History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III

Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan B. (Susan Brownell) Anthony

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• Publié par: onta
• Publié le: 08 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 24
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

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The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of
III), by Various
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Title: History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III)
Author: Various
Editor: Elizabeth Cady Stanton
Susan B. Anthony
Matilda Joslyn Gage
Release Date: April 11, 2009 [EBook #28556]
Language: English
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H I S T O R Y
O F
W OMAN S UFFRAGE.
EDITED BY
ELIZABETH CADY STANTON,
SUSAN B. ANTHONY, AND
MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.ILLUSTRATED WITH STEEL ENGRAVINGS.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. III.
1876-1885.
"WOMEN ARE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES, ENTITLED TO ALL THE RIGHTS, PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES
GUARANTEED TO CITIZENS BY THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION."
SUSAN B. ANTHONY.
17 MADISON ST., ROCHESTER, N. Y.
Copyright, 1886, by Susan B. Anthony.
[Pg iii]PREFACE.
The labors of those who have edited these volumes are not only finished as far as this work extends, but if
three-score years and ten be the usual limit of human life, all our earthly endeavors must end in the near
future. After faithfully collecting material for several years, and making the best selections our judgment has
dictated, we are painfully conscious of many imperfections the critical reader will perceive. But since
stereotype plates will not reflect our growing sense of perfection, the lavish praise of friends as to the merits
of these pages will have its antidote in the defects we ourselves discover. We may however without egotism
express the belief that this volume will prove specially interesting in having a large number of contributors
from England, France, Canada and the United States, giving personal experiences and the progress of
legislation in their respective localities.Into younger hands we must soon resign our work; but as long as health and vigor remain, we hope to publish
a pamphlet report at the close of each congressional term, containing whatever may be accomplished by
State and National legislation, which can be readily bound in volumes similar to these, thus keeping a full
record of the prolonged battle until the final victory shall be achieved. To what extent these publications may
be multiplied depends on when the day of woman's emancipation shall dawn.
[Pg iv]For the completion of this work we are indebted to Eliza Jackson Eddy, the worthy daughter of that noble
philanthropist, Francis Jackson. He and Charles F. Hovey are the only men who have ever left a generous
bequest to the woman suffrage movement. To Mrs. Eddy, who bequeathed to our cause two-thirds of her
large fortune, belong all honor and praise as the first woman who has given alike her sympathy and her wealth
to this momentous and far-reaching reform. This heralds a turn in the tide of benevolence, when, instead of
building churches and monuments to great men, and endowing colleges for boys, women will make the
education and enfranchisement of their own sex the chief object of their lives.
The three volumes now completed we leave as a precious heritage to coming generations; precious,
because they so clearly illustrate—in her ability to reason, her deeds of heroism and her sublime
selfsacrifice—that woman preeminently possesses the three essential elements of sovereignty as defined by
Blackstone: "wisdom, goodness and power." This has been to us a work of love, written without recompense
and given without price to a large circle of friends. A thousand copies have thus far been distributed among
our coadjutors in the old world and the new. Another thousand have found an honored place in the leading
libraries, colleges and universities of Europe and America, from which we have received numerous
testimonies of their value as a standard work of reference for those who are investigating this question.
Extracts from these pages are being translated into every living language, and, like so many missionaries,
are bearing the glad gospel of woman's emancipation to all civilized nations.
Since the inauguration of this reform, propositions to extend the right of suffrage to women have been
submitted to the popular vote in Kansas, Michigan, Colorado, Nebraska and Oregon, and lost by large
majorities in all; while, by a simple act of legislature, Wyoming, Utah and Washington territories have
[Pg v]enfranchised their women without going through the slow process of a constitutional amendment. In New
York, the State that has led this movement, and in which there has been a more continued agitation than in
any other, we are now pressing on the legislature the consideration that it has the same power to extend the
right of suffrage to women that it has so often exercised in enfranchising different classes of men.
Eminent publicists have long conceded this power to State legislatures as well as to congress, declaring that
women as citizens of the United States have the right to vote, and that a simple enabling act is all that is
needed. The constitutionality of such an act was never questioned until the legislative power was invoked for
the enfranchisement of women. We who have studied our republican institutions and understand the limits of
the executive, judicial and legislative branches of the government, are aware that the legislature, directly
representing the people, is the primary source of power, above all courts and constitutions. Research into the
early history of this country shows that in line with English precedent, women did vote in the old colonial days
and in the original thirteen States of the Union. Hence we are fully awake to the fact that our struggle is not for
the attainment of a new right, but for the restitution of one our fore-mothers possessed and exercised.
All thoughtful readers must close these volumes with a deeper sense of the superior dignity, self-reliance and
independence that belong by nature to woman, enabling her to rise above such multifarious persecutions as
she has encountered, and with persistent self-assertion to maintain her rights. In the history of the race there
has been no struggle for liberty like this. Whenever the interest of the ruling classes has induced them to
confer new rights on a subject class, it has been done with no effort on the part of the latter. Neither the
American slave nor the English laborer demanded the right of suffrage. It was given in both cases to
[Pg vi]strengthen the liberal party. The philanthropy of the few may have entered into those reforms, but political
expediency carried both measures. Women, on the contrary, have fought their own battles; and in their
rebellion against existing conditions have inaugurated the most fundamental revolution the world has ever
witnessed. The magnitude and multiplicity of the changes involved make the obstacles in the way of success
seem almost insurmountable.
The narrow self-interest of all classes is opposed to the sovereignty of woman. The rulers in the State are not
willing to share their power with a class equal if not superior to themselves, over which they could never hope
for absolute control, and whose methods of government might in many respects differ from their own. The
annointed leaders in the Church are equally hostile to freedom for a sex supposed for wise purposes to have
been subordinated by divine decree. The capitalist in the world of work holds the key to the trades and
professions, and undermines the power of labor unions in their struggles for shorter hours and fairer wages,
by substituting the cheap labor of a disfranchised class, that cannot organize its forces, thus making wife and
sister rivals of husband and brother in the industries, to the detriment of both classes. Of the autocrat in the
home, John Stuart Mill has well said: "No ordinary man is willing to find at his own fireside an equal in the
person he calls wife." Thus society is based on this fourfold bondage of woman, making liberty and equality
for her antagonistic to every organized institution. Where, then, can we rest the lever with which to lift one-half
of humanity from these depths of degradation but on "that columbiad of our political life—the ballot—which
makes every citizen who holds it a full-armed monitor"?
[Pg vii][Pg vii]LIST OF ENGRAVINGS.
VOL. III.
PHŒBE W. COUZINS Frontispiece.
MARILLA M. RICKER page 112
FRANCES E. WILLARD 129