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

fundamental principle. Who are the people? I feel that it is not my business to ask men to vote on my right to be admitted to the franchise. I have been debarred from my right. You hold the position to do me justice. Why should I go to one-half of the people and ask whether so clear and explicit a declaration as this includes me? The suffrage is not theirs to give, and I would not get it from them easily if it were. Neither would you get even education if you had to ask them for it. This question is not for the people at large to settle. Justice demands that we should be referred to the most intelligent tribunals in the land, and not remanded to the popular vote.

      Mrs. Clay Bennett based her argument largely on the authority of the Scriptures. Mrs. Gougar said:

      We do not come as Democrats or Republicans, not as Northern or as Southern, but as women representing a great principle. This is in line with the Magna Charta, with the Petition of Rights, with the Articles of Confederation, with the National Constitution. This is in direct line of the growth of human liberty. The Declaration of Independence says, "Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." Are you making a single law which does not touch me as much as it does you?

      Questions are upon you which you can not solve without the moral sentiment of womanhood. You need us more than we need suffrage. In our large cities the vicious element rules. The reserve force is in the womanhood of the nation. Woman suffrage is necessary for the preservation of the life of the republic. To give women the ballot is to increase the intelligent and law-abiding vote. The tramp vote is entirely masculine. By enfranchising the women of this country, you enfranchise humanity.

      Mrs. Colby thus described to the committee the recent vote in Nebraska on a woman suffrage amendment:

      The subject was well discussed; the leading men and the majority of the press and pulpit favored it. Everything indicated that here at last the measure might be safely submitted to popular vote. On election day the women went to the polling places in nearly every precinct in the State, with their flowers, their banners, their refreshments and their earnest pleadings. But every saloon keeper worked against the amendment, backed by the money and the power of the liquor league. The large foreign vote went almost solidly against woman suffrage. Nebraska defies the laws of the United States by allowing foreigners to vote when they have been only six months on the soil of America. Many of these, as yet wholly unfamiliar with the institutions of our country, voted the ballot which was placed in their hands. The woman suffrage amendment received but a little over one-third of the votes cast.

      Men were still so afraid women did not want to vote that only one thing remained to convince them we were in earnest, and that was for us to vote that way. So the next session we had another amendment introduced, to be voted on by the men as before, but not to take effect until ratified by a majority of the women. We were willing to be counted if the Legislature would make it legal to count us. It refused because the question, it said, had already been settled by the people. Although we had worked and pleaded and done all that women could do to obtain our rights of citizenship, yet the Legislature looking at "the people" did not see us, and refused to submit the question again. Having failed to obtain our rights by popular vote, we now appeal to you.

      Miss Anthony related the unsuccessful efforts of Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick and other ladies of Louisiana to have women placed on the school boards of that State, due wholly to their disfranchisement. In a forcible speech Mrs. Sewall declared:

      In coming here my sense of justice is satisfied, for we belong to this nation as well as you. This room, this building, this committee, the whole machinery of government is supported in part by the money of women and is for their protection as well as for that of men....

      Our question should never be partisan. We do not wish to go before our State Legislatures crippled with the fact that an amendment has been submitted by one party rather than the other. The Republican party gave the ballot to the negro and claimed its vote in return. We do not wish any party to feel it has a right to our vote. The Senate now has a majority of Republicans and the House of Democrats, consequently any measure which is passed by this Congress will be unpartisan. This question should receive support of both parties by the higher laws of the universe. Another name for life is helpfulness. Separation of parts belonging to one whole is death. Separation of parties on questions not of partisan interest is death to many issues. It is in your power to bring the parties together by that higher law of the universe on this proposition to submit a Sixteenth Amendment to our Legislatures, that without entanglement of partisan interests this question can be decided.

      The committee were so interested in the address of Madame Neymann that the time of the hearing was extended in order that she might finish it. She said in part:

      Why Americans, so keen in their sense of what is right and just, should be so dull on this question of giving woman her due share of independence, I can not comprehend. Is not this the land where foreigners flock because they have heard the bugle call of freedom? Why then is it that your own children, the patriotic daughters of America, who have been reared and nurtured in free homes, brought up under the guidance and amidst the blessings of freedom—why is it that you hold them unworthy of the honor of being enrolled as citizens and voters? England, Canada and even Ireland have gone ahead of us, and was not America destined by its tradition to be first and foremost in this important movement of making women the equal, the true partner of man?

      In a free country the national life stands in direct relation to the home life, the public life reacts upon the family, and the family furnishes the material for the State. The lives and the characters of our children are influenced by the manners and methods of our Government, and to say that mothers have no right to be concerned in the politics of the country is simply saying that the life and character of our children are of no concern to us.

      The citizen's liberty instead of being sacrificed by society has to be defended by society. Who defends woman's individuality in our modern State? Universal suffrage is the only guarantee against despotism. Every man who believes in the subjection of woman will play the despot whenever you give him an opportunity.

      We have no right to ask if it is expedient to grant suffrage to women. We recognize that the principle is just and justice must be done though the heavens fall. It is small minds that bring forth small objections. The man who believes in a just principle trusts and confides in it, and thus we ask you to confide in suffrage for women.

      On May 6, 1886, the committee report, made by the Hon. John W. Stewart (Vt.), stated that the resolution was laid on the table. The following minority report was submitted:

      In a Government by the people the ballot is at once a badge of sovereignty and the means of exercising power. We need not for our present purpose define the right to vote, nor inquire whence it comes. Whether it is a natural or a political right, one arising from social relations and duties, or a necessity incidental to individual protection and communal welfare, is immaterial to the discussion. Let the advocates of man's right to participate in governmental affairs choose their own ground and we will be content. The voting franchise exists, and it exists because it has been seized by force or because of some right antedating its sanction by law. Nativity does not confer it, because aliens exercise it; it does not arise from taxation, for many are taxed who can not vote and many vote who are not taxed. Ability to bear arms is not the test of the voting franchise, as many legally vote who were never able to bear arms, and others who have become unable to do so by reason of sickness, accident or age; nor does education mark the line, for the learned and the illiterate meet at the ballot box.

      With us a portion of the adult population have assumed to exercise the right, admitted to exist somewhere, of governing, and have forced another portion into the position of the governed. That this assumption is just and wise is averred by some and denied by others. If we call upon these rulers for a copy of their commission they present one written by themselves.

      Children, idiots and convicted felons properly belong to the governed and not to the governing class, as they are intellectually or morally unfit to govern. Necessity only places them there; necessity is an absolute monarch and will be everywhere obeyed. To this governed class has been added woman, and we beg the House and the country to inquire why. They are also "people" and we submit that they are neither moral nor intellectual incapables, and no necessity for