Mary Clemmer, the gifted correspondent of the New York Independent, learning that Senator Wadleigh was about to report adversely upon the sixteenth amendment, wrote the following private letter, which, as a record of her own sentiments on the question, she gave to Miss Anthony for publication in this history:
Hon. Bainbridge Wadleigh—Dear Sir: The more I think of it the more I regret that, as chairman of the Committee on Privileges and Elections, you regard with less favor the enfranchisement of women than did your distinguished predecessor, Senator Morton. At this moment, when your committee is discussing that subject, I sigh for the large outlook, the just mind, the unselfish decision of that great legislator. You were his friend, you respected his intellect, you believed in his integrity, you sit in his seat. You are to prepare the report that he would prepare were he still upon the earth. May I ask you to bring to that labor as fair a spirit, as unprejudiced an outlook, as just a decision as he would have done?
I ask this not as a partisan of woman's rights, but as a lover of the human race. In this faint dawn of woman's day, I discern not woman's development of freedom merely, but the promise of that higher, finer, purer civilization which is to redeem the world, the lack of which makes men tyrants and women slaves. You cannot be unconscious of the fact that a new race of women is born into the world, who, while they lack no womanly attribute, are the peers of any man in intellect and aspiration. It will be impossible long to deny to such women that equality before the law granted to the lowest creature that crawls, if he happens to be a man; denied to the highest creature that asks it, if she happens to be a woman.
On what authority, save that of the gross regality of physical strength, do you deny to a thoughtful, educated, tax-paying person the common rights of citizenship because she is a woman? I am a property-owner, the head of a household. By what right do you assume to define and curtail for me my prerogatives as a citizen, while as a tax-payer you make not the slightest distinction between me and a man? Leave to my own perception what is proper for me as a lady, to my own discretion what is wise for me as a woman, to my own conscience what is my duty to my race and to my God. Leave to unerring nature to protect the subtle boundaries which define the distinctive life and action of the sexes, while you as a legislator do everything in your power to secure to every creature of God an equal chance to make the best and most of himself.
If American men could say as Huxley says, "I scorn to lay a single obstacle in the way of those whom nature from the beginning has so heavily burdened," the sexes would cease to war, men and women would reign together, the equal companions, friends, helpers, and lovers that nature intended they should be. But what is love, tenderness, protection, even, unless rooted in justice? Tyranny and servitude, that is all. Brute supremacy, spiritual slavery. By what authority do you say that the country is not prepared for a more enlightened franchise, for political equality, if six women citizens, earnest, eloquent, long-suffering, come to you and demand both? No words can express my regret if to the minority report I see appended only the honored name of George F. Hoar of Massachusetts.
Mary Clemmer.
Your friend,
In response to all these arguments, appeals and petitions, Senator Wadleigh, from the Committee on Privileges and Elections, presented the following adverse report, June 14, 1878:
The Committee on Privileges and Elections, to whom was referred the Resolution (S. Res. 12) proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and certain Petitions for and Remonstrances against the same, make the following Report:
This proposed amendment forbids the United States, or any State to deny or abridge the right to vote on account of sex. If adopted, it will make several millions of female voters, totally inexperienced in political affairs, quite generally dependent upon the other sex, all incapable of performing military duty and without the power to enforce the laws which their numerical strength may enable them to make, and comparatively very few of whom wish to assume the irksome and responsible political duties which this measure thrusts upon them. An experiment so novel, a change so great, should only be made slowly and in response to a general public demand, of the existence of which there is no evidence before your committee.
Petitions from various parts of the country, containing by estimate about 30,000 names, have been presented to congress asking for this legislation. They were procured through the efforts of woman suffrage societies, thoroughly organized, with active and zealous managers. The ease with which signatures may be procured to any petition is well known. The small number of petitioners, when compared with that of the intelligent women in the country, is striking evidence that there exists among them no general desire to take up the heavy burden of governing, which so many men seek to evade. It would be unjust, unwise and impolitic to impose that burden on the great mass of women throughout the country who do not wish for it, to gratify the comparatively few who do.
It has been strongly urged that without the right of suffrage, women are, and will be, subjected to great oppression and injustice.
But every one who has examined the subject at all knows that, without female suffrage, legislation for years has improved and is still improving the condition of woman. The disabilities imposed upon her by the common law have, one by one, been swept away, until in most of the States she has the full right to her property and all, or nearly all, the rights which can be granted without impairing or destroying the marriage relation. These changes have been wrought by the spirit of the age, and are not, generally at least, the result of any agitation by women in their own behalf.
Nor can women justly complain of any partiality in the administration of justice. They have the sympathy of judges and particularly of juries to an extent which would warrant loud complaint on the part of their adversaries of the sterner sex. Their appeals to legislatures against injustice are never unheeded, and there is no doubt that when any considerable part of the women of any State really wish for the right to vote, it will be granted without the intervention of congress.
Any State may grant the right of suffrage to women. Some of them have done so to a limited extent, and perhaps with good results. It is evident that in some States public opinion is much more strongly in favor of it than it is in others. Your committee regard it as unwise and inexpedient to enable three-fourths in number of the States, through an amendment to the national constitution, to force woman suffrage upon the other fourth in which the public opinion of both sexes may be strongly adverse to such a change.
For these reasons, your committee report back said resolution with a recommendation that it be indefinitely postponed.
This adverse report was all the more disappointing because Mr. Wadleigh, as Mrs. Clemmer's letter states, filled the place of Hon. Oliver P. Morton of Indiana, one of the most steadfast friends of woman suffrage, who, at the last session of congress, had asked as a special favor the reference of our petitions to the Committee on Privileges and Elections, of which he was chairman, that they might receive proper attention and that he might report favorably upon them. In the discussion on the Pembina bill in 1874, Senator Morton made an earnest speech in favor of woman's enfranchisement. In his premature death our cause lost one of its bravest champions.
Senator Wadleigh's report called forth severe criticism; notably from the New Northwest of Oregon, the Woman's Journal of Boston, the Inter-Ocean of Chicago, the Evening Telegram and the National Citizen of New York. We quote from the latter:
The report is not a statesman-like answer based upon fundamental principles, but a mere politician's dodge—a species of dust-throwing quite in vogue in Washington. "Several millions of voters totally inexperienced in political affairs"! They would have about as much experience as the fathers in 1776, as the negroes in 1870, as the Irish, English, Italians, Norwegians, Danes, French, Germans, Portuguese, Scotch, Russians, Turks, Mexicans, Hungarians, Swedes and Indians, who form a good part of the voting population of this country. Did Mr. Wadleigh never hear of Agnes C. Jencks—the woman who has stirred up politics to its deepest depth; who has shaken the seat of President Hayes; who has set in motion the whole machinery of government, and who, when brought to the witness stand has for hours successfully baffled such wily politicians as Ben Butler and McMahon;—a woman who thwarts alike Republican and Democrat, and at her own will puts the brakes on all this turmoil of her own raising? Does Senator Wadleigh know nothing of that woman's "experience in politics"?
"Quite dependent upon the other sex." It used to be said the negroes were "quite dependent" upon their masters, that it would really be an abuse of the poor things to set them free, but when free and controlling the results of their own labor, it was found the masters had been the ones "quite dependent," and thousands of them who before the war rolled in luxury, have since been in the depths of poverty—some of them even dependent upon the bounty of their former slaves. When men cease to rob women of their earnings they will find them generally, as thousands now are, capable of self-care.[36]
"Military duty." When women hold the ballot there will not be quite as much military duty to be done. They will then have a voice and a vote in the matter, and the men will no longer be able to throw the country into a war to gratify spite or ambition, tearing from woman's arms her nearest and dearest. All men do not like "military duty." "The key to that horrible enigma, German socialism, is antagonism to the military system," and nations are shaken with fear because of it. But when there is necessity for military duty, women will be found in line. The person who planned the Tennessee campaign, in which the Northern armies secured their first victories, was a woman, Anna Ella Carroll. Gen. Grant acted upon her plan, and was successful. She was endorsed by President Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Wade, Scott, and all the nation's leaders in its hour of peril, and yet congress has not granted her the pension which for ten years her friends have demanded. Mr. Wadleigh holds his seat in the United States Senate to-day, because of the "military duty" done by this woman.
"About 30,000 names," to petitions. There have been 70,000 sent in during the present session of congress, for a sixteenth amendment, besides hundreds of individual petitions from women asking for the removal of their own political disabilities. Men in this country are occasionally disfranchised for crime, and sometimes pray for the removal of their political disabilities. Nine such disfranchised men had the right of voting restored to them during the last session of congress. But not a single one of the five hundred women who individually asked to have their political disabilities removed, was even so much as noticed by an adverse report, Mr. Wadleigh knows it would make no difference if 300,000 women petitioned. But whether women ask for the ballot or not has nothing to do with the question. Self-government is the natural right of every individual, and because woman possesses this natural right, she should be secured in its exercise.
Mr. Wadleigh says, "nor can woman justly complain of any partiality in the administration of justice." Let us examine: A few years ago a married man in Washington, in official position, forced a confession from his wife at the mouth of a pistol, and shot his rival dead. Upon trial he was triumphantly acquitted and afterwards sent abroad as foreign minister. A few months ago a married woman in Georgia, who had been taunted by her rival with boasts of having gained her husband's love, found this rival dancing with him. She drew a knife and killed the woman on the spot. She was tried, convicted, and, although nursing one infant, and again about to become a mother, was sentenced to be hanged by the neck till she was 'dead, dead, dead.' There is Mr. Wadleigh's equal administration of justice between man and woman! There is "the sympathy of judges and juries." There is the "extent which would warrant loud complaint on the part of their adversaries of the sterner sex." And this woman escaped the gallows not because of "the sympathy of the judge" or "jury," but because her own sex took the matter up, and from every part of the country sent petitions by the hundreds to Governor Colquitt of Georgia, asking her pardon. That pardon came in the shape of ten years' imprisonment;—ten years in a cell for a woman, the mother of a nursing and an unborn infant, while for General Sickles the mission to Madrid with high honors and a fat salary.
Messrs. Wadleigh of New Hampshire, McMillan of Minnesota, Ingalls of Kansas, Saulsbury of Delaware, Merrimon of North Carolina and Hill of Georgia, all senators of the United States, are the committee that report it "inexpedient" to secure equal rights to the women of the United States. But we are not discouraged; we are not disheartened; all the Wadleighs in the Senate, all the committees of both Houses, the whole congress of the United States against us, would not lessen our faith, nor our efforts. We know we are right; we know we shall be successful; we know the day is not far distant, when this government and the world will acknowledge the exact and permanent political equality of man and woman, and we know that until that hour comes woman will be oppressed, degraded; a slave, without a single right that man feels himself bound to respect. Work then, women, for your own freedom. Let the early morning see you busy, and dusky evening find you planning how you may become free.
But the most severe judgment upon Mr. Wadleigh's action came from his own constituents, who, at the close of the forty-fifth congress excused his further presence in the United States Senate, sending in his stead the Hon. Henry W. Blair, a valiant champion of national protection for national citizens.[37]
In April, 1878, Mrs. Williams transferred the Ballot-Box to Mrs. Gage, who removed it to Syracuse, New York, and changed its name to the National Citizen. In her prospectus Mrs. Gage said:
The National Citizen will advocate the principle that suffrage is the citizen's right, and should be protected by national law, and that, while States may regulate the suffrage, they should have no power to abolish it. Its especial object will be to secure national protection to women in the exercise of their right to vote; it will oppose class legislation of whatever form. It will support no political party until one arises which is based upon the exact equality of man and woman.
As the first step towards becoming well is to know you are ill, one of the principal aims of the National Citizen will be to make those women discontented who are now content; to waken them to self-respect and a desire to use the talents they possess; to educate their consciences aright; to quicken their sense of duty; to destroy morbid beliefs, and fit them for their high responsibilities as citizens of a republic. The National Citizen has no faith in that old theory that "a woman once lost is lost forever," neither does it believe in the assertion that "a woman who sins, sinks to depths of wickedness lower than man can reach." On the contrary it believes there is a future for the most abandoned, if only the kindly hand of love and sympathy be extended to rescue them from the degradation into which they have fallen. The National Citizen will endeavor to keep its readers informed of the progress of women in foreign countries, and will, as far as possible, revolutionize this country, striving to make it live up to its own fundamental principles and become in reality what it is but in name—a genuine republic.