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. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.
There is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of writers on government, or in any actual experiment heretofore tried, an exposition of the term 'citizen' which has not been understood as conferring the actual possession and enjoyment, or the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment, of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political.
No one can, in the correct sense of the term, be a citizen of a State who is not entitled, upon the terms prescribed by the institutions of the State, to all the rights and privileges conferred by those institutions upon the highest class of society.
When the right to vote is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State being twenty-one years of age and citizens of the United States, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.
All that has been accomplished by this amendment to the Constitution, or its previous provisions, is to distinguish them (women) from aliens, and make them capable of becoming voters. In giving expression to my judgment, this clause does advance them to full citizenship, and clothes them with the capacity to become voters.
In the House, on January 24, 1872, the following discussion took place:
Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts.—I ask unanimous consent, out of the usual course of the rules, to present a petition.
The Speaker.—Is there objection? The Chair hears none.
Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts.—I am honored with the duty of presenting a petition for a declaratory law to assure the right of suffrage to the women citizens of the United States. They believe their absolute constitutional right is to vote. They here and now desire to bring to the attention of Congress the necessity of passing a new law declaring and executing that right. They claim such a law in two views: first, as of right, and secondly, as of expediency to the nation. They insist that this their right ought to be secured to them by law, and they insist also that it is expedient for the Republic that this right should be accorded to them.
The mothers of the land, who shall form the characters of all its citizens through their teaching in childhood, giving direction to the thoughts which shall hereafter govern the land, may well claim that it is expedient that they shall have a voice in making the laws which govern them, which will give them greater freedom of action than they now have, which will afford them higher opportunities for noble culture than they now have, and raise their thoughts to a plane worthy of the generation that shall come after us, which must in all its social and moral qualities take its impress from their teachings, so that the men of the land shall then be as the women of the land now are; and as you elevate and ennoble woman, in so much, in a greater ratio, will our sons be better fitted for the great duties and responsibilities of the future. No stream shall rise higher than its fountain.
Sir, I recognize the fact that I have no right at this time to trespass on the business and indulgence of the House to argue the momentous question involved in this memorial, but I present this petition of 35,000 women of America, from almost every State in the Union. From every class and condition of life, from the highest and most refined, and from the humblest and most lowly, all are represented here, all asking that their claim to what they conceive to be their greatest right, and which we claim to be the inalienable right of every male citizen shall be granted to them.
The unanimity with which they come here; the fact that without organization, almost as a matter of spontaneity, 35,000 names should have been gathered and sent to this Capitol to a committee, whose voluntary duty it was made to receive them; the fact that other names are now coming in at the rate of some 500 a day; that from California 10,000 more are on the way, all speak to the Representatives of the people in accents that can not be misunderstood, that here is a great and necessary reform which calls for the fullest consideration and the promptest action of the Congress of the United States.
They are not to be told that this is an innovation, that this is a new thing. Division of property between the husband and the wife was a greater innovation upon the feudal law, which is the foundation of our law as regards women, and a very much greater innovation than this will be. That in the parent State from which we come women have had the right to act in public affairs; from the fact that in that parent State a woman is at the head of public affairs, seems to point to us that women may safely be trusted with the right to vote.
I have desired to say this much, in presenting this petition, in order that it may be brought to the notice of the House and the country; that it may take the same place in the consideration of the people that in a not very far day in the past anti-slavery petitions took, which founded the great party which now has control of the Government of this country. There was a great reform, beginning in the little, urged on by petitions, not so numerous in its early days, and hardly so numerous in its later days, as this, scarcely arriving to the dignity of numbers of applicants which characterizes the petition which I now present; and although, when a great moneyed interest was at stake, it took years to bring that freedom which those petitions asked for, yet let me assure the House of Representatives that in my judgment, much sooner, and as certainly as the sun rolls around in its course a few more times, just so sure will the right asked for in this petition be accorded to the women citizens of the United States.
I ask that this petition, which I propose simply to show to the House in its large volume (unrolling the petition), may be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, to whom this subject has already been referred.
Mr. Eldridge.—I ask that the petition be read.
The Speaker.—With the names?
Mr. Eldridge.—Certainly.
The Speaker.—That would require unanimous consent.
Mr. Butler, of Massachusetts.—I pray that may not be done, because I promised the Committee on Appropriations not to take much time. I ask that the petition simply be read.
The Clerk read as follows:
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled:
The undersigned, citizens of the United States, pray your honorable bodies that in any proposed amendment to the Constitution which may come before you in regard to suffrage in the District of Columbia or any Territory, the right of voting may be given to women on the same terms as to men.
The petition was then referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
In the House, January 29, 1872.—Mr. Parker, of Missouri, introduced a bill (H. R. No. 1277) to allow women to vote and hold office in the Territories of the United States; which was read a first and second time, referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, and ordered to be printed.
In United States Senate on January 29, 1872.—The Vice-President said:—The Chair has been requested to present the protest of ladies of the county of Munroe, Indiana, signed by Mrs. Morton C. Hunter, Mrs. A. Y. Moore, and several hundred other ladies, remonstrating against an extension of the right of suffrage to women, "because the Holy Scripture inculcates a different and for us a higher sphere, apart from public life; because as women we find a full measure of duties, cares, and responsibilities devolving upon us, and we are therefore unwilling to bear other and heavier burdens, and those unsuited to our physical organization; because we hold that an extension of suffrage would be adverse to the interests of the working women of the country, with whom we heartily sympathize: because these changes must introduce a fruitful element of discord in the existing marriage relation, which would tend to the infinite detriment of children, and increase the already alarming prevalence of divorce through the land; because no general law affecting the condition of all women should be framed to meet exceptional discontent." This memorial will be referred to the Committee on the Judiciary.
To the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States in Congress assembled:
The undersigned, citizens of the United States, pray your honorable bodies that in any proposed amendment to the Constitution which may come before you in regard to suffrage in the District of Columbia or any Territory, the right of voting may be given to women on the same terms as to men.
The National Woman Suffrage Association held its May Anniversary of 1872 in New York, at Steinway Hall. As can be seen by the call,[149] the intention was to form a political party, but the delegates, after some discussion, decided that nominees without electors were incongruous. As usual a large number of States were represented by delegates, California sending Laura de Force Gordon, and Oregon, Abigail Scott Duniway. This convention was chiefly remarkable as being the first at which the presidency changed hands—Miss Anthony, instead of Mrs. Stanton, being elected to fill the position of chief officer.
A delegation, consisting of Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. De Force Gordon, and Miss Anthony, was sent by the National Woman Suffrage Association to the Presidential Conventions held by the Liberal Republicans at Cincinnati, the Democrats at Baltimore, and the Republicans at Philadelphia. The fruit of all the earnest labor of this delegation was a splinter in the Republican platform. This, however, was something to be grateful for, as it was the first mention of woman in the platform of either of the great political parties during our National existence. On the strength of this plank the following address was issued: