On February 7, Senator Blair reported for the committee—Senators Charles B. Farwell (Ill.), Jonathan Chace (R. I.), Edward O. Wolcott (Col.), in favor of the amendment. After an able and exhaustive argument the report closed as follows:
Unless this Government shall be made and preserved truly republican in form by the enfranchisement of woman, the great reforms which her ballot would accomplish may never be; the demoralization and disintegration now proceeding in the body politic are not likely soon to be arrested. Corruption of the male suffrage is already a well-nigh fatal disease; intemperance has no sufficient foe in the law-making power; a republican form of government can not survive half-slave and half-free.
The ballot is withheld from women because men are not willing to part with one-half the sovereign power. There is no other real cause for the continued perpetration of this unnatural tyranny.
Enfranchise women or this republic will steadily advance to the same destruction, the same ignoble and tragic catastrophe, which has engulfed the male republics of history. Let us establish a government in which both men and women shall be free indeed. Then shall the republic be perpetual.
The women of the nation are deeply indebted to Senator Blair for his able and persistent efforts in their behalf. Year after year, in the midst of the great pressure of duties connected with his office, he carefully prepared these constitutional and legal reports knowing that they could have only the indirect results of educating public sentiment and contributing to the history of this great movement for the political rights of half the race.
The other members of the committee, Senators Zebulon B. Vance (N. C.), Joseph E. Brown (Ga.), J. B. Beck (Ky.), announced that they should present a minority report in opposition, but as "Letters from a Chimney Corner," by Mrs. Caroline F. Corbin, and "The Law of Woman Life," by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, apparently had been exhausted, and as no other woman had provided them with the necessary ideas, the report never materialized. Senator Vance, however, as chairman of this Select Suffrage Committee asked for a clerk at this time, to be paid out of the contingent fund.
The House Judiciary Committee granted a hearing January 28, which was addressed by Miss Anthony, Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Duniway, Mrs. Minor, the Rev. Olympia Brown, Mrs. Colby, Miss Lavina A. Hatch (Mass.) and Mrs. Ella M. Marble (Minn.). The committee took no action.
FOOTNOTES:
[73] It is a loss to posterity that Miss Shaw never writes her addresses. She is beyond question the leading woman orator of this generation, and is not surpassed in power by any of the men.
[74] See [History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 647].
[75] This was done, but no representation was allowed women in the celebration.