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
Upon no question whatever has such a large number of petitions
been sent as upon this demand for woman suffrage. You have the
petitions in your hands, and I ask you in the name of justice and
humanity not to let this Congress adjourn without action.
You ask us if we are impatient. Yes; we are impatient. Some of
us may die, and I want our grand old standard-bearer, Susan B.
Anthony, whose name will go down to history beside that of George
Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Wendell Phillips--I want that
woman to go to heaven a free angel from this Republic. The power
lies in your hands to make us all free. May the blessing of God be
upon the hearts of every one of you, gentlemen; may the scales
of prejudice fall from your eyes, and may you, representing the
Senate of the United States, have the grand honor of telegraphing
to us, to the millions of waiting women from one end of this
country to the other, that the sixteenth amendment has been
submitted to the ratification of the several legislatures of our
States striking the word "male" out of the constitutions; and that
this shall be, as we promise it to be, a government of the people,
for the people, and by the people.
REMARKS BY MRS. ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY.
Miss Anthony. I now, gentlemen of the committee, introduce to you
Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, from the extreme Northwest; and before
she speaks I wish to say that she has been the one canvasser in
the great State of Oregon and Washington Territory, and that it is
to Mrs. Duniway that the women of Washington Territory are more
indebted than to all other influences for their enfranchisement.
Mrs. Duniway. Gentlemen of the committee, do you think it possible
that an agitation like this can go on and on forever without a
victory? Do you not see that the golden moment has come for this
grand committee to achieve immortality upon the grandest idea that
has ever stirred the heart-beats of American citizens, and will
you not in the magnanimity of noble purposes rise to meet the
situation and, accede to our demand, which in your hearts you must
know is just?
I do not come before you, gentlemen, with the expectation to
instruct you in regard to the laws of our country. The women
around us are law-abiding women. They are the mothers, many of
them, of true and noble men, the wives, many of them, of grand,
free husbands, who are listening, watching, waiting eagerly for
successful tidings of this great experiment.
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