The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 3

WHEREAS, We believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence and of the Const.i.tution of the United States, and believe a true republic is the best form of government in the world; and

WHEREAS, This government is false to its underlying principles in denying to women the only means of self-government, the ballot; and

WHEREAS, One-half of the citizens of this nation, after a century of boasted liberty, are still political slaves; therefore,

_Resolved_, That we protest against calling the present centennial celebration a celebration of the independence of the people of the United States.

_Resolved_, That we meet in our respective towns and districts on the Fourth of July, 1876, and declare ourselves no longer bound to obey laws in whose making we have had no voice, and, in presence of the a.s.sembled nations of the world gathered on this soil to celebrate our nation's centennial, demand justice for the women of this land.

WHEREAS, The men of this nation have established for men of all nations, races and color, on this soil, at the cost of countless lives, the proposition (in the language of Frederick Dougla.s.s) "that a man's head is his head, his body is his body, his feet are his feet"; therefore,

_Resolved_, That justice, equity and chivalry demand that man at once establish for his wife and mother the corresponding proposition, that a woman's head is her head, her body is her body, her feet are her feet, and that all ownership and mastery over her person, property, conscience, and liberty of speech and action, are in violation of the supreme law of the land.

_Resolved_, That we rejoice in the resistance of Julia and Abby Smith, Abby Kelly Foster, Sarah E. Wall and many more resolute women in various parts of the country, to taxation without representation.

_Resolved_, That the thanks of the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation are hereby tendered to Hon. A. A. Sargent, of California, for his earnest words in behalf of woman suffrage on the floor of the United States Senate, Jan. 25, 1876; and to Hon.

N. P. Banks, of Ma.s.sachusetts, for his appeal in behalf of the centennial woman suffrage memorial in the United States House of Representatives, March 31, 1876.

_Resolved_, That the repeated attempts to license the social evil are a practical confession of the weakness, profligacy and general unfitness of men to legislate for women, and should be regarded with alarm as a proof that their firesides and liberties are in constant peril while men alone make and execute the laws of this country.

WHEREAS, There are 7,000 more women than men in the District of Columbia, and no form of government for said District has allowed women any voice in making the laws under which they live; therefore,

_Resolved_, That in this centennial year the congress of the United States having exclusive jurisdiction over that territory should establish a truly republican form of government by granting equal suffrage to the men and women of the District of Columbia.

Immediately at the close of the May convention Mrs. Gage again went to Philadelphia to complete the arrangements in regard to the centennial headquarters. Large and convenient rooms were soon found upon Arch street, terms agreed upon and a lease drawn, when it transpired that a husband's consent and signature must be obtained, although the property was owned by a woman, as by the laws of Pennsylvania a married woman's property is under her husband's control. Although arrangements for this room had been made with the real owner, the terms being perfectly satisfactory to her, the husband refused his ratification, tearing up the lease, with abuse of the women who claimed control of their own property, and a general defiance of all women who dared work for the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of their s.e.x. Thus again were women refused rooms in Philadelphia in which to enter their protest against the tyranny of this republic, and for the same reason--they were slaves. Had the patriots of the revolutionary period asked rooms of King George, in which to foster their treason to his government, the refusal could have been no more positive than in these cases.

The quarters finally obtained were very desirable; fine large parlors on the first floor, on Chestnut street, at the fashionable west end, directly opposite the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation.

The other members of the committee being married ladies, Miss Anthony, as a _feme sole_, was alone held capable of making a contract, and was therefore obliged to a.s.sume the pecuniary responsibility of the rooms. Thus it is ever the married women who are more especially cla.s.sed with lunatics, idiots and criminals, and held incapable of managing their own business. It has always been part of the code of slavery, that the slave had no right to property; all his earnings and gifts belonging by law, to the master. Married women come under this same civil code. The following letter was extensively circulated and published in all the leading journals:

NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE PARLORS, } 1,431 Chestnut Street, PHILADELPHIA, PA. }

The National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation has established its centennial headquarters in Philadelphia, at 1,431 Chestnut street. The parlors, in charge of the officers of the a.s.sociation, are devoted to the special work of the year, pertaining to the centennial celebration and the political party conventions; also to calls, receptions, conversazioni, etc. On the table a centennial autograph book receives the names of visitors. Friends at a distance, both men and women, who cannot call, are invited to send their names, with date and residence, accompanied by a short expressive sentiment and a contribution toward expenses. In the rooms are books, papers, reports and decisions, speeches, tracts, and photographs of distinguished women; also mottoes and pictures expressive of woman's condition. In addition to the parlor gatherings, meetings and conventions will be held during the season in various halls and churches throughout the city.

On July Fourth, while the men of this nation and the world are rejoicing that "All men are free and equal" in the United States, a declaration of rights for women will be issued from these headquarters, and a protest against calling this centennial a celebration of the independence of the people, while one-half are still political slaves.

Let the women of the whole land, on that day, in meetings, in parlors, in kitchens, wherever they may be, unite with us in this declaration and protest. And, immediately thereafter, send full reports, in ma.n.u.script or print, of their resolutions, speeches and action, for record in our centennial book, that the world may see that the women of 1876 know and feel their political degradation no less than did the men of 1776.

The first woman's rights convention the world ever knew, called by Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, met at Seneca Falls, N. Y., July 19, 20, 1848. In commemoration of the twenty-eighth anniversary of that event, the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation will hold in ---- hall, Philadelphia, July 19, 20, of the present year, a grand ma.s.s convention, in which eminent reformers from the new and old world will take part. Friends are especially invited to be present on this historic occasion.

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.

From these headquarters numberless doc.u.ments were issued during the month of June. As the presidential nominating conventions were soon to meet, letters were addressed to both the Republican and Democratic parties, urging them to recognize the political rights of women in their platforms. Thousands of copies of these letters were scattered throughout the nation:

_To the President and Members of the National Republican Convention, Cincinnati, O., June 14, 1876._

GENTLEMEN: The National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation asks you to place in your platform the following plank:

_Resolved_, That the right to the use of the ballot inheres in every citizen of the United States; and we pledge ourselves to secure the exercise of this right to all citizens, irrespective of s.e.x.

In asking the insertion of this plank, we propose no change of fundamental principles. Our question is as old as the nation. Our government was framed on the political basis of the consent of the governed. And from July 4, 1776, until the present year, 1876, the nation has constantly advanced toward a fuller practice of our fundamental theory, that the governed are the source of all power. Your nominating convention, occurring in this centennial year of the republic, presents a good opportunity for the complete recognition of these first principles. Our government has not yet answered the end for which it was framed, while one-half the people of the United States are deprived of the right of self-government. Before the Revolution, Great Britain claimed the right to legislate for the colonies in all cases whatsoever; the men of this nation now as unjustly claim the right to legislate for women in all cases whatsoever.

The call for your nominating convention invites the cooperation of "all voters who desire to inaugurate and enforce the rights of every citizen, including the full and free exercise of the right of suffrage." Women are citizens; declared to be by the highest legislative and judicial authorities; but they are citizens deprived of "the full and free exercise of the right of suffrage." Your platform of 1872 declared "the Republican party mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of the nation for their n.o.ble devotion to the cause of freedom." Devotion to freedom is no new thing for the women of this nation. From the earliest history of our country, woman has shown herself as patriotic as man in every great emergency in the nation's life.

From the Revolution to the present hour, woman has stood by the side of father, husband, son and brother in defense of liberty.

The heroic and self-sacrificing deeds of the women of this republic, both in peace and war, must not be forgotten. Together men and women have made this country what it is. And to-day, in this one-hundredth year of our existence, the women--as members of the nation--as citizens of the United States--ask national recognition of their right of suffrage.

The Declaration of Independence struck a blow at every existent form of government, by declaring the individual the source of all power. Upon this one newly proclaimed truth our nation arose. But if States may deny suffrage to any cla.s.s of citizens, or confer it at will upon any cla.s.s--as according to the Minor-Happersett decision of the Supreme Court--a decision rendered under the auspices of the Republican party against suffrage as a const.i.tuent element of United States citizenship--we then possess no true national life. If States can deny suffrage to citizens of the United States, then States possess more power than the United States, and are more truly national in the character of their governments. National supremacy does not chiefly mean power "to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce"; it means national protection and security in the exercise of the right of self-government, which comes alone, by and through the use of the ballot.

Even granting the premise of the Supreme-Court decision that "the Const.i.tution of the United States does not confer suffrage on any one"; our national life does not date from that instrument. The const.i.tution is not the original declaration of rights. It was not framed until eleven years after our existence as a nation, nor fully ratified until nearly fourteen years after the commencement of our national life. This centennial celebration of our nation's birth does not date from the const.i.tution, but from the Declaration of Independence. The declared purpose of the civil war was the settlement of the question of supremacy between the States and the United States. The doc.u.ments sent out by the Republican party in this present campaign, warn the people that the Democrats intend another battle for State sovereignty, to be fought this year at the ballot-box.

The National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation calls your attention to the fact that the Republican party has itself reopened this battle, and now holds the anomalous position of having settled the question of State sovereignty in the case of black men, and again opened it, through the Minor-Happersett decision, not only in the case of women citizens, but also in the case of men citizens, for all other causes save those specified in the fifteenth amendment. Your party has yet one opportunity to retrieve its position. The political power of this country has always shown itself superior to the judicial power--the latter ever shaping and basing its decisions on the policy of the dominant party. A pledge, therefore, by your convention to secure national protection in the enjoyment of perfect equality of rights, civil and political, to all citizens, will so define the policy of the Republican party as to open the way to a full and final adjustment of this question on the basis of United States supremacy.

Aside from the higher motive of justice, we suggest your adoption of this principle of equal rights to women, as a means of securing your own future existence. The party of reform in this country is the party that lives. The party that ceases to represent the vital principles of truth and justice dies. If you would save the life of the Republican party you should now take broad national ground on this question of suffrage.

By this act you will do most to promote the general welfare, secure the blessings of liberty to yourselves and your posterity, and establish on this continent a genuine republic that shall know no cla.s.s, caste, race, or s.e.x--where all the people are citizens, and all citizens are equal before the law.

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.

_Centennial Headquarters_, 1,431 Chestnut street, _Philadelphia_, June 10, 1876.

_To the President and Members of the National Democratic Convention a.s.sembled at St. Louis, June 27, 1876_:

GENTLEMEN: In reading the call for your convention, the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation was gratified to find that your invitation was not limited to voters, but cordially extended to all citizens of the United States. We accordingly send delegates from our a.s.sociation, asking for them a voice in your proceedings, and also a plank in your platform declaring the political rights of women.

Women are the only cla.s.s of citizens still wholly unrepresented in the government, and yet we possess every qualification requisite for voters in the several States. Women possess property and education; we take out naturalization papers and pa.s.sports; we preempt lands, pay taxes, and suffer for our own violation of the laws. We are neither idiots, lunatics, nor criminals; and, according to your State const.i.tutions, lack but one qualification for voters, namely, s.e.x, which is an insurmountable qualification, and therefore equivalent to a bill of attainder against one-half the people; a power no State nor congress can legally exercise, being forbidden in article 1, sections 9, 10, of our const.i.tution. Our rulers may have the right to regulate the suffrage, but they can not abolish it altogether for any cla.s.s of citizens, as has been done in the case of the women of this republic, without a direct violation of the fundamental law of the land.

As you hold the const.i.tution of the fathers to be a sacred legacy to us and our children forever, we ask you to so interpret that _Magna Charta_ of human rights as to secure justice and equality to all United States citizens irrespective of s.e.x. We desire to call your attention to the violation of the essential principle of self-government in the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the women of the several States, and we appeal to you, not only because as a minority you are in a position to consider principles, but because you were the party first to extend suffrage by removing the property qualification from all white men, and thus making the political status of the richest and poorest citizen the same.

That act of justice to the laboring ma.s.ses insured your power, with but few interruptions, until the war.

When the District of Columbia suffrage bill was under discussion in 1866, it was a Democratic senator (Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania) who proposed an amendment to strike out the word "male," and thus extend the right of suffrage to the women, as well as the black men of the District. That amendment gave us a splendid discussion on woman suffrage that lasted three days in the Senate of the United States. It was a Democratic legislature that secured the right of suffrage to the women of Wyoming, and we now ask you in national convention to pledge the Democratic party to extend this act of justice to the women throughout the nation, and thus call to your side a new political force that will restore and perpetuate your power for years to come.

The Republican party gave us a plank in their platform in 1872, pledging themselves to a "respectful consideration" of our demands. But by their const.i.tutional interpretations, legislative enactments, and judicial decisions, so far from redeeming their pledge, they have buried our pet.i.tions and appeals under laws in direct opposition to their high-sounding promises and professions. And now (1876) they give us another plank in their platform, approving the "substantial advance made toward the establishment of equal rights for women"; cunningly reminding us that the privileges and immunities we now enjoy are all due to Republican legislation--although, under a Republican dynasty, inspectors of election have been arrested and imprisoned for taking the votes of women; temperance women arrested and imprisoned for praying in the streets; houses, lands, bonds, and stock of women seized and sold for their refusal to pay unjust taxation--and, more than all, we have this singular spectacle: a Republican woman, who had spoken for the Republican party throughout the last presidential campaign, arrested by Republican officers for voting the Republican ticket, denied the right of trial by jury by a Republican judge, convicted and sentenced to a fine of one hundred dollars and costs of prosecution; and all this for a.s.serting at the polls the most sacred of all the rights of American citizenship--the right of suffrage--specifically secured by recent Republican amendments to the federal const.i.tution.

Again, the Supreme Court of the United States, by its recent decision in the Minor-Happersett case, has stultified its own interpretation of const.i.tutional law. A negro, by virtue of his United States citizenship, is declared under recent amendments a voter in every State in the Union; but when a woman, by virtue of her United States citizenship, applies to the Supreme Court for protection in the exercise of this same right, she is remanded to the State by the unanimous decision of the nine judges on the bench, that "the Const.i.tution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one."

All concessions of privileges or redress of grievances are but mockery for any cla.s.s that has no voice in the laws and lawmakers. Hence we demand the ballot--that scepter of power--in our own hands, as the only sure protection for our rights of person and property under all conditions. If the few may grant or withhold rights at their own pleasure, the many cannot be said to enjoy the blessings of self-government. Jefferson said, "The G.o.d who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time. The hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them." 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 underlie our form of government, it is not unworthy to remind you that the party that takes this onward step will reap its just reward.

Had you heeded our appeals made to you in Tammany Hall, New York, in 1868, and again in Baltimore, in 1872, your party might now have been in power, as you would have had, what neither party can boast to-day, a live issue on which to rouse the enthusiasm of the people. Reform is the watchword of the hour; but how can we hope for honor and honesty in either party in minor matters, so long as both consent to rob one-half the people--their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters--of their most sacred rights? As a party you defended the right of self-government in Louisiana ably and eloquently during the last session of congress. Are the rights of women in all the Southern States, whose slaves are now their rulers, less sacred than those of the men of Louisiana? "The whole art of government," says Jefferson, "consists in being honest."

It needs but little observation to see that the tide of progress, in all countries, is setting toward the emanc.i.p.ation and enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women; and this step in civilization is to be taken in our day and generation. Whether the Democratic party will take the initiative in this reform, and reap the glory of crowning fifteen million women with the rights of American citizenship, and thereby vindicate our theory of self-government, is the momentous question we ask you to decide in this eventful hour, as we round out the first century of our national life.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, _President_.

MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE, _Chairman Executive Committee_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Corresponding Secretary_.