Woman and the Republic / A Survey of the Woman-Suffrage Movement in the United States and a Discussion of the Claims and Arguments of Its Foremost Advocates

by Helen Kendrick Johnson

In discussing them, Dr. Jacobi says: "What is imagined, claimed, and very seriously demanded, is, that women be recognized as human beings, with a range of faculties and activities co-extensive with that of men, whatever may be the difference in the powers within that range."

In another place she admits that "women are really recognized as individuals, the same as men," and the fact that they are so recognized is made the basis of an argument for their voting. Suppose men demanded that they be given a "range of faculties and activities co-extensive with that of women, whatever may be the difference in the powers within that range," if they demanded it "seriously" they would probably become laughing- stocks.

She says: "The sex relations of women as lovers, as wives, as mothers, as daughters, remain untouched, certainly unimpaired, by the demand to extend beyond these. What is impaired is not the sex relation, nor sex condition, but the social disabilities, the personal and social subordination, the condition of political non-existence, which have been foisted upon that sex condition."

The repeated demand to "extend beyond" the sex relations of either sex is a demand to touch those relations, and whether it is a demand to impair them depends upon the question whether it is true that disabilities and subordination have been foisted upon the sex conditions. In olden times they were. Men were subject to social disabilities, personal and social subordination, and political non-existence. It followed that women were also in the same subjection. As men threw off the yoke, the sex relations began to assume their natural position. Man was the protector, woman the protected. In the natural relations, the protector is at the service of the protected, and that is the state of things to-day. In order to be preserved in bodily, mental, and spiritual freedom, woman must yield with grace to the hand that serves her. In order to protect, man must see to it that this freedom he has won is kept sacred and inviolable. He cannot be at once a tyrant and a guard. This freedom removes from woman all disabilities save those of sex. The question then is, can all the intelligence and all the weakness of women be represented for their own welfare and their own defence, by the same methods as those by which men attain that end, and yet leave these fundamental sex relations untouched and unimpaired?

The Suffrage leaders did not expect or intend to leave them untouched, or unimpaired, if complete change was impairment. In the "History" they say: "It is often asked if political equality—would not arouse antagonism between the sexes? If it could be proved that men and women had been harmonious in all ages and countries, and that women were happy and satisfied in their slavery, we might hesitate in proposing any change whatever; but the apathy, the helpless, hopeless resignation of a subject class, cannot be called happiness. A woman growing up under American ideas of liberty in government and religion cannot brook any disability based on sex alone, without a deep feeling of antagonism with the power that creates it."

Dr. Jacobi says: "Manhood Suffrage in America may seem to result, historically, from the general average equality of social conditions among the inhabitants of the Thirteen States. But it may also be deduced as a philosophical necessity from the Idea of Individualism, which became the core of the Federal Union. This idea, at first suggested only for men, has, little by little, spread to women also."

Individualism, in the sense of personal moral responsibility, became the core, first of the Hebrew Theocracy, and last of the American National life. But that republicanism which has come to rest on sex distinction is the combined result of Individualism and Authority. Suffrage discussion for years has turned upon the idea of Individualism versus Authority.

In a government like ours, where all the intelligence and all the weakness are represented for their own welfare and defence, authority must to a certain extent hold a stern hand over individualism, because freedom for all means license for not a single one, be it man or woman. Mrs. Fanny Ames says: "Any argument [against Suffrage] worth anything at all, comes down to this—an argument against American democracy—and must rest there." Many arguments have been adduced against Woman Suffrage that were also arguments against democracy; because there are always people, and wise people too, who fear the test of the ultimate experiment. To this fear the Suffragists catered when, in contradiction to their own dictum of universal suffrage, they asked Congress for a sixteenth amendment that should require an educational qualification for all, both men and women. But, guided by the statesmanship that seeks to form a true and enduring democracy, this Republic has come to the sex basis.

Dr. Jacobi says: "The complex contradictions in the present distributions of sovereign power are further intensified by the vulgarization of the general ideal. It is one thing to say, 'Some men shall rule,' quite another to declare, 'All men shall rule,' and that in virtue of the most primitive and rudimentary attribute they possess,—that, namely, of sex. If the original contempt for masses of men has ever diminished, and the conception of mankind been ennobled, it is because, upon the primitive animal foundation, human imagination has built a fair structure of mental and moral attribute and possibility, and habitually deals with that. This indeed is no new thing to do; for it was to this moral man that Pericles addressed his funeral oration, and of whom Lincoln thought in his speech at Gettysburg. Of this moral man, women—the sex hitherto so despised—are now recognized to constitute an integral part. It is useless, therefore, to attempt to throw them out by an appeal to the primitive conditions of a physical force to which no one appeals for any other purpose."

The immortal orator at Gettysburg was commander-in-chief of an army and navy whose physical power was then in the very act of saving the nation and redeeming it from the sin of slavery. The soldier-statesman of Greece, in his funeral oration, was addressing an army. The fair structure of mental and moral attribute and possibility has not been built by human imagination. The conception of the moral man that has ennobled mankind is older than any man who has embodied it. It is as old as mankind itself, upon whose primitive animal foundation God implanted side by side the conception of the moral man, woman—and of the governing man, man.