The History of Woman Suffrage Volume II Part 72

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 a.s.sent.

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 inst.i.tuted 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 pet.i.tions 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 quant.i.ty 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 G.o.d-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 s.e.x 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 const.i.tutions 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 munic.i.p.al law from the beginning of the world to the year 1860, which maintains, or a.s.serts, 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 circ.u.mstances 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 Const.i.tution 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 const.i.tuted 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 s.e.x 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 pa.s.sed, n.o.body 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 n.o.body 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. n.o.body suspected it; n.o.body suggested it; and n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s 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 ent.i.tled 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.