Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States. Various
suffrage will destroy the family and ruin society. If a married couple will quarrel at all, they will find the occasion, and it were fortunate indeed if their contention might concern important affairs. There is no peace in the family save where love is, and the same spirit which enables the husband and wife to enforce the toleration act between themselves in religious matters will keep the peace between them in political discussions. At all events, this argument is unworthy of notice at all unless we are to push it to its logical conclusion, and, for the sake of peace in the family, to prohibit woman absolutely the exercise of freedom of thought and speech. Men live with their countrymen and disagree with them in politics, religion, and ten thousand of the affairs of life, as often the trifling as the important. What harm, then, if woman be allowed her thought and vote upon the tariff, education, temperance, peace and war, and whatsoever else the suffrage decides?
But we are told that no government, of which we have authentic history, ever gave to woman a share in the sovereignty.
This is not true, for the annals of monarchies and despotisms have been rendered illustrious by queens of surpassing brilliance and power. But even if it be true that no republic ever enfranchised woman with the ballot—even so until within one hundred years universal or even general suffrage was unknown among men.
Has the millennium yet dawned? Is all progress at an end? If that which is should therefore remain, why abolish the slavery of men?
But we are informed that woman does not vote when she has the opportunity. Wherever she has the unrestricted right she exercises it. The records of Wyoming and Washington demonstrate the fact.
And in these Territories, too, as well as wherever else she has exercised the suffrage, she has elevated man to her own level, and has made the voting precinct as respectable and decorous as the lecture-room or the assemblies of the devout. All the experience there is refutes the apprehension of those who fear that woman will either neglect the discharge of her great duty, when allowed its fair and equal exercise, or that the rude and baser sort will overwhelm and banish the noble and refined.
But to my mind it seems like trifling with a great subject to dwell upon topics like this. It can only be justified by the continual iteration of the objection by the opponents of woman suffrage, who in the lack of substantial grounds whereupon to base their opposition to the exercise of a great right by one-half the community declare that there is no time in which woman can vote.
I will now read an extract from the report of the majority of the committee, showing to a certain extent the degree of consequence which this movement has assumed, its extent throughout our country, and something of its duration. I have not the latest data, for since this report was compiled there has been action in several States, and a great deal of popular discussion and a vast amount of demonstration from the action of popular assemblies.
The committee say:
This movement for woman suffrage has developed during the last half century into one of great strength. The first petition was presented to the Legislature of New York in 1835. It was repeated in 1846, and since that time the petition has been urged upon nearly every Legislature in the Northern States. Five States have voted upon the question of amending their constitutions by striking out the word "male" from the suffrage clause—Kansas in 1867, Michigan in 1874, Colorado in 1877, Nebraska in 1882, and Oregon in 1884.
The ratio of the popular vote in each case was about one-third for the amendment and two-thirds against it. Three Territories have or have had full suffrage for women. In two, Wyoming since 1869 and Washington since 1883, the experiment (!) is an unqualified success. In Utah Miss Anthony keenly and justly observes that suffrage is as much of a success for the Mormon women as for the men.
In eleven States school suffrage for women exists. In Kansas, from her admission as a State. In Kentucky and Michigan fully as long a time. School suffrage for women also exists in Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, New York, Nebraska, and Oregon.
In all these States, except Minnesota, school suffrage was extended to women by the respective Legislatures, and in Minnesota by the popular vote, in November, 1876. Not only these eleven States, but in nearly all the other Northern and Western States women are elected to the offices of county and city superintendent of public schools and as members of school boards. In Louisiana the constitution of 1879 makes women eligible to school offices.
It may also be observed as indicating a rising and controlling public sentiment in recognition of the right and capacity of woman for public affairs that she is eligible to such offices as that of county clerk, register of deeds, and the like in many and perhaps in all the States. Kansas and Iowa elected several women to these positions in the election of November, 1885, while President Grant alone appointed more than five thousand women to the office of postmaster; and although many women have been appointed in the Departments and to pension agencies and like important employments and trusts, so far as your committee are aware no charge of incompetency or of malfeasance in office has ever yet been sustained against a woman.
It may be further stated in this connection that nearly every Northern State has had before it from time to time since 1870 a bill for the submission of the question of woman suffrage to the popular vote. In some instances such a resolution has been passed at one session and failed to be ratified at another by from one to three votes; thus Iowa passed it in 1870, killed it in 1872; passed it in 1874, failed to do so in 1876; passed it in 1878, and failed in 1880; passed it again in 1882, and defeated it in 1884; four times over and over, and this winter these heroic and indomitable women are trying it in Iowa again.
If men were to make such a struggle for their rights it would be considered a fine thing, and there would be books and even poetry written about it.
In New York, since 1880, the women have urged this great measure before the Legislature each year. There it takes the form of a bill to prohibit the disfranchisement of women. This bill has several times come within five votes of passing the assembly.
In many States well sustained efforts for municipal suffrage have been made, and, as if in rebuke to the conservatism, or worse, of this great Republic, this right of municipal suffrage is already enjoyed in the province of Ontario, Canada, and throughout the island of Great Britain by unmarried women to the same extent as by men, there being the same property qualification required of each.
The movement for the amendment of the National Constitution began by petitioning Congress December, 1865, and since 1869 there have been consecutive applications to every Congress praying for the submission to the States of a proposition similar to the joint resolution herewith reported to the Senate.
The petitions have come from all parts of the country; more especially from the Northern and Western States, although there is an extensive and increasing desire for the suffrage existing among the women in the Southern States, as we are informed by those whose interest in the subject makes them familiar with the real state of feeling in that part of our country. It is impossible to know just what proportion of the people—men and women—have expressed their desire by petition to the National Legislature during the last twenty years, but we are informed by Miss Anthony that in the year 1871 Senator Sumner collected the petitions from the files of the Senate and House of Representatives, and that there were then an immense number. A far greater number have been presented since that time, and the same lady is our authority for the estimate that in all more than two hundred thousand petitions, by select and representative men and women, have been poured upon Congress in behalf of this prayer of woman to be free. Who is so interested in the framing of the law as woman, whose only defense is the law? There never was a stronger exhibition of popular demand by American citizens to be heard in the court of the people for the vindication of a fundamental right.
Since the submission of the report the attempt has been made to secure action in several of the State Legislatures. One which came very near being successful was made in the State of Vermont. The suffrage was extended, if I am not incorrectly informed, so far as the action of the house of representatives of that State could give it, and an effort being made to propose some restriction and condition upon the suffrage it was defeated, when, as I am told by the friends of the movement, if it could have reached a vote in the Vermont Legislature on the naked proposition of suffrage to women as suffrage is extended to men, they felt the very greatest confidence