I remember, Mrs. Minor (turning to that lady), how we discussed these questions in those early years. We weren"t sleepy in our talk as we were being cut off inch by inch from the protection of the Const.i.tution. I remember how Mrs. Stanton said in a public address: "If you continue to deny to women the protection of this amendment, you will finally come to the point when it will cease to protect even black men," and we have lived to see that day.
The address on The Coming s.e.x by Mrs. Eliza Archard Connor, a well-known journalist of New York, was declared by the press to be in its delivery "the gem of the convention." She said in part:
It is my conviction that women are the natural orators of the race. They have keener sympathies and quicker intuitions than men. They have a gift of language that not even their worst enemies will deny, and these are just the qualities which go to make the orator.... The time is coming when we shall need all our eloquence, all our intellectual power and all our love. The day is approaching when men will come with ballots in their hands, begging women to use them....
Wherever you go, wake women up, tell them to learn everything.
Tell them to study with all their might history, civil government, political economy, social and industrial science--for the time is coming when they will need them all....
This is the work before us. This is the meaning of the desperate unrest and unhappiness of women. It is this that has drawn us here to enter our protest against the wicked, old, one-legged order of things. Our honored Miss Anthony has gone through fire and hail while she worked for her convictions. All of us have wrought as best we might for the higher education of women, for their pecuniary independence, for their civil and political rights, fighting the world, the flesh and the devil.
My own work has been in the field of journalism. For nearly twenty years I have faced here every form of disability because I am a woman, have met defeat after defeat, till the iron has entered my soul. Yet every day I have thanked G.o.d that I have been permitted to bear my share in the tremendous struggle for the development of women in the nineteenth century. Struggle means development; it can come in no other way, and this will be the grandest since creation began--the crowned, perfected woman.
For this the cry of womanhood has risen out of the depths through the centuries. Up through agony and despair it has come, through sin and shame, through poverty and martyrdom, through torture which has wrung drops of blood from woman"s lips, still up, up, till it has reached the great white throne itself.
The enrollment committee reported a list of about one hundred thousand names of persons asking for woman suffrage. The treasurer announced the receipts for 1888 to be $12,510. All of the expenses of the great International Council had been paid and a balance of nearly $300 remained.
The resolutions might be described as an epitomized recital of wrongs and a Bill of Rights.
WHEREAS, Women possessed and exercised the right of suffrage in the inauguration of this Government; and,
WHEREAS, They were deprived of this right by the arbitrary Acts of successive State Legislatures in violation of the original compact as seen in the early const.i.tutions; therefore,
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of the several States to make prompt rest.i.tution of these ancient rights, recognized by innumerable precedents in English history, and to-day by the gradual extension of the suffrage over vast territories.
WHEREAS, Woman"s t.i.tle deed to an equal share in the inheritance left her by the fathers of the Republic has been examined and proved by able lawyers; and,
WHEREAS, This right is already exercised in some form in one hundred localities in different parts of the world; therefore,
_Resolved_, That s.e.x is no longer considered a bar to the exercise of suffrage by civilized nations.
_Resolved_, That it is the duty of Congress to pa.s.s a declaratory act, compelling the several States to establish a "republican form of government" within their borders by securing to women their right to vote, thus nullifying the fraudulent Acts of Legislatures and making our Government h.o.m.ogeneous from Maine to Oregon.
_Resolved_, That the question of enfranchising one-half the people is superior to that of Indian treaties, admission of new States, tariff, international copyright or any other subject before the country, and that it is the foremost duty of the Fiftieth Congress at this, its last session, to submit an amendment to the Const.i.tution forbidding States to disfranchise citizens on account of s.e.x.
_Resolved_, That as a question of ethics the difference between putting a fraudulent ballot in the box and keeping a rightful ballot out is nothing, and that we condemn the action which prevents women from casting a ballot at any election as a shameful evidence of the corruption of dominant political parties in this country.
WHEREAS, The Legislature of Washington Territory has twice voted for woman suffrage--women for the most part having gladly accepted and exercised the right, Governor Squire in his report to the Secretary of the Interior in 1884 having declared that it met the approval of a large majority of the people; and,
WHEREAS, In 1887, after the women had voted for three and a half years, the Territorial Supreme Court p.r.o.nounced the law invalid on the ground that the nature of the bill must be described in the t.i.tle of the act; and,
WHEREAS, In January, 1888, another bill pa.s.sed by the Legislature gave to this law an explicit t.i.tle; and the bill, again granting suffrage to women, was signed by Governor Semple, thus triumphantly showing the approval of the people, the Legislature and the Governor; and,
WHEREAS, The Territorial Supreme Court, in August, 1888, again rendered a decision against the right of the women of the Territory to vote, basing their decision upon the false a.s.sumption that Congress had never delegated to the Territories the right to define the status of their own voters; and,
WHEREAS, This decision strikes a blow at the fundamental powers of the United States Congress, confounding laws delegated to the Territories by the Organic Act of 1852, which vests in their Legislatures the power to prescribe their qualifications for voting and holding office--with State governments which limit legislative enactments by const.i.tutions of their own making--thus setting at naught the will of the people; therefore,
_Resolved_, That we earnestly and respectfully pet.i.tion Congress that in pa.s.sing an enabling act or acts for the admission of the other Territories there be incorporated a clause allowing women to vote for delegates to their const.i.tutional conventions, and at the election for the adoption of the const.i.tution, in every one where the Legislature has granted woman suffrage and such law has not been repealed by a subsequent Legislature.
WHEREAS, In the year 1873 our leader, Susan B. Anthony, was deprived of the right of trial by jury, by a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, simply because she was a woman, it is the duty of all women to resent the insult thus offered to womanhood and demand of the men of this closing century of const.i.tutional government such condemnation of this infamous decision of Judge Ward Hunt[74] as shall teach the coming generation of voters that the welfare of the republic demands that women be protected equally with men in the exercise of citizenship; and,
WHEREAS, In the great Centennial Celebration of 1876 women were denied all partic.i.p.ation in the public proceedings commemorating the birth of the Declaration of Independence, though they sought earnestly and respectfully to declare their sentiments of loyalty to the great principles of liberty and responsibility there enunciated, they should now demand official recognition by Congress and the State Legislature on all the Boards of Commissioners which, at the public expense, are to initiate and carry out the august ceremonials of the coming Const.i.tutional Celebration in New York in April, 1889, to the end that taxation without representation shall no longer be acknowledged a just and const.i.tutional policy in this government nominally of the _people_, therefore,
_Resolved_, That a committee be appointed by the National W. S.
A. to memorialize Congress on this subject, and to take such other action as shall bring before the enlightened manhood of our country their duty of chivalry no less than justice in this important matter.[75]
WHEREAS, The question of woman"s enfranchis.e.m.e.nt is fundamental and of paramount importance; therefore,
_Resolved_, That, while the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation welcomes and claims the support of persons of all parties and beliefs, it desires to strongly rea.s.sert the position which it has held of being nonpartisan.
A hearing was granted by the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage the morning of January 24. Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Minor, Mrs. Duniway, Mrs.
Johns, the Rev. Olympia Brown, the Rev. Miss Shaw and Miss Alice Stone Blackwell were introduced to the committee by Miss Anthony, and each from a different standpoint presented the arguments for the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women.
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 enfranchis.e.m.e.nt 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 ign.o.ble 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 const.i.tutional 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 (Ma.s.s.) 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 surpa.s.sed 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.
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 a.s.sociation, 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 pa.s.sed 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.