And, sir, I do not dread change. Why should we? Is not change the primal condition on which all life is permitted to exist? Change is the very essence of all things pure, the sign and token of the divinity that is within us, and conservatism per se is infidelity against the ordination of God. When, therefore, we see such change in all things that are around us, in fashions and customs and laws and recognitions and intellectualities, even to the supremest generalizations of science, in all things save the elemental principles of our being and by consequence of our rights, why shall we say that these forms into which we have cast administration and government, shall not obey the great law of development and take upon themselves ameliorations better suited to the changing society of mankind, to the wants of a more truthful representation, to the participation by all in the Government that is over all. Mr. President, I am of those who believe that they will. When I look around on the incongruities and corruptions that surround our present system, when I see what politics and government and administration actually are, if I believed there was to be no progress in that direction I should be bereft of all hope and desolate of faith. On the contrary, methinks I can see in the adown vista of the future the golden apples hanging on the tree of promise. It seems to me that the light of the morning is already streaming in upon us that shall illuminate further advancements in the science of government. And why should not even Republican government take to itself other modes of administration without infraction of its fundamental liberties? Why should not large reductions transpire in those opportunities that invite the most sinister combination for offices and spoils? Is there any reason why the emoluments of place should more than repay the labor it calls for? Is there any reason why large abolitions of executive patronage may not transpire; why Government may not generate through examining commissioners, best agencies of its own for the functional work it is called to perform, leaving appeals to the community to pass rather upon controlling measures and general policies and legislative functionaries? Is there any reason why that should not take place? Sir, already, if I mistake not, in the large cities of this land, which are the local points of your domestic political system, the necessity for such a change is being felt and acted upon, and large branches of executive work and supervision are being necessarily put in commission. Mr. President, I think what I have said sufficiently shows that the argument which is advanced, that the present surroundings are such that woman could not properly participate in your elections, is an argument that does not go to the right of the woman, but does go to the wrong of the man. It is a criticism, perhaps a satire upon the civilization of your political system, not a justification for any exclusions practiced under it.

There is one other line of remark that has been indulged in, and only one other so far as I have heard, which calls for any special rejoinder, and that affirms the precedents of the past to be all against any such proposition as that now submitted. It is said that there is no precedent, that it is not customary in any of our governments, that it is not one of the recognitions of our society, that it has never been signified as such in the past. I do not know that such an argument amounts to anything at best, but I do know that the allegation itself has no foundation in fact. I know that in many cases and on many occasions this impassable barrier that is now set forth as dividing the natural rights of man and woman has been broken down and trampled upon, and that, too, without any injury to the society from so doing. Perhaps I can best illustrate this point by what an accomplished lady, who has given much thought and research to the subject, has presented. I read from a contribution she has made to one of our leading public prints. She says:

So long as political power was of an absolute and hereditary character women shared it whenever they happened, by birth, to hold the position to which it was attached. In Hungary, in some of the German States, and in the French Provinces to this day, certain women, holding an inherited right, confer the franchise upon their husbands, and in widowhood empower some relative or accredited agent to be the legislative protector of their property. In 1858, the authorities of the old university town of Upsal granted the right of suffrage to fifty women owning real estate, and to thirty-one doing business on their own account. The representative that their votes elected was to sit in the House of Burgesses. In Scotland, it is less than a century since, for election purposes, parties were unblushingly married in cases where women conveyed a political franchise, and parted after the election. In Ireland, the court of Queen's Bench, Dublin, restored to women, in January, 1864, the old right of voting for town commissioners. The Justice, Fitzgerald, desired to state that ladies were also entitled to sit as town commissioners, as well as to vote for them, and the chief-justice took pains to make it clear that there was nothing in the act of voting repugnant to their habits.

In November, 1864, the Government of Moravia decided that all women who were tax-payers had the right to vote. In the Government of Pitcairn's Island, women over sixteen have voted ever since its settlement. In Canada, in 1850, a distinct electoral privilege was conferred on women, in the hope that thereby the Protestant might balance the Roman Catholic power in the school system. I lived where I saw this right exercised by female property holders for four years. I never heard the most cultivated man, not even that noble gentleman, the late Lord Elgin, object to its results. In New Jersey, the Constitution adopted in 1776, gave the right of suffrage to all inhabitants, of either sex, who possessed fifty dollars in proclamation money. In 1790, to make it clearer, the Assembly inserted the words "he or she." Women voted there till 1838, when, the votes of some colored women having decided an election, the prejudice against the negro came to the aid of lordly supremacy, and an act was passed limiting the right of suffrage to "free white male citizens." In 1852, the Kentucky Legislature conferred the right on widows with children in matters relating to the school system. The same right was conferred in Michigan; and full suffrage was given to women in the State constitution submitted to Kansas in 1860.

I think that is a list of illustrations sufficient to dispose of any argument that may arise on such a score. And now, Mr. President, permit me to say, in concluding the remarks I have felt called upon to make here, that I have spoken rather as indicating my assent to the principle than as expecting any present practical results from the motion in question. In the earliest part of my political life, when first called upon to represent a constituency in the General Assembly of Missouri, in looking around, after my arrival at the seat of Government at those matters that seemed to me of most importance in legislation, I was struck with two great classes of injustices, two great departments in which it seemed to me the laws and the constitutions of my State had done signal wrong. Those were one as respects the rights of colored persons; the other as respects the rights of married women, minors, and females; and I there and then determined that whenever and wherever it should be in my power to aid in relieving them of those inequalities and those injustices, I would do so to the extent of my humble ability. Since then I have labored zealously in those two reforms as far and as fast as a public opinion could be created or elicited to enforce them, and I can say from my own observation that each step of advance taken has been fruitful of all good and productive of no evil. Emancipation of the colored race in Missouri has been achieved in a most thorough manner, substantially achieved even before the war; and to-day the community is ripe for the declaration that all are created equal, and that there is no reason to exclude from any right, civil or political, on the ground of race or color. I feel proud to say likewise that Missouri has gone further, and wiped from her statute-book large portions of that unjust and unfair and illiberal legislation which had been leveled at the rights and the property of the women of the State. Believing that that cause which embraces and embodies the cause of civil liberty will go forward still triumphing and to triumph, I will never, so help me God, cast any vote that may be construed as throwing myself in the face of that progress. Even though I recognize, therefore, the impolicy of coupling these two measures in this manner and at this time, I shall yet record my vote in the affirmative as an earnest indication of my belief in the principle and my faith in the future.

Mr. DAVIS: Mr. President, our entire population, like that of all other countries, is divided into two great classes, the male and the female. By the census of 1860 the white female population of the United States exceeded thirteen millions, and the aggregate negro population, of both sexes, was below four and a half millions. That great white population, and all its female predecessors, have never had the right of suffrage, or, to use that cant phrase of the day, have never been enfranchised; and such has also been the condition of the negro population. That about one negro in ten thousand in four or five States have been allowed to vote, is too insignificant to be dignified with any consideration as an exception. But now a frenzied party is clamoring to have suffrage given to the negro, while they not only raise no voice for female suffrage, but frown upon and repel every movement and utterance in its favor. Who of the advocates of negro suffrage, in Congress or out of it, dare to stand forth and proclaim to the manhood of America, that the free negroes are fitter and more competent to exercise transcendent political power, the right of suffrage, than their mothers, their wives, their sisters, and their daughters? The great God who created all the races and in every race gave to man woman, never intended that woman should take part in national government among any people, or that the negro, the lowest, should ever have co-ordinate and equal power with the highest, the white race, in any government, national or domestic. To woman in every race He gave correlative, and as high, as necessary, and as essential, but different faculties and attributes, intellectual and moral, as He gave to man in the same race; and to both, those adapted to the equally important but different parts which they were to play in the dramatic destinies of their people. The instincts, the teachings of the distinct and differing, but harmonious organism of each, led man and woman in every race and people and nation and tribe, savage and civilized, in all countries and ages of the world, to choose their natural, appropriate, and peculiar field of labor and effort. Man assumed the direction of government and war, woman of the domestic and family affairs and the care and the training of the child; and each have always acquiesced in this partition and choice. It has been so from the beginning, throughout the whole history of man, and it will continue to be so to the end, because it is in conformity to nature and its laws, and is sustained and confirmed by the experience and reason of six thousand years.

I therefore, Mr. President, am decidedly and earnestly opposed to the amendment moved by my friend from Pennsylvania. There is no man more deeply impressed with or more highly appreciates the important offices which woman exercises over the destiny of race than I do. I concede that woman, by her teachings and influence, is the source of the large mass of the morality and virtue of man and of the world. The benignant and humanizing and important influence which she exercises upon the whole race of man in the proper discharge of her functions and duties can not be overestimated; but that woman should properly perform these great duties, this inappreciably valuable task, it is necessary that she should be kept pure. The domestic altar is a sacred fane where woman is the high and officiating priestess. This priestess should be virtuous, she should be intelligent, she should be competent to the performance of all her high duties. To keep her in that condition of purity, it is necessary that she should be separated from the exercise of suffrage and from all those stern and contaminating and demoralizing duties that devolves upon the hardier sex—man.

What is the proposition now before the Senate? To make pure, cultivated, noble woman a partisan, a political hack, to lead her among the rabble that surround and control by blackguardism and brute force so many of the hustings of the United States. Mr. President, if one greater evil or curse could befall the American people than any other, in my judgment it would be to confer upon the women of America the right of suffrage. It would be a great step in the line of mischief and evil, and it would lead to other and equally fatal steps—in the same direction. Sir, if ever in the depths and silence of night I send up my secret orisons to my Maker, one of the most fervent of my prayers would be that the women of my country should be saved and sheltered by man from this great contamination. It is not necessary to the proper influence and to the legitimate power of woman. A cultivated, enlightened, delicate, refined, and virtuous woman at the family altar is the persuasive and at the same time plastic power that sways and fashions the principles and character of her children, and thus makes her impress upon the future men of America, the Phocians, the Timoleons, the Washingtons, who are the honor of the race, and whose destiny it is to elevate and ennoble it. Mr. President, in proportion as man becomes civilized so increases the power and the influence of woman. In the tribes and nations of the lowest ignorance and barbarism this influence is least—it is most potent where there is the greatest intellectual and moral cultivation of man. I want this gentle and holy influence to continue pure and uncontaminated by keeping it within the domestic fane and afar from party politics. But, sir, it has become the fashion, the philosophy, the frenzy of the day to coin catch-words that carry a seemingly attractive principle, but at the same time alluring and mischievous, and among them is this cry for woman's rights and also for negro suffrage and manhood suffrage and universal suffrage. It is all nothing but slang and demagoguery, and is fraught with naught but evil, mischief, and degradation, individually and nationally. For these reasons, sir, one of the last propositions, or if gentlemen choose, principles which have been or may be propounded to the people of America, or as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States, to which I shall ever give my acceptance, is female suffrage.

I do not deny that our national family properly and wisely comprehends all of the nationalities of Europe who may come here, according to the terms of our naturalization laws, and their posterity; but I assert that negroes, Indians, Mongolians, Chinese, and Tartars ought not and can not safely be admitted to the powers and privileges of citizenship.

I have no doubt that my honorable friend from Pennsylvania desires that the right of suffrage should be given to women; and if he had the power to transfer all the women of the conservative States into and to become residents of the radical States, who imagines that if that were done the Radicals of this House and of the nation would shout in favor of giving to women the right of suffrage? If the Radicals in Congress and out of Congress knew with the certainty of truth that every vote which they will enfranchise by conferring the right of suffrage on the negro, would be cast against that party, in favor of their late southern masters, in favor of the Democracy, in hostility to the schemes of ambition and spoils which are now animating the heart and mind of the great radical organization, who doubts that this party and every mother's son of them would shout for withholding suffrage from the negro?

Mr. SPRAGUE: I know the Senate is impatient for a vote. I know they are determined to vote favorably. When it is necessary that women shall vote for the support of liberty and equality I shall be ready to cast my vote in their favor. The black man's vote is necessary to this at this time....

Mr. BUCKALEW: I desire to say before the vote is taken on this amendment that I shall vote in favor of it because of the particular position which it occupies. A vote given for this amendment is not a final one. I understand it to pronounce an opinion upon the two propositions which have been undergoing consideration in the Senate, in a comparative manner, if I may use the expression. In voting for this proposition I affirm simply that the principles and the reasonings upon which the bill itself, as reported by the committee, is based, would apply with equal, if not increased force, to the particular proposition contained in the amendment. If that be affirmed, then recurs the question whether it is proper, whether it is expedient at this time to increase, and very extensively increase, suffrage in this country. I do not understand that the general argument on that question is involved in the present motion. I do not understand that it comes up of necessity in considering the proposition covered by the amendment of my colleague which stands simply in contrast with that contained in the bill. I presume there are several gentlemen, members of this body, who will vote with reference to this consideration and who will reserve their opinion, either openly or in their own consciousness, upon the general or indirect question of the extension of suffrage to the females of the United States.

But the occasion invites some remarks beyond the mere statement of this point. The debates which have been going on for three days in this Chamber will go out to the country. They will constitute an element in the popular discussions of the times and awaken a large amount of public attention. This is not the last we shall hear of this subject. It will come to us again; and I am persuaded that one reason why it will come again is that the arguments against the proposed extension of suffrage have not been sufficient; they have been inadequate; they have been placed upon grounds which will not endure debate. Those who are in favor of the extension of suffrage to females can answer what has been said in this Chamber, and they can answer it triumphantly; and you will eventually be obliged to take other grounds than those which have been here stated. From the beginning of this debate there has been either an open or an implied concession of the principle upon which the extension of suffrage is asked; and that is, that there is some natural right or propriety in extending it further than it was extended by those who formed our State and Federal Constitutions; that there is some principle of right or of propriety involved which now appeals powerfully to us in favor of extended and liberal action in behalf of those large classes who have been hitherto disfranchised; upon whom the right of suffrage has not been heretofore conferred.

Having made this concession upon the fundamental ground of the inquiry, or at all events intimated it, the opponents of an extended franchise pass on to particular arguments of inconvenience or inexpediency as constituting the grounds of their opposition.

Now, sir, I venture to say that those who resist the extension of suffrage in this country will be unsuccessful in their opposition; they will be overborne, unless they assume grounds of a more commanding character than those which they have here maintained. This subject of the extension of suffrage must be put upon practical grounds and extricated from the sophisms of theoretical reasoning. Gentlemen must get out of the domain of theory. They must come back again to those principles of action upon which our fathers proceeded in framing our constitutional system. They lodged suffrage in this country simply in those whom they thought most worthy and most fit to exercise it. They did not proceed upon those humanitarian theories which have since obtained and which now seem to have taken a considerable hold on the public mind. They were practical men, and acted with reference to the history and experience of mankind. They were no metaphysicians; they were not reformers in the modern sense of the term; they were men who based their political action upon the experience of mankind, and upon those practical reflections with reference to men and things in which they had indulged in active life. They placed suffrage then upon the broad common-sense principle that it should be lodged in and exercised by those who could use it most wisely and most safely and most efficiently to serve the great ends for which Government was instituted. They had no other ground than this, and their work shows that they proceeded upon it, and not upon any abstract or transcendental notion of human rights which ignored the existing facts of social life.

Now, sir, the objection which I have to a large extension of suffrage in this country, whether by Federal or State power, is this: that thereby you will corrupt and degrade elections, and probably lead to their complete abrogation hereafter. By pouring into the ballot-boxes of the country a large mass of ignorant votes, and votes subjected to pecuniary or social influence, you will corrupt and degrade your elections and lay the foundation for their ultimate destruction. That is a conviction of mine, and it is upon that ground that I resist both negro suffrage and female suffrage, and any other proposed form of suffrage which takes humanity in an unduly broad or enlarged sense as the foundation of an arrangement of political power.

Mr. President, I proposed before the debate concluded, before this subject should be submitted to the Senate for its final decision, to protest against some of the reasoning by which this amendment was resisted. I intended to protest against particular arguments which were submitted; but I was glad this morning that that duty which I had proposed to myself was discharged, and well discharged by the Senator from Missouri [Mr. Brown]. For instance, the argument that the right of suffrage ought not to be conferred upon this particular class because they did not or could not bear arms—a consideration totally foreign and irrelevant, in my opinion, to the question which we are discussing.

But, sir, passing this by, I desire to add a few words before I conclude upon another point which was stated or suggested by the Senator from Missouri, and that is the question of reform or improvement in our election system; I mean in the machinery by which or plans upon which those elections proceed. After due reflection given to this subject, my opinion is that our electoral systems in this country are exceedingly defective, and that they require thorough revision, that to them the hand of reform must be strongly applied if republican institutions are to be ultimately successful with us.

I would see much less objection to your extension of the right of suffrage very largely to classes now excluded if you had a different mode of voting, if you did take or could take the sense of these added classes in a different manner from that which now obtains in popular voting. You proceed at present upon the principle or rule that a mere majority of the electoral community shall possess the whole mass of political power; and what are the inevitable results? First, that the community is divided into parties, and into parties not very unequal in their aggregate numbers. What next? That the balance of power between parties is held by a very small number of voters; and in practical action what is the fact? That the struggle is constantly for that balance of power, and in order to obtain it, all the arts and all the evil influences of elections are called into action. It is this struggle for that balance of power that breeds most of the evils of your system of popular elections. Now, is it not possible to have republican institutions and to eliminate or decrease largely this element of evil? Why, sir, take the State of Pennsylvania, whose voice, perhaps, in this Government is to give direction to its legislation at a given time and take a pecuniary interest in the country largely interested in your laws, looking forward upon the eve of a hotly contested election to some particular measures of Government which shall favor it, with what ease can that interest throw into the State a pecuniary contribution competent to turn the voice of that powerful State and change or determine the policy of your Government. And why so? It is only necessary that this corrupt influence should be exerted very slightly indeed within that State from abroad in order to turn the scale, because you are only to exert your pernicious power upon a small number of persons who hold the balance of power between parties therein. Sir, that organization of our system which allows such a state of things to occur must be inherently vicious. Instead of this being a Government of the whole people, which is our fundamental principle, which is our original idea, it is a Government, in the first place, of a majority only of the people; and in the next place, it is in some sort a Government of that small number of persons who give preponderance to one party over another, and who may be influenced by fanaticism, corruption, or passion.

This being our political state at present with reference to electoral action, what do you propose? We have a great evil. Electoral corruption is the great danger in our path. It is the evil in our system against which we must constantly struggle. Every patriot and every honest man here and in his own State is bound to lift his voice and to strike boldly against it in all its forms, and it requires for its repression all the efforts and all the exertion we can put forth. Now what is proposed by the reformers of the present time? We have our majority rule—it is not a principle; it is an abuse of all terms to call it a principle—we have our majority rule in full action, presenting an invitation to corrupt, base, and sinister influences to attach themselves to our system; we have great difficulties with which we now struggle arising from imperfect arrangements, and what do you propose? To reform existing evils and abuses? To correct your system? To study it as patriots, as men of reflection and good sense? No, sir. You propose to introduce into our electoral bodies new elements of enormous magnitude. You propose to take the base of society, excluded now, and build upon it, and upon it alone or mainly, because the introduction of the enormous mass of voters proposed by the reformers will wholly change the foundations upon which you build.

Will not these new electors you propose to introduce be more approachable than men who now vote to all corrupt influences? Will they not be more passionate, and therefore more easily influenced by the demagogue? Will they not be more easily caught and enraptured by superficial declamation, because more incapable of profound reflection? Will not their weakness render them subservient to the strong and their ignorance to the artful?

I shall not, however, detain you with an elaborate argument upon this question of suffrage. I only feel myself called upon to say enough to indicate the general direction of my reflections upon the questions before us; to show why it is that I am immovably opposed at this time to extending our system of suffrage in the District of Columbia or elsewhere so as to include large classes of persons who are now excluded; and to state my opinion that reform or change should be concerned with the correction of the existing evils of our electoral system, instead of with the enlargement of its boundaries.

Mr. DOOLITTLE: I move that the Senate do now adjourn.

Several SENATORS: Oh, no; let us have a vote.

The motion was not agreed to.

Mr. DOOLITTLE: Mr. President, this amendment, in my judgment, opens a very grave question; a question graver than it appears at the blush; a question upon which the ablest minds are divided here and elsewhere; a question, however, on which we are called upon to vote, and therefore one upon which I desire very briefly to state the views which control my judgment when I say that I shall vote against the amendment which is now offered.

For myself, sir, after giving some considerable reflection to the subject of suffrage, I have arrived at the conclusion that the true base or foundation upon which to rest suffrage in any republican community is upon the family, the head of the family; because in civilized society the family is the unit, not the individual. What is meant by "man" is man in that relation where he is placed according to nature, reason, and religion. If it were a new question and it were left to me to determine what should be the true qualification of a person to exercise the right of suffrage, I would fix it upon that basis that the head of a family, capable of supporting that family, and who had supported the family, should be permitted to vote, and no other.

While I know that the question is not a new one; while it is impossible for me to treat it as a new question because suffrage everywhere has been extended beyond the heads of families, yet the reason, in my judgment, upon which it has been extended is simply this: if certain men have been permitted to vote who were not the heads of families it was because they were the exceptions to the general rule, and because it was to be presumed that if they were not at the time heads of families they ought to be, and probably would be. I say that according to reason, nature, and religion, the family is the unit of every society. So far as the ballot is concerned, in my judgment, it represents this fundamental element of civilized society, the family. It therefore should be cast by the head of the family, and according to reason, nature, and religion man is the head of the family. In that relation, while every man is king, every woman is queen; but upon him devolves the responsibility of controlling the external relations of this family, and those external relations are controlled by the ballot; for that ballot or vote which he exercises goes to choose the legislators who are to make the laws which are to govern society. Within the family man is supreme; he governs by the law of the family, by the law of reason, nature, religion. Therefore it is that I am not in favor of conferring the right of suffrage upon woman....

Mr. President, I have stated very briefly that I shall not be able to vote for the proposition of my honorable friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan]. I shall not be able to vote for this bill if it be a bill to give universal suffrage to the colored men in this District without any restriction or qualification. I have been informed that some other Senator intends before this bill shall have passed in the Senate to propose an amendment which will attach a qualification, and perhaps, should that meet the views of the Senate, I might give my support to the bill. I shall not detain the Senate further now on this subject.

Mr. POMEROY: I desire to say in just a brief word that I shall vote against the amendment of the Senator from Pennsylvania, simply because I am in favor of this measure, and I do not want to weigh it down with anything else. There are other measures that I would be glad to support in their proper place and time; but this is a great measure of itself. Since I have been a member of the Senate, there was a law in this District authorizing the selling of colored men. To have traveled in six years from the auction-block to the ballot with these people is an immense stride, and if we can carry this measure alone of itself we should be contented for the present. I am for this measure religiously and earnestly, and I would vote down and vote against everything that I thought weakened or that I thought was opposed to it. It is simply with this view, without expressing any opinion in regard to the merits of the amendment, that I shall vote against it and all other amendments.

The PRESIDENT pro tem.: The question is on the amendment of the Senator from Pennsylvania [Mr. Cowan], to strike out the word "male" before the word "person," in the second line of the first section of the amendment reported by the Committee on the District of Columbia as a substitute for the whole bill, and on that question the yeas and nays have been ordered. Yeas, 9. Nays, 37.[58]

In the House, January 28, 1867, Mr. Noell, of Missouri, introduced a bill to amend the suffrage act of the District of Columbia, which, after the second reading, he moved should be referred to a select committee of five, and on that motion demanded the previous question, and called for the yeas and nays, which resulted in 49 yeas,[59] 74 nays—68 not voting.

FOOTNOTES:

[48] FORM OF PETITION.—To the Senate and House of Representatives:—The undersigned women of the United States, respectfully ask an amendment of the Constitution that shall prohibit the several States from disfranchising any of their citizens on the ground of sex.

In making our demand for Suffrage, we would call your attention to the fact that we represent fifteen million people—one-half the entire population of the country—intelligent, virtuous, native-born American citizens; and yet stand outside the pale of political recognition. The Constitution classes us as "free people," and counts us whole persons in the basis of representation; and yet are we governed without our consent, compelled to pay taxes without appeal, and punished for violations of law without choice of judge or juror. The experience of all ages, the Declarations of the Fathers, the Statute Laws of our own day, and the fearful revolution through which we have just passed, all prove the uncertain tenure of life, liberty, and property so long as the ballot—the only weapon of self-protection—is not in the hand of every citizen.

Therefore, as you are now amending the Constitution, and, in harmony with advancing civilization, placing new safeguards round the individual rights of four millions of emancipated slaves, we ask that you extend the right of Suffrage to Woman—the only remaining class of disfranchised citizens—and thus fulfill your constitutional obligation "to guarantee to every State in the Union a Republican form of Government." As all partial application of Republican principles must ever breed a complicated legislation as well as a discontented people, we would pray your Honorable Body, in order to simplify the machinery of Government and ensure domestic tranquillity, that you legislate hereafter for persons, citizens, tax-payers, and not for class or caste. For justice and equality your petitioners will ever pray.

[49] JOINT RESOLUTIONS BEFORE CONGRESS AFFECTING WOMEN.

To the Editor of the Standard—Sir:—Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania; Mr. Schenck, of Ohio; Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island; Mr. Stevens, of Pennsylvania, have each a resolution before Congress to amend the Constitution.

Article 1st, Section 2d, reads thus: "Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union according to their respective number."

Mr. Broomall proposes to amend by saying "male electors," Mr. Schenck "male citizens," Mr. Jenckes "male citizens," Mr. Stevens "legal voters." There is no objection to the amendment proposed by Mr. Stevens, as in process of time women may be made "legal voters" in the several States, and would then meet that requirement of the Constitution. But those urged by the other gentlemen, neither time, effort, nor State Constitutions could enable us to meet, unless, by a liberal interpretation of the amendment, a coat of mail to be worn at the polls might be judged all-sufficient. Mr. Jenckes and Mr. Schenck, in their bills, have the grace not to say a word about taxes, remembering perhaps that "taxation without representation is tyranny." But Mr. Broomall, though unwilling to share with us the honors of Government, would fain secure us a place in its burdens; for while he apportions representatives to "male electors" only, he admits "all the inhabitants" into the rights, privileges, and immunities of taxation. Magnanimous M. C.!

I would call the attention of the women of the nation to the fact that under the Federal Constitution, as it now exists, there is not one word that limits the right of suffrage to any privileged class. This attempt to turn the wheels of civilization backward, on the part of Republicans claiming to be the Liberal party, should rouse every woman in the nation to a prompt exercise of the only right she has in the Government, the right of petition. To this end a committee in New York have sent out thousands of petitions, which should be circulated in every district and sent to its Representative at Washington as soon as possible.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

NEW YORK, January 2, 1866.

[50] Leaving Rochester October 11th, she called on Martha Wright, Auburn; Phebe Jones and Lydia Mott, Albany; Mrs. Rose, Gibbons, Davis, Stanton, New York; Lucy Stone and Antoinette Brown Blackwell, New Jersey; Stephen and Abby Foster, Worcester; Mrs. Severance, Dall, Nowell, Dr. Harriot K. Hunt, Dr. Zakzyewska, Mr. Phillips and Garrison, in Boston, urging them to join in sending protests to Washington against the pending legislation. Mr. Phillips at once consented to vote $500 from the "Jackson Fund" to commence the work. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton spent all their "Christmas holidays" in writing letters and addressing appeals and petitions to every part of the country, and before the close of the session of 1865-66 ten thousand signatures were poured into Congress.

[51] "THIS IS THE NEGRO'S HOUR."

To the Editor of the Standard—Sir:—By an amendment of the Constitution, ratified by three-fourths of the loyal States, the black man is declared free. The largest and most influential political party is demanding suffrage for him throughout the Union, which right in many of the States is already conceded. Although this may remain a question for politicians to wrangle over for five or ten years, the black man is still, in a political point of view, far above the educated women of the country. The representative women of the nation have done their uttermost for the last thirty years to secure freedom for the negro, and so long as he was lowest in the scale of being we were willing to press his claims; but now, as the celestial gate to civil rights is slowly moving on its hinges, it becomes a serious question whether we had better stand aside and see "Sambo" walk into the kingdom first. As self-preservation is the first law of nature, would it not be wiser to keep our lamps trimmed and burning, and when the constitutional door is open, avail ourselves of the strong arm and blue uniform of the black soldier to walk in by his side, and thus make the gap so wide that no privileged class could ever again close it against the humblest citizen of the republic?

"This is the negro's hour." Are we sure that he, once entrenched in all his inalienable rights, may not be an added power to hold us at bay? Have not "black male citizens" been heard to say they doubted the wisdom of extending the right of suffrage to women? Why should the African prove more just and generous than his Saxon compeers? If the two millions of Southern black women are not to be secured in their rights of person, property, wages, and children, their emancipation is but another form of slavery. In fact, it is better to be the slave of an educated white man, than of a degraded, ignorant black one. We who know what absolute power the statute laws of most of the States give man, in all his civil, political, and social relations, demand that in changing the status of the four millions of Africans, the women as well as the men shall be secured in all the rights, privileges, and immunities of citizens.

It is all very well for the privileged order to look down complacently and tell us, "This is the negro's hour; do not clog his way; do not embarrass the Republican party with any new issue; be generous and magnanimous; the negro once safe, the woman comes next." Now, if our prayer involved a new set of measures, or a new train of thought, it would be cruel to tax "white male citizens" with even two simple questions at a time; but the disfranchised all make the same demand, and the same logic and justice that secures suffrage to one class gives it to all. The struggle of the last thirty years has not been merely on the black man as such, but on the broader ground of his humanity. Our Fathers, at the end of the first revolution, in their desire for a speedy readjustment of all their difficulties, and in order to present to Great Britain, their common enemy, an united front, accepted the compromise urged on them by South Carolina, and a century of wrong, ending in another revolution, has been the result of their action. This is our opportunity to retrieve the errors of the past and mould anew the elements of Democracy. The nation is ready for a long step in the right direction; party lines are obliterated, and all men are thinking for themselves. If our rulers have the justice to give the black man suffrage, woman should avail herself of that new-born virtue to secure her rights; if not, she should begin with renewed earnestness to educate the people into the idea of universal suffrage.

ELIZABETH CADY STANTON.

NEW YORK, December 26, 1865.

[52] From the New York Evening Express.

SCENES IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.—Negroes are to Vote—Why not Coolies in California—Indians everywhere, and First of all, Fifteen Millions of our Countrywomen.

The following occurred in the House, Tuesday, upon Thaddeus Stevens' resolution, from the Reconstruction Committee, to deprive the South of representation, unless the South lets the negroes vote there....

Mr. CHANDLER, of New York, having the floor for an hour, said: Before proceeding with my remarks, I will yield the floor for ten minutes to my colleague [Mr. Brooks].

Mr. BROOKS: Mr. Speaker, I do not rise, of course, to debate this resolution, in the few minutes allowed me by my colleague, nor, in my judgment, does the resolution need any discussion unless it may be for the mere purpose of agitation. I do not suppose that there is an honorable gentleman upon the floor of this House who believes for a moment that any movement of this character is likely to become the fundamental law of the land, and these propositions are, therefore, introduced only for the purpose of agitation. If the honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens] had been quite confident of adopting this amendment, he would at the start have named what are States of this Union. The opinion of the honorable gentleman himself, that there are no States in this Union but those that are now represented upon this floor, I know full well, but he knows as well that the President of the United States recognizes thirty-six States of this Union, and that it is necessary to obtain the consent of three-fourths of those thirty-six States, which number it is not possible to obtain. He knows very well that if his amendment should be adopted by the Legislatures of States enough, in his judgment, to carry it, before it could pass the tribunal of the Executive Chamber it would be obliged to receive the assent of twenty-seven States in order to become an amendment to the Constitution. The whole resolution, therefore, is for the purpose of mere agitation. It is an appeal from this House to the outside constituencies that we know by the name of buncombe. Here it was born, and here, after its agitation in the States, it will die. Hence, I asked the gentleman from Pennsylvania this morning to be consistent in his proposition. In one thing he is consistent, and that is in admitting the whole of the Asiatic immigration, which, by the connection of our steamers with China and Japan and the East Indies, is about to pour forth in mighty masses upon the Pacific coast to the overwhelming even of the white population there.

Mr. STEVENS: I wish to correct the gentleman. I said it excluded Chinese.

Mr. BROOKS: How exclude them, when Chinese are to be included in the basis of representation?

Mr. STEVENS: I say it excludes them.

Mr. BROOKS: How exclude them?

Mr. STEVENS: They are not included in the basis of representation.

Mr. BROOKS: Yes, if the States exclude them from the elective franchise; and the States of California and Oregon and Nevada are to be deprived of representation according to their population upon the floor of this House by this amendment. I asked him, also, if the Indian was not a man and a brother, and I obtained no satisfactory answer from the honorable gentleman. I speak now, in order to make his resolution consistent, for no one hundred thousand coolies or wild savages, but I raise my voice here in behalf of fifteen million of our countrywomen, the fairest, brightest portion of creation, and I ask why they are not permitted to vote for Representatives under this resolution? Why, in organizing a system of liberality and justice, not recognize in the case of free women as well as free negroes the right of representation?

Mr. STEVENS: The gentleman will allow me to say that this bill does not exclude women. It does not say who shall vote.

Mr. BROOKS: I comprehend all that; but the whole object of this amendment is to obtain votes for the negroes. That is its purport, tendency, and meaning; and it punishes those who will not give a vote to the negroes in the Southern States of our Union. That is the object of the resolution, and the ground upon which it is presented to this House and to the country. This is a new era; this is an age of progress. Indians are not only Indians, but men and brothers; and why not, in a resolution like this, include the fair sex too, and give them the right to representation? Will it be said that this sex does not claim a right to representation? Many members here have petitions from these fifteen millions of women, or a large portion of them, for representation, and for the right to vote on equal terms with the stronger sex, who they say are now depriving them of it. To show that such is their wish and desire, I will send to the Clerk's desk to be read certain documents, to which I ask the attention of the honorable gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Stevens], for in one of them he will find he is somewhat interested.

The Clerk read as follows:

STANDARD OFFICE, 48 Beekman Street, New York, Jan. 20, 1866.

Dear Sir:—I send you the inclosed copy of petition and signatures sent to Thaddeus Stevens last week. I then urged Mr. Stevens, if their committee of fifteen could not report favorably on our petitions, they would, at least, not interpose any new barrier against woman's right to the ballot.

Mrs. Stanton has sent you a petition—I trust you will present that at your earliest convenience. The Democrats are now in minority. May they drive the Republicans to do good works—not merely to hold the rebel States in check until negro men shall be guaranteed their right to a voice in their governments, but to hold the party to a logical consistency that shall give every responsible citizen in every State equal right to the ballot. Will you, sir, please send me whatever is said or done with our petitions? Will you also give me the names of members whom you think would present petitions for us?

Hon. JAMES BROOKS. Respectfully yours, SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

A PETITION FOR UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:—[The petition here presented has been already in The Express. The following are the signatures to the petition sent to Mr. Stevens]: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, New York; Susan B. Anthony, Rochester, N.Y.; Antoinette Brown Blackwell, New York; Lucy Stone, Newark, N.J.; Ernestine L. Rose, New York; Joanna S. Morse, 48 Livingston St., Brooklyn; Elizabeth R. Tilton, 48 Livingston St., Brooklyn; Ellen Hoxie Squier, 34 St. Felix St., Brooklyn; Mary Fowler Gilbert, 294 West 19th St., New York; Mary E. Gilbert, 294 West 19th St., New York; Mattie Griffith, New York.

The SPEAKER: The ten minutes of the gentleman from New York [Mr. Brooks] have expired.

Mr. BROOKS: I will only say that at the proper time I will move to amend—or if I do not I would suggest to some gentleman on the other side to move it—this proposed amendment by inserting the words "or sex" after the word "color," so that it will read:

Provided, That whenever the elective franchise shall be denied or abridged in any State on account of race or color or sex, all persons of such race or color or sex shall be excluded from the basis of representation.

Mr. STEVENS: Is the gentleman from N.Y. [Mr. Brooks] in favor of that amendment?

Mr. BROOKS: I am if negroes are permitted to vote.

Mr. STEVENS: That does not answer my question. Is the gentleman in favor of the amendment he has indicated?

Mr. BROOKS: I suggested that I would move it at a convenient time.

Mr. STEVENS: Is the gentleman in favor of his own amendment?

Mr. BROOKS: I am in favor of my own color in preference to any other color, and I prefer the white women of my country to the negro. [Applause on the floor and in the galleries promptly checked by the Speaker]. The Speaker said he saw a number of persons clapping in the galleries. He would endeavor, to the best of his ability, whether supported by the House or not, to preserve order. Applause was just as much out of order as manifestations of disapproval, and hisses not more than clapping of hands. Instead of general applause on the floor, gentlemen on the floor should set a good example.

[53] WOMEN POLITICIANS.—Mr. Lane, of Kansas, it is reported, has presented to the Senate the petition of "one hundred and twenty-four beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished ladies of Lawrence," praying for a constitutional amendment that shall prohibit States from disfranchising citizens on account of sex. That trick will not do. We wager a big apple that the ladies referred to are not "beautiful" or accomplished. Nine of every ten of them are undoubtedly passe. They have hook-billed noses, crow's-feet under their sunken eyes, and a mellow tinting of the hair. They are connoisseurs in the matter of snuff. They discard hoops, waterfalls, and bandeaux. They hold hen conventions, to discuss and decide, with vociferous expression, the orthodoxy of the minister, the regularity of the doctor, and the morals of the lawyer. They read the Tribune with spectacles, and have files of The Liberator and Wendell Phillips' orations, bound in sheepskin. Heaven forbid that we should think of any of the number as a married woman, without a fervent aspiration of pity for the weaker vessel who officiates as her spouse. As to rearing children, that is not to be thought of in the connection. Show us a woman who wants to mingle in the exciting and unpurified squabble of politics, and we will show you one who has failed to reach and enjoy that true relation of sovereignty which is held by her "meek and lowly" sisters; who, though destitute of such panting aspirations, hold the scepter of true authority in those high and holy virtues which fascinate while they command in their undisputed empire—the social circle. What iconoclast shall break our idol, by putting the ballot in woman's hand?—Albany Evening Journal.

A CRY FROM THE FEMALES.—Mr. Sumner yesterday presented a petition to the Senate from a large number of the women of New England, praying that they may not be debarred from the right of suffrage on account of sex. Our heart warms with pity toward these unfortunate creatures. We fancy that we can see them, deserted of men, and bereft of those rich enjoyments and exalted privileges which belong to women, languishing their unhappy lives away in a mournful singleness, from which they can escape by no art in the construction of waterfalls or the employment of cotton-padding. Talk of a true woman needing the ballot as an accessory of power, when she rules the world by a glance of her eye. There was sound philosophy in the remark of an Eastern monarch, that his wife was sovereign of the Empire, because she ruled his little ones, and his little ones ruled him. The sure panacea for such ills as the Massachusetts petitioners complain of, is a wicker-work cradle and a dimple-cheeked baby.—The New York Tribune.

[54] WOMAN SUFFRAGE.—Editor Commonwealth:—Enclosed is a letter I sent to the editor of The Nation. As I consider his allusion to it insufficient, will you have the kindness to print it, no paper but yours, that I know of, being now open to the subject. All that the editor of The Nation has a right to say is, that he has not investigated the statistics. Most of the women who have signed the petitions are women who have not a male relative in the world interested in the matter. Very truly yours,

BOSTON, Jan. 20, 1866. CAROLINE H. DALL.

70 WARREN AVENUE, BOSTON, Jan. 6, 1866.

To the Editor of The Nation:—I saw with surprise in The Nation, received to-day, a paragraph on "Universal Suffrage," which contained the following lines:

"We think the women of the United States ought to have the franchise if they desire it, and we think they ought to desire it. But until they do desire it, and show that they do, by a general expression of opinion, we are opposed to their being saddled with it on grounds of theoretical fitness, etc."

Surely, it is difficult to explain such a sentence in a professedly far-seeing and deep-thinking journal! That argument will serve as well for the lately enfranchised blacks as for women, for no one will pretend that of the millions set free, a bare majority would of themselves contend for the franchise. That argument might have refused them freedom itself, for a large majority of Southern slaves knew too little of it to desire it, however they may have longed to be rid of a taskmaster and the pangs which slavery brought. During the last four years women have been silent about their "rights" in the several States, because pressed by severe duties. Desirous to establish a reputation for discretion, we have refrained from complicating the perplexities of any Senator; but now that a constitutional amendment is pending we must be careful, even if we gain no franchise, to lose no opportunity.

Hitherto the Constitution of the United States has contained no word that would shut women out from future suffrage. Mr. Schenck, of Ohio, and Mr. Jenckes, of Rhode Island, propose to limit a right to "male citizens" which should rest, as it now does, simply on "legal voters." This would oblige women to move to amend the Constitution of the United States after each separate State was carried. We have no inclination for this unnecessary work, and here, in Boston, we are preparing a petition basing the necessity of our present interference on this fact alone. How much women desire the suffrage, Mr. Editor, you ought to perceive from the conduct of the women of Australia. Carelessly enough, her male legislators omitted the significant adjective from their constitutional amendment, and, without a word of warning, on election day, every woman, properly qualified, was found at the polls. There was no just reason for refusing them the privilege, and The London Times says the precedent is to stand.

A very absurd article in The Evening Post has lately given us an idea that New York contains some remarkable women. Women born to be looked at!—women who do their whole duty if they blossom like the roses, and like the roses die. Let us hope they fulfill the functions of this type by as short a sojourn on this earth as may be, lingering, as Malherbe would have it, only for "the space of a morning." It may be among them that you find the women who "look persistently to married life as a means of livelihood." Here, in Massachusetts, we do not acknowledge any such. Fashion has her danglers among men and women, but we pity those whose lot has thrown them into intimate relations with such women as you describe. They are not of our sort. We think that if the writer in The Evening Post were tested, he would be forced to admire most the hands which could do the best work. It would be small comfort to him, when Bridget and John had simultaneously departed, when the baby was crying and the fire out, that his wife sat lonely, in one corner of the apartment, with serene eyes and unstained hands. Men who talk such nonsense in America, must remember that neither wealth nor gentle blood can here protect them from such a dilemma. As to suffrage, we are not now talking of granting it to a distinct race; if we were, they might manifest a "general" desire for it. Women, who love their husbands and brothers, can not all submit to bear the reproach which clings to their demand for justice. A few of us must suffer sharply for the sake of that great future which God shows us to be possible, when goodness shall join hands with power. But we do not like our pain. We would gladly be sheltered, and comforted, and cheered, and we warn you, by what passes in our own hearts, that women will never express a "general" desire for suffrage until men have ceased to ridicule and despise them for it; until the representatives of men have been taught to treat their petitions with respect. There would be no difficulty in obtaining this right of suffrage If it depended on a property qualification. It is consistent democracy which bars our way.

CAROLINE HEALEY DALL.

[55] Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: That, from and after the passage of this act, each and every male person, excepting paupers and persons under guardianship, of the age of twenty-one years and upward, who has not been convicted of any infamous crime or offence, and who is a citizen of the United States, and who shall have resided in the said District for the period of six months previous to any election therein, shall be entitled to the elective franchise, and shall be deemed an elector and entitled to vote at any election in said District, without any distinction on account of color or race.

[56] The New York Tribune, Dec. 12, 1866, contains the following editorial comments: The Senate devoted yesterday to a discussion of the right of women to vote—a side question, which Mr. Cowan, of Pennsylvania, interjected into the debate on suffrage for the District of Columbia. Mr. Cowan chooses to represent himself as an ardent champion of the claim of woman to the elective franchise. It is not necessary to question his sincerity, but the occasion which he selects for the exhibition of his new-born zeal, subjects him to the suspicion of being considerably more anxious to embarrass the bill for enfranchising the blacks, than to amend it by conferring upon women the enjoyment of the same right. Mr. Cowan was once a Republican. He abandoned his party, has been repudiated by his State, and may well be casting about for some new issue by which to divert attention from his faithlessness on the old. We have heard that Mr. Cowan affects the classics; we are sure, therefore, that he will thank us for reminding him of that familiar story out of Plutarch respecting Alcibiades. When the dissolute Athenian had cut off the tail of his dog, which was the dog's principal ornament, and all Athens cried out against him for the act, Alcibiades laughed, and said: "Just what I wanted has happened. I wished the Athenians to talk about this that they might not say something worse of me."

We are not to be suspected of indifference to the question whether woman shall vote. At a proper time we mean to urge her claim, but we object to allowing a measure of urgent necessity, and on which the public has made up its mind, to be retarded and imperilled. Nor do we think the Radical majority in the Senate need be beholden to the enemy's camp for suggestions as to their policy. We want to see the ballot put in the hands of the black without one day's delay added to the long postponement of his just claim. When that is done, we shall be ready to take up the next question.

[57] Mrs. Frances Dana Gage, of Ohio.

[58] YEAS—Messrs. Anthony, Brown, Buckalew, Cowan, Foster, Nesmith, Patterson, Riddle, Wade—9. NAYS—Messrs. Cattell, Chandler, Conness, Creswell, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Edmunds, Fessenden, Fogg, Frelinghuysen, Grimes, Harris, Henderson, Hendricks, Howard, Howe, Kirkwood, Lane, Morgan, Morrill, Norton, Poland, Pomeroy, Ramsey, Ross, Saulsbury, Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, Sumner, Trumbull, Van Winkle, Willey, Williams, Wilson, Yates—37.

[59] YEAS—Ancona, Baker, Barker, Baxter, Benjamin, Boyer, Broomall, Bundy, Campbell, Cooper, Defrees, Denison, Eldridge, Farnsworth, Ferry, Finck, Garfield, Hale, Hawkins, Hise, Chester D. Hubbard, Edwin N. Hubbell, Humphrey, Julian, Kasson, Kelley, Kelso, Le Blond, Coan, McClurg, McKee, Miller, Newell, Niblock, Noell, Orth, Ritter, Rogers, Ross, Sitgreaves, Starr, Stevens, Strouse, Taber, Nathaniel G. Taylor, Trimble, Andrew H. Ward, Henry D. Washburn, Winfield—49.



CHAPTER XVIII.

NATIONAL CONVENTIONS IN 1866-67.

The first National Woman Suffrage Convention after the war—Speeches by Ernestine L. Rose, Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Henry Ward Beecher, Frances D. Gage, Theodore Tilton, Wendell Phillips—Petitions to Congress and the Constitutional Convention—Mrs. Stanton a candidate to Congress—Anniversary of the Equal Rights Association.

The first Woman's Rights Convention[60] after the war was held in the Church of the Puritans, New York, May 10th, 1866.

As the same persons were identified with the Anti-slavery and Woman's Rights Societies, and as by the "Proclamation of Emancipation" the colored man was now a freeman, and a citizen; and as bills were pending in Congress to secure him in the right of suffrage, the same right women were demanding, it was proposed to merge the societies into one, under the name of "The American Equal Rights Association," that the same conventions, appeals, and petitions, might include both classes of disfranchised citizens. The proposition was approved by the majority of those present, and the new organization completed at an adjourned session. Though Mr. Garrison, with many other abolitionists, feeling that the Anti-slavery work was finished, had retired, and thus partly disorganized that Society, yet, in its executive session, Wendell Phillips, President, refused to entertain the proposition, on the ground that such action required an amendment to the constitution, which could not be made without three months previous notice. Nevertheless there was a marked division of opinion among the anti-slavery friends present.



At an early hour Dr. Cheever's church was well filled with an audience chiefly of ladies, who received the officers and speakers[61] of the Convention with hearty applause. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, President of the "National Woman's Rights Committee," called the Convention to order, and said:

We have assembled to-day to discuss the right and duty of women to claim and use the ballot. Now in the reconstruction is the opportunity, perhaps for the century, to base our government on the broad principle of equal rights to all. The representative women of the nation feel that they have an interest and duty equal with man in the struggles and triumphs of this hour.

It may not be known to all of you that, during the past year, thousands of petitions, asking the ballot for woman, have been circulated through the Northern States and sent to Congress. Our thanks are due to the Hon. James Brooks for his kindness in franking our petitions, and his skill in calling to them the attention of the nation. As we have lost this champion in the House, I trust his more fortunate successor will not dodge his responsibilities to his countrywomen who are taxed but not represented. This should be a year of great activity among the women of this State. As New York is to have a constitutional convention in '67, it behooves us now to make an earnest demand, by appeals and petitions, to have the word "male" as well as "white" stricken from our Constitution.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY, presented several resolutions for consideration.

5. Resolved, That disfranchisement in a republic is as great an anomaly, if not cruelty, as slavery itself. It is, therefore, the solemn duty of Congress, in "guaranteeing a republican form of government to every State of this Union," to see that there be no abridgment of suffrage among persons responsible to law, on account of color or sex.

6. Resolved, That the Joint Resolutions and report of the "Committee of Fifteen," now before Congress, to introduce the word "male" into the Federal Constitution, are a desecration of the last will and testament of the Fathers, a violation of the spirit of republicanism, and cruel injustice to the women of the nation.

7. Resolved, That while we return our thanks to those members of Congress who, recognizing the sacred right of petition, gave our prayer for the ballot a respectful consideration, we also remind those who, with scornful silence laid them on the table, or with flippant sentimentality pretended to exalt us to the clouds, above man, the ballot and the work of life, that we consider no position more dignified and womanly than on an even platform with man worthy to lay the corner-stone of a republic in equality and justice.

8. Resolved, That we recommend to the women of the several States to petition their Legislatures to take the necessary steps to so amend their constitutions as to secure the right of suffrage to every citizen, without distinction of race, color or sex; and especially in those States that are soon to hold their constitutional conventions.

THEODORE TILTON said: According to the programme, it is now my friend Mr. Beecher's turn to speak, but I observe that this gentleman, like some of the rest of the President's friends, occupies a back seat. [Laughter]. While, therefore, he is sitting under the gallery, I will occupy your attention just long enough to give that modest man a chance to muster nerve enough to make his appearance in public. [Laughter]. First of all, I have an account to settle with Mrs. Stanton. In her speech on taking the chair, she said that editors are not good housekeepers—a remark which no editor would think of retorting upon herself. [Laughter]. But, however dingy my editorial office may sometimes be, it is always a cheerful place when Mrs. Stanton visits it. [Applause]. Moreover, I think the place she invited me out of is no darker than this place which she invited me into! [Laughter]. In fact, I think the press has generally as much illumination as the church. [Applause].

Mrs. President, this convention is called to consider the most beautiful and humane idea which has ever entered into American politics—the right of woman to that ballot which belongs equally to all citizens. What is the chief glory of our democratic institutions? It is, that they appeal equally to the common interest of all classes—to high and low, to rich and poor, to white and black, to male and female. And never, until the political equality of all these classes is fully recognized by our laws, shall we have a government truly democratic. The practical instrument of this equality is the ballot. Now what is the ballot? Mr. Frothingham gave us one definition; Mr. Phillips gave us another. But the ballot is so large a thing that it admits of many definitions. The ballot is what the citizen thinks of the government. The government looks to the ballot to know the popular will. I do not mean to say that the little piece of white paper which we hold in our hand on election day is the only means whereby we can utter an opinion that shall be heard in Washington. We can speak by the pen; we can speak by the voice. A wise government will give heed to the public press, and to the popular voice. But there is no spoken voice, there is no written word, which the government is legally bound to heed except the ballot. When they see the ballot, they know they are served with official notice. When you talk to a government, you talk as to a tree; but when you vote at it, you scratch your name on the bark. Now, I want to see Rosalind's name cut into the bark of the government. [Applause]. Who ought to possess the ballot? Our President is right—I mean this President. [Applause]. She does not claim the ballot for women as women, but for women as citizens. That is the true ground. The ballot belongs not to the white man, not to the black man, not to the woman, but to the citizen. Shall the minister vote? No. Shall the lawyer? No. Shall the merchant? No. Shall the rich man? No. Shall the poor man? No. None of these shall vote. There is only one person who shall vote, and that is the citizen. [Applause]. Now I trust the day is not far distant when our institutions shall practically recognize this idea—when civil prerogative shall be limited not only by no distinction of color, but by no distinction of sex.

Are women politically oppressed that they need the ballot for their protection? I leave that question to be answered by women themselves. I demand the ballot for woman, not for woman's sake, but for man's. She may demand it for her own sake; but to-day, I demand it for my sake. We shall never have a government thoroughly permeated with humanity, thoroughly humane, thoroughly noble, thoroughly trustworthy, until both men and women shall unite in forming the public sentiment, and in administering that sentiment through the government. [Applause]. The church needs woman, society needs woman, literature needs woman, science needs woman, the arts need woman, politics need woman. [Applause]. A Frenchman once wrote an essay to prove woman's right to the alphabet. She took the alphabet, entered literature, and drove out Dean Swift. When she takes the ballot, and enters politics, she will drive out Fernando Wood. [Applause]. But, shall we have a woman for President? I would thank God if to-day we had a man for President. [Laughter]. Shall women govern the country? Queens have ruled nations from the beginning of time, and woman has governed man from the foundation of the world! [Laughter]. I know that Plato didn't have a good opinion of women; but probably they were not as amiable in his day as in ours. They undoubtedly have wrought their full share of mischief in the world. The chief bone of contention among mankind, from the earliest ages down, has been that rib of Adam out of which God made Eve. [Laughter]. And I believe in holding women to as great a moral accountability as men. [Laughter]. I believe, also, in holding them to the same intellectual accountability. Twenty years ago, when Macaulay sat down to review Lucy Rushton's—no, I mean Lucy Aiken's (laughter) "Life of Addison," he was forced to allude to what was a patent fact, that a woman's book was then to be treated with more critical leniency than a man's. But criticism nowadays never thinks of asking whether a book be a woman's or a man's, as a preliminary to administering praise or blame. In the Academy of Design, the critic deals as severely with a picture painted by a woman as with one painted by a man. This is right. Would you have it otherwise? Not at all! We are to stand upon a common level.

The signs of the times indicate the progress of woman's cause. Every year helps it forward visibly. The political status of woman was never so seriously pondered as it is now pondered by thoughtful minds in this country. By and by, the principles of Christian democracy will cover the continent—nay, will cover the world, as the equator belts it with summer heat! [Applause]. Until which time, we are called to diligent and earnest work. "Learn to labor and to wait," saith the poet. There will be need of much laboring and of long waiting. Sir William Jones tells us that the Hindoo laws declared that women should have no political independence—and there is many a backward Yankee who don't know any better than to agree with the Hindoos. Salatri, the Italian, drew a design of Patience—a woman chained to a rock by her ankles, while a fountain threw a thin stream of water, drop by drop, upon the iron chain, until the link should be worn away, and the wistful prisoner be set free. In like manner the Christian women of this country are chained to the rock of Burmese prejudice; but God is giving the morning and the evening dew, the early and the latter rain, until the ancient fetters shall be worn away, and a disfranchised sex shall leap at last into political liberty. [Applause]. And now for Mr. Beecher.

MR. BEECHER, on rising, was received with hearty applause,[62] and spoke for an hour, in a strain of great animation, as follows:

It may be asked why, at such a time as this, when the attention of the whole nation is concentrated upon the reconstruction of our States, we should intrude a new and advanced question. I have been asked "Why not wait for the settlement of the one that now fills the minds of men? Why divert and distract their thoughts?" I answer, because the questions are one and the same. We are not now discussing merely the right of suffrage for the African, or his status as a new-born citizen. Claiming his rights compels us to discuss the whole underlying question of government. This is the case in court. But when the judge shall have given his decision, that decision will cover the whole question of civil society, and the relations of every individual in it as a factor, an agent, an actor....

All over the world, the question to-day is, Who has a right to construct and administer law? Russia—gelid, frigid Russia—can not escape the question. Yea, he that sits on the Russian throne has proved himself a better democrat than any of us all, and is giving to-day more evidence of a genuine love of God, and of its partner emotion, love to man, in emancipating thirty million serfs, than many a proud democrat of America has ever given. (Applause.) And the question of emancipation in Russia is only the preface to the next question, which doubtless he as clearly as any of us foresees—namely, the question of citizenship, and of the rights and functions of citizenship. In Italy, the question of who may partake of government has arisen, and there has been an immense widening of popular liberty there. Germany, that freezes at night and thaws out by day only enough to freeze up again at night, has also experienced as much agitation on this subject as the nature of the case will allow. And when all France, all Italy, all Russia, and all Great Britain shall have rounded out into perfect democratic liberty, it is to be hoped that, on the North side of the fence where it freezes first and the ice thaws out last, Germany will herself be thawed out in her turn, and come into the great circle of democratic nations. Strange, that the mother of modern democracy should herself be stricken with such a palsy and with such lethargy! Strange, that in a nation in which was born and in which has inhered all the indomitableness of individualism should be so long unable to understand the secret of personal liberty! But all Europe to-day is being filled and agitated with this great question of the right of every man to citizenship; of the right of every man to make the laws that are to control him; and of the right of every man to administer the laws that are applicable to him. This is the question to-day in Great Britain. The question that is being agitated from the throne down to the Birmingham shop, from the Atlantic to the North Sea, to-day, is this: Shall more than one man in six in Great Britain be allowed to vote? There is only one in six of the full-grown men in that nation that can vote to-day. And everywhere we are moving toward that sound, solid, final ground—namely, that it inheres in the radical notion of manhood that every man has a right which is not given to him by potentate nor by legislator, nor by the consent of the community, but which belongs to his structural idea, and is a divine right, to make the laws that control him, and to elect the magistrates that are to administer those laws. It is universal.

And now, this being the world-tide and tendency, what is there in history, what is there in physiology, what is there in experience, that shall say to this tendency, marking the line of sex, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther?" I roll the argument off from my shoulders, and I challenge the man that stands with me, beholding that the world-thought to-day is the emancipation of the citizen's power and the preparation by education of the citizen for that power, and objects to extending the right of citizenship to every human being, to give me the reasons why. (Applause). To-day this nation is exercising its conscience on the subject of suffrage for the African. I have all the time favored that: not because he was an African, but because he was a man; because this right of voting, which is the symbol of everything else in civil power, inheres in every human being. But I ask you, to-day, "Is it safe to bring in a million black men to vote, and not safe to bring in your mother, your wife, and your sister to vote?" (Applause). This ought ye to have done, and to have done quickly, and not to have left the other undone. (Renewed applause).

To-day politicians of every party, especially on the eve of an election, are in favor of the briefest and most expeditious citizenizing of the Irishmen. I have great respect for Irishmen—when they do not attempt to carry on war! (Laughter). The Irish Fenian movement is a ludicrous phenomenon past all laughing at. Bombarding England from the shore of America! (Great laughter). Paper pugnation! Oratorical destroying! But when wind-work is the order of the day, commend me to Irishmen! (Renewed laughter). And yet I am in favor of Irishmen voting. Just so soon as they give pledge that they come to America, in good faith, to abide here as citizens, and forswear the old allegiance, and take on the new, I am in favor of their voting. Why? Because they have learned our Constitution? No; but because voting teaches. The vote is a schoolmaster. They will learn our laws, and learn our Constitution, and learn our customs ten times quicker when the responsibility of knowing these things is laid upon them, than when they are permitted to live in carelessness respecting them. And this nation is so strong that it can stand the incidental mischiefs of thus teaching the wild rabble that emigration throws on our shores for our good and upbuilding. We are wise enough, and we have educational force enough, to carry these ignorant foreigners along with us. We have attractions that will draw them a thousand times more toward us than they can draw us toward them. And yet, while I take this broad ground, that no man, even of the Democratic party (I make the distinction because a man may be a democrat and be ashamed of the party, and a man may be of the party and not know a single principle of democracy), should be debarred from voting, I ask, is an Irishman just landed, unwashed and uncombed, more fit to vote than a woman educated in our common schools? Think of the mothers and daughters of this land, among whom are teachers, writers, artists, and speakers! What a throng could we gather if we should, from all the West, call our women that as educators are carrying civilization there! Thousands upon thousands there are of women that have gone forth from the educational institutions of New England to carry light and knowledge to other parts of our land. Now, place this great army of refined and cultivated women on the one side, and on the other side the rising cloud of emancipated Africans, and in front of them the great emigrant band of the Emerald Isle, and is there force enough in our government to make it safe to give to the African and the Irishman the franchise? There is. We shall give it to them. (Applause). And will our force all fail, having done that? And shall we take the fairest and best part of our society; those to whom we owe it that we ourselves are civilized: our teachers; our companions; those to whom we go for counsel in trouble more than to any others; those to whom we trust everything that is dear to ourselves—our children's welfare, our household, our property, our name and reputation, and that which is deeper, our inward life itself, that no man may mention to more than one—shall we take them and say, "They are not, after all, fit to vote where the Irishman votes, and where the African votes?" I am scandalized when I hear men talk in the way that men do talk—men that do not think.

If therefore, you refer to the initial sentence, and ask me why I introduce this subject to-day, when we are already engaged on the subject of suffrage, I say, This is the greatest development of the suffrage question. It is more important that woman should vote than that the black man should vote. It is important that he should vote, that the principle may be vindicated, and that humanity may be defended; but it is important that woman should vote, not for her sake. She will derive benefit from voting; but it is not on a selfish ground that I claim the right of suffrage for her. It is God's growing and least disclosed idea of a true human society that man and woman should not be divorced in political affairs any more than they are in religious and social affairs. I claim that women should vote because society will never know its last estate and true glory until you accept God's edict and God's command—long raked over and covered in the dust—until you bring it out, and lift it up, and read this one of God's Ten Commandments, written, if not on stone, yet in the very heart and structure of mankind, Let those that God joined together not be put asunder. (Applause.)

When men converse with me on the subject of suffrage, or the vote, it seems to me that the terminology withdraws their minds from the depth and breadth of the case to the mere instruments. Many of the objections that are urged against woman's voting are objections against the mechanical and physical act of suffrage. It is true that all the forces of society, in their final political deliverance, must needs be born through the vote, in our structure of government. In England it is not so. It was one of the things to be learned there that the unvoting population on any question in which they are interested and united are more powerful than all the voting population or legislation. The English Parliament, if they believed to-day that every working man in Great Britain staked his life on the issues of universal suffrage, would not dare a month to deny it. For when a nation's foundations are on a class of men that do not vote, and its throne stands on forces that are coiled up and liable at any time to break forth to its overthrow, it is a question whether it is safe to provoke the exertion of those forces or not. With us, where all men vote, government is safe; because, if a thing is once settled by a fair vote, we will go to war rather than give it up. As when Lincoln was elected, if an election is valid, it must stand. In such a nation as this, an election is equivalent to a divine decree, and irreversible. But in Great Britain an election means, not the will of the people, but the will of rulers and a favored class, and there is always under them a great wronged class, that, if they get stirred up by the thought that they are wronged, will burst out with an explosion that not the throne, nor parliament, nor the army, nor the exchequer can withstand the shock. And they wisely give way to the popular will when they can no longer resist it without running too great a risk. They oppose it as far as it is safe to do so, and then jump on and ride it. And you will see them astride of the vote, if the common people want it. But in America it is not so. The vote with us is so general that there is no danger of insurrection, and there is no danger that the government will be ruined by a wronged class that lies coiled up beneath it. When we speak of the vote here, it is not the representative of a class, as it is in England, worn like a star, or garter, saying, "I have the king's favor or the government's promise of honor." Voting with us is like breathing. It belongs to us as a common blessing. He that does not vote is not a citizen, with us.

It is not the vote that I am arguing, except that that is the outlet. What I am arguing, when I urge that woman should vote, is that she should do all things back of that which the vote means and enforces. She should be a nursing mother to human society. It is a plea that I make, that woman should feel herself called to be interested not alone in the household, not alone in the church, not alone in just that neighborhood in which she resides, but in the sum total of that society to which she belongs; and that she should feel that her duties are not discharged until they are commensurate with the definition which our Saviour gave in the parable of the good Samaritan. I argue, not a woman's right to vote: I argue woman's duty to discharge citizenship. (Applause.) I say that more and more the great interests of human society in America are such as need the peculiar genius that God has given to woman. The questions that are to fill up our days are not forever to be mere money questions. Those will always constitute a large part of politics; but not so large a portion as hitherto. We are coming to a period when it is not merely to be a scramble of fierce and belluine passions in the strife for power and ambition. Human society is yet to discuss questions of work and the workman. Down below privilege lie the masses of men. More men, a thousand times, feel every night the ground, which is their mother, than feel the stars and the moon far up in the atmosphere of favor. As when Christ came the great mass carpeted the earth, instead of lifting themselves up like trees of Lebanon, so now and here the great mass of men are men that have nothing but their hands, their heads, and their good stalwart hearts, as their capital. The millions that come from abroad come that they may have light and power, and lift their children up out of ignorance, to where they themselves could not reach with the tips of their fingers. And the great question of to-day is, How shall work find leisure, and in leisure knowledge and refinement? And this question is knocking at the door of legislation. And is there a man who does not know, that when questions of justice and humanity are blended, woman's instinct is better than man's judgment? From the moment a woman takes the child into her arms, God makes her the love-magistrate of the family; and her instincts and moral nature fit her to adjudicate questions of weakness and want. And when society is on the eve of adjudicating such questions as these, it is a monstrous fatuity to exclude from them the very ones that, by nature, and training, and instinct, are best fitted to legislate and to judge.

For the sake, then, of such questions as these, that have come to their birth, I feel it to be woman's duty to act in public affairs. I do not stand here to plead for your rights. Rights compared with duties, are insignificant—are mere baubles—are as the bow on your bonnet. It seems to me that the voice of God's providence to you to-day is, "Oh messenger of mine, where are the words that I sent you to speak? Whose dull, dead ear has been raised to life by that vocalization of heaven, that was given to you more than to any other one?" Man is sub-base. A thirty-two feet six-inch pipe is he. But what is an organ played with the feet, if all the upper part is left unused? The flute, the hautboy, the finer trumpet stops, all those stops that minister to the intellect, the imagination, and the higher feelings—these must be drawn, and the whole organ played from top to bottom! (Applause.)

More than that, there are now coming up for adjudication public questions of education. And who, by common consent, is the educator of the world? Who has been? Schools are to be of more importance than railroads—not to undervalue railroads. Books and newspapers are to be more vital and powerful than exchequers and banks—not to undervalue exchequers and banks. In other words, as society ripens, it has to ripen in its three departments, in the following order: First, in the animal; second, in the social; and third, in the spiritual and moral. We are entering the last period, in which the questions of politics are to be more and more moral questions. And I invoke those whom God made to be peculiarly conservators of things moral and spiritual to come forward and help us in that work, in which we shall falter and fail without woman. We shall never perfect human society without her offices and her ministration. We shall never round out the government, or public administration, or public policies, or politics itself, until you have mixed the elements that God gave to us in society—namely, the powers of both men and women. (Applause.) I, therefore, charge my countrywomen with this duty of taking part in public affairs in the era in which justice, and humanity, and education, and taste, and virtue are to be more and more a part and parcel of public procedure. * * * *

In such a state of society, then, as the present, I stand, as I have said, on far higher ground in arguing this question than the right of woman. That I believe in; but that is down in the justice's court. I go to the supreme bench and argue it, and argue it on the ground that the nation needs woman, and that woman needs the nation, and that woman can never become what she should be, and the nation can never become what it should be, until there is no distinction made between the sexes as regards the rights and duties of citizenship—until we come to the 28th verse of the third chapter of Galatians. What is it? [turning to Mr. Tilton, who said, "I don't know!"] Don't know? If it was Lucy Rushton, you would! (Great laughter).

There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.

And when that day comes; when the heavenly kingdom is ushered in with its myriad blessed influences; when the sun of righteousness shall fill the world with its beams, as the natural sun coming from the far South fills the earth with glorious colors and beauty, then it will come to pass that there shall be no nationality, no difference of classes, and no difference of sexes. Then all shall be one in Christ Jesus. Hold that a minute, please [handing Mr. Tilton a pocket Testament from which he had read the foregoing passage of Scripture]. Theodore was a most excellent young man when he used to go to my church; but he has escaped from my care lately, and now I don't know what he does. (Laughter).

I urge, then, that woman should perform the duty of a citizen in voting. You may, perhaps, ask me, before I go any further, "What is the use of preaching to us that we ought to do it, when we are not permitted to do it?" That day in which the intelligent, cultivated women of America say, "We have a right to the ballot" will be the day in which they will have it. (Voices—"Yes." "That is so"). There is no power on earth that can keep it from them. [Applause]. The reason you have not voted is because you have not wanted to. [Applause]. It is because you have not felt that it was your duty to vote. You have felt yourselves to be secure and happy enough in your privileges and prerogatives, and have left the great mass of your sisters, that shed tears and bore burdens, to shirk for themselves. You have felt that you had rights more than you wanted now. O yes, it is as if a beauty in Fifth Avenue, hearing one plead that bread might be sent to the hungry and famishing, should say, "What is this talk about bread for? I have as much bread as I want, and plenty of sweetmeats, and I do not want your loaves." Shall one that is glutted with abundance despise the wants of the starving, who are so far below them that they do not hear their cries, not one of which escapes the ear of Almighty God? Because you have wealth and knowledge and loving parents, or a faithful husband, or kind brothers, and you feel no pressure of need, do you feel no inward pressure of humanity for others? Is there no part of God's great work in providence that should lead you to be discontented with your ease and privileges until you are enfranchised? You ought to vote; and when your understanding and intellect are convinced that you ought to do it, you will have the power to do it; and you never will till then.

I. Woman has more interest than man in the promotion of virtue and purity and humanity. Half, shall I say?—Half does not half measure the proportion of those sorrows that come upon woman by reason of her want of influence and power. All the young men that, breaking down, break fathers' and mothers' hearts; all those that struggle near to the grave, weeping piteous tears of blood, it might almost be said, and that at last, under paroxysms of despair, sin against nature, and are swept out of misery into damnation; the spectacles that fill our cities, and afflict and torment villages—what are these but reasons that summon woman to have a part in that regenerating of thought and that regenerating of legislation which shall make vice a crime, and vice-makers criminals? Do you suppose that, if it were to turn on the votes of women to-day whether rum should be sold in every shop in this city, there would be one moment's delay in settling the question? What to the oak lightning is that marks it and descends swiftly upon it, that woman's vote would be to miscreant vices in these great cities. [Applause]. Ah, I speak that which I do know. As a physician speaks from that which he sees in the hospital where he ministers, so I speak from that which I behold in my professional position and place, where I see the undercurrent of life. I hear groans that come from smiling faces. I witness tears that when others look upon the face are all swept away, as the rain is when one comes after a storm. Not most vocal are our deepest sorrows. Oh, the sufferings of wives for husbands untrue! Oh, the sufferings of mothers for sons led astray! Oh, the sufferings of sisters for sisters gone! Oh, the sufferings of companions for companion-women desecrated! And I hold it to be a shame that they, who have the instinct of purity and of divine remedial mercy more than any other, should withhold their hand from that public legislation by which society may be scoured, and its pests cleared away. And I declare that woman has more interest in legislation than man, because she is the sufferer and the home-staying, ruined victim.