The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 11

First, then, we ask you in the significant name of history to read the record of woman as a ruler from the time when Deborah judged Israel, and the land had rest and peace forty years, even down to this present when Victoria Regina, the Empress Queen, rules her vast kingdom so ably that we sometimes hear American men talk about a return "to the good old ways of limited monarchy," with woman for a ruler. John Stuart Mill, after studious research, testifies as follows:

When to queens and emperors we add regents and viceroys of provinces, the list of women who have been eminent rulers of mankind swells to a great length. The fact is so undeniable that some one long ago tried to retort the argument by saying that queens are better than kings, because under kings women govern, but under queens, men. Especially is her wonderful talent for governing evinced in Asia. If a Hindoo princ.i.p.ality is strongly, vigilantly, and economically governed; if order is preserved without oppression; if cultivation is extending, and the people prosperous, in three cases out of four that princ.i.p.ality is under a woman's rule. This fact, to me an entirely unexpected one, I have collected from a long official knowledge of Hindoo governments. There are many such instances; for though by Hindoo inst.i.tutions a woman cannot reign, she is the legal regent of a kingdom during the minority of the heir--and minorities are frequent, the lives of the male rulers being so often prematurely terminated through their inactivity and excesses. When we consider that these princesses have never been seen in public, have never conversed with any man not of their own family, except from behind a curtain; that they do not read, and if they did, there is no book in their languages which can give them the smallest instruction on political affairs, the example they afford of the natural capacity of women for government is very striking.

In view of these facts, does it not appear that if there is any one distinctively feminine characteristic, it is the mother-instinct for government? But now with clearer vision we reread the record of the past. True, we find no Raphael or Beethoven, no Phidias or Michael Angelo among women. No woman has painted the greatest picture, carved the finest statue, composed the n.o.blest oratorio or opera. Not many women's names appear after Joan of Arc's in the long list of warriors; but, as a ruler, woman stands to-day the peer of man.

While man has rendered such royal service in the realm of art, woman has not been idle. Infinite wisdom has intrusted to her the living, breathing marble or canvas, and with smiles and tears, prayers and songs has she patiently wrought developing the latent possibilities of the divine Christ-child, the infant Washington, the baby Lincoln. Ah! since G.o.d and men have intrusted to woman the weightiest responsibility known to earth, the development and education of the human soul, need you fear to intrust her with citizenship? Is the ballot more precious than the soul of your child? If it is safe in the home, in the school-room, the Sunday-school, to place in woman's hands the education of your children, is it not safe to allow that mother to express her choice in regard to which one of these sons, her boys whom she has taught and nursed, shall make laws for her guidance?

Just here, in imagination, is heard the question, "How much help could we expect from women on financial questions?" We accept the masculine idea of woman's mathematical deficiencies. We have had slight opportunity for discovering the best proportions of a silver dollar, owing to the fact that the family specimens have been zealously guarded by the male members; and yet, we may have some latent possibilities in that direction, since already the "brethren" in our debt-burdened churches wail out from the depths of masculine indebtedness and interest-tables, "Our sisters, we pray you come over and help us!" And, in view of the fact of the present condition of finances, in view of the fact of the enormous taxes you impose upon us, can you look us calmly in the face and a.s.sert that matters might, would, should, or could have been worse, even though Julia Ward Howe, Mary A. Livermore, or Elizabeth Cady Stanton, had voted on the silver bill?

A moment since I referred to the great responsibilities of motherhood, and doubtless your mental comment was, "Yes, that is woman's peculiar sphere; there she should be content to remain."

It _is_ our sphere--beautiful, glorious, almost infinite in its possibilities. We accept the work; we only ask for opportunity to perform it. The sphere has enlarged, that is all. There has been a new revelation. That historic "first gun" proclaimed a wonderful message to the daughters of America; for, when the smoke of the cannonading had lifted, the entire horizon of woman was broadened, illuminated, glorified. On that April morn, when a nation of citizens suddenly sprang into an army of warriors, with a patriotism as intense, a consecration as true, American women quietly a.s.sumed their vacated places and became citizens. New boundaries were defined. A Mary Somerville or Maria Mitch.e.l.l seized the telescope and alone with G.o.d and the stars, cast a new horoscope for woman. And the new truth, electrifying, glorifying American womanhood to-day, is the discovery that the State is but the larger family, the nation the old homestead, and that in this national home there is a room and a corner and a duty for "mother." A duty recognized by such a statesman as John Adams, who wrote to his wife in regard to her mother:

Your mother had a clear and penetrating understanding and a profound judgment, as well as an honest, a friendly and charitable heart. There is one thing, however, which you will forgive me if I hint to you. Let me ask you rather if you are not of my opinion. Were not her talents and virtues too much confined to private, social and domestic life? My opinion of the duties of religion and morality comprehends a very extensive connection with society at large and the great interests of the public. Does not natural morality and, much more, Christian benevolence make it our indispensable duty to endeavor to serve our fellow-creatures to the utmost of our power in promoting and supporting those great political systems and general regulations upon which the happiness of mult.i.tudes depends? The benevolence, charity, capacity and industry which exerted in private life would make a family, a parish or a town happy, employed upon a larger scale and in support of the great principles of virtue and freedom of political regulations, might secure whole nations and generations from misery, want and contempt.

Intense domestic life is selfish. The home evidently needs fathers as much as mothers. Tender, wise fatherhood is beautiful as motherhood, but there are orphaned children to be cared for.

These duties to the State and nation as mothers, true to the highest needs of our children, we dare not ignore; and the nation cannot much longer afford to have us ignore them.

As statesmen, walking on the sh.o.r.e piled high with the "drift-wood of kings," the wrecks of nations and governments, you have discovered the one word emblazoned as an epitaph on each and every one, "Luxury, luxury, luxury!" You have hitherto placed a premium upon woman's idleness, helplessness, dependence. The children of most of our fashionable women are being educated by foreign nurses. How can you expect them to develop into patriotic American statesmen? For the sake of country I plead--for the sake of a responsible, exalted womanhood; for the sake of a purer womanhood; for home and truth, and native land. As a daughter, with holiest, tenderest, most grateful memories clinging to the almost sacred name of father; as a wife, receiving constant encouragement, support, and cooperation from one who has revealed to her the genuine n.o.bility of true manhood; as a mother, whose heart still thrills at the first greeting from her little son; and as a sister, watching with intense interest the entrance of a brother into the great world of work, I could not be half so loyal to woman's cause were it not a synonym for the equal rights of humanity--a diviner justice for all!

With one practical question I rest my case. The world objected to woman's entrance into literature, the pulpit, the lyceum, the college, the school. What has she wrought? Our wisest thinkers and historians a.s.sert that literature has been purified. Poets and judges at international collegiate contests award to woman's thought the highest prize. Miss Lucia Peabody received upon the occasion of her second election to the Boston school board the highest vote ever polled for any candidate. Since woman has proved faithful over a few things, need you fear to summon her to your side to a.s.sist you in executing the will of the nation? And now, yielding to none in intense love of womanhood; standing here beneath the very dome of the national capitol overshadowed by the old flag; with the blood of the revolutionary patriots coursing through my veins; as a native-born, tax-paying American citizen, I ask equality before the law.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON said: _Gentlemen of the Committee_: In appearing before you to ask for a sixteenth amendment to the United States Const.i.tution, permit me to say that with the Hon.

Charles Sumner, we believe that our const.i.tution, fairly interpreted, already secures to the humblest individual all the rights, privileges and immunities of American citizens. But as statesmen differ in their interpretations of const.i.tutional law as widely as they differ in their organizations, the rights of every cla.s.s of citizens must be clearly defined in concise, unmistakable language. All the great principles of liberty declared by the fathers gave no protection to the black man of the republic for a century, and when, with higher light and knowledge his emanc.i.p.ation and enfranchis.e.m.e.nt were proclaimed, it was said that the great truths set forth in the prolonged debates of thirty years on the individual rights of the black man, culminating in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the const.i.tution, had no significance for woman. Hence we ask that this anomalous cla.s.s of beings, not recognized by the supreme powers as either "persons" or "citizens" may be defined and their rights declared in the const.i.tution.

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 cla.s.ses of citizens. In determining your right and power to legislate on this question, consider what has been done already.

As the national const.i.tution 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," it is evident: _First_--That the immunities and privileges of American citizenship, however defined, are national in character, and paramount to all State authority.

_Second_--That while the const.i.tution leaves the qualification of electors to the several States, it nowhere gives them the right to deprive any citizen of the elective franchise; the State may regulate but not abolish the right of suffrage for any cla.s.s.

_Third_--As the Const.i.tution 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 const.i.tutions that exclude citizens from the franchise on account of s.e.x, alike violate the spirit and letter of the Federal const.i.tution.

_Fourth_--As the question 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 the right.

Let me give you a few extracts from the national const.i.tution upon which these propositions 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 const.i.tution.

This is declared to be a government "of the people." All power, it is said, centers in the people. Our State const.i.tutions also open with the words, "We, the people." Does any one pretend to say that men alone const.i.tute races and peoples? When we say parents, do we not mean mothers as well as fathers? When we say children, do we not mean girls as well as boys? When we say people, do we not mean women as well as men? When the race shall spring, Minerva-like, from the brains of their fathers, it will be time enough thus to ignore the fact that one-half the human family are women. Individual rights, individual conscience and judgment are our great American ideas, the fundamental principles of our political and religious faith. Men may as well attempt to do our repenting, confessing, and believing, as our voting--as well represent us at the throne of grace as at the ballot-box.

ARTICLE 1, SEC. 9.--No bill of attainder, or _ex post facto_ law shall be pa.s.sed; no t.i.tle of n.o.bility shall be granted by the United States.

SEC. 10.--No State shall pa.s.s any bill of attainder, _ex post facto_ law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any t.i.tle of n.o.bility.

Notwithstanding these provisions of the const.i.tution, bills of attainder have been pa.s.sed by the introduction of the word "male"

into all the State const.i.tutions denying to woman the right of suffrage, and thereby making s.e.x a crime. A citizen disfranchised in a republic is a citizen attainted. When we place in the hands of one cla.s.s of citizens the right to make, interpret and execute the law for another cla.s.s wholly unrepresented in the government, we have made an order of n.o.bility.

ARTICLE 4, SEC. 2.--The citizens of each State shall be ent.i.tled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.

The elective franchise is one of the privileges secured by this section approved in Dunham _vs._ Lamphere (3 Gray Ma.s.s. Rep., 276), and Bennett _vs._ Boggs (Baldwin's Rep., p. 72, Circuit Court U. S.).

ARTICLE 4, SEC. 4.--The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government.

How can that form of government be called republican in which one-half the people are forever deprived of all partic.i.p.ation in its affairs?

ARTICLE 6.--This Const.i.tution, 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 Const.i.tution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.

ARTICLE 14, SEC. 1.--All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.... No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States.

In the discussion of the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman, suffrage is now claimed by one cla.s.s of thinkers as a privilege based upon citizenship and secured by the Const.i.tution of the United States, as by lexicographers as well as by the const.i.tution itself, the definition of citizen includes women as well as men. No State can rightfully deprive a woman-citizen of the United States of any fundamental right which is hers in common with all other citizens. 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 sane mind and unconvicted of crime,--because these are qualifications or conditions that all citizens, sooner or later, may attain. But to go beyond this, and say to one-half the citizens of the State, notwithstanding you possess all of these qualifications, you shall never vote, is of the very essence of despotism. It is a bill of attainder of the most odious character.

A further investigation of the subject will show that the const.i.tutions of all the States, with the exception of Virginia and Ma.s.sachusetts, read substantially alike. "White male citizens" shall be ent.i.tled 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 partic.i.p.ate 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 const.i.tution a prohibition that does not exist.

In framing a const.i.tution, the people are a.s.sembled in their sovereign capacity, and being possessed of all rights and 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 const.i.tution 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 const.i.tution, but the right itself is antecedent to all const.i.tutions. 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 const.i.tutions, directly or by implication, then I say that such prohibitions are clearly in conflict with the Const.i.tution of the United States and yield thereto.

Another cla.s.s of thinkers, equally interested in woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, maintain that there is, as yet, no power in the United States Const.i.tution to protect the rights of all United States citizens, in all lat.i.tudes and longitudes, and in all conditions whatever. When the const.i.tution was adopted, the fathers thought they had secured national unity. This was the opinion of Southern as well as Northern statesmen. It was supposed that the question of State rights was then forever settled. Hon. Charles Sumner, speaking on this point in the United States Senate, March 7, 1866, said the object of the const.i.tution was to ordain, under the authority of the people, a national government possessing unity and power. The confederation had been merely an agreement "between the States,"

styled, "a league of firm friendship." Found to be feeble and inoperative through the pretension of State rights, it gave way to the const.i.tution which, instead of a "league," created a "union," in the name of the people of the United States.

Beginning with these inspiring and enacting words, "We, the people," it was popular and national. Here was no concession to State rights, but a recognition of the power of the people, from whom the const.i.tution proceeded. The States are acknowledged; but they are all treated as component parts of the Union in which they are absorbed under the const.i.tution, which is the supreme law. There is but one sovereignty, and that is the sovereignty of the United States. On this very account the adoption of the const.i.tution was opposed by Patrick Henry and George Mason. The first exclaimed, "That this is a consolidated government is demonstrably clear; the question turns on that poor little thing, 'We, the people,' instead of the States." The second exclaimed, "Whether the const.i.tution is good or bad, it is a national government, and no longer a confederation." But against this powerful opposition the const.i.tution was adopted in the name of the people of the United States. Throughout the discussions, State rights was treated with little favor. Madison said: "The States are only political societies, and never possessed the right of sovereignty." Gerry said: "The States have only corporate rights." Wilson, the philanthropic member from Pennsylvania, afterward a learned Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States and author of the "Lectures on Law," said: "Will a regard to State rights justify the sacrifice of the rights of men? If we proceed on any other foundation than the last, our building will neither be solid nor lasting."

Those of us who understand the dignity, power and protection of the ballot, have steadily pet.i.tioned congress for the last ten years to secure to the women of the republic the exercise of their right to the elective franchise. We began by asking a sixteenth amendment to the national const.i.tution. March 15, 1869, the Hon. George W. Julian submitted a joint resolution to congress, to enfranchise the women of the republic, by proposing a sixteenth amendment:

ARTICLE 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 s.e.x.

While the discussion was pending for the emanc.i.p.ation and enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the slaves of the South, and popular thought led back to the consideration of the fundamental principles of our government, it was clearly seen that all the arguments for the civil and political rights of the African race applied to women also. Seeing this, some Republicans stood ready to carry these principles to their logical results. Democrats, too, saw the drift of the argument, and though not in favor of extending suffrage to either black men, or women, yet, to embarra.s.s Republican legislation, it was said, they proposed amendments for woman suffrage to all bills brought forward for enfranchising the negroes.

And thus, during the pa.s.sage of the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, and the District suffrage bill, the question of woman suffrage was often and ably discussed in the Senate and House, and received both Republican and Democratic votes in its favor. Many able lawyers and judges gave it as their opinion that women as well as Africans were enfranchised by the fourteenth and fifteenth Amendments. Accordingly, we abandoned, for the time being, our demand for a sixteenth amendment, and pleaded our right of suffrage, as already secured by the fourteenth amendment--the argument lying in a nut-sh.e.l.l. For if, as therein a.s.serted, all persons born or naturalized in the United States are citizens of the United States; and if a citizen, according to the best authorities, is one possessed of all the rights and privileges of citizenship, namely, the right to make laws and choose lawmakers, women, being persons, must be citizens, and therefore ent.i.tled to the rights of citizenship, the chief of which is the right to vote.

Accordingly, women tested their right, registered and voted--the inspectors of election accepting the argument, for which inspectors and women alike were arrested, tried and punished; the courts deciding that although by the fourteenth amendment they were citizens, still, citizenship did not carry with it the right to vote. But granting the premise of the Supreme Court decision, "that the const.i.tution does not confer suffrage on any one," then it inhered with the citizen before the const.i.tution was framed.

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 inauguration of our national independence.

But however the letter and spirit of the const.i.tution may be interpreted by the people, the judiciary of the nation has uniformly proved itself the echo of the party in power. When the slave power was dominant the Supreme Court decided that a black man was not a citizen, because he had not the right to vote; and when the const.i.tution was so amended as to make all persons citizens, the same high tribunal decided that a woman, though a citizen, had not the right to vote. An African, by virtue of his United States citizenship, is declared, under recent amendments, a voter in every State of 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." Such vacillating interpretations of const.i.tutional law must unsettle our faith in judicial authority, and undermine the liberties of the whole people. Seeing by these decisions of the courts that the theory of our government, the Declaration of Independence, and recent const.i.tutional amendments, have no significance for woman, that all the grand principles of equality are glittering generalities for her, we must fall back once more to our former demand of a sixteenth amendment to the federal const.i.tution, that, in clear, unmistakable language, shall declare the status of woman in this republic.

The Declaration of Independence struck a blow at every existent form of government by making the individual the source of all power. This is the sun, and the one central truth around which all genuine republics must keep their course or perish. National supremacy means something more than 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. Women are the only cla.s.s of citizens still wholly unrepresented in the government, and yet we possess every requisite qualification for voters in the United States. Women possess property and education; we take out naturalization-papers and pa.s.sports and register ships. We preempt lands, pay taxes (women sometimes work out the road-tax with their own hands) and suffer for our own violation of laws. We are neither idiots, lunatics, nor criminals, and according to our State const.i.tution 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 neither the States nor the United States can legally exercise, being forbidden in article 1, sections 9, 10, of the const.i.tution. Our rulers have the right to regulate the suffrage, but they cannot abolish it 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. All concessions of privileges or redress of grievances are mockery for any cla.s.s that have no voice in the laws, and law-makers; 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 and withhold rights at their pleasure, the many cannot be said to enjoy the blessings of self-government.

William H. Seward said in his great speech on "Freedom and Union," in the United States Senate, February 29, 1860:

Mankind have a natural right, a natural instinct, and a natural capacity for self-government; and when, as here, they are sufficiently ripened by culture, they will and must have self-government, and no other.

Jefferson said:

The G.o.d who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of freedom may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

Few people comprehend the length and breadth of the principle we are advocating to-day, and how closely it is allied to everything vital in our system of government. Our personal grievances, such as being robbed of property and children by unjust husbands; denied admission into the colleges, the trades and professions; compelled to work at starving prices, by no means round out this whole question. In asking for a sixteenth amendment to the United States Const.i.tution, and the protection of congress against the injustice of State law, we are fighting the same battle as Jefferson and Hamilton fought in 1776, as Calhoun and Clay in 1828, as Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis in 1860, namely, the limit of State rights and federal power. The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman involves the same vital principle of our government that is dividing and distracting the two great political parties at this hour.

There is nothing a foreigner coming here finds it so difficult to understand as the wheel within a wheel in our national and State governments, and the possibility of carrying them on without friction; and this is the difficulty and danger we are fast finding out. The recent amendments are steps in the right direction toward national unity, securing equal rights to all citizens, in every lat.i.tude and longitude. But our congressional debates, judicial decisions, and the utterances of campaign orators, continually falling back to the old ground, are bundles of contradictions on this vital question. Inasmuch as we are, first, citizens of the United States, and second, of the State wherein we reside, the primal rights of all citizens should be regulated by the national government, and complete equality in civil and political rights everywhere secured. When women are denied the right to enter inst.i.tutions of learning, and practice in the professions, unjust discriminations made against s.e.x even more degrading and humiliating than were ever made against color, surely woman, too, should be protected by a civil-rights bill and a sixteenth amendment that should make her political status equal with all other citizens of the republic.