Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
What are we to do with our conquered provinces of the South? Give
them all the franchises which we hold ourselves, assuredly--as
many personal rights and as many State rights--provided always
that they cease to encroach upon our liberties, and are no longer
rebels against the common Government. Now that the issue is
forced upon us, let us apply our principles unsparingly to all,
and conclude by making the slaves, men and women too, as free and
equal in all civil and political functions as their male masters.
Secretary Chase has seized the occasion of our heavy financial
troubles to give us a general national banking system; so out of
the nettle Danger to our liberal institutions let us pluck the
flower Safety to the interest of the feeblest subject. It is thus
that the darkest evil is often made nurse to the brightest good.
The black mud at its roots nourishes the pure white water-lily.
When the Southern people, white and black, male and female, are
all voters together, by simple virtue of their human needs and
rights, then, but not till then, will I consent to their freely
voting themselves into an independent nation, if they are so
disposed. Even then, democracy requires that the question shall
be decided by the suffrage of the whole country, North as well as
South. A republic can never be dismembered except by the consent
of a majority of all its citizens....
ERNESTINE L. ROSE, a native of Poland, was next introduced; she
said: Louis Kossuth told us it is not well to look back for
regret, but only for instruction. I therefore intend slightly to
cast my mind's eye back for the purpose of enabling us, as far
as possible, to contemplate the present and foresee the future.
It is unnecessary to point out the cause of this war. It is
written on every object we behold. It is but too well understood
that the primary cause is Slavery; and it is well to keep that in
mind, for the purpose of gaining the knowledge how ultimately to
be able to crush that terrible rebellion which now desolates the
land. Slavery being the cause of the war, we must look to its
utter extinction for the remedy. (Applause).
We have listened this evening to an exceedingly instructive, kind
and gentle address, particularly that part of it which tells how
to deal with the South after we have brought them back. But I
think it would be well, at first, to consider how to bring them
back!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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