The History of Woman Suffrage Volume III Part 106

_Nays_--Messrs. Beck, Bowen, Gibson, Harsh, Laird, Miller, Moore, Morton, McDonald, Riden, Salisbury--11.

[459] It is a pleasure to record that both these gentlemen have reached the logical result of their former views, and now advocate giving the franchise to intelligence and patriotism regardless of the s.e.x of the possessor. Governor Saunders, in the capacity of United States Senator, cast a favorable ballot on measures in any manner referring to woman's civil rights, and in 1882 spoke on the platform of the National a.s.sociation, at its Was.h.i.+ngton convention.

[460] The legislature of 1875 repealed this law except so far as it referred to unmarried adult women and widows. In the legislature of 1881, Senator C. H. Gere introduced a bill revising the laws relating to schools. One of the provisions of the bill conferred the school ballot on women on the same terms as on men--viz: Any person having children of school age, or having paid taxes on personal property, or being a.s.sessed on real estate, within such a period, is ent.i.tled to vote at all elections pertaining to schools.

This, however, does not include the power to vote for State or county superintendents. The women of the State now vote so largely that it is no longer a matter of comment or record.

[461] The following named representatives voted "yea": Messrs.

Ahmanson, Cannon, Doone, Galey, Goodin, Hall, Jenkins, Kipp, Majors, Myers, Nims, Patterson, Porter, Quimby, Rhodes, Ryan, Wickham, Riordan, Roberts--19. Voting "nay": Messrs. Briggs, Beall, E. Clark, J. Clark, Dillon, Duby, Grenell, Hudson, Munn, Overton, Reed, Rosewater, Rouse, Schock, Shook, Sommerlad--16.

[462] Voting in the affirmative: Messrs. Gerrard, Hascall, Kennedy, Tucker, Tennant, and Mr. President--6. Voting in the negative: Messrs. Brown, Hawke, Hillon, Metz, Sheldon, and Thomas--6.

[463] Voting "yea": Messrs. Ballard, Boyd, Campbell, Ca.s.sell, Estabrook, Gibbs, Gray, Hascall, Kenaston, Kilburn, Kirkpatrick, Lake, Lyon, Majors, Mason, Manderson, Maxwell, Neligh, Newsome, Philpott, Price, Robinson, Stewart, Spiece, Shaff, Thomas, Tisdel, Towle, Wakeley, President Strickland--30. Voting "nay": Messrs.

Abbott, Eaton, Granger, Griggs, Moore, Myers, Parchin, Reynolds, Sprague, Stevenson, Hummel, Vifquain, Weaver--13.

[464] The gentlemen who advocated the measure most warmly, were among the ablest judges and jurists of the State. Of the opposition, Judge O. P. Mason experienced a change of heart, and ten years later appeared as a foremost advocate. General E.

Estabrook of Omaha lent all his influence to the amendment in the late canva.s.s, and Col. Philpott of Lincoln was also a warm advocate, often accompanying his zealous wife and other members of the effective and untiring Lincoln a.s.sociation to the school-house meetings held in all parts of Lancaster county. D. T. Moore was called out at a meeting in York in 1881, and came forward without hesitation, saying that he was in favor of woman suffrage. He related this incident: that on his return home from the convention of 1871, he found that his wife had been looking after his stock farm and attending to his business so that everything was in good order. He praised her highly, when she replied, "Yes, and while I was caring for your interests, you were voting against my rights."

The reply set him to thinking, and he thought himself over on the other side. A. J. Weaver opposed the clause in a very bitter speech. The friends of the amendment in 1881 were given to understand that Mr. Weaver was friendly, but to prevent the foreigners having that opinion, Mr. Weaver translated the record of his opposition into German, and distributed the papers among the German voters. Having been elected to congress, he was one of only three Republican members who voted against the standing committee on woman's claims. These facts cost him a great many votes at the time of his reelection in 1884, and are not yet forgotten.

[465] The debates of this convention were not reported for the economical reasons mentioned. The names of the honored fifteen are, Clinton Briggs, W. L. Dunlap, R. C. Eldridge, J. G. Ewan, C. H.

Frady, C. H. Gere, R. B. Harrington, D. P. Henry, C. F. Manderson, J. McPherson, M. B. Reese, S. M. Kirkpatrick, L. B. Thorne, A. M.

Walling, J. F. Zediker. Many of these were active friends of the amendment of 1881.

[466] The officers elected were: _President_, Harriet S. Brooks, Omaha; _Vice-President-at-Large_, Clara Bewick Colby, Beatrice; _Vice-Presidents_--First Judicial District, Mrs. B. J. Thomson, Hebron; Second, Mrs. E. L. Warner, Roca; Third, Mrs. A. P.

Nicholas, Omaha; Fourth, Mrs. J. S. Burns, Scribner; Fifth, Mrs. C.

C. Chapin, Riverton; Sixth, Mrs. D. B. Slaughter, Fullerton; _Recording Secretary_, Mrs. Ada M. Bittenbender, Osceola; _Corresponding Secretary_, Mrs. Gertrude McDowell, Fairbury; _Treasurer_, Mrs. L. Russell, Tec.u.mseh; _Executive Committee_, Rev.

M. J. DeLong, Tec.u.mseh; Mrs. Orpha C. Dinsmoor, Omaha; Mrs. J. C.

Roberts, David City; Mrs. C. B. Parker, Mrs. J. B. Finch, Lincoln; Mrs. E. M. Correll, Hebron; Mrs. J. H. Bowen, Hastings.

[467] Members voting in the affirmative were: Messrs. Abbott, Babc.o.c.k; Bailey, Baldwin, Bartlett, Broatch, Brown, Cantlin, Carman, Cook, Cole, Correll, Dailey, Dew, Dowty, Filley, Fried, Graham, Gray, Hall, Heac.o.c.k, Herman, Hostetter, Howe, Jackson of p.a.w.nee, Jensen, Johnson, Jones, Kaley, Kempton, Kyner, Linn, McClun, McDougall, McKinnon, Mickey, Moore of York, Montgomery, Palmer, Paxton, Ransom, Reed, Roberts, Root, Schick, Scott, Sill, Sloc.u.mb, Watts, Wilsey and Windham--51. Voting in the negative: Messrs. Bick, Bolln, Case, Franse, Frederick, Gates, Hollman, Jackson of Douglas, King, Lamb, Laughlin, McShane, Moore of Otoe, Mullen, Overton, Peterson, Putney, Sears, Wells, Whedon, Ziegler and Mr. Speaker--22.

[468] At this time the valuable information from Wyoming with which Nebraska was afterwards flooded; letters from Gov. Hoyt, editorials from leading papers of the territory, and testimony from every reputable source, had not been gathered; but two members of the House, J. H. Helm and Church Howe, had been residents of Wyoming, and these cheerfully gave their a.s.surance that only good had resulted from the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the women of Wyoming.

[469] Those voting in the affirmative were: Messrs. Baker, Burns (of Dodge), Burns (of York), c.o.o.n, Daily, Dinsmore, Doane, Evans, Gere, Graham, Harrington, Morse, Perkins, Pierce, Powers, Smith, Tefft, Turner, Van Wyck, Wells, Wherry and White--22. Those voting in the negative were: Messrs. Ballentine, Cady, Ervin, Howe, Myers, Taylor, Turk and Zehrung--8. Two of these names cannot stand in the roll of honor without an explanation; for twenty votes indicate the full strength of the bill. The irrelevance of opponents was ill.u.s.trated by Senators Morse and Pierce. The former in voting said, he had opposed the measure every step of the way, and now to be consistent he voted aye. Senator Pierce said he had been watching the other side of the capitol and nothing there seemed popular but whiskey and women, therefore, he voted aye!

[470] The speakers of this convention were Clara Bewick Colby, acting president; Mr. Sattler, who gave the welcome; Ada M.

Bittenbender, Esther L. Warner, Judge I. N. Taylor, Mrs. M. E.

Vandermark, Rev. Haywood and Professor Wood of Nebraska City College. The latter spoke in English in the afternoon, and in German, his native tongue, in the evening. The announcement that he would do so drew a large number of his countrymen. One of these was allowed the floor by request, when he soundly berated (in German) the women as opposed to foreigners, while at the same time he tried to weaken Professor Wood's argument by saying it was to be attributed to an American wife. It was reported that the marked contrast between the speakers was commented on by resident Germans greatly to the disadvantage of their fellow-townsman.

[471] The officers elected were: _President_, Ada M. Bittenbender; _Vice-President_, Clara Bewick Colby; _Secretary_, Belle G.

Bigelow; _Corresponding Secretary_, Gertrude M. McDowell; _Treasurer_, Lucinda Russell; _Executive Committee_, Harriet S.

Brooks, E. M. Correll, Susie n.o.ble Fifield, George B. Skinner, Rev.

John McNamara, Jennie F. Holmes; _Vice-Presidents of Judicial Districts_--First, Barbara J. Thompson; second, Dr. Ruth M. Wood; third, Orpha Clement Dinsmoor; fourth, Ada Van Pelt; fifth, Mrs. H.

S. Sydenham.

[472] Most of the speakers spent several weeks in the State. Mrs.

Helen M. Gougar, Mrs. May Wright Sewall, Mrs. Saxon, Mrs. Blake, Mrs. Harbert, Mrs. Shattuck, Mrs. Neyman, Miss Anthony, Miss Couzins and Miss Hindman were the princ.i.p.al National speakers, and their ability and zeal aroused the whole State. Mrs. Colby was indefatigable in her exertions from the moment the amendment was submitted to the end of the canva.s.s. Mrs. Colby and Miss Rachel Foster organized the whole campaign throughout the State, and kept all the speakers in motion.--[S. B. A.

[473] For further details of the closing scenes, see Vol. III. page 241.

[474] _Yeas_--Brown (Clay), Brown (Colfax), Butler, Canfield, Conklin, Dolan, Dunphy, Harrison, Heist, McShane, Norris, Patterson, Rogers, Sang, Schonheit, Sowers, Thatch and Walker--18.

Senator Butler voted with these for the purpose of being able to move a reconsideration. _Nays_--Bomgardner, Brown (Douglas), Conner, Dye, Filley and Reynolds--6. _Absent_--Barker, Brown (Lancaster), Case, Dech, Fisher, Harris, Kinkaid and Rich.

CHAPTER L.

KANSAS.

Effect of the Popular Vote on Woman Suffrage--Anna C.

Wait--Hannah Wilson--Miss Kate Stephens, Professor of Greek in State University--Lincoln Centre Society, 1879--The Press--The Lincoln _Beacon_--Election, 1880--Sarah A. Brown, Democratic Candidate--Fourth of July Celebration--Women Voting on the School Question--State Society, 1884--Helen M. Gougar--Clara Bewick Colby--Bertha H. Ellsworth--Radical Reform a.s.sociation--Mrs. A.

G. Lord--Prudence Crandall--Clarina Howard Nichols--Laws--Women in the Professions--Schools--Political Parties--Pet.i.tions to the Legislature--Col. F. G. Adams' Letter.

We closed the chapter on Kansas in Vol. II. with the submission and defeat of the woman suffrage amendment, leaving the advocates of the measure so depressed with the result that several years elapsed before any further attempts were made to reorganize their forces for the agitation of the question. This has been the experience of the friends in every State where the proposition has been submitted to a vote of the electors--alike in Michigan, Colorado, Nebraska and Oregon--offering so many arguments in favor of the enfranchis.e.m.e.nt of woman by a simple act of the legislature, where the real power of the people is primarily represented. We have so many instances on record of the exercise of this power by the legislatures of the several States in the regulation of the suffrage, that there can be no doubt that the sole responsibility in securing this right to the women of a State rests with the legislature, or with congress in pa.s.sing a sixteenth amendment that should override all State action in protecting the rights of United States citizens.

We are indebted to Anna C. Wait for most of the interesting facts of this chapter. She writes:

I watched with intense interest from my home in Ohio, the progress of the woman suffrage idea in Kansas in the campaign of 1867, and although temporary defeat was the result, yet the moral grandeur displayed by the people in seeking to make their const.i.tution an embodiment of the principle of American liberty, decided me to become a citizen of that young and beautiful State.

Gov. Harvey's message was at that time attracting much attention and varied comments by the press. For the benefit of those who have not studied the whole history of the cause, we give the following extracts from his message, published February 9, 1871:

The tendency of this age is towards a civil policy wherein political rights will not be affected by social or ethnological distinctions; and from the moral nature of mankind and the experience of States, we may infer that restrictions merely arbitrary and conventional, like those based upon color and s.e.x, cannot last much longer than they are desired, and cannot be removed much sooner than they should be. This consideration should give patience to the reformer, and resignation to the conservative.

Let us have a true republic--a "government of the people, by the people, for the people," and we shall hear no more the oligarchical cry of croaking conservatism calling for a "white man's government"--appealing by this, and like slogans of cla.s.s and caste to the lowest and meanest principles of human nature, dangerous alike to real republicanism and true democracy. Expediency, that great pretext for the infringement of human rights, no longer justifies us in the retention of a monopoly of political power in our own favored cla.s.s of "white male citizens."

In the summer of 1871, Mr. Wait and myself removed to Salina, where Mrs. Hannah Wilson resided. She was the only person in this section of Kansas I ever heard of doing any suffrage work between the years of 1867 and 1877. She was a woman of great force of character, and a strong advocate of suffrage. She was born in Hamilton county, Ohio, and came to Salina in 1870. After Miss Anthony lectured in that city in 1877, Mrs. Wilson circulated pet.i.tions to the legislature and to congress. She was also active and aggressive in the temperance cause. When she learned of the Lincoln _Beacon_, and its advocacy of woman suffrage, she wrote an article for the paper, and accompanied it with a kind letter and the price of a year's subscription. Mrs. Wilson was a Quaker, and in her dress and address strictly adhered to the peculiarites of that sect.

Miss Kate Stephens, professor of Greek in the Kansas State University, writes that she has made diligent search during the past summer among the libraries of Topeka and Lawrence for record of suffrage work since the campaign of 1867, and finds absolutely nothing, so that I am reduced to the necessity of writing, princ.i.p.ally, of our little efforts here in central Kansas. In the intensely interesting letters of Mesdames Helen Ekin Starrett, Susan E. Wattles, Dr. R. S. Tenney and Hon. J. P. Root, in Vol.

II., all written since 1880, I find no mention of any woman suffrage organizations. Mrs. Wattles, of Mound City, says: "My work has been very limited. I have only been able to circulate tracts and papers"; and she enumerates all the woman suffrage papers ever published in America, which she had taken and given away. A quiet, un.o.btrusive method of work, but one of the most effective; and doubtless to the sentiment created and fostered by this sowing of suffrage literature by Mrs. Wattles, is largely due the wonderful revival which has swept like one of our own prairie fires over south-eastern Kansas during the past year; a sentiment so strong as to need but "a live coal from off the altar" to kindle into a blaze of enthusiasm. This it received in the earnest eloquence of Mrs. Helen M. Gougar, who has twice visited that portion of the State. All these writers express their faith in a growing interest in the suffrage cause, and, some of them, the belief that if the question were again submitted to a vote of the people, it would carry.

In our State suffrage convention, June, 1884, among the demands which we resolved to make of our incoming legislature, was the submission of an amendment striking out the word "male" from the State const.i.tution. For myself, I entertained no hope that it would succeed further than as a means of agitation and education.

On reflection, I hope it will not be done. The women of Kansas have once been subjected to the humiliation of having their political disabilities perpetuated by the vote of the "rank and file" of our populace. While I believe the growth of popular opinion in favor of equality of rights for women has nowhere been more rapid than in Kansas, yet I do not lose sight of the fact that thousands of foreigners are each year added to the voting population, whose ballots in the aggregate defeat the will of our enlightened, American-born citizens. Besides, it is a too convenient way for a legislature to s.h.i.+rk its own responsibility.

If the demand is made, I hope it may be done in connection with that for munic.i.p.al and presidential suffrage.

The history of the woman suffrage organizations in Kansas since 1867, may be briefly told. The first owes its existence to one copy of the _National Citizen and Ballot-Box_ subscribed for by my husband, W. S. Wait, who by the merest chance heard Miss Anthony deliver her famous lecture, "Woman wants Bread, not the Ballot," in Salina, in November, 1877. The paper was religiously read by Mrs. Emily J. Biggs and myself; although we did not need conversion, both being radical in our ideas on this question, we had long felt the need of something being done which would fix public attention and provoke discussion. This was all we felt ourselves competent to do, and the knowledge that n.o.body else in our section of the country would do it, coupled with the inspiration of the _National Citizen_, culminated, in November 1879, in sending to the _Saline Valley Register_, George W.

Anderson, editor and proprietor, a notice for a meeting of women for the purpose of organizing a suffrage society. In response to the call, Mrs. Emily J. Biggs, Mrs. Sarah E. Lutes, and Mrs.

Wait, met November 11, 1879, at the house of A. T. Biggs, and organized the Lincoln Auxiliary of the National a.s.sociation. We elected a full corps of officers from among ladies whom we believed to be favorable, interviewed them for their approval, and sent a full report of the meeting to be published as a matter of news in the _Register_, which had given our call without comment. The editor had a few weeks previously bought the paper, and we were totally ignorant in regard to his position upon the question. We were not long left in doubt, for the fact that we had actually organized in a way which showed that we understood ourselves, and meant business, had the effect to elicit from his pen a scurrilous article, in which he called us "the three n.o.ble-hearted women," cla.s.sed us with "free-lovers," called us "monstrosities, neither men nor women," and more of the same sort. Of course, the effect of this upon the community was to array all true friends of the cause on our side, to bring the opposition, made bold by the champions.h.i.+p of such a gallant leader, to the front, and cause the faint-hearted to take to the fence. And here we had the discussion opened up in a manner which, had we foreseen, I fear our courage would have been inadequate to the demand. But not for one moment did we entertain a thought of retreating. Knowing that if we maintained silence, the enemy would consider us vanquished, I wrote an article for his paper, quoting largely from Walker's American Law, which he published; and Mrs. Biggs also furnished him an article in which she showed him up in a manner so ludicrous and sarcastic that he got rid of printing it by setting it up full of mistakes which he manufactured himself, and sending her the proof with the information that if he published it at all, it would be in that form. It appeared the following week, however, in the first number of _The Argus_, a Democratic paper, Ira C. Lutes, editor and proprietor, in which we at once secured a column for the use of our society. About a dozen ladies attended our second meeting, at which the following resolutions were unanimously adopted, all the ladies present being allowed to vote:

WHEREAS, The local newspaper is adjudged, by common consent, to be the exponent of the intelligence, refinement, and culture of a community, and, in a large degree, the educator of the rising generation; and

WHEREAS, In one issue of the Lincoln _Register_ there appears no fewer than forty-seven misspelled words, with numerous errors in grammatical construction and punctuation; also a scurrilous article headed "Woman vs. Man," in which the editor not only grossly misrepresents us, but a.s.sails the characters of all advocates of suffrage everywhere in a manner which shocks the moral sense of every true lady and gentleman in this community; therefore

_Resolved_, That this a.s.sociation present the editor of the _Register_ with a copy of some standard English spelling-book, and English Language Lessons, for his especial use.

_Resolved_, That as he has been so kind as to offer his advice to us, unsolicited, we reciprocate the favor by admonis.h.i.+ng him to confine himself to facts in future, and to remember that the people of Lincoln are capable of appreciating truth and common decency.

_Resolved_, That a copy of these resolutions be furnished the editor of the Lincoln _Register_, with the books above named.