The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 15

But what is love, tenderness, protection, even, unless rooted in justice? Tyranny and servitude, that is all. Brute supremacy, spiritual slavery. By what authority do you say that the country is not prepared for a more enlightened franchise, for political equality, if six women citizens, earnest, eloquent, long-suffering, come to you and demand both? No words can express my regret if to the minority report I see appended only the honored name of George F. h.o.a.r of Ma.s.sachusetts.

Your friend, MARY CLEMMER.

In response to all these arguments, appeals and pet.i.tions, Senator Wadleigh, from the Committee on Privileges and Elections, presented the following adverse report, June 14, 1878:

_The Committee on Privileges and Elections, to whom was referred the Resolution (S. Res. 12) proposing an Amendment to the Const.i.tution of the United States, and certain Pet.i.tions for and Remonstrances against the same, make the following Report:_

This proposed amendment forbids the United States, or any State to deny or abridge the right to vote on account of s.e.x. If adopted, it will make several millions of female voters, totally inexperienced in political affairs, quite generally dependent upon the other s.e.x, all incapable of performing military duty and without the power to enforce the laws which their numerical strength may enable them to make, and comparatively very few of whom wish to a.s.sume the irksome and responsible political duties which this measure thrusts upon them. An experiment so novel, a change so great, should only be made slowly and in response to a general public demand, of the existence of which there is no evidence before your committee.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Marilla M. Ricker]

Pet.i.tions from various parts of the country, containing by estimate about 30,000 names, have been presented to congress asking for this legislation. They were procured through the efforts of woman suffrage societies, thoroughly organized, with active and zealous managers. The ease with which signatures may be procured to any pet.i.tion is well known. The small number of pet.i.tioners, when compared with that of the intelligent women in the country, is striking evidence that there exists among them no general desire to take up the heavy burden of governing, which so many men seek to evade. It would be unjust, unwise and impolitic to impose that burden on the great ma.s.s of women throughout the country who do not wish for it, to gratify the comparatively few who do.

It has been strongly urged that without the right of suffrage, women are, and will be, subjected to great oppression and injustice.

But every one who has examined the subject at all knows that, without female suffrage, legislation for years has improved and is still improving the condition of woman. The disabilities imposed upon her by the common law have, one by one, been swept away, until in most of the States she has the full right to her property and all, or nearly all, the rights which can be granted without impairing or destroying the marriage relation. These changes have been wrought by the spirit of the age, and are not, generally at least, the result of any agitation by women in their own behalf.

Nor can women justly complain of any partiality in the administration of justice. They have the sympathy of judges and particularly of juries to an extent which would warrant loud complaint on the part of their adversaries of the sterner s.e.x.

Their appeals to legislatures against injustice are never unheeded, and there is no doubt that when any considerable part of the women of any State really wish for the right to vote, it will be granted without the intervention of congress.

Any State may grant the right of suffrage to women. Some of them have done so to a limited extent, and perhaps with good results.

It is evident that in some States public opinion is much more strongly in favor of it than it is in others. Your committee regard it as unwise and inexpedient to enable three-fourths in number of the States, through an amendment to the national const.i.tution, to force woman suffrage upon the other fourth in which the public opinion of both s.e.xes may be strongly adverse to such a change.

For these reasons, your committee report back said resolution with a recommendation that it be indefinitely postponed.

This adverse report was all the more disappointing because Mr.

Wadleigh, as Mrs. Clemmer's letter states, filled the place of Hon.

Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, one of the most steadfast friends of woman suffrage, who, at the last session of congress, had asked as a special favor the reference of our pet.i.tions to the Committee on Privileges and Elections, of which he was chairman, that they might receive proper attention and that he might report favorably upon them. In the discussion on the Pembina bill in 1874, Senator Morton made an earnest speech in favor of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt.

In his premature death our cause lost one of its bravest champions.

Senator Wadleigh's report called forth severe criticism; notably from the _New Northwest_ of Oregon, the _Woman's Journal_ of Boston, the _Inter-Ocean_ of Chicago, the _Evening Telegram_ and the _National Citizen_ of New York. We quote from the latter:

The report is not a statesman-like answer based upon fundamental principles, but a mere politician's dodge--a species of dust-throwing quite in vogue in Washington. "Several millions of voters totally inexperienced in political affairs"! They would have about as much experience as the fathers in 1776, as the negroes in 1870, as the Irish, English, Italians, Norwegians, Danes, French, Germans, Portuguese, Scotch, Russians, Turks, Mexicans, Hungarians, Swedes and Indians, who form a good part of the voting population of this country. Did Mr. Wadleigh never hear of Agnes C. Jencks--the woman who has stirred up politics to its deepest depth; who has shaken the seat of President Hayes; who has set in motion the whole machinery of government, and who, when brought to the witness stand has for hours successfully baffled such wily politicians as Ben Butler and McMahon;--a woman who thwarts alike Republican and Democrat, and at her own will puts the brakes on all this turmoil of her own raising? Does Senator Wadleigh know nothing of that woman's "experience in politics"?

"Quite dependent upon the other s.e.x." It used to be said the negroes were "quite dependent" upon their masters, that it would really be an abuse of the poor things to set them free, but when free and controlling the results of their own labor, it was found the masters had been the ones "quite dependent," and thousands of them who before the war rolled in luxury, have since been in the depths of poverty--some of them even dependent upon the bounty of their former slaves. When men cease to rob women of their earnings they will find them generally, as thousands now are, capable of self-care.[36]

"Military duty." When women hold the ballot there will not be quite as much military duty to be done. They will then have a voice and a vote in the matter, and the men will no longer be able to throw the country into a war to gratify spite or ambition, tearing from woman's arms her nearest and dearest. All men do not like "military duty." "The key to that horrible enigma, German socialism, is antagonism to the military system,"

and nations are shaken with fear because of it. But when there is necessity for military duty, women will be found in line. The person who planned the Tennessee campaign, in which the Northern armies secured their first victories, was a woman, Anna Ella Carroll. Gen. Grant acted upon her plan, and was successful. She was endorsed by President Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Wade, Scott, and all the nation's leaders in its hour of peril, and yet congress has not granted her the pension which for ten years her friends have demanded. Mr. Wadleigh holds his seat in the United States Senate to-day, because of the "military duty" done by this woman.

"About 30,000 names," to pet.i.tions. There have been 70,000 sent in during the present session of congress, for a sixteenth amendment, besides hundreds of individual pet.i.tions from women asking for the removal of their own political disabilities. Men in this country are occasionally disfranchised for crime, and sometimes pray for the removal of their political disabilities.

Nine such disfranchised men had the right of voting restored to them during the last session of congress. But not a single one of the five hundred women who individually asked to have their political disabilities removed, was even so much as noticed by an adverse report, Mr. Wadleigh knows it would make no difference if 300,000 women pet.i.tioned. But whether women ask for the ballot or not has nothing to do with the question. Self-government is the natural right of every individual, and because woman possesses this natural right, she should be secured in its exercise.

Mr. Wadleigh says, "nor can woman justly complain of any partiality in the administration of justice." Let us examine: A few years ago a married man in Washington, in official position, forced a confession from his wife at the mouth of a pistol, and shot his rival dead. Upon trial he was triumphantly acquitted and afterwards sent abroad as foreign minister. A few months ago a married woman in Georgia, who had been taunted by her rival with boasts of having gained her husband's love, found this rival dancing with him. She drew a knife and killed the woman on the spot. She was tried, convicted, and, although nursing one infant, and again about to become a mother, was sentenced to be hanged by the neck till she was 'dead, dead, dead.' There is Mr. Wadleigh's equal administration of justice between man and woman! There is "the sympathy of judges and juries." There is the "extent which would warrant loud complaint on the part of their adversaries of the sterner s.e.x." And this woman escaped the gallows not because of "the sympathy of the judge" or "jury," but because her own s.e.x took the matter up, and from every part of the country sent pet.i.tions by the hundreds to Governor Colquitt of Georgia, asking her pardon. That pardon came in the shape of ten years'

imprisonment;--ten years in a cell for a woman, the mother of a nursing and an unborn infant, while for General Sickles the mission to Madrid with high honors and a fat salary.

Messrs. Wadleigh of New Hampshire, McMillan of Minnesota, Ingalls of Kansas, Saulsbury of Delaware, Merrimon of North Carolina and Hill of Georgia, all senators of the United States, are the committee that report it "inexpedient" to secure equal rights to the women of the United States. But we are not discouraged; we are not disheartened; all the Wadleighs in the Senate, all the committees of both Houses, the whole congress of the United States against us, would not lessen our faith, nor our efforts.

We know we are right; we know we shall be successful; we know the day is not far distant, when this government and the world will acknowledge the exact and permanent political equality of man and woman, and we know that until that hour comes woman will be oppressed, degraded; a slave, without a single right that man feels himself bound to respect. Work then, women, for your own freedom. Let the early morning see you busy, and dusky evening find you planning how you may become FREE.

But the most severe judgment upon Mr. Wadleigh's action came from his own const.i.tuents, who, at the close of the forty-fifth congress excused his further presence in the United States Senate, sending in his stead the Hon. Henry W. Blair, a valiant champion of national protection for national citizens.[37]

In April, 1878, Mrs. Williams transferred the _Ballot-Box_ to Mrs.

Gage, who removed it to Syracuse, New York, and changed its name to the _National Citizen_. In her prospectus Mrs. Gage said:

The _National Citizen_ will advocate the principle that suffrage is the citizen's right, and should be protected by national law, and that, while States may regulate the suffrage, they should have no power to abolish it. Its especial object will be to secure national protection to women in the exercise of their right to vote; it will oppose cla.s.s legislation of whatever form.

It will support no political party until one arises which is based upon the exact equality of man and woman.

As the first step towards becoming well is to know you are ill, one of the princ.i.p.al aims of the _National Citizen_ will be to make those women discontented who are now content; to waken them to self-respect and a desire to use the talents they possess; to educate their consciences aright; to quicken their sense of duty; to destroy morbid beliefs, and fit them for their high responsibilities as citizens of a republic. The _National Citizen_ has no faith in that old theory that "a woman once lost is lost forever," neither does it believe in the a.s.sertion that "a woman who sins, sinks to depths of wickedness lower than man can reach." On the contrary it believes there is a future for the most abandoned, if only the kindly hand of love and sympathy be extended to rescue them from the degradation into which they have fallen. The _National Citizen_ will endeavor to keep its readers informed of the progress of women in foreign countries, and will, as far as possible, revolutionize this country, striving to make it live up to its own fundamental principles and become in reality what it is but in name--a genuine republic.

Instead of holding its usual May anniversary in New York city, the National a.s.sociation decided to meet in Rochester to celebrate the close of the third decade of organized agitation in the United States, and issued the following call:

The National a.s.sociation will hold a convention in Rochester, N.

Y., July 19, 1878. This will be the thirtieth anniversary of the first woman's rights convention, held July 19, 1848, in the Wesleyan church at Seneca Falls, N. Y., and adjourned to meet, August 2, in Rochester. Some who took part in that convention have pa.s.sed away, but many others, including both Mrs. Mott and Mrs. Stanton, are still living. This convention will take the place of the usual May anniversary, and will be largely devoted to reminiscences. Friends are cordially invited to be present.

CLEMENCE S. LOZIER, M. D., _President_.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, _Chairman Executive Committee_.

The meeting was held in the Unitarian church on Fitzhugh street, occupied by the same society that had opened its doors in 1848; and Amy Post, one of the leading spirits of the first convention, still living in Rochester and in her seventy-seventh year, a.s.sisted in the arrangements. Rochester, known as "The Flower City,"

contributed of its beauty to the adornment of the church. It was crowded at the first session. Representatives from a large number of States were present,[38] and there was a pleasant interchange of greetings between those whose homes were far apart, but who were friends and co-workers in this great reform. The reunion was more like the meeting of near and dear relatives than of strangers whose only bond was work in a common cause. Such are the compensations which help to sustain reformers while they battle ignorance and prejudice in order to secure justice. In the absence of the president, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Mrs. Stanton took the chair and said:

We are here to celebrate the third decade of woman's struggle in this country for liberty. Thirty years have pa.s.sed since many of us now present met in this place to discuss the true position of woman as a citizen of a republic. The reports of our first conventions show that those who inaugurated this movement understood the significance of the term "citizens." At the very start we claimed full equality with man. Our meetings were hastily called and somewhat crudely conducted; but we intuitively recognized the fact that we were defrauded of our natural rights, conceded in the national const.i.tution. And thus the greatest movement of the century was inaugurated. I say greatest, because through the elevation of woman all humanity is lifted to a higher plane. To contrast our position thirty years ago, under the old common law of England, with that we occupy under the advanced legislation of to-day, is enough to a.s.sure us that we have pa.s.sed the boundary line--from slavery to freedom. We already see the mile-stones of a new civilization on every highway.

Look at the department of education, the doors of many colleges and universities thrown wide open to women; girls contending for, yea, and winning prizes over their brothers. In the working world they are rapidly filling places and climbing heights unknown to them before, realizing, in fact, the dreams, the hopes, the prophesies of the inspired women of by-gone centuries. In many departments of learning woman stands the peer of man, and when by higher education and profitable labor she becomes self-reliant and independent, then she must and will be free. The moment an individual or a cla.s.s is strong enough to stand alone, bondage is impossible. Jefferson Davis, in a recent speech, says: "A Caesar could not subject a people fit to be free, nor could a Brutus save them if they were fit for subjugation."

Looking back over the past thirty years, how long ago seems that July morning when we gathered round the altar in the old Wesleyan church in Seneca Falls! It taxes and wearies the memory to think of all the conventions we have held, the legislatures we have besieged, the pet.i.tions and tracts we have circulated, the speeches, the calls, the resolutions we have penned, the never-ending debates we have kept up in public and private, and yet to each and all our theme is as fresh and absorbing as it was the day we started. Calm, benignant, subdued as we look on this platform, if any man should dare to rise in our presence and controvert a single position we have taken, there is not a woman here that would not in an instant, with flushed face and flashing eye, bristle all over with sharp, pointed arguments that would soon annihilate the most skilled logician, the most profound philosopher.

To those of you on this platform who for these thirty years have been the steadfast representatives of woman's cause, my friends and co-laborers, let me say our work has not been in vain. True, we have not yet secured the suffrage, but we have aroused public thought to the many disabilities of our s.e.x, and our countrywomen to higher self-respect and worthier ambition, and in this struggle for justice we have deepened and broadened our own lives and extended the horizon of our vision. Ridiculed, persecuted, ostracised, we have learned to place a just estimate on popular opinion, and to feel a just confidence in ourselves. As the representatives of principles which it was necessary to explain and defend, we have been compelled to study const.i.tutions and laws, and in thus seeking to redress the wrongs and vindicate the rights of the many, we have secured a higher development for ourselves. Nor is this all. The full fruition of these years of seed-sowing shall yet be realized, though it may not be by those who have led in the reform, for many of our number have already fallen asleep. Another decade and not one of us may be here, but we have smoothed the rough paths for those who come after us. The lives of mult.i.tudes will be gladdened by the sacrifices we have made, and the truths we have uttered can never die.

Standing near the gateway of the unknown land and looking back through the vista of the past, memory recalls many duties in life's varied relations we would had been better done. The past to all of us is filled with regrets. We can recall, perchance, social ambitions disappointed, fond hopes wrecked, ideals in wealth, power, position, unattained--much that would be considered success in life unrealized. But I think we should all agree that the time, the thought, the energy we have devoted to the freedom of our countrywomen, that the past, in so far as our lives have represented this great movement, brings us only unalloyed satisfaction. The rights already obtained, the full promise of the rising generation of women more than repay us for the hopes so long deferred, the rights yet denied, the humiliation of spirit we still suffer.

And for those of you who have been mere spectators of the long, hard battle we have fought, and are still fighting, I have a word. Whatever your att.i.tude has been, whether as cold, indifferent observers--whether you have hurled at us the shafts of ridicule or of denunciation, we ask you now to lay aside your old educational prejudices and give this question your earnest consideration, subst.i.tuting reason for ridicule, sympathy for sneers. I urge the young women especially to prepare themselves to take up the work so soon to fall from our hands. You have had opportunities for education such as we had not. You hold to-day the vantage-ground we have won by argument. Show now your grat.i.tude to us by making the uttermost of yourselves, and by your earnest, exalted lives secure to those who come after you a higher outlook, a broader culture, a larger freedom than have yet been vouchsafed to woman in our own happy land.

Congratulatory letters[39] and telegrams were received from all portions of the United States and from the old world. s.p.a.ce admits the publication of but a few, yet all breathed the same hopeful spirit and confidence in future success. Abigail Bush, who presided over the first Rochester convention, said:

No one knows what I pa.s.sed through upon that occasion. I was born and baptized in the old Scotch Presbyterian church. At that time its sacred teachings were, "if a woman would know anything let her ask her husband at home." * * * I well remember the incidents of that meeting and the thoughts awakened by it. * * * Say to your convention my full heart is with them in all their deliberations and counsels, and I trust great good to women will come of their efforts.

Ernestine L. Rose, a native of Poland, and, next to Frances Wright, the earliest advocate of woman's enfranchis.e.m.e.nt in America, wrote from England:

How I should like to be with you at the anniversary--it reminds me of the delightful convention we had at Rochester, long, long ago--and speak of the wonderful change that has taken place in regard to woman. Compare her present position in society with the one she occupied _forty_ years ago, when I undertook to emanc.i.p.ate her from not only barbarous laws, but from what was even worse, a barbarous public opinion. No one can appreciate the wonderful change in the social and moral condition of woman, except by looking back and comparing the past with the present. *

* * Say to the friends, Go on, go on, halt not and rest not.

Remember that "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" and of right. Much has been achieved; but the main, the vital thing, has yet to come. The suffrage is the magic key to the statute--the insignia of citizenship in a republic.

Caroline Ashurst Biggs, editor of the _Englishwoman's Review_, London, wrote:

I have read with great interest in the _National Citizen_ and the _Woman's Journal_ the announcement of the forthcoming convention in Rochester. * * * I cannot refrain from sending you a cordial English congratulation upon the great advance in the social and legal position of women in America, which has been the result of your labor. The next few years will see still greater progress.

As soon as the suffrage is granted to women, a concession which will not be many years in coming either in England or America, every one of our questions will advance with double force, and meanwhile our efforts in that direction are simultaneously helping forward other social, legal, educational and moral reforms. Our organization in England does not date back so far as yours. There were only a few isolated thinkers when Mrs. John Stuart Mill wrote her essay on the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women in 1851. For twenty years, however, it has progressed with few drawbacks. In some particulars the English laws in respect of women are in advance of yours, but the connection between England and America is so close that a gain to one is a gain to the other.

Lydia E. Becker, editor of the _Women's Suffrage Journal_, Manchester, England, wrote: