The History of Woman Suffrage Volume II Part 50

When, on that March day of 1867, the negroes of the District first voted, with what anxiety did the people wait, and with what joy did they read the glad tidings, flashed over the wires the following morning! And the success of that first election in this District, inspired Congress with confidence to pa.s.s the proposition for the XV. Amendment, and the different States to ratify it until it has become a fixed fact that black men all over the nation may not only vote, but sit in legislative a.s.semblies and const.i.tutional conventions. We now ask Congress to do the same for women. We ask you to enfranchise the women of the District this very winter, so that next March they may go to the ballot-box, and all the people of this nation may see that it is possible for women to vote and the republic to stand. There is no reason, no argument, nothing but prejudice, against our demand; and there is no way to break down this prejudice but to try the experiment. Therefore we most earnestly urge it, in full faith that so soon as Congress and the people shall have witnessed its beneficial results, they will go forward with a XVI. Amendment that shall prohibit any State to disfranchise any of its citizens on account of s.e.x.

Mrs. HOOKER said: The fifth commandment, "Honor thy father and thy mother," can not be obeyed while boys are taught by our laws and const.i.tutions to hold all women in contempt. I feel it is not only woman's right, but duty to a.s.sume responsibility in the government. I think the importance of the subject demands its hearing.

Madam ANNEKE: You have lifted up the slave on this continent; listen now to woman's cry for freedom.

Mrs. MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE: Liberty is an instinct of the human heart, and men desirous of creating change in governments or religion have led other men by promising them greater liberty and better laws. Nothing is too good, too great, too sacred for humanity--and, as part of humanity, woman as well as man demands the best that governments have to offer. Honorable gentlemen have spoken of pet.i.tions. For twenty years we have pet.i.tioned, and I now hold in my hand over three thousand names of citizens from but a small portion of the State of New York, asking that justice shall be done women by granting them suffrage. But people have become tired of begging for rights, and many persons favoring this cause will not again pet.i.tion. We but ask justice, and we say to you that the stability of any government depends upon its doing justice to the most humble individual under it.

Mrs. PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS: We are tired of pet.i.tioning. It is time our legislators knew what was right and gave us justice.

Mrs. WILBOUR remarked that a lady of the district near her said she had obtained 1,500 signatures in one ward of the city to a pet.i.tion.

Senator PATTERSON inquired what the effect would be in case women were allowed to vote, if there were a difference of opinion between the husband and wife on some political question--where the authority of the family would rest?

Mrs. STANTON replied that there was always a superior will and brain in every family. If it was the man, he would rule; if it was the woman, she would rule. Individuality would be preserved in the family as well as in society.

Hon. Mr. WELKER wanted to know if the women in the District had shown any interest in the movement yet.

Mrs. STANTON replied that they had; they had attended the sessions of the Convention held here, and all she had spoken to were in favor of it.

Mrs. WILBOUR said the pet.i.tion of 1,500 women of the District asking for suffrage had been presented to Congress this very winter.

Hon. Mr. COOKE said that the Committee on the District of Columbia could not get enough time allowed them by the House to transact the necessary business of the District during the short morning hour to which they were limited by the rules, and he feared they would be unable to get the action of the House on the subject.

Miss ANTHONY said that they must make time enough to present the bill at least; and asked if women had the right to vote, and make and unmake members, if they could not then find time to plead woman's cause?

The honorable member was obliged to answer this pertinent question in the affirmative.

Senator HAMLIN said the Committee would take the matter into consideration and discuss it; that in Scripture language he could say he "was almost, if not quite, persuaded."

Altogether the hearing was serious and impressive, and it was evident that the honorable gentlemen had already given the subject a thoughtful consideration. As each member of the Congressional Committee was presented by Senator Hamlin, the ladies had abundant opportunity for learning their individual opinions. Senator Sumner never appeared more genial, and said though he had been in Congress for twenty years, and through the exciting scenes of the Nebraska Act, Emanc.i.p.ation, District of Columbia Suffrage Act, and Reconstruction, he had never seen a committee in which were present so many Senators and Representatives, so many spectators, and so much interest manifested in the subject under discussion.

The following description (in the _Hartford Courant_) is from the pen of Mrs. Fannie Howland.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, Jan. 22, 1870.

The close of the Woman's Suffrage Convention in this city was marked by an event which, no matter how slowly its logical sequence is developed, must be regarded as initiative.

A committee of ladies appointed by the convention and composed in great part of those well known as leaders in the movement, was received at the Capitol by the committee of the Senate and House (on the District of Columbia) for a formal hearing. The object of that hearing was to request the honorable gentlemen to present a bill to Congress for enfranchising the women of the District, as an experiment preparatory to ultimate acknowledgment of equal rights for all the women of the United States. The ladies were received in one of the larger committee rooms, in order to accommodate a number who wished to be present at this novel interview. After taking their seats, the Hon. Hannibal Hamlin, chairman, presented to them successively the gentlemen of the committee, who certainly greeted their fair appellants with the deferential courtesy due to fellow-sovereigns, albeit unacknowledged and disguised, for the present, under the odium of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt.

The gentlemen took their seats around a long table in the middle of the room. Mrs. Stanton stood at one end, serene and dignified. Behind her sat a large semi-circle of ladies, and close about her a group of her companions, who would have been remarkable anywhere for the intellectual refinement and elevated expression of their earnest faces. Opposite, at the other end of the table, sat Charles Sumner, looking fatigued and worn, but listening with alert attention. So these two veterans in the cause of freedom were fitly and suggestively brought face to face.

The scene was impressive. It was simple, grand, historic. Women have often appeared in history--n.o.ble, brilliant, heroic women; but _woman_ collectively, impersonally, never until now. To-day, for the first time, she asks recognition in the commonwealth--not in virtue of hereditary n.o.blesse--not for any excellence or achievement of individuals, but on the simple ground of her presence in the race, with the same rights, interests, responsibilities as man. There was nothing in this gathering at the Capitol to touch the imagination with illusion, no ball-room splendor of light and fragrance and jewels, none of those graceful enchantments by which women have been content to reign through brief dynasties of beauty over briefer fealties of homage. The cool light of a winter morning, the bare walls of a committee room, the plain costumes of every day use, held the mind strictly to the simple facts which gave that group of representative men and women its moral significance, its severe but picturesque unity. Some future artist, looking back for a memorable ill.u.s.tration of this period, will put this new "Declaration of Independence" upon canvas, and will ransack the land for portraits of those ladies who first spoke for their countrywomen at the Capitol, and of those Senators and Representatives who first gave them audience.

Mrs. Stanton's speech was brief and able, eloquent from the simplicity and earnestness of her heart, logical from the well disciplined vigor of her mind. She was followed by Miss Anthony, morally as inevitable and impersonal as a Greek chorus, but physically and intellectually individual, intense, original, full of humor and good nature--anything but the roaring lioness of newspaper reports some years ago. Mrs. Davis, of Rhode Island, spoke briefly in support of the demand for franchise. Mrs. I. B.

Hooker presented the Scriptural argument for the equality of woman in all moral responsibility and duty under the divine law.

She spoke very feelingly, and was heard with marked attention. A German lady from Wisconsin who, weighed in any balance, would not be found wanting, struggled to express, in broken English, the ideas for which she came forward as representing many of her countrywomen in the West. Madam Anneke fought by her husband's side in the revolution of 1848; but such an example adds no force to the argument for woman's suffrage, the plea being made, not for distinguished exceptional women, but for the average women of the community.

When the ladies had finished their remarks, the gentlemen were invited to ask any questions which were suggested by the subject discussed. Either from indifference or chivalrous sentiment, no very grave questions were proposed, nothing which required effort or argument to answer. Probably when the matter comes, as sooner or later it must come, before Congress, we shall hear some well-considered defense of the Salic law, which in this democratic republic, excludes all women from the citizen's prerogative. One of the honorable gentlemen asked how they could be certain that any number of women in the United States desired the ballot. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony recounted their experience at conventions, the numerous signatures to pet.i.tions, the many demonstrations here and in England in favor of woman suffrage, but reminded the gentleman that no such separate expression is required from the unwashed, unkempt immigrants upon whom the government makes haste to confer unqualified suffrage, nor from the southern negroes, who are provided for by the XV.

Amendment.

The hearing ended about noon, followed by very cordial shaking hands and pleasant chat. I do not know if the ladies were invited to "call again," but am quite sure that Miss Anthony's parting salutation was an "au revoir." There was some quiet by-play as the audience dispersed, a little interchange of knowing nods and condescending smiles, as if to say, "we can keep these absurd pretensions at bay while _we_ live, and after us the deluge." I have no doubt that to some persons it appears an extravagant joke for women to aspire to political equality with the negro. King George thought it a very good joke when his upstart colonists steeped their tea in the salt water of Boston harbor, but the laugh was on their side in the long run. History has no precedents for the elevation of woman to a civic status, but we are making precedents every day in our conduct of popular government. In Athens--where woman was both wors.h.i.+ped and degraded--the protectress of the city was a feminine ideal whose glorious image crowned the Parthenon with consummate beauty. In America, where woman is beloved and respected as nowhere else in the world--if she is only true to the ideals of private and public virtue--if she seeks power only as a means for the highest good of the race, the old fable of the Pellas Athenae may become real, and the nation acknowledge with grateful joy, that the fathers "builded better than they knew," when they placed the figure of a woman on the dome of their Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton.

The second Was.h.i.+ngton Convention a.s.sembled at 10 o'clock, January 19th, 1870, in Lincoln Hall. Mrs. Stanton called the a.s.semblage to order and invited the Rev. Samuel J. May to open the convention with prayer. Letters were read from John Stuart Mill, Robert Purvis, Clara Barton, and others. Miss Barton appealed to her soldier friends in behalf of woman's right of suffrage thus:

Brothers, when you were weak, and I was strong, I toiled for you.

Now you are strong, and I am weak because of my work for you, I ask your aid. I ask the ballot for myself and my s.e.x, and as I stood by you, I pray you stand by me and mine.

Mr. Purvis closed his eloquent letter with these sentiments:

Censured as I may be for apparent inconsistency, as a member and an officer of the American Anti-Slavery Society, in approving a movement whose leaders are opposed to the pa.s.sage of the XV.

Amendment, I must be true to my own soul, to my sense of the absolute demands of justice, and hence, I say that, much as I desire (and Heaven knows how deeply through life I have antagonized therefor) the possession of all my rights as an American citizen, were I a woman, black or white, I would resist, by every feeling of self-respect and personal dignity, any and every encroachment of power, every act of tyranny (for such they will be), based upon the impious, false, and infamous a.s.sumption of superiority of s.e.x.

Mr. Sinclair Toucey, of New York, wrote a letter in which he said:

The argument of to-day against the legal and political equality of the s.e.xes carries one back to the days of pro-slavery ascendency, and brings vividly to mind the old wail of the non-humanity of the negro, and his lack of capacity for civilizing improvements: and though the opponents of equal rights for both s.e.xes do not go quite so far as to deny the humanity of women, yet one might believe they would, did not such a denial involve their own status.... In a feeble manner I fought the old pro-slavery dogma, and in a feeble manner I am trying to fight its twin--the non-equality of the s.e.xes.... I believe in the brotherhood of man, regardless of s.e.x, color, or birth-place, and that every member of the great family is ent.i.tled to equal rights in life's ceaseless struggles.

Mr. Mill's letter was as follows:

AVIGNON, France, Dec. 11, 1869.

DEAR MADAM: I should have reason to be ashamed of myself if your name were unknown to me. I am not likely to forget one who stood in the front rank of the woman's rights movement in its small beginnings, and helped it forward so vigorously in its early and most difficult stages. You and Mrs. Mott have well deserved to live to see the cause in its present prosperity, and may now fairly hope to see a commencement of victory in some of the States at least. I have received many kind and cordial invitations to visit the United States, and were I able, the great convention to which you invite me would certainly be a strong inducement to do so. My dislike to a sea voyage would not of itself prevent me, if there were not a greater obstacle--want of time. I have many things to do yet, before I die, and some months (it is not worth while going to America for less) is a great deal to give at my time of life, especially as it would not, like ordinary traveling, be a time of mental rest, but something very different. I regret my inability the less, as the friends of the cause in America are quite able to dispense with direct personal co-operation from England. The really important co-operation is the encouragement we give one another by the success of each in our own country. For Great Britain this success is much greater than appears on the surface, for our people, as you know, shrink much more timidly than Americans from attracting public notice to themselves; and the era of great public meetings on this subject has not arrived in our country, though it may be near at hand. I need hardly say how much I am gratified at the mode in which my name was mentioned in the National Convention at Newport, and still more at the tribute to the memory of my dear wife, who from early youth was devoted to this cause, and had done invaluable service to it as the inspirer and instructor of others, even before writing the essay so deservedly eulogized in your resolutions. To her I owe the far greater part of whatever I have myself been able to do for the cause, for though from my boyhood I was a convinced adherent of it, on the ground of justice, it was she who taught me to understand the less obvious bearings of the subject, and its close connection with all the great moral and social interests of the cause. I am, dear madam, very sincerely yours,

J. S. MILL.

To Mrs. Paulina W. Davis.

Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, was introduced and made some very appropriate remarks:

He said he was no new convert to this idea of woman's right to suffrage. Woman claims the right to vote, not because she is a woman, and stronger or weaker than man, but because she is a citizen, amenable to the laws and under the control of the government. He did not propose to vote to simply give woman the franchise, but to remove the obstacles that now forbid the exercise of that right. He welcomed to this organization every earnest worker, and he was glad to hear that they were stirring up the elements. He had been waiting for the last two months for pet.i.tions, but he thought the franchise would never be secured to any cla.s.s until it was imbedded in the const.i.tution, and put beyond the freaks of politicians and majorities in State Legislatures. He was in favor of carrying the movement into the fundamental law of the land. The negro's hour is pa.s.sed, and it is woman's hour now. The negro has had his day, his cause has triumphed, and as woman is a citizen, and we need her ballot in the government, I hope that this movement may have a triumphant success.

Committees[128] were appointed. Mrs. Wright of Auburn, N. Y., stated that her sister, Lucretia Mott, had charged her with a message to the Convention, she sent her "G.o.d speed" to the movement, and regretted that she could not be present.

Paulina W. Davis read an interesting history of the woman's rights movement, giving a brief sketch of its leaders. Miss Anthony introduced a series of resolutions,[129] which were laid on the table for debate.

Mrs. M. GAGE, Secretary of the Suffrage a.s.sociation of New York, addressed the Convention. She thought the world had never yet seen what woman could do, because she had never been given the opportunity. The ballot is the symbol of a higher power than a king's crown; it is the promise of justice to him who holds it.

John Bright said no oppression, however h.o.a.ry headed, could stand the voice of the people.

Mrs. SUSAN EDSON, of Was.h.i.+ngton, desired to have the Committee on Resolutions urge upon Congress the pa.s.sage of the bill now before it, providing for the reorganization of the Treasury Department, but opposing that section of the bill which fixes the salary of the female employees lower than that of the men. She thought this was a proper subject for the convention to discuss.

At the evening session Mrs. Josephine S. Griffing occupied the chair.

Hon. JAMES M. SCOVILL, of New Jersey, said:--I believe in heroism. Grant won with the sword at Appomattox what Charles Sumner contended for half a century--an idea. That idea is the liberty of all, limited by the like liberty of each. To-night we are here to bow to conscience, not to caste. Susan B. Anthony, the heroine of the hour, sustained by such brave souls as crowd this platform, who for the last twenty years have worked without fear and without reproach, deserves the thanks of millions yet to be, for she is the hero, the champion of the same idea for which Abraham Lincoln and half a million soldiers died. The emanc.i.p.ation of man was the proposition. The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman was not the corollary to that proposition, but the major premise.

John Stuart Mill, in his great book, "The Subjection of Women,"

denies the superior mental capacity of man when compared with woman. The nineteenth century don't yield a blind a.s.sent to such bosh as Tennyson's, "Woman is the lesser man." It would not do for Madame de Stael to a.s.sert (for alas! it was too true then--for the first Napoleon never read Rochefort's "Ma.r.s.eillaise") that man could conquer, but woman must submit to public opinion. To-day Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Anna E.

d.i.c.kinson take public opinion by storm, because they use the everlasting logic of human rights. Woman has power enough whenever fidelity, or truth, or genius are wors.h.i.+ped. She wants authority. The will of the nation says, "She shall have it and that speedily." We want and demand that Congress shall make a loud "amen" to this clearly expressed will of the nation. The civil rights bill did little good until you armed the African with the ballot. Then the old master touched his hat to the new citizen--his old slave. And why? Because he was a power in the land. It is only G.o.dlike to use power for humanity; and that is the way we propose to use it. Congress must hear us--shall hear us--because we speak in the voice of the people. And I speak to you as a man, yes, and as a lawyer, when I tell you your boasted amendments are the small dust of the balance till the XVI. is written. Then we will have a country, never again clasping the Bible with the handcuffs of slavery, but a land where we, men and women alike, can wors.h.i.+p a common G.o.d, before whom there is neither Jew nor Greek, "white male" nor female, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free.

Mrs. WILBOUR remarked that she was fully aware of the truth that humanity was a unit. She knew the day was coming when a woman would be considered the equal of man. No disabilities to vote or hold office should exist in a free country on account of s.e.x or color. She was anxious to know by what authority the word "male"

had been placed in the const.i.tution, which governed woman as well as man. Woman's rights were natural rights--nothing more or less.