# History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 2/Chapter 21

Contents
CHAPTER XXI.
RECONSTRUCTION.
The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments—Universal Suffrage and Universal Amnesty the Key-note of Reconstruction—Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips Hesitate—A Trying Period in the Woman Suffrage Movement—Those Opposed to the word "Male" in the Fourteenth Amendment Voted Down in Conventions—The Negro's Hour—Virginia L. Minor on Suffrage in the District of Columbia—Women Advised to he Silent— The Hypocrisy of the Democrats preferable to that of the Republicans—Senator Pomeroy's Amendment—Protests against a Man's Government—Negro Suffrage a Political Necessity—Charles Sumner Opposed to the Fourteenth Amendment, but Voted for it as a Party Measure—Woman Suffrage for Utah—Discussion in the House as to who Constitute Electors—Bills for Woman Suffrage presented by the Hon. George W. Julian and Senators Wilson and Pomeroy—The Fifteenth Amendment—Anna E. Dickinson's Suggestion—Opinions of Women on the Fifteenth Amendment—The Sixteenth Amendment—Miss Anthony chosen a Delegate to the Democratic National Convention July 4, 1868—Her Address Read by a Unanimous Vote—Horatio Seymour in the Chair—Comments of the Press—The Revolution.
The war settled two questions: 1st. That we are a Nation, and not a mere confederacy of States. 2d. That all "persons" born or naturalized in the United States are "citizens," and stand equal before the law. Freedom, United States citizenship, the limit of State authority, and national protection of the fundamental rights of citizens in the several States, are clearly set forth in the following amendments:
Thirteenth Amendment, December 18, 1865.
"1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
"2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation."
Fourteenth Amendment, July 28, 1868.
Section 1. "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." ​Section 2. "Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State."
Section 3. "No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State Legislature, or as an Executive or Judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or give aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."
Section 5. "The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article."
Fifteenth Amendment, March 30, 1870.
Section 1. "The right of citizens of the United to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
The women understood the principles involved in these amendments, and accepted the logical conclusions. Under the first they applied to Congress for protection against the tyranny of the States in depriving them of the right of suffrage, but they were remanded to the States, and were told that Congress had no jurisdiction in the matter. Under the second, when women claimed the rights of citizens as tax-payers who helped to support the Government, they were told that neither the fathers nor their sons ever thought of women in framing their Constitutions, and that some special legislation was needed before their rights of citizenship could be recognized or accorded.
During the prolonged debates on these amendments, those who watched the progress of political sentiment and understood the drift of events, struck the key-note of reconstruction in "universal suffrage and universal amnesty," but they were speedily silenced or condemned. Abraham Lincoln saw that this was the true policy ​and counseled it in private. But he was influenced by those who misjudged the signs of the times, and for the success of his party and his own re-election, he yielded to weak counselors. Horace Greeley, with the suffering and humiliation of the South, as well as the guilt and selfishness of the North before him, declared "universal suffrage and universal amnesty" to be the true basis of reconstruction, but a few cracks of the party whip brought him into line. Henry Ward Beecher foreshadowed the same policy in an able letter, which called down upon him the nation's scorn and denunciation, for which he was stabbed by the friends of his own household. He was the one leading man in the nation who, in all his public speeches, demanded universal suffrage in the reconstruction. And by universal suffrage Mr. Beecher meant political equality for all, without distinction of race, color, or sex. Women would have been dull scholars indeed had they not readily seen that the watchword "universal suffrage" stripped of the limitations that lay in the minds of party politicians, included women also.
Under Section 1 of the Fourteenth Amendment they saw that being "persons" and born in the United States, they were "citizens," whom the National Government was bound to protect against the tyranny of the State.
Section 2 called their attention to another principle of justice, that those who were counted in the basis of representation should have a voice in the rulers whose election their numbers helped to secure. To be sure, the word "male" thrown in seemed to nullify all applications of the several amendments to one sex, nevertheless the women understood the breadth of the principle, and made their demands for an equal recognition on the ground that they too were counted in the basis of representation.
Again, in the discussion on removing the "political disabilities" of those who had made war on the Government, when the injustice of taxing that large class denied the suffrage was pointed out and the exercise of that right demanded for thousands of rebels, the women saw the application of that principle to themselves, and echoed the old war-cry in our first Revolution, "taxation without representation is tyranny." In the exhaustive discussions on the emancipation and enfranchisement of the black man and the restoration of the rebels to political equality, the fundamental principles of republican government were more clearly comprehended by the American people than ever before. Hence, it was in harmony with the order of events that educated women, appreciating the genius of our institutions, with their interest in politics intensified by all the ​complications of the war, should think and reason and express their opinions on all these great questions of popular thought. They saw that "universal suffrage and universal amnesty" was the broad, safe foundation for the new republic. They saw that the enfranchisement of the women of the South would not only double the vote, but give a new impulse to thought and education throughout the Southern States, and mitigate the hostility they would naturally feel in seeing their slaves suddenly made their political superiors, their rulers, law-makers, judges, and jurors! They saw that with the incoming tide of ignorant voters from Southern plantations and from the nations of the Old World, that the Government needed the intelligent votes and moral influence of woman to outweigh the ignorance and vice fast crowding round our polling booths.
Seeing all this, they pressed with earnestness the well-considered demand for woman's enfranchisement, not from any selfish or personal considerations, but for the elevation of all womankind, and to vindicate the principles that underlie republican government. They who have the responsibility of action are usually more timid in counsel than those who can exert only an indirect influence. Hence the statesmen of that period did not dare to trust their own principles to their logical results, and instead of the broad demand of equal rights for all, they proposed reconstruction on the basis of "manhood suffrage"; a half-way measure that satisfied nobody, glossed over by the party in power as "universal suffrage," "equal suffrage," "impartial suffrage," until compelled to call the proposition by its true name, "manhood suffrage."
Having served the Government during the war in such varied capacities, and taken an active part in the discussion of its vital principles on so many reform platforms, women naturally felt that in reconstruction their rights as citizens should be protected and secured. They who had so diligently rolled up petitions for the emancipation and enfranchisement of the slaves now demanded the same liberties, not only for the white women of the nation, but for the newly made freed-women from Southern plantations, who had borne more grievous burdens and endured keener sufferings in the flesh and far more aggravating humiliations in spirit, than the man slave could ever know. And yet Abolitionists who had drawn their most eloquent appeals for emancipation from the hopeless degradation of woman in slavery, ignored alike the African and the Saxon in reconstruction, and refused to sign the petition for "woman suffrage." Even such just and liberal men as Gerrit Smith and ​Wendel Phillips, in their haste to see the consummation of the black man's freedom, to which they had devoted their life-long efforts, lost sight of the ever-binding principles of justice, and accepted an amendment to the National Constitution that made all men rulers, all women subjects. Gerrit Smith, who had often said, "It is always safe to do right"; "now is the time for action, you can not be sure of to-morrow"; "speak the truth though the heavens fall," acted from policy rather than principle in refusing to sign the following petition:
The undersigned, citizens of the State of New York, earnestly but respectfully request, that in any change or amendment of the Constitution you may propose to extend or regulate suffrage, there shall be no distinctions made between men and women.
Peterboro, Dec. 30, 1868.
My Dear Susan B. Anthony:—I this evening received your earnest letter. It pains me to be obliged to disappoint you. But I can not sign the petition you send me. Cheerfully, gladly can I sign a petition for the enfranchisement of women. But I can not sign a paper against the enfranchisement of the negro man, unless at the same time woman shall be enfranchised. The removal of the political disabilities of race is my first desire—of sex, my second. If put on the same level and urged in the same connection neither will be soon accomplished. The former will very soon be, if untrammeled by the other, and its success will prepare the way for the accomplishment of the other.
With great regard, your friend,Gerrit Smith.
To which letter Mrs. Stanton replied in The Revolution Jan. 14, 1869:
The above is the petition to which our friend Gerrit Smith, as an abolitionist, can not conscientiously put his name, while Republicans and Democrats are signing it all over the country. He does not clearly read the signs of the times, or he would see that there is to be no reconstruction of this nation, except on the basis of universal suffrage, as the natural, inalienable right of every citizen. The uprising of the women on both continents, in France, England, Russia, Switzerland, and the United States, all show that advancing civilization demands a new element in the government of nations. As the aristocracy in this country is the "male sex," and as Mr. Smith belongs to the privileged order, he naturally considers it important for the best interests of the nation, that every type and shade of degraded, ignorant manhood should be enfranchised, before even the higher classes of womanhood should be admitted to the polls. This does not surprise us. Men always judge more wisely of objective wrongs and oppressions, than of those in which they are themselves involved. Tyranny on a Southern plantation is far more easily seen by white men at the North than the wrongs of the women of their own households.
​Then, again, when men have devoted their lives to one reform, there is a natural feeling of pride, as well as an earnest principle, in seeing that one thing accomplished. Hence, in criticising such good and noble men as Gerrit Smith and Wendell Phillips for their apathy on woman's enfranchisement at this hour, it is not because we think their course at all remarkable, nor that we have the least hope of influencing them, but simply to rouse the women of the country to the fact that they must not look to these men as their champions at this hour. While philosophy and science alike point to woman as the new power destined to redeem the world, how can Mr. Smith fail to see that it is just this we need to restore honor and virtue in the Government? There is sex in the spiritual as well as the physical, and what we need to-day in government, in the world of morals and thought, is the recognition of the feminine element, as it is this alone that can hold the masculine in check.
Again; Mr. Smith refuses to sign the petition because he thinks to press the broader question of "universal suffrage" would defeat the partial one of "manhood suffrage"; in other words, to demand protection for woman against her oppressors, would jeopardize the black man's chance of securing protection against his oppressors. If it is a question of precedence merely, on what principle of justice or courtesy should woman yield her right of enfranchisement to the negro? If men can not be trusted to legislate for their own sex, how can they legislate for the opposite sex, of whose wants and needs they know nothing? It has always been considered good philosophy in pressing any measure to claim the uttermost in order to get something. Being in Ireland at the time of the Repeal excitement, we asked Daniel O'Connell one day if he expected to secure a repeal of the Union. "Oh, no!" said he, "but I claim everything that I may be sure of getting something." But their intense interest in the negro blinded our former champions so that they forsook principle for policy, and in giving woman the cold shoulder raised a more deadly opposition to the negro than any we had yet encountered, creating an antagonism between him and the very element most needed to be propitiated in his behalf. It was this feeling that defeated "negro suffrage" in Kansas.
But Mr. Smith abandons the principle clearly involved, and intrenches himself on policy. He would undoubtedly plead the necessity of the ballot for the negro at the south for his protection, and point us to innumerable acts of cruelty he suffers to-day. But all these things fall as heavily on the women of the black race, yea far more so, for no man can ever know the deep, the damning degradation to which woman is subject in her youth, in helplessness and poverty. The enfranchisement of the men of her race, Mr. Smith would say, is her protection. Our Saxon men have held the ballot in this country for a century, and what honest man can claim that it has been used for woman's protection? Alas! we have given the very hey day of our life to undoing the cruel and unjust laws that the men of New York had made for their own mothers, wives, and daughters.
As to the "rights of races," on which so much stress is laid just now, we have listened to debates in anti-slavery conventions, for twenty years or more, and we never heard Gerrit Smith plead the negro cause on any lower ground than his manhood; his individual, inalienable right to freedom and equality; ​and thus, we conjure every thoughtful man to plead woman's cause to-day. Politicians will find, when they come to test this question of "negro supremacy" in the several States, that there is a far stronger feeling among the women of the nation than they supposed. We doubt whether a constitutional amendment securing "manhood suffrage" alone could be fairly passed in a single State in this Union. Women everywhere are waking up to their own God-given rights, to their true dignity as citizens of a republic, as mothers of the race.
Although those who demand "woman's suffrage" on principle are few, those who would oppose "negro suffrage" from prejudice are many, hence the only way to secure the latter, is to end all this talk of class legislation, bury the negro in the citizen, and claim the suffrage for all men and women, as a natural, inalienable right. The friends of the negro never made a greater blunder than when, at the close of the war, they timidly refused to lead the nation in demanding suffrage for all. If even Wendell Phillips and Gerrit Smith, the very apostles of liberty on this continent, failed at that point, how can we wonder at the vacillation and confusion of politicians at this hour. We had hoped that the elections of '67, with their overwhelming majorities in every State against negro suffrage, would have proved to all alike, how futile is compromise, how short-sighted is policy. We have pressed these considerations so often on Mr. Phillips and Mr. Smith during the last four years, that we fear we have entirely forfeited the friendship of the one, and diminished the confidence of the other in our good judgment; but time, that rights all wrongs, will surely bring them back to the standpoint of principle.
As soon as we had a mouthpiece in The Revolution we found that many noble women in every State understood the situation, and saw that while the question of reconstruction was under debate, woman was false to herself not to put in her claims. In face of all opposition, those who did see the policy and justice of claiming this time as the woman's hour also, made the most persistent, brave fight possible. Again were appeals and petitions sent to Congress and the people, but now for woman's enfranchisement. When the whole nation was as it were resolved into its original elements, and the fundamental rights of citizens the topic for discussion in the halls of legislation and at every fireside, the time seemed so opportune for the settlement of the broad question of representation, that the persistency and determination of a few women to secure their rights was neither surprising nor unreasonable.
This was one of the most trying periods in the woman suffrage movement. Negro suffrage being a party measure, a political necessity and the culmination of the anti-slavery conflict, Republicans and Abolitionists could bid each other a most sincere and heartfelt Godspeed. And with them, too, stood the majority of the woman suffrage associations. Wives and daughters of Republicans and Abolitionists, imbued with the ideas of politicians, "one measure at a ​time," "one reform for a generation," lost sight of the true philosophy, that justice is always in order, and the fact that "universal suffrage" was the one reform that belonged specifically to the period of reconstruction. But women educated to self-sacrifice and self-abnegation readily accepted the idea that it was divine and beautiful to hold their claims for rights and privileges in abeyance to all orders and classes of men. They forgot that the highest patriotism, and the best interests of man himself demanded the enfranchisement of woman.
The few who insisted on absolute right stood firmly together under a steady fire of ridicule and reproach even from their life-long friends most loved and honored. They knew their position was unassailable, for they had well learned the lesson taught in the early days of anti-slavery and the Republican party, that all compromises with principle are dangerous. Statesmen and reformers alike admitted that the demands of the women were just and proper, though not opportune. But when the whole question of suffrage was up for discussion, there could not be a better time to get all the agitation possible in regard to woman's claims. The subject once settled on the narrow ground of class, it would not be renewed for a generation. Time has proved their fears well grounded. Nearly twenty years have passed, and there has been no such agitation and excitement as then on the question. If all the women, to say nothing of the Republicans and Abolitionists who claimed to believe in the truth of the idea, had stood firm, woman would have been enfranchised with the negro. But few could withstand the persecution, the ridicule, the pathetic appeals to keep silent, and in a large measure when the Anti-Slavery Society disbanded the woman suffrage movement became the toy of the Republican party, and has been trifled with ever since, like the cat with the mouse in the fable.
But Democrats seeing the inconsistency of Republicans, did advocate our cause, present our petitions in Congress, and frank our documents to all parts of the country. And because these women, denied help and encouragement from other sources, accepted aid from the Democrats, they were called "Copperheads"; ​disloyal to the Government. Women who had been complimented by the Republican press as "wise," "prudent," "noble," while rolling up 300,000 petitions for emancipation, were now said to be "selfish," "impracticable," "unreasonable," because forsooth they demanded some new liberties for themselves. More over said the Republicans, "these Democrats are hypocritical, they do not believe in the extension of suffrage to any class." To this
​the women replied, "If the Democrats advocate a grand measure of public policy which they do not believe, they occupy much higher ground than Republicans who refuse to press the same measure which they claim to believe. At all events the hypocrisy of Democrats serves us a better purpose in the present emergency than does the treachery of Republicans."
But with all their long-time friends against them; such as Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson in the Senate, William Lloyd Garrison and Gerrit Smith in reform, Horace Greeley and most of the Liberals in the press, the position of the women seemed so untenable to the majority that at times a sense of utter loneliness and desertion made the bravest of them doubt the possibility of maintaining the struggle or making themselves fairly understood. And yet, what was done was sound in principle and wise in policy. Every argument made by Republicans and Abolitionists for the enfranchisement of the negro was pertinent for woman. As Mr. Sumner said to us years after he made that great speech on "Equal rights to all," "substitute sex for color, and you have the best speech I could make on your platform." Our cause was wise too in policy, for never before had we such an opportunity to compel intelligent opposition in the halls of legislation and in conventions of the people. Black men were at the white heat of anxiety and expectation; Abolitionists, with bated breath, watched every move and vote in Congress; Republicans felt that on the success or defeat of "negro suffrage" hung the life or death of their party; and all alike feared the slightest influence that might turn the scale, and deplored the seeming coalition of the women and the Democrats. Hence what an hour to proclaim our principles of government upon their broadest basis, and to keep up the discussion of woman suffrage at every point with so formidable an opposition!
Few only were equal to the emergency. Even in the Equal Rights Conventions the slightest opposition to the XIV Amendment called out hisses and denunciation, and all resolutions on that point were promptly voted down. Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony were waylaid again and again in the ante-rooms, and implored to avoid all discussions on the pending amendments, and were persistently opposed by black men, Abolitionists, Republicans and women who did not understand either the principle or policy involved in the discussion. This opposition of the few did not grow out of any hostility ​to "negro suffrage," for they were all Abolitionists, and had labored untiringly for the emancipation of the slaves; but they were opposed to the enfranchisement of another class of ignorant men to be lifted above their heads, to be their law-makers and Governors; to prescribe the moral code and political status of their daughters. The hue and cry against those who claimed that "that was the woman's hour," for accepting the aid of Democrats in the establishment of a paper through which they could plead their own case, were so many plausible pretexts in the mouths of those who could not consistently attack their principles of action. But from this opposition on all sides true woman suffragists learned their power to stand alone, and to maintain the right against large and honorable majorities.
Again said our professed friends we can carry "negro suffrage" now; it is a political necessity; do not trammel us with another issue—this done, depend upon it, men have too much chivalry to forget the services of the loyal women all through the war, and through the long political struggle in Congress. Women in our conventions echoed the same assuring sentiments, and voted down resolutions of protest and rebuke. They were deceived with the plausible promises made by Republicans and Abolitionists—promises still unredeemed, for Republicans have been busy ever since trying to save the life of their party; and Abolitionists, with few exceptions, have thrown their influence into Labor Reform, Temperance, Finance, and Literature. But of what do you complain, asked our statesmen. Of many things, we replied:
1st. Our National Constitution was broad and liberal in letter and spirit, put no limits on suffrage, made no distinctions in sex, until the Republicans, by their amendments, introduced the word "male," and thus blocked woman's path to equality.
2d. Republicans in Congress either suppressed our petitions for suffrage, or presented them under protest, after holding them for weeks in their possession.
3d. By their speeches and votes in Congress, and their decisions in the courts on questions involving our civil and political rights, they have stultified their own grand declarations of the equal rights of citizens in a republic.
When the XIV Amendment was first proposed, the Hon. Charles Sumner opposed it, because, he said, there was already enough of Justice, Liberty, and Equality in the Constitution to protect the humblest citizen under our flag. He had always taken the ground that the Constitution was an Anti-Slavery document, hence to vote for an amendment was to contradict his former position. We ​opposed the amendments because, in the Constitution as it was there were no distinctions of sex recognized, while the amendments declaring "manhood suffrage," established an aristocracy of sex. However, in due season, Mr. Sumner withdrew his opposition; and without changing his opinion, voted for the amendments because negro suffrage was a party measure, and the political necessity of the hour. We, having no party, no votes, no political right but to petition and discuss the measures up for consideration, saw no reason for changing our opinions, hence we used the best possible means to keep up the agitation until the amendments were passed, and beyond reconsideration. Nevertheless, in the midst of this general hostility, the sound policy of the agitation carried on against the Republican party and its measures was evident in the numerous bills some of its liberal members soon after presented in Congress. In The Revolution, December 10, 1868, we find the following:
Now let the work of petitioning and agitating for this amendment be prosecuted with a vigor and energy unknown before. And let Senator Pomeroy be honored with receiving and presenting to the Senate such a deluge of names as shall convince him that his noble step in the direction of a true democracy, is appreciated; and such too as shall be a rebuke to all half-way measures that would leave woman (white and colored) behind the colored male; and moreover, that shall convince Congress and the whole government that we can be trifled with no longer on a subject so vital to the peace, prosperity, and perpetuity of our own people, and the establishment of free institutions among the nations of the earth.
Congress Wide Awake.—Last week we gave good account of Mr. Julian, of Indiana, on behalf of suffrage for woman. This week we can report similar progress in the Senate also. The following is Senator Wilson's bill to amend an act entitled an act to regulate the elective franchise in the District of Columbia:
Be it enacted, etc., That the word "male" in the first section of the act entitled "An act to regulate the elective franchise in the District of Columbia, passed on the 8th day of January, 1867," be struck out, and that every word in said act applicable to persons of the male sex shall apply equally to persons of the female sex, so that hereafter women, ​who are inhabitants of the said District of Columbia and citizens of the United States, may vote at all elections and be eligible to civil offices in said District on the same terms and conditions in all respects as men.
Mr. Julian, in the House, on leave, introduced the following bill further to extend the right of suffrage in the District of Columbia:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled, That from and after the passage of this act the right of suffrage in the District of Columbia shall be based upon citizenship; and all citizens of the United States, native and naturalized, resident in said District, who are twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and who have not forfeited this right by crime, shall enjoy the same equally, irrespective of sex.
Sec. 2, And be it further enacted, That all acts or parts of acts inconsistent with the provisions of this act are hereby repealed.
"Mr. Julian, on leave, introduced the following bill further to extend the right of suffrage in the Territories of the United States:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled, That from and after the passage of this act the right of suffrage in all the Territories of the United States, now or hereafter to be organized, shall be based upon citizenship; and all citizens of the United States, native or naturalized, resident in said Territories, who are twenty-one years of age, of sound mind, and who have not forfeited their right by crime, shall enjoy the same equally, irrespective of sex.
Sec. 2, And be it further enacted, That all acts or parts of acts, either by Congress or the legislative assemblies of said Territories, inconsistent with the provisions of this act are hereby declared null and void.
Woman Suffrage In Utah.—March 25, 1869.—Mr. Julian introduced the following bill into Congress to discourage polygamy in Utah by granting the right of suffrage to the women of that Territory:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress Assembled, That from and after the passage of this act the right of Suffrage in the Territory of Utah shall belong to, and may be exercised by, the people thereof, without any distinction or discrimination whatever founded on sex.
The bill was read twice, referred to the Committee on Territories, and ordered to be printed.
The New York Herald is no more than an average of the voice of the intelligent portion of the press in the following excerpts from its columns: Senator Wilson has introduced a bill so to amend the suffrage laws of the District of Columbia as to give to women of all colors and races, as well as men, the right of suffrage. As Congress has exclusive powers of legislation over the District of Columbia in all cases whatsoever, here is a fair chance to try the two houses upon this very interesting question. There are a few out-spoken members of the Senate in favor of Woman Suffrage, and first and foremost among them is "Old Ben Wade," who goes for the whole programme of negroes' rights and women's rights. Senator Pomeroy, of Kansas, has so far advanced in the cause of Woman Suffrage that he has proposed to make it a part of the supreme law of the land. But we like the idea of Mr. Wilson of first trying the experiment in the District of Columbia.
We remember the time when, in full view from the west front of the Capitol, there was a regular slave pen, which was also a market where ​negroes were bought and sold. The abolitionists first raised a hue and cry against that pen, and they kept it up to 1850, when among the compromise measures of Henry Clay passed that year was a provision abolishing the slave trade in the District. Some twelve years later, during the rebellion, the bolder and broader experiment was tried of abolishing slavery in toto in said District. These measures over a reserved bit of territory over which Congress possesses absolute authority were deemed judicious experiments and were demanded for the sake of consistency, in view of the legislation resolved upon in Southern reconstruction. So now, in view of a constitutional amendment establishing not only manhood suffrage, but womanhood suffrage throughout the United States, Mr. Wilson doubtless thinks it wise first to try the experiment of Woman Suffrage in the aforesaid District, to see how it will work. As the District of Columbia has not only survived but has flourished and continues to flourish under emancipation and negro suffrage, we can not imagine why there should be any hesitation in trying therein the experiment of Woman Suffrage. At all events let Senator Wilson push forward his bill, so that the country may know, so that General Grant may know, and so that the women may know who in the Senate in favor of negroes' rights will dare to oppose woman's rights.
Congress.—December 16, 1869.—In the House, some discussion arose on a question involving the equality of woman to hold appointments in the government. It was on a bill providing for the taking of the census. A motion was made to amend an amendment by changing the word elector (voter) to resident.
Mr. Lawrence, of Ohio, said: I am opposed to the amendment of the gentleman from New York. The effect will be to exclude every female from any appointment, and although I suppose there will not be many female applicants for office under this bill, I see no reason why we should exclude them. (Laughter.) I know no reason why a soldier's widow or any other female properly qualified might not receive an appointment to any office the duties of which she may be as capable of performing as those of our own sex. If reasons exist let them be given. I will inquire of the gallant gentleman from New York whether he wishes to exclude this portion of his constituents and mine from the privilege of holding office under this bill? (Renewed laughter.)
Mr. Wood: My amendment says elector, not electress, and until the ladies have the privilege of electors of the United States I propose to exclude them.
Mr. Lawrence: I am opposed to that. Merit and capacity to serve the people to the best advantage, after a proper consideration of claims, should be the test for office.
Mr. Garfield, of Ohio: The word "elector" in the amendment of the gentleman from New York (Mr. Wood) would exclude Alaska altogether. There are no electors in Alaska. I would suggest that he substitute the word "resident," which would avoid the difficulty to which I have referred.
The question being put on Mr. Wood's amendment,
Mr. Garfield, of Ohio, moved to amend the proposed amendment by inserting the word "resident" instead of "elector."
As in the war women bravely assumed duties in many departments of labor unknown to them before, so in the reconstruction they gave more earnest thought to questions of public policy, and made many valuable suggestions. A well written speech on "Reconstruction and Universal Suffrage," was delivered by Mrs. M. C. Walling, of Texas, in the Senate chamber of the Capitol at Washington, May 10th, 1866; The first and last time that a woman was ever granted the privilege of speaking there.
To Anna Dickinson belongs the honor of suggesting a XV amendment. Although the XIV amendment to the National Constitution gave to that document for the first time a concise definition of a "citizen," and forbade any State to abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, yet this amendment was found inadequate to protect the political rights of the colored men; and the Republican party was anxiously casting about for a method of perfecting their work, when the puzzle was solved by a proposition for a XV amendment, which should prohibit disfranchisement on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. The suggestion for this amendment originated at the National Loyalists' Convention held at Philadelphia, September, 1866, in a consultation between Anna Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, and Theodore Tilton, and was in time accepted by the Republican party. It was reported in Congress Feb. 26, 1869, and received the necessary ratification March 30, 1870. Thus a woman and a colored man were two important factors in perfecting the work of reconstruction through a constitutional provision prohibiting disfranchisement on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
As when the XIV amendment was pending, the efforts of women were directed toward securing the omission of the invidious word "male," so on the submission of the XV amendment their efforts were again directed toward securing the enfranchisement of woman by the introduction of the word "sex" in the last line of Section 1. But Congress with the usual short-sightedness of injustice, refused to secure the political freedom of one half the entire people, even forgetting to enfranchise a portion of the colored race from their "previous condition of servitude" because of sex.
Washington, D. C., Jan. 31, 1882.
Dear Mrs. Stanton:— ... Mrs. Gage's version of the origin of the 15th Amendment is in substance true. To dear Anna E. Dickinson and brave Theodore Tilton belongs the credit of forcing that amendment upon the attention of the Nation at the right moment and in the right way to make it successful. I have given Miss Dickinson the credit you award her in my "Life and Times," and have made myself one of your earliest converts in the same.
Very truly yours,Fred'k Douglass.
Washington, D. C., Feb. 6, 1882.
My Dear Mrs. Stanton:—Referring, since reading your note, to what I have said of the National Loyalist Convention, held in Philadelphia in 1866, I find that I have done but very scant justice to Anna E. Dickinson and Theodore Tilton. Their courage, skill and sagacity, were never displayed to greater advantage than on that occasion. I have, as you will see, mentioned the main facts, but I have given but a meagre view of the moral conditions surrounding it. Bold and prompt action was needed, and the man and the woman were equal to the occasion. From the first Miss Dickinson, Mr. Tilton and myself felt that any reconstruction at the South leaving the freedmen without the ballot, would leave them in the absolute power of the old master-class. Hence from the first we conferred together as to the manner of bringing the subject to the attention of the Convention. We looked to the Committee on Resolutions to bring up the subject, but waited in vain. They had nothing for us but well rounded platitudes and glittering generalities about the Union and the relation of the States to the National Government all well enough in ordinary times, but totally inappropriate in respect of the real situation of the country at the moment. When it became known that Mr. Tilton and myself meant to bring forward the subject, we were besought not to do a thing so impolitic. We were implored not to load the Republican party with this new burden. We were told of the advantage it would give the Democratic party against us; how it would intensify and concentrate the prejudice already felt for the negro. It was evident that negro suffrage was the one great dread of the Convention. The proposal to discuss it was deplored as a blunder which would cost us dearly. This apprehension was mainly confined to the delegates from the border States, and as they had the control of the Convention, they managed to keep out the disturbing question of negro suffrage till the last day.
Seeing the evident purpose to this end, Mr. Tilton, after consulting with Miss Dickinson and myself, introduced the suffrage question. His action was received as a very large fire-brand, and caused a storm of tumult and confusion, in the midst of which the President, Mr. Speed, and other officers left their places on the platform, declaring the Convention adjourned. At this critical juncture, with the tact and skill of a veteran, Mr. Tilton seized the helm, declared the Convention not adjourned, and moved that Honorable John Minor Botts take the Chair. The Border States delegates took their hats and heels out of the Convention without standing upon the order of their going, while the men from the Gulf States nobly stood their ground. The Convention was still large. The going out of the Border States unfettered the platform. Anna E. Dickinson came on the stand with all her wonted ability, and ​thrilled the audience by her eloquent plea for negro suffrage. Hers was the speech, not of a brilliant declaimer, but the solid logic of a statesman. When she sat down I felt that the battle was more than half won. Next after Miss Dickinson came Theodore Tilton. It was plain from the moment he took the stand that the situation suited him, and that we were to hear from him that day such words of wisdom, truth and soberness as only genius could supply. We were not disappointed. He was the full master of the subject and the occasion, I followed Mr. Tilton, and resolutions favoring what has since become the 15th Amendment were passed with very little opposition.
You will notice on page 480 of my book, that I don't forget my walk with you from the house of Mr. Joseph Southwick, where you quietly brought to my notice your arguments for womanhood suffrage. That is forty years ago. You had just returned from your European tour. From that conversation with you I have been convinced of the wisdom of woman suffrage, and have never denied the faith....
Very truly yours,Fred'k Douglass
When Anna Dickinson, Frederick Douglass, and Theodore Tilton pressed the question of negro suffrage on the Loyalists' convention, they were met by the same arguments and appeals against it, that were urged upon those who pressed woman suffrage when the Fourteenth Amendment was pending. Douglass knew that any reconstruction without political equality for the black man was a delusion; the women saw as clearly that any reconstruction without political equality for them was a delusion also, and their determination to have some recognition under government sprung from the same love of freedom and self-respect that moved Douglass when, with equal determination, he walked in the procession, and took his seat as a delegate, as he had a right to do, though warned that he would stir up a mob, and be a firebrand in the convention. The description of this scene by Mr. Douglass himself is a suggestive study for all oppressed classes:
I was residing in Rochester at the time, and was duly elected as a delegate from that city to attend this convention. The honor was a surprise and a gratification to me. It was unprecedented for a city of over 60,000 white citizens, and only about 200 colored residents, to elect a colored man to represent them in a national political convention, and the announcement of it gave a shock to the country of no inconsiderable violence. Many Republicans, with every feeling of respect for me personally, were unable to see the wisdom of such a course. They dreaded the clamor of social equality and amalgamation which would be raised against the party, in consequence of this startling innovation. They, dear fellows, found it much more agreeable to talk of the principles of liberty as glittering generalities, than to reduce those principles to practice.}}
When the train on which I was going to the convention reached Harrisburgh, it met and was attached to another from the West crowded with ​Western and Southern delegates on the way to the convention, and among them were several loyal Governors, chief among whom was the Governor of Indiana, Oliver P. Morton, a man of Websterian mould in all that appertained to mental power. When my presence became known to these gentlemen, a consultation was immediately held among them, upon the question as to what was best to do with me. It seems strange now, in view of all the progress which has been made, that such a question could arise. But the circumstances of the times made me the Jonah of the Republican ship, and responsible for the contrary winds and misbehaving weather. Before we reached Lancaster, on our eastward bound trip, I was duly waited upon by a committee of my brother delegates, which had been appointed by other honorable delegates, to represent to me the undesirableness of my attendance upon the National Loyalists' Convention. The spokesman of these sub-delegates was a gentleman from New Orleans with a very French name, which has now escaped me, but which I wish I could recall, that I might credit him with a high degree of politeness and the gift of eloquence. He began by telling me that he knew my history and my works, and that he entertained a very high respect for me, that both himself and the gentlemen who sent him, as well as those who accompanied him, regarded me with admiration; that there was not among them the remotest objection to sitting in the convention with me, but their personal wishes in the matter they felt should be set aside for the sake of our common cause; that whether I should or should not go into the convention was purely a matter of expediency; that I must know that there was a very strong and bitter prejudice against my race in the North as well as at the South; and that the cry of social and political equality would not fail to be raised against the Republican party if I should attend this loyal national convention. He insisted that it was a time for the sacrifice of my own personal feeling, for the good of the Republican cause; that there were several districts in the State of Indiana so evenly balanced that a very slight circumstance would be likely to turn the scale against us, and defeat our Congressional candidates and thus leave Congress without a two-thirds vote to control the headstrong and treacherous man then in the presidential chair. It was urged that this was a terrible responsibility for me or any other man to take.
I listened very attentively to this address, uttering, no word during its delivery; but when it was finished, I said to the speaker and the committee, with all the emphasis I could throw into my voice and manner: "Gentlemen, with all respect, you might as well ask me to put a loaded pistol to my head and blow my brains out, as to ask me to keep out of this convention, to which I have been duly elected. Then, gentlemen, what would you gain by this exclusion? Would not the charge of cowardice, certain to be brought against you, prove more damaging than that of amalgamation? Would you not be branded all over the land as dastardly hypocrites, professing principles which you have no wish or intention of carrying out? As a mere matter of policy or expediency, you will be wise to let me in. Everybody knows that I have been duly elected as a delegate by the city of Rochester. The fact has been broadly announced and commented upon all over the country. If I am not admitted, the public will ask, 'Where is Douglass? Why is he not seen in the convention?' and you would find that inquiry more difficult to answer ​than any charge brought against you for favoring political or social equality; but, ignoring the question of policy altogether, and looking at it as one of right and wrong, I am bound to go into that convention; not to do so, would contradict the principle and practice of my life." With this answer, the committee retired from the car in which I was seated, and did not again approach me on the subject; but I saw plainly enough then, as well as on the morning when the Loyalist procession was to march through the streets of Philadelphia, that while I was not to be formally excluded, I was to be ignored by the Convention.
I was the ugly and deformed child of the family, and to be kept out of sight as much as possible while there was company in the house. Especially was it the purpose to offer me no inducement to be present in the ranks of the procession of its members and friends, which was to start from Independence Hall on the first morning of its meeting. In good season, however, I was present at this grand starting point. My reception there confirmed my impression as to the policy intended to be pursued toward me. Few of the many I knew were prepared to give me a cordial recognition, and among these few I may mention Gen. Benj. F. Butler, who, whatever others may say of him, has always shown a courage equal to his convictions. Almost everybody else whom I met seemed to be ashamed or afraid of me. On the previous night I had been warned that I should not be allowed to walk through the city in the procession; fears had been expressed that my presence in it would so shock the prejudices of the people of Philadelphia, as to cause the procession to be mobbed.
The members of the convention were to walk two abreast, and as I was the only colored member of the convention, the question was, as to who of my brother members would consent to walk with me? The answer was not long in coming. There was one man present who was broad enough to take in the whole situation, and brave enough to meet the duty of the hour; one who was neither afraid nor ashamed to own me as a man and a brother; one man of the purest Caucasian type, a poet and a scholar, brilliant as a writer, eloquent as a speaker, and holding a high and influential position—the editor of a weekly journal having the largest circulation of any weekly paper in the city or State of New York—and that man was Mr. Theodore Tilton. He came to me in my isolation, seized me by the hand in a most brotherly way, and proposed to walk with me in the procession. I have been in many awkward and disagreeable positions in my life, when the presence of a friend would have been highly valued, but I think I never appreciated an act of courage and generous sentiment more highly than I did that of this brave young man, when we marched through the streets of Philadelphia on this memorable day.
This experience shows how little knowledge politicians have of what lies in the hearts of the people; that even statesmen seldom appreciate the many steps in progressive thought already achieved, before there is any popular demonstration. It shows, too, the commanding influence of personal dignity and lofty self-respect, incapable of being either flattered or coerced to take any position among men but one of absolute equality. And this was exactly the position taken by those women who opposed the Fourteenth Amendment. The Loyalists' Convention was held at a most critical period in the Nation's life; the policy and action of all the Southern States centered in its deliberations. Though Mr. Douglass would not hold the rightful representation of his race in abeyance to the success of the Convention, the pacification of the South, the policy of the border States, nor the life of the Nation, yet he too criticised the women who took precisely the same position in maintaining the dignity of sex against the action of the Republican party and the whole Northern policy of reconstruction. What to either class was the nation's life, so long as the flag gave them no protection against the humiliating distinctions of caste? What to them were boasted republican institutions, so long as their rights, privileges, and immunities as citizens were denied? White men could only be taught the lesson of a common humanity by just such resistance as these oppressed classes made. Protests and petitions, falling like seeds here and there on good ground, at last moved some liberal Republicans to action, and several bills recognizing the political existence of women were duly presented. The best results of the war have been the struggle and determination of black men and women for recognition in the reconstruction, for they have compelled the nation's consideration of the vital principles of republican government, and secured for both classes many rights and privileges heretofore unknown.
​The congressional action throughout this session proves that if all the friends of woman suffrage had been steadfast to their principles, and made a simultaneous effort against any further extension of "manhood suffrage" until woman too was recognized, the measure might have been carried; at least the agitation could have been prolonged and intensified in the halls of legislation fourfold. But in the general confusion as to what might or might not be sound policy, the most liberal took each onward step with doubt and hesitation. However, the persistent hostility to the amendments kept up the agitation in Congress, which at last culminated in a proposition for a Sixteenth Amendment, for which the National Woman Suffrage Association has, with one short interval, ever since petitioned.
Art. 16. The Right of Suffrage in the United States shall be based on citizenship, and shall be regulated by Congress; and all citizens of the United States, whether native or naturalized, shall enjoy this right equally without any distinction or discrimination whatever founded on sex.
Petitions for a Sixteenth Amendment were immediately printed and sent throughout the nation, and have been steadily rolling into Congress for the last thirteen years from all the State and National Woman Suffrage Associations. The Fortieth Congress was the first in which an amendment to the National Constitution in the interests of woman was ever proposed. In a series of editorials in The Revolution there was a decided expression of hostility towards the Fifteenth Amendment during all the time it was pending in Congress. In the issue of October 21, 1869, Mrs. Stanton said:
2d. We should oppose the measure, because men have no right to pass it without our consent. When it is proposed to change the constitution or fundamental law of the State or Nation, all the people have a right to say what that change shall be.
If women understood this pending proposition in all its bearings, theoretically and practically, there would be an overwhelming vote against the admission of another man to the ruling power of this nation, until they themselves were first enfranchised. There is no true patriotism, no true nobility in tamely and silently submitting to this insult. It is mere sycophancy to man; it is licking the hand that forges a new chain for our degradation; it is indorsing the old idea that woman's divinely ordained position is at man's feet, and not on an even platform by his side.
By this edict of the liberal party, the women of this Republic are now to touch the lowest depths of their political degradation.
June 3, 1869.
The Fifteenth Amendment.—It is not to be believed that the nation which is now engaged in admitting the newly liberated negro to the plenitude of all political franchise, will much longer retain woman in a state of helotage, which is more degrading than ever, because being no longer shared by any of the male sex, it constitutes every woman the inferior of every man.—John Stuart Mill.
It is this thought, so clearly seen and concisely stated by this distinguished English philosopher and statesman, that I have endeavored to press on the hearts of American reformers for the last four years. I have seen and felt, with a vividness and intensity that no words could express, the far-reaching consequences of this degradation of one-half the citizens of the republic, on the government, the Saxon race, and woman herself, in all her political, religious, and social relations. It is sufficiently humiliating to a proud woman to be reminded ever and anon in the polite world that she's a political nonentity; to have the fact gracefully mourned over, or wittily laughed at, in classic words and cultured voice by one's superiors in knowledge, wisdom and power; but to hear the rights of woman scorned in foreign tongue and native gibberish by everything in manhood's form, is enough to fire the souls of those who think and feel, and rouse the most lethargic into action.
If, with weak and vacillating words and stammering tongue, our bravest men to-day say freedom to woman, what can we hope when the millions educated in despotism, ignorant of the philosophy of true government, religion and social life, shall be our judges and rulers? As you go down in the scale of manhood, the idea strengthens at every step, that woman was created for no higher purpose than to gratify the lust of man. Every daily paper heralds some rape on flying, hunted girls; and the ​pitying eyes of angels see the holocaust of womanhood no journal ever notes. In thought I trace the slender threads that link these hideous, overt acts to creeds and codes that make an aristocracy of sex. When a mighty nation, with a scratch of the pen, frames the base ideas of the lower orders into constitutions and statute laws, and declares every serf, peasant and slave the rightful sovereigns of all womankind, they not only degrade every woman in her own eyes, but in that of every man on the footstool. A cultivated lady in Baltimore writes us a description of a colored republican reunion, held in that city a few evenings since, in which a colored gentleman offered the following toast: "Our wives and daughters—May the women of our race never unsex themselves by becoming strong-minded."E. C. S.
March 11, 1869.
Drawing the Lines.—If the fifteenth article of Constitutional Amendments ever gets ratified and becomes the rule of suffrage, it will have at least one good effect. Woman will then know with what power she has to contend. It will be male versus female, the land over. All manhood will vote not because of intelligence, patriotism, property, or white skin, but because it is male, not female. All womanhood will be newly outraged and debased, not for ignorance, disloyalty, poverty, or a black skin, but because it is female, not male. Julia Ward Howe, of Boston, has some good thoughts in the Galaxy for March on this subject, in part as below:
"The Irish or German savage, after three years' cleansing, is admitted to the general enrollment of the community. The colored man, cleaner at the start than these, the natural ally of republican principles, trained to an understanding of freedom by a long experience of its opposite, stands next upon the record. Voting to him is a military necessity. It is the only weapon with which he can meet those whom law, custom, and prejudice have hitherto trebly armed against him. This admitted right of elective franchise to all men, brings one scarcely anticipated condition. It arrays now the whole male and female sexes in a new and unforeseen condition. The right of the elective franchise is now the recognition of the inalienable right of all men to the proper administration of their interests, and in America this right is founded upon the right of human intelligence to its own exercise, the right of human labor to its own recompense. The generous culture which allows woman in this country so large an extension of thought, and the social necessities which place in her hands so many of the nicer tasks hitherto kept for those of the other sex, alike commission her to claim and make good her right to the most simple, general and explicit method of expressing her will in the arena where wills are counted and respected."
End of the Suffrage Agitation.—"The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment will put an end to further agitation of the subject, for a long time at least, and thus leave the government of the country free to deal with its material interests, and with the more pressing questions of public policy and administration which will arise from time to time. We do not concur with those who predict that the question of suffrage for women will speedily demand public action or engross public attention, or that the right of men to hold office without distinction of color or race, will absorb any great degree of public time or public thought for a long while to come. Until some decided practical advantage is to be gained by a dominant political party, ​neither of these questions will be pressed to a decision; and both of them have, in our judgment, commanded more attention already than they will soon command again. With the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, we may fairly look upon the suffrage agitation as at an end, for the present political generation at all events; and that consideration, of itself, affords a very powerful argument in favor of its adoption."
Such is the conclusion of the New York Times. It is, too, the belief, hope, and intention of a large number of party leaders, both Republican and Democrat. But such reckon without their host. They seem to have no idea with whom they have to deal. Woman may not achieve her rights next year; may not vote for President in 1872. But if President Grant means by "let us have peace," an end to the struggle for Woman Suffrage, he must pray to some other than the God of Heaven, or the politicians of his party and country; for the latter can't stop the agitation, and the former won't. So President Pierce actually proclaimed peace with slavery at his inauguration; but John Brown was already whetting his sword, and the Almighty was forging his thunderbolts for that vessel of wrath, long fitted for destruction, and the day of peace is not even yet.p. p.
Providence, June 7, 1869.
Paulina Wright Davis on the Fifteenth Amendment.—My Dear Mrs. Stanton: Nothing but the great crisis pending in our movement would have drawn me from my retirement again into public strife and turmoil, but I feel it a duty to enter my protest with yours against the Fifteenth Amendment. Last winter, in Boston, I could only give my vote against it, for no Sixteenth had been proposed. It seemed almost a childish, selfish thing to do, when all the eloquence of a Boston platform was arrayed on the other side, and other women rose and said they were ready to step aside and let the colored man have his rights first. Not one said we will step aside and let the negro woman (whom I affirm, as I ever have, is better fitted for self-government than the negro man) have her rights before we press our claim, I could not but think it an easy thing for them to do, never having had the right they demanded. But if they truly believe that it will do for humanity what is claimed for it, I do not see why it should be called magnanimous for a woman to say, I yield to man just what he has always asserted as his, the right to rule. You have taken a bold stand, and I thank God for it. Though still in the minority, there is hope; for with a radical truth one shall chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight; and ere very long, before another convention, I trust many more will see with us that the Fifteenth Amendment, without the Sixteenth, is a compromise worse by far for the nation than any other ever passed. They could be repealed, this can not. Once settled, the waves of corruption will swamp our little bark freighted with all humanity, the women of all shades of color, and subject to every variety of tyranny and oppression, from the cramped feet of the Chinese to the cramped brains and waists of our own higher order of civilization.
It seems specially strange to those of us who so well remember the motto of the old Abolitionists, "Immediate and unconditional emancipation," now to hear a half measure advocated. It was that stern principle of justice which attracted and held me in the old organization when those dearest to me went into the Liberty party. I had been trained in that school which ​taught children that they must do right for right's sake, without hope of reward or fear of punishment, leaving the consequences with the All wise Ruler of events. Among the early Abolitionists this uncompromising spirit was manifest, and to me it was the real gospel.
I remember well the strong opposition to some who advocated the election of John C. Fremont, in 1856, among whom was Frederick Douglass. He was then denounced as a compromiser asking for a half loaf. He still asks for the half loaf; but others who stood firmly then for the whole have now come down to his plane, and desire above all things to finish up the anti-slavery work and have the negro man out of the way, and so give the Sixteenth Amendment the go-by, claiming manhood suffrage because it is the order of nature that man, however ignorant, debased and brutal he may be, shall always be first, because he always has been, yielding the whole argument to physical force, leaving the negro woman wholly out of the question, giving her over to the tyranny of the husband, which is nearly, if not quite, equal to that of the master. The anti-slavery platform still carefully guards itself against the woman question, while on the Suffrage platform the Fifteenth Amendment is considered essential. Miss Couzins was the only one who put the two amendments fairly before the Convention in Boston. After presenting the issues of the two amendments she trenched lightly on another topic still more offensive. She plead for the outcast woman in a most womanly way, but it did not prove to be a popular theme; but I think she is too true, pure, and noble not to do the same again and again.
Last evening Miss Peckham, Mrs. Churchill, and Miss Couzins presented the suffrage question to a select audience in Providence. Each in her own way and from her own stand-point spoke well. I have not time to give you as elaborate a notice as I should like to of each, but will do so after the convention which the State Association propose holding next week, on Monday, the 14th, in Westerly, R. I. If you have helps to send us we shall welcome them cordially.
Yours ever truly,P. W. Davis.
July 22, 1869.
Fifteenth Amendment—Its Ludicrous Side.—Almost every question has its ludicrous side. The champions of the Fifteenth Amendment to the Constitution present an illustration. Conceding woman's equal right to the ballot with man, they still resist her claims on the ground that this is not her hour, but man's hour. "The black man's hour." As though justice and right were determined by clocks and almanacs. And as though some sort of terrible crisis could not be urged always. Admitting even that in fitness for the franchise, the white women, especially of the North, are eminently superior to the average of Southern men, of any color, they still demand that woman's claim be postponed to their favorite Fifteenth Amendment, which presumes every man in the nation of whatever color, grade, or race, the superior of woman, however exalted by culture, by wealth, by refinement, by patriotism, or whatever virtues, gifts, or graces. An Amendment, it is called, while preparing the way to lift into lordship absolute, every man, however mean and vile, over every woman, however divine her character!
And then these "Amenders" presume to charge with "selfishness," "ignorance," "conservatism," and nobody knows what else, those who are ​laboring night and day, in season, out of season, and at all seasons, under a banner on which was inscribed at the formation of their Association, "Equal Rights to all citizens; especially the Right of Suffrage, irrespective of Race, Color or Sex." Without pretending that the Association, or any of its members, has violated, in letter or in spirit, a word of this constitutional pledge, leading Abolitionists are charging "injustice," "insincerity," and "treachery to the cause of liberty," on actors in the Equal Rights Association, besides ignorance, selfishness, and conservatism, because they will not turn aside from their holy purpose to promote a measure that basely, grossly insults one-half, and that the best half of the human race. Were the subject not too serious for mirth, such accusations, coming from such a source, would be simply ludicrous. As it is, many will laugh at such absurdity. The Fifteenth Amendment, at best, is but a trick, a device (as was the Fourteenth with its word male three times burned into a single period), of as corrupt and unprincipled a school of politicians as ever disgraced the name of legislation, to save themselves and their party in place and power. It is told us in all seriousness, that the word male is not in the Fifteenth Amendment, as though that atoned for its infamy, and rendered it worthy of woman's support. Why should the word male be in it? Three times solemnly muttered in the Fourteenth, it needed no repetition in the Fifteenth.
Another ludicrous view of this subject, is the zeal with which so many women are laboring to hoist all mandom into power over them. Power as omnipotent as ignorance, prejudice, and love of domination can possibly create. A little reflection, one would think, might show and satisfy the blindest that the opposition they encounter already is quite sufficient, without augmenting it a thousand fold, and anchoring it fast in the constitution of the country. True, they are assured by radical Republicans that as soon as the negro man is secured, the colored woman and the white woman also shall be equally distinguished. Had this age an Æsop, he would tell again his story of the goat and the fox at the bottom of the well. How to get out, of course, was the question. After long and anxious thought, a happy expedient struck the fox. "Do you, friend goat, rear yourself up against the wall, as near the top as possible, and from the tip of your horns I can spring out, and then it will be quite easy to pull you up by the horns also." No quicker spoken than done. Out leaped the fox, and was safe. Then the goat demanded his release, as promised. "You old fool!" answered Reynard! "Had you half as much brain as beard, you would know that I would never risk my life to save yours," and away he ran. The whole history of American politics is assurance, but pre-eminently so is the history of present parties, that a party victory would scarcely be risked to save all womankind from consuming fire. A very few such elections as the late one in Virginia, would subdue immensely the present Republican ardor on the colored man's rights.
But most ludicrous of all is it to hear old anti-slavery leaders and teachers referring to the past for defense of their present hostility, and challenging us to re-read that history and be ashamed of our present course. But when in the past did Wendell Phillips ever teach that a half loaf is better than no bread, if poisoned, or if it were snatched or stolen from a family of starving orphans? It was not in 1839, nor '49, nor '59, that he held or inculcated such ​a philosophy. The motto of the Anti-Slavery Standard was and is "Without Concealment—Without Compromise." Now under that sublime evangel women are instructed to bridge over the gulf to colored male enfranchisement with their own imperiled, nay, sacrificed equal rights. Better now the "half loaf," festering, putrid with the poison of compromise, than no bread! Better that the black man have his half loaf, though he steal it from his mother and sisters, more hungry, starving, and dying, than himself!
Oh, no! it was never so in the past. Terrible to conservatism as to slavery itself, was the mighty war-cry of the Abolitionists for twenty years. "No union with slaveholders!" No compromise with injustice for an election, or for an hour, not even for a good ultimate purpose! Colonization proposed a double purpose, the final extinction of slavery, and a meanwhile redemption of Africa from the midnight gloom and horror of heathenism. "Get thee behind me, Satan," was the thundering response and just rebuke of it by the Abolitionists! "Let us compromise with the South, and buy up their slaves," said Elihu Burritt and his overgrown mushroom convention, at Cleveland. "Our curse on your slave trade, foreign and domestic," was the answering response of the Garrisonian Invincibles. Many of the oldest leaders and officers of the society refused even to help an escaped slave-mother buy her children of her old master. "Let us form a Republican party," said foxy politicians, and fight the extension of slavery into Kansas, or any other new territory with ballot, bullet, and battle-axe, if need be, but leaving the damnable system in the States with its 4,000,000 of victims and their posterity still chained under constitutional guarantee and the army and navy of the nation. "No union with slaveholders," rung out the lips and lungs of the Abolitionists, in tones that shook the land from Maine to Mexico! "Fremont and Jessie" harnessed by constitutional compromise to the Juggernaut car of slavery, were not to be preferred by them to Beelzebub Buchanan himself. "No union with slave-holders," though Gabriel were candidate and chief captain of their hosts!
Now what do we behold? Wendell Phillips has shivered the English language all to pieces in attempts to describe the baseness and utter worthlessness of the Republican party. The president has sold "the poisonous porridge called his soul," to Virginia rebels and New York and Pennsylvania aristocrats and bondholders, and yet Mr. Phillips persists in demanding that woman lay her own right of suffrage at the presidential and Republican party feet, while they so mould and manipulate the black male element, as by it, if possible, to save themselves from utter rout and destruction. Thanks be to God, some of us learned the old anti-slavery lesson from Wendell Phillips better. And we dare take our appeal from the Wendell Phillips of to-day, to him of twenty years ago. And we do "dare to look our past history in the face." And moreover, we look with triumph, and with hearts swelling with fervent gratitude that our anti-slavery teachers schooled us so well. What is it but ludicrous (if mirth be possible on such a question) for those who are thus seeking the enfranchisement of but half of even the fragmentary colored race, to charge with selfishness, compromise, and treachery, the association, or any of its members, that are earnestly laboring to extend the ballot to every American citizen, irrespective of all distinctions of race, complexion or sex? Can such accusers look each other in the face and not laugh? Cato wondered ​that two augurs could meet with gravity. What would he do here? And still more preposterous, if not ludicrous, is it, when woman voluntarily stops and becomes the agent of her own degradation, and with her own hands builds barriers against her own advancement; piling up opposition, Pelion upon Ossa, when the majority against her, even in New York and New England, is already appalling? And then for us to be referred to the teachings and experiences of the past for lessons in compromise, cold, calculating compromise, such as Abolitionists ever blasted with the breath of their nostrils, and scourged from their presence with fiery indignation! The Equal Rights Association is not to be turned aside by any seductive devices from its high and holy purpose of enfranchisement for all American citizens, knowing no race, no color, no sex.
P. P.
Oct. 7, 1869.
Dear Revolution:—Pardon a few plain words from an earnest friend of human suffrage.
Your course opposing the Fifteenth Amendment and Political (combined with moral) Temperance action, seems to me absolutely suicidal, and must and will logically leave you to the tender mercies of negro-drivers or haters and rumsellers and their sympathizers. How much human suffrage can hope for at their hands, judge ye!
J. K. Phœnix.
P. S.—To say I am utterly astonished and grieved at The Revolution therein but feebly expresses my feelings. But we shall see what you will effect by it.
In this period of reconstruction the Woman Suffrage Associations sent their first delegates to National political conventions. The appointment of Susan B. Anthony to the Democratic Presidential Convention was a new and unlooked-for sensation.
The Revolution, New York, July 9, 1868.
Susan B. Anthony in Tammany Hall.—Our readers will remember, some time ago, it was announced in all the daily journals that Susan B. Anthony was appointed a delegate to the Democratic Convention, to represent the woman's suffrage movement in this country. She accordingly applied by letter for a hearing in the Convention. Her letter was presented ​to the Convention by the President, ex-Governor Horatio Seymour, read by the clerk in a loud, clear voice, received a most respectful and enthusiastic hearing, and was referred to the Committee on Resolutions.
As our readers would, no doubt, like to know what radical doctrines the Democratic party are now sufficiently developed to applaud, we give the letter below. Let no one say that our devotion to the education of this party for the last four years has been in vain:
| Woman's Suffrage Association, 37 Park Row, | Woman's Suffrage Association, 37 Park Row, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ |
| Room 20, New York, July 4, 1868. | | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ |
| Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs. Horace Greeley, | Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mrs. Horace Greeley, | $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ Central Com. |
| $\scriptstyle {\left.{\begin{matrix}\ \\\ \end{matrix}}\right\}\,$ Central Com. ||
To the President and Members of the National Democratic Convention
Gentlemen:—I address you by letter to ask the privilege of appearing before you during the sittings of this Convention, to demand the enfranchisement of the women of America, the only class of citizens wholly unrepresented in the Government, the only class (not guilty of crime) taxed without representation, tried without a jury of their peers, governed without their consent. And yet in this class are found many of your most noble, virtuous, law-abiding citizens, who possess all the requisite qualifications of voters. Women have property and education. We are not "idiots, lunatics, paupers, criminals, rebels," nor do we "bet on elections." We lack, according to your constitutions, but one qualification—that of sex—which is insurmountable, and, therefore, equivalent to a deprivation of the suffrage; in other words, the "tyranny of taxation without representation."
We desire to lay before you this violation of the great fundamental principle of our Government for your serious consideration, knowing that minorities can be moved by principles as majorities are only by votes. Hence we look to you for the initiative step in the redress of our grievances.
The party in power have not only failed to heed our innumerable petitions, asking the right of suffrage, poured into Congress and State Legislatures, but they have submitted a proposition to the several States to insert the word "male" in the Federal Constitution, where it has never been, and thereby put up a new barrier against the enfranchisement of woman. This fresh insult to the women of the Republic, who so bravely shared the dangers and sacrifices of the late war, has roused us to more earnest and persistent efforts to secure those rights, privileges, and immunities that belong to every citizen under Government. As you hold the Constitution of the fathers to be a sacred legacy to us and our children forever, we ask you to save it from this desecration, which deprives one-half our citizens of the right of representation in the Government. Over this base proposition the nation has stood silent and indifferent. While the dominant party has with one hand lifted up two million black men and crowned them with the honor and dignity of citizenship, with the other it has dethroned fifteen million white women—their own mothers and sisters, their own wives and daughters—and cast them under the heel of the lowest orders of manhood.
We appeal to you, not only because you, being in a minority, are in a position to consider principles, but because you have been the party heretofore to extend the suffrage. It was the Democratic party that fought ​most valiantly for the removal of the "property qualification" from all white men, and thereby placed the poorest ditch-digger on a political level with the proudest millionaire. This one act of justice to workingmen has perpetuated your power, with but few interruptions, from that time until the war. And now you have an opportunity to confer a similar boon on the women of the country, and thus possess yourselves of a new talisman that will insure and perpetuate your political power for decades to come.
While the first and highest motive we would urge on you, is the recognition in all your action of the great principles of justice and equality that are the foundation of a republican government, it is not unworthy to remind you that the party that takes this onward step will reap its just reward. It needs but little observation to see that the tide of progress in all countries is setting toward the enfranchisement of woman, and that this advance step in civilization is destined to be taken in our day.
We conjure you, then, to turn from the dead questions of the past to the vital issues of the hour. The brute form of slavery ended with the war. The black man is a soldier and a citizen. He holds the bullet and the ballot in his own right hand. Consider his case settled. Those weapons of defense and self-protection can never be wrenched from him. Yours the responsibility now to see that no new chains be forged by bondholders and monopolists for enslaving the labor of the country.
The late war, seemingly in the interest of slavery, was fought by unseen hands for the larger liberties of the whole people. It was not a war between North and South, for the principle of class and caste knows neither latitude or longitude. It was a war of ideas—of Aristocracy and Democracy—of Capital and Labor—the same that has convulsed the race through the ages, and will continue to convulse future generations, until Justice and Equality shall reign upon the earth.
I desire, therefore, an opportunity to urge on this Convention the wisdom of basing its platform on universal suffrage as well as universal amnesty, from Maine to California, and thus take the first step toward a peaceful and permanent reconstruction.
In behalf of the Woman's Suffrage Association,
Respectfully yours,Susan B. Anthony.
The comments of the daily city press on this "innovation" were ​as varied as amusing. During the reading of this document, several members of the Equal Rights Association occupied conspicuous seats in the Convention. This was the first time in the history of that party that any effort had been made to secure the attendance of their mothers, wives, and daughters. But observing that women had been an element of enthusiasm in Republican meetings all through the war and the period of reconstruction, and seeing the improved tone and manner their presence had given to the speeches, and the general conduct of the proceedings, it was thought best to secure the same influence henceforth in Democratic conventions. The attempt at this time was quite satisfactory and successful. A large number of handsomely-dressed ladies helped to swell the immense audience that assembled in Tammany Hall, one of the most spacious and elegant
​in the city, to be dedicated on that day, July 4th, 1868, to Democratic principles.
As there were strong hopes that that party was about to take some new departure; some onward step; even to nominate for their leader so radical a man as Salmon P. Chase, a large number of Radicals and Liberals were present. Had the Democrats made that nomination, and put a woman suffrage plank in their platform, they would probably have carried the election. But they timidly clung to their old moorings, nominated a man who had an unpopular war record, and submitted a platform without one vital principle with which to rouse the enthusiasm of the people.
Thus was the movement inaugurated of sending women as delegates to both Republican and Democratic Presidential conventions, giving rise to the agitation of the suffrage question on new platforms. With what success the example has been followed, the records from time to time fully show.
* ↑ Going over to the Copperheads.—As we have received several letters from radical friends, warning us that we are going over to the copperheads, for their comfort and instruction we will state some part of our political creed.   1. We believe that suffrage is a natural right that belongs to every man and woman of sound mind, without any qualification of property, education, or sex, and moreover, that no reconstruction is worthy the name that does not secure this right to the humblest citizen under government.   2. We believe that both the spirit and the letter of the Federal Constitution and the Declaration of Independence give Congress the right to secure a republican form of every State in the Union, and if they had done their duty at the end of the war and proclaimed universal suffrage and universal amnesty, North and South, the Republican party would not have been floundering about in the fogs and mists of statesmanship to-day, without one inspiring party cry, or one grand motto inscribed upon their banners, to carry them through the coming Presidential campaign.   3. We believe that behind the rights of the Federal Government and the rights of the several States are fundamental rights more sacred than either, namely the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and happiness; that out of these rights all just governments flow, and whatever hinders the growth of the individual, restricts his liberty, and destroys his happiness, is tyranny, and it is his sacred duty to resist it to the death, as it is that of the State to resist the Federal Government, in order to secure larger liberty for its whole people. Rebellion in defense of justice, mercy, and the higher law is always in order. Inasmuch as the rights of the individual are above all constitutions, customs, creeds, and codes, it is the duty of the general government to protect these rights against all intermediate authorities.   4. While we have always demanded emancipation and enfranchisement for the African race, we have no great enthusiasm for "negro suffrage" as a party cry, because it is too narrow and partial for the hour. In '56, Republicans asked aid and comfort of Abolitionists, because they were opposed to the extension of slavery, but the Abolitionists, who demanded "immediate emancipation," scouted the proposition; non-extension, said they, is by no means grappling with the principle; shutting up slavery where it is, is a step in the right direction, and will eventually strangle the whole system, but to educate the people into an idea we need the enthusiasm of a principle. When we say "slavery is a sin," and therefore demand "immediate emancipation," we end the evil and its extension in the same breath. So we say, to-day, to the Abolitionists and Republicans, we can not accept your platform, because it is not based on the idea that suffrage is a natural right, we admit that "negro suffrage" is a step in the right direction, but to educate the people to this partial demand even, we need the enthusiasm of a principle, which you do not proclaim, so long as you ask simply the extension of suffrage to two million men, instead of its universal application to every citizen of the republic. As the greater includes the less, when we say universal enfranchisement, we claim all that the most radical Abolitionists and Republicans claim and much more. Now, if the copperheads are educated up to this point, we are happy to give them the right hand of fellowship, and shall hope to be one of the delegates to the Tammany Hall Convention. We have read their platform, as set forth in four mortal columns of the World, and really do not see much to choose between it and the Chicago platform. In fact, with the two Democratic candidates, Gen. Grant and Chief-Justice Chase, and their twin platforms, stump orators will have a hard task to prove why the people should prefer one candidate or party to the other. The aristocratic principle—the government of the many by the few—has been tried six thousand years in every latitude and longitude, and under every imaginable form, and the nations based on this principle have all alike perished. We have proclaimed the true democratic idea on this continent, but never lived it. Now the work of this generation is to realize what the fathers declared a government of equality. The ballot is the symbol of this idea, and it is not too much to demand to-day that it be placed in the hand of every citizen. It is not too much to ask that this idea, baptized in the blood of two revolutions, be now made the corner-stone of the republic, the test of loyalty to the Union, to justice, to humanity.—E. C. S. The Revolution, June 11, 1868.
* ↑ Lucretia Mott, Martha C. Wright, Robert Purvis, Olympia Brown, Josephine Griffing, Parker Pillsbury, Paulina Wright Davis, Matilda Joslyn Gage, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Ernestine L. Rose, Clarina Howard Nichols.
* ↑ (New York Herald, July 1, 1868): The Women's Rights Women and the Democratic Convention.—The Central Committee of the Woman's Suffrage Association has prepared a woman's rights platform for the coming National Democratic Convention. This association was given the cold shoulder and completely ignored by the radicals at Chicago, and the Democrats have therefore a splendid opportunity to take wind out of the Republican sails on "womanhood suffrage" against "manhood suffrage," and for white women especially, as better qualified for an intelligent exercise of the suffrage than the thousands of black men just rescued from the ignorance of negro slavery. The Democratic Convention can turn the radical party out of doors upon this issue alone if only bold enough to take strong ground upon it in favor of at least the same political rights to white women that Congress has given to Southern niggers.   (World, July 1, 1868): The Woman's Suffrage Central Committee have spoken with a kindness which will be appreciated at its proper value; they propose to anticipate and obviate the labors of the National Democratic Convention by preparing a platform for the party in advance. To this platform we elsewhere give the benefit of our circulation. The document will not be amenable to censure for any lack of explicitness or novelty, and will doubtless receive all the attention to which its intrinsic merits entitle it, and which its exceptional comprehensiveness will challenge. Place aux dames! the party in advance. To this platform we elsewhere give the benefit of our circulation. The document will not be amenable to censure for any lack of explicitness or novelty, and will doubtless receive all the attention to which its intrinsic merits entitle it, and which its exceptional comprehensiveness will challenge. Place aux dames!   (Evening Telegram, July 2, 1868): The Woman's Platform.—The Woman's Suffrage Association present to the Tammany Hall Fourth of July Democratic National Convention a platform of principles which contains some good sound planks and proves at all events that an educated white woman is more fit to be intrusted with the ballot than is the brutalized and ignorant negro who has been invested with political power by the radicals of Congress. The platform is the work of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, and the red men of the wigwam and their associates might do worse than indorse and adopt it entire. Besides, this declaration of principles on the part of the strong-minded females opens up a new feature in the campaign and may get rid of a serious difficulty. Why should not the Democratic Convention take the cow by the horns, nominate Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Susan B. Anthony as their candidate for the Vice-Presidency, and thus strike out at once in a bold revolutionary policy that would entirely overshadow the radicals and their niggers' rights and sweep the country from Maine to California? We invite the attention of Belmont and the National Committee to the suggestion. Chase and Stanton would be a wonderfully strong ticket and a remarkable association of names, and so, for that matter, would be Chase and Anthony. Besides, it might really bring about a great reform in the character of the Senate to be presided over by a female. There would be fewer disgraceful scenes in that body, and even Chandler, Nye, and poor maudlin Yates would feel the influence of woman's presence, and learn to behave themselves decently.   (Sun, July 2, 1868): The Revolution for this week is full of suggestive and entertaining, if not instructive, reading matter. Whether or not women ought to vote, it is very clear that those of the sex who are associated under the leadership of Mrs. Stanton and Miss Anthony can write in the most saucy and piquant fashion, and, moreover, know how to disarm by their wit and good humor the most ill-natured of their adversaries.   (Tribune, July 2, 1868): Woman Suffrage.—It is said that strong ground will be taken against the admission of Miss Susan B. Anthony as a delegate at large to represent the interests of American women in the Convention; but as that lady's ticket is already "impeticosed," and as she has a will of her own, and a number of brawny friends who will not see her deprived of her rights as a publisher, a woman, and an American citizen, it may be inferred that Miss Anthony will take a seat in due form, and will make herself heard when her turn comes.   (World, July 2, 1868): The ladies of the spirited woman's rights weekly, called The Revolution, with Miss Susan B. Anthony at their head, are setting their caps for the Democratic party. Availing themselves of the privilege conferred on their charming sex by leap-year, they are making the first advances if not a downright "proposal." Miss Anthony greets the National Convention by hanging out a fresh new sign in flaming red, brighter than the blushes of Aurora, and all the way up three flights of stairs to her office, visitors will encounter red signs to the right of them, red signs to the left of them, like the cannon at Balaklava. A conservative stranger needs all the courage of the immortal Light Brigade to run the gauntlet of the blazing word "Revolution" staring at him on so many sides. Miss Anthony has taken uncommon pains to make her paper this week captivating and irresistible, as will be seen by the advertisement she has inserted in this morning's World for the benefit of members of the Convention. But if she were a confiding miss of "sweet sixteen," instead of the "strong-minded woman" that she is, and the blushes of all those brilliant signs were transfused into her own lovely cheeks, we suspect (such is the infirmity or the perversity of "those odious men") that she would make more conquests than she can reasonably expect to do with the intellectual blaze and brilliancy of this week's Revolution—splendid new signs and all. We fear the time is rather distant when gallant young democrats will not surrender to soft eyes and modest feminine ways sooner than to a good piece of argumentation in a female mouth. Miss Anthony will be the author of a "Revolution" indeed, if she succeeds in persuading the well-dressed beaux to prefer wives to whom they would go to school. The members of the Convention are more mature, though we doubt if they are much more sensible. But Miss Anthony is not of a temper to be discouraged by small obstacles, and we applaud the spirit with which she attempts to "make hay while the sun shines."   (Evening Express, July 2, 1868): "The Revolution" and "the Woman."—The women—naturally enough malcontent when the inferior race of negroes is given the ballot; when Coolies are promised the ballot, and even Indians can not be refused equal and universal suffrage as "men and brethren"—insist now, more and more, upon women being taken into the Radical party. The Democracy acknowledge their right to equality with negroes and Coolies and Comanches—not much of an acknowledgment, by the way, but something in the way of progress, and far ahead of the Radicals. The last number of The Revolution is irresistible in argument against the Negro Suffrage Radicals, who will not give women equal rights with negroes.