Woman and the Republic. Helen Kendrick Johnson
security. Such has been the patient sufferance of the women under this government, and such is now the necessity which constrains them to demand the equal station to which they are entitled. The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world." Then follows a categorical parody of the eighteen grievances, which will be duly considered in this and later chapters.
After thirty years of Suffrage effort, the leaders say that this instrument contained all that the most radical have ever claimed. The Fathers of the Revolution say in their Preamble: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation." The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion say: "When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one portion of the family of man to assume among the people of the earth a position different from that which they have hitherto occupied, but one to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes that impel them to such a course." The strained and ridiculous attitude produced by ignoring the essential difference between a political movement and a sex movement is visible in every line, and yet that instinct which finds for a new cause its appropriate channel never carried more truly than in this presentment of the ultimate purpose of woman suffrage. The Fathers were met to dissolve the relations that bound their land politically to a foreign power, and to form a separate and equal nation. The Mothers were met to dissolve the relations that bound their sex politically to man, and to form a separate and equal sex organization. The Fathers proposed to free men, women, and children from the yoke of England. The Mothers proposed to free women and girls from the yoke of men. It is suggestive to consider the "slight changes," between the two Declarations.
The Fathers of the Revolution begin their protest by saying: "We hold these truths to be self-evident:—That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion add nothing to the meaning, but detract greatly from the force of its expression, when in their parody they say: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men and women are created equal, and are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These women of all in America were the first to belittle themselves by seeming to assume that in a revolutionary document that was promulgated to declare a determination to wrest from tyranny the liberty that was an inalienable right for all, they and their sex were excluded because the generic term "man" was employed in relation to another inalienable right, which was about to be set forth—that of revolution against intolerable tyranny. The Americans who framed that instrument would have been the last men in the world to assert that women were not the equals of men. They were not discussing abstract human or sex conditions. They met "to institute a new government." The Mothers of the Woman's Rebellion had an inalienable right to meet "to institute a new government," if they believed as sincerely as did the Fathers of the Revolution that "a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinced a design to reduce them under absolute despotism." Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were their natural and God-given rights. If they truly believed that these were trampled upon by government, they might be justified in revolting and attempting to form a new government. That they did not so believe, seems to be proved by their statement that "they knew that woman had wrongs, but how to state them was the difficulty, and this was increased from the fact that they themselves were fortunately organized and conditioned." The Declaration of Independence meant war against the ever-growing encroachment of despotism. The gauntlet was thrown down at the feet of a king by his subjects. The Declaration of Sentiments meant war against the whole social order as then constituted. The gauntlet was thrown down at the feet of man by those who declared him to be a determined foe.
They had not the remotest notion of "instituting a new government," far from it; they relied upon the old government to sustain them in making their attempted "rebellion" a revolution. Without the backing of the state's defence, they had no expectation or hope of enforcing any new enactment they might desire. They were gladly consenting to be governed, in order to prove that they withheld consent.
Should woman suffrage prevail, the foundation principles of democracy would have to be overthrown and "a new government instituted" in which the power should be delegated and not direct, if the nation thus formed was to "assume among the powers of the earth a separate and equal station." The leaders of the Suffrage movement well understood that they claimed no inalienable right to institute a new government, and this is again shown in another "slight change" made by them. The first count in the suffrage indictment against all men, but especially against those of the American Republic, reads as follows: "He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise." The Fathers made no claim or suggestion that the suffrage was an inalienable right, or a right at all. Not only is there nothing to intimate that voting was a natural right, but from that day to this it has been the theory and the practice of our Government to control the suffrage. The fact that "governments were instituted among men" for the purpose of securing inalienable rights, proves that in the opinion of the Declarers the method of instituting a government was not in itself inalienable. Governments to secure certain inalienable rights are instituted among men, wrote Jefferson, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." This was not the first government founded upon "consent of the governed." The English government had been so founded, but our fathers now refused their consent. That particular government could no longer exist for them with their consent. In their judgment, it had become destructive of the proper ends of all government, and so they proclaimed that the inalienable right to liberty made it—to use the words of the Declaration—"the right, the duty, of those who suffer from it to refuse allegiance to it, and to institute a new government."
In the New York Constitutional Convention of 1867, Mr. George William Curtis defended the proposition so to amend the Constitution as to extend the suffrage to women. In the course of his eloquent remarks he said: "The Chairman of the Committee asked Miss Anthony whether, if suffrage was a natural right, it could be denied to children? Her answer seemed to me perfectly satisfactory. She said simply, 'All that we ask is an equal and not an arbitrary regulation. If you have the right, we have it.'" To me it seems to discredit the logical powers both of Miss Anthony and of Mr. Curtis that one should have made this reply and the other should have rested content with it. That was a pertinent question, and it was not answered at all. To say "if you have the right, we have it," is not to tell whether one thinks children should have it. As a matter of fact, an agitation of "the rights of minors" arose from the discussion of "natural right," and also an agitation for "minority representation" that is continued to this day. Mr. Curtis added: "The honorable Chairman would hardly deny that to regulate the exercise of a right according to obvious reason and experience is one thing, to deny it absolutely and forever is another." To regulate a law is to abolish it, either relatively or absolutely, for some, and to maintain it for others. When the State of New York says that no alien who has not been naturalized shall vote, that no boy under twenty-one shall vote, that no person resident in one town or ward shall vote in another, that no criminal or pauper shall vote—it acts on the natural principle of self-defence, which contravenes the dogma of a natural right of any one to the suffrage. On that principle it would be impossible for the Congress to impeach a President; to forbid, as it did, those who had been in rebellion from voting; or to deny the suffrage to a child or to any human being. Government itself becomes impossible. Judge Story, whom Suffrage writers claim as favorable to their cause on other grounds, says that the right of voting has always been treated as a granted and not a natural right, derived from and regulated by each country according to its ideas of government. Both Federal and State courts have decided again and again that there is no such thing as a natural right to suffrage.
The "consent of the governed" certainly meant something very different to our fathers, and to our statesmen, and to ourselves, from what it could mean to any other government