Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
I think that is a list of illustrations sufficient to dispose of
any argument that may arise on such a score. And now, Mr.
President, permit me to say, in concluding the remarks I have
felt called upon to make here, that I have spoken rather as
indicating my assent to the principle than as expecting any
present practical results from the motion in question. In the
earliest part of my political life, when first called upon to
represent a constituency in the General Assembly of Missouri, in
looking around, after my arrival at the seat of Government at
those matters that seemed to me of most importance in
legislation, I was struck with two great classes of injustices,
two great departments in which it seemed to me the laws and the
constitutions of my State had done signal wrong. Those were one
as respects the rights of colored persons; the other as respects
the rights of married women, minors, and females; and I there and
then determined that whenever and wherever it should be in my
power to aid in relieving them of those inequalities and those
injustices, I would do so to the extent of my humble ability.
Since then I have labored zealously in those two reforms as far
and as fast as a public opinion could be created or elicited to
enforce them, and I can say from my own observation that each
step of advance taken has been fruitful of all good and
productive of no evil. Emancipation of the colored race in
Missouri has been achieved in a most thorough manner,
substantially achieved even before the war; and to-day the
community is ripe for the declaration that all are created equal,
and that there is no reason to exclude from any right, civil or
political, on the ground of race or color. I feel proud to say
likewise that Missouri has gone further, and wiped from her
statute-book large portions of that unjust and unfair and
illiberal legislation which had been leveled at the rights and
the property of the women of the State. Believing that that cause
which embraces and embodies the cause of civil liberty will go
forward still triumphing and to triumph, I will never, so help me
God, cast any vote that may be construed as throwing myself in
the face of that progress. Even though I recognize, therefore,
the impolicy of coupling these two measures in this manner and at
this time, I shall yet record my vote in the affirmative as an
earnest indication of my belief in the principle and my faith in
the future.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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