The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV

by Unknown

CHAPTER X.

THE NATIONAL-AMERICAN CONVENTION OF 1890.

The winter of 1890 brought the usual crowd of eminent women to Washington to attend the Twenty-second national convention of the suffrage association, February 18-21. As the president, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, was to start for Europe on the 19th, the congressional hearings took place previous to the convention and consisted only of her address. The Senate hearing on February 8 was held for the first time in the new room set apart for the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, but much objection was made because on account of its size only a small audience could be admitted. Senators Vance, Farwell, Blair and John B. Allen of the new State of Washington were present. Mrs. Stanton said in part:

For almost a quarter of a century a body of intelligent and law-abiding women have held annual conventions in Washington and made their appeals before committees of the House and the Senate, asking to be recognized as citizens of this Republic. A whole generation of distinguished members, who have each in turn given us aid and encouragement, have passed away—Seward, Sumner, Wilson, Giddings, Wade, Garfield, Morton and Sargent—with Hamlin, Butler and Julian still living, have all declared our demands just, our arguments unanswerable.

In consulting at an early day as to the form in which our claims should be presented, some said by an amendment to the Constitution, others said the Constitution as it is, in spirit and letter, is broad enough to protect the rights of every citizen under our flag. But when the war came and we saw that it took three amendments to make the slaves of the South full-fledged citizens, we thought it would take at least one to make woman's calling and election sure. So we asked for a Sixteenth Amendment. But learned lawyers, Judges and Congressmen took the ground that women were already enfranchised by the Fourteenth Amendment. The House minority report in 1871, signed by Benjamin F. Butler and William Loughridge, held that view. It is an able, unanswerable argument on the whole question, based on the oft-repeated principles of the Republican party at that time. It stands to-day a living monument of the grossest inconsistencies of which the Republican party ever was guilty.[76] ...

We can not play fast and loose with the eternal principle of justice without being caught sooner or later in the net of our own weaving. The legitimate results of the war have been all frittered away by political maneuvering. While Northern statesmen have made a football of the rights of 12,000,000 women as voters, and by Supreme Court decisions driven them from the polls, why arraign the men in the South for treating 1,000,000 freedmen in the same way? Are the rights of that class of citizens more sacred than ours? Are the violations of the fundamental principles of our Government in their case more dangerous than in ours?...

In addressing those who already enjoy the right of suffrage, one naturally would suppose that it would not be necessary to enlarge on the advantages of having a voice in deciding the laws and the rulers under which one lives. And neither would it if each member of this committee understood that woman's wants and needs are similar to his own; that the cardinal virtues belong to her as well as to him; that personal dignity, the power of self-protection, are as important for her as for him; that woman loves justice, equality, liberty, and wishes the right to give her consent to the Government under which she lives, as much as man does. Matthew Arnold says: "The first desire of every cultured mind is to take part in the great work of government." ...

If we would rouse new respect for womanhood in the hearts of the masses, we must place woman in a position to respect herself, which she can never do as long as her political status is beneath that of the most degraded, ignorant classes of men. To make women the political equals of their sons, or even of their gardeners and coachmen, would add new dignity to their position; and to change our laws and constitutions in harmony with the new status would have its influence on the large class of young men now devoting themselves to the study of the law. Lord Brougham said long ago that the Common Law of England for women, and all the statutes based on such principles, were a disgrace to the Christianity and civilization of the nineteenth century. Do you think our sons can rise from such studies with a high ideal of womanhood? And with what feelings do you suppose women themselves read these laws, and the articles in the State constitutions, rating them with the disreputable and feeble-minded classes? Can you not understand the dignity, the pride, the new-born self-respect which would thrill the hearts of the women of this nation in their enfranchisement? It would elevate their sphere of action and every department of labor in which they are occupied; it would give new force to their words as teachers, reformers and missionaries, new strength to their work as guardians of the young, the wayward and the unfortunate. It would transform them from slaves to sovereigns, crowned with the rights of citizenship, with the ballot, that scepter of power, in their own right hands....

If there are any who do not wish to vote, that is the strongest reason for their enfranchisement. If all love of liberty has been quenched in their souls by their degraded condition, the duties of citizenship and the responsibility of self-government should be laid upon them at once, for their pitiful indifference is merely the result of their disfranchisement. Would that I could awake in the minds of my countrywomen the full significance of this demand for the right of suffrage; what it is to be queens in their own right, intrusted with the power of self-government, possessed of all the privileges and immunities of American citizens....

Whoever heard of an heir apparent to a throne in the Old World abdicating her rights because some conservative politician or austere bishop doubted woman's capacity to govern? History affords no such example. Those who have had the right to a throne have invariably taken possession of it and, against intriguing cardinals, ambitious nobles and jealous kinsmen, fought even to the death to maintain the royal prerogatives which by inheritance were theirs. When I hear American women, descendants of Jefferson, Hancock and Adams, say they do not want to vote, I feel that the blood of the revolutionary heroes must long since have ceased to flow in their veins.

Suppose when the day dawned for Victoria to be crowned Queen of England she had gone before the House of Commons and begged that such terrible responsibilities might not be laid upon her, declaring that she had not the moral stamina nor intellectual ability for the position; that her natural delicacy and refinement shrank from the encounter; that she was looking forward to the all-absorbing duties of domestic life, to a husband, children, home, to her influence in the social circle where the Christian graces are best employed. Suppose with a tremulous voice and a few stray tears in her blue eyes, her head drooping on one side, she had said she knew nothing of the science of government; that a crown did not befit a woman's brow; that she had not the physical strength even to wave her nation's flag, much less to hold the scepter of power over so vast an empire; that in case of war she could not fight and hence could not reign, as there must be force behind the throne, and this force must be centered in the hand which governed. What would her Parliament have thought? What would other nations have thought?...

None of you would admit, honorable gentlemen, that all the great principles of government which center round our theories of justice, liberty and equality in favor of individual sovereignty have not as yet produced as high a type of womanhood as has a monarchy in the Old World. We have a large number of women as well fitted as Victoria for the most responsible positions in the Government, who could fill the highest places with equal dignity and wisdom.

There is no subject more intensely interesting to men than the science of government, and when their wives are intelligent on all the questions it comprises they will be far more valuable companions than they are to-day. Marriage means companionship, a similarity of tastes and opinions, and where one of the parties has no interest in or knowledge of those subjects most absorbing to the other, the bonds of union necessarily are weakened. So long as woman's thought is centered in personal and family aggrandizement, her strongest influence will be used to keep man's interest there also. The virtue of patriotism would be far greater among men, their devotion to the public good far more earnest, if the influences of home life were not continually drawing them into a narrow selfishness.

Women naturally take no interest in questions where their opinions have no weight, in a sphere of action from which they are excluded. They are not supposed to know what is necessary for the public good, hence how could they influence their husbands to make that their first duty when in public life? But when women are enfranchised their interest in the State will deepen. They will see that the welfare of their own children depends as much on the conditions of the outside world as on the environments of their own homes. This settled discontent of women is exerting an insidious influence which is undermining the very foundations of the home as well as the State. We must rouse them to new hopes, new ambitions, new aspirations, through the enjoyment of the blessings of freedom and self-government.

Moreover, an active participation in the practical duties of government by educated women would bring a new and needed element to the State. We can not overestimate the influence women exert, whether for good or ill, hence the immense importance of their having right views on all questions of public interest and some knowledge of the requirements of practical politics. But their power to-day is wholly irresponsible and hence dangerous. Lay on them the responsibility of legislating, with all the criticism and odium of a constituency and a party, in case they make some blunder, and you render them wiser in judgment and more deliberate in action. To secure this large disfranchised class as allies to one of the leading parties would be a wise measure for that party and bring a new element of morality and intelligence into the body politic. Women are now taking a more active part in public affairs than ever before and, with political freedom, always will be the reserved moral power to sustain great men in their best endeavors.

An interesting conversation followed. Chairman Zebulon B. Vance (N. C.) asked Mrs. Stanton if women would be willing to go to war if they had the ballot. She answered that they would decide whether there should be war. He inquired whether women would not lose their refining influence and moral qualities if they engaged in men's work. She replied that there would have to be a definition of "men's work" and that she found the latter in many avocations, such as washing, cooking, and selling needles and tape, which might be considered the work of women. "The moral qualities," she said, "are more apt to grow when a human being is useful, and they increase in the woman who helps to support the family rather than in the one who gives herself to idleness and fashionable frivolities. The consideration of questions of legislation, finance, free trade, etc., certainly would not degrade woman, nor is her refinement so evanescent a virtue that it could be swept away by some work which she might do with her hands. Queen Victoria looked as dignified and refined in opening Parliament as any lady one ever had seen."

Miss Susan B. Anthony, who was never so happy as when her beloved friend was scoring a victory, said there would always be a division of labor, in time of war as in time of peace. Women would do their share in the hospitals and elsewhere, and if they were enfranchised, the only difference would be that they would be paid for their services and pensioned at the close of the war. Mrs. Colby reminded the committee that the report of the U. S. Commissioner of Labor showed that the largest proportion of immoral women came from home life and the more feminine occupations.

Mrs. Stanton drew from the chairman the admission that his wife wanted the franchise, and he laughingly admitted that he had had the worst of the discussion. Senator Allen expressed himself in favor of woman suffrage, and Senator Charles B. Farwell said, "The suffragists have logic, argument, everything on their side."

Another heaping was granted by the Senate Committee, February 24, when they were addressed by the Rev. Anna Howard Shaw, Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett, Mrs. Virginia L. Minor and Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby.

Later in the session Senator Henry W. Blair (N. H.) presented the majority report of the Committee (No. 1576), the usual strong, dignified statement. It closed as follows: "To deny the submission of this joint resolution to the action of the Legislatures of the States is analogous to the denial of the right of justice in the courts. It is to say that no plaintiff shall bring his suit; no claimant of justice shall be heard; and whatever may be the result to the friends of woman suffrage when they reach the Legislatures of the States, it is, in our belief, the duty of Congress to submit the joint resolution and give them the opportunity to try their case."