Volume IV Part 12 (1/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[28] John Randolph Tucker, Va.; Nathaniel J. Hammond, Ga.; David B.

Culberson, Tex.; Patrick A. Collins, Ma.s.s.; George E. Seney, O.; William C. Oates, Ala.; John H. Rogers, Ark.; John R. Eden, Ill.; Risden T. Bennett, N. C.; Ezra B. Taylor, O.; Abraham X. Parker, N.

Y.; Ambrose A. Ranney, Ma.s.s.; William P. Hepburn, Ia.; John W.

Stewart, Vt.; Lucien B. Caswell, Wis.

[29] See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 715.

[30] This had been done when Miss Anthony voted in Rochester, N. Y., in 1872.

CHAPTER VI.

FIRST DISCUSSION AND VOTE IN THE U. S. SENATE--1887.

Although the Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage had reported several times in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal Const.i.tution which should prohibit disfranchis.e.m.e.nt on account of s.e.x, and although Thomas W. Palmer, in 1885, had delivered a speech on the question in the Senate, it never had been brought to a discussion and vote.[31] Urged by the members of the National a.s.sociation, and by his own strong convictions as to the justice of the cause, Senator Henry W. Blair (N. H.), on Dec. 8, 1886, called up the following, which he had reported for the majority of the committee on February 2 of that year:

JOINT RESOLUTION PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSt.i.tUTION OF THE UNITED STATES EXTENDING THE RIGHT OF SUFFRAGE TO WOMEN.

_Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress a.s.sembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein)_, That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Const.i.tution of the United States; which, when ratified by three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be valid as part of said Const.i.tution, namely:

SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of s.e.x.

SECTION 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce the provisions of this article.

Senator Blair supported this resolution in a long and comprehensive speech, that will be recorded in history as one of the ablest ever made on this subject, in the course of which he said:[32]

Upon solemn occasions concerning grave public affairs, and when large numbers of the citizens of the country desire to test the sentiments of the people upon an amendment of the organic law in the manner provided by the provisions of that law, it may well become the duty of Congress to submit the proposition to the amending power, which is the same as that which created the original instrument itself--the electors of the several States.

It can hardly be claimed that two-thirds of each branch of Congress must necessarily be convinced that the Const.i.tution should be amended, before it submits the same to the judgment of the States.

If there be any principle upon which our form of government is founded, and wherein it is different from aristocracies, monarchies and despotisms, that principle is this: Every human being of mature powers, not disqualified by ignorance, vice or crime, is the equal of and is ent.i.tled to all the rights and privileges which belong to any other human being under the law.

The independence, equality and dignity of all human souls is the fundamental a.s.sertion of those who believe in what we call human freedom. But we are informed that women are represented by men.

This can not reasonably be claimed unless it first be shown that their consent has been given to such representation, or that they lack the capacity to consent. But the exclusion of this cla.s.s from the suffrage deprives them of the power of a.s.sent to representation even when they possess the requisite ability....

The Czar represents his whole people, just as much as voting men represent women who do not vote at all.

True it is that the voting men, in excluding women and other cla.s.ses from the suffrage, by that act charge themselves with the trust of administering justice to all, even as the monarch whose power is based upon force is bound to rule uprightly. But if it be true that ”all just government is founded upon the consent of the governed,” then the government of woman by man, without her consent given in a sovereign capacity, even if that government be wise and just in itself, is a violation of natural right and an enforcement of servitude against her on the part of man. If woman, like the infant or the defective cla.s.ses, be incapable of self-government, then republican society may exclude her from all partic.i.p.ation in the enactment and enforcement of the laws under which she lives. But in that case, like the infant and the idiot and the unconsenting subject of tyrannical forms of government, she is ruled and not represented by man. This much I desire to say in the beginning in reply to the broad a.s.sumption of those who deny women the suffrage by saying that they are already represented by their fathers, their husbands, their brothers and their sons.

The common ground upon which all agree may be stated thus: All males having certain qualifications are in reason and in law ent.i.tled to vote. These qualifications affect either the body or the mind or both. The first is the attainment of a certain age.

The age in itself is not material, but maturity of mental development is material, although soundness of body in itself is not essential, and want of it never works forfeiture of the right. Age as a qualification for suffrage is by no means to be confounded with age as a qualification for service in war.

Society has well established the distinction, and also that one has no relation whatever to the other--the one having reference to physical prowess, while the other relates only to the mental state. This is shown by the ages fixed by law, that of eighteen years as the commencement of the term of presumed fitness for military service and forty-five as the period of its termination; while the age of presumed fitness for the suffrage, which requires no physical superiority certainly, is set at twenty-one years when still greater strength of body has been attained than at the period when liability to the dangers and hards.h.i.+ps of war begins. There are at least three million more male voters in our country than of the population liable by law to the performance of military duty. It is still further to be observed that the right of suffrage continues as long as the mind lasts, while ordinary liability to military service ceases at a period when the physical powers, though still strong, are beginning to wane.

The truth is that there is no legal or natural connection between the liability to fight and the right to vote.

The right to fight may be exercised voluntarily, or the liability to fight may be enforced by the community, whenever there is need for it, and the extent to which the physical forces of society may be called upon in self-defense or in justifiable revolution is measured not by age or s.e.x, but by necessity, which may go so far as to call into the field old men and women and the last vestige of physical force. It can not be claimed that woman has no right to vote because she is not liable to fight, for she is so liable, and the freest government on the face of the earth has the reserved power under the call of necessity to place her in the forefront of the battle itself; and more than this, woman has the right, and often has exercised it, to go there. If any one could question the existence of this reserved power to call woman to the common defense, either in the hospital or the field, it would be woman herself, who has been deprived of partic.i.p.ation in the Government and in shaping public policies which have resulted in dire emergency to the State. But in all times, and under all forms of government and of social existence, woman has given her body and her soul to the common defense.