The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 31

I want the Committee on the Judiciary to tell the congress and the country whether they think it is good policy now to confer suffrage on all the colored women of the South, ignorant as they are known to be, and thus add to the ignorance that we are now struggling with, and whether the republic can be sustained upon such a basis as that. For that reason, and because I want that information from an unbiased committee, because I know that suffrage has been degraded sufficiently already, and because it would be degraded infinitely more if a report favorable to this extension of suffrage should be adopted and pa.s.sed through congress, I am opposed to this movement. No matter if there are a number of respectable ladies who are competent to vote and desire it to be done, because of the very fact that they cannot be allowed this privilege without giving all the ma.s.s of ignorant colored women in the country the right to vote, thus bringing in a ma.s.s of ignorance that would crush and degrade the suffrage of this country almost beyond conception, I shall vote to refer the subject to the Judiciary Committee, and I shall await their report with a good deal of anxiety.

Mr. MORGAN: Mr. President--

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The morning hour has expired, and the unfinished business is before the Senate.

DECEMBER 20, 1881.

Mr. h.o.a.r: I now call up the resolution for appointing a special committee on woman suffrage.

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The morning hour having expired, the senator from Ma.s.sachusetts calls up the resolution which was under consideration yesterday.

Mr. INGALLS: What is the regular order?

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: There is no regular unfinished business. The senator from Florida [Mr. Call] gave notice yesterday that he would ask the indulgence of the Senate to-day to consider the subject of homestead rights.

Mr. h.o.a.r: I hope this matter may be disposed of. It is very unpleasant to me to stand before the Senate in this way, taking up its time with this matter in a five minutes' debate every day in succession for an unlimited period of time. It is a matter which every senator understands. It has nothing to do with the merits of the woman suffrage question at all. It is a mere desire on the part of these people to have a particular form of hearing, which seems to me the most convenient for the Senate, and I hope the Senate will be willing to vote on the resolution and let it pa.s.s.

Mr. MORGAN: I have no objection to proceeding to the consideration of the resolution, but I desire to address the Senate upon it.

Mr. h.o.a.r: I think I must ask now as a favor of the senator from Alabama that he let the resolution be disposed of promptly.

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from Alabama states that he has no objection to the present consideration of the resolution, but he asks leave to make some remarks upon it. The Chair hearing no objection to the consideration of the resolution, it is before the Senate.

Mr. FARLEY: I object to the consideration of the resolution.

Mr. h.o.a.r: I move to take it up.

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from Ma.s.sachusetts calls it up as a matter of right. If a majority of the Senate agree to take up the resolution it is before the Senate, and the Chair will put the question. The question is on agreeing to the motion of the senator from Ma.s.sachusetts to proceed to the consideration of the resolution. [The motion was agreed to; and the Senate resumed the consideration of the resolution reported from the Committee on Rules by Mr. h.o.a.r on the 13th instant, which was read.]

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The pending question is on the motion of the senator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] to refer the subject to the Committee on the Judiciary, on which the yeas and nays have been ordered.

Mr. MORGAN: Mr. President, I stand in a different relation to this question from that of the senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck], who said yesterday that he had received a number of communications from very respectable ladies in his own State upon this very important subject, and yet felt constrained by a sense of duty to deny the action which they solicited at the hands of congress. I am not informed that any woman from Alabama has ever sent a pet.i.tion to the Senate, or to either house, upon this matter. Indeed, it is my impression that no pet.i.tions or letters have ever been addressed by any lady in the State of Alabama to either house of congress upon this question. It may be that that peculiar type of civilization which drives women from their homes to the ballot-box to seek redress and protection against their husbands has never yet reached the State of Alabama, and I shall not be disagreeably disappointed if it should never come upon our people, for they have lived in harmony and in prosperity now for many years. Besides the relief which the State has seen proper to give to married women in respect of their separate estates, we have not thought it wise or politic in any sense to go further and undertake to make a line of demarkation between the husband and wife as politicians. On the contrary, according to our estimate of a proper civilization, we look to the family relation as being the true foundation of our republican inst.i.tutions.

Strike out the family relation, disband the family, destroy the proper authority of the person at the head of the family, either the wife or the husband, and you take from popular government all legitimate foundation.

The measure which is now brought before the Senate of the United States is but the initial measure of a series which has been urged upon the attention of States and territories, and upon the attention of the Congress of the United States in various forms to draw a line of political demarkation through a man's household, through his fireside, and to open to the intrusion of politics and politicians that sacred circle of the family where no man should be permitted to intrude without the consent of both the heads of the family. What picture could be more disagreeable or more disgusting than to have a pot-house politician introduce himself into a gentleman's family, with his wife seated at one side of the fireplace and himself at the other, and this man coming between to urge arguments why the wife should oppose the policy that the husband advocates, or that the husband should oppose the policy that the wife advocates?

If this measure means anything it is a proposition that the Senate of the United States shall first vote to carry into effect this unjust and improper intrusion into the home circle. Suppose this resolution to raise a select committee should be pa.s.sed: that committee will have its hands full and its ears full of pet.i.tions and applications and speeches from strong-minded women, and of course it must make some report to the Senate; and we shall have this subject introduced in here as one that requires a peculiar application of the powers of the Senate for its digestion and for the completion of the bills and measures founded upon it. At the next session of congress this select committee will become a standing committee of the Senate, and then we shall have that which appears to be the most potential and at the same time the most dangerous element in politics to-day, agitation, agitation, agitation. It seems that the legislators of the United States Government are not to be allowed to pa.s.s in quiet judgment upon measures of this character, but like many other things which are addressing themselves to the attention of the people on this side of the water and the other, they must all be moved against the Senate and against the House by agitation. You raise your committee and allow the agitators to come before them, yea, more than that, you invite them to come; and what is the result? The Congress of the United States will for the next ten or perhaps twenty years be continually a.s.sailed for special and peculiar legislation in favor of the women of the land.

I do not understand that a woman in this country has any more right to a select committee than a man has. It would be just as rational and as proper in every legislative and parliamentary sense to have a select committee for the consideration of the rights of men as to have a committee for the consideration of the rights of women. I object, sir, to this disseverance between the s.e.xes, and I object to the Senate of the United States giving its sanction in advance or in any way to this character of legislation. It is a false principle, and it will work evil, and only evil, in this country.

What jurisdiction do you expect to exercise in the Senate of the United States for the benefit of the women in respect of suffrage or in respect of separate estates? Where are the boundaries of your jurisdiction? You find them in the territories and in the District of Columbia. If you expect to proceed into the States you must have the Const.i.tution of the United States amended so as to put our wives and our daughters upon the footing of those who are provided for in the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments. Your jurisdiction is limited to the territories and to the District of Columbia.

Inasmuch as this measure, I understand, has been made a party measure by the decree of a caucus, I propose to make some little inquiry into the past legislation of the Congress of the United States under Republican rule in respect of the extension of the right of suffrage to certain cla.s.ses of people in this country. I will take up first the territories.

Let us look for a moment at the result of woman suffrage in some of the territories. The territorial legislature of Utah has gone forward and conferred the right of suffrage upon women. The population in the last decade has reached from 64,000, I believe, to about 150,000. The territorial legislature of Utah conferred upon the females of that territory the right of suffrage, and how have they exercised that right? Sir, I am ashamed to say it, but it is known to the world that the power of Mormonism and polygamy in Utah territory is sustained by female suffrage. You cannot get rid of those laws. Ninety per cent. of the legislative power of Utah territory is Mormon and polygamous. If female suffrage is to be incorporated into the laws of our country with a view to the amelioration of our morals or our political sentiments, we stand aghast at the spectacle of what has been wrought by its exercise in the territory of Utah. There stands a power supporting the crime of polygamy through what they call a divine inspiration, or teaching from G.o.d, and all the power of the judges of the United States and of the Congress of the United States has been unavailing to break it down. Who have upheld it? Those who in the family circle represent one husband to fifteen women. A continual acc.u.mulation of the power of the church and of polygamy is going on, and when the Gentiles, as they are called, enter that territory with the view of breaking it up they are confronted by the women, who are allowed to vote, and from whom we should naturally expect a better and a higher morality in reference to subjects of the kind. But this only shows the power of man over woman. It only shows how through her tender affections, her delicate sensibilities, and her confiding spirit she can be made the very slave and bond-servant of man, and can scarcely ever be made an independent partic.i.p.ant in the stronger exercise of the powers which G.o.d seems to have intrusted to him. Never was there a picture more disgusting or more condemnatory of the extension of the franchise to women as contradistinguished from men than is presented in the territory of Utah to-day.

Where is the necessity of raising the number of voters in the United States from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000? That would be the direct effect of conferring suffrage upon the women, for they are at least one-half, if not a little more than one-half, of the entire population of the country above the age of twenty-one. We have now ma.s.ses of voters so enormous in numbers as that it seems to be almost beyond the power of the law to execute the purposes of the elective franchise with justice, with propriety, and without crime. How much would these difficulties and these intrinsic troubles be increased if we should raise the number of voters from 10,000,000 to 20,000,000 in the United States? That would be the direct and immediate effect of conferring the franchise upon the women. What would be the next effect of such an extension of the suffrage? It was described by my friend from Missouri [Mr. Vest] and by other senators who have spoken upon this subject. The effect would be to drive the ladies of the land, as they are termed, the well-bred and well-educated women, the women of nice sensibilities, within their home circle, there to remain, while the ruder of that s.e.x would thrust themselves out on the hustings and at the ballot-box, and fight their way to the polls through negroes and others who are not the best of company even at the polls, to say nothing of the disgrace of a.s.sociation with them. You would paralyze one-third at least of the women of this land by the very vulgarity of the overture made to them that they should go struggling to the polls in order to vote in common with the herd of men. They would not undertake it.

The most intelligent and trustworthy part of the suffrage thus placed upon the land would never be available, while that which was not worthy of respect either for its character or for its information would take the matter in hand and move along in the circle of politicians to cast their suffrages at the ballot-box.

As the States to be formed out of the territories are admitted into the Union, they will come stamped with the characteristics which the legislatures of the territories have imprinted upon them; and if after due consideration in those territories the men who have the regulation of public affairs should come to the conclusion that it was best to have woman suffrage, then we can allow them, under existing laws, to go on and perfect their systems and apply for admission into the Union with them as they may choose to adopt them and to shape them. The law upon that subject as it exists is liberal enough, for it gives to the legislatures the right to regulate the qualifications of suffrage. It leaves it to each local community, wherever it may be throughout the territories of the United States, to determine for itself what it may prefer to have.

Is it the object in the raising of this committee only that it shall have so many speeches made, so much talk about it, or is it to be the object of the committee to have legislation brought here? If you bring legislation here, what will you bring? An amendment to the const.i.tution like the fourteenth amendment, or else some provision obligatory upon the territories by which female suffrage shall be allowed there, whether the people want it or whether they do not? For my part, before this session of congress ends I intend to introduce a bill to repeal woman suffrage in the territory of Utah, knowing and believing that that will be the most effectual remedy for the extirpation of polygamy in that unfortunate territory. If you choose to repeal the laws of any territory conferring the right of suffrage upon women you have the power in congress to do it; but there are no measures introduced here and none advocated in that direction.

The whole drift of this movement is in the other direction. This committee is sought to be raised either for the accommodation of some senator who wants a chairmans.h.i.+p and a clerk, or it is sought to be raised for the purpose of encouraging a raid on the laws and traditions of this country, which I think would end in our total demoralization, I therefore oppose this measure in the beginning, and I expect to oppose it as far as it may go.

Now let us notice for a moment the case of the District of Columbia. There are some senators here who have given themselves a great deal of trouble in the advocacy of the right of suffrage of the people of the United States, and especially of the colored people. They put themselves to great trouble, and doubtless at some expense of feeling, to worry and beset and harry gentlemen who come from certain States of this Union, in reference to the votes of the negroes: and yet these very gentlemen have been either in this House or in the other when the Republican party has had a two-thirds majority of both branches and has deliberately taken from the people of the District of Columbia the right to elect any officer from a constable to a mayor, all because when the experiment was tried here it was found that the negroes were a little too strong. There was too much African suffrage in the ballot-box, and they must get rid of it, and to get rid of it on terms of equality they have disfranchised every man in the District of Columbia.

I shall have more faith in the sincerity of the declarations of gentlemen of their desire to have the women vote when I see that they have made some step toward the restoration of the right of suffrage to the people of the District of Columbia. While they let this blot remain upon our law, while they allow this d.a.m.ning conviction to stand, they may stare us in the face and accuse us continually of a want of candor and sincerity on this subject, but they will address their arguments to me in vain, even as coming from men who have an infatuation upon the subject. I do not believe a word of it, Mr. President.

I cannot be convinced against these facts that this new movement in favor of female suffrage means anything more than to add another patch to the worn-out garment of Republicanism, which they patched with Mahoneism in Virginia, with repudiation elsewhere, and which they now seek to patch further by putting on the delicate little silk covering of woman suffrage. I do not believe that this movement has its root and branch in any sincere desire to give to the women of this land the right of suffrage. I think it is a mere party movement with a view of attempting to draw into the reach of the Republican party some little support from the sympathy and interest they suppose the ladies will take in their cause if they should advocate it here. No bill, perhaps, is expected to be reported. The committee will sit and listen and profess to be charmed and enlightened and instructed by what may be said, and then the subject will be pa.s.sed by without any actual effort to secure the pa.s.sage of a bill.

Introduce your bills and let them go to the Judiciary Committee, where the rights of men are to be considered as well as the rights of women. If this subject is of that pressing national importance which senators seem to think it is, it is not to be supposed that the Committee on the Judiciary will fail to give it profound and early attention. When you bring a select committee forward under the circ.u.mstances under which this is to be raised, you must not expect us to give credit generally to the idea that the real purpose is to advance the cause of woman suffrage, but rather that the real purpose is to advance the cause of political domination in this country. I can see no reason for the raising of this select committee, unless it be to furnish some senator, as I have remarked, with a clerk and messenger. If that were the avowed reason or could even be intimated, I think I should be disposed to yield that courtesy to the senator, whoever he might be; but I cannot do it under the false pretext that the real object is to bring forward measures here for the introduction of woman suffrage into the District of Columbia, where we have no suffrage, or into the territories, where they have all the suffrage that the territorial legislatures see proper to give them. I therefore shall oppose the resolution.

Mr. BAYARD: I move the that Senate proceed to the consideration of executive business. [The motion was agreed to.]

JANUARY 9, 1882.

Mr. h.o.a.r: I now ask for the consideration of the resolution relating to a select committee on woman suffrage.

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: There being ten minutes left of the morning hour, the senator from Ma.s.sachusetts [Mr. h.o.a.r] asks for the consideration of the resolution relating to woman suffrage.

The pending question is on the motion of the senator from Delaware [Mr. Bayard] to refer the subject-matter to the Committee on the Judiciary, on which the yeas and nays have been ordered.

The princ.i.p.al legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Mr. BUTLER (when Mr. Pugh's name was called): I was requested by the senator from Alabama [Mr. Pugh] to announce his pair with the senator from New York [Mr. Miller].

The roll-call was concluded.

Mr. TELLER: On this question I am paired with the senator from Alabama [Mr. Morgan]. If the senator from Alabama were present, I should vote "nay."

Mr. MCPHERSON (after having voted in the affirmative): I rise to ask the privilege of withdrawing my vote. I am paired with my colleague [Mr. Sewell] on all political questions, and this seems to have taken a political shape.

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from New Jersey withdraws his vote.

The result was announced--yeas 27, nays 31. So the motion was not agreed to.

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The question recurs on the adoption of the resolution.

Mr. EDMUNDS: Let it be read for information. The secretary read the resolution.

Mr. EDMUNDS: "Shall" ought to be stricken out and "may" inserted, because the Senate ought always to have the power to refer any particular measure as it pleases.

Mr. h.o.a.r: I have no objection to that modification.

The PRESIDENT _pro tempore_: The senator from Ma.s.sachusetts accepts the suggestion of the senator from Vermont, and the word "may" will be subst.i.tuted for "shall."

Mr. HILL of Georgia: I wish to say that I have opposed all resolutions, whether originating on the other side of the chamber or on this side, appointing special committees. They are all wrong. They are not founded, in my judgment, on a correct principle. There is no necessity to raise a select committee for this business. The standing committees of the Senate are ample to do everything that it is proposed the select committee asked for shall do. The only result of appointing more special committees is to have just that many more clerks, just that much more expense, just that many more committee-rooms. This is not the first time I have opposed the raising of a select committee.