Volume II Part 49 (1/2)
Extracts from the Const.i.tution of the United States, upon which the resolutions are based:
PREAMBLE, We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Const.i.tution for the United States of America.
ARTICLE I. Sec. 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States, and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Virginia L. Minor.]
SEC. 4. The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may, at any time, by law, alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.--[See Elliot's Debates, vol. 3, p. 366--remarks of Mr. Madison--Story's Commentaries, Secs.
623, 626, 578].
SEC. 8. The Congress shall have power to establish a uniform mode of naturalization--to make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers vested by this Const.i.tution in the Government of the United States, or in any department or officer thereof.
SEC. 9. No bill of attainder, or _ex post facto_ law shall be pa.s.sed.
No t.i.tle of n.o.bility shall be granted by the United States.
No State shall pa.s.s any bill of attainder, _ex post facto_ law--or law impairing the obligations of contracts, or grant any t.i.tle of n.o.bility.--(See c.u.mmings _vs._ the State of Missouri. Wallace Rep. 278, and Exparte Garland, same volume).
ARTICLE IV. Sec. 2. The citizens of each State shall be ent.i.tled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States. (The elective franchise is one of the privileges secured by this section--See Corfield _vs._ Coryell, 4 Was.h.i.+ngton Circuit Court Reps. 380--cited and approved in Dunham _vs._ Lamphere, 3 Gray--Ma.s.s. Rep.
276--and Bennett _vs._ Boggs, Baldwin Rep., p. 72, Circuit Court U. S.)
SEC. 4. The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government. (How can that form of government be republican, when one-half the people are forever deprived of all partic.i.p.ation in its affairs).
ARTICLE VI. This Const.i.tution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Const.i.tution or laws of any States to the contrary notwithstanding.
XIV. AMENDMENT. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.
At this same convention Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, President of the Missouri State a.s.sociation, in her opening address said:
I believe that the Const.i.tution of the United States gives me every right and privilege to which every other citizen is ent.i.tled; for while the Const.i.tution gives the States the right to regulate suffrage, it nowhere gives them power to prevent it.
The power to regulate is one thing, the power to prevent is an entirely different thing. Thus the State can say where, when, and what citizens may exercise the right of suffrage. If she can say that a woman, who is a citizen of the United States, shall not vote, then she can equally say that a Chinaman, who is not a citizen, shall vote and represent her in Congress. The foreign naturalized citizen claims his right to vote from and under the paramount authority of the Federal Government, and the State has no right to prevent him from voting, and thus place him in a lower degree or grade of citizens.h.i.+p than that of free citizens.
This being the case, is it presumable that a foreign citizen is intended to be placed higher than one born on our soil? Under our Const.i.tution and laws, woman is a naturalized citizen with her husband. There are men in this town to-day, to my certain knowledge, who have had this boon of citizens.h.i.+p thrust upon them, who scorned the name, and who freely claimed allegiance to a foreign power. Our Government has existed for eighty years, yet this question of citizens.h.i.+p has never been settled. In 1856 the question came before the then Attorney-General, Mr. Cus.h.i.+ng, as to whether Indians were citizens of the United States, and as such, were ent.i.tled to the privilege of preempting our public lands. He gave it as his opinion that they were not citizens, but domestic subjects, and therefore not ent.i.tled to the benefits of the act.
In 1821 the question came before Attorney-General William Wirt, as to whether free persons of color in the State of Virginia were citizens of the United States, and as such, ent.i.tled to command vessels engaged in foreign trade. He gave it as his opinion that they were not, that the Const.i.tution by the term citizen, and by its description of citizen, meant only those who were ent.i.tled to all the privileges of free white persons, and negroes were not citizens. In 1843 the question came before Attorney-General Legree, of South Carolina, as to whether free negroes of that State were citizens, and he gave it as his opinion that as the law of Congress intended only to exclude aliens, therefore that they as denizens could take advantage of the act. Mr. Marcy, in 1856, decided that negroes were not citizens, but ent.i.tled to the protection of the Government.
In justice to our s.e.x, I must ask you to bear in mind the fact that all these wise Secretaries of State and Attorney-Generals, were men that made these singular decisions, not illogical, unreasoning women, totally incapable of understanding politics.
And lastly, in 1862, our late honored and lamented fellow-citizen, Attorney-General Bates, decided that free negroes were citizens. Thus, you see, it took forty-one years to make this simple discovery. I have cited all these examples to show you that all rights and privileges depend merely on the acknowledgment of our right as citizens, and wherever this question has arisen the Government has universally conceded that we are citizens; and as such, I claim that if we are ent.i.tled to two or three privileges, we are ent.i.tled to all. This question of woman's right to the ballot has never yet been raised in any quarter. It has yet to be tested whether a free, moral, intelligent woman, highly cultivated, every dollar of whose income and property are taxed equally with that of all men, shall be placed by our laws on a level with the savage. I am often jeeringly asked, ”If the Const.i.tution gives you this right, why don't you take it?” My reply is both a statement and a question.
The State of Ma.s.sachusetts allows negroes to vote. The Const.i.tution of the United States says the citizens of each State shall be allowed all the privileges of the citizens in the several States. Now, I ask you, can a woman or negro vote in Missouri? You have placed us on the same level. Yet, by such question you hold us responsible for the unstatesmanlike piece of patchwork which you call the Const.i.tution of Missouri! Women of the State, let us no longer submit to occupy so degraded a position! Disguise it as you may, the disfranchised cla.s.s is ever a degraded cla.s.s. Let us lend all our energies to have the stigma removed from us. Failing before the Legislatures, we must then turn to the Supreme Court of our land and ask it to decide what are our rights as citizens, or, at least, not doing that, give us the privilege of the Indian, and exempt us from the burden of taxation to support so unjust a Government. [Applause].
Ten thousand extra copies of _The Revolution_ containing these resolutions and this speech were published and sent to friends throughout the country, laid on every member's desk in Congress, and circulated at the Was.h.i.+ngton Convention of 1870. From this hour up to the time of the Supreme Court decision in the case of Virginia L.
Minor in 1875, the National Woman Suffrage a.s.sociation took this view in regard to the XIV. Amendment. Mrs. Stanton, fully accepting the new position, made her speech on that basis before the Congressional Committee[127] on the District of Columbia. In calling this Committee to order Senator Hamlin said:
We have met this morning for the purpose of considering two pet.i.tions which have been presented, I believe, only to the Senate Committee of the District of Columbia. The first one is a pet.i.tion, very numerously signed, I think, by both ladies and gentlemen of this city, and in a few brief words it says that: ”The undersigned, residents of the District of Columbia, earnestly but respectfully request that you extend the right of suffrage to the women of the District.” The other memorial, very nearly as brief, is in these words: ”The undersigned citizens of the United States pray your honorable body that in the proposed amendments to the Const.i.tution which may come before you in regard to suffrage, and in any law affecting suffrage, in the District of Columbia or in any Territory, the right of voting may be given to the women on the same terms as to the men.” Upon this subject we have some lady friends who desire to address us, and I have the pleasure of introducing to you Mrs. Stanton.
Mrs. STANTON said: Accustomed to appeal to the sentiments and combat the prejudices of popular a.s.semblies, it is a comparatively easy task to plead the cause of woman before clear, logical, dispa.s.sionate minds--committees of statesmen--trained to view all subjects in the light of pure reason; for unprejudiced minds admit to-day that if the democratic theory of government is true, the argument lies wholly on our side of this question. As history shows that each step in civilization has been a steady approximation to our democratic theory, securing larger liberties to the people, it is fair to infer that its full realization--the equal rights of all--will be the best possible government.