Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/450

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424
History of Woman Suffrage.

The President announced that so great was the interest evinced, that a third day's session had been arranged.

Third Day—Morning.—Among the large and fashionable audience present were the Governor of Wyoming Territory, many Senators and Members of Congress, as well as other distinguished persons. Mrs. Griffing read an interesting letter from Mrs. Frances D. Gage:

More than one-half of the "people," are to-day without the right of franchise, and can exert no power in the government, and have no voice in electing its representatives. They have no voice in making the laws under which they live. If they commit offenses they are punished the same as voters. If they have property it is taxed precisely the same and for the same purposes as is the property of the voter. Government money and lands and revenues are appropriated for schools, colleges, and institutions of learning by the voters for their own use, while the non-voters are debarred all rights and privileges in the same. And it may be said that the disfranchised "have no rights that the enfranchised are bound to respect." ... A government that fails to execute its own laws and mocks at its own enactments, can not be respected by its people. We therefore demand that our representatives "shall guarantee to every State in this Union a republican form of government;" that the right of suffrage be guaranteed to all persons of sound mind and adult years, without regard to race, color, or sex.
Respectfully, Frances D. Gage.

Rev. Samuel J. May said this movement was the most radical one ever proposed to the civilized world. America had suffered severely because it had violated the rights of 4,000,000 people. If the rights of 15,000,000 were much longer violated, severer suffering still would be induced.

Charlotte B. Wilbour said: In demanding suffrage for women we are not making any innovation on political principles, but only attempting to restore the broken connection between practice and profession. A steady, constant, palpable ignoring of the application of great truths, like the claim of woman's rights, and the equality of all before the law, begets a reckless manner of assertion, an illogical application of premises, and thence a sort of organic dishonesty of mind which is carried into practice almost unconsciously. Every subject of a government who has not a voice in its conduct is openly degraded, and must be something more or less than human not to show it in the conduct of his life. We demand the ballot for women in the name of that very domesticity which is urged against it, of that home whose peace has always been more marred by passive servility and masculine authority than by any over-assertion of individuality, on the part of the so-called partner.

Speeches were also made by Mr. Hinton of Washington, and Miss Phoebe Couzins.

Miss Anthony called upon Senator Sherman, of Ohio, to address the meeting, who expressed himself highly pleased with the convention to which he only came as a listener. The following letters were then read:

Syracuse, January 18, 1870.
Mrs. M. J. GageM. J. GageDear Friend: I doubt not this meeting will urge emphatically upon Congress the duty of striking the word "male" from the suffrage bill for the District of Columbia. It is a gross injustice, a shame that such a term should be in any legal paper defining citizenship in any civilized State, especially a shame that it should stand in a bill touching suffrage, in what ought to be the model District, the choice sample ground of wise and just government for the model republic. Let an indignant protest and admonition go up in regard to this matter from your convention, that Congress shall not dare to dis-