Elizabeth Cady Stanton SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE Speech to Electors of Eighth Congressional District, New York Oct. 10, 1866 191 To the Electors of the Eighth Congressional District. Although, by the Constitution of the State of New York woman is denied the elective franchise, yet she is eligible to office; therefore, I present myself to you as a candidate for Representative to Congress. Belonging to a disfranchised class, I have no political antecedents to recommend me to your support; but my creed is free speech, free press, free men and free trade.- the cardinal point of democracy. Viewing all questions from the standpoint of principle rather than expediency, there is a fixed uniform law, as yet unrecognized by either of the leading parties, governing alike the social and political life of men and nations. The Republican party has occasionally clear vision of personal rights, though in its protective policy it seems wholly blind to the rights of property and commerce, while it recognizes the duty of benevolence between man and man, it teaches the narrowest selfishness in trades between nations. The Democrats, on the contrary, while holding sound and liberal principles on trade and commerce, have ever in their political affiliations maintained the idea of class and caste among men.- an idea wholly at variance with the genius of our free institutions and fatal to a high civilization. In asking your suffrage, believing alike in free men and free trade, I could not represent either party as now constituted. Nevertheless, as an independent candidate, I desire an election at this time as a rebuke to the dominant party for its retrogressive legislation in so amending the National Constitution as to make invidious distinctions on the grounds of sex. That instrument recognizes as persons all citizens who obey the laws and support the State, and if the Constitution of the several States were brought into harmony with the broad principles of the Federal Constitution, the women of the Nation would no longer be taxed without representation, or governed without their consent. I would gladly have a voice and vote in the Fortieth Congress to demand universal suffrage, that thus a republican form of government might be secured to every state in the Union. If the party now in the ascendency makes its demand for "Negro Suffrage" in good faith, on the ground of natural right, and because the highest good of the state demands that the republican idea be vindicated, on no principle of justice or safety can the women of the Nation be ignored. On the high grounds of safety to the Nation, and justice to citizens, I ask your support in the coming election. Elizabeth Cady Stanton. New York Oct. 10, 1866. X At the November election in 1866 Mrs Stanton offered herself as a candidate to Congress in the Eighth District in the city of New York. She did this to show the Constitutional right of a woman to run for office. She received twenty four votes. 192 Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.