The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony

to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State 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, or deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

       Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

5 Women also had attempted to vote in local and State elections in 1870 and 1871. An account of the trials and decisions which followed will be found in the History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, Chap. XXV.

6 The most earnest advocates of the constitutional right of women to Federal Suffrage are Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett, Ky.; Mrs. Clara B. Colby, D. C.; Mrs. Martha E. Root, Mich.; Miss Sara Winthrop Smith, Conn. They have done a large amount of persistent but ineffectual work in the endeavor to obtain a recognition of this right.

7 Senator John Sherman did at one time introduce a bill for this purpose.

8 This is precisely what was done in the case of Susan B. Anthony above referred to.

9 The first report, in 1871, was signed by Representatives Benjamin F. Butler (Mass.) and William A. Loughridge (Ia.): History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 464.

      The second, in 1879, was signed by Senators George F. Hoar (Mass.), John H. Mitchell (Ore.), Angus Cameron (Wis.): Id., Vol. III, p. 131.

      The third, in 1882, was signed by Senators Elbridge G. Lapham (N. Y.), Thomas W. Ferry (Mich.), Henry W. Blair (N. H.), Henry B. Anthony (R. I.): Id., p. 231.

      The fourth, in 1883, was signed by Representative John D. White (Ky.): Id., p. 263

       It is worthy of notice that from 1879 to 1891, inclusive, Miss Susan B. Anthony was enabled to spend the congressional season in Washington, and during this time nine of these eleven favorable reports were made.

      CHAPTER II.

       The National Suffrage Convention of 1884.

       Table of Contents

      The first Woman's Rights Convention on record was held in Seneca Falls, N. Y., in July, 1848; the second in Salem, O., in April, 1850; the third in Worcester, Mass., in October, 1850. By this time the movement for the civil, educational and political rights of women was fully initiated, and every year thenceforth to the beginning of the Civil War national conventions were held in various States for the purpose of agitating the question and creating a favorable public sentiment. These were addressed by the ablest men and women of the time, and the discussions included the whole scope of women's wrongs, which in those days were many and grievous.

      Immediately after the war the political disabilities of the negro man were so closely akin to those of all women that the advocates of universal suffrage organized under the name of the Equal Rights Association. The "reconstruction period," however, engendered so many differences of opinion, and a platform so broad permitted such latitude of debate, the women soon became convinced that their own cause was being sacrificed. Therefore in May, 1869, under the leadership of Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Miss Susan B. Anthony, the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed in New York City, having for its sole object the enfranchisement of women. From this time it held a convention in Washington, D. C., every winter.

      The above mentioned associations and conventions, as well as the American Woman Suffrage Association, formed at Cleveland, O., in November, 1869, under the leadership of Mrs. Lucy Stone, are described in detail in the preceding volumes of this History. The present volume begins with the usual convention of the National Association in Washington in 1884. This place was selected for a twofold purpose: because here a more cosmopolitan audience could be secured than in any other city, including representatives from every State in the Union and from all the nations of the world; and because here the association could carry directly to the only tribunal which had power to act, its demand for a submission to the State Legislatures of an amendment to the Federal Constitution which should forbid disfranchisement on account of sex. During each of these conventions it was the custom for committees of the Senate and House to grant hearings to the leading advocates of this proposition.

The Sixteenth of these annual conventions met in Lincoln Hall, in response to the usual Call,10 March 4, 1884, continuing in session four days.11

On the evening before the convention a handsome reception was given at the Riggs House by Charles W. and Mrs. Jane H. Spofford to Miss Susan B. Anthony, which was attended by several hundred prominent men and women. Delegates were present from twenty-six States and Territories.12 Miss Anthony was in the chair at the opening session and read a letter from Mrs. Stanton, who was detained at home, in which she paid a glowing tribute to Wendell Phillips, the staunch defender of the rights of women, who had died the preceding month.

      Mrs. Mary B. Clay, in speaking of the work in her State, said:

      In talking to a Kentuckian on the subject of woman's right to qualify under the law, you have to batter down his self-conceit that he is just and generous and chivalric toward woman, and that she can not possibly need other protection than he gives her with his own right arm—while he forgets that it is from man alone woman needs protection, and often does she need the right to protect herself from the avarice, brutality or neglect of the one nearest to her. The only remedy for her, as for man himself, in this republic, is the ballot in her hand. He thinks he is generous to woman when he supplies her wants, forgetting that he has first robbed her by law of all her property in marriage, and then may or may not give her that which is her own by right of inheritance....

      A mother, legally so, has no right to her child, the husband having the right to will it to whom he pleases, and even to will away from the mother the unborn child at his death. The wife does not own her own property, personal or real, unless given for her sole use and benefit. If a husband may rent the wife's land, or use it during his life and hers, and take the increase or rental of it, and after her death still hold it and deprive her children of its use, which he does by curtesy, and if she can not make a will and bequeath it at her death, then I say she is robbed, and insulted in the bargain, by such so-called ownership of land. "A woman fleeing from her husband and seeking refuge or protection in a neighbor's house, the man protecting her makes himself liable to the husband, who can recover damages by law." "If a husband refuse to sue for a wife who has been slandered or beaten, she can not sue for herself." These are Kentucky laws.

      Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck closed her record for Massachusetts by saying: "The dead wall of indifference is at last broken down and the women 'remonstrants,' by their active resistance to our advancing progress, are not only turning the attention of the public in our direction and making the whole community interested, but also are paving the way for future political