Mr. Sargent.—No, it is qualified further, as the Senator will see if the whole section is read.
Mr. Edmunds.—Not as to the first election.[Pg 562]
Mr. Sargent.—I think myself the section is very inartificially drawn.
Mr. Edmunds.—I do not know but that it is very artificially drawn, if it is intended to include the Indian and the Canadian.
Mr. Sargent.—To answer the Senator from Vermont I ask that the final proviso of the section be read, which qualifies the part he referred to.
The Chief Clerk read as follows:
Provided, further, That the right of suffrage and of holding office shall be exercised only by citizens of the United States, and those who shall have declared on oath, before a competent court of record, their intention to become such, and shall have taken an oath to support the Constitution and Government of the United States.
Mr. Edmunds.—That does not relate to the first election.
Mr. Sargent.—That objection applies to the details of the bill; it does not apply to my amendment.
Mr. Edmunds.—That is true.
The Presiding Officer.—The Senator from Wisconsin is entitled to the floor.
Mr. Carpenter.—Mr. President, as the yeas and nays have been ordered on this question and I shall vote for this amendment, without going into any argument of the general question, I desire to say one word as to the reason why I shall so vote.
I believe it is not one of woman's rights, but it is one of man's that the franchise should be extended to women. I believe there is no situation in which man can be placed where the aid of woman is not beneficial; that in all the relations of life, in all the occupations and all the duties of life it was the intention of God in creating the race that woman should be the helpmate of man, everywhere and in all circumstances and occupations. Look through your country, look in your railroad cars, look in your post-offices, look in your dry-goods stores, and there you see everything decent and orderly and quiet. Why? Because women go there. The only place in this country from which they are excluded by law is the voting place, and in many of our large cities those places are the most disgraceful that can be found under our institutions. Now, I believe if the elections were open to ladies as well as gentlemen, to women as well as men, there would be as much order, quiet, and decency at the voting places as there is in a railroad car, and for precisely the same reason. If our wives and mothers and daughters were going to these election places there would be order and decency there, or there would be a row once for all that would make them decent. I have more confidence in the influence of women at the elections in New York City to reform the condition of things that exists there and bring about decency and order at the elections and the prevention of violence and fraud, than I have in all the Army and Navy that the President can send there under the election bill which was put through here by my honorable friend from New York (Mr. Conkling).
Without enlarging on the subject, I shall vote for this amendment, not because this Territory is located, as some Senator has said, near Minnesota. I would vote for female suffrage in the District of Columbia to-morrow; I would vote for it in the State of Wisconsin; I would vote for it anywhere and everywhere if I had an opportunity to do so.
Mr. Morrill, of Maine.—Mr. President, I shall vote against this amend-