply astonished at a verdict of guilty as the general
public. The District Attorney is fortunate in having as a contestant
(defendant, he would professionally call her) in this friendly little
duel, a lady who is the embodiment of American common sense, courage,
and ability; and we are certain that after this tournament is
adjourned he will accept, with his usual urbanity, the aid of ladies'
ballots to lift him to some other place where his conceded abilities
shall be more widely known.

The New York _Commercial Advertiser_, under the heading, "Miss Anthony
and the Jury of her Peers," said: There is perplexity in the Northern
District of New York. It was in that jurisdiction that Miss Susan B.
Anthony and sundry "erring sisters" voted at the November election.
For this they were arrested and indicted. The venue was laid in Monroe
County and there the trial was to take place. Miss Anthony then
proceeded to stump Monroe County and every town and village thereof,
asking her bucolic hearers the solemn conundrum, "Is it a crime for a
United States citizen to vote?" The answer is supposed generally to be
in the negative, and so convincing is Sister Anthony's rhetoric
regarded that it is supposed no jury can be found to convict her. Her
case has gone to the jurymen of Monroe in her own persuasive pleadings
before they are summoned. The District Attorney has, therefore,
postponed the trial to another term of the Court, and changed the
place thereof to Ontario County; whereupon the brave Susan takes the
stump in Ontario, and personally makes known her woes and wants. It is
a regular St. Anthony's dance she leads the District Attorney; and, in
spite of winter cold or summer heat, she will carry her case from
county to county precisely as fast as the venue is changed. One must
rise very early in the morning to get the start of this active apostle
of the sisterhood.

Rochester _Democrat and Chronicle_: If Miss Anthony has converted
every man in Monroe County to her views of the Suffrage question, as
the District Attorney intimates in his recent efforts to have her case
adjourned, it is pretty good evidence--unless every man in Monroe
County is a fool--that the lady has done no wrong. "Her case," remarks
the Auburn _Bulletin_, "will probably be carried over to another term,
and all she has to do is to canvass and convert another county. A
shrewd woman that! Again we say, she ought to vote."

The Syracuse _Standard_ said: Miss S. B. Anthony is sharp enough for a
successful politician. She is under arrest in Rochester for voting
illegally, and she is conducting her case in a way that beats even
lawyers. She stumped the county of Monroe and spoke in every school
district so powerfully that she has actually converted nearly the
entire male population to the Woman Suffrage doctrine. The sentiment
is so universal that the United States District Attorney dare not
trust his case to a jury drawn from that county, and has changed the
venue to Ontario County. Now Miss Anthony proposes to stump Ontario
immediately, and has procured the services of Mrs. Matilda Joslyn
Gage, of Fayetteville, to assist her. By the time the case comes on
Miss Anthony will have Ontario County converted to her doctrines.

The Rochester _Union and Advertiser_ quoted the above and commented as
follows: We give in another column to-day, from a legal friend, a
communication which shows very clearly that Miss Anthony is engaged in
a work that will be likely to bring her to grief. It is nothing more
nor less than an attempt to corrupt the source of that justice, under
law, which flows from trial by jury. Miss Anthony's case has passed
from its gayest to its gravest character. United States Courts are not
stages for the enactment of comedy or farce, and the promptness and
decision of their judges in sentencing to prison culprits convicted
before them shows that they are no respecters of persons.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY AS A CORRUPTIONIST.

_To the Editors of the Union and Advertiser:_

Gentlemen--I saw this morning with equal surprise and regret in the
_Democrat and Chronicle_ the following article:

"We understand that Miss Susan B. Anthony, in company with Mrs.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, intends to lecture through Ontario County. She is
confident that by June 16th a jury of twelve men can not be found in
that county who will render a verdict of guilty against the women who
are to be tried for illegal voting at the last fall election."

I had learned from the same source that Miss Anthony had made such an
effort in Monroe County, and it was stated elsewhere that her trial
had been sent thence to Ontario County by reason of such efforts to
persuade juries of the justice of her cause. I can scarcely credit
these statements.

Reduced to simple terms, it is an attempt by public lectures and
female influence, by an accused party so to affect jurors 'that a jury
of twelve men can not be found in that county who will render a
verdict of guilty.' If this may be a part of the administration of
justice, then the United States Attorney may by similar or other means
attempt beforehand to secure an opposite result; and the
administration of justice is brought into contempt, and corruption has
entered the jury-box.... There is a statute and common law offense
known as embracery, which is defined to consist "in such practices as
lead to affect the administration of justice, _improperly working upon
the minds of jurors_." It seems clear, adds Russell in his Treatise on
Laws and Misdemeanors, 'that _any attempt whatever to corrupt or
influence or instruct a jury in the cause beforehand, or any way
incline them to be more favorable to the one side than the other_, by
money, letters, threats, or _persuasions_, EXCEPT ONLY by the strength
of evidence and the arguments of the counsel in OPEN COURT AT THE
TRIAL OF THE CAUSE, is a proper act of EMBRACERY, whether the jurors
upon whom the attempt is made _give any verdict or not_, and whether
the verdict given be true or false.' ... I trust no merely temporary
excitement in respect to female suffrage will lead good citizens to
sanction any attempt whatever to influence jurors out of Court, either
before or during the trial of a cause. It is alike an insult to the
juror and an imputation on our public virtue.

LEX.
_May 24, 1873._

[New York _Sun_, Saturday, January 4, 1873].

GOING TO JAIL FOR VOTING FOR GRANT.

The arrest of the fifteen women of Rochester, and the imprisonment of
the renowned Miss Susan B. Anthony, for voting at the November
election, afford a curious illustration of the extent to which the
United States Government is stretching its hand in these matters. If
these women violated any law at all by voting, it was clearly a
statute of the State of New York, and that State might be safely left
to to vindicate the majesty of its own laws. Is is only by an
overstrained construction of the XIV. and XV. Amendments, that the
National Government can force its long finger into the Rochester case
at all.

But so it is. Eager to crowd in and regulate the elections at every
poll In the Union, the power at Washington strikes down a whole State
Government in Louisiana, and holds to bail a handful of women in New
York. Nothing can escape its eye or elude its grasp. It can soar high;
it can stoop low. It can enjoin a Governor in New Orleans; it can jug
a woman in Rochester. Nothing is too big for it to grapple with;
nothing is too small for it to meddle with.... By the by, we advise
Miss Anthony not to go to jail. Perhaps she feels that she deserves
some punishment for voting for General Grant, but it is a bailable
offense. "Going to jail for the good of the cause" may do for poetry,
but it becomes very prosaic when reduced to practice. Let Miss Anthony
enter into bonds, adjust her spectacles, face her accusers, and argue
her own case.

The Worcester _Spy_ said: Miss Susan B. Anthony, whatever else she may
be, is evidently of the right stuff for a reformer. Of all the woman
suffragists she has the most courage and resource, and fights her own
and her sisters' battle with the most wonderful energy, resolution,
and hopefulness. It is well known that she is now under indictment for
voting illegally in Rochester last November. Voting illegally in her
case means simply voting, for it is held that women can not lawfully
vote at all. She is to be tried soon, but in the meantime, while at
large on bail, she has devoted her time to missionary work on behalf
of woman suffrage, and has spoken, it is said, in almost every school
district in Monroe County, where her trial would have been held in the
natural course of things. She has argued her cause so well that almost
all the male population of the county has been converted to her views
on this subject. The District Attorney is afraid to trust the case to
a jury from that county, and has obtained a change of venue to Ontario
on the ground that a fair trial can not be had in Monroe.

Miss Anthony, rather cheered than discouraged by this unwilling
testimony to the strength of her cause and her powers of persuasion,
has made arrangements to canvass Ontario County as thoroughly as
Monroe. As county lines do not inclose distinct varieties of the human
race, it is fair to presume that the people of the former county will
be as susceptible to argument and appeal, as those of the latter, and
by the time the case comes on, an Ontario jury will be as little
likely to convict as a Monroe jury is now supposed to be. Some foolish
and bigoted people who edit newspapers, are complaining that Miss
Anthony's proceedings are highly improper, inasmuch as they are
intended to influence the decision of a cause pending in the courts.
They even talk about contempt of court, and declare that Miss Anthony
should be compelled to desist from making these invidious harangues.
We suspect that the courts will not venture to interfere with this
lady's speech-making tour, but will be of the opinion that she has the
same right which other people, male or female, have to explain her
political views, and make converts to them if she can. We have never
known it claimed before that a person accused of an offense was
thereby deprived of the common right of free speech on political and
other questions.

The New York _Evening Post_ said: The proceedings of the Circuit Court
of the United States at Canandaigua yesterday, before which Miss Susan
B. Anthony was on trial for voting in Rochester at the late general
election, were very remarkable. Hitherto the advocates of the right of
our countrywomen to vote have hardly obtained a hearing, but Miss
Anthony has made an important step in advance. It is a great gain to
obtain a judicial hearing for her cause; to have the merits of woman
suffrage carefully considered by careful and able men. The appearance
of so eminent and distinguished a lawyer as Henry R. Selden in her
defense will give to the question a new aspect in the minds of the
people. The position he took is still more encouraging to those who
think that women have a legal right to vote. The distinction he made
between the absoluteness of this right and the belief of Miss Anthony
that she possessed such a right, since the guilt relates only to the
legal guilt in this particular instance, is of no general importance;
but his emphatic testimony, irrespective of the present case, that all
women have both an absolute and a legal right to vote, is a fact to
command attention.

So convinced was Judge Selden of the validity of this opinion, that
for the second time in his professional life, as he himself said, he
was compelled to offer himself as a witness in behalf of his client.
Being sworn, he testified that before the defendant voted she called
on him for advice as to her legal right to vote; that he took time to
examine the question very carefully, and then advised her that "she
was as much a voter as I or any other man"; that he believed then that
she had a legal right to vote, and he believed so now, and on that
advice she voted. It seems likely that the decision of the Court will
be in Miss Anthony's favor. If such be the result the advocates of
woman suffrage will change places with the public. They will no longer
be forced to obtain hearings from Congressional and Legislative
Committees for their claims, but will exercise their right to vote by
the authority of a legal precedent against which positive laws
forbidding them from voting will be the only remedy. It is a question
whether such laws can be passed in this country. A careful examination
of the subject must precede any such legislation, and, the inference
from the result of Judge Selden's investigation is that the more the
subject is studied the less likely will any legislative body be to
forbid those women who want to vote from so doing.

[The Rochester _Evening Express_, June 21st.]

THE NATIONAL CASES AT CANANDAIGUA.

The trial of Miss Anthony at Canandaigua on a charge of having voted
illegally on the 5th of November last, in this city, has attracted
attention throughout this country and in England. It was a great
National trial, intended as Judge Hunt said, as the purpose of the act
of voting in this case, to settle a principle. The eminence of the
judge presiding and the reputation of the counsel engaged in the case,
gave it further significance. All the counsel won new laurels in this
contest. Judge Selden could scarcely increase the respect for his
character and legal ability by any fresh contest in the forum, but he
evinced the power of his logical faculties and his perfect
acquaintance with law and legal precedent in his closely reasoned
argument. Mr. Crowley, United States District Attorney, made a very
able argument in reply, which all agree was worthy of his high
position and of the cause in which he appeared for the Government. Mr.
Van Voorhis showed legal erudition careful examination of the case in
hand, and of the law and decision of courts bearing upon it, making
bold and strong points which commanded the attention and respect of
the Court, and elicited the approbation of clients and people.

[_Commercial Advertiser_, June 18, 1873.]

THE FEMALE SUFFRAGISTS.

When a jurist as eminent as Judge Henry R. Selden testifies that he
told Miss Anthony before election that she had a right to vote, and
this after a careful examination of the question, the whole subject
assumes new importance, and Mr. Selden at once becomes the central
object of adoration by all the gentle believers in woman's right to
the ballot. And when the same able lawyer advocates the cause of Miss
Anthony in the United States Courts, there is abundant reason why
other men, both lay and legal, should put themselves in an attitude,
at least of willingness to change their convictions upon this topic,
which now threatens to take on very enlarged proportions. The points
made in the argument by Mr. Selden are that the defendant had a legal
right to vote; that even if no such right existed, if she believed she
had such right and voted in good faith, that she committed no offense;
and lastly, he argued that she did vote in pursuance of such belief.
The point that Miss Anthony had acted illegally only because she was a
woman, was well put. Had her brother, under the same circumstances
done the same thing, his act would have been not only innocent but
laudable. The crime was, therefore, not in the act done, but in the
sex of the person who did it. Women, remarked the Judge, have the same
interest in the maintenance of good government as men. No greater
absurdity, to use no harsher term, can be presented to the human mind
than that of rewarding men and punishing women for the same act,
without giving women any voice in the question of which shall be
rewarded and which punished. How grateful to Judge Selden must all the
suffragists be! He has struck the strongest and most promising blow in
their behalf that has yet been given. Dred Scott was the pivot on
which the Constitution turned before the war. Miss Anthony seems
likely to occupy a similar position now.

[From _Democrat and Chronicle_, Rochester, July, 1873.]

WOMEN'S MEETING.

A meeting of the women's tax-payers' association was held at the
Mayor's office yesterday afternoon, the President, Mrs. Lewia C.
Smith, in the chair. It had been expected that Judge Selden would
address the meeting, but in consequence of professional engagements he
had been unable to prepare such an address as he desired, but will
speak at a future meeting.

Miss Susan B. Anthony was present, and addressed the meeting. She
stated that she had received many letters urging her not to be
disheartened by the result of her case, and she assured all that she
was far from being discouraged. In fact, she considered that they had
won a victory by showing to the world that in order to accomplish her
defeat the courts were obliged to set aside everything, even the
sacred right of trial by jury. Miss Anthony read extracts from letters
received from Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Parker Pillsbury. Mrs.
Stanton pours out her indignation in a letter to Mrs. Gage and Miss
Anthony thus:

"To have my right to the earth and the fullness thereof equally with
man; to do my work and say my say without his let or hindrance, or
even question, has filled me with indignation ever since I began to
think; and one more act of puny legislation, in line with all that has
been done in the past, does not add a feather's weight to my chronic
indignation.

"The insult of being tried by men--judges, lawyers, juries, all
men--for violating the laws and constitutions of men, made for the
degradation and subjugation of my whole sex; to be forever publicly
impaled by the unwavering finger of scorn, by party press, and pulpit,
so far transcends a petty verdict of a petty judge in a given case,
that my continuous wrath against the whole dynasty of tyrants in our
political, religious, and social life, has not left one stagnant drop
of blood in my veins to rouse for any single act of insult.

"The outrage of trying intelligent, educated, well-bred, native-born
American women by juries of men, made up of the riff-raff from the
monarchies and empires of the old world, or ignorant natives of the
new, who do not read the newspapers, nor form opinions on current
events or United States citizens' rights, so overtops the insult of
any verdict they could possibly render, that indignation at what they
might say is swallowed up in the outrage that they have the right to
say anything in limiting the rights of women as citizens in this
republic. What are Centennials and Fourth of Julys to us, when our
most sacred rights can be made foot-balls for the multitude. Do not,
therefore, argue from my silence, that I do not feel every fresh stab
at womanhood. Instead of applying lint to the wounds, my own thought
has been, how can we wrest the sword from the hand of the tyrant."

The following resolutions were then offered and adopted:

_Resolved_, That the gross outrage committed in the case of Miss
Anthony by the United States Circuit Court, the stamping under foot by
Justice Hunt of the Constitution of the United States, and all the
forms of law, in order to defeat a woman who could not be defeated
otherwise, has in no way discouraged the true friends of woman
suffrage, but to the contrary, the unjustifiable means to which the
Court was compelled to resort in order to convict Miss Anthony has not
only aroused the old woman's rights women into new life and action,
but shocked all thinking minds throughout the country, to a
consideration of the vital question of American citizenship. Does it,
or does it not give to the possessor the right to vote?

_Resolved_, That we arraign Ward Hunt, a Justice of the Supreme Court
of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors in his office,
committed on the trial of Susan B. Anthony, on a charge of knowingly
voting illegally for a representative in Congress. He denied the right
of trial by jury; he refused to permit her counsel to address the jury
in her behalf; he refused the request of her counsel that the jury be
polled; he directed the clerk to enter a verdict of guilty without
consulting the jury; he had prejudged her case, and had written his
opinion against her before he came to the Court, or had heard the
evidence, or the arguments of her counsel. He tried her in a manner
indicating that he had undertaken to accomplish a certain result, and
that he must do in spite of law or evidence. His assertion that the
facts were admitted in her case is false. No facts were admitted on
Miss Anthony's trial, except that she was a woman and had voted. The
one fact of consequence to the United States was, whether or not Miss
Anthony voted for a representative in Congress. To prove this the
United States District Attorney proved that she handed to the
inspectors four folded ballots, the contents of which were unknown. It
did not appear that the ballots were not blanks. There were six boxes,
and each elector might cast six ballots. Upon such evidence Judge Hunt
decided that it was proved that Miss Anthony voted for a
representative in Congress, and refused to submit the case, or the
question of fact, to the jury. Therefore,

_Resolved_, That a violation of the Constitution so palpable, a
disregard of the forms of of law so flagrant, demand the impeachment
of Justice Hunt, and his removal from a bench he has proved himself
unfit to occupy.

_Resolved_, That we will petition Congress to reverse by Congressional
enactment the judgments of Judge Hunt against Miss Anthony and the
Inspectors of Election. These fiats of a judicial dictator must not be
allowed to remain upon the records of the Court. Trial by jury must be
restored to its throne, from which Judge Hunt has hurled it. A
constitutional right so sacred must be vindicated by Congress. There
is no other tribunal to which we can appeal. Therefore we shall
confidently ask Congress to reverse these unjust judgments and rebuke
and impeach this unjust judge.

_Resolved_, That to the Hon. Henry R. Selden for his able and earnest
defense of their citizen's right to vote, the women of this country
owe a debt of gratitude beyond their present power to pay or
appreciate.

_Resolved_, That we tender our thanks to John Van Voorhis, counsel for
the inspectors of the Eighth Ward, for his prompt and efficient
defense of their right and duty to register the names and receive the
votes of all United States citizens.

_Resolved_, That we bid Godspeed to our co-laborer, Susan B. Anthony,
for the courage and persistence shown during her trial, and thank her
for her assurance to the Court (which he did not need) of her unshaken
conviction of the legality of her vote, and of her determination to
persist in the exercise of her citizen's right of suffrage.

_Resolved_, That we tender our thanks to the inspectors of election of
the Eighth Ward, Messrs. Jones, Marsh, and Hall, for their manliness
and courage in receiving the women's vote and maintaining their right
and duty in so doing through their long and unfair trial."

A paper of considerable length was read by Mrs. Hebard, which was very
fine, and set forth the woman question in a philosophical manner.

Mrs. L. C. Smith said that in stamping his seal of death upon trial by
jury, Judge Hunt had proved beyond all cavil the inseparability of
man's and woman's interests. For in order to withhold the right of
franchise from woman he was obliged to abolish trial by jury, man's
only safeguard against the tyranny of the bench.

The meeting then adjourned to meet at three o'clock P.M. on the 24th
inst.

Miss Anthony received material sympathy from many persons who sent
money to aid in the payment of her fine--Dr. E. B. Foote, of New York,
sending $25, and Gerrit Smith, of Peterboro, $100, accompanied by a
letter. Dr. Foote has kindly furnished Miss Anthony's reply to him for
publication:

ROCHESTER, July 2, 1873.

DR. E. B. FOOTE--MY DEAR SIR: Your letter of June 18, inclosing the
quarter of the United States Government's fine for my alleged
violation of _State law_ was most welcome, I have waited this
acknowledgment from fact of my absence from home since the judge
pronounced that verdict and penalty. What a comedy! Such a _grave
offense_ and such a paltry punishment!

Now if the United States Government would only demand the payment of
the $100 and costs--but it will never do it, because all parties
_know_ I will never _pay a dime--no, not one._ It, is quite enough for
me pay all the _just claims_ of the trial; my own counsel, etc. I owe
no allegiance to the Government's penalties until I have a voice in
it, and shall pay none. What the Government can _exact_ it may,
whether of cash or imprisonment.

Do you know my _one regret now is_ that I am _not possessed of some
real estate_ here in Rochester so that my name would be on the tax
list, and I would _refuse to pay the taxes thereon_, and then I could
carry that branch of the question into the Courts. _Protests_ are no
longer worth the paper they are written on. Downright resistance, the
actual throwing of the tea overboard, is now the word and work. With
many thanks for the $25.

Sincerely yours, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE ABOVE HUMAN LAW.

LETTER FROM GERRIT SMITH.

PETERBORO, August 15, 1873

SUSAN B. ANTHONY--DEAR FRIEND: I have your letter. So you have not
paid your fine; are not able to pay it; and are not willing to pay it!
I send you herein the money to pay it. If you shall still decline
doing so, then use the money at your own discretion, to promote the
cause of woman suffrage.

I trust that you feel kindly toward Judge Hunt. He is an honest man
and an able judge. He would oppress no person--emphatically, no woman.
It was a light fine that he imposed upon you. Moreover, he did not
require you to be imprisoned until it was paid. In taking your case
out of the bands of the jury, he did what he believed he had a perfect
right to do; and what [HAND] provided there was no fact to be
passed upon) he had precedents for doing. And yet Judge Hunt
erred--erred as, but too probably, every other judge would, in like
circumstances, have erred. At the hazard of being called, for the ten
thousandth time, a visionary and a fanatic for holding opinions which,
though they will be entirely welcome to the more enlightened future
sense of men, are as entirely repugnant to their present sense, I
venture to say that the Judge erred in allowing himself to look into
the Constitution. Indeed, yours was a case that neither called for nor
permitted the opening of any law-book whatever. You have not forgotten
how frequently, in the days of slavery, the Constitution was quoted in
behalf of the abomination. As if that paper had been drawn up and
agreed upon by both the blacks and the whites, instead of the whites
only; and as if slavery protected the rights of the slave instead of
annihilating them. I thank God that I was withheld from the great
folly and great sin of acknowledging a law for slavery--a law for any
piracy--least of all for the superlative piracy. Nor have you
forgotten how incessantly, in the late war, our enemies, Northern as
well as Southern, were calling for this observance of the
Constitution. As if the purpose of that paper was to serve those
whose parricidal hands were at the throat of our Nation. I recall but
one instance in which I was ever reconciled to profanity. It was when,
during the war, I was witnessing a heated conversation between a
patriotic Republican and a rabid secession Democrat. The Republican
was arguing that the Government should put forth all its powers to
suppress the rebellion. At this stage the Democrat thrust in the
stereotyped rebel phrase: "but only according to the Constitution."
This interruption provoked the Republican to exclaim, as he hurried
on, "Damn the Constitution!" The oath so happily helped to express my
own feeling that I had no more heart to censure it than the recording
angel had to preserve the record of Uncle Toby's famous oath.

And now, in your case, is another wrongful use of the Constitution.
The instrument is cited against woman, as if she had united with man
in making it, and was, therefore, morally bound by the flagrant
usurpation, and legally concluded by it. Moreover, an excuse for
turning the Constitution against her is that doing so deprives her of
nothing but the pastime of dropping in a box a little piece of paper.
Nevertheless, this dropping, inasmuch as it expresses her choice of
the guardians of her person and property, is her great natural right
to provide for the safety of her life and of the means to sustain it.
She has no rights whatever, and she lives upon mere privileges and
favors, if others may usurp her rights. In fact she lies at the mercy
of men, if men only may choose into whose hands to put the control of
her person and property.... I do not complain of Judge Hunt's
interpretations of the Constitution on the suffrage question. I do not
complain of his refusing to accept the constitutional recognition of
woman's right to vote, though that right seems to lie on the very
surface of the Constitution amongst her rights of citizenship. Nor do
I complain of his passing by this recognition to dig down into the
Constitution for proofs of there being two kinds of citizens--one that
can vote and one that can not vote. What I complain of is that he did
not hold as void, instead of arguing them to be valid, any words in
the instrument which seemed to him to favor the disfranchisement of
woman and consequent robbery and destruction of her rights. What I
complain of is that, instead of his conscientious regard for his oath,
he was not prepared to ignore and scout all human law so far as it is
antagonistic to natural law and natural rights....

How striking and instructive is the following extract from a speech
made a year or two ago in the Spanish Parliament: "Natural rights
dwell essentially in the individual, and are derived directly from his
own moral nature. They are therefore, so to speak, unlegislatable,
since they do not arise from the law, do not depend on the law, and,
not depending on the law, can not be abrogated by the law. Born of the
organic constitution of the individual, with the individual they live
and die, unless a tyrannical, unrighteous, and iniquitous law tears
them from him, and then he will have the right to protest forever
against this wrong and the iniquity of the law, and to rise against it
whenever he can. Well, my lords, the inalienable rights of the Cubans
have been torn from them by unrighteous, tyrannical, and iniquitous
laws." Would that Judge Hunt and all our judges might, ere long, take
the ground of this sublimely eloquent Spaniard, that natural rights
are "unlegislatable".... Would that my much esteemed friend, Judge
Hunt, had so far outgrown bad law and grown into good law, as to have
pronounced at your trial the disenthralment of woman, and thus have
set the name of Hunt in immortality by the side of the names of
Brougham and Mansfield, and others who have had the wisdom and the
courage to thrust aside false paper law and install in its place that
sovereign law which is written upon the heart and upon the very
foundations of human being! He does not doubt that they did right. He
honors them for having done as they did. Nor can he doubt that to deny
to woman all part in the making and executing of laws under which her
life and property may be taken from her is a crime against her, which
no paper law can sanction and which God's law must condemn.... This
worship of the Constitution!--how blinding and belittling! I would
that every judge who tends to this weakness (and nearly every judge,
yes, and nearly every other person tends to it) might find his steps
arrested by the warning example of Daniel Webster. This pre-eminently
intellectual man, whom nature had fitted to soar in the high sphere of
absolute and everlasting law, had so shrivelled his soul by his
worship of the Constitution that he came, at last, to desire no other
inscription on his grave-stone than his shameless confession of such
base worship. And all this, notwithstanding the Constitution was, in
his eye, the great bulwark of slavery!

Be of good courage and good cheer, my brave and faithful sister! I
trust our country is on the eve of great and blessed changes.... Best
of all, the ballot can not much longer be withheld from woman. Men are
fast coming to see that it belongs to her as fully as to themselves,
and that the country is in perishing need of her wielding it. If the
silly portion of our ladies will but cease from their silly
apprehension that the plan is to _make_ them vote whether they will or
no, and also cease from their ignorant and childish admissions that
they already have all the rights they want--then will the American
women quickly be enfranchised, and their nation will rapidly achieve a
far higher civilization than it is possible for any nation to arrive
at which is guilty of the folly and the sin of clothing man with all
political power and reducing women to a political cipher.

Cordially yours, GERRIT SMITH.

WASHINGTON NOTES.

BY GRACE GREENWOOD.

When I said that in the dull languor of our summer collapse we felt
none of your fierce Northern excitements, I should have excepted the
Anthony suffrage case. That touched nearly if not deeply. The ark of
the holy political covenant resting here--the sacred mules that draw
it being stabled in the Capitol for half a year at a time--the woman
who has laid unsanctified hands upon it, is naturally regarded with
peculiar horror. I did not take exception to the _Times'_ article of
June 19th on this case. It was mild and courteous in tone, and the
view taken of the XIV. Amendment plea seems to me the only sound one.
I certainly do not want to get into your political preserves by any
quibble or dodge. I want my right there freely granted and guaranteed,
and will be politely treated when I come, or I won't stay. The
promised land of justice and equality is not to be reached by a short
cut. I fear we have a large part of the forty years of struggle and
zigzaging before us yet. I am pretty sure our Moses has not appeared.
I think he will be a woman. Often the way seems dark, as well as long,
when I see so much fooling with the great question of woman's claims
to equal educational advantages with men; to just remuneration for
good work, especially in teaching, and fair credit for her share in
the patriotic and benevolent enterprises of the age. I do not say that
equal pay for equal services will never be accorded to woman, even in
the civil service, till she has the ballot to back her demand; but
that is the private opinion of many high Government officials. I do
not say that woman's right to be represented, as well as taxed, will
never be recognized as a logical practical result of the democratic
principle till the Democrats come in power. But it may be so. The
Gospel was first offered to the Jews, but first accepted by the
Gentiles.

In your article, fair as it was in spirit, you failed to touch upon
two points which struck me rather painfully. It seems that Judge Hunt,
after pronouncing a learned, and, I suppose, a sound opinion,
peremptorily ordered the jury to bring the defendant in guilty. Now,
could not twelve honest, intelligent jurymen be trusted to defend
their birthright against one woman? Why such zeal, such more than
Roman sternness? Again, in the trial of the inspectors of election,
why were both judge and jurymen so merciful? No verdict of guilty was
ordered, and the council of twelve who had seen fit to punish Miss
Anthony by a fine of $100 and costs, merely mulcted in the modest sum
of $25, each defenseless defendant sinning against light. Was it that
they considered in their manly clemency the fact that women have
superior facilities for earning money, or did they give heed to the
old, old excuse, "The woman tempted me, and I did register"?

It surely is strange that such severe penalties should be visited on a
woman, for a first and only indiscretion in the suffrage line, when a
man may rise up on election morning and go forth, voting and to vote.
If he be of an excitable and mercurial nature, one of the sort of
citizens which sweet Ireland empties on us by the county, he may
sportively flit about among the polls, from ward to ward, of the
metropolis, and no man says to him nay; he may even travel hilariously
from city to city, with free passes and free drinks--who treats Miss
Anthony?--making festive calls, and dropping ballots for cards, and
no disturbance comes of it--he is neither fined nor confined. So, it
would seem, "a little voting is a dangerous thing."

Say what you will, the whole question of woman's status in the State
and the Church, in society and the family, is full of absurd
contradictions and monstrous anomalies. We are so responsible, yet
irresponsible--we are idols, we are idiots--we are everything, we are
nothing. We are the Caryatides, rearing up the entablature of the
temple of liberty we are never allowed to enter. We may plot against a
government, and hang for it; but if we help to found and sustain a
government by patriotic effort and devotion, by toil and hardship, by
courage, loyalty, and faith, by the sacrifice of those nearest and
dearest to us, and then venture to clutch at the crumbs that fall from
the table where our Masters Jonathan, Patrick, Hans, and Sambo sit at
feast, you arrest us, imprison us, try us, fine us, and then add
injury to insult, by calling us old, ugly, and fanatical.

One is forcibly reminded of the sermon of the colored brother on
woman, the heads of which discourse were: "Firstly. What am woman?
Secondly. Whar did she come from? Thirdly. Who does she belong to?
Fourthly. Which way am she gwine to?"

The law and the Gospel have settled the "secondly" and "thirdly."
Woman came from man, and belongs to him by the mortgage he holds on
her through that spare-rib; but "firstly" and "fourthly" remain as
profound and unsolvable questions as they were before the Ethiopian
divine wrestled with them. But perhaps this troublous and perplexed
existence is our "be-all and end-all"; that in the life beyond, man
may foreclose that old mortgage and re-absorb woman into his glorified
and all-sufficient being.

I have never believed with Miss Anthony, that the XIV. Amendment was
going to help us. I have never accepted certain other of her theories;
but I believe in and accept her as a woman of intense convictions, of
high courage and constancy; and I don't like to hear her ridiculed and
abused. If anything can make me think meanly of my young brothers of
the press, it is the way they pelt and pester Susan B. Anthony. For
shame, boys! Never a one of you will make the man she is. Even some of
our Washington editors turn aside from the fair game. Providence, in
its inscrutable wisdom, has provided for them in the Board of Public
Works, to vent their virtuous indignation and manly scorn of the woman
they are determined shall stand in perpetual pillory in the
market-place of this great, free Republic.--_New York Times_.

The Washington, D. C., _Star_ says of Judge Hunt's opinion: "If his
views are to prevail, of what effect are the suffrage amendments to
the Federal Constitution."

[_The County Post_, Washington Co., N. Y., Friday, June 27, 1873].

NOT A VOTER.

The United States Courts have pronounced on Miss Anthony's case, which
she so adroitly made by voting last fall, in company with fourteen
others of her sex. The decision was adverse to the claim made by this
devoted friend of female suffrage, that as the Constitution now stood,
women had a right to vote. Accordingly the indomitable old lady was
found guilty of violating the law regulating the purity of the
ballot-box, and fined one hundred dollars and costs. A good many
journals seem to regard this as a good joke on Susan B, as they call
her, and make it the excuse for more poor jokes of their own. It may
be stupid to confess it, but we can not see where the laugh comes in.
If it is a mere question of who has got the best of it, Miss Anthony
is still ahead; she has voted, and the American Constitution has
survived the shock. Fining her one hundred dollars does not rub out
that fact that fourteen women voted, and went home, and the world
jogged on as before. The decision of the judge does not prove that it
is wrong for women to vote, it does not even prove that Miss Anthony
did wrong in voting. It only shows that one judge on the bench differs
in opinion from other equally well qualified judges off the bench. It
is not our province to find fault with this decision of the United
States Court at Rochester. Miss Anthony may be wrong in attempting to
vote; of that we are not certain. But of the greater question back of
it, of Miss Anthony's inherent right to vote we have no question, and
that after all is the more important matter. This Rochester breakwater
may damn back the stream for a while, but it is bound to come,
sweeping away all barriers. The opposition to extending the suffrage
to the other sex is founded alone on prejudice arising from social
custom. Reason and logic are both against it. Women will not be
voters possibly for some years to come; it is not desirable that the
franchise should come too quick; but they are certain to have the full
privilege of citizenship in the end.

[_The Age_, Thursday, July 31, 1873.]

KU-KLUX PRISONERS.

The Ku-Klux prisoners are, it seems, now to be released. They are
persons some of whom had committed assaults and other offenses
cognizable by the laws of the States where they lived, and the Ku-Klux
legislation by Congress was a political device as unnecessary as it
was unconstitutional. Perhaps the most ridiculous, as well as the most
unjust prosecution under the Ku-Klux law was that instituted against
Miss Anthony for voting in Rochester. Under her view of her rights,
she presented herself at the polls, and submitted her claims to the
proper officers, who decided that she had a right to vote. She
practiced no fraud or concealment of any kind. She did what every good
citizen here would do, if any doubt arose from assessment,
registration, or residence, as to his right to vote. He would state
the case to the election officers, and abide their decision. Yet this,
we are told, is a criminal offense under the Ku-Klux law, for which a
citizen who has done exactly what he ought to have done, may be fined
and imprisoned as a criminal. Nay, if, as often happens, a point of
doubt is submitted to our Court of Common Pleas and decided in favor
of the applicant, he is still liable to criminal prosecution under the
Federal Ku-Klux law, if a United States Commissioner or Judge differs
from the State Judge in the construction of the State law. Since the
victims of the Ku-Klux act are now receiving pardons, we hope the fine
of $100 unlawfully imposed on Miss Anthony may be remitted. We do not
think there was a case of more gross injustice ever practiced under
forms of law, than the conviction of that lady for a criminal offense
in voting, with the assent of the legal election officers to whom her
right was submitted. If all the victims of this unconstitutional law
were as innocent as she was, they can not be too soon released. Even
those who were guilty of offenses cognizable by the State law, were
unjustly tried and condemned under an unconstitutional statute passed
for political effect.

[From the Philadelphia _Age_].

THE FUNNY CASE OF MISS ANTHONY.

The case of Miss Susan B. Anthony seems to be dismissed with a laugh
by most of the press; but from the first institution of a prosecution
against her under the Ku-Klux law, we have regarded the proceeding as
one in which the injustice was not cloaked by the absurdity. The law
was passed by Congress on a political cry that massacre and outrage
menaced negroes at the polls in the Southern States, and now we have
it used to oppress a woman in Rochester, New York. We are not debarred
from saying "oppressed" because the judge left the fine to be levied
on her property instead of imprisoning her person--in a State in which
women have, we suppose, long been exempt from imprisonment for debt.
But the chief outrage in the case is that it affords the first case,
we believe, in the United States, or anywhere in modern times, of a
conviction for a crime when there was no criminal intent. The proof,
or the presumption of this, is essential to a crime in the criminal
law of every civilized nation. The case of Miss Anthony was that of a
lady who believed that the much vaunted amendments of the Federal
Constitution extended to white women; and many lawyers and Congressmen
have also avowed this opinion. We do not hold it, but we do not doubt
that Miss Anthony does, very sincerely. We think as the Judge says in
her case, that the Federal Constitution has nothing to do with the
matter; that is wholly regulated by the Constitution of New York. But
every word of his argument was equally strong to show that he, a
Federal Judge, had nothing to do with the matter, and that it wholly
belonged to the courts of New York. They know, we presume, no law that
can create a crime without a criminal intention, and we deny the right
of Congress or any earthly authority to pass so monstrous a law. Every
day in criminal courts that point arises. If a man charged with
larceny is proved to have taken the goods of another, but under some
idea that he had a right to them, no matter how erroneous, the
criminal prosecution is instantly dismissed. Our eminent jurist,
Judge King, used to say: "This is a civil suit run mad." Has any
citizen of Philadelphia supposed that if there is a doubt as to his
right to vote--one of those numerous doubts that arise in changes of
residence, time of registration, naturalization, etc.--and wishing
scrupulously to do right, he go to the window and fully and fairly
state his case, and the election officers consider it, and adjudge
that he should vote then and there, has any citizen heretofore known
that he thus became liable to conviction for a crime under the Ku-Klux
laws, if some judge of a court should think the election officers
decided the point erroneously?

Yet that is the doctrine of Miss Anthony's case. Her garb and person
sufficed to tell she was a woman when she approached the polls, and
there was also argument over the matter, exhibiting afresh the fact
notorious at her home, that she claimed a lawful right to vote under
certain amendments of the Constitution. She was no repeater or false
personator, or probably she would not be persecuted, and certainly she
would be pardoned.

She submitted her right to the election officers, and they, the judges
appointed by the law, decided in her favor. It is just the case we
have supposed in Philadelphia, and which often really occurs here, and
may occur anywhere. And now we are told the Ku-Klux law makes this
hitherto laudable and innocent mode of procedure a crime, punishable
with fine and imprisonment! This is the decision over which many
journals are laughing because the first victim is a woman. We can not
see the joke.

[Chicago _Evening Journal_, Dec. 1, 1874].

Mrs. Myra Bradwell, the editor and publisher of the _Legal News_, of
this city, is a warm advocate of woman's rights. In the last number of
the _News_, speaking of Susan B. Anthony, she declares that Judge Ward
Hunt, of the Federal bench, "violated the Constitution of the United
States more, to convict her of illegal voting, than she did in voting,
for he had sworn to support it, she had not."

Sister Myra is evidently not afraid of being hauled up for contempt of
court.

[St. Louis _Daily Globe_, Thursday, June 26, 1873].

MISS ANTHONY'S CASE.

JUDGE HUNT'S DECISION REVIEWED--SHE HAD A RIGHT TO A JURY TRIAL.

_Editor of St. Louis Globe_:--I ask the favor of a small space in your
paper to notice the very remarkable decision of Judge Hunt, in the
case of the United States _vs._ Susan B. Anthony.

The Judge tells us "that the right of voting, or the privilege of
voting, is a right or privilege arising under the constitution of the
States, and not of the united States. If the right belongs to any
particular person, it is because such person is entitled to it as a
citizen of the State where he offers to exercise it, and not because
of citizenship of the United States."

If this position be true (which I do not admit), then Judge Hunt
should have pronounced the act of Congress unconstitutional, and
dismissed the case for want of jurisdiction. If the matter belongs
exclusively to the States, then the United States have nothing to do
with it, and clearly have no right to interfere and punish a person
for the (supposed) violation of a State law. But this is one of the
least of the criticisms to which this opinion is exposed. A far graver
one consists in the fact that the defendant was denied the right of a
trial by jury.

The Supreme Court of the United States say: "Another guarantee of
freedom was broken when Milligan was denied a trial by jury. The great
minds of the country have differed on the correct interpretation to be
given to various provisions of the Federal Constitution, and judicial
decision has been often invoked to settle their true meaning; but,
until recently, no one ever doubted that the right of trial by jury
was fortified in the organic law against the power of attack. It is
now assailed; but if ideas can be expressed in words, and language has
any meaning, this right--one of the most valuable in a free
country--is preserved to every one accused of crime, who is not
attached to the army, or navy, or militia in actual service. The VI.
Amendment affirms that in 'all criminal prosecutions the accused shall
enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury,'
language broad enough to embrace all persons and cases."--_Ex parte
Milligan, 4 Wallace, p. 122._

It is true a jury was impaneled, but this was all, for we are informed
that, at the conclusion of the opinion, Judge Selden requested that
the case should be submitted to the jury upon the question of intent,
and upon certain propositions of law; but the court declined to submit
the case upon any question whatever, and directed them to render a
verdict of guilty against the defendant.

I have been pained to witness, on the part of some of our newspapers,
a disposition to treat this decision with indifference, by some even
with levity. Has it come to this, that because she is a woman the
defendant can not get a fair and impartial trial? The case of the
inspectors was not treated in this way--but then they were men.

JUSTICE.

[_The Journal_, Thursday, July 30, 1874].

THE ALBANY LAW JOURNAL ON SUSAN B. ANTHONY'S CASE.

_To the Editor of the Syracuse Journal_:--I wish to call the attention
of the readers of _The Journal_, especially legal ones, to the
underlying intent and unjust perversions of the Albany _Law Journal_
of this month, in its leading article, entitled "Can a Judge direct a
Verdict of Guilty?"

This _Law Journal_, which professes to lead the legal craft of the
Empire State in the devious ways of legal justice, has but now,
thirteen months after its date, a review of Miss Anthony's celebrated
trial, as conducted by Judge Ward Hunt. Having taken a year and a
month to get the first principles of justice and of constitutional law
through his head, the belated editor of that law journal has come to
the conclusion--self-evident as it ought to be to a child--that a
judge has no legal right to take from an accused person the right of
trial by jury. Sapient editor, wise man! No second Solomon, you. You,
with all your legal lore, have at last managed to see, in a year and a
month, what the veriest simple woman in the land, all uneducated as
women are in the technicalities of the law, had no difficulty of
seeing in an hour. Right of trial by jury holds all other legal rights
within its grasp. Deprive a man or woman of that, and of what use is
your habeas corpus act, of what use your law of penalties or
acquittal? The terrors of the middle ages, the _lettres de cachet_,
sequestration, confiscation, rayless dungeons, and iron masks at once
rise in view.

We will, however, allow to this editor one grain of sense, as he
acknowledges the dangerous power in the hands of judges of the United
States Circuit Court, a power they possess outside of right, a power
through which one of them can, as did Judge Ward Hunt in Miss
Anthony's case, transcend his legal rights, to warp and bend
constitutional guarantees to his own ends, and having so done that
there is no legal appeal from his unwarrantable decision. A United
States judge is practically irresponsible. Nothing can touch him for
illegality in office but a Congressional impeachment, which from a
combination of circumstances is difficult to bring about. He holds the
dearest rights of American citizens at pleasure in his hands, and this
is law and justice in the United States. These are solely and entirely
man-made laws. No woman had finger or tongue in the matter.

But Mr. Albany _Law Journal_ editor, after acknowledging their
injustice toward accused persons, and their dangers to the liberties
of every individual, tells Miss Anthony that "if she" is dissatisfied
with "our laws," meaning, of course, man-made laws like these, "she
would better adopt the methods of reform that men use, or, better
still, emigrate." Was ever a more disreputable phrase penned?
Disgraceful to its author, and doubly so, as he pretends to be a
teacher of law. This is the language of a very Nero come to judgment.

"Our laws." Whose laws, pray? The laws of men made for "our" benefit
alone. Is this what Mr. Editor of the Albany _Law Journal_ means?
Pray, Mr. Albany _Law Journal_, what are "the methods of reform that
men use," when they are dissatisfied with "our laws," only to speak
against such laws, and to vote for men to make better ones? Miss
Anthony has tried both of "the methods of reform men use," and for
doing the last was arrested, tried, fined, and all but imprisoned. It
seems "the methods of reform men use" are, after all, not just the
kind of methods for Miss Anthony and her friends to use. But then, Mr.
Albany _Law Journal_ allows Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage one other
alternative, which he deems a "better one," _i.e._, to "emigrate."

Mr. Editor continues: "We can well afford to lose her who rehearsed
the story of her wrongs in public addresses, in twenty-nine of the
post-office districts of Monroe, and twenty-one of Ontario, in her
canvass of those counties prior to her trial, and Mrs. Matilda Joslyn
Gage, who made a speech on this subject in Canandaigua and sixteen
other towns of Ontario County, previous to Miss Anthony's trial, June
17, 1873, with a view, of course, of influencing public opinion in
that region, so that a conviction could not be had."

As Judge Hunt trampled on the citizen's right of trial by jury, so Mr.
Albany _Law Journal_ shows himself to be of the same ilk, by desiring
to trample on that other guaranteed constitutional right of free
speech. He would ostracise Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage; he would banish
them from the country because they dared to use one of "the methods of
reform that men use," _i.e._, speaking of their "wrongs" in order to
educate and enlighten public opinion. If old Greece could banish her
best citizen, Aristides, simply because he was her most just one, Miss
Anthony and myself certainly ought to consider it a matter of
self-gratulation that we are deemed fit for banishment because of our
demand for justice; justice not merely for ourselves, but for one-half
the nation.

That editor's contempt of rights and justice, as shown in his article,
is simply amazing. He might as well have said in so many words, "This
country and its government is for the benefit of us males alone; you
women are part and parcel of our property; if you are not suited with
all things as we fix them for you, then get out from our country."
This is the tenor of what Mr. Albany _Law Journal_ editor says. Does
not every honest lawyer's face tingle with shame when he reads this
disgraceful sentiment in that journal to which he so constantly looks
for instruction in the higher departments of justice? Does not his
republicanism revolt from such a sentiment? Does he not here recognize
the enunciation of a principle as directly opposed to liberty as even
Judge Hunt's control of jury trial?

This journal shows that the right to do a thing and the power to do it
are distinctly separate. Judge Hunt did what he had the power to do,
but not the right to do. Mr. _Law Journal_ possesses neither the right
nor the power of banishing those citizens who do not conform to his
wishes, but he has evinced a desire to hold such power, and did he
have it, the country would find in him a tyrant of the same class as
Judge Hunt.

As dilatory as this editor has been in reviewing this important case,
he is equally timid in his criticism upon it. Currying to judicial and
political power, he terms Judge Hunt's willful and knowing infraction
of law "a mistake," but in regard to Miss Anthony, he says, "she
intended deliberately to break the law." A large class of people
believe just the contrary. We who know Miss Anthony well, and who
believe with her, know that, on the contrary, she intended to do an
act which is protected by the law, instead of breaking law; she was
acting under authority of the law. Because Judge Hunt defied the law;
because the editor of the Albany _Law Journal_ is inexcusably ignorant
of, or recklessly indifferent to the law, it does not follow that Miss
Anthony belongs to that class, or should be judged by their corrupt
standard. Miss Anthony, in common with hundreds, nay, thousands of
other women, as well as of a large class of scholarly men--men of
intelligence and a broad sense of justice--men, too, of political
insight--fully believes that to woman, equally with man, does the
Constitution secure political rights. These persons, this large class,
believe that the XIII., XIV., and XV. Amendments to the national
Constitution overrode and destroyed all those parts of State
constitutions which were, or are now, by expression contrary to their
provisions, and they believe that the fundamental right of citizens of
the United States is the right to take part in making the laws which
shall govern them; the exercise of this right to be regulated (not
prevented) by States. They do not concede Miss Anthony to have been a
law-breaker as the Albany _Law Journal_, the Judiciary Committee of
the House of Representatives, and other friends of Judge Hunt concede
her to have been. If the judiciary of the country is so far powerful,
and so far irresponsible as to warp the law in favor of its own
prejudices, even to the extent of preventing trial by jury, as Judge
Hunt is conceded to have done, then our judiciary and not our
criminals is our dangerous class. With such judges as Hunt, who has
attempted to crush out the trial by jury, and make of the jury merely
an ornamental tail to his judicial kite; with such teachers as the
Albany _Law Journal_, which, while acknowledging Hunt's outrageous
illegality of action, yet calls it "a mistake," and speaks of him as
"a good and pure" man, the administrators and the expounders of law
have become the most dangerous enemies of the people. The eminent
Judge Brady recognizes the low condition of legal honor, and in a
recent speech, said he hoped to see the day when his legal brethren
would understand that it was their duty to assist in the
administration of justice, and not to lend themselves to degrading
efforts to defeat it. We commend these remarks to the consideration of
Judge Hunt and the editor of the Albany _Law Journal_.

With that lack of self-respect which seems to inhere in all opponents
of woman suffrage, that editor, in addition to all else, tries to
indulge in a little facetiousness over the threadbare witticisms that
Miss Anthony "was a woman when she voted." Coming down through the
lips of Judge Hunt and the United States District Attorney of the
prosecution, it reaches the law editor in time for him to say that "on
the trial of Miss Anthony she conceded that on the day of election she
was a woman," and in a parenthesis ("we know that she generally was a
woman, and are not surprised to learn that she was on election day.")
What an amazing platitude this is to fall from the lips of a teacher
of law. That the United States District Attorney engaged in the
prosecution should degrade the dignity of the law by the question (to
Judge Selden) "if it was conceded that on the day of election Miss
Anthony was a woman?" to which the reply was, "Yes, now and ever heart
and soul a woman"; that Judge Hunt should ask her "if she voted as a
female"? to which he got the answer, "No, sir, I voted as a citizen of
the United States"; those questions, I say, were not so much a matter
of surprise under the peculiar forms of the trial, but that a law
journal should so far forget its dignity; should so far descend from
argument, from discussion of law to unseemly banter on the question of
sex; that it should so far stoop from a canvass of the most important
trial that ever took place, to a senile jest on woman, must be matter
of astonishment to every candid mind in the legal fraternity, and
certainly has a tendency to convince the female portion of the country
that the male man is fast losing his right to the definition of "man,
a reasoning animal."

In regard to that editor's expressed desire that the case of Miss
Anthony should have gone to the jury, as they would have brought in a
verdict of guilty, I will inform him that one of those jurymen told me
his verdict would have been "not guilty" had he been allowed by Judge
Hunt to express his opinions, "nor would he have been alone." This was
just what Hunt knew and feared and was determined should not take
place. Therefore he gagged the jury and ordered the verdict of guilty
entered--a verdict which, as this editor acknowledges, was never
rendered.

_Fayetteville, N. Y._ MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.

ULYSSES S. GRANT,

PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

_To all to whom those Presents shall come, Greeting_:

WHEREAS, at the June term, 1873, of the United States Circuit Court of
the Northern District of New York, one Beverly W. Jones, one Edwin T.
Marsh, and one William B. Hall were convicted of illegally registering
certain persons as voters, and receiving their votes, and were
sentenced each to pay a fine of twenty-five dollars,

AND WHEREAS, the Honorable H. A. Sargent asks that they be pardoned,
in view of the peculiar circumstances of their offense,

_Now, therefore_, be it known, that I, Ulysses S. Grant, President of
the United States of America, in consideration of the premises, divers
other good and sufficient reasons me thereunto moving, do hereby grant
to the said Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, a
full and unconditional pardon.

_In testimony whereof_, I have hereunto signed my name and caused the
Seal of the United States to be affixed.

[SEAL.] Done at the City of Washington, this Third day of March, A.D.
1874, and of the Independence of the United States the
Ninety-eighth.

By the President. U. S. GRANT.

HAMILTON FISH, Secretary of State.

CORRESPONDENCE FROM WASHINGTON--SPECIAL TO THE _COMMONWEALTH_.

WASHINGTON, _April 14, 1874_.

SUSAN ANTHONY'S CASE.

Speaking of women, reminds me that a report will soon be made by the
Judiciary Committee upon the petition of Susan B. Anthony for a
remission of her fine for voting in the last Presidential campaign for
General Grant and Henry Wilson. The friends of woman's suffrage
confidently expect a favorable report upon this subject from the
committee. It was a clear case of a decision by a judge in excess of
his authority, and acting without warrant of law. It will not be a
decision if favorably made into which the right of suffrage will
necessarily enter. Miss Anthony claims her conviction was
unconstitutional under the law, the judge having refused her the right
of trial by jury in that he directed the jury to bring in a verdict of
guilty. She insists that this proceeding of the judge was in
derogation of her legal right of trial by jury, and as by law she had
no appeal in a criminal case from the decision of a single judge, that
it is the duty, as it is in the power, of Congress to remit the fine
which she has been ordered to pay with the costs. This simply involves
a legal question, and one which the Judiciary Committee will be quite
likely to decide in Susan's favor as she has both law and precedent on
her side. If the committee report favorably to the House, it will be
quite likely to pass on its merits as a legal question, giving many
members an opportunity to vote as their sympathies would direct
without committing themselves squarely to the question of woman's
suffrage. It is a step that will pave the way to this in the future.
Mr. Sargent has introduced a similar bill in the Senate, and Senator
Carpenter is pledged not only to its support but announces himself
ready to work for its passage.

The question of whether woman shall vote has become one of live issues
in politics to-day, and must be met by parliaments and people whether
they will or no. Susan B. Anthony, as the pioneer in this crusade,
holds the respectful consideration of a large number of our public
men. They have learned that she is in earnest in the advocacy of equal
rights, social and political, for her sex. She has no other religion
than work for this cause, unless it be war upon what she calls the
male despotism of both church and State. She will have gained in this,
the great cause to which she has consecrated her life, a substantial
victory. Notwithstanding it does not bear directly upon the question
of suffrage, it will be a recognition of the fact that judges can not
with impunity make decisions that woman has no rights that they are
bound to respect, and the rebuke that this remission of her fine, if
ordered by Congress, will be to the judge presiding in her case is one
that his associates throughout the country will be sure to heed. This
will at the same time give courage and hope to the friends of equal
rights to all regardless of race, sex, or previous condition of
servitude.

MINOR vs. HAPPERSETT.

(_Toledo Sunday Journal, April, 1875_,)

We insert to-day a communication from a friend of equal rights, who
highly condemns the interpretation of the Constitution by the Supreme
Court--his opinion also being from a legal standpoint. There is no
doubt but that although the mere letter of the Constitution may be
adhered to, _women_ not being _specified_ as being _people and not
non-entities_, the interpretation is clear behind the spirit of the
Constitution. It is then the manifest duty of Congress, since the
Supreme Court gives the conservative interpretation, to so amend the
Constitution as to bring it up unmistakably to the design of the
framers, which was representation for all the people.

THE GREAT USURPATION.

_President Woman's Suffrage Association, Toledo, Ohio_:

DEAR MADAM: What a fraud is practiced by the administration of this
government upon the provisions of the Constitution of the United
States! As government is administered, the female portion of the
public are defrauded of constitutional right, and made to become
political slaves. Since the beginning, all the way down to the present
day, woman has been debarred of all political privilege, though
reckoned and accounted as one of the people, in matters of census and
taxation. Her disabilities in this behalf were removed by the adoption
of the National Constitution; but nullification of that Constitution
and a high handed usurpation on the part of the States, have ever
hindered the enjoyment of her constitutional rights. But so long as
she is classed by the Constitution as one of the people--so long as
the people are the owners, the proprietors of the government
established by the Constitution--so long as it provides for
self-government, popular sovereignty--so long must she be _entitled_
to take part in administration, though prevented from doing so by fine
and imprisonment.

I am awakened to this subject of woman suffrage by a decision of the
Supreme Court of the United States, made at Washington this week. I
have not seen the text of the opinion read by the Chief Justice, but I
find this statement in the Court news of Monday last:

"No. 182.--Virginia L. Minor agt. Reese Happersett: in error to
Supreme Court of Missouri.--The plaintiff in error instituted an
action against Happersett, who was the judge of an election, for
denying her the right to vote. She based her right to vote upon the
ground that as a citizen of the United States she had that right under
the Constitution. Mr. Chief Justice Waite delivered the opinion,
holding, first, that women are and always have been citizens of the
United States as well as men; second, the Constitution of the United
States does not attach the right of voting to the right of
citizenship; third, nor does the Constitution of any of the States
make the right to vote coextensive with citizenship; fourth,
consequently, women are not entitled to vote by virtue of the
Constitution of the United States, when the State laws do not give the
right. Affirmed."

The great usurpation is now affirmed, legalized, by the decree of the
Judicial Department of this government! More than 20,000,000 of the
people of this Nation have been declared without the pale of political
rights secured to them by the Constitution of the fathers. This
decision indorses the disfranchisement of every female in the land, so
long endured by her. Her citizenship, which the National Constitution
makes evidence of her copartnership, or tenancy in common, or
proprietorship in the Government, is worthless--is only a name; and
does not enable her to exercise the privileges and immunities of our
system of self-government which that Constitution declares this
government to be--a government by and for its citizens. Woman can not
now exercise her constitutional right--she is only a cipher, important
once in a decade, in numbering the people--she is only a political
slave, a helpless Helot. Make ready, adorn your person, O woman, to
celebrate the coming centennial of the Declaration of American
Independence of the British throne! Mark! a woman sits upon that
throne and wears the royal crown! But, glorious parchment is that old
Declaration. That instrument marks an epoch in government and
political philosophy. It certifies the rights of the human race. Its
truths sounded in American ears on every fourth of July, for one
hundred years, save one, have, nevertheless, failed in their
realization, and, to-day, one half the population of this Nation can
not exercise a political right. How happens this state of
affairs?--not that the Constitution hinders woman and prevents her
participation in matters of government, for it is abundant in its
provisions in her behalf. Let me examine and try to ascertain the
point of difficulty. I copy from the Constitution a provision which
covers the entire question of woman's right of suffrage:

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen
every second year, by the people of the several States; and
the electors in each State shall have the qualifications
requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State
Legislature."--[_Art._ 1. _Sec._ 2.]

The law and logic of woman's right--her political right--to vote for
members of Congress, President and Vice-President, appear thus in
argument: These officers are to be chosen "by the people of the
several States"--that is by the men and women of the Nation. The
personality of the people, by the creative fiat, is distinguished by
difference of sex, male and female. The choosers, the people of the
several States, are required to have certain qualifications to enable
them to choose, and these qualifications are to be subject to State
regulations. The right to vote for these officers of the United States
is anchored in the Constitution--no State may nullify that right--it
can only regulate its exercise:--for example, prescribe, as
qualifications for access to the ballot-box, that the chooser or
voter shall be twenty-one years old, a resident of the State for one
year, of the county or town for thirty days, etc.--these are properly
qualifications and such as the Constitution intends. Every State
Constitution limits the right to a part only of the people, which is
denial of right to the other portion of the people, and not regulation
or the right by way of adjective qualifications, as illustrated above.

Can sex either qualify or disqualify a chooser, one of the people to
cast a ballot for President? All the States, in unchecked
nullification, pronounce in the affirmative and write it in their
constitutions--the masculine qualifies, the feminine disqualifies--and
this has just now been echoed by the Supreme Court of the United
States! My mind and reason forbid my acceptance of such postulate.

The term "people" comprehends and includes female persons as well as
male persons. It is impossible, therefore, that sex, either the one or
the other, is contemplated by the Constitution as a qualification or
disqualification for suffrage. There must be National officers,
President, etc., else no government; they are to be chosen--this calls
for choosers or voters; the "people" are to choose--the people are a
majority of persons--these persons are, some male, some female--no
limitation is indicated as to which shall belong the right to vote;
sex, it seems, is out of the question, as the people are of both
sexes, so both male and female must vote or choose at the polls. Let
the States regulate the approaches to the ballot-box, but not deny the
right of user, by the people of the Nation. The Constitution exacts
all this--it is plain, it is positive--there is no hint in the same
that there shall be had at the polls any preference on account of sex.
Expulsion of woman from the polls by State nullification is a gigantic
wrong--a villainous usurpation.

Again, some things carry in their very face the absurd, the
incongruous, the ridiculous; States enacting laws and forming
constitutions which are interpreted as warrants of right to vote--the
masculine gender, this qualifies for voting--the feminine, this
disqualifies the voter. How ridiculous! Virility the distinguishing
qualification of voters in the United States! How queer this looks and
sounds. Sex is elemental--inherent in all the people, and should never
be deemed ground of qualification or disqualification to vote, any
more than the height or weight of person. But the Supreme Court of the
United States wink at the wickedness of the States as nullifiers, and
allow the masculine usurpation to remain. Perhaps this grave body of
learned Justices look upon the question of qualification in a broader
or other sense than that taught by Dr. Webster. Their decision, it
seems, turns upon the use and meaning of that word. This, then, is the
solemn conclusion of the embodied justice of the land--_qualification
to vote_, MASCULINE GENDER!--and not things in common belonging to
every person of the entire population, no matter what the sex; such as
age, residence, etc.

Madam, you have no available political rights--the Constitution
intends you shall have and exercise them, and it has made provisions
accordingly--but the false interpretations of the courts, and the
trespassing State Constitutions have hitherto hindered you. But I
believe a day of revolution, call it reckoning if you please, is at
hand--fast approaching. President Lincoln liberated by proclamation,
three or four millions of chattel slaves. President Grant has the
power, Constitutional power, to liberate, to-day, twenty millions of
political slaves, of which, I am sorry to say, you are one. Let
politicians and political parties beware how they treat this question
of woman suffrage. What became of the old Whig Party, in consequence
of its alliance with chattel slavery. _Illium fuit._

Sincerely yours, etc., HORACE DRESSER.

[The Toledo _Sunday Journal._]

The New York _Evening Post_ has a long article relative to the
decision of the Supreme Court regarding the right of women to vote
under the Constitution of the United States, coinciding in the
decision. It closes by saying: "The advocates of woman suffrage will
scarcely be disappointed by this judgment. We do not believe that
sincere friends of the proposed reform will regret the failure to
secure it by trickery."

There are few who have maintained that the XIV. and XV. Amendments
secured suffrage to women as well as to colored men, who would be
willing to admit that they desired to obtain suffrage through
trickery? Either it is, or is not, conveyed through the Constitution
and the Amendments. Certainly if it is, they have a right to avail
themselves of it; and even if it is not, it is nevertheless, a right.
The woman suffragists believe that the withholdal from women of the
right of suffrage is a fraud and an imposition. To secure them what is
already their right, can not involve trickery. Every day and every
hour that the right of suffrage is withheld from women, a monstrous
wrong is practiced upon them. As long as there were no women who
demanded the ballot, and by tacit consent it was relinquished, the
fraud practiced by debarring them from it was merely of a negative
character--but the privilege should have been left open; but from the
moment that one woman demanded it, an outrage was practiced upon her
by the entire people in denying it her, and the plea that it is not
woman's sphere, which is sometimes made, is the most shallow
subterfuge of any, for it is not for men, but for woman alone, to
determine what that sphere is, or is not.

FOOTNOTES:

[208] Alvin Stewart, one of the noble pioneers in Anti-Slavery.

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

The transcriber made changes as below indicated
to the text to correct obvious errors:

1. p. 10. permanance --> permanence
2. p. 18, batte-field --> battle-field
3. p. 80, menancing --> menacing
4. p. 84, ALL HUMAN GOVERNMENT. --> ALL HUMAN GOVERNMENT."
5. p. 88, Footnote #47, no footnote marker in footnote text.
6. p. 103, enfrachising --> enfranchising
7. p. 112, I have read --> "I have read
8. p. 119, Doubtles --> Doubtless
9. p. 125, it will led --> it will lead
10. p. 139, Do they like --> "Do they like
11. p. 189, "I ask you --> I ask you
12. p. 190, resolutions --> resolutions.
13. p. 224, consience --> conscience
14. p. 246, Thank you --> Thank you.
15. p. 284, Footnote #99, TRIAN --> TRAIN
16. p. 327, inviduous --> invidious
17. p. 348, everhelp --> everheld
18. p. 371, suffage --> suffrage
19. p. 424, indignat --> indignant
20. p. 435, devolop --> develop
21. p. 438, Aniversary --> Anniversary
22. p. 439, sincerly --> sincerely
23. p. 442, Athony --> Anthony
24. p. 444, appropiate --> appropriate
25. p. 455, delaring --> declaring
26. p. 530, sate --> state
27. p. 531, elswhere --> elsewhere
28. p. 554, surrended --> surrendered
29. p. 587, Dictrict --> District
30. p. 638, stautte --> statute
31. p. 666, syonymous --> synonymous
32. p. 691, ursurped --> usurped
33. p. 692, eithth --> eight
34. p. 708, folowing --> following
35. p. 723, 4 Wallace, 351-323 (left as published)
36. p. 727, plantiff --> plaintiff
37. p. 733, privieges --> privileges
38. p. 755, disabilty --> disability
39. p. 791, acording --> according
40. p. 803, Footnote #188, standardized punctutation in list of
states and individuals
41. p. 900, a a (left as published)
42. p. 921, Wom n's --> Woman's
43. p. 934, ther campaign (left as published)
44. p. 947, dissatified --> dissatisfied
45. p. 950, [HAND] replaces image of hand pointing right

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II" ***

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