Friends and Fellow citizens: I stand before you to-night, under
indictmen for the alleged crime of having voted at the last Presidential
election, without having a lawful
right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove to you
that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but,
instead,simply exercised my
citizen's right, guaranteed to me and all United States. Citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the
power of any state to deny. Our democratic-republican government is based on the
idea of the natural right of every individual member thereof to avoice and a
vote in making and executing the laws. We assert the province of government to
be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their unalienable rights. We throw
to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments
were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to
protect his own life. liberty and property. And when 100 or 1,000,000 people
enter into a free government, they do not barter away their natural rights; they
simply pledge themselves to protect each other in the enjoyment of them, through
prescribed judicial and legislative tribunals. They agree to abandon the
methods of brute force in the adjustment of their differences, and adopt those
of civilization. nor can you find a word in any of the grand documents left us
by the fathers that assumes for government the power to create or to confer
rights. The Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the
constitutions of the several states and the organic laws of the territories,
all alike propose to protect the
people in the exercise of their God-given rights Not one of them
pretends to bestow rights. "All men are created equal, and endowed by
their Creator with certain unalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and
the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these, governments are instituted among
men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." Here is no
shadow of government authority over rights, nor exclusion of any from their full
and equal enjoyment. Here is pronounced the right of all men, and
"consequently," as the Quaker preacher said, "of all women," to a voice in the
government. And here, in this very first paragraph of the declaration, is the
assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for, how can "the consent
of the governed" be given, if the right to vote be denied. Again: "That whenever
any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the
people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its
foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers
in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety
and happiness. Surely, the right of
the whole people to vote is her clearly implied. For however destructive in
their happiness this government might become, a disfranchised class could
neither alter nor abolish it, nor institute a new one,
except by the old brute force method of insurrection and rebellion.
One-half of the people of this
nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute
books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one. The
women, dissatisfied as they are
with this form of government, that enforces taxation
without representation,-that compels them to obey laws to which they have
never given their consent, -that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a
jury of their peers, that robs
them, in marriage, of the custody of their own persons, wages and children,-are
this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the
other half, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of the
declarations of the framers of
this government, every one of which was based on the immutable
principle of equal rights to all. By those declarations, kings, priests,
popes, aristocrats, were all alike
dethroned, and placed on a common level politically,
with the lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, me, as such, were
deprived of their divine right to
rule, and placed on a political
level with women. By the
practice of those declarations all class and caste distinction will be
abolished; and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman, all alike, bound from
their subject position to the proud
platform of equality. The preamble of the federal constitution says: "We, the
people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish
justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote
the general welfare vand secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and established
this constitution for the United States
of America." It was we,
who formed this Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings or liberty, but
to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but
to the whole people-women as well as men. And it is downright mockery to talk to
women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the
use of the only means of securing
them provided by this democratic-republican government-the ballot. The early journals of Congress show that
when the committee reported to that body the original articles of confederation,
the very first article which became
the subject discussion was that respecting equality of suffrage. Article
4th said: "The
better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and between the people of the
different States of this Union, the free inhabitants
of each of the States, (paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from
Nor can
you find a word in any of the grand documents left us by the fathers
that
assumes for government the power to create or to confer rights. The
Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the constitutions
of the several states and the organic laws of the territories, all alike
propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given rights.
Not
one of them pretends to bestow rights.
"All men are created
equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable rights. Among
these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure
these, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just
powers
from the consent of the governed."
Here is no shadow of government
authority over rights, nor exclusion of any
from their full and equal
enjoyment. Here is pronounced the right of all men,
and "consequently," as
the Quaker preacher said, "of all women," to a voice in
the government.
And here, in this very first paragraph of the declaration, is
the
assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for, how can "the
consent of the governed" be given, if the right to vote be denied. Again:
"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new
government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its
powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety
and happiness."
Surely, the right of the whole people to vote is here
clearly implied. For
however destructive in their happiness this
government might become, a
disfranchised class could neither alter nor
abolish it, nor institute a new
one, except by the old brute force method
of insurrection and rebellion.
One-half of the people of this nation
to-day are utterly powerless to blot from
the statute books an unjust law,
or to write there a new and a just one. The
women, dissatisfied as they
are with this form of government, that enforces
taxation without
representation,-that compels them to obey laws to which they
have never
given their consent, -that imprisons and hangs them without a trial
by a
jury of their peers, that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of their
own persons, wages and children,-are this half of the people left wholly at the
mercy of the other half, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of
the
declarations of the framers of this government, every one of which was
based on
the immutable principle of equal rights to all. By those
declarations, kings,
priests, popes, aristocrats, were all alike
dethroned, and placed on a common
level politically, with the lowliest
born subject or serf. By them, too, me, as
such, were deprived of their
divine right to rule, and placed on a political
level with women. By the
practice of those declarations all class and caste
distinction will be
abolished; and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman, all
alike, bound from
their subject position to the proud platform of equality.
The preamble of
the federal constitution says:
"We, the people of the United States, in
order to form a more perfect union,
establish justice, insure domestic
tranquility, provide for the common defense,
promote the general welfare
and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves
and our posterity, do
ordain and established this constitution for the United
States of
America."
It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet
we, the male
citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union.
And we formed it,
not to give the blessings or liberty, but to secure
them; not to the half of
ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to
the whole people-women as well
as men. And it is downright mockery to talk
to women of their enjoyment of the
blessings of liberty while they are
denied the use of the only means of
securing them provided by this
democratic-republican government-the ballot.
The early journals of Congress
show that when the committee reported to that
body the original articles
of confederation, the very first article which
became the subject of
discussion was that respecting equality of suffrage.
Article 4th said:
"The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and
intercourse
between the people of the different States of this Union, the free
inhabitants of each of the States, (paupers, vagabonds and fugitives from
justice excepted,) shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of
the free citizens of the several States."
Thus, at the very
beginning, did the fathers see the necessity of the
universal application
of the great principle of equal rights to all-in order to
produce the
desired result-a harmonious union and a homogeneous people.
Luther Martin,
attorney-general of Maryland, in his report to the Legislature
of that
State of the convention that framed the United States Constitution,
said:
"Those who advocated the equality of suffrage took the matter up on the
original principles of government: that the reason why each individual man
in
forming a State government should have an equal vote, is because each
individual, before he enters into government, is equally free and equally
independent."
James Madison said;
"Under every view of the
subject, it seems indispensable that the mass of the
citizens should not
be without a voice in making the laws which they are to
obey, and in
choosing the magistrate who are to administer them." Also, "Let it
be
remembered, finally, that it has ever been the pride and the boast of
America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human
nature."
And these assertions of the framers of the United States
Constitution of the
equal and natural rights of all the people to a voice
in the government, have
been affirmed and reaffirmed by the leading
statesmen of the nation, throughout
the entire history of our government.
Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said in 1866:
"I have made up my
mind that elective franchise is one of the inalienable
rights meant to be
secured by the declaration of independence."
B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri,
in the three day's discussion in the United
States Senate in 1866, on
Senator Cowan's motion to strike "male" from the
District of Columbia
suffrage bill, said:
"Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the
American Senate, I stand for
universal suffrage; and as a matter of
fundamental principle, do not recognize
the right of society to limit on
any ground of race or sex. I will go farther
and say, that I recognize the
right of franchise as being intrinsically a
natural right. I do not
believe that society is authorized to impose any
limitation upon it that
do not spring out of the necessities of the social
state itself. Sir, I
have been shocked, in the course of this debate, to hear
Senators declare
this right only a conventional and political arrangement, a
privilege
yielded to you and me and others; not a right in any sense, only a
concession! Mr. President, I do not hold my liberties by any such tenure. On
the contrary, I believe that whenever you establish that doctrine,
whenever you
crystalize that idea in the public mind of this country, you
ring the
death-knell of American liberties."
Charles Summer, in his
brave protests against the fourteenth and fifteenth
amendments, insisted
that, so soon as by the thirteenth amendment the slaves
became free men,
the original powers of the United States Constitution
guaranteed to them
equal rights-the right to vote and to be voted for. In
closing one of his
great speeches he said;
"I do not hesitate to say that when the slaves of
our country became citizens
they took their place in the body politic as a
component part of the people,
entitled to equal rights, and under the
protection of these two guardian
principles: First-That all just
government stand on the consent of the
governed; and second, that taxation
without representation is tyranny; and
these rights it is the duty of
Congress to guarantee as essential to the ideal
of a Republic."
The
preamble of the Constitution of the State of New York declares the same
purpose. It says: "We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to
Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish
this Constitution."
Here is not the slightest intimation either of
receiving freedom from the
United States Constitution, or of the State
conferring the blessings of liberty
upon the people; and the same is true
of every one of the thirty-six State
Constitutions. Each and all, alike
declare rights God-given, and that to secure
the people in the enjoyment
of their inalienable rights, is their one and only
object in ordaining and
establishing government. And all of the State
Constitutions are equally
emphatic in their recognition of the ballot as the
means of securing the
people in the enjoyment of these rights.
Article 1 of the New York State
Constitution says: "No member of this State
shall be disfranchised or
deprived of the rights or privileges secured to any
citizen thereof,
unless by the law of the land, or the judgement of his peers."
And so
carefully guarded is the citizen's right to vote, that the
Constitution
makes special mention of all who may be excluded. It says:
"Laws may be
passed excluding from the right of suffrage all persons who
have been or
may be convicted of bribery, larceny or any infamous crime."
In naming the
various employments that shall not affect the residence of
voters-the 3d
section of article 2d says "that being kept at any alms house, or
other
asylum, at public expense, nor being confined at any public prison, shall
deprive a person of his residence," and hence his vote. Thus is the right of
voting most sacredly hedged about. The only seeming permission in the New
York
State Constitution for the disfranchisement of women is in section
1st of
article 2d, which says: "Every male citizen of the age of
twenty-one years,
c., shall be entitled to vote."
But I submit that
in view of the explicit assertions of the equal right of
the whole people,
both in the preamble and previous article of the
constitution, this
omission of the adjective "female" in the second, should not
be construed
into a denial; but, instead, counted as of no effect. Mark the
direct
prohibition: "No member of this State shall be disfranchised, unless by
the
law of the land, or the judgment of his peers." "The law of the land," is
the United States Constitution: and there is no provision in that document that
can be fairly construed into a permission to the States to deprive any
class of
their citizens of their right to vote. Hence New York can get no
power from
that source to disfranchise one entire half of her members. Nor
has "the
judgment of their peers" been pronounced against women exercising
their right
to vote; no disfranchised person is allowed to be judge or
juror- and none but
disfranchised persons can be women's peers; nor has
the legislature passed laws
excluding them on account of idiocy of lunacy;
nor yet the courts convicted
them of bribery, larceny, or any infamous
crime. Clearly, then, there is no
constitutional ground for the exclusion
of women from the ballot-box in the
State of New York, No barriers
whatever stand to-day between women and the
exercise of their right to
vote save those of precedent and prejudice.
The clauses of the United
States Constitution, cited by our opponents as
giving power to the States
to disfranchise any classes of citizens they shall
please, are contained
in sections 2d and 4th of article 1st. The second says:
"The House of
Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second
year by
the people of the several States; and the electors in each State shall
have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of
the State Legislature."
This cannot be construed into a concession to
the States of the power to
destroy the right to become an elector, but
simply to prescribe what shall be
the qualification, such as competency of
intellect, maturity of age, length of
residence, that shall be deemed
necessary to enable them to make an intelligent
choice of candidates. If,
as our opponents assert, the last clause of this
section makes it the duty
of the United States to protect citizens in the
several States against
higher or different qualifications for electors for
representatives in
Congress, than for members of Assembly, them must the first
clause make it
equally imperative for the national government to interfere with
the
States, and forbid them from arbitrarily cutting off the right of one-half
of the people to become electors altogether. Section 4th says:
"The time,
places and manner of holding elections for Senators and
Representatives
shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislative thereof;
but Congress
may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as
to the
places by choosing Senators."
Here is conceded the power only to prescribed
times, places and manner of
holding the elections; and even with these
Congress may interfere, with all
excepting the mere place of choosing
Senators. Thus you see, there is not the
slightest permission in either
section for the States to discriminate against
the right of any class of
citizens to vote. Surely, to regulate cannot be to
annihilate! nor to
qualify to wholly deprive. And to this principle every true
Democrat and
Republican said amen, when applied to black men by Senator Sumner
in his
great speeches for EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL from 1865 to 1869; and when, in
1871, I asked that Senator to declare the power of the United States
Constitution to protect women in their right to vote-as he had done for black
men-he handed me a copy of all his speeches during that reconstruction
period,
and said:
"Miss Anthony, put sex where I have race or color,
and you have here the best
and strongest argument I can make for woman.
There is not a doubt but women
have the constitutional right to vote, and
I will never vote for a sixteenth
amendment to guarantee it to them. I
voted for both the fourteenth and
fifteenth under protest; would never
have done it but for the pressing
emergency of that hour; would have
insisted that the power of the original
Constitution to protect all
citizens in the equal enjoyment of their rights
should have been vindicated
through the courts. But the newly made freedmen had
neither the
intelligence, wealth nor time to wait that slow process. Women
possess all
these in an eminent degree, and I insist that they shall appeal to
the
courts, and through them establish the power of our American magna charta,
to protect every citizen of the Republic. But, friends, when in accordance with
Senator Sumner's counsel, I went to the ballot-box, last November, and
exercised my citizen's right to vote, the courts did not wait for me to
appeal
to them-they appealed to me, and indicted me on the charge of
having voted
illegally.
Senator Sumner, putting sex where he did
color, said:
"Qualifications cannot be in their nature permanent or
insurmountable. Sex
cannot be a qualification any more than size, race,
color, or previous
condition of servitude. A permanent or insurmountable
qualification is
equivalent to a de-privation of the suffrage. In other
words, it is the tyranny
of taxation without representation, against which
our revolutionary mothers, as
well as fathers, rebelled."
For any
State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the
disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of
attainder, or an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme
law of the land. By it, the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from
women and their female posterity. To them, this government has no just
powers
derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government
is not a
democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a
hateful
obligarchy of sex. The most hateful aristocracy ever established
on the face of
the globe. An obligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern
the poor; an
obligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the
ignorant; or even an
obligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the
African, might be endured; but
this obligarchy of sex, which makes father,
brothers, husband, sons, the
obligarchs over the mother and sisters, the
wife and daughters of every
household; which ordains all men sovereigns,
all women subjects, carries
dissension, discord and rebellion into every
home of the nation. And this most
odious aristocracy exists, too, in the
face of Section 4, of Article 4, which
says: "The United States shall
guarantee to every State in the Union a
republican form of government."
What, I ask you, is the distinctive difference between the inhabitants of a
monarchical and those of a republican form of government, save that in the
monarchical the people are subjects, helpless, powerless, bound to obey
laws
made by superiors-while in the republican, the people are citizens,
individual
sovereigns, all clothed with equal power, to make and unmake
both their laws
and law makers, and the moment you deprive a person of his
right to a voice in
the government, you degrade him from the status of a
citizen of the republic,
to that of a subject, and it matters very little
to him whether his monarch be
an individual tyrant, as is the Czar of
Russia, or a 15,000,000 headed monster,
as here in the United States; he
is a powerless subject, serf or slave; not a
free and independent citizen
in any sense.
But is urged, the use of the masculine pronouns he, his and
him, in all the
constitutions and laws, is proof that only men were meant
to be included in
their provisions. If you insist on this version of the
letter of the law, we
shall insist that you be consistent, and accept the
other horn of the dilemna,
which would compel you to exempt women from
taxation for the support of the
government, and from penalties for the
violation of laws.
A year and a half ago I was at Walla, Walla, Washington
Territory. I saw
there a theatrical company, called the "Pixley Sisters,"
playing before crowded
houses, every night of the whole week of the
territorial fair. The eldest of
those three fatherless girls was scarce
eighteen. Yet every night a United
States officer stretched out his long
fingers, and clutched six dollars of the
proceeds of the exhibition of
those orphan girls, who, but a few years before,
were half starvelings in
the streets of Olympia, the capital of the far-off
northwest territory. So
the poor widow, who keeps a boarding house,
manufacturers shirts, or sells
apples and peanuts on the street corners of our
cities, is compelled to
pay taxes from her scanty pittance. I would that the
women of this
republic, at once, resolve, never again to submit of taxation,
until their
right to vote be recognized. Amen.
Miss Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass.,
twenty years ago, took this
position. For several years, the officers of
the law distrained her property,
and sold it to meet the necessary amount;
still she persisted, and would not
yield an iota, though every foot of her
lands should be struck off under the
hammer. And now, for several years,
the assessor has left her name off the tax
list, and the collector passed
her by without a call.
Mrs. J. S. Weeden, of Viroqua, Wis., for the past
six years, has refused to
pay her taxes, though the annual assessment is
$75.
Mrs. Ellen Van Valkenburg, of Santa Cruz, Cal., who sued the County
Clerk for
refusing to register her name, declares she will never pay
another dollar of
tax until allowed to vote; and all over the country,
women property holders are
waking up to the injustice of taxation without
representation, and ere long
will refuse, en masse, to submit to the
imposition.
There is no she, or her, or hers, in the tax laws.
The
statute of New York reads:
"Every person shall be assessed in the town or
ward where he resides when the
assessment is made, or the lands owned by
him." "Every collector shall call at
least once on the person taxed, or at
his usual place of residence, and shall
demand payment of the taxes
charged on him. If any one shall refues to pay the
tax imposed on him, the
collector shall levy the same by distress and sale of
his property"
The same is true of all the criminal laws: "No person shall be compelled to
be a witness against himself. "
The same with the law of May 31st,
1870, the 19th section of which I am
charged with having violated; not
only are all the pronouns in it masculine,
but everybody knows that that
particular section was intended expressly to
hinder the rebels from
voting. It reads "If any person shall knowingly vote
without his having a
lawful right," c. Precisely so with all the papers served
on me-the U.S.
Marshal's warrant, the bail-bond, the petition for habeas
corpus, the bill
of indictment-not one of them had a feminine pronoun printed
in it; but, to
make them applicable to me, the Clerk of the Court made a little
carat at
the left of "he" and placed an "s" over it, thus making she out of he.
Then the letters "is" were scratched out, the little carat under and "er" over,
to make her out of his, and I insist if government officials may thus
manipulate the pronouns to tax, fine, imprison and hang women, women may take
the same liberty with them to secure to themselves their right to a voice
in
the government.
So long as any classes of men were denied their
right to vote, the government
made a show of consistency, by exempting
them from taxation. When a property
qualification of $250 was required of
black men in New York, they were not
compelled to pay taxes, so long as
they were content to report themselves worth
less than that sum; but the
moment the black man died, and his property fell to
his widow or daughter,
the black woman's name would be put on the assessor's
list, and she be
compelled to pay taxes on the same property exempted to her
husband. The
same is true of ministers in New York. So long as the minister
lives, he
is exempted from taxation on $1,500 of property, but the moment the
breath
goes out of his body, his widow's name will go down on the assessor's
list, and she will have to pay taxes on the $1,500. So much for the special
legislation in favor of women.
In all the penalties and burdens of the
government, (except the military,)
women are reckoned as citizens, equally
with men. Also, in all privileges and
immunities, save those of the jury
box and ballot box, the two fundamental
privileges on which rest all the
others. The United States government not only
taxes, fines, imprisons and
hangs women, but it allows them to pre-empt lands,
register ships, and
take out passport and naturalization papers. Not only does
the law permit
single women and widows to the right of naturalization, but
Section 2
says: "A married woman may be naturalized without the concurrence of
her
husband." (I wonder the fathers were not afraid of creating discord in the
families of foreigners); and again: "When an alien, having complied with the
law, and declared his intention to become a citizen, dies before he is
actually
naturalized, his widow and children shall be considered citizens,
entitled to
all rights and privileges as such, on taking the required
oath." If a foreign
born woman by becoming a naturalized citizen, is
entitled to all the rights and
privileges of citizenship, is not a native
born woman, by her national
citizenship, possessed of equal rights and
privileges?
The question of the masculine pronouns, yes and nouns, too, has
been settled
by the United States Supreme Court, in the Case of Silver
versus Ladd,
December, 1868, in a decision as to whether a woman was
entitled to lands,
under the Oregon donation law of 1850. Elizabeth
Cruthers, a widow, settled
upon a claim, 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
Washington, 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,
Associate
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 a 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
United States senator elect from Oregon, Hon. J. H. Mitchell, 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 constitutions, 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 there was for a doubt, under the old regime,
the adoption of
the fourteenth 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 states 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 constitutions 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 agree with me,
that it is not only one of the them, but the one
without which all the others
are nothing. Seek the first 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, entitled to vote and hold office.
Prior
to the adoption of the thirteenth 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.
Associate Justice Washington, 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, pronounced 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."
Associate 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 institutions, 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 constituent 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,
pronounce 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. He said:
"The
constitution 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 citizenship, without addition
or
qualification, means the possession of equal rights, civil and
political. We
all know that the crowing 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 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? Ridiculously absurd
question, you say. 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 emancipation and enfranchisement, was no less
in-famous, 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 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 disfranchisement. That only such classes
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
pronounce 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
moral!! intellect, culture, wealth,
family-paying taxes on large estates, and
contributing equally with them
and their sex, in every direction, to the
growth, prosperity and
well-being of the republic? And what shall be said of
the judicial
opinions of Judges Carter, Jameson, McKay and Sharswood, all based
upon
this aristocratic, monarchial idea, of the right of one class 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
fourteenth amendment.
Judge
Underwood, of Virginia, in nothing the recent decision of Judge Carter,
of
the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia to women the right to vote,
under the fourteenth and fifteenth amendment, says;
"If the people of the
United States, by amendment of their constitution,
could expunge, without
any explanatory or assisting legislation, an adjective
of five letters
from all state and local constitutions, and thereby raise
millions of our
most ignorant fellow-citizens to all of 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 and local
constitutions, and
thereby raise other millions of more educated and better
informed citizens
to equal rights and privileges, without explanatory or
assisting
legislation?"
If the fourteenth amendment does not secure to all citizens
the right to
vote, for what purpose was the grand old charter of the
fathers lumbered with
its unwieldy proportions? The republican party, and
Judges Howard and Bingham,
who drafted the document, 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 thirteenth amendment, black men
had become people, and hence were
entitled to all the privileges and immunities
of the government, precisely
as were the women of the country, and foreign men
not naturalized.
According to Associate Justice Washington, 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 pass 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 institute 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 freed men were in possession of every possible
right, privilege and immunity of the government, except that of suffrage, and
hence, needed no constitutional 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
constitutional right to deny them, save that of
the ballot? Clearly, then if
the fourteenth 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.
The second
section is simply a threat to punish the states, by reducing their
representation on the floor of Congress, should they disfranchise any of their
male citizens, on account of color, and does not allow of the inference
that
the states may disfranchise from any, or all other causes, nor in any
wise
weaken or invalidate the universal guarantee of the first section.
What rule of
law or logic would allow the conclusion, that the prohibition
of a crime to one
person, on severe pains and penalties, was a sanction of
that crime to any and
all other persons save that one?
But, however
much the doctors of the law may disagree, as to whether people
and
citizens, in the original constitution, were once and the same, or whether
the privileges and immunities in the fourteenth amendment include the right of
suffrage, the question of the citizen's right to vote is settled forever
by the
fifteenth amendment. "The citizen's right to vote shall not be
denied by the
United States, nor any state thereof; on account of race,
color, or previous
condition of servitude." How can the state deny or
abridge the right of the
citizen, if the citizen does not possess it?
There is no escape from the
conclusion, that to vote is the citizen's
right, and the specifications of
race, color, or previous condition of
servitude can, in no way, impair the
force of the emphatic assertion, that
the citizen's right to vote shall not be
denied or abridged.
The
political strategy of the second section of the fourteenth amendment,
failing to coerce the rebel states into enfranchising their negroes, and the
necessities of the republican party demanding their votes throughout the
South,
to ensure the re-election of Grant in 1872, that party was
compelled to place
this positive prohibition of the fifteenth amendment
upon the United States and
all the states thereof.
If we once
establish he false principle, that United States citizenship does
not
carry with it the right to vote in every state in this Union, there is no
end to the petty freaks and cunning devices, that will be resorted to, to
exclude one and another class of citizens from the right of suffrage.
It
will not always be men combining to disfranchise all women; native born
men combining to abridge the rights of all naturalized citizens, as in Rhode
Island. It will not always be the rich and educated who may combine to cut
off
the poor and ignorant; but we may live to see the poor, hardworking,
uncultivated day laborers, foreign and native born, learning the power of
the
ballot and their vast majority of numbers, combine and amend state
constitutions so as to disfranchise the Vanderbilts and A. T Stewarts, the
Conklings and Fentons. It is poor rule that won't work more ways than one.
Establish this precedent, admit the right to deny suffrage to the states,
and
there is no power to foresee the confusion, discord and disruption
that may
await us. There is, and can be, but one safe principle of
government-equal
rights to all. And any and every discrimination against
any class, whether on
account of color, race, nativity, sex, property,
culture, can but imbitter and
disaffect that class, and thereby endanger
the safety of the whole people.
Clearly, then, the national government must
not only define the rights of
citizens, but it must stretch out its
powerful hand and protect them in every
state in this Union.
But if
you will insist that the fifteenth amendment's emphatic interdiction
against robbing United States citizens of their right to vote, "on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude," is a recognition of the
right, either of the United States, or any state, to rob citizens of that
right, for any or all other reason, I will prove to you that the class of
citizens for which I now plead, and to which I belong, may be, and sure,
by all
the principles of our government, and many of the laws of the
states, included
under the term "previous condition of servitude."
First.-The married women and their legal status. What is servitude? "The
condition of a slave." What is a slave? "A person who is robbed of the proceeds
of his labor; a person who is subject to the will of another."
By the
law of Georgia, South Carolina, and all the states of the South, the
negro
had no right to the custody and control of his person. He belonged to his
master. If he was disobedient, the master had the right to use correction. If
the negro didn't like the correction, and attempted to run away, the
master had
a right to use coercion to bring him back.
By the law of
every state in this Union to-day, North as well as South, the
married
woman has no right to the custody and control of her person. The wife
belongs to her husband; and if the refuses obedience to his will, he may use
moderate correction, and if she doesn't like his moderate correction, and
attempts to leave his "bed and board," the husband may use moderate
coercion to
bring her back. The little word "moderate," you see, is the
saving clause for
the wife, and would doubtless be overstepped should
offended husband administer
his correction with the "cat-o'-nine-tails,"
or accomplish his coercion with
blood-hounds.
Again, the slave had no
right to the earnings of his hands, they belonged to
his master; no right
to the custody of his children, they belonged to his
master; no right to
sue or be sued, or testify in the courts. If he committed a
crime, it was
the master who must sue or be sued.
In many of the states there has been
special legislation, giving to married
women the right to property
inherited, or received by bequest, or earned by the
pursuit of any
avocation outside of the home; also, giving her the right to sue
and be
sued in matters pertaining to such separate property; but not a single
state of this Union has eve secured the wife in the enjoyment of her right to
the joint ownership of the joint earnings of the marriage copartnership.
And
since, in the nature of things, the vast majority of married women
never earn a
dollar, by work outside of their families, nor inherit a
dollar from their
fathers, it follows that from the day of their marriage
to the day of the death
of their husbands, not one of them ever has a
dollar, except it shall please
her husband to let her have it.
In
some of the states, also, there have been laws passed giving to the mother
a joint right with the father in the guardianship of the children. But twenty
years ago, when our woman's rights movement commenced, by the laws of the
State
of New York, and all the states, the father had the sole custody and
control of
the children. No matter if he were a brutal, drunken libertine,
he had the
legal right, without the mother's consent, to apprentice her
sons to
rumsellers, or her daughters to brothel keepers. He could even
will away an
unborn child, to some other person than the mother. And in
many of the states
the law still prevails, and the mothers are still
utterly powerless under the
common law.
I doubt if there is, to-day, a
State in this Union where a married woman can
sue or be sued for slander
of character, and until quite recently there was not
one in which she
could sue or be sued for injury of person. However damaging to
the wife's
reputation any slander may be, she is wholly powerless to institute
legal
proceedings against her accuser, unless her husband shall join with her;
and how often have we hard of the husband conspiring with some outside
barbarian to blast the good name of his wife? A married woman cannot testify in
courts in cases of joint interest with her husband. A good farmer's wife
near
Earlville, Ill., who had all the rights she wanted, went to a dentist
of the
village and had a full set of false teeth, both upper and under.
The dentist
pronounced them an admirable fit, and the wife declared they
gave her fits to
wear them; that she could neither chew nor talk with them
in her mouth. The
dentist sued the husband; his counsel brought the wife
as witness; the judge
ruled her off the stand; saying "a married woman
cannot be a witness in matters
of joint interest between herself and her
husband." Think of it, ye good wives,
the false teeth in your mouths are
joint interest with your husbands, about
which you are legally incompetent
to speak!! If in our frequent and shocking
railroad accidents a married
woman is injured in her person, in nearly all of
the States, it is her
husband who must sue the company, and it is to her
husband that the
damages, if there are any, will be awarded. In Ashfield,
Mass., supposed
to be the most advanced of any State in the Union in all
things,
humanitarian as well as intellectual, a married woman was severely
injured
by a defective sidewalk. Her husband sued the corporation and recovered
$13,000 damages. And those $13,000 belong to him bona fide; and whenever that
unfortunate wife wishes a dollar of it to supply her needs she must ask
her
husband for it; and if the man be of a narrow, selfish, nighardly
nature, she
will have to hear him say, every time, "What have you done, my
dear, with the
twenty-five cents I gave you yesterday?" Isn't such a
position, ask you,
humiliating enough to be called "servitude?" That
husband, as would any other
husband, in nearly every State of this Union,
sued and obtained damages for the
loss of the services of his wife,
precisely as the master, under the old slave
regime, would have done, had
his slave been thus injured, and precisely as he
himself would have done
had it been his ox, cow or horse instead of his wife.
There is an old
saying that "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet,"
and I submit
it the deprivation by law of the ownership of one's own person,
wages,
property, children, the denial of the right as an individual, to sue and
be sued, and to testify in the courts, is not a condition of servitude most
bitter and absolute, though under the sacred name of marriage?
Does any
lawyer doubt my statement of the legal status of married women? I
will
remind him of the fact that the old common law of England prevails in
every
State in this Union, except where the Legislature has enacted special
laws
annulling it. And I am ashamed that not one State has yet blotted from its
statue books the old common law of marriage, by which blackstone, summed up in
the fewest words possible, is made to say, "husband and wife are one, and
that
one is the husband."
Thus may all married women, wives and
widows, by the laws of the several
States, be technically included in the
fifteenth amendment's specification of
"condition of servitude," present
or previous. And not only married women, but
I will also prove to you that
by all the great fundamental principles of our
free government, the entire
womanhood of the nation is in a "condition of
servitude" as surely as were
our revolutionary fathers, when they rebelled
against old King George.
Women are taxed without representation, governed
without their consent,
tried, convicted and punished without a jury of their
peers. And is all
this tyranny any less humiliating and degrading to women
under our
democratic-republican government to-day than it was to men under
their
aristocratic, monarchical government one hundred years ago? There is not
an
utterance of old John Adams, John Hancock or Patrick Henry, but finds a
living response in the soul of every intelligent, patriotic woman of the
nation. Bring to me a common-sense woman property holder, and I will show you
one whose soul is fired with all the indignation of 1776 every time the
tax-gatherer presents himself at her door. You will not find one such but
feels
her condition of servitude as galling as did James Otis when he
said:
"The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not represented
appears
to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights,
and if
continued, seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of
every civil
right. For, what one civil right is worth a rush after a man's
property is
subject to be