History of Woman Suffrage Volume II Part 35

I appeal again to my honorable friend, the Chairman of the Committee. He has made the land ring with his cry of universal suffrage and universal amnesty. Suffrage and amnesty to whom? To those who sought to smother the government in the blood of its n.o.blest citizens, to those who ruined the happy homes and broke the faithful hearts of which I spoke. Sir, I am not condemning his cry. I am not opposing his policy. I have no more thirst for vengeance than he, and quite as anxiously as my honorable friend do I wish to see the harvests of peace waving over the battle-fields. But, sir, here is a New York mother, who trained her son in fidelity to G.o.d and to his country. When that country called, they answered. Mother and son gave, each after his kind, their whole service to defend her. By the sad fate of war the boy is thrown into the ghastly den at Andersonville. Mad with thirst, he crawls in the pitiless sun toward a muddy pool. He reaches the dead-line, and is shot by the guard--murdered for fidelity to his country. "I demand amnesty for that guard, I demand that he shall vote," cries the honorable Chairman of the Committee. I do not say that it is an unwise demand. But I ask him, I ask you, sir, I ask every honorable and patriotic man in this State, upon what conceivable ground of justice, expediency, or common sense shall we give the ballot to the New York boy's murderer and refuse it to his mother?

Mr. Chairman, I have thus stated what I conceive to be the essential reasonableness of the amendment which I have offered.

It is not good for man to be alone. United with woman in the creation of human society, their rights and interests in its government are identical, nor can the highest and truest development of society be reasonably conceived, so long as one s.e.x a.s.sumes to prescribe limits to the scope and functions of the other. The test of civilization is the position of women. Where they are wholly slaves, man is wholly barbarous; and the measure of progress from barbarism to civilization is the recognition of their equal right with man to an unconstrained development.

Therefore, when Mr. Mill unrolls his pet.i.tion in Parliament to secure the political equality of women, it bears the names of those English men and women whose thoughts foretell the course of civilization. The measure which the report of the Committee declares to be radically revolutionary and perilous to the very functions of s.e.x, is described by the most sagacious of living political philosophers as reasonable, conservative, necessary, and inevitable; and he obtains for it seventy-three votes in the same House in which out of about the same whole number of voters Charles James Fox, the idol of the British Whigs, used to be able to rally only forty votes against the policy of Pitt. The dawn in England will soon be day here. Before the American principle of equal rights, barrier after barrier in the path of human progress falls. If we are still far from its full comprehension and further from perfect conformity to its law, it is in that only like the spirit of Christianity, to whose full glory even Christendom but slowly approaches. From the heat and tumult of our politics we can still lift our eyes to the eternal light of that principle; can see that the usurpation of s.e.x is the last form of caste that lingers in our society; that in America the most humane thinker is the most practical man, and the organizer of justice the most sagacious statesman.

Mr. Gould, of Columbia, followed with a long speech in opposition, and the discussion[104] continued through several days; but Mr.

Curtis's amendment, in the Committee of the Whole, received 24 ayes against 63 nays; and on the final vote in the Convention, 19 ayes[105]

against 125 nays.

Mr. Greeley, seemingly to atone for the disappointment of the women of the State in his adverse report, published the following editorial in _The Tribune_ of July 26th, 1867:

WOMEN IN POLITICS.

The Const.i.tutional Convention of our State, yesterday, negatived--yeas 19, nays 125--the proposition that women should share with men the duties and responsibilities of voters at elections. This decision was preceded by an earnest, protracted discussion, in which the right and expediency of extending the elective franchise to women were most eloquently urged by George William Curtis, and less elaborately by several others. The judgment p.r.o.nounced yesterday by the Convention must therefore be regarded as final.

We do not, however, regard it as a verdict against a partic.i.p.ation in public affairs by women. On the contrary, we hold that woman's influence not only is, but should be felt in legislation and government, and must increase in power as the race becomes more enlightened and humane. We only insist that she shall speak and be heard distinctly as woman, not mingled and confused with man. To make women voters at our elections as now held, and eligible to office in compet.i.tion with men, would be far better calculated to corrupt woman than to reform man and purify politics. To have women mingle freely with men in primary meetings, caucuses, nominating conventions, investigating committees, juries, etc., etc., is not in our judgment calculated to elevate woman more than to reform existing abuses in legislation and practical politics. We should greatly prefer a system like this:

Let the women of our State, after due discussion and consultation, hold a convention composed of delegates from the several counties, equal in number to the members of a.s.sembly. To this Convention let none but women be admitted, whether as officers or spectators. Let this convention, keeping its debates wholly private, decide what department of legislative government may be safely a.s.signed and set apart to woman. We would suggest all that relates to the family; marriage, divorce, separation from bed and board, the control and maintenance of children, education, the property rights of married women, inheritance, dower, etc., etc., as subjects that could wisely and safely be set apart to be legislated upon by woman alone. And we believe that if she (not a few women, but the s.e.x) shall ever suggest and require such an apportionment of legislative powers and duties, man will cheerfully concede it.

"But would you have woman hold elections like ours"? No! we would not! We would have her teach us how to take the sense of the electors far more quietly and cheaply. When a department of legislation shall be a.s.signed to woman, we would have her collect through school-district, or kindred organizations, the names of all female citizens who possess the qualifications, other than of s.e.x, required from male voters at our elections. These being duly, lucidly registered, let, then, women in each a.s.sembly district be designated to collect the votes of its women. Let them simply advertise the address to which votes should be sent and appoint a week wherein to collect them. Now, let every female citizen write her ballot and enclose it, signing her name to the address indicated; and due time having been allowed for votes to arrive by mail or otherwise, let the votes be duly canva.s.sed, and the result ascertained and declared, and certificates of election issued accordingly.

Under this plan, the invalid, the bed-ridden, the bereaved, and even the absent, could vote as well as others, and the cost of holding an election throughout the State need not reach $10,000.

Such are the outlines of our views regarding woman in politics.

They are doubtless susceptible of improvement; but we think not by effacing in politics the natural and time-honored distinctions between women and men. A female legislature, a jury of women, we could abide; a legislature of men and women, a jury promiscuously drawn from the s.e.xes we do not believe in.

The New York _Independent_ published the following criticism on Mr.

Greeley's report a few days after its publication:

CONSt.i.tUTIONAL CONVENTION.

BY ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

Your committee does not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to woman. However defensible in theory, we are satisfied that public sentiment does not demand, and would not sustain, an innovation so revolutionary and sweeping; so openly at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the s.e.xes as venerable as the Government itself, and involving transformations so radical in social and domestic life. Should we prove to be in error on this head, the Convention may overrule us by changing a few words in the first section of our proposed article.

In the above extract from the majority report of the Committee on Suffrage we have substantially four reasons why the committee did not recommend an extension of the elective franchise to women.

1st. Public sentiment does not demand it.

2d. It would be an innovation revolutionary and sweeping.

3d. It is at war with a distribution of duties and functions between the s.e.xes.

4th. The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of women would disturb relations as venerable as government itself, and radically change our domestic life.

Shades of Jeremy Bentham and Sidney Smith forgive! After publis.h.i.+ng to the world that immortal oration of Noodledom, and refuting for all time such fallacies as the above, how amazing that Radical Republicans in the capital of the Empire State should repeat in the ears of the nineteenth century stale plat.i.tudes from the effete civilizations of the Old World--that to their starving wives and mothers, knocking at the door of the political citadel, instead of bread and the ballot, they should give stones and twenty years more of degradation in disfranchis.e.m.e.nt. But if it be true that public sentiment is not prepared for this just and beneficent measure, then it is the duty of our leaders, instead of stereotyping the ignorant prejudices of the people into statutes and const.i.tutions, to educate this public sentiment, by the utterance of sound ideas, by the example of honest action. When G.o.d gives new truths to the few, it is that they may win the response of the many. There is no blunder more constantly made by politicians than the a.s.sumption that the people are never ready for an onward step.

The people were ready for emanc.i.p.ation so long before the Government declared it that, when it did come, the measure called forth but little enthusiasm. It is not so much the will of the people that troubles the politician as the safety of the party in power. This committee denies the ballot to woman, and gives it to the black man, for the same reason--party success; not because they think public sentiment is ready for either, for in their uncertainty they dare not submit the question of the black man separately to a vote of the people. "But the measure is so revolutionary and sweeping." When we abjured King George, and declared all men equal, we inaugurated a very revolutionary measure, undermined kingdoms and empires, deranged the political, commercial, and social interests of two continents, and upset innumerable family relations, by crowding husbands and fathers into untimely graves. Had the Honorable Suffrage Committee been in Boston Harbor, they would have objected to throwing the tea overboard as too revolutionary a measure; they would have scouted Jefferson's radical declaration as absurd, in view of the royal facts on every throne in Europe, and the divine command, "Honor the king." After revolutionizing, as we have just done, the entire system of labor at the South, the social and political status of a race, and in pressing a measure for which public sentiment seemed unprepared, deluging the land in blood, how futile is such reasoning as the above in the mouths of those who inaugurated this second revolution.

Again, "The enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman is at war with the distribution of duties and functions between the s.e.xes." The plea of tyrants in all ages. Says the English peer, "I'll make laws and govern; let the peasant till the earth and provide the sinews of war." Says the proud slaveholder, "I'll read and write and think; let the negro hoe the sugar, rice, and corn." Says the New York Suffrage Committee, "We will do the voting; let women pay the taxes. We will be judges, jurors, sheriffs; and give woman the right to be hung on the gallows." Napoleon once said to Madame de Stael, "Why will you women meddle with politics?"

"Sire," she replied, "if you will hang us, we must ask the reason why."

The functions of the s.e.xes! What particular function does it require to vote? In the discussion on this point, we hear of property, education, morality, sanity; yet "white males" vote without these, and women possessing all are denied the right.

While different men have different duties, different functions, different spheres, ranging from the heights of Parna.s.sus to the bowels of the earth, why legislate all women into a nutsh.e.l.l?

Because a man is a father, must he needs be nothing else? Are lawyers, merchants, tailors, cobblers, bootblacks less skilled in their specialties because they vote? Because some women are mothers, shall all women concentrate every thought in that direction? and can those who are mothers be nothing else? Have not those who are training up sons and daughters an interest beyond the home, in the great outer world, where they are soon to act their part? If women should vote one day in the year, must every duty and function of their being be subordinated to that one act during the whole 365?

Many men, possessing the right of suffrage, never exercise it: many more use it indifferently once a year, or sell it to the highest bidder; and on what principle does the theory rest, that if woman had this right, she would desert husband, child, and home, and reserve all her love and care, her smiles and enthusiasm, for the ballot-box? No; woman's love for man is not based on the statutes of the State, nor the maternal instinct on the second article of the Const.i.tution. Whatever distribution of duties and functions are fixed by nature we need no legislation to enforce. So long as the fact of motherhood does not release woman from taxation, and the necessity of earning her own bread, it should not deprive her of that right most needed for her protection. If the 40,000 drunkards' wives in this State have the necessary functions to provide food, clothes, and shelter for worthless husbands and helpless children, they have the necessary functions to go to the polls and vote for such social and sanitary laws as shall end the vice of intemperance.

"But," says the Committee, "this measure would disturb relations as venerable as government itself."

So said objectors twenty years ago in this State when woman was first secured in her rights of property. Some of our must distinguished lawyers prophesied a social convulsion on the adoption of that measure. But it came without earthquake or tornado. In a single hour, by a stroke of the pen, the women of the Empire State were crowned property-holders. But only those who had felt the iron teeth of the law took note of the onward legislation. It was a mighty wave on the sh.o.r.es of progress, that made scarce a ripple on the surface, was.h.i.+ng the feet of the lonely traveler on the sand, though unheeded by the mult.i.tude on the bosom of its waters.

The ballot in the hand of woman will bring neither the millennium nor pandemonium the next day; but it will surely right many wrongs. It will open to her the colleges, the professions, the profitable and honorable walks of life, and give her better wages for her work. In securing to woman self-respect, independence and power, we shall purify and exalt our social relations. Helpless and dependent, woman must ever be the victim of society. "Give a man a right over my subsistence," says Alexander Hamilton, "and he has a right over my whole moral being."

February 13, 1868, Mr. Graves offered a resolution: "That the article on suffrage be recommitted to be revised, by striking out the word 'male' after the word 'every' in the first line of Section 1, Article II."

Mr. GRAVES said: In offering this resolution I am not unmindful of the opinion that has been expressed in this Convention on the question. Yet, sir, I see a willingness expressed on all sides, to extend the suffrage to the black man at the South and the equally ignorant foreigner, alike without education, without knowledge of our laws and Const.i.tution, incapable of appreciating the genius of republican inst.i.tutions, and who, neither by manner, by effort, by example, by influence, can do aught to promote the best interests of this Government.

If this const.i.tution as it now is shall be approved by the people, you allow the black men of the South, fresh from the chains of slavery, to go to the ballot-box and vote on all the great questions involving the interests of this nation, while you deny the same right to educated, patriotic women--our own wives and mothers, who are educating our children, who give tone and character to society, and who are first and foremost in all moral movements.

You deny them the right to select officers who are to discharge the duties of government, and, worse still, a voice in the laws they are compelled to obey. Yes, sir, you say to the drunken husband who spends his time in whisky saloons, who goes reeling home at night to abuse his wife and children, that he is fit to vote on the interests of the family and the town, while you deny that right to the clear-headed, industrious wife, who feeds, clothes and shelters the worthless husband and educates the half-orphaned children.

What a travesty on common sense and justice is such legislation!

I know there are men in this Convention shaking in their boots for fear their mothers, wives, and daughters shall have equal power with themselves; cowardly men without gallantry, who fear that woman's voice in legislation might end some of the pet vices of society--might be more potent than their own.

Mr. SEAVER rose to a point of order, and asked, "Who are the men shaking in their boots?"

Mr. GRAVES retorted, "Wounded birds will flutter."

Mr. VEDDER wanted the gentleman's words recorded.

Mr. GRAVES: I was about to say that educated women should be permitted to go to the ballot-box, and by their votes help to maintain our form of government. Why is it that every father in this country is educating his daughter as well as his son in all branches of science? Why does he expend his money in preparing his daughter for the most responsible positions, and then deny her the right to exercise her powers in the most intricate and exalted of sciences--that of government? I know it is said that the right of suffrage conferred on woman would destroy all domestic peace; which is to say a man can not tolerate an equal at his fireside. Does domestic peace exist in the exact ratio of a woman's inferiority to the man she calls her husband? The intelligent, educated wife must exert an influence for good over the husband. The wise, far-seeing, self-disciplined mother must exert an influence for good over her children; why, then, may not this influence be equally potent in the State?

The resolution was lost.

The struggle in New York ended, all thoughts were turned towards Kansas, where, as already shown, the friends of woman suffrage were doomed to another disappointment. However, the year was one of active effort; tracts and pet.i.tions were diligently circulated; a thorough campaign made in Kansas; a series of meetings held in all the chief cities from Leavenworth to New York, and a newspaper established, demanding far more time and money than its founders antic.i.p.ated. Thus the intervening months were fully occupied until the May Anniversaries, when all religious and reformatory a.s.sociations were accustomed to hold their annual meetings in New York city.

EQUAL RIGHTS ANNIVERSARY.

The American Equal Rights a.s.sociation held its annual meeting in Cooper Inst.i.tute, New York, May 14, 1868. Its officers[106], with but few changes, were the same as before.

The HUTCHINSON FAMILY, the branch of John, was present, and with their sister, Abby Hutchinson Patten, opened the meeting with their song, "We Come to Greet You." Lucy Stone read a letter from John Stuart Mill, expressing sympathy with the movement. Letters were also read from Rev. Robert Collyer of Chicago, Maria Giddings, the daughter of Hon. Joshua R. Giddings, of Ohio, Frances Dana Gage, and several others. Miss Anthony invited all delegates of Equal Rights Societies to seats on the platform; she also moved that Mrs. Rose, Mrs. Stanton, Mr. Burleigh and Mr.

Foster be a committee to prepare resolutions.

HENRY B. BLACKWELL reported the success of the campaign of the women of this Society in Kansas, where Rev. Olympia Brown, Lucy Stone, Mrs. Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had canva.s.sed. Their eloquence and determination gave great promise of success; but in an inopportune moment, Horace Greeley and others saw fit in the Const.i.tutional Convention to report unfavorably on the proposition to extend suffrage to the women of the Empire State, and that influenced the sentiment of the younger Western States, and their enterprise was crushed. Even the Republicans in Kansas, after witnessing this example, set their faces against the extension of suffrage to women. The negroes got but a few more votes than did the women.

LUCY STONE gave a resume of the progress of the cause in this country and in England. Col. Higginson and Mrs. Rose made excellent remarks. "Keep the ball rolling" was gracefully rendered by Mrs. Abby Hutchinson Patton, the whole audience joining in the chorus. Mrs. Stone presented two forms of pet.i.tion to Congress; one to extend suffrage to women in the District of Columbia and the Territories, the other for the submission of a proposition for a 16th Amendment to prohibit the States from disfranchising citizens on account of s.e.x. Frederick Dougla.s.s made an acceptable speech in favor of the pet.i.tions. The President announced that Mrs. Patten headed the subscription list to aid the a.s.sociation in its work for the coming year with $50.

Miss Anthony presented the various tracts published by the Society, and _The Revolution_, urging the friends of the cause to aid in the circulation of the paper, as it was the only one owned and edited by women, wholly devoted to the cause of Equal Rights.