# History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 5

Contents
CHAPTER V.
THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION OF 1886.
The Eighteenth national convention met in the Church of Our Father, Washington, D. C, Feb. 17-19, 1886, presided over by Miss Susan B. Anthony, vice-president-at-large, with twentythree States represented. In her opening address Miss Anthony paid an eloquent tribute to her old friend and co-laborer, their absent president, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton; sketched the history of the movement for the past thirty-six years, and described the first suffrage meeting ever held in Washington. This hadbeen conducted by Ernestine L. Rose and herself in 1854, and the audience consisted of twenty or thirty persons gathered in an upper room of a private house. To-night she faced a thousand interested listeners.
The first address was given by Mrs. Sarah M. Perkins (O.), Are Women Citizens? "While suffrage will not revolutionize the world," she said, "the door of the millennium will have a little child's hand on the latch when the mothers of the nation have equal power with its fathers."
In the evening Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby addressed the audience on The Relation of the Woman Suffrage Movement to the Labor Question. She began by saying, "All revolutions of thought must be allied to practical ends." After sketching those already attained by women, she continued:
Miss Ada C. Sweet, who for a number of years occupied the unique position of pension agent in Chicago, supplemented Mrs. Colby's remarks by urging all women to work for the ballot in order to come to the rescue of their fellow-women in the hospitals, asylums and other institutions. She emphasized her remarks by recounting instances of personal knowledge. The Rev. Rush R. Shippen, pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church of Washington, a consistent advocate of equal suffrage, spoke on woman's advance in every department of the world's work, on the-evolution of that work itself and the necessity for a continued progress in conditions.
Mrs. May Wright Sewall presented a comprehensive report of the year's work of the executive committee. The Edmunds Bill had been a special point of attack because of its arbitrary disfranchisement of Utah women, and Mrs. Zerelda G. Wallace (Ind.) had written a personal plea against it to every member of the House. At the close of this report a vote on woman suffrage was called for. The audience voted unanimously in favor, except one man whose "no" called forth much laughter. Miss Anthony said she sympathized with him, as she had been laughed at all her life.
Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett (Ky.), whose specialty was the Bible argument for woman's equality, said in the course of her remarks: "I am filled with shame and sorrow that from listening to men, instead of studying the Bible for myself, I did once think that the God who said He came into the world to preach glad ​tidings to the poor, to break every yoke and to set the prisoners free, had really come to rivet the chains with which sin had bound the women, and to forge a gag for them more cruel and silencing than that put into their mouths by heathen men; for in many heathen nations women were once selected to preside at their most sacred altars."
Miss Mary F. Eastman (Mass), in an impressive address, said:
Men tell us that they speak for us. There is no companionship of women as equals permitted in the State. A man can not represent a woman's opinion. It was in inspiration that magnificent Declaration of Independence was framed. Men builded better than they knew; they were at the highest perception of principles; but after declaring this magnificent principle they went back on it. ....
Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.) spoke strongly on A Case in Point. Mrs. Elizabeth Avery Meriwether, of St. Louis, devoted her remarks chiefly to a caustic criticism of Senator George G. Vest, who had recently declared himself uncompromisingly opposed to woman suffrage. He was made the target of a number of spicy remarks, and some of the newspaper correspondents insisted that the presence of the suffrage convention in the city was responsible for the Senator's severe illness, which followed immediately afterwards. Mrs. Meriwether's son, Lee, paid a handsome tribute to "strong-minded mothers."
Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck (Mass.) addressed the convention on The Basis of Our Claim, the right of every individual to make his personality felt in the Government. Madame Clara ​Neymann (N. Y.) gave a scholarly paper on German and American Independence Contrasted, in which she said:
Oh, shame upon the short-sightedness, the delinquency of American statesmen, who will quietly look on and suffer such an injustice to exist! Nowhere in the world is woman so highly respected as in free America, and nowhere does she feel so keenly and deeply her degradation. The vote—you know it full well—is the insignia of power, of influence, of position. And from this position the American woman is debarred.
Do you wonder at the low estimate of American politics? The exclusion of women means the exclusion of your best men. Not before the husband can take his wife, the brother his sister, the father his daughter to the primary meeting, to the political assembly and to the polls, will he himself become interested and fulfil his duty as a voter and a citizen. ....
"Look at the homes of the wealthy, or even of the large middle-class," it is often said; "what shallowness and pretense among the women; how they shrink from the responsibility of motherhood; how they spend their days in idle gossip, in hollow amusements; how they waste their hours in frivolities; see what extravagant, unhallowed lives they lead." Sad and true enough! For there is no aristocracy so pernicious as a moneyed aristocracy—no woman so dangerous as she who has privileges and no corresponding duties. There is nothing so wasteful as wasted energies, nothing so harmful as powers wrongfully directed; and the gifts and powers of our wealthy, well-to-do women are wrongfully directed. They are employed in the interest of vanity, of worldly ambition, of public display, of sense gratification.
From whence arises this misdirected ambition? The harm is caused by the false standard man holds up to woman. If men would no longer admire the shallowness of such women they would undoubtedly aim higher. On the one side man subordinates himself to woman's whims and caprices, and on the other side she is . made conscious all the time of her dependence and subordination in all that pertains to the higher interests of life; and while he makes a slave of her, she revenges herself and makes a slave of him. See how these women hold men down to their own low level; for women who have no higher aspirations than their own immediate pleasure ​will induce men to do the same. There is an even-handed justice that rules this world. For every wrong society permits to exist, society must suffer. Look what fools men are made by foolish women—women who are brought up with the idea that they must be ornamental, a beautiful toy for man to play with. See how they turn around and make a toy of him, an instrument to play upon at their leisure.
What we ask in place of all this indulgence is simple justice, a recognition of woman's higher endowment. In giving her larger duties to perform, nobler aims to accomplish—in making her a responsible human being—you not only will benefit her, but will regenerate the manhood of America. ....
Much indignation was expressed during the convention over the recent action of Gov. Gilbert A. Pierce, of the Territory of Dakota. The Legislature, composed of residents, the previous year passed a bill conferring Full Suffrage on women, which was vetoed by the Governor, an outsider appointed a short time before by President Chester A. Arthur. With a stroke of the pen he prevented the enfranchisement of 50,000 women.
Hundreds were turned away at the last evening session and there was scarcely standing room within the church. A witty and vivacious speech by Mrs. Helen M. Gougar (Ind.) was the first number on the program. Mrs. Julia B. Nelson (Minn.) followed in an original dialect poem, Hans Dunderkopf's Views of Equality. Mrs. Sewall showed the Absurdity of the American Woman's Disfranchisement:t:
Much has been said about the need of the ballot to protect the industrial interests of men, but is it not as ungallant as it is illogical ​that they should have the ballot for their protection while women, pressed by the same necessities, should be denied it?
An interesting feature of these national conventions was the State reports, which contained not only valuable specific information, but often felicitous little arguments quite equal to those of the more formal addresses. Such reports were received in 1886 from thirty different States. A large number of interesting letters also were read, among them one from George W. Childs, inclosing check; John W. Hutchinson, Belva A. Lockwood, the Hon. J. A. Pickler, Madame Demorest, Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Lucinda B. Chandler, the Rev. Olympia Brown, Mary E. Haggart, Armenia S. White, Emma C. Bascom, Almeda B. Gray and many others.
A letter from Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton urged that the question of woman suffrage should now be carried into the churches and church conventions for their approval, and that more enlightened teaching from the pulpit in regard to women should be insisted upon. The letter was accompanied by a resolution to this effect, both expressed in very strong language. They were read first in executive session. The following extracts are taken from the stenographic report of the meeting:
Mrs. Perkins (O.): I think we ought to pay due consideration and respect to our beloved president. I have no objection to sending missionaries to the churches asking them to pay attention to woman suffrage; but I do not think the churches are our greatest enemies. They might have been so in Mrs. Stanton's early days, but to-day they are our best helpers. If it were not for their cooperation I could not get a hearing before the public. And now that they are coming to meet us half way, do not throw stones at them. I hope that resolution, as worded, will not go into the convention.
Mrs. Meriwether (Mo.): I think the resolution could be amended so as to offend no one. The ministers falsely construe the Scriptures. We can overwhelm them with arguments for woman suffrage—with Biblical arguments. We can hurl them like shot and shell. Herbert Spencer once wrote an article on the different biases which distort the human mind, and among the first he reckoned the theological bias. In Christ's time and in the early Christian days there was no liberty, every one was under the despotism of the Roman Czsars, but women were on an equality with men, and the religion that Christ taught included women equally with men. He made none of the invidious distinctions which the churches make to-day.
Mrs. Shattuck (Mass.): We did not pass the resolution of last year, so it could not have harmed anybody. But I protest against this fling at masculine interpretation of the Scriptures.
Mrs. Minor (Mo.): I object to the whole thing—resolution and letter both. I believe in confining ourselves to woman suffrage.
Mrs. Colby (Neb.): I was on that committee of resolutions last year and wrote the modified one which was presented, and I am willing to stand by it. I have not found that it hurts the work, save with a few who do not know what the resolution was, or what was said about it. The discussion was reported word for word in the Woman's Tribune and I think no one who read it would say that it was irreligious or lacked respect for the teachings of Christ. I believe we must say something in the line of Mrs. Stanton's idea. She makes no fling at the church. She wants us to treat the Church as we have the State—viz., negotiate for more favorable action. We°have this fact to deal with—that in no high orthodox body have women been accorded any privileges.
Edward M. Davis (Penn.): I think we have never had a resolution offered here so important as this. We have never had a measure brought forward which would produce better results. I agree entirely with Mrs. Stanton on this thing, that the church is the greatest barrier to woman's progress. We do not want to proclaim ourselves an irreligious or a religious people. This question of religion does not touch us either way. We are neutral.
​Mapdame Neymann (N. Y.): Because the clergy has been onesided, we do not want to be one-sided. I know of no one for whom I have a greater admiration than for Mrs. Stanton. Her resolution antagonizes no one.
Mrs. Brooks (Neb.): Let us do this work in such a way that it will not arouse the opposition of the most bigoted clergyman. All this discussion only shows that the old superstitions have got to be banished.
Mrs. Snow (Me.): Mrs. Stanton wishes to convert the clergy.
Mrs. Dunbar (Md.): I don't want the resolution referred back to the committee, out of respect to Mrs. Stanton and the manner in which she has been treated by the clergy. I do not want to lose the wording of the original resolution, and therefore move that it be taken up here.
Mrs. Gougar: I think it is quite enough to undertake to change the National Constitution without undertaking to change the Bible. I heartily agree with Mrs. Stanton in her idea of sending delegates to church councils and convocations, but I do not sanction this resolution which starts out—"The greatest barrier to woman's emancipation is found in the superstitions of the church." That is enough in itself to turn the entire church, Catholic and Protestant, against us.
Mrs. Nelson (Minn.): The resolution is directed against the superstitions of the church and not against the church, but I think it would be taken as against the church.
Miss Anthony (N. Y.): As the resolution contains the essence of the letter, I move that the whole subject go to the Plan of Work Committee.
The meeting adjourned without action, and on Friday morning the same subject was resumed. A motion to table Mrs. Stanton's resolution was lost. Miss Anthony then moved that both letter and resolution be placed in her hands, as the representative of the president of the association, to be read in open convention without indorsement. "I do not want any one to say that we young folks strangle Mrs. Stanton's thought."
The Rev. Dr. Mcurdy (D. C.): I do not intend to oppose or favor the motion, but as a clergyman and a High Church Episcopalian, I can not see any particular objections to Mrs. Stanton's letter. The Scriptures must be interpreted naturally. Whenever Paul's remarks are brought up I explain them in the light of this nineteenth century as contrasted with the first.
The resolution was brought up later in open convention and the final vote resulted in 32 ayes and 24 noes. This was not at that time a delegate body, but usually only those voted who were especially connected with the work of the association. Before the present convention adjourned a basis of delegate representa​tion was adopted, and provision made that hereafter only regularly accredited delegates should be entitled to vote.
The resolution calling upon Congress to take the necessary measures to secure the ballot for women through an amendment to the Federal Constitution, was vigorously opposed by the Southern delegates as contrary to States' Rights, but was finally adopted. There was some discussion also on the resolution which condemned the disfranchising of Gentile as well as Mormon women, but which approved the action of Congress in making disfranchisement a punishment for the crime of polygamy. A difference of opinion was shown in regard to the latter clause. This closed the convention.
As a favorable Senate report was pending, no hearing was held before that committee.
The House Judiciary Committee granted a hearing on the morning of February 20. The speakers, as usual, were introduced to the chairman of the committee by Miss Anthony. The first of these, Mrs. Virginia L. Minor, had attempted to vote in St. Louis, been refused permission, carried her case to the Supreme Court and received an adverse decision. Miss Anthony said in reference to this decision: "Chief Justice Waite declared the United States had no voters. The Dred Scott Decision was that the negro, not being a voter, was not a citizen. The Supreme Court decided that women, although citizens, were not protected in the rights of citizenship by the Fourteenth Amendment." Mrs. Minor said in part:
The Supreme Court has half done the work. When my case came up, and I asked them that the same law should protect me as protected the negro, the court said, "When the State gives you the right to vote, we will perpetuate it; the United States has no voters.' I want to ask you one question. If there are no United States voters, ​what right has the U. S. Court to go into the State of New York, arrest Susan B. Anthony and condemn her under Federal Law?
Another decision of the Supreme Court said in relation to the Fourteenth Amendment, that the negro, because of citizenship, was made a voter in every State of the Union. The court went on to say that it had a broader significance, that it included the Chinese or any nationality that should become citizens. That court has said we are citizens. If the Chinese would have the right to vote if they were citizens, have not we the right to vote because of citizenship?
Mrs. Julia B. Nelson (Minn.), who had been for many years teaching the freed negroes of the South, said:
Mrs. Meriwether pointed out the helplessness of mothers to obtain legal protection for themselves and their children, or to influence the action of municipal bodies, without the suffrage. Miss Eastman said in the course of her address:
Mrs. Clay Bennett based her argument largely on the authority of the Scriptures. Mrs. Gougar said:
Mrs. Colby thus described to the committee the recent vote in Nebraska on a woman suffrage amendment:
Miss Anthony related the unsuccessful efforts of Mrs. Caroline E. Merrick and other ladies of Louisiana to have women placed on the school boards of that State, due wholly to their disfranchisement. In a forcible speech Mrs. Sewall declared:
The committee were so interested in the address of Madame Neymann that the time of the hearing was extended in order that she might finish it. She said in part:
In a free country the national life stands in direct relation to the home life, the public life reacts upon the family, and the family furnishes the material for the State. The lives and the characters of our children are influenced by the manners and methods of our Government, and to say that mothers have no right to be concerned in the politics of the country is simply saying that the life and character of our children are of no concern to us.
The citizen's liberty instead of being sacrificed by society has to be defended by society. Who defends woman's individuality in our modern State? Universal suffrage is the only guarantee against despotism. Every man who believes in the subjection of woman will play the despot whenever you give him an opportunity.
On May 6, 1886, the committee report, made by the Hon. John W. Stewart (Vt.), stated that the resolution was laid on the table. The following minority report was submitted:
With us a portion of the adult population have assumed to exercise the right, admitted to exist somewhere, of governing, and have forced another portion into the position of the governed. That this assumption is Just and wise is averred by some and denied by others. If we call upon these rulers for a copy of their commission they present one written by themselves.
Children, idiots and convicted felons properly belong to the governed and not to the governing class, as they are intellectually or morally unfit to govern. Necessity only places them there; necessity is an absolute monarch and will be everywhere obeyed. To this governed class has been added woman, and we beg the House and the country to inquire why. They are also "people" and we submit that they are neither moral nor intellectual incapables, and no necessity for their disfranchisement can be suggested; on the contrary, we believe that they are now entitled to immediate and absolute enfranchisement.:
First: Because their own good demands it. Give woman the ballot and she will have additional means and inducements to a broader and better education, including a knowledge of affairs, of which she will not fail to avail herself to the uttermost; give her the ballot and you add to her means of protection of her person and estate. The ballot is a powerful weapon of defense sorely needed by those too weak to wield any other, and to take it from such and give to those already clothed in strength and fully armed, would appear to be unjust, unfair and unwise to one unaccustomed to the sight. Long usage "sanctions and sanctifies" wrongs and abuses, and causes cruelty to be mistaken for kindness.
The history of woman is for the most part a history of wrong and outrage. Created the equal companion of man, she early became his slave, and still is so in most parts of the world. In many so-called Christian nations of Europe she is to-day yoked with beasts and is doing the labor of beasts, while her son and husband are serving in the army, protecting the divine right of kings and men to slay and destroy. In the farther East she is still more degraded, being substantially excluded from the world. Man has not been consciously unjust to woman in the past, nor is he now, but he believes that she is in her true sphere, not realizing that he has fixed her sphere, and not God. This is as true of the barbarian as of the Christian, and no more so. If the "unspeakable Turk" should be solicited to open the doors of his harem and let the inmates become free, he would be indignant, doubtless, and would swear by the beard of the Prophet that he never would so degrade lovely woman, who, in her sphere, was intended to be the solace of glorious, superior man.
Yet, as man advances, woman is elevated, and her elevation in turn advances him. No liberty ever given her has been lost or abused or regretted. Where most has been given she has become ​best. Liberty never degrades her; slavery always does. For her good, therefore, she needs the ballot.
Second: Woman's vote is needed for the good of others. Our horizon is misty with apparent dangers. Woman may aid in dispelling them. She is an enemy of foreign war and domestic turmoil; she is a friend of peace and home. Her influence for good in many directions would be multiplied if she possessed the ballot. She desires the homes of the land to be pure and sober; with her help they may become so. Without her what is the prospect in this regard?
We do not invite woman into the "dirty pool of politics," nor does she intend to enter that pool. Politics is not necessarily unclean; if it is unclean she is not chargeable with the great crime, for crime it is. Politics must be purified or we are lost. To govern this great nation wisely and well is not degrading service; to do it, all the wisdom, ability and patriotism of all the people is required. No great moral force should be unemployed.
But it is sometimes said that women do not desire the ballot. Some may not; very many do not, perhaps a majority. Such indifference can not affect the right of those who are not indifferent. Some men, for one or other insufficient reason, decline to vote; but no statesman has yet urged general disfranchisement on that account. It may be true, and in our judgment it is, that those individuals who so fail to appreciate the rights and obligations of freemen as to deliberately refuse to vote should be disfranchised and made aliens, but their offense should not be visited on vigilant and patriotic citizens. Neither male nor female suffragists can be forced to use the ballot, and while the individuals of each class may fail to appreciate the privilege or recognize the duty the franchise confers, in the main it will result otherwise.
The conservative woman who feels that her present duties are as burdensome as she can bear, when she realizes what she can accomplish for her country and for mankind by the ballot, will as reverently thank God for the opportunity and will as zealously dis-charge her new obligations, as will her more radical sister who has long and wearily labored and fervently prayed for the coming of the day of equality of rights, duties and hopes.
* E. B. Taylor.
* W. P. Hepburrn.
* L. B. Caswell.
I concur in the opinion of the minority that the resolution ought to be adopted.
A. A. Ranney.
* ↑ "John Randolph Tucker, Va.; Nathaniel J. Hammond, Ga.; David B. Culberson, Tex.; Patrick A. Collins, Mass.; George E. Seney, O.; William C. Oates, Ala.; John H. Rogers, Ark.; John R. Eden, Ill.; Risden T. Bennett, N. C.; Ezra B. Taylor, O; Abraham X. Parker, N. Y.; Ambrose A. Ranney, Mass.; William P. Hepburn, Ia.; John W. Stewart, Vt.; Lucien B. Caswell, Wis.
* ↑ See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 715.
* ↑ This had been done when Miss Anthony voted in Rochester, N. Y., in 1872.