An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872, and on the Trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, the Inspectors of Election by Whom Her Vote was Received.Anonymous
History
An Account of the Proceedings on the Trial of Susan B. Anthony, on the Charge of Illegal Voting, at the Presidential Election in Nov., 1872, and on the Trial of Beverly W. Jones, Edwin T. Marsh, and William B. Hall, the Inspectors of Election by Whom Her Vote was Received.
Anonymous
Anthony, Susan B. (Susan Brownell), 1820-1906 -- Trials, litigation, etc.; Election law -- United States; Women -- Suffrage -- United States
"The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a
republican form of government."
What, I ask you, is the distinctive difference between the inhabitants
of a monarchical and those of a republican form of government, save
that in the monarchical the people are subjects, helpless, powerless,
bound to obey laws made by superiors--while in the republican, the
people are citizens, individual sovereigns, all clothed with equal
power, to make and unmake both their laws and law makers, and the moment
you deprive a person of his right to a voice in the government, you
degrade him from the status of a citizen of the republic, to that of a
subject, and it matters very little to him whether his monarch be an
individual tyrant, as is the Czar of Russia, or a 15,000,000 headed
monster, as here in the United States; he is a powerless subject, serf
or slave; not a free and independent citizen in any sense.
But, it is urged, the use of the masculine pronouns he, his and him, in
all the constitutions and laws, is proof that only men were meant to be
included in their provisions. If you insist on this version of the
letter of the law, we shall insist that you be consistent, and accept
the other horn of the dilemma, which would compel you to exempt women
from taxation for the support of the government, and from penalties for
the violation of laws.
A year and a half ago I was at Walla Walla, Washington Territory. I saw
there a theatrical company, called the "Pixley Sisters," playing before
crowded houses, every night of the whole week of the territorial fair.
The eldest of those three fatherless girls was scarce eighteen. Yet
every night a United States officer stretched out his long fingers, and
clutched six dollars of the proceeds of the exhibitions of those orphan
girls, who, but a few years before, were half starvelings in the streets
of Olympia, the capital of that far-off north-west territory. So the
poor widow, who keeps a boarding house, manufactures shirts, or sells
apples and peanuts on the street corners of our cities, is compelled to
pay taxes from her scanty pittance. I would that the women of this
republic, at once, resolve, never again to submit to taxation, until
their right to vote be recognized.
Miss Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass., twenty years ago, took this
position. For several years, the officers of the law distrained her
property, and sold it to meet the necessary amount; still she persisted,
and would not yield an iota, though every foot of her lands should be
struck off under the hammer. And now, for several years, the assessor
has left her name off the tax list, and the collector passed her by
without a call.
Mrs. J.S. Weeden, of Viroqua, Wis., for the past six years, has refused
to pay her taxes, though the annual assessment is $75.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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