Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887Various
History
Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States,: 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887
Various
Women -- Suffrage -- United States
The white men of this country have thrown out upon us, the women,
a race inferior, you must admit, to your daughters, and yet that
race has the ballot, and why? He has a right to it; he earned and
paid for it with his blood. Whose blood paid for yours? Not your
blood; it was the blood of your forefathers; and were they not our
forefathers? Does a man earn a hundred thousand dollars and lie
down and die, saying, "It is all my boys'?" Not a bit of it. He
dies saying, "Let my children, be they cripples, be they idiots,
be they boys, or be they girls, inherit all my property alike."
Then let us inherit the sweet boon of the ballot alike.
When our fathers were driving the great ship of state we were
willing to ride as deck or cabin passengers, just as we felt
disposed; we had nothing to say; but to-day the boys are about to
run the ship aground, and it is high time that the mothers should
be asking, "What do you mean to do?" It is high time that the
mothers should be demanding what they should long since have had.
In our own little State the laws have been very much modified in
regard to women. My father was the first man to blot out the old
English law allowing the eldest son the right of inheritance to
the real estate. He took the first step, and like all those who
take first steps in improvement and reform he received a mountain
of curses from the oldest male heirs; but it did not matter to
him.
Since 1868 I have, by my own individual efforts, by the use of
hard-earned money, gone to our Legislature time after time and
have had this law and that law passed for the benefit of the
women; and the same little ship of state has sailed on. To-day our
men are just as well satisfied with the laws of our State for the
benefit of women in force as they were years ago. In our State a
woman has a right to make a will. In our State she can hold bonds
and mortgages as her own. In our State she has a right to her
own property. She can not sell it, though, if it is real estate,
simply because the moment she marries her husband has a life-time
right. The woman does not grumble at that; but still when he dies
owning real estate, she gets only the rental value of one-third,
which is called the widow's dower. Now I think the man ought to
have the rental value of one-third of the woman's maiden property
or real estate, and it ought to be called the widower's dower. It
would be just as fair for one as for the other. All that I want is
equality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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