FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[132]Miss Laura Clay and Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, the national auditors, were unable to be present.[133]There were present also reporters from the New York Sun, New York World, Springfield Republican, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, and other papers.

[132]Miss Laura Clay and Mrs. Catharine Waugh McCulloch, the national auditors, were unable to be present.

[133]There were present also reporters from the New York Sun, New York World, Springfield Republican, Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, and other papers.

Adopted by the Women's National Loyal League, May 14, 1863.

... We ask not for ourselves or our friends redress of specific grievances or posts of honor or emolument. We speak from no considerations of mere material gain; but, inspired by true patriotism, in this dark hour of our nation's destiny, we come to pledge the loyal women of the Republic to freedom and our country. We come to strengthen you with earnest words of sympathy and encouragement. We come to thank you for your proclamation, in which the nineteenth century seems to echo back the Declaration of Seventy-six. Our fathers had a vision of the sublime idea of liberty, equality and fraternity; but they failed to climb the heights which with anointed eyes they saw. To us, their children, belongs the work to build up the living reality of what they conceived and uttered. It is not our mission to criticise the past. Nations, like individuals, must blunder and repent. It is not wise to waste our energy in vain regret, but from each failure we should rise up with renewed conscience and courage for nobler action. The follies and faults of yesterday we cast aside as the old garments we have outgrown. Born anew to freedom, slave creeds and codes and constitutions all now must pass away. "For men do not put new wine into old bottles, else the bottles break and the wine runneth out and the bottles perish; but they put new wine into new bottles and both are preserved."

Our special thanks are due to you, that by your proclamation 2,000,000 women are freed from the foulest bondage humanity ever suffered. Slavery for man is bad enough, but the refinements of cruelty ever must fall on the mothers of the oppressed race, defrauded of all the rights of the family relation and violated in the most holy instincts of their nature. A mother's life is bound up in that of her child. There center all her hopes and ambitions. But the slave-mother in her degradation rejoices not in the future promise of her daughter, for she knows by experience what her sad fate must be. No pen can describe the unutterable agony of that mother whose past, present and future all are wrapped in darkness; who knows the crown of thorns she wears must press her daughter's brow; who knows the wine-press she treads those tender feet must tread alone. For, by the law of slavery, "the child follows the condition of the mother."

By your act, the family, that great conservator of national virtue and strength, has been restored to millions of humble homes around whose altars coming generations shall magnify and bless the name of Abraham Lincoln. By a mere stroke of the pen you have emancipated millions from a conditionof wholesale concubinage. We now ask you to finish the work by declaring that nowhere under our national flag shall the motherhood of any race plead in vain for justice and protection. So long as one slave breathes in this republic, we drag the chain with him. God has so linked the race, man to man, that all must rise or fall together. Our history exemplifies this law. It was not enough that we at the North abolished slavery for ourselves, declared freedom of speech and press, built churches, colleges and free schools, studied the science of morals, government and economy, dignified labor, amassed wealth, whitened the sea with our commerce and commanded the respect and admiration of the nations of the earth—so long as the South, by the natural proclivities of slavery, was sapping the very foundations of our national life....

You are the first President ever borne on the shoulders of freedom into the position you now fill. Your predecessors owed their elevation to the slave oligarchy, and in serving slavery they did but obey their masters. In your election, northern freemen threw off the yoke, and with you rests the responsibility that our necks never shall bow again. At no time in the annals of the nation has there been a more auspicious moment to retrieve the one false step of the fathers in their concessions to slavery. The Constitution has been repudiated and the compact broken by the southern traitors now in arms. The firing of the first gun on Sumter released the North from all constitutional obligations to slavery. It left the government, for the first time in our history, free to carry out the declaration of our Revolutionary fathers, and made us in fact what we ever have claimed to be, a nation of freemen.

"The Union as it was"—a compromise between barbarism and civilization—can never be restored, for the opposing principles of freedom and slavery can not exist together. Liberty is life, and every form of government yet tried proves that slavery is death. In obedience to this law, our republic, divided and distracted by the collisions of class and caste, is tottering to its base and can be reconstructed only on the sure foundation of impartial freedom to all. The war in which we are involved is not the result of party or accident, but a forward step in the progress of the race never to be retraced. Revolution is no time for temporizing or diplomacy. In a radical upheaving the people demand eternal principles on which to stand.

Northern power and loyalty never can be measured until the purpose of the war be liberty to man; for a lasting enthusiasm ever is based on a grand idea, and unity of action demands a definite end. At this time our greatest need is not men or money, valiant generals or brilliant victories, but aconsistent policy, based on the principle that "all governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." The nation waits for you to say that there is no power under our declaration of rights nor under any laws, human or divine, by which free men can be made slaves; and therefore that your pledge to the slaves is irrevocable, and shall be redeemed.

If it be true, as it is said, that northern women lack enthusiasm in this war, the fault rests with those who have confused and confounded its policy. The pages of history glow with instances of self-sacrifice by women in the hour of their country's danger. Fear not that the daughters of this republic will count any sacrifice too great to insure the triumph of freedom. Let themen who wield the nation's power be wise, brave and magnanimous, and its women will be prompt to meet the duties of the hour with devotion and heroism.

When Fremont on the western breeze proclaimed a day of jubilee to the bondmen within our gates, the women of the nation echoed back a loud amen. When Hunter freed a million men and gave them arms to fight our battles, justice and mercy crowned that act and tyrants stood appalled. When Butler, in the chief city of the southern despotism, hung a traitor we felt a glow of pride; for that one act proved that we had a government and one man brave enough to administer its laws. And when Burnside would banish Vallandigham to the Dry Tortugas, let the sentence be approved and the nation will ring with plaudits. Your proclamation gives you immortality. Be just, and share your glory with men like these who wait to execute your will.

On behalf of the Women's National Loyal League,

Elizabeth Cady Stanton,President.Susan B. Anthony,Secretary.

Address Delivered at Ottumwa, Kansas, July 4, 1865.

Mr. President, and Men and Women of Kansas:

It is a pleasure to me, beyond the reach of words, to be with you today. I accepted the invitation of your committee that I might feast my eyes on your grand prairies, ever fringed with the darker green of their timber-skirted creeks and rivers. I came here on this 89th anniversary of our National Independence, that I might look into the honest, earnest faces of the men and the women who, ten years ago, taught the nation anew, that "resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." Through all this glorious decade of heroic struggle, my interests, my sympathies, my affections have been bound up with yours; for, during and since the cruel outrages of the summer of 1856, my two and only brothers have stood shoulder to shoulder with the freedom-loving, freedom-voting, freedom-fighting men of Kansas. And, as I have waited the telegraphic word that trembled along the western wires, telling of your successes and your defeats, it has ever been with bated breath lest those of my own home circle, too, should be numbered among the slain. Therefore, though not here in person through all these trial years, in spirit I have been with you, in your privations and hardships, in your sufferings and sacrifices to make freedom and free institutions the sure inheritance of Kansas and the nation.

You have already listened to the grand old Declaration of the Fathers of 1776. You have heard the true words of your representative to the next Congress.[134]His manly utterances here today give you assurance that he will faithfully reflect the highest and truest sentiments of his constituency. Men and women of Kansas, I congratulate you, that you have in this chosen agent a man who will speak and vote on the vital questions to come before the next Congress from the standpoint of human equality.

It is my purpose to call your attention to the recent declarations of our President to our "erring sister States" of the South. I ask you specially to note his proclamation to Mississippi. After pointing out that the Constitution of the United States guarantees to every State in the Union a republican form of government, and that the late rebellion has deprived the people of Mississippi of all civil government, he continues:

Now, therefore, in obedience to the high and solemn duties imposed upon me by the Constitution of the United States, and for the purpose of enabling the loyal people of said State to organize a State government, whereby justice may be established, domestic tranquillity insured,and loyal citizens protected in all their rights of life, liberty, and property, I, Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, and Commander-in-Chief of the army and navy of the United States, do hereby appoint William L. Sharkey Provisional Governor of the State of Mississippi, whose duty it shall be, at the earliest practicable period, to prescribe such rules and regulations as may be necessary and proper for convening a convention, composed of delegates to be chosen by that portion of the people of said State who are loyal to the United States, and no others, for the purpose of altering or amending the constitution thereof; and with authority to exercise, within the limits of said State, all the powers necessary and proper to enable such loyal people of the State of Mississippi to restore said State to its constitutional relations to the Federal government, and to present such republican form of State government as will entitle the State to the guarantee of the United States therefor, and its people to protection by the United States against invasion, insurrection, and domestic violence: Provided, That in any election that may be hereafter held for choosing delegates to any State Convention as aforesaid, no person shall be qualified as an elector, or shall be eligible as a member of such convention, unless he shall have previously taken and subscribed the oath of amnesty, as set forth in the President's proclamation of May 29, A. D. 1865,and is a voter qualified as prescribed by the Constitution and laws of the State, of Mississippi, in force immediately before the ninth (9th) of January, A. D. 1861, the date of the so-called ordinance of secession; and the said convention, when convened, or the Legislature that may be thereafter assembled, will prescribe the qualifications of electors, and the eligibility of persons to hold office under the Constitution and laws of the State, a power the people of the several States composing the Federal Union have rightfully exercised from the origin of the government to the present time.

The President says he finds the people of Mississippi "deprived of all civil government" by the revolutionary progress of the rebellion; therefore he appoints a provisional governor, to call an election of the loyal people for delegates to a convention to alter or amend the constitution that was in force prior to the rebellion. He does this "for the purpose of enabling the loyal people of said State to organize a State government whereby justice may be established, domestic tranquillity insured, and loyal citizens protected in all their rights of life, liberty and property." To this laudable end he instructs the governor, who is his military agent, to allow no man to vote or to be voted for, unless he shall have previously taken and subscribed to the oath of amnesty of May 29, 1865,and is a voter by the old constitution and laws of the slaveholding State of Mississippi. By this ordering, the President makes it impossible for the great mass of the loyal people to have a voice in organizing the new government. He re-establishes precisely the same basis of class representation that worked out the ruin of the old State government. Not to mention the loyal women, who make fully one-half of the loyal people, he shuts out all the loyal black men, with all the loyal poor white men, who were not allowed to vote under the old regime of slavery.

Thus, by this initiative step, the President makes it inevitable that the rebuilding of the government shall be controlled by the ex-rebels; the men who have fought desperately for four years to overthrow the federal government; the men who hate republicanism; the men who love and are determined to enjoy aristocracy. The loyal white men there, who have stood firmly and truly by the government through all the cruel persecutions of this bloody rebellion, are today a most powerless and pitiable minority; and yet the President tells this little handful that their only hope of organizing a genuine republican form of government lies in their ability to outvote the vast horde of disloyal civilians and pardoned, but not penitent, returned rebelsoldiers. Such an offence against white loyalty is enough to make the very stones cry out.

But what shall we say of the other and deeper crime against the thousands of loyal black soldiers, who have fought bravely for us from the hour we permitted them to shoulder the musket; against the entire slave population, who have welcomed our Yankee soldiers, been faithful spies and guides to our armies, nursed our sick and wounded, relieved and rescued our starving prisoners, and in every conceivable way and manner given "aid and comfort" to our Union cause? I tell you, men and women of Kansas, no tongue can speak the ingratitude, the injustice, the shame and outrage of a proposition thus to leave those true and faithful freedmen to the cruel legislation of their old tyrants and oppressors, made tenfold more their enemies, because of their attachment and service to the government which they themselves have failed to destroy. Think of it, to thrust four million loyal people under the political heel of eight millions, almost to a man, disloyal!

I am sure you, who have given the best blood of Kansas to put down the slaveholders' rebellion against the rightful rule of the majority, will never by your silence give seeming consent to a reorganization of those rebel States on any basis save that of the ballot to all loyal citizens, black and white. You will never consent that loyal Union soldiers and friends, for no crime but the color of their skin, shall be made subjects, if not slaves, to disloyal rebel soldiers and enemies, with no virtue but that of belonging to the "governing race," as the President's North Carolina appointee calls the white faces. No, no, you will make these grand old prairies ring with your thunder-toned protests until they shall be felt and feared in the legislative halls at Washington. Then will your honorable and honored representative say for you on the floor of the next Congress, as he has said here today in the shadow of these mighty oaks of your Neosho, "no reconstruction except on the basis of the ballot in every loyal hand, black and white." Then will your senator[135]echo your voice from his seat in the Capitol, as he did the other day in old, Faneuil Hall, when he said, "the price of our victories is lost unless we give the negro the homestead, the musket, and the ballot."

And then will your other senator,[136]who has not spoken since he, with his colleagues in the Senate, said, "colonize" the faithful, loyal blacks; since he said, admit Louisiana and Arkansas back into the Union on the vote of the merest minority of their freshly-oathed white men—then will he say "no reconstruction without negro suffrage." But, good people, I charge you, suffer not this man to return to his seat in the Senate, until he has not only repented and confessed, but given sure promise forever to forsake his old sins of "white suffrage" and "black colonization." You owe it to yourselves and your country to see that your entire representation in the next Congress is right on this one vital question of reunion. Tell your senator if he must advocate a class and caste government in the rebel States, it must be loyal blacks, not disloyal whites. If he must colonize somebody, it must be the cowed, unconverted rebels, the anti-negro-equality white faces. Tell himhenceforth to speak and vote to disfranchise, and drive out if need be, the persons who make war and oppress and outrage, and are resolved not to give "fair play" to peaceable, industrious citizens. You have but to speak and you will be obeyed, for it is the people's will, not that of their servants, which is law.

Now, a word on your State legislature: One of the first reports that met my ear on my arrival in your State last winter, was that the Republicans of Kansas, almost in a body, had voted against a bill for "negro suffrage," and that they voted thus for the reason that the question was introduced and urged by the opposition party of the State. My humble but earnest advice to you is that you permit those delegates who voted against right, against justice, against equality to all men, for so paltry a reason, henceforth to remain quietly at home. Teach them and all other aspirants for your suffrages that your representatives must speak and vote for the right, though the arch-demon from the pit below shall present the measure. That miserable political quibbling at Topeka last winter lost Kansas the place which of right belonged to her—that of being the first of the loyal States to give her freedmen their inalienable right to self-protection.

Our hope of salvation from the fatal errors that are now fastening themselves upon the plan and the policy of reorganization, lies in the prompt and right action of the coming Congress. The delegates from any and all of the rebel States, sent up to Washington by "free white loyal male" suffrages to knock for admission into the Union, must be sent home with instructions that no member will be admitted to Congress except he be elected by a majority of all the loyal men of the State, black as well as white. To the end that Congress may thus reject the amnestied white suffrage delegates, the people, all over the country, should unite in one mighty voice and demand that their representatives shall thus speak and thus vote. "The price of liberty is eternal vigilance." If we sleep now, all is lost; for on this one question of the negro hangs the future of our republic.

Since the firing of the first gun of the rebellion there has been no hour fraught with so much danger as is the present. To have been vanquished on the field of battle would have involved much of misery; but to be foiled now in gathering up the fruits of our blood-bought victories, and to re-enthrone slavery under the new guise of negro disfranchisement, negro serfdom, would be a defeat and disaster, a cruelty and crime, which would surely bequeath to coming generations a legacy of wars and rumors of wars, equalled only by that which the Revolutionary fathers entailed upon their descendants by their fatal compromises with slavery. It would leave the final triumph of the great principles of republicanism, universal freedom and equality, "taxation and representation inseparable," the "consent of the governed," to be worked out and established in each of those old slave States, through a fearful re-enactment of the early struggles which you of Kansas so well remember.

If Congress shall admit the rebel representatives on the basis of white suffrage, those States will have added to their old representation the other two-fifths of what used to be "all other persons," which will give them an increase of fourteen votes in the House as a reward for their four years offire and sword against the government. With this added power on the floor of Congress united to their political aiders and abettors from the Northern States, there is scarcely any project they may not be able to carry through in their own time and way. Nor is there room for a doubt, that it is the spirit and purpose of the slave oligarchy, whipped and cowed as they say by force of might, not right, to make a most desperate political fight to regain their old supremacy in the legislation of the country.

I base my estimate of the nature and intentions of the to-be-restored representation of the South, on the results of the elections already held in several of the rebel States, and from the efforts everywhere among the old planters again to reduce the black freedmen, as nearly as possible, to the status of slavery. In Virginia, the elections gave a legislature largely secession and almost wholly anti-negro. The planters have solemnly leagued themselves together to pay only five dollars per month to able field hands, each laborer to furnish his own clothes and pay his own doctor bills. This, too, when these same planters used to pay or receive for the hire of these same laborers, the sum of fifteen dollars and upwards. In South Carolina, Gen. Rufus Saxton reports that the old planters are actually driving the freedmen to work in the fields in chain gangs, and that the woods are strewn with the bodies of negroes shot dead in their efforts to escape the cruel torture. In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, the city election resulted in a secession mayor and common council. The only Union success I have noticed is that of Fernandina, Florida, and there the negroes were allowed to vote. Even the loyal State of Missouri saved her free constitution by less than two thousand votes.

The result of white suffrage can not be other than the election of large majorities of anti-negro, if not absolutely secession State and National representatives. Tennessee, the President's own State, of the loyalty of whose people we have heard much, has adopted a free constitution, and under it framed a new code of anti-negro laws; and we can hardly expect any rebel State to do better, for these new free State law-makers are the persecuted loyal men of Tennessee who have been outraged in their homes, hunted to the caves and mountains, or for a time driven out of the State altogether by the secessionists. One of these new free State laws says, the testimony of no "free colored person shall be received in court against any white person." By this enactment, the meanest white man may enter the home of the bravest black soldier, or wealthiest colored citizen, may murder his sons, ravish his wife and daughters, pillage and burn his house, commit any and every possible crime against him and his, and yet, if no human eye but his own, or that of his family, or his colored friends, witness the barbarisms, that black man, the father, the husband, the land-holder, outraged beyond measure, has no possible legal redress in the courts of Tennessee.

Then again, in case a free colored person is imprisoned and unable to pay his jail fees, he may be apprenticed out to labor until the sum be paid. And yet again, the courts may apprentice colored children as they see proper. The law does not even say friendless or orphan children. Is not that slavery under a new form? Thus, to leave those devoted black men's lives, liberties and property to be protected by white men, whose loyalty to the government is because it is a means to secure power to themselves, not from any love ofits republican principles, is to doom them to all the ignominies and cruelties of slavery itself.

Let us not be deceived by the wicked wiles of politicians who tell us that President Johnson can not give the right to the ballot to the black loyalists of the South; for it is but the new "refuge of lies" to which slavery resorts. The same men told us that Lincoln had not the power to emancipate the slaves; that the government had no right to arm the negro, etc. If President Johnson has constitutional authority, either civil or military, to take away a man's right to vote, as a punishment for disloyalty, he must have power to give a man the same right, as a reward for loyalty; if the President may disfranchise a rebel soldier in order to enable the loyal people of a State to organize a republican form of government, he may also enfranchise a Union soldier to accomplish the same purpose. If the President has not the right nor the power to give the ballot to any person not entitled to it under the old order of slavery, how will he organize South Carolina, by whose old constitution no person was allowed to vote unless he owned ten slaves or was worth ten thousand dollars? Of course nobody owns ten slaves, and how many men, think you, who remained loyal at home, or how many returned soldiers or amnestied civilians have the requisite ten thousand dollars? In South Carolina, therefore, the President will be compelled to create voters; and, if he shall enfranchise any of the white non-voters, can he not also enfranchise the loyal black non-voters?

Let us watch and pray without ceasing. Let us hope that the day will dawn, and that soon, when law shall be found on the side of justice to the black race. These objectors never questioned McClellan's military right to put down slave insurrections with an "iron hand," or Halleck's infamous Order No. 3 to drive all negroes outside the military lines. It was only when Generals Fremont, Hunter and others declared the slaves free, that they might cripple the rebel armies and add them to our Union forces, that the cry of no law, no power was raised. Thus it is clear that the blindness and inability to find rightful authority, civil or military, first to emancipate, then to arm, and now to enfranchise the negroes, have the one source. Slavery perpetrated the "sum of all villainies" on the negroes, and then, to justify its wickedness, filled the whole land with atrocious lies of their depraved and degraded nature. The American people consented to the outrage; and their continued prejudice against that oppressed race but proves the adage, "we hate those whom we have injured."

Last of all comes the objection that the old masters will influence the vote of the negroes, and that, therefore, to enfranchise them will but give increased power to the old lords of the lash. Do not believe such nonsense. Think you, men who for four years have withstood every possible temptation and torture to induce them to fight for the slave oligarchy, can now be wheedled into voting for it? No, no. Those loyal, brave, black men who have known enough to fight on the right side will know enough to vote on the right side; and it is because the aiders and abettors of the old slave power believe and know that the negroes will be an invincible host on the side of equality, that they thus fear them.

We never from the beginning have had a genuine republican form of governmentin any State in the Union; for in no State have "the people" ever been permitted to elect their representatives. Even in Massachusetts and Vermont, the States nearest republican, only one-half of the people, the "male inhabitants," are allowed to vote. In other States it is only all "free white male persons," and in others still, all "free white male inhabitants owning so many slaves or so much property." It is not true therefore thatthe peoplehave ever exercised the right to prescribe the qualifications of voters or officers. From the beginning, Congress always has settled the question in its organic act. That of your own Territory read, "Every free, white, male inhabitant shall vote at the first election, and be eligible to any office within the Territory." Thus you see Congress, not you, the people, decided who should and who should not vote in Kansas. And when the delegates of the prescribed "free, white, male" order met in convention, they proved themselves nothing above human, very like the so-elected conventions of other States, and retained all legislative power within the limits of the original congressional permit. The same is true of the rebel States, in which the President now finds the people destitute of all civil government; when he specifies who may vote, when he excludes any class from the ballot-box, he makes it impossible for "the people" to form a republican government.

When the loyal black men are not allowed their right to vote in the first election of the rebel States, their governments are thrown into the hands of a very small minority, and that too of very doubtful loyalty. The President by adhering to the old slave definition of "the people," rules that all our brave black Union soldiers and our best friends and allies, without whose aid we should still be struggling with rebels in arms, shall be subjects, not citizens, of the government they have rescued from the Confederate usurpers. It is not in human nature that a people fanatically believing themselves a superior race, and thereby rightful legislators over another and inferior race, shall execute justice and equality toward those whom they decree shall be "hewers of wood and drawers of water." No, the black man's guarantee to the protection of his inalienable rights to "life, liberty and property," is bound up in his right to the ballot.

When I speak of the inalienable rights of the negro, I do not forget that these belong equally to woman. Though the government shall be reconstructed on the basis of universal manhood suffrage, it yet will not be a true republic. Still one-half of the people will be in subjection to the other half, and the time will surely come when the whole question will have to be reopened and an accounting made with this other subject class. There will have to be virtually another reconstruction, based on the duty of the national government to guarantee to every citizen the right of self-protection, and this right, for woman as for man, is vested in the ballot.

That this superior "white male" class may not be trusted even to legislate for their own mothers, sisters, wives and daughters, the cruel statutes in nearly all the States, both slave and free, give ample proof. In scarcely a State has a married woman the legal right to the control of her person, to the earnings of her hands or brain, to the guardianship of her children, to sue or be sued, or to testify in the courts, and by these laws women have suffered wrongs and outrages second only to those of chattel slavery itself. If this betrue, that this so-called superior class can not legislate justice even to those nearest and dearest in their own hearts and homes, is it not a crime to place a separate race, one hated and despised, wholly at the will of that governing class?

It must not be; and the one great work for the people at this hour, and every hour, between this and next December, is to agitate this question until the entire nation shall speak in tones not to be mistaken, which shall compel the coming Congress to refuse admission to every representative from the rebel States, who is sent there by the so-called "loyal white male" people.

"No reorganization without Negro Suffrage" is the word to send back to every rebel State. Until Congress shall define and settle this question, it can not in the future, as it has not in the past, perform its duty—guarantee a republican form of government in each of the States. When Congress shall thus decide, there will be work to do in most of the loyal States. Let us all labor to that end.

Men and women of Kansas, what say you, shall new loyal States or old rebel States be admitted into the Union until they present constitutions and laws truly republican, until they send representatives to Washington elected by a majority of all the people—white and black, men and women? You say No; your blood-enriched prairies, your battle-fought ravines, your sacked and burned cities, say No; your martyred dead, your own immortal John Brown, their freed souls all gloriously marching on, say No!

My friends, there is one word more I must leave with you. There is yet another danger. The reverence, the almost idolatry of the American people for their martyred President, is being used and abused by the political managers at Washington, and over all the country. The people are lulled to sleep over the most startling propositions, by insidious whisperings that President Lincoln originated or approved them. Almost every reconstruction plan is sent over the wires "sugar-coated" with, "President Johnson, in this, is but carrying out the spirit and purpose of Mr. Lincoln!" And there is no disguising or denying the fact, that the people are today accepting, and that too without questioning, the anti-negro reorganization plans already inaugurated, because of these wily, insinuating appeals to their reverence for the memory of their sacred dead.

If the four years' administration of Abraham Lincoln taught the American people any one lesson above another, it was that they must think and speak and proclaim, and that he, as President, was bound to execute their will, not his own. And if Lincoln were alive today, he would say as he did four years ago, "I wait the voice of the people." The stern logic of the events of today would guide him, not those of yesterday. Therefore let us not be thrown off our watch by any of these appeals to our reverence for the opinions and plans of our departed President. If his freed spirit is permitted today to hover over each and all of the vast gatherings of the loyal people throughout the nation, it is beckoning every soul upward and onward in the path of equal justice to all; it is urging the great heart of the nation to plant our new Union on the everlasting rock of republicanism—universal freedom and universal suffrage.

FOOTNOTES:[134]Sidney Clark, of Lawrence.[135]S. C. Pomeroy.[136]James H. Lane.

[134]Sidney Clark, of Lawrence.

[135]S. C. Pomeroy.

[136]James H. Lane.

Adopted by the Eleventh National Woman's Rights Convention, held in New York City, Thursday, May 10, 1866.

Prepared by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony.

To the Senate and House of Representatives:

We already have presented to your honorable body during this session many petitions asking the enfranchisement of women; and now, from our national convention, we again make our appeal and urge you to lay no hand on that "pyramid of rights," the Constitution of the Fathers, unless to add glory to its height and strength to its foundation.

We will not rehearse the oft-repeated arguments on the natural rights of every citizen, pressed as they have been on the nation's conscience for the last thirty years in securing freedom for the black race, and so grandly echoed on the floor of Congress during the past winter. We can not add one line or precept to the comprehensive speech recently made by Charles Sumner in the Senate, to prove that "no just government can be formed without the consent of the governed;" to prove the dignity, the education, the power, the necessity, the salvation of the ballot in the hand of every man and woman; to prove that a just government and a true church rest alike on the sacred rights of the individual.

As you are familiar with Sumner's speech on "Equal Rights to All," so convincing in facts, so clear in philosophy, and so elaborate in quotations from the great minds of the past, without reproducing the chain of argument, permit us to call your attention to a few of its unanswerable assertions regarding the ballot:

I plead now for the ballot, as the great guarantee, and the only sufficient guarantee—being in itself peacemaker, reconciler, schoolmaster and protector—to which we are bound by every necessity and every reason; and I speak also for the good of the States lately in rebellion, as well as for the glory and safety of the republic, that it may be an example to mankind.Ay, sir, the ballot is the Columbiad of our political life, and every citizen who has it is a full-armed Monitor.The ballot is schoolmaster. Reading and writing are of inestimable value, but the ballot teaches what these can not teach.Plutarch records that the wise man of Athens charmed the people by saying that equality causes no war, and "both the rich and the poor repeated it."The ballot is like charity, which never faileth, and without which man is only as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The ballot is the one thing needful, without which rights of testimony and all other rights will be no better than cobwebs which the master will break through with impunity. To him who has the ballot all other things shall be given—protection,opportunity, education, a homestead. The ballot is like the horn of abundance, out of which overflow rights of every kind, with corn, cotton, rice and all the fruits of the earth. Or, better still, it is like the hand of the body, without which man, who is now only a little lower than the angels, must have continued only a little above the brutes. They are fearfully and wonderfully made; but as is the hand in the work of civilization, so is the ballot in the work of government. "Give me the ballot, and I can move the world."Do you wish to see harmony truly prevail, so that industry, society, government, civilization, may all prosper, and the republic may wear a crown of true greatness? Then do not neglect the ballot.Lamartine said, "Universal suffrage is the first truth and only basis of every national republic."

Ay, sir, the ballot is the Columbiad of our political life, and every citizen who has it is a full-armed Monitor.

The ballot is schoolmaster. Reading and writing are of inestimable value, but the ballot teaches what these can not teach.

Plutarch records that the wise man of Athens charmed the people by saying that equality causes no war, and "both the rich and the poor repeated it."

The ballot is like charity, which never faileth, and without which man is only as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. The ballot is the one thing needful, without which rights of testimony and all other rights will be no better than cobwebs which the master will break through with impunity. To him who has the ballot all other things shall be given—protection,opportunity, education, a homestead. The ballot is like the horn of abundance, out of which overflow rights of every kind, with corn, cotton, rice and all the fruits of the earth. Or, better still, it is like the hand of the body, without which man, who is now only a little lower than the angels, must have continued only a little above the brutes. They are fearfully and wonderfully made; but as is the hand in the work of civilization, so is the ballot in the work of government. "Give me the ballot, and I can move the world."

Do you wish to see harmony truly prevail, so that industry, society, government, civilization, may all prosper, and the republic may wear a crown of true greatness? Then do not neglect the ballot.

Lamartine said, "Universal suffrage is the first truth and only basis of every national republic."

In regard to "taxation without representation," Mr. Sumner quotes from Lord Coke:

The supreme power can not take from any man any part of his property without consent in person or by representation.Taxes are not to be laid on the people, but by their consent in person or by representation.I can see no reason to doubt but that the imposition of taxes, whether on trade, or on land or houses or ships, or real or personal, fixed or floating property in the colonies, is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of the colonies, as British subjects and as men. I say men, for in a state of nature no man can take any property from me without my consent. If he does, he deprives me of my liberty and makes me a slave. The very act of taxing, exercised over those who are not represented, appears to me to deprive them of one of their most essential rights as freemen, 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 taken from him at pleasure without his consent?

The supreme power can not take from any man any part of his property without consent in person or by representation.

Taxes are not to be laid on the people, but by their consent in person or by representation.

I can see no reason to doubt but that the imposition of taxes, whether on trade, or on land or houses or ships, or real or personal, fixed or floating property in the colonies, is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of the colonies, as British subjects and as men. I say men, for in a state of nature no man can take any property from me without my consent. If he does, he deprives me of my liberty and makes me a slave. The very act of taxing, exercised over those who are not represented, appears to me to deprive them of one of their most essential rights as freemen, 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 taken from him at pleasure without his consent?

In demanding suffrage for the black man you recognize the fact that, as a freedman, he is no longer a "part of the family," and that therefore his master is no longer his representative; hence, as he will now be liable to taxation, he must also have representation. Woman, on the contrary, has never been such a "part of the family" as to escape taxation. Although there has been no formal proclamation giving her an individual existence, the single woman always has had the right to property and wages, the right to make contracts and do business in her own name. And even married women, by recent legislation, have been secured in these civil rights. Woman now holds a vast amount of the property in the country and pays her full proportion of taxes, revenue included. On what principle, then, do you deny her representation? By what process of reasoning was Charles Sumner able to stand up in the Senate, a few days after these sublime utterances, and rebuke 15,000,000 disfranchised tax-payers for the exercise of their mere right of petition? If he felt that this was not the time for woman even to mention her right to representation, why did he not, in some of his splendid sentences, propose to release the wage-earning and property-owning women from the tyranny of taxation?

We propose no new theories. We simply ask that you secure the practical application of the immutable principles of our government to all, without distinction of race, color or sex. And we urge our demand now, because you have now the opportunity and the power to take this onward step in legislation. The nations of the earth stand watching and waiting to see if our Revolutionary idea, "all men are created equal," can be realized in government. Crush not, we pray you, the myriad hopes which hang on our success.Peril not this nation with another bloody war. Men and parties must pass away, but justice is eternal; and only they who work in harmony with its laws are immortal. All who have carefully contrasted the speeches of this Congress with those made under the old regime of slavery, must have seen the added power and eloquence which greater freedom gives. But still you propose no action on your grand ideas. Your joint resolutions, your reconstruction reports, do not reflect your highest thought.

The Constitution, as it stands, in basing representation on "respective numbers" covers a broader ground than any you have yet proposed. Is not the only amendment needed to Article 1, Section 3, to strike out the exceptions which follow "respective numbers?" And is it not your duty, by securing a republican form of government to every State, to see that these "respective numbers" are made up of enfranchised citizens, thus bringing your legislation up to the Constitution—not the Constitution down to your party possibilities? The only tenable ground of representation is universal suffrage, as it is only through universal suffrage that the principle of "equal rights to all" can be realized. All prohibitions based on race, color, sex, property or education are violations of the republican idea; and the various qualifications now proposed are but so many plausible pretexts to debar new classes from the ballot-box. The limitations of property and intelligence, though unfair, can be met; as with freedom must come the repeal of statute laws that deny schools and wages to the negro, and time will make him a voter. But color and sex! Neither time nor statutes can make black, white, or woman, man! You assume to be the representatives of 15,000,000 women—American citizens—who already possess every attainable qualification for the ballot. Women read and write, hold many offices under government, pay taxes and suffer the penalties of crime, and yet are denied individual representation.

For twenty years we have labored to bring the statute-laws of the several States into harmony with the broad principles of the Constitution, and have been so far successful that in many of them little remains to be done except to secure the right of suffrage. Hence, our prompt protest against the propositions before Congress to introduce the word "male" into the Federal Constitution, which, if successful, would sanction all State action in withholding the ballot from woman. As the only way in which disfranchised citizens can appear before you, we availed ourselves of the sacred right of petition; and, as our representatives, it was your duty to give those petitions a respectful reading and a serious consideration. How a Republican Senate failed in that duty, is already inscribed on the page of history. Some tell us it is not judicious to press the claims of women now; that this is not the time. Time? When you propose legislation so fatal to the best interests of woman and the nation, shall we be silent until after the deed is done? No! As we love justice, we must resist tyranny. As we honor the position of American senator, we must appeal from the politician to the man.

With man, woman shared the dangers of the Mayflower on a stormy sea, the dreary landing on Plymouth Rock, the rigors of New England winters and the privations of a seven years' war. With him she bravely threw off the British yoke, felt every pulsation of his heart for freedom, and inspired theglowing eloquence which maintained it through the century. With you, we have just passed through the agony and death, the resurrection and triumph of another revolution, doing all in our power to mitigate its horrors and gild its glories. And now, think you, we have no souls to fire, no brains to weigh your arguments; that, after education such as this, we can stand silent witnesses while you sell our birthright of liberty to save from a timely death an effete political organization? No, as we respect womanhood, we must protest against this desecration of the magna charta of American liberties; and with an importunity not to be repelled, our demand must ever be, "No compromise of human rights"—"No admission to the Constitution of inequality of rights or disfranchisement on account of color or sex."

In the oft-repeated experiments of class and caste, who can number the nations that have risen but to fall? Do not imagine you come one line nearer the demand of justice by enfranchising but another shade of manhood; for, in denying representation to woman, you still cling to the same false principle on which all the governments of the past have been wrecked. The right way, the safe way, is so clear, the path of duty is so straight and simple, that we who are equally interested with yourselves in the result, conjure you to act not for the passing hour, not with reference to transient benefits, but to do now the one grand deed which shall mark the zenith of the century—proclaim Equal Eights to All. We press our demand for the ballot at this time in no narrow, captions or selfish spirit; from no contempt of the black man's claims, nor antagonism to you who, in the progress of civilization, are now the privileged order; but from the purest patriotism, for the highest good of every citizen, for the safety of the republic, and as a glorious example to the nations of the earth.

February 15, 1870.

Careful readers of the Tribune have probably succeeded in discovering that we have not always been able to applaud the course of Miss Susan B. Anthony. Indeed, we have often felt, and sometimes said, that her methods were as unwise as we thought her aims undesirable. But through these years of disputation and struggling, she has thoroughly impressed friends and enemies alike with the sincerity and earnestness of her purposes....

Fifty years ago the full moon of suffrage rose in the small, red and wrinkled countenance of the infant Susan B. Anthony. "Agitation is the word," says Miss Anthony, in these her later years. Agitation was probably the word then, as a happy family surrounded the cradle of the boisterous phenomenon. Miss Anthony has compressed into her half-century a deal of work, talk, hurry and resolution. Beginning with the women's temperance conventions in 1848, she has strewn the gliding years with organizations, societies, conventions innumerable, to the wonderment, if not always to the admiration, of an observant world. "Through all these years," remarks Mrs. Henry B. Stanton, "Miss Anthony was the connecting link between me and the outer world—the reform scout who went to see what was going on in the enemy's camp, and returned with maps and observations to plan the mode of attack." It has been intimated that Miss Anthony has not remained sweet Dian's votary, in maiden meditation fancy free, because nobody asked her to change her name and station. Many victims, we are told, are carrying crushed hearts and blighted hopes through life, and all because of the unrelenting cruelty exercised by this usually good-humored woman towards the whole male sex.—The Tribune.

Miss Anthony bears her fifty summers lightly. Whatever our sentiments may be as to the cause she advocates, we do full justice to her resistless energy and activity and unswerving fidelity to her principles. Charming and cordial in her manners, with kind words for all, she welcomed every guest last evening and made them at ease.—The Times.

It was regarded last night, and was a topic of conversation, that the public announcement that Miss Anthony was fifty years old was one more of the courageous things for which her life has been distinguished. Battling with the wrong and striving for the right has not left so rigid a mark of the progress of time upon her features as to prevent her keeping up a little fiction about being fair and forty. Miss Anthony prefers the truth, and she saysthat the register in the family Bible supports the assertion that a half-century of rolling years have passed before her.—The Herald.

Miss Anthony looked her very best last night, and let the truth be said, even should it be followed by persecuting proposals from the bachelors, she didn't look much more than five-and-twenty. The genial salutations and happy surroundings of the hour effaced for the time those lines which care and labor and fifty years will make, however pure the soul within. Miss Anthony was happy and she looked it.... She wears her years and honors well. May we live till the celebration of her centenary, and she read the report thereof next day in the columns of the Evening Mail.—The Mail.

In these latter days the aspirations and activities of woman are greatly quickened, and her day of pure and perfect freedom seems near at hand. When the year of jubilee shall at last ring in, no name will be more highly honored than that of Miss Susan B. Anthony; and her honors have been well deserved. Early and late, in season and out, in places high and low, all over this broad land, by voice and pen, has she labored with unflagging zeal for the exalted liberty of woman.... Men who have honored mothers, pure sisters, devoted wives and loving daughters, owe to Miss Anthony a heavy debt of gratitude for her life-work in behalf of women.—The Globe.

Miss Anthony's reception has been one of the events of the week.... Men who have expended about half of the time and half of the energy in the business of money-making which Miss Anthony has expended in benefiting the race, have become millionaires, and have been held up to the rising generation as examples of energy and industry worthy of imitation. Bronzes have been erected and numerous biographies written to do them honor. Had Miss Anthony labored for herself as devotedly as she has for others, she would no doubt have received the usual reward in greenbacks; and but for the fact of her being a woman, might have had a bronze erected in her honor.—The Courier.

It is not always true that "the good die young," for Miss Susan B. Anthony has lived to celebrate her fiftieth birthday.... Right glad are we that the anniversary was observed with due pomp and circumstance. No kindly tribute to great moral worth is too good for this good woman. As one of the chief heroines of our generation, she abundantly deserves all the honors which were paid her on that festal night. There are many public-spirited workers in our busy land; many noble souls who have devoted their life-long energies to the elevation of their fellow-beings; many moral pioneers, who, when they die, will leave the world better than they found it; and conspicuous among these is the staunch, unwearied and indomitable woman who, at the end of half a century of life, can remember but few idle or wasted days. If Miss Anthony's persevering efforts in behalf of her sex are not worthy of generous praise, then there is no just fame due to a brave career. If her methods have sometimes lacked soundness of judgment, they have never lacked nobility of purpose. There exists a peculiar, invaluable and time-honored class of plain and substantial women who are said to be "as honestas the day is long;" and Susan B. Anthony is the queen of this royal race. Dauntless and tireless as the sterner sex, sympathetic and tender as the gentler, we sometimes think that she is both man and woman in one. She is one of the sterling characters of our day. The whole people ought to rejoice that such a woman was born, has lived and still toils.—The Independent.

Out of scores of letters received space allows the reproduction of but a few:

I shall always be present in sympathy with any number of people who will express their admiration of the sterling traits which adorn the life and character of the lady who now passes the fiftieth anniversary of her most devoted and unselfish life. I am glad to tender the legal representative of a dollar for each of these years, with the confident assurance of the early triumph of that cause to which her life has been singularly devoted. This greenback is no surer of being redeemed in gold than is my confidence in the golden era of legal enfranchisement for woman!... Long before Miss Anthony sees her "threescore and ten," the political equality of all American citizens will be fully established. With sentiments of the highest esteem, I am, very cordially and truly,

S. C. Pomeroy.

... God bless her, and may she live many happy, joyous years! That she and her noble co-workers are soon to see the complete triumph of the woman's cause I firmly believe. And when in after years the great benefactors of this century are sought for, Susan B. Anthony's name will be found occupying one of the highest niches in the temple of honest fame. Truly yours,

J. P. Root. [Lieutenant-Governor of Kansas.]

... Enclosed is a check for $50, one for each year of your life. Will agree to give you the same pro rata sum on your one hundredth, birthday. With love, your brother,

D. R. Anthony.

There will be among those who sympathize with and rejoice in your labors, no lack of testimony tonight to their persistency and value; but from one who deplores both, you will perhaps be willing to hear a hearty, cordial, admiring expression of the regard he is nevertheless forced to cherish for the sincerity and the unmistakably disinterested devotion which has marked your long and hopeful work in the cause you hold so dear and serve so faithfully. I can not wish you the success you seek—let me give you this better wish, that the anniversary your friends celebrate tonight may never bring fewer tokens of regard than now, and never find you seeming less the faithful worker "of cheerful yesterdays and confident tomorrows." With renewed congratulations I am, very cordially yours,

Whitelaw Reid.

I could not be where I longed to be last evening, where I could look upon the toilworn face of the true, tried and never found wanting—the one of all others who has borne the heat of the day, and that without wilting or complaining ever hopeful and ever pursuing "the even tenor of her way." Absence shall not keep from thee my mite, and how I wish it were ten, yes, twenty times as much, but here it is with my love, respect and genuine friendship. Be of brave heart and believe that I am thy fast friend,

Abby Hopper Gibbons.

Yours is a "golden wedding" indeed—for the fiftieth anniversary of a life that has been wedded to a great cause is a far more glorious golden wedding than those which generally go by that name. Accept my heartiest wishes for your welfare and for the success of your novel celebration. Heretofore the privilege of growing old and possessing common sense has belonged exclusively to the other sex. Sincerely yours,

Frances Ellen Burr.

Please accept the enclosed check of $50, as a slight token of regard from our absent trio. As I hardly need tell you, the lion's share of this birthday gift is sent by my father, but neither mother nor I will admit that in the unsubstantial, and yet I hope not valueless part of the offering, the personal regard and appreciation of your noble work for woman which accompany it, our contribution is any less than his. I remain yours very truly,

Laura Curtis Bullard.

You have worked for the slave and for woman. Your fifty years shine about you and rest like a halo of glory around your head.... Fifty years today! When that half-century again rolls around, you and I will be in our graves and our names and work will stand back of us to all time. But into that future I look with prophetic eye to see woman no longer enslaved, and to find, not only on this continent, but over the world, as benefactor of the race, the name of Susan B. Anthony. Your affectionate friend,

Matilda Joslyn Gage.

My good husband in writing from Toledo says: "Tell Susan that all the newspaper accounts taken together could not increase the pride which I have long felt in her pertinacious, obstinate, fault-finding, raspish, strong-minded, dogmatic and grand career. God bless her!" To all of which I subscribe most affectionately,

Elizabeth R. Tilton.

... If your Bible says you are fifty, I will try to be as reverential as possible when next we meet. I wish you similar health and strength when you are seventy-five—you'll find no change in me. I send you by express today Whittier's poems. Ever affectionately,

Ellen Wright Garrison.

All the people who know you and who don't know you were given opportunity to utter their good wishes, and poor me, wandering across these western spaces, quite left out in the cold! Please ma'am, why did I know nothing of your reception till it was all over? I should have sent you what I now send—a gray silk gown, wherein you are to make yourself fine and grand, and a draft for $200 as a little nest-egg.

If I only had a happy ease with my pen, how glad I would have been to put on paper in glowing words just what I think of the faithful, unselfish, earnest, single-minded, courageous years, which my dear old Susan has given to the service of humanity. How, through poverty and persecution, evil tongues and slanderous words, ridicule and reproach, she has said, "Nothing shall daunt me; 'tis God's service;" and so speaking, has held fast the profession of her faith without wavering.... God bless her! God bless her! The tears come to my eyes as I write that benediction, and think how gently and earnestly men and women alike in time to come will repeat it when hername is mentioned; when those same men and women shall see her life and her work, not as now "through a glass darkly," but as those who gaze through the sunshine of truth. Good-by, dear friend—many happy years for you, prays your loving

Anna E. Dickinson.

Accept the enclosed check for $50, not as a present, merely, but as a debt, honestly due, for "services rendered." Had there been no "agitation" for the last twenty years, resulting in so complete a "Revolution," we teachers might still be working for $1 per week and "boarding 'round." But thanks to your unfailing "persistency," and the faithfulness of your co-workers in speaking for a class, the majority of whom dare not speak for themselves through fear of losing the little already gained, the salaries of all workingwomen have been largely increased.... So, if need be, fight as valiantly, dear sister, for the next twenty years as for the last, or at least till woman's right to a voice in the laws by which she is governed shall be acknowledged in every State and Territory of our country. Affectionately your sister,

Mary S. Anthony.

On this, your fiftieth birthday, permit me to present you my check for $50, as a slight and very inadequate expression of admiring gratitude on my part for your twenty years of arduous and self-sacrificing labor in the cause of woman. What woman has gained already, and it is much, what I and others have been able to achieve in professional life, must be mainly ascribed to you, and such as you.... Your faithful friend and co-worker,

Clemence S. Lozier.

Although away here in Rome, I have kept track of your goings-on through The Revolution, which comes regularly.... I wish I could have been there to assist at the merrymaking. Miss Manning has kindly offered to take a little remembrance [an Etruscan gold and garnet pin] to you when she goes home, which you are to wear with that new silk dress. You see how selfish I am. I wish to compel you not only to think of me, but to associate me in your mind with our peerless Anna, God bless the dear child! Ever affectionately,

Kate N. Doggett.

The presents received were too numerous to mention. From Mr. and Mrs. Cheney, South Manchester, Conn., $50; Erie Co. (N. Y.) Suffrage Association, $50; Henry Ward Beecher, the Tiltons, Frank D. Moulton, Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. S. C. Pomeroy, $25 each; Mr. and Mrs. Samuel E. Sewall, $20; and from other friends, sums of ten, fifteen and twenty dollars, amounting in all to $1,000. In addition were a broché shawl from Mrs. Stanton, gold watch, chain and pin from Miss Sarah Johnston, pen-and-ink sketch from Eliza Greatorex, point and duchesse lace collars and handkerchiefs, sets of books, engravings, gold pens, pocket-books, travelling case, and floral offerings.

Delivered in twenty-nine of the post-office districts of Monroe, and twenty-one of Ontario, in Miss Anthony's canvass of those counties prior to her trial in June, 1873.

Friends and Fellow-Citizens:—I stand before you under indictment 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 doing, 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 a voice 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 inalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that government can give rights. No one denies that before governments were organized each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty and property. 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 which 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 toprotectthe 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 inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. 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, or exclusion of any class 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 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:

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 form, 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 to 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 today 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 never have 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 who are 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 these declarations, kings, popes, priests, aristocrats, all were alike dethroned and placed on a common level, politically, with the lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, men, as such, were deprived of their divine right to rule and placed on a political level with women. By the practice of these declarations all class and caste distinctions would be abolished, and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman, all alike rise from their subject position to the broader 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 tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor we, the male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed this Union. We formed it not to give the blessings of 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. It is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied 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 one which became the subject of discussion was that respecting equality of suffrage. Article IV 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 which 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.

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