Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
If you recognize a difference, let your legislation proceed from
both elements of the body politic which your legislation is to
affect.
It is said also, that if you allow women to vote, the logic of
your argument will go further and require that women shall be
voted for and they may chance to receive votes enough for
election; and they may even go to the State Legislature or to
Congress. Suppose such a thing should happen, would a city which
is represented in the Congress of the United States by John
Morrissey and Fernando Wood, have reason to blush if by some
singular good fortune she should chance to be represented by
Elizabeth Cady Stanton? (Applause.) Would the halls of Congress
suffer any loss of dignity, or any loss of efficiency, even if
John Morrissey's place should be vacated to make room for Mrs.
Stanton, or if some Pennsylvania Democrat should be allowed to
remain at home while Lucretia Mott occupied his chair?
(Applause.) Is it so terrible that women who can utter sentiments
as noble and elevating as those to which you have listened, who
can sustain them by logic as clear, and who can expose with such
delicate wit the ridiculous absurdity of the opposite side,
should have a voice in the counsels of the nation? Somebody says
that "the child is father to the man." You know who govern the
children. Who governed you when you were children? Is it not as
safe that woman should govern in the halls of national
legislation as in the family and in the school? You will find in
hundreds of schools, governed a few years ago by men, only women
for teachers to-day. I remember that in a building which
contained some three hundred pupils, the last man employed as a
teacher was an assistant teacher under the supervision of a woman
as principal; a woman who has vindicated her right to the place
by her admirable administration, and her admirable adaptation to
the business of teaching, so that she has become, as it were, a
fixture in that schoolhouse. And that is only one case among
many. And if woman excels in government in those spheres in which
she has had an opportunity to prove her ability, it is at least
safe to try the experiment further.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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