Again, in the discussion on removing the "political disabilities" of those who had made war on the Government, when the injustice of taxing that large class denied the suffrage was pointed out and the exercise of that right demanded for thousands of rebels, the women saw the application of that principle to themselves, and echoed the old war-cry in our first Revolution, "taxation without representation is tyranny." In the exhaustive discussions on the emancipation and enfranchisement of the black man and the restoration of the rebels to political equality, the fundamental principles of republican government were more clearly comprehended by the American people than ever before. Hence, it was in harmony with the order of events that educated women, appreciating the genius of our institutions, with their interest in politics intensified by all the complications of the war, should think and reason and express their opinions on all these great questions of popular thought. They saw that "universal suffrage and universal amnesty" was the broad, safe foundation for the new republic. They saw that the enfranchisement of the women of the South would not only double the vote, but give a new impulse to thought and education throughout the Southern States, and mitigate the hostility they would naturally feel in seeing their slaves suddenly made their political superiors, their rulers, law-makers, judges, and jurors! They saw that with the incoming tide of ignorant voters from Southern plantations and from the nations of the Old World, that the Government needed the intelligent votes and moral influence of woman to outweigh the ignorance and vice fast crowding round our polling booths.
Seeing all this, they pressed with earnestness the well-considered demand for woman's enfranchisement, not from any selfish or personal considerations, but for the elevation of all womankind, and to vindicate the principles that underlie republican government. They who have the responsibility of action are usually more timid in counsel than those who can exert only an indirect influence. Hence the statesmen of that period did not dare to trust their own principles to their logical results, and instead of the broad demand of equal rights for all, they proposed reconstruction on the basis of "manhood suffrage"; a half-way measure that satisfied nobody, glossed over by the party in power as "universal suffrage," "equal suffrage," "impartial suffrage," until compelled to call the proposition by its true name, "manhood suffrage."
Having served the Government during the war in such varied capacities, and taken an active part in the discussion of its vital principles on so many reform platforms, women naturally felt that in reconstruction their rights as citizens should be protected and secured. They who had so diligently rolled up petitions for the emancipation and enfranchisement of the slaves now demanded the same liberties, not only for the white women of the nation, but for the newly made freed-women from Southern plantations, who had borne more grievous burdens and endured keener sufferings in the flesh and far more aggravating humiliations in spirit, than the man slave could ever know. And yet Abolitionists who had drawn their most eloquent appeals for emancipation from the hopeless degradation of woman in slavery, ignored alike the African and the Saxon in reconstruction, and refused to sign the petition for "woman suffrage." Even such just and liberal men as Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips, in their haste to see the consummation of the black man's freedom, to which they had devoted their life-long efforts, lost sight of the ever-binding principles of justice, and accepted an amendment to the National Constitution that made all men rulers, all women subjects. Gerrit Smith, who had often said, "It is always safe to do right"; "now is the time for action, you can not be sure of to-morrow"; "speak the truth though the heavens fall," acted from policy rather than principle in refusing to sign the following petition:
To the Senate and House of Representatives in Congress assembled:
The undersigned, citizens of the State of New York, earnestly but respectfully request, that in any change or amendment of the Constitution you may propose to extend or regulate suffrage, there shall be no distinctions made between men and women.
Peterboro, Dec. 30, 1868.
My Dear Susan B. Anthony:—I this evening received your earnest letter. It pains me to be obliged to disappoint you. But I can not sign the petition you send me. Cheerfully, gladly can I sign a petition for the enfranchisement of women. But I can not sign a paper against the enfranchisement of the negro man, unless at the same time woman shall be enfranchised. The removal of the political disabilities of race is my first desire—of sex, my second. If put on the same level and urged in the same connection neither will be soon accomplished. The former will very soon be, if untrammeled by the other, and its success will prepare the way for the accomplishment of the other.
Gerrit Smith.
With great regard, your friend,
To which letter Mrs. Stanton replied in The Revolution Jan. 14, 1869:
The above is the petition to which our friend Gerrit Smith, as an abolitionist, can not conscientiously put his name, while Republicans and Democrats are signing it all over the country. He does not clearly read the signs of the times, or he would see that there is to be no reconstruction of this nation, except on the basis of universal suffrage, as the natural, inalienable right of every citizen. The uprising of the women on both continents, in France, England, Russia, Switzerland, and the United States, all show that advancing civilization demands a new element in the government of nations. As the aristocracy in this country is the "male sex," and as Mr. Smith belongs to the privileged order, he naturally considers it important for the best interests of the nation, that every type and shade of degraded, ignorant manhood should be enfranchised, before even the higher classes of womanhood should be admitted to the polls. This does not surprise us. Men always judge more wisely of objective wrongs and oppressions, than of those in which they are themselves involved. Tyranny on a Southern plantation is far more easily seen by white men at the North than the wrongs of the women of their own households.
Then, again, when men have devoted their lives to one reform, there is a natural feeling of pride, as well as an earnest principle, in seeing that one thing accomplished. Hence, in criticising such good and noble men as Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips for their apathy on woman's enfranchisement at this hour, it is not because we think their course at all remarkable, nor that we have the least hope of influencing them, but simply to rouse the women of the country to the fact that they must not look to these men as their champions at this hour. While philosophy and science alike point to woman as the new power destined to redeem the world, how can Mr. Smith fail to see that it is just this we need to restore honor and virtue in the Government? There is sex in the spiritual as well as the physical, and what we need to-day in government, in the world of morals and thought, is the recognition of the feminine element, as it is this alone that can hold the masculine in check.
Again; Mr. Smith refuses to sign the petition because he thinks to press the broader question of "universal suffrage" would defeat the partial one of "manhood suffrage"; in other words, to demand protection for woman against her oppressors, would jeopardize the black man's chance of securing protection against his oppressors. If it is a question of precedence merely, on what principle of justice or courtesy should woman yield her right of enfranchisement to the negro? If men can not be trusted to legislate for their own sex, how can they legislate for the opposite sex, of whose wants and needs they know nothing? It has always been considered good philosophy in pressing any measure to claim the uttermost in order to get something. Being in Ireland at the time of the Repeal excitement, we asked Daniel O'Connell one day if he expected to secure a repeal of the Union. "Oh, no!" said he, "but I claim everything that I may be sure of getting something." But their intense interest in the negro blinded our former champions so that they forsook principle for policy, and in giving woman the cold shoulder raised a more deadly opposition to the negro than any we had yet encountered, creating an antagonism between him and the very element most needed to be propitiated in his behalf. It was this feeling that defeated "negro suffrage" in Kansas.
But Mr. Smith abandons the principle clearly involved, and intrenches himself on policy. He would undoubtedly plead the necessity of the ballot for the negro at the south for his protection, and point us to innumerable acts of cruelty he suffers to-day. But all these things fall as heavily on the women of the black race, yea far more so, for no man can ever know the deep, the damning degradation to which woman is subject in her youth, in helplessness and poverty. The enfranchisement of the men of her race, Mr. Smith would say, is her protection. Our Saxon men have held the ballot in this country for a century, and what honest man can claim that it has been used for woman's protection? Alas! we have given the very hey day of our life to undoing the cruel and unjust laws that the men of New York had made for their own mothers, wives, and daughters.
As to the "rights of races," on which so much stress is laid just now, we have listened to debates in anti-slavery conventions, for twenty years or more, and we never heard Gerrit Smith plead the negro cause on any lower ground than his manhood; his individual, inalienable right to freedom and equality, and thus, we conjure every thoughtful man to plead woman's cause to-day. Politicians will find, when they come to test this question of "negro supremacy" in the several States, that there is a far stronger feeling among the women of the nation than they supposed. We doubt whether a constitutional amendment securing "manhood suffrage" alone could be fairly passed in a single State in this Union. Women everywhere are waking up to their own God-given rights, to their true dignity as citizens of a republic, as mothers of the race.
Although those who demand "woman's suffrage" on principle are few, those who would oppose "negro suffrage" from prejudice are many, hence the only way to secure the latter, is to end all this talk of class legislation, bury the negro in the citizen, and claim the suffrage for all men and women, as a natural, inalienable right. The friends of the negro never made a greater blunder than when, at the close of the war, they timidly refused to lead the nation in demanding suffrage for all. If even Wendell Phillips and Gerrit Smith, the very apostles of liberty on this continent, failed at that point, how can we wonder at the vacillation and confusion of politicians at this hour. We had hoped that the elections of '67, with their overwhelming majorities in every State against negro suffrage, would have proved to all alike, how futile is compromise, how short-sighted is policy. We have pressed these considerations so often on Mr. Phillips and Mr. Smith during the last four years, that we fear we have entirely forfeited the friendship of the one, and diminished the confidence of the other in our good judgment; but time, that rights all wrongs, will surely bring them back to the standpoint of principle.
As soon as we had a mouthpiece in The Revolution we found that many noble women in every State understood the situation, and saw that while the question of reconstruction was under debate, woman was false to herself not to put in her claims. In face of all opposition, those who did see the policy and justice of claiming this time as the woman's hour also, made the most persistent, brave fight possible. Again were appeals and petitions sent to Congress and the people, but now for woman's enfranchisement. When the whole nation was as it were resolved into its original elements, and the fundamental rights of citizens the topic for discussion in the halls of legislation and at every fireside, the time seemed so opportune for the settlement of the broad question of representation, that the persistency and determination of a few women to secure their rights was neither surprising nor unreasonable.
This was one of the most trying periods in the woman suffrage movement. Negro suffrage being a party measure, a political necessity and the culmination of the anti-slavery conflict, Republicans and Abolitionists could bid each other a most sincere and heartfelt Godspeed. And with them, too, stood the majority of the woman suffrage associations. Wives and daughters of Republicans and Abolitionists, imbued with the ideas of politicians, "one measure at a time," "one reform for a generation," lost sight of the true philosophy, that justice is always in order, and the fact that "universal suffrage" was the one reform that belonged specifically to the period of reconstruction. But women educated to self-sacrifice and self-abnegation readily accepted the idea that it was divine and beautiful to hold their claims for rights and privileges in abeyance to all orders and classes of men. They forgot that the highest patriotism, and the best interests of man himself demanded the enfranchisement of woman.
The few who insisted on absolute right stood firmly together under a steady fire of ridicule and reproach even from their life-long friends most loved and honored. They knew their position was unassailable, for they had well learned the lesson taught in the early days of anti-slavery and the Republican party, that all compromises with principle are dangerous. Statesmen and reformers alike admitted that the demands of the women were just and proper, though not opportune. But when the whole question of suffrage was up for discussion, there could not be a better time to get all the agitation possible in regard to woman's claims. The subject once settled on the narrow ground of class, it would not be renewed for a generation. Time has proved their fears well grounded. Nearly twenty years have passed, and there has been no such agitation and excitement as then on the question. If all the women, to say nothing of the Republicans and Abolitionists who claimed to believe in the truth of the idea, had stood firm, woman would have been enfranchised with the negro. But few could withstand the persecution, the ridicule, the pathetic appeals to keep silent, and in a large measure when the Anti-Slavery Society disbanded the woman suffrage movement became the toy of the Republican party, and has been trifled with ever since, like the cat with the mouse in the fable.
But Democrats seeing the inconsistency of Republicans, did advocate our cause, present our petitions in Congress, and frank our documents to all parts of the country. And because these women, denied help and encouragement from other sources, accepted aid from the Democrats, they were called "Copperheads";[108] disloyal to the Government. Women who had been complimented by the Republican press as "wise," "prudent," "noble," while rolling up 300,000 petitions for emancipation, were now said to be "selfish," "impracticable," "unreasonable," because forsooth they demanded some new liberties for themselves. More over said the Republicans, "these Democrats are hypocritical, they do not believe in the extension of suffrage to any class." To this the women replied, "If the Democrats advocate a grand measure of public policy which they do not believe, they occupy much higher ground than Republicans who refuse to press the same measure which they claim to believe. At all events the hypocrisy of Democrats serves us a better purpose in the present emergency than does the treachery of Republicans."