Elizabeth Cady Stanton SPEECHES & WRITINGS FILE Speech, Washington, D. C. 1884 Manuscript of address by Elizabeth Cady Stanton at Washington, D.C. 1884. Manuscript of speech delivered by Elizabeth Cady Stanton as President of the National Women's Suffrage Association Washington, D.C. 1884. Mrs. Stanton's Opening Speech pp.37 Words 2220 For eleven consecutive years, women citizens of the United States have assembled here in Washington, to ask that the principles of our government be carried to their logical results, making women equal with men before the law. And we have asked this not only 2. for the protection of one half the people of this nation, but for the safety of the nation itself, for every violation of a great principle is sure to be followed by its penalty. Our Fathers declared the equality of the human family, but by their laws enslaved the African race & all women. But the experiment of limiting 3. universal principles to a favored few is ever fraught with danger: liberty for white men only convulsed the nation for half a century; & mid the thundering cannon of a civil war the requiem of slavery was chanted round the world. Out of this baptism of blood statesmen with clearer moral vision .4. saw for a time a new significance, in the words justice liberty & equality.-& in the 13th 14th & 15th amendments, declared the status of an American citizen. & the rights, privileges, & immunities involved in citizenship. When learned Judges, Lawyers, & philosophers, gave it as their opinion that woman, too was enfranchised by .5. by the 14th amendment. With new hope, [woman] we pondered the constitution of [her] our country, & felt that at last it was indeed the Magna Carta of [his] our rights- With kindling interest, we listened to the eloquence of leading statesmen, in their plans to liberty & words cannot describe the joy that filled our hearts, to realize at last the hopes so long .6. deferred was happening such as they only who have belonged to a disfranchised class can understand To make assurance doubly sure women in many states tested their new found rights. At college dorms, in the courts, at the Ballot Box. Some asked the right to practice law, & were 7. denied; some voted & were arrested; some tested their civil & political rights in the Supreme Court of the United States, & thousands petitioned Congress to declare that women were enfranchised under the 14th amendment, but they prayed, & petitioned in vain. Through every great principle involved in the 8 amendments, & all the thrilling debates of the republican party since the war, have been frighted with new rules of freedom for [women] all citizens yet no sooner have the pleading cries, & [glowing] periods of these statesmen died away than woman learned that they had no significance for her. The 9 Supreme Court of the United States, & Congress in their decisions & arguments on the constitutional rights of woman, have alike stultified themselves, and falsified both the letter & spirit of these amendments, in making them a protection for one class of citizens, & a new denial of political freedom 10 for another. We prophesied on this platform years ago, that this violation of principle & the spirit of the amendments, the illogical decisions in our courts, the fruitless arguments in Congress on the constitutional rights of woman must blunt the moral sense of the whole nation, & ultimately imperil the liberties of the colored voters of the south; and our prophecies are fulfilled. 11 President Hayes in his last message complaining that the spirit of these amendments have not been faithfully fulfilled by the southern states: & for the best of reasons, they have never been fulfilled by those who first [pressed] them on the nation's heart. The south in the reorganizing of its political parties, is simply adopting the tactics of northern politicians. Northern carpet baggers so called, "bull dozers" the .12. the colored men into voting the republican ticket in 1872. & southern politicians "bulldozed" the same class into voting the democratic ticket in 1878. In neither case, have the purity of the ballot box, nor the sacredness of the elections, nor the best interests of the colored voters themselves been protected. It is one thing to utter high sounding principles, & quite another .13. to carry them into practice. I would recommend that the large appropriations made annually to the department of justice, should hereafter be applied to the education of our rulers, into a knowledge of what justice is. "President Hayes says in his message that all over our wide territory in the near future. the name & character of citizen of the United States shall mean .14. one, & the same thing & carry with them unchallenged security, & respect" And yet where do we see any preparation among our rulers, for the security, & respect of the rights of women even in the District of Columbia, under the very shadow of the Capitol? Here in 1871 the first time the District had a republican form of government: a legislative assembly. 72 women marched to the city Hall, & asked to register their [??mes] names .15. as qualified voters. This experiment of government in the District, was made to such republican power, by a solid colored vote. Intelligent American women, were crowded aside, by burly African men, who could neither read, nor write. Yet President Grant, who maintained the rights of freedman in Louisiana, at the point of the beyonet, never gave a thought to the disfranchised women of the District. And yet there .16. were 7000 more women, than men in the District, at that time: industrious, tax paying, law abiding citizens, who neither kept, not haunted, the dram shops, nor gambling saloons. A large part of the taxes paid for the support of the Police force, criminal & civil courts station houses, alms house[s], & jails etc come out of the hard earnings of woman, & yet if a little vagrant homeless, hungry girl steals, a loaf of .17. bread, a doll, or a pocket handkerchief the jail, filled with hardened criminals, is the only place the District provides for her reformation. While a reform school for boys, received an appropriation of 100,000, & $35,000 a year for its support. And yet in view of all these outrages on women, & girls, President Hayes in his recent message gives them no thought. Though he makes .18. [though he makes] a truly paternal review of the interests of this [great] republic great & small, from the army the navy & our foreign relations: to the timber on the western mountains, the switches of the Washington railroad, & the education of the 50 little Indians in Hampton Virginia;- from the Postal service, the Paris exposition, the abundant harvests: and the possible bulldozing of some colored man in .19. & 20 the various southern districts, to cruelty to live animals, & the crowded condition of the mummies, & dead ducks in the Smithsonian Institute, & yet he forgets to mention 20,000 000 women citizens, robbed of their social, civil, & political rights. .21. Hon James G. Blaine in his speech, indicting the southern democracy, enlarges on the injustice of their treatment of colored voters, & makes a strong point on that section of the 14th Amendment, which says if colored male citizens, are not permitted to vote, neither shall they be counted in the basis of representation. The Senator considers it the height of injustice, to count citizens in the .22. basis of representation when not allowed to vote, & thus compell them to swell the number of their tyrants He says [*solid*] The colored citizen is thus most unhappily situated; his right of suffrage is but a hollow mockery: it holds to his ear the word of promise but breaks it always to his hope, and he ends only in being made the unwilling instrument of increasing the political strength of that party from which he received ever- tightening fetters when he was a slave and contemptuous refusal of civil rights since he was made free. He resembles, indeed, those unhappy captives in the East, who, deprived of their birthright, are compelled to yield their strength to the upbuilding of the monarch from whose tyrannies they have most to fear, and to fight against the power from which alone deliverance might be expected. The franchise intended for the shield and defense of the negro has been turned against him and against his friends, and has vastly increased the power of those from whom he has nothing to hope and everything to dread. But we need not go to Louisiana, or South Carolina to find such injustice. The women of Maine, New England, the western, southern, & middle states .23. are all counted in the basis of representation, compelled to send hundreds of men to Congress, who care nothing for their rights, & interests who wholly misrepresent them, & yet not one of all these, [have] has the right to vote. The Senator further says, "The war, with all its costly sacrifices, was fought in vain, unless equal rights for all classes, be established in all the states of the .24. union" I wonder as he uttered that sentiment, if the faintest shadow of a woman fell aslant his brain! It is a sad reflection, that all these glowing sentiments of justice, liberty, & equality, that have thrilled the hearts of the American people, for the last quarter of a century, should now have no meaning, to be but hollow mockery, naught but the stock 25 in trade of clap trap politicians. We on this platform agree with Mr Blaine, "that the war with all its costly sacrifices was fought in vain, unless equal rights for all classes", be established in all the states of the union", North as well as South. And to this end, I would recommend the Senator to begin his work in Maine. There is a large class of citizens, intelligent, refined, virtuous, .26. whose moral power we need to have represented in the government, not only for the nation's safety, but for the more complete development of that class itself, in political religious & social ideas. As a question of civilization, the enfranchisement of woman is of more vital importance, than that of all other classes put together, as her enlighted influence would do for politics, & religion [what] .27. what her higher education, in the domestic arts have already done for social life. There is more buried wealth in the minds of the women in Maine, than in all the lumber, & fisheries that state can boast. And yet this large class representing so much intelligence, wealth, & latent power, claims no political consideration from [their] its great Senator. .28. In less than sixty days the 45th Congress will have passed into history. What shall we find on its pages concerning women? That to forty thousand citizens of the U.S. filling every department of art science & literature, teachers, ministers, lawyers, "the cream of the philanthropy & intelligence of the country" as senators said upon the floor, in presenting to this Congress the petitions, asking for a constitutional [*29*] amendment protecting women citizens in their right to vote: -- that the Senate Committee on Privileges & Elections gave three minutes to these petitioners, to the final decision of this vital question; three minutes! at the close of the session, & at the close of the day, in the twilight-hour, when even bats, & owl begin to see clearly & to roam. [*30*] forth in their nightly haunts, & after this three minutes! of consideration two of which might have been consumed in the roll call & the third in awaiting the arrival of the tardy chairman, this committee of the highest legislative body in the land, voted down the woman suffrage resolution 6 to 3. [*31*] They who voted in favor of the 16 amendment are Senators, Hoar, Mass, Mitchell Oregon Cameron Wis. Nays Wadleigh N.H. McMillan Minn. Saulsbury Del. Merriman S.C. Hill Ga. Ingalls Kansas. [*32*] In the other House the Judiciary committee were promptly in their seats. Five members of this committee, Lapham of N.Y., Lynde of Wis. Frye of Me. Butler Mass Conger Mich. eminent Judges, able Lawyers & Honored Statesmen, rose early in the morning. Feb 5th 1878 to vote Yes in the constitutional amendment for women. Five more rose early in the morning, of the same day, Knott, Ky. [*33*] Hartridge Ga. Stenger Penn. McMahon Ohio, Culberson Texas to vote no in the rights of woman. The eleventh Hour Gentleman, Harris of Virginia for some reason, did not rise that eventful morning , & there our question his, waiting for him to get up & make his toilet. In both Houses therefore our question is pending. In the Senate [*34*] upon the calendar wiating for some brave man to call it up, & force it before that body for debate & action. In the House our question rests in that tie vote. The days are rapidly passing & what shall be the record in this question, of the statesmen of the 45th Congress. In each of these Houses [*35 *] are men of sterling integrity, who have served the men of their states faithfully & well. Yet these men have deserted them, & turned their allegiance to new heroes lifted out of obscurity by the last election. To these men elected to retirement we appeal. You are writing many of you the lat chapter of your public career. What page shall the mothers, & daughters of this [* 36*] republic find therein to which they can proudly point, & say "This was for us". As the years roll on, & bring to us victory at last, the men who have helped to fight our battle will be proud of their old time loyalty to woman, & their courage in facing a fake, & wicked public sentiment, to or amend their laws, & constitutions as to make all citizens equal [*37*] the law. The air of Washington is heavy with the wrecked hopes, of disappointed statesmen, of those who led by personal ambition, & party allegiance, have sacrificed principle to expediency. They only hold a place in the hearts of the people; they only are immortal, who live not for themselves alone, but for all humanity. Transcribed and reviewed by volunteers participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.