Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
Gentlemen, we cannot displace the corner-stone without
destruction to the edifice itself! The subject is so vast, has so
many side issues, that a volume might as readily be laid before
your honorable committee as these few words hastily written with
an aching woman's heart. Personally, if any woman in this vast
land has a grievance by not having a vote, I may claim that
grievance to be mine. With father, brother, husband, son, taken
away by death, I stand utterly alone, with minor children to
educate and considerable property interests to guard. But I would
deem it unpatriotic to ask for a general law which must prove
disastrous to my country, in order to meet that exceptional
position in which, by the adorable will of God, I am placed. I
prefer, indeed, to trust to that moral influence over men which
intelligence never fails to exercise, and which is really more
potent in the management of business affairs than the direct
vote. In this I am doubtless as old-fashioned as were our
grandmothers, who assisted to mold this vast republic. They knew
that the greatest good for the greatest number was the only safe
legislative law, and that to it all exceptional cases must
submit.
Gentlemen, in conclusion, a sophism in legislation is not a mere
abstraction; it must speedily bear fruit in material results of
the most disastrous nature, and I implore your honorable
committee, in behalf of our common country, not to open a
Pandora's box by way of experiment from whence so much evil must
issue, and which once opened may never again be closed.
Very respectfully,
MADELEINE VINTON DAHLGREN.
Mrs. Dahlgren was ably reviewed by Virginia L. Minor of St. Louis,
and the Toledo Woman Suffrage Association. Mrs. Minor said:
In assuming to speak for the "silent masses" of women, Mrs.
Dahlgren declares that silence does not give consent; very
inconsequently forgetting, that if it does not on one side of the
question, it may not on the other, and that she may no more
represent them than do we.
The Toledo society, through its president Mrs. Rose L. Segur, said:
We agree with you that this grave question is not one of
expediency. It is simply one of right and justice, and therefore
a most legitimate subject for agitation. As a moral force woman
must have a voice in the government, or partial and unjust
legislation is the result from which arise the evils consequent
upon a government based upon the enslavement of half its
citizens.
To this Mrs. Dahlgren replied briefly, charging the ladies with
incapacity to comprehend her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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