Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Must we be told that woman herself does not ask the ballot? Then
I submit to such, if such there be, the question is not one of
privilege, but of duty--of solemn responsibility. If woman does
not desire the ballot, demand it, take it, she sins against her
own nature and all the holiest instincts of humanity, and can not
too soon repent. After all, the question of suffrage is one of
justice and right. Unless human government be in itself an
unnatural and impious usurpation, whoever renders it support and
submission has a natural right to an equal voice in enacting and
executing the laws. Nor can one man, or millions on millions of
men acquire or possess the power to withhold that right from the
humblest human being of sane mind, but by usurpation, and by
rebellion against the constitution of the moral universe. It
would be robbery, though the giving of the right should induce
all the predicted and dreaded evils of tyrants, cowards and white
male citizens. Be justice done though the heavens fall and the
hells arise! Nay, it is only justice, reared as a lightning-rod,
that can shield any governmental fabric when the very heavens are
falling in righteous retribution.
The past mortality must last among nations, so long as they set
at nought the Divine economy and purpose in their formation. The
human body may yield to decay and die, though the soul be
imperishable and eternal. But nations, like souls, need not die.
Streams of new life flow into them, like rivers into the sea; and
why should not the sea and the nations on its shores, roll on
together with the ages? When governments shall learn to lay their
foundations in righteousness, with eternal justice the chief
corner-stone; when equal and impartial liberty shall be the
acknowledged birthright of all, then will national life begin to
be prolonged; and the death of a nation, were it possible, should
be as though more than a Pleiad had expired. No more would nation
then lift up sword against nation; and the New Jerusalem would
indeed descend from God out of heaven and dwell among men.
SUSAN B. ANTHONY made an appeal for contributions to the funds of
the Association, to enable it to carry on its work, especially in
Kansas.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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