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2 PISTOLS IN ACTION -
SUSAN B. ANTHONY & ELIZABETH CADY
STANTON
On Women's Right to Vote
Go here for more about
Susan B. Anthony.
Go here for more about
Susan B. Anthony's speech on women's
right to vote.
It follows the full text transcript of
Susan B. Anthony's speech On Women's Right to
Vote, delivered at various locations in the state of New
York - 1873.
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Friends and
Fellow-citizens: |
I stand before you
to-night, under indictment for the alleged crime
of having voted at the last Presidential
election, without having a lawful right to vote.
It shall be my work this evening to prove to you
that in thus voting, I not only committed no
crime, but, instead, simply exercised my
citizen's right, guaranteed to me and all United
States citizens by the National Constitution,
beyond the power of any State to deny.
Our democratic-republican government is based on
the idea of the natural right of every
individual member thereof to a voice and a vote
in making and executing the laws. We assert the
province of government to be to secure the
people in the enjoyment of their unalienable
rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that
governments can give rights. Before governments
were organized, no one denies that each
individual possessed the right to protect his
own life. liberty and property. And when 100 or
1,000,000 people enter into a free government,
they do not barter away their natural rights;
they simply pledge themselves to protect each
other in the enjoyment of them, through
prescribed judicial and legislative tribunals.
They agree to abandon the methods of brute force
in the adjustment of their differences, and
adopt those of civilization.
Nor can you find a word in any of the grand
documents left us by the fathers that assumes
for government the power to create or to confer
rights. The Declaration of Independence, the
United States Constitution, the constitutions of
the several states and the organic laws of the
territories, all alike propose to protect the
people in the exercise of their God-given
rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow
rights.
"All men are created equal, and endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness. That to secure these, governments are
instituted among men, deriving their just powers
from the consent of the governed."
Here is no shadow of government authority over
rights, nor exclusion of any from their full and
equal enjoyment. Here is pronounced the right of
all men, and "consequently," as the Quaker
preacher said, "of all women," to a voice in the
government. And here, in this very first
paragraph of the declaration, is the assertion
of the natural right of all to the ballot; for,
how can "the consent of the governed" be given,
if the right to vote be denied. Again:
"That whenever any form of government becomes
destructive of these ends, it is the right of
the people to alter or abolish it, and to
institute a new government, laying its
foundations on such principles, and organizing
its powers in such forms as to them shall seem
most likely to effect their safety and
happiness."
Surely, the right of the whole people to vote is
here clearly implied. For however destructive in
their happiness this government might become, a
disfranchised class could neither alter nor
abolish it, nor institute a new one, except by
the old brute force method of insurrection and
rebellion. One-half of the people of this nation
to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the
statute books an unjust law, or to write there a
new and a just one. The women, dissatisfied as
they are with this form of government, that
enforces taxation without representation,-that
compels them to obey laws to which they have
never given their consent, -that imprisons and
hangs them without a trial by a jury of their
peers, that robs them, in marriage, of the
custody of their own persons, wages and
children,-are this half of the people left
wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct
violation of the spirit and letter of the
declarations of the framers of this government,
every one of which was based on the immutable
principle of equal rights to all. By those
declarations, kings, priests, popes,
aristocrats, were all alike dethroned, and
placed on a common level politically, with the
lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, me,
as such, were deprived of their divine right to
rule, and placed on a political level with
women. By the practice of those declarations all
class and caste distinction will be abolished;
and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman, all
alike, bound from their subject position to the
proud platform of equality.
The preamble of the federal constitution says:
"We, the people of the United States, in order
to form a more perfect union, establish justice,
insure domestic tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general welfare and
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and
our posterity, do ordain and established this
constitution for the United States of America."
It was we, the people, not we, the white male
citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens; but we,
the whole people, who formed this Union. And we
formed it, not to give the blessings or liberty,
but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves
and the half of our posterity, but to the whole
people-women as well as men. And it is downright
mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of
the blessings of liberty while they are denied
the use of the only means of securing them
provided by this democratic-republican
government-the ballot.
The early journals of Congress show that when
the committee reported to that body the original
articles of confederation, the very first
article which became the subject of discussion
was that respecting equality of suffrage.
Article 4th said: "The better to secure and
perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse
between the people of the different States of
this Union, the free inhabitants of each of the
States, (paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from
justice excepted,) shall be entitled to all the
privileges and immunities of the free citizens
of the several States."
Thus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see
the necessity of the universal application of
the great principle of equal rights to all-in
order to produce the desired result-a harmonious
union and a homogeneous people.
Luther Martin, attorney-general of Maryland, in
his report to the Legislature of that State of
the convention that framed the United States
Constitution, said:
"Those who advocated the equality of suffrage
took the matter up on the original principles of
government: that the reason why each individual
man in forming a State government should have an
equal vote, is because each individual, before
he enters into government, is equally free and
equally independent."
James Madison said, "Under every view of the
subject, it seems indispensable that the mass of
the citizens should not be without a voice in
making the laws which they are to obey, and in
choosing the magistrate who are to administer
them." Also, "Let it be remembered, finally,
that it has ever been the pride and the boast of
America that the rights for which she contended
were the rights of human nature."
And these assertions of the framers of the
United States Constitution of the equal and
natural rights of all the people to a voice in
the government, have been affirmed and
reaffirmed by the leading statesmen of the
nation, throughout the entire history of our
government.
Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said in 1866:
"I have made up my mind that elective franchise
is one of the inalienable rights meant to be
secured by the declaration of independence."
B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri, in the three day's
discussion in the United States Senate in 1866,
on Senator Cowan's motion to strike "male" from
the District of Columbia suffrage bill, said:
"Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the
American Senate, I stand for universal suffrage;
and as a matter of fundamental principle, do not
recognize the right of society to limit on any
ground of race or sex. I will go farther and
say, that I recognize the right of franchise as
being intrinsically a natural right. I do not
believe that society is authorized to impose any
limitation upon it that do not spring out of the
necessities of the social state itself. Sir, I
have been shocked, in the course of this debate,
to hear Senators declare this right only a
conventional and political arrangement, a
privilege yielded to you and me and others; not
a right in any sense, only a concession! Mr.
President, I do not hold my liberties by any
such tenure. On the contrary, I believe that
whenever you establish that doctrine, whenever
you crystallize that idea in the public mind of
this country, you ring the death-knell of
American liberties."
Charles Sumner, in his brave protests against
the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments,
insisted that, so soon as by the thirteenth
amendment the slaves became free men, the
original powers of the United States
Constitution guaranteed to them equal rights-the
right to vote and to be voted for. In closing
one of his great speeches he said;
"I do not hesitate to say that when the slaves
of our country became citizens they took their
place in the body politic as a component part of
the people, entitled to equal rights, and under
the protection of these two guardian principles:
First-That all just government stand on the
consent of the governed; and second, that
taxation without representation is tyranny; and
these rights it is the duty of Congress to
guarantee as essential to the ideal of a
Republic."
The preamble of the Constitution of the State of
New York declares the same purpose. It says:
"We, the people of the State of New York,
grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in
order to secure its blessings, do establish this
Constitution."
Here is not the slightest intimation either of
receiving freedom from the United States
Constitution, or of the State conferring the
blessings of liberty upon the people; and the
same is true of every one of the thirty-six
State Constitutions. Each and all, alike declare
rights God-given, and that to secure the people
in the enjoyment of their inalienable rights, is
their one and only object in ordaining and
establishing government. And all of the State
Constitutions are equally emphatic in their
recognition of the ballot as the means of
securing the people in the enjoyment of these
rights.
Article 1 of the New York State Constitution
says: "No member of this State shall be
disfranchised or deprived of the rights or
privileges secured to any citizen thereof,
unless by the law of the land, or the judgment
of his peers."
And so carefully guarded is the citizen's right
to vote, that the Constitution makes special
mention of all who may be excluded. It says:
"Laws may be passed excluding from the right of
suffrage all persons who have been or may be
convicted of bribery, larceny or any infamous
crime."
In naming the various employments that shall not
affect the residence of voters-the 3d section of
article 2d says "that being kept at any alms
house, or other asylum, at public expense, nor
being confined at any public prison, shall
deprive a person of his residence," and hence
his vote. Thus is the right of voting most
sacredly hedged about. The only seeming
permission in the New York State Constitution
for the disfranchisement of women is in section
1st of article 2d, which says: "Every male
citizen of the age of twenty-one years, c.,
shall be entitled to vote."
But I submit that in view of the explicit
assertions of the equal right of the whole
people, both in the preamble and previous
article of the constitution, this omission of
the adjective "female" in the second, should not
be construed into a denial; but, instead,
counted as of no effect. Mark the direct
prohibition: "No member of this State shall be
disfranchised, unless by the law of the land, or
the judgment of his peers." "The law of the
land," is the United States Constitution: and
there is no provision in that document that can
be fairly construed into a permission to the
States to deprive any class of their citizens of
their right to vote. Hence New York can get no
power from that source to disfranchise one
entire half of her members. Nor has "the
judgment of their peers" been pronounced against
women exercising their right to vote; no
disfranchised person is allowed to be judge or
juror- and none but disfranchised persons can be
women's peers; nor has the legislature passed
laws excluding them on account of idiocy of
lunacy; nor yet the courts convicted them of
bribery, larceny, or any infamous crime.
Clearly, then, there is no constitutional ground
for the exclusion of women from the ballot-box
in the State of New York, No barriers whatever
stand to-day between women and the exercise of
their right to vote save those of precedent and
prejudice.
The clauses of the United States Constitution,
cited by our opponents as giving power to the
States to disfranchise any classes of citizens
they shall please, are contained in sections 2d
and 4th of article 1st. The second says: "The
House of Representatives shall be composed of
members chosen every second year by the people
of the several States; and the electors in each
State shall have the qualifications requisite
for electors of the most numerous branch of the
State Legislature."
This cannot be construed into a concession to
the States of the power to destroy the right to
become an elector, but simply to prescribe what
shall be the qualification, such as competency
of intellect, maturity of age, length of
residence, that shall be deemed necessary to
enable them to make an intelligent choice of
candidates. If, as our opponents assert, the
last clause of this section makes it the duty of
the United States to protect citizens in the
several States against higher or different
qualifications for electors for representatives
in Congress, than for members of Assembly, them
must the first clause make it equally imperative
for the national government to interfere with
the States, and forbid them from arbitrarily
cutting off the right of one-half of the people
to become electors altogether. Section 4th says:
"The time, places and manner of holding
elections for Senators and Representatives shall
be prescribed in each State by the Legislative
thereof; but Congress may at any time, by law,
make or alter such regulations, except as to the
places by choosing Senators."
Here is conceded the power only to prescribed
times, places and manner of holding the
elections; and even with these Congress may
interfere, with all excepting the mere place of
choosing Senators. Thus you see, there is not
the slightest permission in either section for
the States to discriminate against the right of
any class of citizens to vote. Surely, to
regulate cannot be to annihilate! nor to qualify
to wholly deprive. And to this principle every
true Democrat and Republican said amen, when
applied to black men by Senator Sumner in his
great speeches for EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL from 1865
to 1869; and when, in 1871, I asked that Senator
to declare the power of the United States
Constitution to protect women in their right to
vote-as he had done for black men-he handed me a
copy of all his speeches during that
reconstruction period, and said:
"Miss Anthony, put sex where I have race or
color, and you have here the best and strongest
argument I can make for woman. There is not a
doubt but women have the constitutional right to
vote, and I will never vote for a sixteenth
amendment to guarantee it to them. I voted for
both the fourteenth and fifteenth under protest;
would never have done it but for the pressing
emergency of that hour; would have insisted that
the power of the original Constitution to
protect all citizens in the equal enjoyment of
their rights should have been vindicated through
the courts. But the newly made freedmen had
neither the intelligence, wealth nor time to
wait that slow process. Women possess all these
in an eminent degree, and I insist that they
shall appeal to the courts, and through them
establish the power of our American magna charta,
to protect every citizen of the Republic. But,
friends, when in accordance with Senator
Sumner's counsel, I went to the ballot-box, last
November, and exercised my citizen's right to
vote, the courts did not wait for me to appeal
to them-they appealed to me, and indicted me on
the charge of having voted illegally.
Senator Sumner, putting sex where he did color,
said:
"Qualifications cannot be in their nature
permanent or insurmountable. Sex cannot be a
qualification any more than size, race, color,
or previous condition of servitude. A permanent
or insurmountable qualification is equivalent to
a de-privation of the suffrage. In other words,
it is the tyranny of taxation without
representation, against which our revolutionary
mothers, as well as fathers, rebelled."
For any State to make sex a qualification that
must ever result in the disfranchisement of one
entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of
attainder, or an ex post facto law, and is
therefore a violation of the supreme law of the
land. By it, the blessings of liberty are
forever withheld from women and their female
posterity. To them, this government has no just
powers derived from the consent of the governed.
To them this government is not a democracy. It
is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy;
a hateful oligarchy of sex. The most hateful
aristocracy ever established on the face of the
globe. An oligarchy of wealth, where the rich
govern the poor; an oligarchy of learning, where
the educated govern the ignorant; or even an
oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the
African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of
sex, which makes father, brothers, husband,
sons, the oligarchs over the mother and sisters,
the wife and daughters of every household; which
ordains all men sovereigns, all women subjects,
carries dissension, discord and rebellion into
every home of the nation. And this most odious
aristocracy exists, too, in the face of Section
4, of Article 4, which says: "The United States
shall guarantee to every State in the Union a
republican form of government."
What, I ask you, is the distinctive difference
between the inhabitants of a monarchical and
those of a republican form of government, save
that in the monarchical the people are subjects,
helpless, powerless, bound to obey laws made by
superiors-while in the republican, the people
are citizens, individual sovereigns, all clothed
with equal power, to make and unmake both their
laws and law makers, and the moment you deprive
a person of his right to a voice in the
government, you degrade him from the status of a
citizen of the republic, to that of a subject,
and it matters very little to him whether his
monarch be an individual tyrant, as is the Czar
of Russia, or a 15,000,000 headed monster, as
here in the United States; he is a powerless
subject, serf or slave; not a free and
independent citizen in any sense.
But is urged, the use of the masculine pronouns
he, his and him, in all the constitutions and
laws, is proof that only men were meant to be
included in their provisions. If you insist on
this version of the letter of the law, we shall
insist that you be consistent, and accept the
other horn of the dilemma, which would compel
you to exempt women from taxation for the
support of the government, and from penalties
for the violation of laws.
A year and a half ago I was at Walla, Walla,
Washington Territory. I saw there a theatrical
company, called the "Pixley Sisters," playing
before crowded houses, every night of the whole
week of the territorial fair. The eldest of
those three fatherless girls was scarce
eighteen. Yet every night a United States
officer stretched out his long fingers, and
clutched six dollars of the proceeds of the
exhibition of those orphan girls, who, but a few
years before, were half starvelings in the
streets of Olympia, the capital of the far-off
northwest territory. So the poor widow, who
keeps a boarding house, manufacturers shirts, or
sells apples and peanuts on the street corners
of our cities, is compelled to pay taxes from
her scanty pittance. I would that the women of
this republic, at once, resolve, never again to
submit of taxation, until their right to vote be
recognized. Amen.
Miss Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass., twenty
years ago, took this position. For several
years, the officers of the law disdained her
property, and sold it to meet the necessary
amount; still she persisted, and would not yield
an iota, though every foot of her lands should
be struck off under the hammer. And now, for
several years, the assessor has left her name
off the tax list, and the collector passed her
by without a call.
Mrs. J. S. Weeden, of Viroqua, Wis., for the
past six years, has refused to pay her taxes,
though the annual assessment is $75.
Mrs. Ellen Van Valkenburg, of Santa Cruz, Cal.,
who sued the County Clerk for refusing to
register her name, declares she will never pay
another dollar of tax until allowed to vote; and
all over the country, women property holders are
waking up to the injustice of taxation without
representation, and ere long will refuse, en
masse, to submit to the imposition.
There is no she, or her, or hers, in the tax
laws.
The statute of New York reads:
"Every person shall be assessed in the town or
ward where he resides when the assessment is
made, or the lands owned by him." "Every
collector shall call at least once on the person
taxed, or at his usual place of residence, and
shall demand payment of the taxes charged on
him. If any one shall refuse to pay the tax
imposed on him, the collector shall levy the
same by distress and sale of his property"
The same is true of all the criminal laws: "No
person shall be compelled to be a witness
against himself. "
The same with the law of May 31st, 1870, the
19th section of which I am charged with having
violated; not only are all the pronouns in it
masculine, but everybody knows that that
particular section was intended expressly to
hinder the rebels from voting. It reads "If any
person shall knowingly vote without his having a
lawful right," c. Precisely so with all the
papers served on me-the U.S. Marshal's warrant,
the bail-bond, the petition for habeas corpus,
the bill of indictment-not one of them had a
feminine pronoun printed in it; but, to make
them applicable to me, the Clerk of the Court
made a little carat at the left of "he" and
placed an "s" over it, thus making she out of
he. Then the letters "is" were scratched out,
the little carat under and "er" over, to make
her out of his, and I insist if government
officials may thus manipulate the pronouns to
tax, fine, imprison and hang women, women may
take the same liberty with them to secure to
themselves their right to a voice in the
government.
So long as any classes of men were denied their
right to vote, the government made a show of
consistency, by exempting them from taxation.
When a property qualification of $250 was
required of black men in New York, they were not
compelled to pay taxes, so long as they were
content to report themselves worth less than
that sum; but the moment the black man died, and
his property fell to his widow or daughter, the
black woman's name would be put on the
assessor's list, and she be compelled to pay
taxes on the same property exempted to her
husband. The same is true of ministers in New
York. So long as the minister lives, he is
exempted from taxation on $1,500 of property,
but the moment the breath goes out of his body,
his widow's name will go down on the assessor's
list, and she will have to pay taxes on the
$1,500. So much for the special legislation in
favor of women.
In all the penalties and burdens of the
government, (except the military,) women are
reckoned as citizens, equally with men. Also, in
all privileges and immunities, save those of the
jury box and ballot box, the two fundamental
privileges on which rest all the others. The
United States government not only taxes, fines,
imprisons and hangs women, but it allows them to
pre-empt lands, register ships, and take out
passport and naturalization papers. Not only
does the law permit single women and widows to
the right of naturalization, but Section 2 says:
"A married woman may be naturalized without the
concurrence of her husband." (I wonder the
fathers were not afraid of creating discord in
the families of foreigners); and again: "When an
alien, having complied with the law, and
declared his intention to become a citizen, dies
before he is actually naturalized, his widow and
children shall be considered citizens, entitled
to all rights and privileges as such, on taking
the required oath." If a foreign born woman by
becoming a naturalized citizen, is entitled to
all the rights and privileges of citizenship, is
not a native born woman, by her national
citizenship, possessed of equal rights and
privileges?
The question of the masculine pronouns, yes and
nouns, too, has been settled by the United
States Supreme Court, in the Case of Silver
versus Ladd, December, 1868, in a decision as to
whether a woman was entitled to lands, under the
Oregon donation law of 1850. Elizabeth Cruthers,
a widow, settled upon a claim, received patents.
She died, and her son was heir. He died. Then
Messrs. Ladd Nott took possession, under the
general pre-emption law, December, 1861. The
administrator, E. P. Silver, applied for a writ
of ejectment at the land office in Oregon City.
Both the Register and Receiver decided that an
unmarried woman could not hold land under that
law. The Commissioner of the General Land
Office, at Washington, and the Secretary of the
Interior, also gave adverse opinions. Here
patents were issued to Ladd Nott, and duly
recorded. Then a suit was brought to set aside
Ladd's patent, and it was carried through all
the State Courts and the Supreme Court of
Oregon, each, in turn, giving adverse decisions.
At last, in the United States Supreme Court,
Associate Justice Miller reversed the decisions
of all the lower tribunals, and ordered the land
back to the heirs of Mrs. Cruthers. The Court
said:
"In construing a benevolent statute of the
government, made for the benefit of its own
citizens, inviting and encouraging them to
settle on its distant public lands, the words a
single man, and unmarried man may, especially if
aided by the context and other parts of the
statute, be taken in a generic sense. Held,
accordingly, that the Fourth Section of the Act
of Congress, of September 27th, 1850, granting
by way of donation, lands in Oregon Territory,
to every white settler or occupant, American
half-breed Indians included, embraced within the
term single man an unmarried woman."
And the attorney, who carried this question to
its final success, is now the United States
senator elect from Oregon, Hon. J. H. Mitchell,
in whom the cause of equal rights to women has
an added power on the floor of the United States
Senate.
Though the words persons, people, inhabitants,
electors, citizens, are all used
indiscriminately in the national and state
constitutions, there was always a conflict of
opinion, prior to the war, as to whether they
were synonymous terms, as for instance:
"No person shall be a representative who shall
not have been seven years a citizen, and who
shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of
that state in which he is chosen. No person
shall be a senator who shall not have been a
citizen of the United States, and an inhabitant
of that state in which he is chosen."
But, whatever there was for a doubt, under the
old regime, the adoption of the fourteenth
amendment settled that question forever, in its
first sentence: "All persons born or naturalized
in the United States and subject to the
jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United
States and of the state wherein they reside."
And the second settles the equal status of all
persons-all citizens:
"No states shall make or enforce any law which
shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens; nor shall any state deprive any person
of life, liberty or property, without due
process of law, nor deny to any person within
its jurisdiction the equal protection of the
laws."
The only question left to be settled, now, is:
Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of
our opponents will have the hardihood to say
they are not. Being persons, then, women are
citizens, and no state has a right to make any
new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall
abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence,
every discrimination against women in the
constitutions and laws of the several states, is
to-day null and void, precisely as is every one
against negroes.
Is the right to vote one of the privileges or
immunities of citizens? I think the
disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state
prisoners will agree with me, that it is not
only one of the them, but the one without which
all the others are nothing. Seek the first
kingdom of the ballot, and all things else shall
be given thee, is the political injunction.
Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define
citizen to be a person, in the United States,
entitled to vote and hold office.
Prior to the adoption of the thirteenth
amendment, by which slavery was forever
abolished, and black men transformed from
property to persons, the judicial opinions of
the country had always been in harmony with
these definitions. To be a person was to be a
citizen, and to be a citizen was to be a voter.
Associate Justice Washington, in defining the
privileges and immunities of the citizen, more
than fifty years ago, said: "they included all
such privileges as were fundamental in their
nature. And among them is the right to exercise
the elective franchise, and to hold office."
Even the "Dred Scott" decision, pronounced by
the abolitionists and republicans infamous,
because it virtually declared "black men had no
rights white men were bound to respect," gave
this true and logical conclusion, that to be one
of the people was to be a citizen and a voter.
Chief Judge Daniels said:
"There is not, it is believed, to be found in
the theories of writers on government, or in any
actual experiment heretofore tried, an
exposition of the term citizen, which has not
been considered as conferring the actual
possession and enjoyment of the perfect right of
acquisition and enjoyment of an entire equality
of privileges, civil and political."
Associate Justice Taney said:
"The words people of the United States, and
citizens, are synonymous terms, and mean the
same thing. They both describe the political
body, who, according to our republican
institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold
the power and conduct the government, through
their representatives. They are what we
familiarly call the sovereign people, and every
citizen is one of this people, and a constituent
member of this sovereignty."
Thus does Judge Taney's decision, which was such
a terrible ban to the black man, while he was a
slave, now, that he is a person, no longer
property, pronounce him a citizen possessed of
an entire equality of privileges, civil and
political. And not only the black man, but the
black woman, and all women as well.
And it was not until after the abolition of
slavery, by which the negroes became free men,
hence citizens, that the United States Attorney,
General Bates, rendered a contrary opinion. He
said:
"The constitution uses the word citizen only to
express the political quality, (not equality
mark,) of the individual in his relation to the
nation; to declare that he is a member of the
body politic, and bound to it by the reciprocal
obligations of allegiance on the one side, and
protection on the other. The phrase, a citizen
of the United States, without addition or
qualification, means neither more nor less than
a member of the nation."
Then, to be a citizen of this republic, is no
more than to be a subject of an empire. You and
I, and all true and patriotic citizens must
repudiate this base conclusion. We all know that
American citizenship, without addition or
qualification, means the possession of equal
rights, civil and political. We all know that
the crowing glory of every citizen of the United
States is, that he can either give or withhold
his vote from every law and every legislator
under the government.
Did "I am Roman citizen," mean nothing more than
that I am a "member" of the body politic of the
republic of Rome, bound to it by the reciprocal
obligations of allegiance on the one side, and
protection on the other? Ridiculously absurd
question, you say. When you, young man, shall
travel abroad, among the monarchies of the old
world, and there proudly boast yourself an
"American citizen," will you thereby declare
yourself neither more nor less than a "member"
of the American nation?
And this opinion of Attorney General Bates, that
a black citizen was not a voter, made merely to
suit the political exigency of the republican
party, in that transition hour between
emancipation and enfranchisement, was no less
in-famous, in spirit or purpose, than was the
decision of Judge Taney, that a black man was
not one of the people, rendered in the interest
and the behest of the old democratic party, in
its darkest hour of subjection to the slave
power. Nevertheless, all of the adverse
arguments, adverse congressional reports and
judicial opinions, thus far, have been based on
this purely partisan, time-serving opinion of
General Bates, that the normal condition of the
citizen of the United States is that of
disfranchisement. That only such classes of
citizens as have had special legislative
guarantee have a legal right to vote.
And if this decision of Attorney General Bates
was infamous, as against black men, but
yesterday plantation slaves, what shall we
pronounce upon Judge Bingham, in the house of
Representatives, and Carpenter, in the Senate of
the United States, for citing it against the
women of the entire nation, vast numbers of whom
are the peers of those honorable gentlemen,
themselves, in moral!! intellect, culture,
wealth, family-paying taxes on large estates,
and contributing equally with them and their
sex, in every direction, to the growth,
prosperity and well-being of the republic? And
what shall be said of the judicial opinions of
Judges Carter, Jameson, McKay and Sharswood, all
based upon this aristocratic, monarchial idea,
of the right of one class to govern another?
I am proud to mention the names of the two
United States Judges who have given opinions
honorable to our republican idea, and honorable
to themselves-Judge Howe, of Wyoming Territory,
and Judge Underwood, of Virginia.
The former gave it as his opinion a year ago,
when the Legislature seemed likely to revoke the
law enfranchising the women of that territory,
that, in case they succeeded, the women would
still possess the right to vote under the
fourteenth amendment.
Judge Underwood, of Virginia, in nothing the
recent decision of Judge Carter, of the Supreme
Court of the District of Columbia to women the
right to vote, under the fourteenth and
fifteenth amendment, says;
"If the people of the United States, by
amendment of their constitution, could expunge,
without any explanatory or assisting
legislation, an adjective of five letters from
all state and local constitutions, and thereby
raise millions of our most ignorant
fellow-citizens to all of the rights and
privileges of electors, why should not the same
people, by the same amendment, expunge an
adjective of four letters from the same state
and local constitutions, and thereby raise other
millions of more educated and better informed
citizens to equal rights and privileges, without
explanatory or assisting legislation?"
If the fourteenth amendment does not secure to
all citizens the right to vote, for what purpose
was the grand old charter of the fathers
lumbered with its unwieldy proportions? The
republican party, and Judges Howard and Bingham,
who drafted the document, pretended it was to do
something for black men; and if that something
was not to secure them in their right to vote
and hold office, what could it have been? For,
by the thirteenth amendment, black men had
become people, and hence were entitled to all
the privileges and immunities of the government,
precisely as were the women of the country, and
foreign men not naturalized. According to
Associate Justice Washington, they already had
the
"Protection of the government, the enjoyment of
life and liberty, with the right to acquire and
possess property of every kind, and to pursue
and obtain happiness and safety, subject to such
restraints as the government may justly
prescribe for the general welfare of the whole;
the right of a citizen of one state to pass
through or to reside in any other state for the
purpose of trade, agriculture, professional
pursuit, or otherwise; to claim the benefit of
the writ of habeas corpus, to institute and
maintain actions of any kind in the courts of
the state; to take, hold, and dispose of
property, either real or personal, and an
exemption from higher taxes or impositions than
are paid by the other citizens of the state."
Thus, you see, those newly freed men were in
possession of every possible right, privilege
and immunity of the government, except that of
suffrage, and hence, needed no constitutional
amendment for any other purpose. What right, I
ask you, has the Irishman the day after he
receives his naturalization papers that he did
not possess the day before, save the right to
vote and hold office? And the Chinamen, now
crowding our Pacific coast, are in precisely the
same position. What privilege or immunity has
California or Oregon the constitutional right to
deny them, save that of the ballot? Clearly,
then if the fourteenth amendment was not to
secure to black men their right to vote, it did
nothing for them, since they possessed
everything else before. But, if it was meant to
be a prohibition of the states, to deny or
abridge their right to vote-which I fully
believe-then it did the same for all persons,
white women included, born or naturalized in the
United States; for the amendment does not say
all male persons of African descent, but all
persons are citizens.
The second section is simply a threat to punish
the states, by reducing their representation on
the floor of Congress, should they disfranchise
any of their male citizens, on account of color,
and does not allow of the inference that the
states may disfranchise from any, or all other
causes, nor in any wise weaken or invalidate the
universal guarantee of the first section. What
rule of law or logic would allow the conclusion,
that the prohibition of a crime to one person,
on severe pains and penalties, was a sanction of
that crime to any and all other persons save
that one?
But, however much the doctors of the law may
disagree, as to whether people and citizens, in
the original constitution, were once and the
same, or whether the privileges and immunities
in the fourteenth amendment include the right of
suffrage, the question of the citizen's right to
vote is settled forever by the fifteenth
amendment. "The citizen's right to vote shall
not be denied by the United States, nor any
state thereof; on account of race, color, or
previous condition of servitude." How can the
state deny or abridge the right of the citizen,
if the citizen does not possess it? There is no
escape from the conclusion, that to vote is the
citizen's right, and the specifications of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude can,
in no way, impair the force of the emphatic
assertion, that the citizen's right to vote
shall not be denied or abridged.
The political strategy of the second section of
the fourteenth amendment, failing to coerce the
rebel states into enfranchising their negroes,
and the necessities of the republican party
demanding their votes throughout the South, to
ensure the re-election of Grant in 1872, that
party was compelled to place this positive
prohibition of the fifteenth amendment upon the
United States and all the states thereof.
If we once establish he false principle, that
United States citizenship does not carry with it
the right to vote in every state in this Union,
there is no end to the petty freaks and cunning
devices, that will be resorted to, to exclude
one and another class of citizens from the right
of suffrage.
It will not always be men combining to
disfranchise all women; native born men
combining to abridge the rights of all
naturalized citizens, as in Rhode Island. It
will not always be the rich and educated who may
combine to cut off the poor and ignorant; but we
may live to see the poor, hardworking,
uncultivated day laborers, foreign and native
born, learning the power of the ballot and their
vast majority of numbers, combine and amend
state constitutions so as to disfranchise the
Vanderbilts and A. T Stewarts, the Conklings and
Fentons. It is poor rule that won't work more
ways than one. Establish this precedent, admit
the right to deny suffrage to the states, and
there is no power to foresee the confusion,
discord and disruption that may await us. There
is, and can be, but one safe principle of
government-equal rights to all. And any and
every discrimination against any class, whether
on account of color, race, nativity, sex,
property, culture, can but embitter and
disaffect that class, and thereby endanger the
safety of the whole people.
Clearly, then, the national government must not
only define the rights of citizens, but it must
stretch out its powerful hand and protect them
in every state in this Union.
But if you will insist that the fifteenth
amendment's emphatic interdiction against
robbing United States citizens of their right to
vote, "on account of race, color, or previous
condition of servitude," is a recognition of the
right, either of the United States, or any
state, to rob citizens of that right, for any or
all other reason, I will prove to you that the
class of citizens for which I now plead, and to
which I belong, may be, and sure, by all the
principles of our government, and many of the
laws of the states, included under the term
"previous condition of servitude."
First.-The married women and their legal status.
What is servitude? "The condition of a slave."
What is a slave? "A person who is robbed of the
proceeds of his labor; a person who is subject
to the will of another."
By the law of Georgia, South Carolina, and all
the states of the South, the negro had no right
to the custody and control of his person. He
belonged to his master. If he was disobedient,
the master had the right to use correction. If
the negro didn't like the correction, and
attempted to run away, the master had a right to
use coercion to bring him back.
By the law of every state in this Union to-day,
North as well as South, the married woman has no
right to the custody and control of her person.
The wife belongs to her husband; and if the
refuses obedience to his will, he may use
moderate correction, and if she doesn't like his
moderate correction, and attempts to leave his
"bed and board," the husband may use moderate
coercion to bring her back. The little word
"moderate," you see, is the saving clause for
the wife, and would doubtless be overstepped
should offended husband administer his
correction with the "cat-o'-nine-tails," or
accomplish his coercion with blood-hounds.
Again, the slave had no right to the earnings of
his hands, they belonged to his master; no right
to the custody of his children, they belonged to
his master; no right to sue or be sued, or
testify in the courts. If he committed a crime,
it was the master who must sue or be sued.
In many of the states there has been special
legislation, giving to married women the right
to property inherited, or received by bequest,
or earned by the pursuit of any avocation
outside of the home; also, giving her the right
to sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such
separate property; but not a single state of
this Union has eve secured the wife in the
enjoyment of her right to the joint ownership of
the joint earnings of the marriage
copartnership. And since, in the nature of
things, the vast majority of married women never
earn a dollar, by work outside of their
families, nor inherit a dollar from their
fathers, it follows that from the day of their
marriage to the day of the death of their
husbands, not one of them ever has a dollar,
except it shall please her husband to let her
have it.
In some of the states, also, there have been
laws passed giving to the mother a joint right
with the father in the guardianship of the
children. But twenty years ago, when our woman's
rights movement commenced, by the laws of the
State of New York, and all the states, the
father had the sole custody and control of the
children. No matter if he were a brutal, drunken
libertine, he had the legal right, without the
mother's consent, to apprentice her sons to rum
sellers, or her daughters to brothel keepers. He
could even will away an unborn child, to some
other person than the mother. And in many of the
states the law still prevails, and the mothers
are still utterly powerless under the common
law.
I doubt if there is, to-day, a State in this
Union where a married woman can sue or be sued
for slander of character, and until quite
recently there was not one in which she could
sue or be sued for injury of person. However
damaging to the wife's reputation any slander
may be, she is wholly powerless to institute
legal proceedings against her accuser, unless
her husband shall join with her; and how often
have we hard of the husband conspiring with some
outside barbarian to blast the good name of his
wife? A married woman cannot testify in courts
in cases of joint interest with her husband. A
good farmer's wife near Earlville, Ill., who had
all the rights she wanted, went to a dentist of
the village and had a full set of false teeth,
both upper and under. The dentist pronounced
them an admirable fit, and the wife declared
they gave her fits to wear them; that she could
neither chew nor talk with them in her mouth.
The dentist sued the husband; his counsel
brought the wife as witness; the judge ruled her
off the stand; saying "a married woman cannot be
a witness in matters of joint interest between
herself and her husband." Think of it, ye good
wives, the false teeth in your mouths are joint
interest with your husbands, about which you are
legally incompetent to speak!! If in our
frequent and shocking railroad accidents a
married woman is injured in her person, in
nearly all of the States, it is her husband who
must sue the company, and it is to her husband
that the damages, if there are any, will be
awarded. In Ashfield, Mass., supposed to be the
most advanced of any State in the Union in all
things, humanitarian as well as intellectual, a
married woman was severely injured by a
defective sidewalk. Her husband sued the
corporation and recovered $13,000 damages. And
those $13,000 belong to him bona fide; and
whenever that unfortunate wife wishes a dollar
of it to supply her needs she must ask her
husband for it; and if the man be of a narrow,
selfish, nighardly nature, she will have to hear
him say, every time, "What have you done, my
dear, with the twenty-five cents I gave you
yesterday?" Isn't such a
position, ask you, humiliating enough to be
called "servitude?" That husband, as would any
other husband, in nearly every State of this
Union, sued and obtained damages for the loss of
the services of his wife, precisely as the
master, under the old slave regime, would have
done, had his slave been thus injured, and
precisely as he himself would have done had it
been his ox, cow or horse instead of his wife.
There is an old saying that "a rose by any other
name would smell as sweet," and I submit it the
deprivation by law of the ownership of one's own
person, wages, property, children, the denial of
the right as an individual, to sue and be sued,
and to testify in the courts, is not a condition
of servitude most bitter and absolute, though
under the sacred name of marriage?
Does any lawyer doubt my statement of the legal
status of married women? I will remind him of
the fact that the old common law of England
prevails in every State in this Union, except
where the Legislature has enacted special laws
annulling it. And I am ashamed that not one
State has yet blotted from its statue books the
old common law of marriage, by which Blackstone,
summed up in the fewest words possible, is made
to say, "husband and wife are one, and that one
is the husband."
Thus may all married women, wives and widows, by
the laws of the several States, be technically
included in the fifteenth amendment's
specification of "condition of servitude,"
present or previous. And not only married women,
but I will also prove to you that by all the
great fundamental principles of our free
government, the entire womanhood of the nation
is in a "condition of servitude" as surely as
were our revolutionary fathers, when they
rebelled against old King George. Women are
taxed without representation, governed without
their consent, tried, convicted and punished
without a jury of their peers. And is all this
tyranny any less humiliating and degrading to
women under our democratic-republican government
to-day than it was to men under their
aristocratic, monarchical government one hundred
years ago? There is not an utterance of old John
Adams, John Hancock or Patrick Henry, but finds
a living response in the soul of every
intelligent, patriotic woman of the nation.
Bring to me a common-sense woman property
holder, and I will show you one whose soul is
fired with all the indignation of 1776 every
time the tax-gatherer presents himself at her
door. You will not find one such but feels her
condition of servitude as galling as did James
Otis when he said:
"The very act of taxing exercised over those who
are not represented appears to me to be
depriving them of one of their most essential
rights, and if continued, seems to be in effect
an entire disfranchisement of every civil right.
For, what one civil right is worth a rush after
a man's property is subject to be taken from him
at pleasure without his consent? If a man is not
his own assessor in person, or by deputy, his
liberty is gone, or he is wholly at the mercy of
others."
What was the three-penny tax on tea, or the
paltry tax on paper and sugar to which our
revolutionary fathers were subjected, when
compared with the taxation of the women of this
Republic? The orphaned Pixley sisters, six
dollars a day, and even the women, who are
proclaiming the tyranny of our taxation without
representation, from city to city throughout the
country, are often compelled to pay a tax for
the poor privilege of defending our rights. And
again, to show that disfranchisement was
precisely the slavery of which the fathers
complained, allow me to cite to you old Ben.
Franklin, who in those olden times was admitted
to be good authority, not merely in domestic
economy, but in political as well; he said:
"Every man of the commonalty, except infants,
insane persons and criminals, is, of common
right and the law of God, a freeman and entitled
to the free enjoyment of liberty. That liberty
or freedom consists in having an actual share in
the appointment of those who are to frame the
laws, and who are to be the guardians of every
man's life, property and peace. For the all of
one man is as dear to him as the all of another;
and the poor man has an equal right, but more
need to have representatives in the Legislature
that the rich one. That they who have no voice
or vote in the electing of representatives, do
not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved
to those who have votes and their
representatives; for to be enslaved is to have
governors whom other men have set over us, and
to be subject to laws made by the
representatives of others, without having had
representatives of our own to give consent in
our behalf."
Suppose I read it with the feminine gender:
"That women who have no voice nor vote in the
electing of representatives, do not enjoy
liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to men who
have votes and their representatives; for to be
enslaved is to have governors whom men have set
over us, and to be subject to the laws made by
the representatives of men, without having
representatives of our own to give consent in
our behalf."
And yet one more authority; that of Thomas
Paine, than whom not one of the Revolutionary
patriots more ably vindicated the principles
upon which our government is founded:
"The right of voting for representatives is the
primary right by which other rights are
protected. To take away this right is to reduce
man to a state of slavery; for slavery consists
in being subject to the will of another; and he
that has not a vote in the election of
representatives is in this case. The proposal,
therefore, to disfranchise any class of men is
as criminal as the proposal to take away
property."
Is anything further needed to prove woman's
condition of servitude sufficiently orthodox to
entitle her to the guaranties of the fifteenth
amendment?
Is there a man who will not agree with me, that
to talk of freedom without the ballot, is
mockery-is slavery-to the women of this
Republic, precisely as New England's orator
Wendell Phillips, at the close of the late war,
declared it to be to the newly emancipated black
men?
I admit that prior to the rebellion, by common
consent, the right to enslave, as well as to
disfranchise both native and foreign born
citizens, was conceded to the States. But the
one grand principle, settled by the war and the
reconstruction legislation, is the supremacy of
national power to protect the citizens of the
United States in their right to freedom and the
elective franchise, against any and every
interference on the part of the several States.
And again and again, have the American people
asserted the triumph of this principle, by their
overwhelming majorities for Lincoln and Grant.
The one issue of the last two Presidential
elections was, whether the fourteenth and
fifteenth amendments should be considered the
irrevocable will of the people; and the decision
was, they shall be-and that it is only the
right, but the duty of the National Government
to protect all United States citizens in the
full enjoyment and free exercise of all their
privileges and immunities against any attempt of
any State to deny or abridge.
And in this conclusion Republican and Democrats
alike agree.
Senator Frelinghuysen said:
"The heresy of State rights has been completely
buried in these amendments, that as amended, the
Constitution confers not only national but State
citizenship upon all persons born or naturalized
within our limits."
The Call for the national Republican convention
said:
"Equal suffrage has been engrafted on the
national Constitution; the privileges and
immunities of American citizenship have become a
part of the organic law."
The national Republican platform said:
"Complete liberty and exact equality in the
enjoyment of all civil, political and public
rights, should be established and maintained
throughout the Union by efficient and
appropriate State and federal legislation."
If that means anything, it is that Congress
should pass a law to require the States to
protect women in their equal political rights,
and that the States should enact laws making it
the duty of inspectors of elections to receive
women's votes on precisely the same conditions
they do those of men.
Judge Stanley Mathews-a substantial Ohio
democrat-in his preliminary speech at the
Cincinnati convention, said most emphatically:
"The constitutional amendments have established
the political equality of all citizens before
the law."
President Grant, in his message to Congress
March 30th, 1870, on the adoption of the
fifteenth amendment, said: "A measure which
makes at once four millions of people voters, is
indeed a measure of greater importance than any
act of the kind from the foundation of the
Government to the present time."
How could four millions negroes be made voter if
two millions were not included?
The California State Republican convention said:
"Among the many practical and substantial
triumphs of the principles achieved by the
Republican party during the past twelve years,
it enumerated with pride and pleasure, the
prohibiting of any State from abridging the
privileges of any citizen of the Republic, the
declaring the civil and political equality of
every citizen, and the establishing all these
principles in the federal constitution by
amendments thereto, as the permanent law."
Benjamin F. Butler, in a recent letter to me,
said:
"I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts
that the Constitution authorizes the right of
women to vote, precisely as if authorizes trial
by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to
citizens."
And again, General Butler said:
"It is not laws we want; there are plenty of
laws-good enough, too. Administrative ability to
enforce law is the great want of the age, in
this country especially. Everybody talks of law,
law. If everybody would insist on the
enforcement of law, the government would stand
on a firmer basis, and question would settle
themselves."
An it is upon this just interpretation of the
United States Constitution that our National
Woman Suffrage Association which celebrates the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the woman's rights
movement in New York on the 6th of May next, has
based all its arguments and action the past five
years.
We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to
give us the right to vote. We appeal to the
women everywhere to exercise their too long
neglected "citizen's right to vote." We appeal
to the inspectors of election everywhere to
receive the votes of all United States citizens
as it is their duty to do. We appeal to United
States commissioners and marshals to arrest the
inspectors who reject the names and votes of
United States citizens, as it is their duty to
do, and leave those alone who, like our eighth
ward inspectors, perform their duties faithfully
and well.
We ask the juries to fail to return verdicts of
"guilty" against honest, law-abiding, tax-paying
United States citizens for offering their votes
at our elections. Or against intelligent, worthy
young men, inspectors of elections, for
receiving and counting such citizens votes.
We ask the judges to render true and
unprejudiced opinions of the law, and wherever
there is room for a doubt to give its benefit on
the side of liberty and equal rights to women,
remembering that "the true rule of
interpretation under our national constitution,
especially since its amendments, is that
anything for human rights is constitutional,
everything against human right
unconstitutional."
And it is on this line that we propose to fight
our battle for the ballot-all peaceably, but
nevertheless persistently through to complete
triumph, when all United States citizens shall
be recognized as equals before the law.
More History
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