Volume II Part 50 (1/2)
When, on that March day of 1867, the negroes of the District first voted, with what anxiety did the people wait, and with what joy did they read the glad tidings, flashed over the wires the following morning! And the success of that first election in this District, inspired Congress with confidence to pa.s.s the proposition for the XV. Amendment, and the different States to ratify it until it has become a fixed fact that black men all over the nation may not only vote, but sit in legislative a.s.semblies and const.i.tutional conventions. We now ask Congress to do the same for women. We ask you to enfranchise the women of the District this very winter, so that next March they may go to the ballot-box, and all the people of this nation may see that it is possible for women to vote and the republic to stand. There is no reason, no argument, nothing but prejudice, against our demand; and there is no way to break down this prejudice but to try the experiment. Therefore we most earnestly urge it, in full faith that so soon as Congress and the people shall have witnessed its beneficial results, they will go forward with a XVI. Amendment that shall prohibit any State to disfranchise any of its citizens on account of s.e.x.
Mrs. HOOKER said: The fifth commandment, ”Honor thy father and thy mother,” can not be obeyed while boys are taught by our laws and const.i.tutions to hold all women in contempt. I feel it is not only woman's right, but duty to a.s.sume responsibility in the government. I think the importance of the subject demands its hearing.
Madam ANNEKE: You have lifted up the slave on this continent; listen now to woman's cry for freedom.
Mrs. MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE: Liberty is an instinct of the human heart, and men desirous of creating change in governments or religion have led other men by promising them greater liberty and better laws. Nothing is too good, too great, too sacred for humanity--and, as part of humanity, woman as well as man demands the best that governments have to offer. Honorable gentlemen have spoken of pet.i.tions. For twenty years we have pet.i.tioned, and I now hold in my hand over three thousand names of citizens from but a small portion of the State of New York, asking that justice shall be done women by granting them suffrage. But people have become tired of begging for rights, and many persons favoring this cause will not again pet.i.tion. We but ask justice, and we say to you that the stability of any government depends upon its doing justice to the most humble individual under it.
Mrs. PAULINA WRIGHT DAVIS: We are tired of pet.i.tioning. It is time our legislators knew what was right and gave us justice.
Mrs. WILBOUR remarked that a lady of the district near her said she had obtained 1,500 signatures in one ward of the city to a pet.i.tion.
Senator PATTERSON inquired what the effect would be in case women were allowed to vote, if there were a difference of opinion between the husband and wife on some political question--where the authority of the family would rest?
Mrs. STANTON replied that there was always a superior will and brain in every family. If it was the man, he would rule; if it was the woman, she would rule. Individuality would be preserved in the family as well as in society.
Hon. Mr. WELKER wanted to know if the women in the District had shown any interest in the movement yet.
Mrs. STANTON replied that they had; they had attended the sessions of the Convention held here, and all she had spoken to were in favor of it.
Mrs. WILBOUR said the pet.i.tion of 1,500 women of the District asking for suffrage had been presented to Congress this very winter.
Hon. Mr. COOKE said that the Committee on the District of Columbia could not get enough time allowed them by the House to transact the necessary business of the District during the short morning hour to which they were limited by the rules, and he feared they would be unable to get the action of the House on the subject.
Miss ANTHONY said that they must make time enough to present the bill at least; and asked if women had the right to vote, and make and unmake members, if they could not then find time to plead woman's cause?
The honorable member was obliged to answer this pertinent question in the affirmative.
Senator HAMLIN said the Committee would take the matter into consideration and discuss it; that in Scripture language he could say he ”was almost, if not quite, persuaded.”
Altogether the hearing was serious and impressive, and it was evident that the honorable gentlemen had already given the subject a thoughtful consideration. As each member of the Congressional Committee was presented by Senator Hamlin, the ladies had abundant opportunity for learning their individual opinions. Senator Sumner never appeared more genial, and said though he had been in Congress for twenty years, and through the exciting scenes of the Nebraska Act, Emanc.i.p.ation, District of Columbia Suffrage Act, and Reconstruction, he had never seen a committee in which were present so many Senators and Representatives, so many spectators, and so much interest manifested in the subject under discussion.
The following description (in the _Hartford Courant_) is from the pen of Mrs. Fannie Howland.
WAs.h.i.+NGTON, Jan. 22, 1870.
The close of the Woman's Suffrage Convention in this city was marked by an event which, no matter how slowly its logical sequence is developed, must be regarded as initiative.
A committee of ladies appointed by the convention and composed in great part of those well known as leaders in the movement, was received at the Capitol by the committee of the Senate and House (on the District of Columbia) for a formal hearing. The object of that hearing was to request the honorable gentlemen to present a bill to Congress for enfranchising the women of the District, as an experiment preparatory to ultimate acknowledgment of equal rights for all the women of the United States. The ladies were received in one of the larger committee rooms, in order to accommodate a number who wished to be present at this novel interview. After taking their seats, the Hon. Hannibal Hamlin, chairman, presented to them successively the gentlemen of the committee, who certainly greeted their fair appellants with the deferential courtesy due to fellow-sovereigns, albeit unacknowledged and disguised, for the present, under the odium of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt.
The gentlemen took their seats around a long table in the middle of the room. Mrs. Stanton stood at one end, serene and dignified. Behind her sat a large semi-circle of ladies, and close about her a group of her companions, who would have been remarkable anywhere for the intellectual refinement and elevated expression of their earnest faces. Opposite, at the other end of the table, sat Charles Sumner, looking fatigued and worn, but listening with alert attention. So these two veterans in the cause of freedom were fitly and suggestively brought face to face.
The scene was impressive. It was simple, grand, historic. Women have often appeared in history--n.o.ble, brilliant, heroic women; but _woman_ collectively, impersonally, never until now. To-day, for the first time, she asks recognition in the commonwealth--not in virtue of hereditary n.o.blesse--not for any excellence or achievement of individuals, but on the simple ground of her presence in the race, with the same rights, interests, responsibilities as man. There was nothing in this gathering at the Capitol to touch the imagination with illusion, no ball-room splendor of light and fragrance and jewels, none of those graceful enchantments by which women have been content to reign through brief dynasties of beauty over briefer fealties of homage. The cool light of a winter morning, the bare walls of a committee room, the plain costumes of every day use, held the mind strictly to the simple facts which gave that group of representative men and women its moral significance, its severe but picturesque unity. Some future artist, looking back for a memorable ill.u.s.tration of this period, will put this new ”Declaration of Independence” upon canvas, and will ransack the land for portraits of those ladies who first spoke for their countrywomen at the Capitol, and of those Senators and Representatives who first gave them audience.
Mrs. Stanton's speech was brief and able, eloquent from the simplicity and earnestness of her heart, logical from the well disciplined vigor of her mind. She was followed by Miss Anthony, morally as inevitable and impersonal as a Greek chorus, but physically and intellectually individual, intense, original, full of humor and good nature--anything but the roaring lioness of newspaper reports some years ago. Mrs. Davis, of Rhode Island, spoke briefly in support of the demand for franchise. Mrs. I. B.
Hooker presented the Scriptural argument for the equality of woman in all moral responsibility and duty under the divine law.
She spoke very feelingly, and was heard with marked attention. A German lady from Wisconsin who, weighed in any balance, would not be found wanting, struggled to express, in broken English, the ideas for which she came forward as representing many of her countrywomen in the West. Madam Anneke fought by her husband's side in the revolution of 1848; but such an example adds no force to the argument for woman's suffrage, the plea being made, not for distinguished exceptional women, but for the average women of the community.
When the ladies had finished their remarks, the gentlemen were invited to ask any questions which were suggested by the subject discussed. Either from indifference or chivalrous sentiment, no very grave questions were proposed, nothing which required effort or argument to answer. Probably when the matter comes, as sooner or later it must come, before Congress, we shall hear some well-considered defense of the Salic law, which in this democratic republic, excludes all women from the citizen's prerogative. One of the honorable gentlemen asked how they could be certain that any number of women in the United States desired the ballot. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony recounted their experience at conventions, the numerous signatures to pet.i.tions, the many demonstrations here and in England in favor of woman suffrage, but reminded the gentleman that no such separate expression is required from the unwashed, unkempt immigrants upon whom the government makes haste to confer unqualified suffrage, nor from the southern negroes, who are provided for by the XV.
Amendment.
The hearing ended about noon, followed by very cordial shaking hands and pleasant chat. I do not know if the ladies were invited to ”call again,” but am quite sure that Miss Anthony's parting salutation was an ”au revoir.” There was some quiet by-play as the audience dispersed, a little interchange of knowing nods and condescending smiles, as if to say, ”we can keep these absurd pretensions at bay while _we_ live, and after us the deluge.” I have no doubt that to some persons it appears an extravagant joke for women to aspire to political equality with the negro. King George thought it a very good joke when his upstart colonists steeped their tea in the salt water of Boston harbor, but the laugh was on their side in the long run. History has no precedents for the elevation of woman to a civic status, but we are making precedents every day in our conduct of popular government. In Athens--where woman was both wors.h.i.+ped and degraded--the protectress of the city was a feminine ideal whose glorious image crowned the Parthenon with consummate beauty. In America, where woman is beloved and respected as nowhere else in the world--if she is only true to the ideals of private and public virtue--if she seeks power only as a means for the highest good of the race, the old fable of the Pellas Athenae may become real, and the nation acknowledge with grateful joy, that the fathers ”builded better than they knew,” when they placed the figure of a woman on the dome of their Capitol at Was.h.i.+ngton.