During the period of reconstruction, the popular cry was, "This is the negro's hour," and Republicans and Abolitionists alike insisted that woman's claim to the suffrage must be held in abeyance until the negro was safe beyond peradventure. Distinguished politicians, lawyers and congressmen declared that woman as well as the negro was enfranchised by the Fourteenth Amendment, yet reformers and politicians denounced those women who would not keep silent, while the Republican and anti-slavery press ignored their demands altogether. In this dark hour of woman's struggle, forsaken by all those who once recognized her civil and political rights, two noble men steadfastly maintained that it was not only woman's right but her duty to push her claims while the constitutional door was open and the rights of citizens in a republic were under discussion; therefore,
Resolved, That women owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Purvis and Parker Pillsbury for their fearless advocacy of our cause, when to do so was considered to be treason to a great party measure, involving life and liberty for the colored race.
Resolved, That in the death of men of such exalted virtue, true to principle under the most trying circumstances, sacrificing the ties of friendship and the respect of their compeers, they are conspicuous as the moral heroes of the nineteenth century.
The memorial service was closed with prayer by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, who voiced the gratitude for the inspiration of such lives as these and the hope that this generation might carry the work on to its full fruition.
The keynote to the speeches and action of this convention was the status of women in our new possessions. At a preliminary meeting of the Business Committee, held in the home of Mrs. Chapman Catt at Bensonhurst-by-the-Sea, N. Y., Jan. 2, 1899, the following "open letter" had been prepared and sent to every member of Congress:
To the Senate and House of Representatives: We respectfully request that in the qualifications for voters in the proposed Constitution for the new Territory of Hawaii the word "male" be omitted.
The declared intention of the United States in annexing the Hawaiian Islands is to give them the benefits of the most advanced civilization, and it is a truism that the progress of civilization in every country is measured by the approach of women toward the ideal of equal rights with men.
Under barbarism the struggle for existence is entirely on the physical plane. The woman freely enters the arena and her failure or success depends wholly upon her own strength. When life rises to the intellectual plane public opinion is expressed in law. Justice demands that we shall not offer to women emerging from barbarism the ball and chain of a sex disqualification while we hold out to men the crown of self-government.
The trend of civilization is closely in the direction of equal rights for women. [Then followed a list of the gains for woman suffrage.]
The Hon. John D. Long, Secretary of the Navy, calls the opposition to woman suffrage a "slowly melting glacier of bourbonism and prejudice". The melting is going on steadily all over our country, and it would be most inopportune to impose upon our new possessions abroad the antiquated restrictions which we are fast discarding at home.
We, therefore, petition your Honorable Body that, upon whatever conditions and qualifications the right of suffrage is granted to Hawaiian men, it shall be granted to Hawaiian women.[119]
Notwithstanding this appeal, and special petitions also from the Suffrage Associations of the forty-five States, our Congress provided a constitution in which the word "male" was introduced more frequently than in the Constitution of the United States or of any State, in the determination to bar out Hawaiian women from voting and holding office. It was declared that only "male" citizens should fill any office or vote for any officer, a sweeping restriction which is not made in a single State of our Union. Not satisfied with this infamous abuse of power, our Congress refused to this new Territory a privilege enjoyed by every other Territory in the United States—that of having the power vested in its Legislature to grant woman suffrage—and provided that this Territorial Legislature must submit the question to the voters. It took care, however, to enfranchise every male being in the Islands—Kanaka, Japanese and Portuguese—and it will be only by their permission that even the American and English women residing there ever can possess the suffrage.
The members of the commission who drafted this constitution were President Sanford B. Dole and Associate Justice W. F. Frear of Hawaii; Senators John T. Morgan, Ala.; Shelby M. Cullom, Ills.; Representative Robert R. Hitt, Ills. Justice Frear said over his own signature, Feb. 11, 1899: "I proposed at a meeting of the Hawaiian Commission that the Legislature be permitted to authorize woman suffrage, and President Dole supported me, but the other members of the commission took a different view." In other words, the Hawaiian members favored the enfranchisement of their women but were overruled by the American members. If but one of the latter had stood by those from Hawaii its women would not have been placed, as they now are, under greater subjection even than those of the United States, and far greater than they were before the annexation of the Islands. Yet after the consummation of this shameful act the world was asked to rejoice over the creation of a new republic!
There is not the slightest reason to hope that the appeals for justice to the women of the Philippines will meet with any greater success, as it is the policy of our Government to give to men every incentive to study its institutions and fit themselves for an intelligent voice in their control, but to discourage all interest on the part of women and to prevent them absolutely from any participation. Having held American women in subjection for a century and a quarter, it now shows a determination to place the same handicap upon the women of our newly-acquired possessions.