Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States

A gentleman said to me a few days ago, "These women want to marry." I am married; I am a mother; and in our home the sons and brothers are all standing like a wall of steel at my back. I have cast aside every prejudice of the past. They lie like rotted hulks behind me.

After the fever of 1878, when our constitutional convention was going to convene, broke the agony and grief of my own heart, for one of my children died, and took part in the suffrage movement in Louisiana, with the wife of Chief-Justice Merrick, Mrs. Sarah A. Dorsey, and Mrs. Harriet Keatinge, of New York, the niece of Mr. Lozier. These three ladies aided me faithfully and ably. When they found we would be received, I went before the convention. I went to Lieutenant-Governor Wiltz, and asked him if he would present or consider a petition which I wished to bring before the convention. He read the petition. One clause of our State law is that no woman can sign a will. We will have that question decided before the meeting of the next Legislature. Some ladies donated property to an asylum. They wrote the will and signed it themselves, and it was null and void, because the signers were women. They not knowing the law, believed that they were human beings, and signed it. That clause, perhaps, will be wiped out. Many gentlemen signed the petition on that account. I took the paper around myself. Governor Wiltz, then lieutenant-governor, told me he would present the petition. He was elected president of the convention. I presented my first petition, signed by the best names in the city of New Orleans and in the State.

I had the names of seven of the most prominent physicians there, leading with the name of Dr. Logan, and many men, seeing the name of Dr. Samuel Logan, also signed it. I went to all the different physicians and ministers. Three prominent ministers signed it for moral purposes alone. When Mrs. Horsey was on her dying bed the last time she ever signed her name was to a letter to go before that convention. No one believed she would die. Mrs. Merrick and myself went before the convention. I was invited before the committee on the judiciary. I made an impression favorable enough there to be invited before the convention with these ladies. I addressed the convention. We made the petition then that we make here; that we, the mothers of the land, are barred on every side in the cause of reform. I have strived hard in the work of reform for women. I pledged my father on his dying bed that I would never cease that work until woman stood with man equal before the law, so far as my efforts could accomplish it. Finding myself baffled in that work, I could only take the course which we have adopted, and urge the proposition of the sixteenth amendment.

I beg of you, gentlemen, to consider this question apart from the manner in which it was formerly considered. We, as the women of the nation, as the mothers, as the wives, have a right to be heard, it seems to me, before the nation. We represent precisely the position of the colonies when they plead, and, in the words of Patrick Henry, they were "spurned with contempt from the foot of the throne." We have been jeered and laughed at and ridiculed; but this question has passed out of the region of ridicule.

The moral force inheres in woman and in man alike, and unless we use all the moral power of the Government we certainly can not exist as a Government.

We talk of centralization, we talk of division; we have the seeds of decay in our Government, and unless right soon we use the moral force and bring it forward in all its strength and bearing, we certainly cannot exist as a happy nation. We do not exist as a happy nation now. This clamor for woman's suffrage, for woman's rights, for equal representation, is extending all over the land.

I plead because my work has been combatted in the cause of reform everywhere that I have tried to accomplish anything. The children that fill the houses of prostitution are not of foreign blood and race. They come from sweet American homes, and for every woman that went down some mother's heart broke. I plead by the power of the ballot to be allowed to help reform women and benefit mankind.

REMARKS OF MRS. MARY A. STEWART, OF DELAWARE.

Mrs. STEWART. I come from a small State, but one that is represented in this Congress, I consider, by some of the ablest men in the land. Our State, though small, has heretofore possessed and to-day possesses brains. Our sons have no more right to brains than our daughters, yet we are tied down by every chain that could bind the Georgian slave before the war. Aye, we are worse slaves, because the Georgian slave could go to the sale block and there be sold. The woman of Delaware must submit to her chains, as there is no sale for her; she is of no account.

Woman from all time has occupied the highest positions in the world. She is just as competent to-day as she was hundreds of years ago. We are taxed without representation; there is no mistake about that. The colonies screamed that to England; Parliament screamed back, "Be still; long live the king, and we will help you." Did the colonies submit? They did not. Will the women of this country submit? They will not. Mark me, we are the sisters of those fighting Revolutionary men; we are the daughters of the fathers who sang back to England that they would not submit. Then, if the same blood courses in our veins that courses in yours, dare you expect us to submit?

The white men of this country have thrown out upon us, the women, a race inferior, you must admit, to your daughters, and yet that race has the ballot, and why? He has a right to it; he earned and paid for it with his blood. Whose blood paid for yours? Not your blood; it was the blood of your forefathers; and were they not our forefathers? Does a man earn a hundred thousand dollars and lie down and die, saying, "It is all my boys'?" Not a bit of it. He dies saying, "Let my children, be they cripples, be they idiots, be they boys, or be they girls, inherit all my property alike." Then let us inherit the sweet boon of the ballot alike.

When our fathers were driving the great ship of state we were willing to ride as deck or cabin passengers, just as we felt disposed; we had nothing to say; but to-day the boys are about to run the ship aground, and it is high time that the mothers should be asking, "What do you mean to do?" It is high time that the mothers should be demanding what they should long since have had.

In our own little State the laws have been very much modified in regard to women. My father was the first man to blot out the old English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to the real estate. He took the first step, and like all those who take first steps in improvement and reform he received a mountain of curses from the oldest male heirs; but it did not matter to him.

Since 1868 I have, by my own individual efforts, by the use of hard-earned money, gone to our Legislature time after time and have had this law and that law passed for the benefit of the women; and the same little ship of state has sailed on. To-day our men are just as well satisfied with the laws of our State for the benefit of women in force as they were years ago. In our State a woman has a right to make a will. In our State she can hold bonds and mortgages as her own. In our State she has a right to her own property. She can not sell it, though, if it is real estate, simply because the moment she marries her husband has a life-time right. The woman does not grumble at that; but still when he dies owning real estate, she gets only the rental value of one-third, which is called the widow's dower. Now I think the man ought to have the rental value of one-third of the woman's maiden property or real estate, and it ought to be called the widower's dower. It would be just as fair for one as for the other. All that I want is equality.

The women of our State, as I said before, are taxed without representation. The tax-gatherer comes every year and demands taxes. For twenty years have I paid tax under protest, and if I live twenty years longer I shall pay it under protest every time. The tax-gatherer came to my place not long since. "Well," said I, "good morning, sir." Said he, "Good morning." He smiled and said, "I have come bothering you." Said I, "I know your face well. You have come to get a right nice little woman's tongue-lashing." Said he, "I suppose so, but if you will just pay your tax I will leave." I paid the tax, "But," said I, "remember I pay it under protest, and if I ever pay another tax I intend to have the protest written and make the tax-gatherer sign it before I pay the tax, and if he will not sign that protest then I shall not pay the tax, and there will be a fight at once." Said he, "Why do you keep all the time protesting against paying this small tax?" Said I, "Why do you pay your tax?" "Well," said he, "I would not pay it if I did not vote." Said I, "That is the very reason why I do not want to pay it. I can not vote and I do not want to pay it." Now the women have no right when election day comes around. Who stay at home from the election? The women and the black and white men who have been to the whipping-post. Nice company to put your wives and daughters in.

It is said that the women do not want to vote. Here is an array of women. Every woman sitting here wants to vote, and must we be debarred the privilege of voting because some luxurious woman, rolling around in her carriage and pair in her little downy nest that some good, benevolent man has provided for her, does not want to vote?

There was a society that existed up in the State of New York called the Covenanters that never voted. A man who belonged to that sect or society, a man whiter-haired than any of you, said to me, "I never voted. I never intended to vote, I never felt that I could conscientiously support a Government that had its Constitution blotted and blackened with the word 'slave,' and I never did vote until after the abolition of slavery." Now, were all you men disfranchised because that class or sect up in New York would not vote? Did you all pay your taxes and stay at home and refrain from voting because the Covenanters did not vote? Not a bit of it. You went to the election and told them to stay at home if they wanted to, but that you, as citizens, were going to take care of yourselves. That was right. We, as citizens, want to take care of ourselves.

One more thought and I will be through. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments give the right of suffrage to women, so far as I know, although you learned men perhaps see a little differently. I see through the glass dimly; you may see through it after it is polished up. The fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, in my opinion, and in the opinion of a great many smart men in the country, and smart women, too, give the right to women to vote without, any "ifs" or "ands" about it, and the United States protects us in it; but there are a few who construe the law to suit themselves, and say that those amendments do not mean that, because the Congress that passed the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments did not mean to do that. Well, the Congress that passed them were mean enough for anything if they did not mean to do that. Let the wise Congress of to-day take the eighth chapter and the fourth verse of the Psalms, which says, "What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?" and amend it by adding, "What is woman, that they never thought of her?"

REMARKS BY MRS. LUCINDA B. CHANDLER, OF PENNSYLVANIA.

Mrs. CHANDLER. Gentlemen, it will be conceded that the progress of civilization, all that lifts humanity above a groveling, sensual, depraved state, is marked by the position, intelligence, and culture of women. Perhaps you think that American women have no rightful claim to present; but American women and mothers do claim that they should have the power to protect their children, not only at the hearthstone, but to supervise their education. It is neither presuming nor unwomanly for the mothers and women of the land to claim that they are competent and best fitted, and that it rightfully belongs to them to take part in the management and control of the schools, and the instruction, both intellectual and moral, of their children, and that in penal, eleemosynary, or reformatory institutions women should have positions as inspectors of prisons, physicians, directors, and superintendents.

I have here a brief report from an association which sent me as a delegate to the National Woman Suffrage Convention, in which it is stated that women in Pennsylvania can be elected as directors on school boards or superintendents of schools, but can not help to elect those officers. It must very readily occur to your minds that when women take such interest in the schools as mothers must needs take they must feel many a wish to control the election of the officers, superintendents, and managers of the schools. The ladies here from New York city could, if they had time, give you much testimony in regard to the management of schools in New York city, and the need there of woman's love and woman's power in the schools and on the school boards. I am also authorized by the association which sent me here to report that the woman-suffragists and some other woman organizations of the city of Philadelphia, have condemned in resolution the action of the governor a year ago, I think, in vetoing a bill which passed largely both houses of the Legislature to appoint women inspectors of prisons. On such questions woman feels the need of the ballot.

The mothers of this land, having breathed the air of freedom and received the benefits of education, have come to see the necessity of better conditions to fulfill their divinely appointed and universally recognized office. The mothers of this land claim that they have a right to assist in making the laws which control the social relations. We are under the laws inherited from barbarism. They are not the conditions suited to the best exercise of the office of woman, and the women desire the ballot to purge society of the vices that are sure to disintegrate the home, the State, the nation.

I shall not occupy your time further this morning. I only present briefly the mother's claim, as it is so universally conceded. We now have in our schools a very large majority of women teachers, and it seems to me no one can but recognize the fact that mothers, through their experience in the family, mothers who are at all competent and fit to fulfill their position as mothers in the family, are best fitted to understand the needs and at least should have an equal voice in directing the management of the schools, and also the management of penal and reformatory institutions.

I was in hopes that Mrs. Wallace would give you the testimony she gave us in the convention of the wonderful, amazing good that was accomplished in a reformatory institution where an incorrigible woman was taken from the men's prison and became not only very tractable, but very helpful in an institution under the influence and management of women. That reformatory institution is managed wholly by women. There is not a man, Mrs. Wallace says, in the building, except the engineer who controls the fire department. Under a management wholly by women, the institution is a very great success. We feel sure that in many ways the influence and power that the mothers bring would tend to convert many conditions that are now tending to destruction through vices, would tend to elevate us morally, purify us, bring us still higher in the standard of humanity, and make us what we ought to be, a holy as well as a happy nation.

REMARKS BY MRS. SARA A. SPENCER, OF WASHINGTON. Mrs. SPENCER. Miss Susan B. Anthony was chosen to present the constitutional argument in our case before the committee. Unless there is more important business for the individual members of the committee than the protection of one-half of our population, I trust that the limit fixed for our hearing will be extended.

The CHAIRMAN. Miss Anthony is entitled to an hour.

Mrs. SPENCER. Good. Miss Anthony is from the United States; the whole United States claim her.

Mrs. ALLEN. I have made arrangements with Miss Anthony to say all that I feel it necessary for me to say at this time.

Mrs. SPENCER. I have been so informed.

REMARKS BY MRS. NANCY B. ALLEN, OF IOWA.

Mrs. ALLEN. Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee: I am not a State representative, but I am a representative of a large class of women, citizens of Iowa, who are heavy tax-payers. That is a subject which we are very seriously contemplating at this time. There is now a petition being circulated throughout our State, to be presented to the legislature, praying that women be exempted from taxation until they have some voice in the management of local affairs of the State. You may ask, "Do not your husbands protect you? Are not all the men protecting you?" We answer that our husbands are grand, noble men, who are willing to do all they can for us, but there are many who have no husbands, and who own a great deal of property in the State of Iowa. Particularly in great moral reforms the women there feel the need of the ballot. By presenting long petitions to the Legislature they have succeeded in having better temperance laws enacted, but the men have failed to elect officials who will enforce those laws. Consequently they have become as dead letters upon the statute-books.

I would refer again to taxes. I have a list showing that in my city three women pay more taxes than all the city officials included. Those women are good temperance women. Our city council is composed almost entirely of saloon men and those who visit saloons and brewery men. There are some good men, but the good men being in the minority, the voices of these women are but little regarded. All these officials are paid, and we have to help support them. All that we ask is an equality of rights. As Sumner said, "Equality of rights is the first of rights." If we can only be equal with man under the law it is all that we ask. We do not propose to relinquish our domestic circles; in fact, they are too dear to us for that; they are dear to us as life itself, but we do ask that we may be permitted to be represented. Equality of taxation without representation is tyranny.

REMARKS BY MISS SUSAN B. ANTHONY, OF NEW YORK.

Miss ANTHONY: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen: Mrs. Spencer said that I would make an argument. I do not propose to do so, because I take it for granted that the members of this committee understand that we have all the argument on our side, and such an argument would be simply a series of platitudes and maxims of government. The theory of this Government from the beginning has been perfect equality to all the people. That is shown by every one of the fundamental principles, which I need not stop to repeat. Such being the theory, the application would be, of course, that all persons not having forfeited their right to representation in the Government should be possessed of it at the age of twenty-one. But instead of adopting a practice in conformity with the theory of our Government, we began first by saying that all men of property were the people of the nation upon whom the Constitution conferred equality of rights. The next step was that all white men were the people to whom should be practically applied the fundamental theories. There we halt to-day and stand at a deadlock, so far as the application of our theory may go. We women have been standing before the American republic for thirty years, asking the men to take yet one step further and extend the practical application of the theory of equality of rights to all the people to the other half of the people—the women. That is all that I stand here to-day to attempt to demand.

Of course, I take it for granted that the committee are in sympathy at least with the reports of the Judiciary Committees presented both in the Senate and the House. I remember that after the adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments Senator EDMUNDS reported on the petition of the ten thousand foreign-born citizens of Rhode Island who were denied equality of rights in Rhode Island simply because of their foreign birth; and in that report held that the amendments were enacted and attached to the Constitution simply for men of color, and therefore that their provisions could not be so construed as to bring within their purview the men of foreign birth in Rhode Island. Then the House Committee on the Judiciary, with Judge Bingham, of Ohio, at its head, made a similar report upon our petitions, holding that because those amendments were made essentially with the black men in view, therefore their provisions could not be extended to the women citizens of this country or to any class except men citizens of color.

I voted in the State of New York in 1872 under the construction of those amendments, which we felt to be the true one, that all persons born in the United States, or any State thereof, and under the jurisdiction of the United States, were citizens, and entitled to equality of rights, and that no State could deprive them of their equality of rights. I found three young men, inspectors of election, who were simple enough to read the Constitution and understand it in accordance with what was the letter and what should have been its spirit. Then, as you will remember, I was prosecuted by the officers of the Federal court, And the cause was carried through the different courts in the State of New York, in the northern district, and at last I was brought to trial at Canandaigua.

When Mr. Justice Hunt was brought from the supreme bench to sit upon that trial, he wrested my case from the hands of the jury altogether, after having listened three days to testimony, and brought in a verdict himself of guilty, denying to my counsel even the poor privilege of having the jury polled. Through all that trial when I, as a citizen of the United States, as a citizen of the State of New York and city of Rochester, as a person who had done something at least that might have entitled her to a voice in speaking for herself and for her class, in all that trial I not only was denied my right to testify as to whether I voted or not, but there was not one single woman's voice to be heard nor to be considered, except as witnesses, save when it came to the judge asking, "Has the prisoner any thing to say why sentence shall not be pronounced?" Neither as judge, nor as attorney, nor as jury was I allowed any person who could be legitimately called my peer to speak for me.

Then, as you will remember, Mr. Justice Hunt not only pronounced the verdict of guilty, but a sentence of $100 fine and costs of prosecution. I said to him, "May it please your honor, I do not propose to pay it;" and I never have paid it, and I never shall. I asked your honorable bodies of Congress the next year—in 1874—to pass a resolution to remit that fine. Both Houses refused it; the committees reported against it; though through Benjamin F. Butler, in the House, and a member of your committee, and Matthew H. Carpenter, in the Senate, there were plenty of precedents brought forward to show that in the cases of multitudes of men fines had been remitted. I state this merely to show the need of woman to speak for herself, to be as judge, to be as juror.

Mr. Justice Hunt in his opinion stated that suffrage was a fundamental right, and therefore a right that belonged to the State. It seemed to me that was just as much of a retroversion of the theory of what is right in our Government as there could possibly be. Then, after the decision in my case came that of Mrs. Minor, of Missouri. She prosecuted the officers there for denying her the right to vote. She carried her case up to your Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court answered her the same way; that the amendments were made for black men; that their provisions could not protect women; that the Constitution of the United States has no voters of its own.

Mrs. SPENCER. And you remember Judge Cartier's decision in my case.

Miss ANTHONY. Mr. Cartier said that women are citizens and may be qualified, &c., but that it requires some sort of legislation to give them the right to vote.

The Congress of the United States notwithstanding, and the Supreme Court of the United States notwithstanding, with all deference and respect, I differ with them all, and know that I am right and that they are wrong. The Constitution of the United States as it is protects me. If I could get a practical application of the Constitution it would protect me and all women in the enjoyment of perfect equality of rights everywhere under the shadow of the American flag.

I do not come to you to petition for special legislation, or for any more amendments to the Constitution, because I think they are unnecessary, but because you say there is not in the Constitution enough to protect me. Therefore I ask that you, true to your own theory and assertion, should go forward to make more constitution.

Let me remind you that in the case of all other classes of citizens under the shadow of our flag you have been true to the theory that taxation and representation are inseparable. Indians not taxed are not counted in the basis of representation, and are not allowed to vote; but the minute that your Indians are counted in the basis of representation and are allowed to vote they are taxed; never before. In my State of New York, and in nearly all the States, the members of the State militia, hundreds and thousands of men, are exempted from taxation on property; in my State to the value of $800, and in most of the States to a value in that neighborhood. While such a member of the militia lives, receives his salary, and is able to earn money, he is exempted; but when he dies the assessor puts his widow's name down upon the assessor's list, and the tax-collector never fails to call upon the widow and make her pay the full tax upon her property. In most of the States clergymen are exempted. In my State of New York they are exempted on property to the value of $1,500. As long as the clergyman lives and receives his fat salary, or his lean one, as the case may be, he is exempted on that amount of property; but when the breath leaves the body of the clergyman, and the widow is left without any income, or without any means of support, the State comes in and taxes the widow.

So it is with regard to all black men. In the State of New York up to the day of the passage of the fifteenth amendment, black men who were willing to remain without reporting themselves worth as much as $250, and thereby to remain without exercising the right to vote, never had their names put on the assessor's list; they were passed by, while, if the poorest colored woman owned 50 feet of real estate, a little cabin anywhere, that colored woman's name was always on the assessor's list, and she was compelled to pay her tax. While Frederick Douglas lived in my State he was never allowed to vote until he could show himself worth the requisite $250; and when he did vote in New York, he voted not because he was a man, not because he was a citizen of the United States, nor yet because he was a citizen of the State, but simply because he was worth the requisite amount of money. In Connecticut both black men and black women were exempted from taxation prior to the adoption of the fifteenth amendment.

The law was amended in 1848, by which black men were thus exempted, and black women followed the same rule in that State. That, I believe, is the only State where black women were exempted from taxation under the law. When the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments were attached to the Constitution they carried to the black man of Connecticut the boon of the ballot as well as the burden of taxation, whereas they carried to the black woman of Connecticut the burden of taxation, but no ballot by which to protect her property. I know a colored woman in New Haven, Conn., worth $50,000, and she never paid a penny of taxation until the ratification of the fifteenth amendment. From that day on she is compelled to pay a heavy tax on that amount of property.

Mrs. SPENCER. Is it because she is a citizen? Please explain.

Miss ANTHONY. Because she is black.

Mrs. SPENCER. Is it because the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments made women citizens?

Miss ANTHONY. Certainly; because it declared the black people citizens.