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
Everybody supposed they would nominate Pendleton, or some other
man of pronounced views, but instead of doing that they nominated
Horatio Seymour, who stood on the fence, politically speaking. My
friends, Mrs. Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and women who have brains
and education, women who are tax-payers, went there and petitioned
for the practical application of the fundamental principles of
our Government to one-half of the people. Those most ignorant
workingmen, the vast mass of them foreigners, went there,
and petitioned that that great political party should favor
greenbacks. Why did they treat those workingmen with respect, and
put a greenback plank in their platform, and only table us, and
ignore us? Simply because the workingmen represented the power of
the ballot. They could make or unmake the great Democratic party
at that election. The women were powerless. We could be ridiculed
and ignored with impunity, and so we were laughed at, and put on
the table.
Then the Republicans went to Chicago, and they did just the same
thing. They said the Government bonds must be paid in precisely
the currency specified by the Congressional enactment, and
Talleyrand himself could not have devised how not to say anything
better than the Republicans did at Chicago on that question. Then
they nominated a man who had not any financial opinions whatever,
and who was not known, except for his military record, and they
went into the campaign. Both those parties had this petition from
us.
I met a woman in Grand Rapids, Mich., a short time ago. She came
to me one morning and told me about the obscene shows licensed
in that city, and said that she thought of memorializing the
Legislature. I said, "Do; you can not do anything else; you are
helpless, but you can petition. Of course they will laugh at you."
Notwithstanding, I drew up a petition and she circulated it.
Twelve hundred of the best citizens signed that petition, and the
lady carried it to the Legislature, just as Mrs. Wallace took her
petition in the Indiana Legislature. They read it, laughed at it,
and laid it on the table; and at the close of the session, by
a unanimous vote, they retired in a solid body to witness the
obscene show themselves. After witnessing it, they not only
allowed the license to continue for that year, but they have
licensed it every year from that day to this, against all the
protests of the petitioners. [Laughter.]
SENATOR EDMUNDS. Do not think we are wanting in respect to you and
the ladies here because you say something that makes us laugh.
MISS ANTHONY. You are not laughing at me; you are treating me
respectfully, because you are hearing my argument; you are not
asleep, not one of you, and I am delighted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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