Reflections and Comments 1865-1895Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
General
Reflections and Comments 1865-1895
Godkin, Edwin Lawrence
Essays
The late discussion on the possibility or expediency of maintaining
governments at the South which had no physical force at their
disposal has not failed to attract the attention of the friends of
woman suffrage. They see readily what, indeed, most outsiders have
seen all along, that the failure of the numerical majority in
certain Southern States to hold the power to which the law entitled
them simply because they were unable or unwilling to fight, has a
very important bearing on the fitness of women to participate in the
practical work of government, and a well-known writer, "T. W. H.,"
in a late number of the _Woman's Journal_, endeavors to show that
what has happened at the South is full of encouragement for the
woman suffragists. His argument is in substance this: You (the
opponents) have always maintained as the great objection to the
admission of women to the franchise, that if women voted, cases
might arise in which the physical force of the community would be in
the hands of one party and the legal authority in those of the
other, and we should then witness the great scandal of a majority
government unable to execute the laws. We have just seen at the
South, however, that the possession of physical force is not always
sufficient to put the majority even of the male voters in possession
of the Government. In South Carolina and Louisiana the Government
has been seized and successfully held by a minority, in virtue of
their greater intelligence and self-confidence. To use his own
language:
"The present result in South Carolina is not a triumph of bodily
strength over weakness, but, on the contrary, of brains over bodily
strength. And however this reasoning affects the condition of South
Carolina--which is not here my immediate question--it certainly
affects, in a very important degree, the argument for woman
suffrage. If the ultimate source of political power is muscle, as is
often maintained, then woman suffrage is illogical; but if the
ultimate source of political power is, as the Nation implies, 'the
intelligence, sagacity, and the social and political experience of
the population,' then the claims of women are not impaired. For we
rest our case on the ground that women equal men on these points,
except in regard to political experience, which is a thing only to
be acquired by practice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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