The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony
of our peers. Great injustice is done us everywhere by our not having a vote. Human nature is naturally selfish, and, as woman is deprived of the ballot, and powerless either to punish or reward, man, loving his bread and butter more than justice, will ever thrust her aside for the benefit of those who can help him, those with ballots in their hands.
....All that is good in the home, and largely the highest principles taught in your youth, were given by your mothers. How then it is possible for you to return this love and interest, as soon as you are capable of acting, by riveting the chains which hold them still slaves, politically and civilly?
You need woman's presence and counsel in legislation as much as she needs yours in the home; you need the association and influence of woman; her intuitive knowledge of men's character and the effect of measures upon the household; you need her for the economical details of public work; you need her sense of justice and moral courage to execute the laws; you need her for all that is just, merciful and good in government. But above all, women themselves need the ballot for self-protection, and as we are by common right and the laws of God free human beings, we demand that you no longer hold us your subjects—your political slaves.
Mrs. Mary E. Haggart (Ind.): When Abraham Lincoln penned the immortal emancipation proclamation he did not stop to inquire whether every man and every woman in Southern slavery did or did not want to be free. Whether women do or do not wish to vote does not affect the question of their right to do so. The right of man to the ballot is a logical deduction from the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. And singular to say, while this inheres in all people alike, the privilege of exercising it is withheld from women by a class who have no right to say whether they are willing or not that women should vote. Their right to the ballot was long ago settled beyond a quibble, by laws and principles of justice which are superior to the codes of men, who have usurped the power to regulate the voting privileges of citizens. If this right be inherent and existing in the great body of society before governments are formed, it follows that all citizens of a republic, be they male or female, are alike entitled to its exercise.
....Is there a man among you willing to resign his own right to the ballot and to place his own business interests and general welfare at the mercy of the votes of others? Would you not resent an attempt on the part of any man, or set of men, to fix your mental status, assign your work in life and lay out with mathematical precision your exact sphere in the world? And yet men undertake to adjust the limitations of the Elizabeth Cady Stantons, the Susan B. Anthonys, the Harriet Beecher Stowes, the Frances E. Willards, the Harriet Hosmers of the world, and continue to talk with patronizing condescension of female retirement, female duties and female spheres.
The question is not whether women want or do not want to vote, but how can republican inconsistencies be wiped out, justice universally recognized and impartially administered, and the civil and political errors of the past effectually repaired. Whoever admits that men have a right to the franchise must include in the admission women also, for there are no reasons capable of demonstrating an abstract right in behalf of one sex which are not equally applicable to the other....
The assertion that women do not want to vote is absolutely without authority, so long as each individual woman does not speak out for herself. In Ohio 225,000, and in Illinois 185,000, have signified a desire to use the ballot for home protection, and yet it is still asserted in those States that women do not want it. Over 100,000 women have already notified this Congress that they desire equality of political rights, and still it is declared all around us that women do not want to vote. Gentlemen, this is most emphatically an assertion which no individual can be justified in making for another.
Since the elective franchise is the parent stem from which branch out legal, industrial, social and educational enterprises necessary to the welfare of the citizens, it will be readily seen how women engaged in reforms, public charities, social enterprises, are hampered and trammeled in their progress without the ballot. Women have beheld their plans frustrated, their Herculean labor undone, their lives wasted, for want of legislative power through the citizen's emblem of sovereignty....
All ranks and occupations are beginning to realize that monstrous evils must ever crowd upon both classes while one side of humanity only is represented, and while one sex has the irresponsible keeping of the rights and privileges of the other. To-day, throughout the length and breadth of our land, woman finds the greatest need of the ballot through an almost overpowering desire to have her wishes and opinions crystallized into law.
I have no hesitancy in saying that if the conditions which surround the women of this nation to-day were the conditions of the male citizens of the country, they would rise up and pronounce them the exact definition of civil and political slavery, instead of the true interpretation of natural justice and civil equity.
Many persons claim that men are born with the right to vote, as they are to the right of life, liberty and happiness; that suffrage is the gift of the State, and that the State has a right to regulate it in any way that it may deem best for the common good. If men are born with the right to life, liberty and happiness, they are also born with the right to give expression as to how these are to be maintained; and in this nation, which professes to rest upon the consent of the governed, this expression is given through the ballot. Consequently the expression of a freeman's will is as God-given as his right to be free. Since the year of Magna Charta we have repudiated the idea of representation by proxy.
We all know that there are thousands of women in this nation who are owners of property, mothers of children, devoted to their homes and families and to all the duties and responsibilities which grow out of social life, and hence are most deeply interested in the public welfare. They have just as much at stake in this Government, which affords them no opportunity of giving or withholding their consent, as men who are consulted. John Quincy Adams said in that grand speech in defense of the petitions of the women of Plymouth: "The women are not only justified, but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do depart from the domestic sphere and enter upon the concerns of their country, of humanity and of God."
Miss Phoebe W. Couzins (Mo.) in closing her address said: "At the gateway of this nation, the harbor of New York, there soon shall stand a statue of the Goddess of Liberty, presented by the republic of France—a magnificent figure of a woman, typifying all that is grand and glorious and free in self-government. She will hold aloft an electric torch of great power which is to beam an effulgent light far out to sea, that ships sailing towards this goodly land may ride safely into harbor. So should you thus uplift the women of this nation, and teach these men, at the very threshold, when first their feet shall touch the shore of this republic, that here woman is exalted, ennobled and honored; that here she bears aloft the torch of intelligence and purity which guides our Ship of State into the safe harbor of wise laws, pure morals and secure institutions."
It had been the custom of these committees, when they reported at all, to delay doing so until the following year. In 1884, however, those of both Senate and House submitted reports soon after the hearings. The favorable recommendation was presented March 28, 1884, signed by Thomas W. Palmer, Henry W. Blair, Elbridge G. Lapham and Henry B. Anthony. Senators Francis Marion Cockrell and Joseph E. Brown dissented.24 The name of Senator James G. Fair does not appear on either document, but he had signed an adverse report in 1882.
An adverse majority report from the House Judiciary Committee was presented by William C. Maybury (Mich.) and began thus:
The right of suffrage is not and never has, under our system of government, been one of the essential rights of citizenship....
What class or portion of the whole people of any State should be admitted to suffrage, and should, by virtue of such admission, exert the active and potential control in the direction of its affairs, was a question reserved exclusively for the determination of the State.
[The report loses sight entirely of the point that this question was not and never has been left to "the people" of a State, but that men alone usurped the right to decide who should be admitted to the suffrage, arbitrarily excluded women and have kept them excluded.]
Under the influence of a just fear that without suffrage as a protective power to the newly-acquired