Volume II Part 84 (1/2)
The question of the masculine p.r.o.nouns, yes and nouns too, has been settled by the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Silver _vs._ Ladd, December, 1868, in a decision as to whether a woman was ent.i.tled to lands under the Oregon donation law of 1850. Elizabeth Cruthers, a widow, settled upon a claim and received patents. She died, and her son was heir. He died. Then Messrs. Ladd & Nott took possession, under the general pre-emption law, December, 1861. The administrator, E. P. Silver, applied for a writ of ejectment at the land office in Oregon City. Both the Register and Receiver decided that an unmarried woman could not hold land under that law. The Commissioner of the General Land Office, at Was.h.i.+ngton, and the Secretary of the Interior, also gave adverse opinions. Here patents were issued to Ladd & Nott, and duly recorded. Then a suit was brought to set aside Ladd's patent, and it was carried through all the State Courts and the Supreme Court of Oregon; each, in turn, giving adverse decisions. At last, in the United States Supreme Court, a.s.sociate Justice Miller reversed the decisions of all the lower tribunals, and ordered the land back to the heirs of Mrs.
Cruthers. The Court said:
In construing a benevolent statute of the government, made for the benefit of its own citizens, inviting and encouraging them to settle on its distant public lands, the words ”single man,” and ”unmarried man” may, especially if aided by the context and other parts of the statute, be taken in a generic sense. Held, accordingly, that the fourth section of the Act of Congress, of September 27th, 1850, granting by way of donation, lands in Oregon Territory, to every white settler or occupant, American half-breed Indians included, embraced within the term single man an unmarried woman.
And the attorney, who carried this question to its final success, is now the Senator elect from Oregon, Hon. J. H. Mitch.e.l.l, in whom the cause of equal rights to women has an added power on the floor of the United States Senate.
Though the words persons, people, inhabitants, electors, citizens, are all used indiscriminately in the National and State const.i.tutions, there was always a conflict of opinion, prior to the war, as to whether they were synonymous terms, as for instance:
No _person_ shall be a representative who shall not have been seven years a _citizen_, and who shall not, when elected, be an _inhabitant_ of that State in which he is chosen. No _person_ shall be a senator who shall not have been a _citizen_ of the United States, and an _inhabitant_ of that State in which he is chosen.
But, whatever room there was for a doubt, under the old regime, the adoption of the XIV. Amendment settled that question forever, in its first sentence:
All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
And the second settles the equal status of all persons--all citizens:
No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
The only question left to be settled now, is: Are women persons?
And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens, and no State has a right to make any new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the const.i.tutions and laws of the several States, is to-day null and void, precisely as is every one against negroes. Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities of citizens? I think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state prisoners will all agree with me, that it is not only one of them, but _the one without which all the others are nothing_. Seek first the kingdom of the ballot, and all things else shall be given thee, is the political injunction.
Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define citizen to be a person, in the United States, ent.i.tled to vote and hold office. And prior to the adoption of the XIII. Amendment, by which slavery was forever abolished, and black men transformed from property to persons, the judicial opinions of the country had always been in harmony with these definitions. To be a person was to be a citizen, and to be a citizen was to be a voter. a.s.sociate Justice Was.h.i.+ngton, in defining the privileges and immunities of the citizen, more than fifty years ago, said:
They included all such privileges as were fundamental in their nature. And among them is the right to exercise the elective franchise and to hold office.
Even the ”Dred Scott” decision, p.r.o.nounced by the Abolitionists and Republicans infamous, because it virtually declared ”black men had no rights white men were bound to respect,” gave this true and logical conclusion, that to be one of the people was to be a citizen and a voter. Chief Judge Daniels said:
There is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of writers on government, or in any actual experiment heretofore tried, an exposition of the term citizen, which has not been considered as conferring the actual possession and enjoyment of the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political.
a.s.sociate Justice Taney said:
The words ”people of the United States” and ”citizens,” are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body, who, according to our republican inst.i.tutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the government, through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the sovereign people, and every citizen is one of this people, and a const.i.tuent member of this sovereignty.
Thus does Judge Taney's decision, which was such a terrible ban to the black man while he was a slave, now that he is a person, no longer property, p.r.o.nounce him a citizen, possessed of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political. And not only the black man, but the black woman, and all women as well. And it was not until after the abolition of slavery, by which the negroes became free men, hence citizens, that the United States Attorney-General Bates rendered a contrary opinion:
The Const.i.tution uses the word ”citizen” only to express the political quality (not equality, mark) of the individual in his relation to the nation; to declare that he is a member of the body politic, and bound to it by the reciprocal obligations of allegiance on the one side, and protection on the other. The phrase ”a citizen of the United States,”
without addition or qualification, means neither more nor less than a member of the nation.
Then, to be a citizen of this Republic, is no more than to be a subject of an Empire. You and I, and all true and patriotic citizens must repudiate this base conclusion. We all know that American citizens.h.i.+p, without addition or qualification, means the possession of equal rights, civil and political. We all know that the crowning glory of every citizen of the United States is, that he can either give or withhold his vote from every law and every legislator under the government. Did ”I am a Roman citizen,” mean nothing more than that I am a ”member” of the body politic of the Republic of Rome, bound to it by the reciprocal obligations of allegiance on the one side, and protection on the other? When you, young man, shall travel abroad among the monarchies of the old world, and there proudly boast yourself an ”American citizen,” will you thereby declare yourself neither more nor less than a ”member” of the American nation?
And this opinion of Attorney-General Bates, that a black citizen was not a voter, made merely to suit the political exigency of the Republican party in that transition hour between emanc.i.p.ation and enfranchis.e.m.e.nt, was no less infamous, in spirit or purpose, than was the decision of Judge Taney, that a black man was not one of the people, rendered in the interest and at the behest of the old Democratic party, in its darkest hour of subjection to the Slave power. Nevertheless, all of the adverse arguments, adverse congressional reports and judicial opinions, thus far, have been based on this purely partisan, time-serving opinion of General Bates, that the normal condition of the citizen of the United States is that of disfranchis.e.m.e.nt. That only such cla.s.ses of citizens as have had special legislative guarantee have a legal right to vote. And if this decision of Attorney-General Bates was infamous, as against black men, but yesterday plantation slaves, what shall we p.r.o.nounce upon Judge Bingham, in the House of Representatives, and Carpenter, in the Senate of the United States, for citing it against the women of the entire nation, vast numbers of whom are the peers of those honorable gentlemen themselves, in morals, intellect, culture, wealth, family--paying taxes on large estates, and contributing equally with them and their s.e.x, in every direction, to the growth, prosperity, and well-being of the Republic? And what shall be said of the judicial opinions of Judges Cartter, Jameson, McKay, and Sharswood, all based upon this aristocratic monarchical idea, of the right of one cla.s.s to govern another?
I am proud to mention the names of the two United States judges who have given opinions honorable to our Republican idea, and honorable to themselves--Judge Howe, of Wyoming Territory, and Judge Underwood, of Virginia. The former gave it as his opinion a year ago, when the Legislature seemed likely to revoke the law enfranchising the women of that Territory, that, in case they succeeded, the women would still possess the right to vote under the XIV. Amendment. Judge Underwood, of Virginia, in noticing the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, denying to women the right to vote, under the XIV. Amendment, says:
If the people of the United States, by amendment of their Const.i.tution, could expunge, without any explanatory or a.s.sisting legislation, an adjective of five letters from all State const.i.tutions, and thereby raise millions of our most ignorant fellow-citizens to all the rights and privileges of electors, why should not the same people, by the same Amendment, expunge an adjective of four letters from the same State const.i.tutions, and thereby raise other millions of more educated and better informed citizens to equal rights and privileges, without explanatory or a.s.sisting legislation?
If the XIV. Amendment does not secure to all citizens the right to vote, for what purpose was that grand old charter of the fathers lumbered with its unwieldy proportions? The Republican party, and Judges Howard and Bingham, who drafted the doc.u.ment, pretended it was to do something for black men; and if that something was not to secure them in their right to vote and hold office, what could it have been? For, by the XIII. Amendment, black men had become people, and hence were ent.i.tled to all the privileges and immunities of the Government, precisely as were the women of the country and foreign men not naturalized.
According to a.s.sociate Justice Was.h.i.+ngton, they already had the
Protection of the Government, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and to pursue and obtain happiness and safety, subject to such restraints as the Government may justly prescribe for the general welfare of the whole; the right of a citizen of one State to pa.s.s through or to reside in any other State for the purpose of trade, agriculture, professional pursuit, or otherwise; to claim the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus, to inst.i.tute and maintain actions of any kind in the courts of the State; to take, hold, and dispose of property, either real or personal, and an exemption from higher taxes or impositions than are paid by the other citizens of the State.
Thus, you see, those newly-made freed men were in possession of every possible right, privilege, and immunity of the Government, except that of suffrage, and hence, needed no const.i.tutional amendment for any other purpose. What right, I ask you, has the Irishman the day after he receives his naturalization papers that he did not possess the day before, save the right to vote and hold office? And the Chinamen, now crowding our Pacific coast, are in precisely the same position. What privilege or immunity has California or Oregon the const.i.tutional right to deny them, save that of the ballot? Clearly, then, if the XIV. Amendment was not to secure to black men their right to vote, it did nothing for them, since they possessed everything else before. But if it was meant to be a prohibition of the States to deny or abridge their right to vote--which I fully believe--then it did the same for all persons, white women included, born or naturalized in the United States, for the amendment does not say all male persons of African descent, but all persons are citizens.