Women -- Suffrage -- History; Women -- Suffrage -- United States -- History; Women's rights -- History; Women's rights -- United States -- History
The bill was carried through merely by the energetic advocacy of
Senators McDonald, Sargent and Hoar, whose oratorical efforts
were reenforced by the presence of Mrs. Lockwood. After the
struggle was over, all the senators who advocated the bill were
made the recipients of bouquets, while the three senators whose
names we have given received large baskets of flowers. This is a
pleasing omen of that purification of legal business which it is
hoped will flow from the introduction of women to the courts. It
was not flowers that used to be distributed at Washington and
Albany in the old corrupt times, among legislators, in testimony
of gratitude for their votes. Let us hope that venal legislation
at Washington will be extirpated by the rise of this beautiful
custom.--[New York _Nation_.
It was noticeable that all the presidential candidates dodged the
issue except Senator Blaine, who voted for the bill.--[Chicago
_Inter-Ocean_.
How humiliated poor old Judge Magruder must feel, since the
congress of the United States paid the woman whom he forbade to
open her mouth in his august presence, in his little court, so
much consideration as to pass an act opening to her the doors of
the Supreme Court of the United States. All honor to the brave
woman, who by her own unaided efforts thus achieved honor,
fortune and fame--the just rewards of her own true
worth.--[_Havre Republican_, Havre de Grace, Maryland.
ENTER PORTIA.--An act of congress was not necessary to authorize
women to be lawyers, if their legal acquirements fitted them for
that vocation; nor was it necessary to state, as an expression of
opinion by the national legislature, that some women are so fully
qualified for the legal profession that no barriers should be
permitted to stand in their way. It was needed simply as a key
whereby the hitherto locked door of the Supreme Court of the
United States may be opened if a woman lawyer, with the usual
credentials, should knock thereon. That is all; and there is no
new question opened for profitless debate. The ability of some
women to be lawyers is like the ability of others to make
bread--it rests upon the facts. There is no room for elaborate
argument to prove either their fitness or unfitness for legal
studies, so long as in Missouri, Wisconsin, Michigan, the
District of Columbia, Iowa and North Carolina there are women in
more or less successful practice and repute. * * * Nowhere are
these great attributes of civilization and regulated
liberty--law, conservatism, justice, equity and mercy in the
administration of human affairs put in broader light or truer,
than they are by the words that Shakespeare puts in the mouth of
this woman jurist.--[_Public Ledger_, Philadelphia, February 12.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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