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
From the standpoint of the Chimney Corner it appears that too many
even of the most gifted and liberal-minded of the leaders in the
woman's rights movement have not yet discovered this flaw in their
logic. They seek to individualize women, not seeing, apparently,
that individualized women, old maids, and individualized men, old
bachelors, though they may be useful in certain minor ways, are, after
all, to speak with the relentlessness of science, fragmentary and
abortive, so far as the great scheme of the universe is concerned, and
often become, in addition, seriously detrimental to the right progress
of society. The man and woman united in marriage form the unit of the
race; they alone rightly wield the self-perpetuating power upon which
all human progress depends; without which the race itself must perish,
the universe become null.
Reaching this point of the argument, it becomes evident that while the
development of the individual man or individual woman is no doubt of
great importance, since, as Margaret Fuller has justly said, "there
must be units before there can be union," it is chiefly so because of
their relation to each other. Their character should be developed
with a view to their future union with each other, and not to be
independent of it. When the leaders of the woman's movement fully
realize this, and shape their course accordingly, they will have made
a great advance both in the value of their work and its claim upon
public sympathy. Moreover, they will have reached a point from which
it will be possible for them to investigate reform and idealize the
relations existing between men and women.
Mr. President, it is no part of my purpose in any manner whatever
to speak disrespectfully of the large number of intelligent ladies,
sometimes called strong-minded, who are constantly going before the
public, agitating this question of female suffrage. While some of them
may, as is frequently charged, be courting notoriety, I have no
doubt they are generally earnestly engaged in a work which, in their
opinion, would better their condition and would do no injury to
society.
In all this, however, I believe they are mistaken.
I think the mental and physical structure of the sexes, of itself,
sufficiently demonstrates the fact that the sterner, more laborious,
and more difficult duties of society are to be performed by the male
sex; while the more delicate duties of life, which require less
physical strength, and the proper training of youth, with the proper
discharge of domestic duties, belong to the female sex. Nature has so
arranged it that the male sex can not attend properly to the duties
assigned by the law of nature to the female sex, and that the female
sex can not discharge the more rigorous duties required of the male
sex.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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