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

M. Du Bois, Mrs. Lovisa C. McCullough; Rhode Island—Catherine C. Knowles; Texas—Jennie Bland Beauchamp; Virginia—N. O. Town; Washington Ty.—Barbara J. Thompson; Wisconsin—Almeda B. Gray, Evaleen L. Mason, Mathilde Anneke; Canada—Dr. Emily H. Stowe.

16 For a full account of Miss Carroll's services and such congressional action as was taken, see History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, pp. 3 and 863. It is the story of a national disgrace.

17 Resolved, That we hold a convention in every unorganized State and Territory during the present year, as far as possible, at the capital.

       Resolved, That we consider the enfranchisement of the women citizens of the United States the paramount issue of the hour, therefore

       Resolved, That we will, by all honorable methods, oppose the election of any presidential candidate who is a known opponent to woman suffrage, and we recommend similar action on the part of our State associations in regard to State and congressional candidates and further

       Resolved, That the officers of this convention shall communicate with presidential nominees of the several political parties and ascertain their position upon this question.

       Resolved, That all Legislatures shall be requested to memorialize Congress upon the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, this to be the duty of the vice presidents of the States and Territories.

       Whereas, The National Government, through Congress and the Supreme Court, has persistently refused to protect the women of the several States and Territories in "the right of the citizen to vote," therefore

       Resolved, That this association most earnestly protests against national interference to abolish the right where it has been secured by the Legislature—as, for example, the Edmunds Tucker Bill, which proposes to disfranchise all the women of Utah, thus inflicting the most degrading penalty upon the innocent equally with the guilty, by robbing them of their most sacred right of citizenship.

18 The method of organization must be governed by circumstances. In some localities it is best to call a public meeting, in others to invite the friends of the movement to a private conference. Both women and men should be members and co-operate, and the society should be organized on as broad and liberal a basis as possible.

      Hold conventions, picnics, teas, and occasionally have a lecture from some one who will draw a large crowd. Utilize your own talent, encourage your young women and men to speak, read essays and debate on the question. Hold public celebrations of the birthdays of eminent women, and in that way interest many who would not attend a pronounced suffrage meeting.

      Persons who can not be induced to attend a public meeting will often accept an invitation to a parlor conference or entertainment where woman suffrage can be made the subject of conversation. Cultured women and men, who "have given the matter no thought," can be interested through a paper presenting the life and work of such women as Margaret Fuller, Abigail Adams, Lucretia Mott, etc., or showing the rise and progress of the woman suffrage movement, giving short biographies of the leaders.

      Advocate suffrage through your local papers. Send them short, pithy communications, and, when possible, secure a column in each, to be edited by the society.

      Invite pastors of churches to select from the numerous appropriate texts in the Bible and preach occasionally upon this subject.

      A strong effort should be made to circulate literature. Every society should own a copy of the Woman Question in Europe, by Theodore Stanton, of the History of Woman Suffrage, by Mrs. Stanton, Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage, of Mrs. Robinson's Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement, of T. W. Higginson's Common Sense for Women, of John Stuart Mill's Subjection of Women, and of Frances Power Cobbe's Duties of Women. These will furnish ammunition for arguments and debates.

      Suffrage leaflets should be circulated in parlors and places of business, and "pockets" should be filled and hung in railroad stations, post-offices and hotels, that "he who runs may read." Over these should be printed "Woman Suffrage—Take and Read."

      All the above methods aim rather at the education of the popular mind than the judiciary and legislative branches of the Government. The next step is to educate the representatives in Congress and on the bench of the Supreme Court in the principles of constitutional law and republican government, that they may understand the justice of the demands for a Sixteenth Amendment which shall forbid the several States to deny or abridge the rights of women citizens of the United States.

19 Miss Anthony never wrote her addresses and no stenographic reports were made. Brief and inadequate newspaper accounts are all that remain.

      CHAPTER III.

       Congressional Hearings and Reports of 1884.

       Table of Contents

Both Senate and House of the preceding Congress had appointed Select Committees on Woman Suffrage to whom all petitions, etc., were referred.20 The Senate of the Forty-eighth Congress renewed this committee, but the House declined to do so. Early in the session, Dec. 19, 1883, the Committee on Rules refused to report such a committee but authorized Speaker Warren Keifer of Ohio to present the question to the House. A spirited debate followed which displayed the sentiment of members against the question of woman suffrage itself. John H. Reagan of Texas was the principal opponent, saying in the course of his remarks:

      I hope that it will not be considered ungracious in me that I oppose the wish of any lady. But when she so far misunderstands her duty as to want to go to working on the roads and making rails and serving in the militia and going into the army, I want to protect her against it. I do not think that sort of employment suits her sex or her physical strength. I think also, when we attempt to overturn the social status of the world as it has existed for six thousand years, we ought to begin somewhere where we have a constitutional basis to stand upon....

      But I suppose whoever clamors for action here finds a warrant for it in the clamor outside, and it is not necessary to look to the Constitution for it; it is not necessary to regard the interests of civilization and the experience of ages in determining our social as well as our political policy; but we will arrange it so that there shall be no one to nurse the babies, no one to superintend the household, but all shall go into the political scramble, and we shall go back as rapidly as we can march into barbarism. That is the effect of such doings as this, disregarding the social interests of society for a clamor that never ought to have been made.

      Mr. Reagan then rambled into a long discussion of the rights allowed under the Constitution, although no action had been proposed except the mere appointment of a Select Committee, to whom all questions relating to woman suffrage might be referred, such as already existed in the Senate.

      James B. Belford of Colorado in an able reply said:

      I have no doubt that this House will be gratified with the profound respect which the gentleman from Texas has expressed for the Constitution of the country. The last distinguished act with which he was connected was its attempted overthrow; and a man who was engaged in an enterprise of that kind can fight a class to whom his mother belonged. I desire to know whether a woman is a citizen of the United States or an outcast without any political rights whatever....

      What is the proposition presented by the gentleman from Ohio? That we will constitute a committee to whom shall be referred all petitions presented by women. Is not the right of petition a constitutional right? Has not woman, in this country at least, risen above the horizon of servitude, discredit and disgrace, and has she not a right, representing as she does in many instances great questions of property, to present her appeals to this