Volume II Part 62 (1/2)

Our conclusion, stated in a few words, is this: All women are citizens. Every citizen, in the language of Judge Daniel in the Dred Scott case, has ”the actual possession and enjoyment or the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political.” The right to prescribe qualifications rests with the States, in the absence of any law of Congress prescribing them. These qualifications involve time of residence, age, and other matters that are entirely within the reach of the citizen by acquisition or lapse of time. Mr. Sumner has demonstrated in a manner that can not be answered that the qualifications thus left for the States to prescribe must be those under which the citizen can become a voter, and can not be such as would permanently exclude him from the right of suffrage.

It has been said that it is not fair for women to take advantage of a right to vote, no matter how clearly given them, which there was no actual intention to give. This objection does not touch the argument we have been making, but it may be well to say a word upon it. The law has so far dealt so unfairly with women that it would seem as if they should not be severely criticised for taking advantage of the law, when, though by mere accident, it happens to favor them. But it is especially to be considered that their claim is in accordance with the whole spirit of the Const.i.tution and in harmony with all the fundamental principles of our Government, while the denial of suffrage to them is in opposition to those principles. If anything is settled in this country as an abstract general principle, it is the right of tax-payers to have a voice in the legislation that is to determine their taxes and in the appointment of the officers who are to levy and expend them, and that the members of the nation should elect its rulers. Our error (and the day is not far distant when we shall all see its absurdity) is in making these fundamental rights the rights of men alone and in denying them to women. The latter have equal intelligence, patriotism, and virtue, and their fidelity to their country has been as well proved as that of men, and it is difficult to see any good reason why they should have no voice in deciding who shall be the rulers of the nation, what its laws, what its taxes and how appropriated, what the policy that is to affect, for good or evil, the business interests that they are becoming more and more largely engaged in. With all this equity in their favor, may they not be allowed, without censure, to avail themselves of a legal right? If the freedom of the slave could have been declared by our judicial tribunals under some guarantee of freedom in the National Const.i.tution, originally intended only for white men, all lovers of freedom would have rejoiced. When Alvan Stewart, thirty years ago, attempted to get such a decision from the supreme court of New Jersey, there was not a cavil heard among the opponents of slavery. So when, in the face of the whole legal opinion of England, Granville Sharpe got a decision in favor of the slave Somerset, forever overthrowing slavery in England, by an application of latent principles of the English const.i.tution, the whole world applauded, and does to this day. It was thus, as we understand it, that slavery was overthrown in Ma.s.sachusetts, a lawyer claiming before its courts the application to a slave of a clause in its bill of rights supposed to have been intended only for white men. We would add that it would not accord at all with the good sense and directness of method that specially characterize the American people, for the friends of woman suffrage to labor years for the pa.s.sage of a further const.i.tutional amendment when they already have all that such an amendment could give.

Having attempted a strictly legal view of this question, permit me, gentlemen, to say that in my heart my claim to vote is based upon the original Const.i.tution, interpreted by the Declaration of Independence. I believe that Const.i.tution comprehensive enough to include all men and all women. I believe that black men needed no other charter than white men. I recognize the stress laid upon Congress, by reason of the infancy of that race, their past bondage, and the duty of protection toward them. But the great principles of liberty and responsibility contained in the Declaration and the Const.i.tution should have afforded protection to every human being living under the flag, and properly applied they would have been found sufficient. For my own part, I will never willingly consent to vote under any special enactment conferring rights of citizens.h.i.+p upon me as upon an alien. Like Paul, I was free-born. ”With a great sum obtained I this freedom,” said the Roman centurion to this old patriot apostle, but he replied, ”I am free-born.” There is music in those words to my ear. They are the deep vibrations of a soul that loves its country as itself.

You sit here, gentlemen, in judgment on my rights as an American citizen, as though they were something different from your own!

By whatsoever t.i.tle you sit in these seats and make laws, wise or unwise, just or unjust, for this great people, by that same t.i.tle do I claim my share in this great responsibility, owing allegiance to G.o.d and my own conscience alone. I may have been born with less capacity than the least among you, with small chance of growing to your mental stature, or reaching your standard of moral elevation; but I have a perfect right to sit in your midst, pigmy that I may be, since I am one of ”the people”

who did ordain this glorious old Const.i.tution, and one of ”the governed,” whose consent is made the basis of a government that can be called just.

It is for this reason that I and my fellow memorialists have asked to be protected in the use of our present rights, rather than endowed with any new ones; and we do pray you, gentlemen of the committee, to give immediate attention to our claim, and to report to the Senate within a short time, favorably if you can, adversely if you must, because we not only wish, in common with thousands of other women-citizens, to vote for the next President, but to have a potent voice in his nomination, and we wish to know, therefore, how far Congress will aid us, and how far we must work out our own salvation. For we can wait no longer. We feel that we have neglected our duty already, else what means this appalling official corruption that is bringing dismay to the stoutest hearts among men, and leading them to doubt the wisdom of republican inst.i.tutions, the strength of the great doctrines of liberty and responsibility on which our Government is founded? We do not doubt these great doctrines, we know what they mean and whereto they tend. Our s.h.i.+p of State carries two engines, gentlemen, and was built for them, but heretofore you have used only one, and now you have reached the place where not only two seas meet, but all ocean currents are struggling together for the mastery. The man power alone will not save you, but put on the woman power, and our gallant s.h.i.+p will steady itself for a moment, and then ride the waves triumphantly forevermore.

Gentlemen, we come to you with pet.i.tions no longer. Here is our declaration and pledge, issued a year ago this day, signed already by thousands of women, and eager names are coming every day. (Mrs. H. read the pledge and exhibited the great autograph book.)

We did hope to present this to Congress itself in the Senate Chamber to-day. We believe that women, being unrepresented in that body, are ent.i.tled to appear there by their memorialists in person, and we have so asked. But Congress has referred us to you, and you have declined even to submit our proposition officially to that body. You find no precedent for this, you say--forgetting, gentlemen, that history makes its own precedents. The men of America made theirs in 1776; the women of America are making theirs to-day, and may G.o.d prosper the right.

Mrs. STANTON said: _Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee_: We appear before you at this time to call your attention to our memorial asking for a ”declaratory act” that shall protect women in the exercise of the right of suffrage. Benjamin F. Butler, early in the session, presented a bill in the House to this effect that may soon, in the order of legislation, come before you for consideration in the Senate of the United States. As you well know, women are demanding their rights as citizens to-day under the original Const.i.tution, believing that its letter and spirit, fairly interpreted, guarantee the blessings of liberty to every citizen under our flag. But more especially do we claim that our t.i.tle deed to the elective franchise is clearly given in the XIV. and XV. Amendments. Therein for the first time, the Const.i.tution defines the term citizen, and, in harmony with our best lexicographers, declares a citizen to be a person possessed of the right to vote. In the last year the question of woman's political status has been raised from one of vague generalities to one of const.i.tutional law.

The Woodhull memorial, and the able arguments sustaining it made by Mr. Riddle and Mrs. Woodhull herself, and the exhaustive minority report of Messrs. Butler and Loughridge, have been before the nation for one year, and yet remain unanswered; in fact, the opinions of many of our most learned judges and lawyers multiplying on all sides, sustain the positions taken in the ”Woodhull Memorial.” As our demands are based on the same principles of const.i.tutional interpretation, I will not detain you with the re-statement of arguments already furnished, but will present a few facts and general princ.i.p.als showing the need of some speedy action on this whole question.

Gentlemen hold seats in Congress to-day by the votes of women.

The legality of the election of Mr. Garfield, of Was.h.i.+ngton Territory, and Mr. Jones, of Wyoming, involves the question whether or not their const.i.tuents are legal voters. Ultimately, this question, involving the fundamental rights of citizens, must be considered in the Senate as well as the House. Women have voted in the general elections in several of the States, and if legislators chosen by women choose Senators, their right to their seats can not be decided until it is first decided whether women are legal voters. Some speedy action on this question is inevitable, to preserve law and order.

In some States women have already voted; in others they are contesting their rights in the courts, and the decisions of judges differ as widely as the capacities of men to see first principles.

Judge Howe, Judge Cartter, and Judge Underwood have given their written opinions in favor of woman's citizens.h.i.+p under the XIV.

and XV. Amendments. Even the majority report of the Judiciary Committee, presented by John A. Bingham, though adverse to the prayer of Victoria Woodhull, admits the citizens.h.i.+p of woman. In the late cases of Sarah Spencer against the Board of Registration, and Sarah E. Webster against the superintendent of election, the judge decided that under the XIV. Amendment women are citizens.

We do not ask to vote outside of law, or in open violation of it, nor to avail ourselves of any strained interpretations of const.i.tutional provisions, but in harmony with the Federal Const.i.tution, the Declaration of Independence, and our American theory of just government. The women of this country and a handful of foreign citizens in Rhode Island, the only disfranchised cla.s.ses, ask you to-day to secure to them a republican form of government to protect them against the oppression of State authorities, who, in violation of your amendments, a.s.sume the right not merely to regulate the suffrage, but to abridge and deny it to these two cla.s.ses of citizens. The Federal Const.i.tution, in its Amendment, clearly defines, for the first time, who are citizens: ”All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the States wherein they reside.”

No one denies that ”all persons,” in the XIV. Amendment, is used without limitation of s.e.x, or in other words, that not men only, but women also are citizens. Whether in theory the citizens.h.i.+p of women is generally admitted or not, it certainly is in practice.

Women pre-empt land; women register s.h.i.+ps; women obtain pa.s.sports; women pay the penalty of their own crimes; women pay taxes, sometimes work out the road tax. In some States, even married women can make contracts, sue and be sued, and do business in their own names; in fact, the old Blackstone idea that husband and wife are one, and that one the husband, received its death blow twenty years ago, when the States of New York and Ma.s.sachusetts pa.s.sed their first laws securing to married women the property they inherited in their own right.

You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a voter. I can read the Const.i.tution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.

”Individual rights,” ”Individual conscience and judgment,” are great American ideas, underlying our whole political and religious life. We are here to-day to ask a Congress of Republicans for that crowning act that shall secure to 15,000,000 women the right to protect their persons, property, and opinions by law. The XIV. Amendment, having told us who are citizens of the republic, further declares that ”no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the 'privileges or immunities' of 'citizens' of the United States.” Some say that ”privileges and immunities” do not include the right of suffrage.

We answer that any person under Government who has no voice in the laws or the rulers has his privileges and immunities abridged at every turn, and when a State denies the right of suffrage, it robs the citizen of his citizens.h.i.+p and of all power to protect his person or property by law.

Disfranchised cla.s.ses are ever helpless and degraded cla.s.ses. One can readily judge of the political status of a citizen by the tone of the press. Go back a few years, and you find the Irishman the target for all the gibes and jeers of the nation. You could scarce take up a paper without finding some joke about ”Pat” and his last bull. But in process of time ”Pat” became a political power in the land, and editors and politicians could not afford to make fun of him. Then ”Sambo” took his turn. They ridiculed his thick skull, woolly head, s.h.i.+n-bone, long heel, etc., but he, too, has become a political power; he sits in the Congress of the United States and in the Legislature of Ma.s.sachusetts, and now politicians and editors can not afford to make fun of him.

Now, who is their target? Woman. They ridicule all alike--the strong-minded for their principles, the weak minded for their panniers. How long think you the New York _Tribune_ would maintain its present scurrilous tone if the votes of women could make Horace Greeley Governor of New York? The editor of the _Tribune_ knows the value of votes, and if, honorable gentlemen, you will give us a ”Declaratory law,” forbidding the States to deny or abridge our rights, there will be no need of arguments to change the tone of his journal; its columns will speedily glow with demands for the protection of woman as well as broadcloth and pig-iron. Then we might find out what he knows and cares for our real and relative value in the Government.

Without some act of Congress regulating suffrage for women as well as black men, women citizens of the United States who, in Was.h.i.+ngton, Utah, and Wyoming Territories, are voters and jurors, and who, in the State of Kansas, vote on school and license questions, would be denied the exercise of their right to vote in all the States of the Union, and no naturalization papers, education, property, residence, or age could help them. What an anomaly is this in a republic! A woman who in Wyoming enjoys all the rights, privileges, and immunities of a sovereign, by crossing the line into Nebraska, sinks at once to the political degradation of a slave. Humiliated with such injustice, one set of statesmen answer her appeals by sending her for redress to the courts; another advises her to submit her qualifications to the States; but we, with a clearer intuition of the rightful power, come to you who thoughtfully, conscientiously, and understandingly pa.s.sed that Amendment defining the word ”citizen,” declaring suffrage a foundation right. How are women ”citizens” from Utah, Wyoming, Kansas, moving in other States, to be protected in the rights they have heretofore enjoyed, unless Congress shall pa.s.s the bill presented by Mr. Butler, and thus give us a h.o.m.ogeneous law on suffrage from Maine to Louisiana?

Remember, these are citizens of the United States as well as of the Territories and States wherein they may reside, and their rights as such are of primal consideration. One of your own amendments to the Federal Const.i.tution, honorable gentlemen, says ”that the right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” We have women of different races and colors, as well as men. It takes more than men to compose peoples and races, and no one denies that all women suffer the disabilities of a present or previous condition of servitude. Clearly the State may regulate, but can not deny the exercise of this right to any citizen.

You did not leave the negroes to the tender mercies of the courts and States. Why send your mothers, wives, and daughters suppliants at the feet of the unwashed, unlettered, unthinking ma.s.ses that carry our elections in the States? Would you compel the women of New York to sue the Tweeds, the Sweeneys, the Connollys, for their inalienable rights, or to have the scales of justice balanced for them in the unsteady hand of a Cardozo, a Barnard, or a McCunn? Nay, nay; the proper tribunal to decide nice questions of human rights and const.i.tutional interpretations, the political status of every citizen under our national flag, is the Congress of the United States. This is your right and duty, clearly set forth in article 1, section 5, of the Const.i.tution, for how can you decide the competency and qualifications of electors for members of either House without settling the fundamental question on what the right of suffrage is based? All power centers in the people. Our Federal Const.i.tution, as well as that of every State, opens with the words, ”We, the people.” However this phrase may have been understood and acted on in the past, women to-day are awake to the fact that they const.i.tute one half the American people; that they have the right to demand that the const.i.tution shall secure to them ”justice,” ”domestic tranquillity,” and the ”blessings of liberty.” So long as women are not represented in the government they are in a condition of tutelage, perpetual minority, slavery.

You smile at the idea of women being slaves in this country.

Benjamin Franklin said long ago, ”that they who have no voice in making the laws, or in the election of those who administer them, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and to their representatives.” I might occupy hours in quoting grand liberal sentiments from the fathers--Madison, Jefferson, Otis, and Adams--in favor of individual representation. I might quote equally n.o.ble words from the statesmen of our day--Seward, Sumner, Wade, Trumbull, Schurz, Thurman, Groesbeck, and Julian--to prove ”that no just government can be formed without the consent of the governed”; that ”the ballot is the columbiad of our political life, and every man who holds it is a full-armed Monitor.” But what do lofty utterances and logical arguments avail so long as men, blinded by old prejudices and customs, fail to see their application to the women by their side? Alas! gentlemen, women are your subjects.

Your own selfish interests are too closely interwoven for you to feel their degradation, and they are too dependent to reveal themselves to you in their n.o.bler aspirations, their native dignity. Did Southern slaveholders ever understand the humiliations of slavery to a proud man like Frederick Dougla.s.s?