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
Now, I am going to tell you one other fact. Seven thousand of the
best citizens of Illinois petitioned the Legislature of 1877 to
give them the poor privilege of voting on the license question. A
gentleman presented their petition; the ladies were in the lobbies
around the room. A gentleman made a motion that the president of
the State association of the Christian Temperance Union be
allowed to address the Legislature regarding the petition of the
memorialists, when a gentleman sprang to his feet, and said it was
well enough for the honorable gentleman to present the petition,
and have it received and laid on the table, but "for a gentleman
to rise in his seat and propose that the valuable time of the
honorable gentlemen of the Illinois Legislature should be consumed
in discussing the nonsense of those women is going a little too
far. I move that the sergeant-at-arms be ordered to clear the hall
of the house of representatives of the mob;" referring to those
Christian women. Now, they had had the lobbyists of the whisky
ring in that Legislature for years and years, not only around it
at respectful distances, but inside the bar, and nobody ever made
a motion to clear the halls of the whisky mob there. It only takes
Christian women to make a mob.
MRS. SAXON. We were treated extremely respectfully in Louisiana.
It showed plainly the temper of the convention when the present
governor admitted that woman suffrage was a fact bound to come.
They gave us the privilege of having women on the school boards,
but then the officers are appointed by men who are politicians.
MISS ANTHONY. I want to read a few words that come from good
authority, for black men at least. I find here a little extract
that I copied years ago from the Anti-Slavery Standard of 1870. As
you know, Wendell Phillips was the editor of that paper at that
time:
"A man with the ballot in his hand is the master of the situation.
He defines all his other rights; what is not already given him he
takes."
That is exactly what we want, Senators. The rights you have not
already given us; we want to get in such a position that we can
take them.
"The ballot makes every class sovereign over its own fate.
Corruption may steal from a man his independence; capital may
starve, and intrigue fetter him, at times; but against all these,
his vote, intelligently and honestly cast, is, in the long run,
his full protection. If, in the struggle, his fort surrenders,
it is only because it is betrayed from within. No power ever
permanently wronged a voting class without its own consent."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account