Elizabeth Cody Stanton SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE Speech: Address on right of Women to vote for delegates to constitutional Convention 1867 Manuscript of address by Elizabeth Cady Stanton on right of women to vote for Delegates to Constitution Convention 1867. 1-10 Taking the suggestions of the President, Senator Summer let us this evening citizens of New York state see what we have to do at home. It is specially fitting that we should do this work of self examination now as we are soon to hold a constitutional convention to frame the fundamental laws that are to govern us the next twenty years. On the whole people of the state rests the responsibility of seeing that all classes are ,11, represented in the coming convention, & that their representatives when assembled [there] shall so amend the constitution. As to make all the citizens of the state equal before the law. Many of the ablest men in the country both Democrats & Republicans have given the opinion that in the revision of a state constitution the state is for the time being resolved into its original elements, & that all the people, the disfranchised .12. classes, as well as those secured in the [right of] suffrage. have a[n] self-evident right to vote for delegates to a Constitutional Convention. A state constitution must originate with & be assented to by a majority of the people & as there is nothing in our constitution to prevent women or black men from voting for or being elected as delegates to a constitutional convention there is no reason why the Legislature should not enact that the people elect their 13 delegates to said convention irrespective of sex or color The Legislatures of 1801 & 1821. at which time all men voted on a property qualification, set aside there qualifications & provided that all men black & white should vote for delegates to a constitutional convention; (while they could not vote for members of assembly); & more than this, they were eligible to seats in that body; called to frame the fundamental law: the fundamental law from which 14 Governors, Senators, Members derive their existence. In deciding to hold a constitutional convention once in twenty years, it was supposed that in that time, in this age of progress the people would demand some onward step in legislation. After sixty-seven years of growth, of free thought, of this universal discussion of individual rights, what is the onward step we to day demand In 1801, it was decided that all men, rich & poor, black .15. & white must be represented in a convention to amend the constitution of the state since that time the women have begun to stir. & the demand now is that all the people of the state, women as well as men have a right to a voice in a convention, that is to frame the fundamental laws under which they are to live for the next twenty years. [*Some tell us this is not the time for woman to make her demand, that this is the negro's hour. No! We have a broader question than either on hand today. This is the nations hour! This is the hour to settle what are the rights of a citizen of the republic! This is the hour to settle, whether this nation shall live or perish*] Yes the women are awake gentlemen, they are making over your laws & [constitutions] .16. & in self-defense you must get out an expurgated editions of your codes & constitutions, lest for your gross violations of republican principles we impeach the whole of you. The great difficulty to my mind in the way of impeaching the President is in finding clean hands to do the work. Wendell Phillips tells us our safety depends on impeaching the President, he tells us too this is a swindling Congress. Perhaps on the .17. principle that it takes a rogue to catch a rogue We may safely follow his advice, & set this swindling Congress on the heels of a usurping President-But the only classes I see fit for this work are the women & negroes. As they are the only people in the country innocent of either executive or legislative usurpation! In order fully to understand the assumption of the “white-male citizen” of the State of New York, let us glance at the Constitution of the state. It opens grandly. We the people of .18. the state of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings do establish this constitution art I. sec I. No member of this state shall be disfranchised, or deprived of any of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof unless by the law of the land or the judgment of his peers. Now if the "white male citizen" had stopped there with so liberal & comprehensive a declaration .19. our constitution would need no amending to the end of time. But having exhausted his magnanimity in one grand utterance, he proceeds in article II. sec I. [?] to throw overboard all the women, & negroes not worth $250, 7/12 of the people of the state, then proudly struts the deck & says "We the people of the state". Why did you not say "We the white male citizens of the state of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its .20. blessings to ourselves do establish this constitution. As the letter now stands the 1st art. is a flat contradiction of the second. Now as I am the mother of half a dozen men in the state of New York, I feel some pride in your consistency. I wish you to so frame the constitution of 67. that the next generation need not think you were a set of addlepated fools, for if the common saying be true .21. that men are what their mothers make, the women of New York will bear the reproach of all your blunders & inconsistencies. The disfranchisement of any class of citizens is in direct violation of art. I. sec. I. No member of this "state shall be disfranchised "or deprived of any of the "rights or privileges secured "to any citizen thereof unless "by the law of the land or the "judgement of his peers. Surely women & negroes .22. are people & however weak & insignificant are members of the state, The law of the land is equality. The question of disfranchisement has never been submitted to the judgement of their peers A peer is an equal. The "white male" who so pompously parades himself in all our codes & constitutions does not recognize women & negroes as his equals, therefore, his judgement in their .23. case amounts to nothing; & on the other hand women & negroes constituting a majority of the people of the state, do not recognize a white male minority as their rightful rulers. On the republican theory that the majority governs what is to become of the "white male" when the women wake up? The consternation some men manifest at the mention of woman's rights, makes me think of an anecdote .24. I read of Jeff. Davis, an artist was an engaged to prepare some emblematic picture for the State House of South Carolina. Jeff was one of a committee to criticize the design. The North was represented by various mechanic implements, the South by a cotton bale with a negro on it fast asleep Ah! said Jeff. that will never do. What will become of the South when the negro wakes up? .25. You may well ask what is to become of the "white male" when the woman wakes up? Already behold him the target for all the jibes & jeers of the nation; everybody repudiates him; everybody points at him the slow unwavering finger of scorn; He is bayoneted in Congress, He is bayoneted in all our State Legislatures. On the one side Republicans & abolitionists stab him on the ground of his color, on the other, the Democrats & the .26. women stab him on the ground of his sex & there is danger lest between them all the "white male" will be driven from the continent & we be left in the condition of the poor Irishwoman out west during the war. Meeting her after a long absence I said, well Bridget how do get on? Oh! Madam said she bad enough. My Husband has gone to the war My sons have gone to the war All the boys in my neighborhood have gone to the war. & there is nothing but women .27. & children left. Oh! Madam said she with great pathos in her voice don't you think this would be a very dreary world without men. Yes! said I Bridget I think it would. But to return to the constitution, in article II. sec. I. you exclude from representation all women & negroes not worth $250. & then go on to tell us what other persons shall not exercise the right of suffrage. Art. II. sec. II says, "Laws .28. "may be passed excluding "from the right of suffrage "all persons who have been "or may convicted of bribery "of larceny, or of any infamous "crime & for depriving every "person who shall make "or become directly or indirectly "interested in any bet or "wager, depending upon "the result of any election "from the right to vote at "such election. And moreover as a punishment for treason deemed the highest crime you have disfranchised .29. the leaders of the late rebellion, thus admitting that there is no severer penalty to be visited on any citizen than disfranchisement. How humiliating! for respectable law abiding women & colored men to be thrust outside the pale of political consideration with traitors, with those convicted of bribery, larceny, infamous crime & with those who bet on elections! How lost to all sense of human moral that .30. "white male citizen" be who publicly violates a wise law, to which he has himself given an intelligent consent. Gentlemen we are ashamed of our company. The Mahomedan forbids a fool a madman or a woman to call the hour for prayers. If it were not for the invidious classification we might hope it was, tenderness rather than contempt [on the part of] that moved the Mahomedan to excuse woman from so severe a .31. duty. But for the ballot which falls like a flake of snow upon the sod we can find no such excuse for New York legislators, Art II. sec III. should be carefully read & considered by the women of the state as it shows the modes of life & surroundings of some of the privileged classes of "white male citizens" who enjoy the liberty of the polls for the purpose of voting says art II. sec III. No person shall be deemed to have gained or lost a .32. residence, by his presence or absence while employed in the service of the United States, nor while engaged in navigating the waters of the State or the United States, or of the High Seas, nor while a student of any seminary of learning; nor while kept at any Alms House or other asylum at public expense, nor while confined at any public prison! What an unspeakable privilege to have that precious jewel the human soul in .33. setting of white manhood, that thus it can pass through the prison the asylum, the Alms House, the muddy waters, of the Erie Canal & come forth undimmed to appear at the ballot-box at the earliest opportunity there to bury its crimes, its poverty, its moral & physical deformities, all beneath the rights, privileges & immunities of a citizen of the [of a citizen] of the republic! .3.[4] Just imagine the motley crew from the ten thousand dens of poverty, & vice, in our large cities Wimping, raving, cringing staggering up to the hills while the loyal mothers of a million soldiers whose bones lie bleaching on every southern plain stand outside sad & silent witnesses of this wholesale desecration of republican institutions. When you say it would degrade woman to go the polls .35. you make a sad confession of your irreligious mode of observing that most sacred right of citizenship. The ballot box in a republican government should be guarded with as much love & care as was the Ark of the Lord among the Children of Israel Here where we have no Heaven anointed Kings & Priests, law must be to us a holy thing & the ballot box the Holy .36. of Holies, for on it depends, the safety & stability of our government. I for one am not willing to be represented by such voters as article II. sec III. welcomes to the polls. I claim to understand the interests of the nation better than yonder pauper in your Alms House; than the unbalanced graduate from your asylum & prison; than the popinjay of twenty one from your seminary .37. of learning, or the traveller on the toe-path of your Erie Canal. Now why is it that the rights of every type of mankind are so sacredly protected while no safeguards are thrown round those of woman. [*Simply because he holds the ballot That is the secret of this safety.*] Even the black man finds greater favour in the eyes of our law makers than the daughters of the state. If he owns real estate to the amount of $250 he may vote, but woman may not; though she [may] own[s] half a .38. township. If he does not vote he is not taxed. By the letter of your constitution he may live in the quiet prueprise of $249 worth of real estate & not be taxed a cent, while you send your tax-gatherer to the poorest widow that owns, a homestead. Lord Coke "says the "supreme power "cannot take from any man "any part of his property without "his consent in person "or by representation. Taxes "are not to laid on the people "Taxation without representation" was the theme for many a hot debate in the parliament of the old world, for many an eloquent era oration in the forests of the new a Century ago. Our Pilgrim Fathers used to say that "taxation without representation is tyranny." that resistance to tyranny is obedience to God, following this logic women in many places refuse to pay taxes.x One thing is certain if the white male will do all the voting he should pay all the taxes. There is no logic so powerful in convincing men of their true interests as a direct appeal to their pockets. .39. (are not women people?) "without their consent. The "very act of taxing those who "are not represented appears "to me to deprive them of "one of their most essential "rights of freemen & if continued "seems to be in effect "an entire disfranchisement "of every civil right, for what "one civil right is worth a "rush after a mans property A "is taking from him "without his consent" But if you claim that woman is virtually represented .40. by the "white male" citizen" I give you the opinion of "James Otis he says there "is no such phrase as "virtual representation "known in law or constitution. "It is altogether "a subtlety, an illusion "wholly unfounded & absurd Said Senator Anthony in the "late debate in the Senate on "this question, It is not a "fair statement of the case "to say that the man represents "the woman, because "it is an assumption on .41. "the part of the man, an "involuntary representation "on the part of the woman "When the American colonies "complained that "they ought not to be taxed "unless they were represented "in the British parliament "it would have been rather "a singular answer to say "that they were represented "by Lord North, or even "the Earl of Chatham. "When South Carolina & "Alabama complain "that they are not represented .42. in Congress, it would be rather a singular answer to say that they were represented by the senators from Massachusetts & New York. They would hardly be satisfied with that kind of representation nor are we satisfied gentlemen with such representation as we have had at your hands. Your one-sided constitutions & statutes prove conclusively how impossible it is for one class to legislate with 43. justice for another. It is enough to fire the soul of any woman with indignation to read your statutes on this second Article of your Constitution; as the panorama of the [loury?] past moves slowly before my eyes, & I behold all the wrong injustice & opposition that has been heaped on woman through the ages & how the tyrant-custom wounds her even in republican America in the 19th century. I .44. feel with Shylock to exclaim, Hath not a woman eyes, hands organs dimensions senses passions fed with the same food hurt with the same weapons subject to the same diseases healed by the same means warmed & cooled by the same summer & winter as a man is. If you prick us do we not bleed; if you tickle us do we not laugh; if you poison us do we not die & if you wrong us shall we not be revenged? Yes! & woman [*Up to pages 44 repeated in another speech*] By your false customs creeds & codes .45. is revenging herself. xYou have closed to her your colleges the profitable & honourable posts of life. You have bounded her sphere & said thus far shalt thou come & no farther. You have shut down the starving millions to a few overcrowded employments, & compelled angels of grace & goodness to sell themselves for bread And now woman revenges herself. Look in your asylums for the deaf the dumb the blind, the idiot, the insane, .46. & there behold the results of this wholesale desecration of the mothers of the race. Go note the streets at the midnight hour & there behold those whom God meant to be Queens in the moral realm of life, giving your sons their first lessons in infamy & vice. Does not woman revenge herself. [I traveled] Going west one month ago I saw five young boys all under twenty five chained together on their way to Auburn prison. As I listened 47 to the story of their young lives, how they had been filched of their daily wages & stimulated to dishonest practices, by that class called fancy women, I blushed for my sex, but remembered that God is just. You cannot wrong the humblest of his children without disturbing the whole social system. As I saw the great iron gates close on those poor boys & thought of the cold hard life within those walls, ah! said I to the friend by my side 48 could we galvanize the women of this state into their right minds, how soon we would change these horrid Bastiles into moral seminary's were all that is true & good & noble in these fallen ones might be nurtured into life. Oh! mothers, is there one of you that would not go to the polls to vote, that if your son was in Auburn prison, he might have books to read, the companionship of the good: the blessed sunshine in his solitude & some tidings of the .49. busy world without. Suppose your son were doomed to hang on the gallows before another day had closed. Go to his lonely cell, see the cold sweat of death already on his brow weigh the agony of that soul, with its sad memories of the past & fearful forebodings of the [future] world to come! In the solitude of that last night broken only by the sound of the hammer & the coarse jibes of men in preparation for the dismal payment .50. of the coming day & tell me would you not vote to save that life, to banish from our land that barbarous institution the gallows. Remember all these wrongs that meet you on every side are subjects of legislation, & you & I have a duty in clearing up the great wilderness of life where so many of our noblest sons & daughters have stumbled & gone down. Is it nothing to the gardener where his rare plants are to grow, ,51, whether [to bloom] bathed in [the] sunshine [& the] dew or [to] [perish] bleached in dampness & shade we may make our homes pure & beautiful, surround our children with elevating & holy influences, but sooner or later they must go forth with the outer world. Has the mother no interest in plucking the thorns from the 10,000 paths were they must tread, yes the nation needs mothers! I am not willing to trust our criminal legislature in the hands ,52, of man alone. Our whole system of punishment, our jails & prisons are a disgrace to the humanity of nineteenth century. I do believe that the influence of woman in all these public departments of life would work the same change she has already made in the literature of the world. When woman began to read & think & write, such men as Swift & Sterne & Fielding went out of fashion. 5 3. I demand the ballot for woman, not only because it is her right, [ms] because the welfare of the State requires it, but from her own pressing necessities. It needs but little observation to see that a disfranchised class is ever a neglected, a degraded class. Look at England in a popula- of 7,000,000, 5,000,000, are disfranchised, hence her land monopoly her established church, her law of primogeniture all upholding, a political religious & social aristocracy .54. grinding the masses to powder. [opposed to the elevation of the masses who] With the ballot they would soon pitch this triple power into the channel & establish a new type of manhood on those Green Islands. John Bright in demanding an extension of suffrage shows that he understands the magic power of the ballot, in transforming mere beasts of burthen into full grown men. Here too disfranchised classes are neglected & degraded. .55. See the negro reduced to slavery in one half the country & made the foot ball of arrogance & assumption in the other. Place him to work beside the Irishman & the Irishman throws down his hoe & walks off. Why? One votes, the other was not. When women first went into our printing offices to set type, the men stopped work & walked off. Why? Did they think the women so superior that they were compelled .56. respectfully to withdraw, & did those who employed the women give them one half the wages they gave the men for the same reason. When you hear men talk of the elevation, the delicacy the superiority of woman, before you decide your social & political status, look at their constitution their statute books & their treatment of women in all the business relations of life. Then you will set the right value on all I meet men every day who say I am fully with you on this question .57. this sentimental trouble. [I heard Mr. Beecher in this house one week ago & listened to all but his closing sentence with great pleasure.] But after showing the necessity of universal suffrage & the importance of the ballot for the elevation of woman, with a look of pious resignation they generally dissent by saying that they do not expect to see what they advocated in their own day. It is remarkable says Dean Swift with what [It is remarkable says "Dean Swift "with what "Christian fortitude some "people can bear other folks "sufferings"] .58. [patience & fortitude men can bear the wrongs of others.] Now if Mr. Beecher were a feeble looking man & had fainted at the close of his effort on that occasion I should have had no reason for discouragement, but judging from his appearance he will live at least a quarter of a century & I should be sorry if we were not to see the republican idea vindicated in all that time. Certain classes of women are voting all .59. over the world now & the women of New York have decided to vote this very year. Ohio, Maine & Kansas are about to strike the word "male" from their constitutions, & I see no reason why we should not do the same thing. N.Y. has taken the lead in her legislation for no man for the last twenty years & will not fall behind now. This demand for the ballot is not the idiosyncracy of a few discontented 60 minds, but an universal movement. Women are everywhere throwing off the lethargy of ages, & are already due upon your heels in the whole realm of thought in art science literature & government! With man woman shared the dangers of the May Flower on a stormy sea, the dreary landing on Plymouth Rock, the signs of a New England winter & the privations of a seven years .61. war. With him she bravely threw off the British yoke, felt every pulsation of his heart for freedom & inspired the glowing eloquence that maintained it through the century. With you we have just gone through the agony & death the resurrection & triumph of another revolution doing all in our power to mitigate its horrors & gild its glories, & now think you we have no souls .62. to fire, no brains to weigh your arguments, that after education such as this we can stand silent witnesses & see you sell again our birthright to equality. [*Dame Partington.*] From recent discussions in the Senate & our leading Journals on the sphere of woman, it is evident that our statesmen & philosophers base their theories of the social & political life of the sexes on the false idea of the old common law, that Husband & wife .63. are one & that one the Husband. Our spiritual intuitions realm & common sense alike teach us that the true interests of man & woman must in the nature of things be identical & that there can be no real antagonism in sex. The popular law, faith, & philosophy bad as they are on this question, rest after all on the true idea, the oneness of the sexes, but our mistake has been we have failed to recognize the .64. equality of that oneness This is the new idea of our day & generation, not that woman shall become man, or take from him any right or honor or power but that in her elevation & perfection he shall be made whole, crowned with new honor, power & glory such as he could never realize in the degradation of one half the race. We have tried the oneness of subordination & found it productive of uniform & settled discontent .65. in the individual & danger to the state. For as the nation is based on the family discord in this primal relation breeds vice, crime, & imbecility in every department of life You cannot place two human beings of sound mind & body side by side & subordinate the hopes, the fears, the will the conscience of one to the other without perverting the natural feelings & powers of both parties. The arrogance & assumption of man, through his false customs, creeds, .66. & codes forcing a condition of inferiority & dependence on woman is the one rock on which conjugal happiness has been uniformly wrecked. In proposing an experiment in social & political life on the basis of the equality of the sexes what honest mind can claim, that our past experiment has been so complete a success, that all change is to be feared & ignored. It is as absurd to say that man is always the head of the family .67. as to say that the nominal ruler of a nation moves the machinery of government. Many a woman makes as grave a blunder in choosing a Husband as we made in choosing a President & there may be the same necessity in overriding authority in both cases. The command "Wives obey your Husbands" is no more binding than "Honor the King." In the face of one our revolutionary Fathers, defied King George .68. pitched his tea chests into the sea & declared all men equal. In the face of the other the daughters of the Pilgrims repudiate the authority of sex. Try our creeds & codes in the crucible of reason & demand equality in the church, the state, & the home. Fear not, oh! ye of little faith. Woman is held in her sphere by the same immutable law that keeps the fish in the sea, the fowls in the air & the planets in their prescribed orbits. .69. & after these false customs are all swept away the true woman will rise up in her nature strength & beauty & be woman still. [*Fish! Fire! Bullet. After men assign the home to woman as her sphere one would really think that after taking the universe to themselves, they might at least let woman be heard within four walls.*] The puny legislation of a darker age may cripple & deform, the best gifts of Heaven to man, but it cannot silence the universal protest of the human soul against all arbitrary authority against all inequalities of rank & condition. In this state are over .76. 50.000 drunkards wives who with Professor Taylor Lewis of Union College believe their Husbands their divinely appointed heads, hence they love, honour, & obey them, stamp on the brow of innocence their depraved & degraded natures, propagate their vices, fill our asylums, jails & prisons with misery disease & death perpetuating an amount of poverty & crime, before which the calmest thinkers stand hopeless & appalled. .71. & to all this the church says Amen! & teaches woman that it is her religious duty to look up to man as her head & refuses to perform the marriage ceremony unless woman will pledge herself to obey. The mass of drunkards wives take kicks, cuffs rags & starvation, because dealt out by their divinely appointed heads. They stand silent by & see their trembling children scourged .72. & tormented, because their divinely appointed heads administer the curse & lash. In view of such wrongs & abominations Prof. Lewis talks of the purity of the family, the sacredness of home, the refinement of woman as if he had never seen but the best phase of social life & as if he did not know that even there union & happiness [is] are the exception rather than the rule. Now to my .73. mind the 50.000 drunkards wives owe obedience to a higher law than the fist of any earthly head. It is their duty to purify themselves, to bless their children, to make home sacred, by taking the reins of government in their own hands & in declaring moral power above brute force trample the authority of sex beneath their feet. It is their duty to impeach their divinely constituted heads & hand .74. them over to the authority of the state. When in the progress of events we shall find by the side of every woman on this footstool a wise stalwart man ever loyal to her best interests, a sure support until she reach the other side of Jordan it will be time enough to teach woman that her head is ever on male shoulders, but so long as the mass of women are compelled to stay & .75. support themselves, all this talk about divinely constituted heads is most pernicious twaddle. Now creeds & codes are not made for those who are a law unto themselves, but for the masses who need a faith & a law. To those men & women who are loyal to each other & the best interests of society the metaphysics of this question matters but little; but when ignorant classes can blend law & gospel 76 for the subjugation of the weak to the strong, of the slave to the master, of woman to man, it becomes the Teacher of ethics to weigh well his words before giving his influence on the side of oppression. They who taught the slave submission to a Southern tyrant were false alike to God & man. They who teach the mother of the race that between her conscience & her God stands a vicegerent on the earth her rightful 77 ruler & representative are guilty of dethroning the Heaven appointed Queen in the moral realm of life. It is a mild & guilty fantasy that in this transition period of our civilization man can represent woman anywhere, as the throne of grace or at the ballot box. We are counterparts of one another equal mind beings in the universe of mind, made in the image of God made & female .78. & when we shall be reunited under better conditions, earth will become a Paradise of Peace & the durk clouds that now brint over all our efforts at readjustment will be rolled back by the rising sun of a higher civilization. Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.