Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. DebsDebs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
History
Labor and Freedom: The Voice and Pen of Eugene V. Debs
Debs, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor)
Labor -- United States; Socialism -- United States; Socialist Party (U.S.); Working class -- United States
In looking over some old letters a day or two ago I found a postal card
which Susan B. Anthony had written to me over thirty years ago, and,
strangely enough, it was held fast by a letter that was written to me
about the same time by Wendell Phillips, as if these two epistles had
been attracted to each other and held together in the bonds of mutualism
as were the great souls who had written them in their heroic struggle
for human enfranchisement.
The faded and time-worn old card carried me back to the day I met Miss
Anthony at the depot on her arrival at Terre Haute, where she was to
speak in public for her sex. At that time Mrs. Ida Husted Harper, who
afterward became Miss Anthony's confidential friend and authorized
biographer, and I, and two or three others, were about the only people
in Terre Haute who believed that woman was a human being and entitled to
the rights of citizenship. We had arranged these meetings for Miss
Anthony and her three active coadjutors in woman's cause at that time,
and they arrived according to the schedule.
I shall never forget how Miss Anthony impressed me. She had all the
charm of a real woman and all the strength of a perfect man. Style,
personal adornment, she did not know; vanity found no lodgment in her
great soul. She was born with a heroic purpose, and she set out in
fulfillment of that purpose with a spirit of dauntless valor and
determination which knew "no variableness or shadow of turning" to the
day that ended her consecrated life and she passed from the scenes of
men.
The trials, privations, insults borne by this grand old pioneer will
never be known by those who are in the ranks today. An event
characteristic of the struggle in which she engaged almost
single-handed for so many years was her arrest and trial for voting in
the presidential election of 1872. A fine of one hundred dollars and
costs was imposed upon her, which she vowed she would not pay, even if
she were sent to jail. When Miss Anthony said a thing she meant it. That
fine was never paid.
It was, after all, a stroke of good fortune that Miss Anthony was the
victim of this barbarous indignity. It inspired one of the greatest
speeches of her life. In opening this dramatic plea and protest she
said:
"Friends and Fellow-Citizens: I stand before you tonight under
indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last
presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall
be my work this evening to prove to you that in thus voting I not only
committed no crime, but, instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights,
guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National
Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny."
She then quoted from the preamble of the Federal Constitution: "We, the
_people_ of the United States," etc., and proceeded:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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