But the first step taken, from the very initiative of that step, I have announced my ground and my determination. When a bill was up here before, proposing to enlarge and widen the franchise in this District, I stated that if negroes were to vote I would persist in opening the door to females. I said that if the thing were to be taken away from the feudal realms and from feudal reasons, which went on the idea that the man who bore arms, and he alone, was entitled to the exercise of political power, and if it was to be put upon the ground of logic, and if we were to be asked to give a reason for it, and if we were to be compelled to give that reason, I said then, and I say now, "If I have no reason to offer why a negro man shall not vote, I have no reason to offer why a white woman shall not vote." If the negro man is interested in the Government of the country, if he can not trust to the masses of the people that the Government shall be a fair and just Government and that it shall do right to him, then the woman is also interested that this Government shall be fair to woman and fair to the interests of woman. Why not, Mr. President? Are not these interests equal to those of the negro and of his race? I know it has been said that the woman is represented by her husband, represented by the male; and yet we know how she has been represented by her husband in bygone times; we know how she is represented by her barbarian husband; and let him who wants to know how she is represented by her civilized husband go to her speeches made in the recent Woman's Rights Convention. We know how she has been represented by her barbarian husband in the past and is even at the present. She bears his burdens, she bears his children, she nurses them, she does his work, she chops his wood, and she grinds his corn; while he, forsooth, by virtue of this patent of nobility that he has derived, in consequence of his masculinity, from Heaven, confines himself to the manly occupations of hunting and fishing and war.