Under this provision, women and free colored men of property exercised the electoral franchise for thirty years, voting also in the Presidential election of 1804, when Thomas Jefferson was re-elected for a second term. The acts of the New Jersey Legislature of 1790 clearly recognized the women, voters, saying:
“No person shall be entitled to vote in any other town-house or precinct than that in which he or she doth actually reside at the time of election.”
At first the law was construed to admit single women only, but afterward it was made to include females eighteen years old, married or single, without distinction of race. But as most of the women were on the side of the Federation and always delivered a heavy vote, a Democratic legislature, to defranchise Federalists, passed in 1807 an act defining the qualifications of electors, excluding women and free colored men by the use of the words “White male citizens.” This was a partisan piece of legislature, clearly in violation of the constitutional guarantee, and made under the pretext that male voters, by disguising themselves as women and negroes, had voted several times. It was on the strength of this pretext that the unconstitutional act was passed and upheld.
It is on record that in Virginia likewise women at an early day exercised the right of voting. But it is unknown, for what reason this right was not preserved.
WOMEN OF THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
There are few events in history that created such world-wide interest as the triumphant success of the American War for Liberation. The deepest impression was made on the French nation, which for centuries had suffered under the tyranny and coercion of extravagant kings, corrupt officials, greedy clergy and feudal nobility. In sharp contrast to the prodigality and lasciviousness of the court and its armies of courtiers and courtesans, who all revelled in luxuries, there was among the people a general feeling of misery and despair. Finances were in a frightful condition; public scandals were every-day occurrences; famines were frequent; the old creeds had lost their power to arouse enthusiasm, while out-worn institutions and customs still encumbered the land, and with their dead weight pressed men down. The deep longing to be delivered from all these parasites and encumbrances, the urgent need of reforms and relief was evident everywhere. In the streets, in all cafés, clubs and salons the discussion of politics was the foremost topic.
The most conspicuous among such political salons were those of Théroigne de Méricourt, Marie Olympe de Gouges, and Madame Roland.
The first of these three ladies was a quick-witted, strikingly handsome woman, intensely passionate in temper, and commanding an almost volcanic power of eloquence. Her salon was the birth-place of the “Club des Amis de la Loi,” the most noteworthy members of which were Jerome Pétion, author of “Les Lois Civiles,” and Camille Desmoulins, author of “La France Libre.” Both writers were among the leaders of the revolution, and it was Desmoulins, who in July, 1789, inflamed the people by his violent speeches to take up arms and storm the Bastille. At the fall of this ill-reputed prison Théroigne de Méricourt came prominently into notice and it was she who proposed to erect a temple for the National Assembly on the site of the razed fortress.
With her friends she also had a hand in framing the “Déclaration des Droits de l’Homme,” which, together with the American Declaration of Independence, ranks among the greatest human documents of history. The most important points of this charter of the French Revolution are: that all men are born and continue free and equal in rights; that Society is an association of men to preserve the natural rights of men; that Sovereignty is vested in the nation; that all Authority, held by an individual or a body of men, comes expressly from the nation; that Liberty is the power of doing what we will, so long as it does not injure the same right of others; that the law can forbid only such actions as are mischievous to society; that Law is the expression of the general will; that all citizens have a right to take part, through their representatives, in the making of laws; that laws must be equal to all; that all citizens have equal rights to fulfill all offices in the state; that society has a right to demand from every public servant an account of his administration; that all men are free to hold what religious views they will, provided that they are not subversive of public order; that freedom of speech, of writing and printing is one of the most precious of the rights of man and that public force is needed to guarantee these rights; that property is an inviolable and sacred right, of which no one can be deprived, save when public necessity, legally established, evidently demands it, and then only with the condition of a just and previously determined indemnity.