The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV

by Unknown

In the absence of Mrs. Stanton Miss Anthony presided, opening her address with the sentence, "Here we have stood for the last twenty-one years, demanding of Congress to take the necessary step to secure to the women of this nation protection in the exercise of their constitutional right to a voice in the government." She introduced the Hon. Albert G. Riddle (D. C.), who in 1871 had made an argument before the Joint Judiciary Committee in favor of woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment; and later had argued before the Supreme Court her right to vote in the District. In the course of his remarks he said: "All the changes in favor of woman—everything indeed that has been achieved—has been in consequence of this contest for woman suffrage. Its advocates began it; they traveled along with it; and all that has been gained in the statutes of the various States and of the United States has been by their efforts; whatever has taken a crystallized form of irrepealable law is because of this discussion, because of this agitation."

Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) read the resolution demanding a representation of women in the Centennial Celebration of the Adoption of the United States Constitution soon to be held in New York City. Miss Anthony then introduced Senator Henry W. Blair (N. H.), who was received with much applause, as the unswerving champion of woman suffrage. In an address considering the constitutional phase of the question, he said:

There has been such progress in the formulation of the State and the national law that it has become necessary for the Supreme Court of the United States to decide that we are not a sovereign people, that we have no nation at all, in order to prevent woman from exercising the right of suffrage throughout this country. In that decision which deprived Mrs. Virginia L. Minor of her right, the Supreme Court was driven to the necessity of deciding in express terms, "The United States has no voters of its own creation." If the United States has no voters, then the old doctrine of State sovereignty is the true one and there is no nation. We are subservient and subordinate to the power of the States to-day by virtue of this decision just exactly as it was claimed we were prior to the recent war. We thought the war established the fact that we were a nation; that the controversy which led up to the war had been decided in favor of the sovereignty of the nation. Under our republican form of government the sovereignty is lodged in the masses of the people. If, therefore, it is not in the man who votes by virtue of his membership in the association of the people known as the United States, then there is no sovereignty there....

As the law now is, in the Federal Constitution there must always have been such a voter of the United States, for in the second clause of the first article it is provided that there shall be a House of Representatives "elected by the people in the States." Where that provision is made it says that the electors shall have the qualifications of the electors in the States. But it does not say that they shall be the same individuals; it does not say that they are to act in the same capacity. They might vary in different portions of the country, in different States; but nevertheless, in giving to the people of the States the right to specify the qualifications which should belong to the electors of the United States, the Constitution did not give up the power to create electors itself....

Take the Fifteenth Amendment. There is the first instance in the entire Constitution where we find the franchise declared to be a "right," and in specific terms alluded to as such. And there it is provided that a right already recognized as existing shall not be abridged by the United States or by the States—a right already existing, not established. And by virtue of that amendment and the provision that this existing right shall not be denied or abridged on account of "race, color or previous condition of servitude," either by the United States or by the States, the national existence of the voter is established....

I think our great difficulty about this is that women perhaps do not, to the extent that they should, place their cause upon the platform that it is a right; that to uphold that it is not a right is a wrong greater than any which has been perpetrated in the past; that freedom to half the human race is a glorious achievement which it still remains for mankind to accomplish....

There is no way in which you can do so much for this world as by giving liberty to those who are the mothers of the generations past and to come; so that freedom to think, freedom to formulate opinions, freedom to decide by the majority of the whole of mature human nature, shall be the universal boon as far as the human race extends....

Miss Anthony then read a letter from Mrs. Stanton which embodied that spirit of independence possessed by her almost beyond all other women:

I notice that in some of our conventions resolutions of thanks are passed to senators, congressmen and legislators for advocating some minor privileges which have been conceded to women, such as admission to colleges and professions, limited forms of suffrage, etc. Now I do not see any occasion for gratitude to these honorable gentlemen who, after robbing us of all our fundamental rights as citizens, propose to restore a few minor privileges. There is not one impulse of gratitude in my soul for any of the fragmentary privileges which by slow degrees we have wrung out of our oppressors during the last half century, nor will there be so long as woman is robbed of all the essential rights of citizenship.

If strong appeals could induce the highway robber to return a modicum of what he had stolen, it might mitigate the miseries of his victim, but surely there would be no reason for gratitude, and an expression of thanks to him would be quite as much out of place as are complimentary resolutions passed in our conventions to legislators for their concessions to women. They deserve nothing at our hands until they make full restitution of all we possessed in the original compact under the colonial constitutions—rights over which in the nature of things men could have no lawful jurisdiction whatever.... Woman has the same right to a voice in this government that man has, and it is based on the same natural desire and capacity for self-government and self-protection....

Until woman is recognized as an equal factor in civilization, and is possessed of her personal property, civil and political rights, all minor privileges and concessions are but so many added aggravations, and are insulting mockeries of that justice, liberty and equality which are the birthright of every citizen of a republic. "Universal suffrage," said Charles Sumner, "is the first proof and only basis of a genuine republic."

Mrs. Stanton referred to the bravery of recent women writers in attacking social problems, citing Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Margaret Deland, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird and Helen Gardiner. She closed with a tribute to the co-laborers who had died during the past year, among them the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Judge Samuel E. Sewall, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Miss Abby W. May and numerous others.

During the second day's proceedings the Rev. Alexander Kent, of the Church of Our Father (Universalist), addressed the convention, saying in part:

It is not uncommon among writers on woman suffrage to find the root of the trouble in those notions of the creation and fall set forth in the ancient Jewish Scriptures—notions which have very generally prevailed throughout Christendom until recently, and which even yet have a large hold upon many people professing to be Christians. In the account of the origin of evil given by the ancient Hebrew writer, woman is the chief offender, and upon her falls the burden of the penalty. In sorrow she is to bring forth her children; her desire is to be to her husband and he is to rule over her. Unquestionably this has tended to prolong the reign of brute force in Christendom by perpetuating a belief in the rightful headship of man in the family and State. But it is a great mistake to see in this Scripture the root of the evil. It is only the record of a theory offered to explain a fact—which antedated both the theory and the record. We find the fact to-day even where we do not find the record—the woman ruled by the man in places where there is no knowledge whatever of the Hebrew Scriptures. I doubt not that among the founders of our Government—meaning the people generally—this doctrine of the rightful headship of man and the subordination of woman was sacredly held as a part of the revealed word of God, and that as such it operated to keep the women as well as the men of that day from perceiving the full significance, the comprehensive scope of the principles affirmed by their leaders, in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence....

If the ballot in the hands of woman is to do a great work for society, it will be first and foremost because of its wholesome influence on herself—because it rouses in her more of hope, more of laudable ambition, more of earnest purpose, more of self-reliance, more independence of the fashions, frivolities and conventionalities of society and the dictates of the church....

Praying for the speedy coming of this day, and hoping it may work gradually toward a purer and happier social life, and a further companionship in thought and feeling, in purpose and effort, between men and women, and especially between husbands and wives in the life of the home, I express my sympathy with the purpose of this convention.

Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.) took the ground that, after fifty years of argument, women now should unite in a continuous demand for the rights of citizenship.

In introducing the Hon. William D. Kelley (Penn.) Miss Anthony said that not only in Congress, where he was known as the Father of the House, but years ago in his own State Legislature, he advocated the political equality of women. After paying a tribute to his mother, to Mary Wollstonecraft and to Frances Wright, he said: "I am here, because I feel that I should again declare publicly the justice of the enfranchisement of women, which, having cherished through youth and early manhood, I asserted in a public address in Independence Hall, at high noon on the Fourth of July, 1841, before there was any organization for promoting woman's rights politically." He then sketched results already achieved and urged women to keep the flame burning for the benefits which would come to posterity.