The History of Woman Suffrage Volume IV Part 14

In Washington Territory, since woman was enfranchised, there have been two elections. At the first there were 8,368 votes cast by women out of a total vote of about 34,000. At the second election, which was held in November last, out of 48,000 votes, 12,000 were cast by women.

I desire also to inform my friend from Georgia that since women were enfranchised in Washington Territory nature has continued in her wonted course. The sun rises and sets; there are seed-time and harvest; seasons come and go. The population has increased with the usual regularity and rapidity. Marriages have been quite as frequent and divorces have been no more so. Women have not lost their influence for good upon society, but men have been elevated and refined. If we are to believe the testimony which comes from lawyers, physicians, ministers of the gospel, merchants, mechanics, farmers and laboring men--the united testimony of the entire people of the Territory--the results of woman suffrage there have been all that could be desired by its friends. Some of the results have been seen in its making the polls quiet and orderly, awakening a new interest in educational questions and those of moral reform, securing the pa.s.sage of beneficial laws and the proper enforcement of them, elevating men, and doing so without injury to women.

Senator James B. Eustis (La.) inquired whether, if the right of suffrage were conferred, women ought to be required to serve on juries. To this Senator Dolph replied: "I can answer that very readily. It does not necessarily follow that because a woman is permitted to vote and thus have a voice in making the laws by which she is to be governed and by which her property rights are to be determined, she must perform such duty as service upon a jury. But I will inform the Senator that in Washington Territory she does serve upon juries, and with great satisfaction to the judges of the courts and to all parties who desire to see an honest and efficient administration of law." The following colloquy then ensued:

MR. EUSTIS: I was aware of the fact that women are required to serve on juries in Washington Territory because they are allowed to vote. I understand that under all State laws those duties are considered correlative. Now, I ask the Senator whether he thinks it is a decent spectacle to take a mother away from her nursing infant and lock her up all night to sit on a jury?

MR. DOLPH: I intended to say before I reached this point of being interrogated that I not only do not believe that there is a single argument against woman suffrage which is tenable, but also that there is not a single one which is really worthy of any serious consideration. The Senator from Louisiana is a lawyer, and he knows very well that a mother with a nursing infant, that fact being made known to the court, would be excused. He knows himself, and he has seen it done a hundred times, that for trivial excuses compared to that, men have been excused from service on a jury.

MR. EUSTIS: I will ask the Senator whether he knows that under the laws of Washington Territory this is a legal excuse from serving on a jury?

MR. DOLPH: I am not prepared to state that it is; but there is no question in the world but that any Judge, this fact being made known, would excuse a woman from attendance upon a jury. No special authority would be required. I will state further that I have not learned that there has been any serious objection on the part of any woman summoned for jury service in that Territory to performing that duty. I have not learned that it has worked to the disadvantage of any family, but I do know that the judges of the courts have taken especial pains to commend the women who have been called to serve upon juries for the manner in which they have discharged their duty.

I wish to say further that there is no connection whatever between jury service and the right of suffrage. The question as to who shall perform jury service, who shall perform military service, who shall perform civil official duty, is certainly a matter to be regulated by the community itself; but the question of the right to partic.i.p.ate in the formation of a government which controls the life, the property and the destinies of its citizens, I contend is one which goes back of these mere regulations for the protection of property and the punishment of offenses under the laws. It is a matter of right which it is a tyranny to refuse to any citizen demanding it.

Now, Mr. President, I shall close by saying, G.o.d speed the day when not only in all the States of the Union and in all the Territories, but everywhere, woman shall stand before the law freed from the last shackle which has been riveted upon her by tyranny and the last disability which has been imposed upon her by ignorance--not only in respect to the right of suffrage but in every other respect the peer and equal of her brother, man.

Senator Vest then entered into a long and elaborate discussion of the resolution, in which he said:

Mr. President, any measure of legislation which affects popular government based on _the will of the people as expressed through their suffrage_ is not only important but vitally so. If this government which is based on _the intelligence of the people_, shall ever be destroyed it will be by injudicious, immature or corrupt suffrage. If the Ship of State launched by our fathers shall ever be destroyed, it will be by striking the rock of universal, unprepared suffrage. Suffrage once given can never be taken away. Legislatures and conventions may do everything else; they never can do that. When any particular cla.s.s or portion of the community is once invested with this privilege _it is fixed, accomplished and eternal_.[52]

The Senator who spoke last on this question refers to the successful experiment in regard to woman suffrage in the Territories of Wyoming and Washington. It is not upon the plains of the spa.r.s.ely-settled Territories of the West that woman suffrage can be tested. Suffrage in the rural districts and spa.r.s.ely-settled regions of this country must from the very nature of things remain pure when corrupt everywhere else. The danger of corrupt suffrage is in the cities, and those ma.s.ses of population to which civilization tends everywhere in all history.

Wyoming Territory! Washington Territory! Where are their large cities? Where are the localities in which the strain upon popular government must come?

The Senator from New Hampshire, who is so conspicuous in this movement, appalled the country some months since by his ghastly array of illiteracy in the Southern States.... He proposes to give the negro women of the South this right of suffrage, utterly unprepared as they are for it. In a convention some two-years-and-a-half ago in the city of Louisville an intelligent negro from the South said the negro men could not vote the Democratic ticket because the women would not live with them if they did. The negro men go out in the hotels and upon the railroad cars; they go to the cities and by attrition they wear away the prejudice of race; but the women remain at home, and their emotional natures aggregate and compound the race-prejudice, and when suffrage is given them what must be the result?

Mr. President, it is not my purpose to speak of the inconveniences, for they are nothing more, of woman suffrage.[53]

I trust that as a gentleman I respect the feelings of the ladies and their advocates. I am not here to ridicule. My purpose only is to use legitimate argument as to a movement which commands respectful consideration if for no other reason than because it comes from women. But it is impossible to divest ourselves of a certain degree of sentiment when considering this question. I pity the man who can consider any question affecting the influence of woman with the cold, dry logic of business. What man can, without aversion, turn from the blessed memory of that dear old grandmother, or the gentle words and caressing hand of that blessed mother gone to the unknown world, to face in its stead the idea of a female justice of the peace or township constable?

For my part I want when I go to my home--when I turn from the arena where man contends with man for what we call the prizes of this paltry world--I want to go back, not to be received in the masculine embrace of some female ward politician, but to the earnest, loving look and touch of a true woman. I want to go back to the jurisdiction of the wife, the mother; and instead of a lecture upon finance or the tariff or the construction of the Const.i.tution, I want those blessed, loving details of domestic life and domestic love.

I have said I would not speak of the inconveniences to arise from woman suffrage--when the mother is called upon to decide as a juryman or jurywoman rights of property or rights of life, whilst her baby is "mewling and puking" in solitary confinement at home.

There are other considerations more important, and one of them to my mind is insuperable. I speak now respecting women as a s.e.x. I believe that they are better than men, but I do not believe they are adapted to the political work of this world. I do not believe that the Great Intelligence ever intended them to invade the sphere of work given to men, tearing down and destroying all the best influences for which G.o.d has intended them.

The great evil in this country to-day is in emotional suffrage.

The great danger to-day is in excitable suffrage. If the voters of this country could think always coolly, and if they could deliberate, if they could go by judgment and not by pa.s.sion, our inst.i.tutions would survive forever, eternal as the foundations of the continent itself; but ma.s.sed together, subject to the excitement of mobs and of these terrible political contests that come upon us from year to year under the autonomy of our government, what would be the result if suffrage were given to the women of the United States?

Women are essentially emotional. It is no disparagement to them they are so. It is no more insulting to say that women are emotional than to say that they are delicately constructed physically and unfitted to become soldiers or workmen under the sterner, harder pursuits of life. What we want in this country is to avoid emotional suffrage, and what we need is to put more logic into public affairs and less feeling.[54]

There are spheres in which feeling should be paramount. There are kingdoms in which the heart should reign supreme. That kingdom belongs to woman, the realm of sentiment, the realm of love, the realm of the gentler and holier and kindlier attributes that make the name of wife, mother and sister next to that of G.o.d himself.

I would not, and I say it deliberately, degrade woman by giving her the right of suffrage. I mean the word in its full signification, because I believe that woman as she is today, the queen of home and of hearts, is above the political collisions of this world, and should always be kept above them....

Sir, if it be said to us that this is a natural right belonging to women, I deny it. The right of suffrage is one to be determined by expediency and by policy, and given by the State to whom it pleases. It is not a natural right; it is a right that comes from the State.[55]

It is claimed that if the suffrage be given to women it is to protect them. Protect them from whom? The brute that would invade their rights would coerce the suffrage of his wife or sister or mother as he would wring from her the hard earnings of her toil to gratify his own beastly appet.i.tes and pa.s.sions.[56]

It is said that the suffrage is to be given to enlarge the sphere of woman's influence. Mr. President, it would destroy her influence. It would take her down from that pedestal where she is today, influencing as a mother the minds of her offspring, influencing by her gentle and kindly caress the action of her husband toward the good and pure.[57]

Senator Vest then presented a list of two hundred men from Ma.s.sachusetts, among them forty-five clergymen, remonstrating against any further extension of suffrage to women. He next presented the old-time letter of Mrs. Clara T. Leonard of that State protesting against the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women. Senator h.o.a.r called attention to the fact that the writer herself was an office-holder, a member of the State Board of Lunacy and Charity, to which Senator Vest answered:

Ah! but what sort of an office-holder? She held the office delegated to her by G.o.d himself, a ministering angel to the sick, the afflicted and the insane. What man in his senses would take from woman this sphere? What man would close to her the charitable inst.i.tutions and eleemosynary establishments of the country? That is part of her kingdom; that is part of her undisputed sway and realm. Is that the office to which woman suffragists of this country ask us now to admit them? Is it to be the director of a hospital? Is it to the presidency of a board of visitors of an eleemosynary inst.i.tution? Oh, no; they want to be President, to be Senators and Members of the House of Representatives and, G.o.d save the mark, ministerial and executive officers, sheriffs, constables and marshals. Of course, this lady is found on this board of directors. Where else should a true woman be found? Where else has she always been found but by the fevered brow, the palsied hand, the erring intellect, aye, G.o.d bless them, from the cradle to the grave the guide and support of the faltering steps of childhood and the weakening steps of old age.[58]

Oh, no, Mr. President, this will not do. If we are to tear down all the blessed traditions, if we are to desolate our homes and firesides, if we are to uns.e.x our mothers and wives and sisters and turn our blessed temples of domestic peace into ward political-a.s.sembly rooms, pa.s.s this joint resolution. But for one I thank G.o.d that I am so old-fashioned that I would not give one memory of my grandmother or of my mother for all the arguments that could be piled, Pelion upon Ossa, in favor of this political monstrosity.

I now present a pamphlet sent to me by a lady. I do not know whether she be wife or mother. She signs this pamphlet as Adeline D. T. Whitney. I have read it twice, and read it to pure and gentle and intellectual women. I shall not read it today for my strength does not suffice.[59] ... There is not one impure, unintellectual aspiration or thought throughout the whole of it.

Would to G.o.d that I knew her, that I could thank her on behalf of the society and politics of the United States for this production. She says to her own s.e.x: "After all, men work for women; or, if they think they do not, it would leave them but sorry satisfaction to abandon them to such existence as they could arrange without us."

Oh, how true that is, how true!

This pamphlet of over five thousand words which began, "What is the law of woman-life? What was she made woman for, and not man?"--might be described as the apotheosis of the sentimental effusions of Senators Brown and Vest.

During the discussion Senator George F. h.o.a.r (Ma.s.s.) said:

Mr. President, I do not propose to make a speech at this late hour of the day, it would be cruel to the Senate, and I had not expected that this measure would be here this afternoon. I was absent on a public duty and came in just at the close of the speech of my honorable friend from Missouri. I wish, however, to say one word in regard to what seemed to be the burden of his speech.

He says that the women who ask this change in our political organization are not simply seeking to be put upon school boards and upon boards of health and charity and to fulfil all the large number of duties of a political nature for which he must confess they are fit, but he says they will want to be President of the United States, and Senators and marshals and sheriffs, and that seems to him supremely ridiculous. Now I do not understand that this is the proposition. What they want is simply to be eligible to such public duty as a majority of their fellow-citizens may think they are fitted for. The most of the public duties in this country do not require robust, physical health, or exposure to what is base or unhealthy; and when those duties are imposed upon anybody it will be only upon such persons as are fit for them.

My honorable friend spoke of the French revolution and the horrors in which the women of Paris took part, and from that he would argue that American wives and mothers and sisters are not fit for the calm and temperate management of our American republican life. His argument would require him by the same logic to agree that republicanism itself is not fit for human society.

The argument is against popular government, whether by men or women, and the Senator only applies to this new phase of the claim of equal rights what his predecessors would have argued against the rights which men now enjoy.

But the Senator thought it was unspeakably absurd that woman with her sentiment and emotional nature and liability to be moved by pa.s.sion and feeling should hold the office of Senator. Why, Mr.

President, the Senator's own speech is a refutation of its own argument. Everybody knows that my honorable friend from Missouri is one of the most brilliant men in this country. He is a logician, he is an orator, he is a man of wide experience, he is a lawyer entrusted with large interests; yet when he was called upon to put forth this great effort of his, this afternoon, and to argue this question which he thinks so clear, what did he do?

_He furnished the gush and the emotion and the eloquence, but when he wanted an argument he had to call upon two women to supply it._ If Mrs. Leonard and Mrs. Whitney have to make the argument in the Senate of the United States for the distinguished Senator from Missouri, it does not seem to me so absolutely ridiculous that they should have, or that women like them should have, seats in this body to make arguments of their own.

Senator Blair closed the debate by saying in part:

I appeal to Senators not to decide this question upon the arguments which have been offered here today for or against the merits of the proposition. I appeal to them to decide it upon that other principle to which I have adverted, whether one-half of the American people shall be permitted to go into the arena of public discussion in the various States, and before their Legislatures be heard upon the issue, "Shall the Federal Const.i.tution be so amended as to extend this right of suffrage?"

If, with this opportunity, those who believe in woman suffrage shall fail, then they must be content; for I agree with the Senators upon the opposite side of the chamber and with all who hold that if the suffrage is to be extended at all, it must be by the operation of existing law. I believe it to be an innate right; yet even an innate right must be exercised only by the consent of the controlling forces of the State. That is all woman asks--that an amendment be submitted.

The opposition had presented three doc.u.ments, each representing the views of one woman, and one of these anonymous. Senator Blair presented a pet.i.tion for the suffrage from the Woman's Christian Temperance Union of 200,000 members, signed by Miss Frances E.

Willard, president, and the entire official board. This was accompanied by a strong personal appeal from a number of distinguished women, and hundreds of thousands of pet.i.tions had been previously sent. The Senator also received permission to have printed in the _Congressional Record_ the arguments made by the representatives of the suffrage movement before the Senate committee in 1880 and 1884.[60]

A vote was then taken on the resolution to submit to the State Legislatures an amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution forbidding the disfranchis.e.m.e.nt of United States citizens on account of s.e.x, which resulted in 16 yeas, 34 nays, 26 absent.[61] Of the absentees Senators Chace, Dawes, Plumb and Stanford announced that they would have voted "yea;" Jones of Arkansas and Butler that they would have voted "nay."

Thus on January 25, 1887, occurred the first and only discussion and vote in the United States Senate on the submission of an amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution which should forbid disfranchis.e.m.e.nt on account of s.e.x, that took place up to the end of the nineteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] The only time the direct question of woman suffrage ever had been discussed and voted on in the U. S. Senate was in December, 1866, on the Bill to Regulate the Franchise for the District of Columbia--History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 102; and in May, 1874, on the Bill to Establish the Territory of Pembina--the same, p.

545; but these were entirely distinct from the submission of a const.i.tutional amendment.

[32] Extended s.p.a.ce is accorded this discussion, as it might reasonably be expected that on the floor of the United States Senate would be made the most exhaustive arguments possible on both sides of this important question.

[33] This report had been presented Mar. 28, 1884, by Senators T. W.

Palmer, H. W. Blair, E. G. Lapham and H. B. Anthony.

[34] The italics are made by the editors of the History.