# History of Woman Suffrage/Volume 4/Chapter 9

Contents
CHAPTER IX.
THE NATIONAL SUFFRAGE CONVENTION OF 1889
The Twenty-first annual convention of the National Association met in the Congregational Church at Washington, Jan. 21-23, 1889, in answer to the official Call:
The denial of the ballot to woman is the great political crime of the century, before which tariff, finance, land monopoly, temperance, labor and all economic questions sink into insignificance; for the right of suffrage involves all questions of person and of property.
While each party in power has refused to enfranchise woman, being skeptical as to her moral influence in government, yet with strange inconsistency they alike seek the aid of her voice and pen in all important political struggles. While not morally bound to obey the laws made without their consent, yet we find women the most law-abiding class of citizens in the community. While not recognized as a component part of the Government, they are most active in all great movements for education, religion, philanthropy and reform.
In the absence of Mrs. Stanton Miss Anthony presided, opening her address with the sentence, "Here we have stood for the last twenty-one years, demanding of Congress to take the necessary step to secure to the women of this nation protection in the exercise of their constitutional right to a voice in the government." She introduced the Hon. Albert G. Riddle (D. C.), who in 1871 had made an argument before the Joint Judiciary Committee in favor of woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment; and later had argued before the Supreme Court her right to vote in the District. In the course of his remarks he said: "All the changes in favor of woman—everything indeed that has been achieved—has been in consequence of this contest for woman suffrage. Its advocates began it; they traveled along with it; and all that has been gained in the statutes of the various States and of the United States has been by their efforts; whatever has taken a crystallized form of irrepealable law is because of this discussion, because of this agitation."
Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker (Conn.) read the resolution demanding a representation of women in the Centennial Celebration of the Adoption of the United States Constitution soon to be held in New York City. Miss Anthony then introduced Senator Henry W. Blair (N. H.), who was received with much applause, as the unswerving champion of woman suffrage. In an address considering the constitutional phase of the question, he said:
As the law now is, in the Federal Constitution there must always have been such a voter of the United States, for in the second clause of the first article it is provided that there shall be a House of Representatives "elected by the people in the States." Where that provision is made it says that the electors shall have the qualifications of the electors in the States. But it does not say that they shall be the same individuals; it does not say that they are to act in the same capacity. They might vary in different portions of the country, in different States; but nevertheless, in giving to the people of the States the right to specify the qualifications which should belong to the electors of the United States, the Constitution did not give up the power to create electors itself. ....
Take the Fifteenth Amendment. There is the first instance in the entire Constitution where we find the franchise declared to be a "right," and in specific terms alluded to as such. And there it is provided that a right already recognized as existing shall not be abridged by the United States or by the States—a right already existing, not established. And by virtue of that amendment and the provision that this existing right shall not be denied or abridged on account of "race, color or previous condition of servitude," either by the United States or by the States, the national existence of the voter is established. ....
I think our great difficulty about this is that women perhaps do not, to the extent that they should, place their cause upon the platform that it is a right; that to uphold that it is not a right is a wrong greater than any which has been perpetrated in the past; that freedom to half the human race is a glorious achievement which it still remains for mankind to accomplish. ....
Miss Anthony then read a letter from Mrs. Stanton which embodied that spirit of independence possessed by her almost. beyond all other women:
If strong appeals could induce the highway robber to return a modicum of what he had stolen, it might mitigate the miseries of his victim, but surely there would be no reason for gratitude, and an expression of thanks to him would be quite as much out of place as are complimentary resolutions passed in our conventions to legislators for their concessions to women. They deserve nothing at our hands until they make full restitution of all we possessed in the original compact under the colonial constitutions—rights over which in the nature of things men could have no lawful jurisdiction whatever. .... Woman has the same right to a voice in this government that man has, and it is based on the same natural desire and capacity for self-government and self-protection. ....
Mrs. Stanton referred to the bravery of recent women writers in attacking social problems, citing Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Margaret Deland, Olive Schreiner, Mona Caird and Helen Gardiner. She closed with a tribute to the co-laborers who had died during the past year, among them the Rev. James Freeman Clarke, Judge Samuel E. Sewall, Dr. Clemence S. Lozier, Dr. Mary F. Thomas, Miss Abby W. May and numerous others.
During the second day's proceedings the Rev. Alexander Kent, of the Church of Our Father (Universalist), addressed the convention, saying in part:
Mrs. Caroline Hallowell Miller (Md.) took the ground that, after fifty years of argument, women now should unite in a continuous demand for the rights of citizenship.
In introducing the Hon. William D. Kelley (Penn.) Miss Anthony said that not only in Congress, where he was known as the Father of the House, but years ago in his own State Legislature, he advocated the political equality of women. After paying a tribute to his mother, to Mary Wollstonecraft and to Frances Wright, he said: "I am here, because I feel that I should again declare publicly the justice of the enfranchisement of women, which, having cherished through youth and early manhood, I asserted in a public address in Independence Hall, at high noon on the Fourth of July, 1841, before there was any organization for promoting woman's rights politically." He then sketched results already achieved and urged women to keep the flame burning for the benefits which would come to posterity.
The Rev. Olympia Brown (Wis.) spoke on Foreign Rule, ​and after pointing out the glory of a country which offered a home to all, and expressing a belief in universal suffrage, she continued:
The last census shows, I think, that there are in the United States three times as many American-born women as the whole foreign population, men and women together, so that the votes of women will eventually be the only means of overcoming this foreign influence and maintaining our free institutions. There is no possible safety for our free school, our free church or our republican government, unless women are given the suffrage and that right speedily. .... The question in every political caucus, in every political convention, is not what great principles shall we announce, but what kind of a document can we draw up that will please the foreigners? . . . . .
When we remember that the first foot to touch Plymouth Rock was a woman's—that in the first settlement of this country women endured trials and privations and stood bravely at the post of duty, even fighting in the ranks that we might have a republic—and that in our great Western world women came at an early day to make the wilderness blossom as the rose, and rocked their babies' cradles in the log cabins when the Indians' war-whoop was heard on the prairies and the wolves howled around their doors—when we remember that in the last war thousands of women in the Northwest bravely took upon themselves the-work of the households and the fields that their husbands and sons might fight the battles of liberty—when we recollect all this, and then are told that loyal women, pioneer women, the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers, are not even to ask for the right of suffrage lest the Scandinavians should be offended, it is time to rise in indignation and ask, Whose country is this? Who made it? Who have periled their lives for it?
Our American women are property holders and pay large taxes; but the foreigner who has lived only one year in the State, and ten days in the precinct, who does not own a foot of land, may vote away their property in the form of taxes in the most reckless manner, regardless of their interests and their rights. Women are well-educated; they are graduating from our colleges; they are ​reading and thinking and writing; and yet they are the political inferiors of all the riff-raff of Europe that is poured upon our shores. It is unbearable. There is no ase that can express the enormous injustice done to women. ....
We can not separate subjects and say we will vote on temperance or on school matters, for all these questions are part of government. .... When women as well as men are voters, the church will get some recognition. I marvel that all ministers are not in favor of woman suffrage, when I consider that their audiences are almost entirely composed of women and that the church to-day is brought into disrepute because it is made up of disfranchised members. The minister would stand a hundred-fold higher than he does now if women had the suffrage. Everybody would want to know what the minister was saying to those women voters.
We are in danger in this country of Catholic domination, not because the Catholics are more numerous than we are,: but because the Catholic church is represented at the polls and the Protestant church is not. The foreigners are Catholic—the greater portion of them; the foreigners are men—the greater part of them, and members of the Catholic church, and they work for it and vote for it. The Protestant church is composed of women. Men for the most part do not belong to it; they do not care much for it except as something to interest the women of their household. The consequence is the Protestant church is comparatively unrepresented at the ballot-box. ....
Mrs. Mary Seymour Howell gave a humorous series of Suffrage Pictures in New York, which was greatly relished by the audience. Mrs. Laura M. Johns described Municipal Suffrage in Kansas in an enthusiastic and interesting manner. The Rev. Anna Howard Shaw then delivered her lecture, which has since become so famous, The Fate of Republics, tracing the rise and fall of the republics of history, which grew because of material prosperity and failed because of moral weakness. All were in the hands of men, and women were excluded from any share.
​Mrs. Harriette R. Shattuck gave an account of the recent school election in Boston where 19,490 women voted, a much higher percentage of those registered than of the men, and thus defeated the dangerous attempt which had been made by the Church to interfere with the State. Richard W. Blue, State Senator of Kansas, was called to the platform by Mrs. Gougar as one who had greatly aided its Municipal Suffrage Bill.
Mrs. May Wright Sewall (Ind.) spoke on Women in the Recent Campaign. In the National Prohibition Convention they sat as delegates and served on committees. In all parts of the country Republican and Democratic women organized clubs and marched in processions; but she called attention to the fact that these methods are not advocated by the suffrage societies so long as women remain disfranchised. Over two hundred clubs were formed for political study. All of the parties placed women on their platforms to speak in behalf of the candidates. A Central Republican Headquarters was opened in New York and put in charge of a national committee of women who sent out hundreds of thousands of campaign documents. When election day came not one of all these women could put her opinion in the ballot-box.
At the evening session Mrs. Lillie Devereux Blake (N. Y.) in her trenchant way discussed Political Methods and pointed out the inconsistent and illogical declarations of platforms and speakers when applied to women, also the delight afforded to men by the tin horns and fireworks. She suggested for President Harrison's Cabinet, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Secretary of State; Susan B. Anthony, Secretary of War; May Wright Sewall, Secretary of the Treasury; Zerelda G. Wallace, Secretary of the Navy; Clara Barton, Secretary of the Interior; Laura de Force Gordon, Attorney-General.
Mrs. Sarah M. Perkins (O.) spoke on The Concentration of Forces, showing how prone women are to organize for every object except suffrage, and yet the majority of these workers would rejoice to have the power which lies in the ballot and would be infinitely better equipped for their work.
Mrs. Mary B. Clay (Ky.) opened the last day's session with ​a forcible address entitled, Are American Women Civil and Political Slaves? She proved the affirmative of her question by quoting the spoken and written declarations of the greatest statesmen on the right of individual representation and the exceptions made against women, citing Walker, the legal writer: "This language applied to males would be the exact definition of political slavery; applied to females, custom does not so regard it."
Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway (Ore.) described the recent arbitrary and unwarranted disfranchisement of the women of Washington Territory. Frederick Douglass was loudly called for and in responding expressed his gratitude to women, "who were chiefly instrumental in liberating my people from actual chains of bondage," and declared his full belief in their right to the franchise.
Mrs. Helen M. Gougar (Ind.) made a strong speech upon Partisan or Patriot? In her address on Woman in Marriage Mrs. Clara Bewick Colby, editor of the Woman's Tribune, said:
The one great mistake of the ages—since woman lost her primal independence and supremacy—to which is due all the sins and sorrows growing out of the association of the sexes, has been in making woman a passive agent instead of an equal factor in arranging the laws, customs and conditions of this mutual state. Whether marriage be a purely business partnership for the care and maintenance of children, or whether it be a sacrament to which the benediction of the church gives peculiar sanctity and perpetuity and makes the parties "no more twain but one flesh," in either case it is an absurdity, which we only tolerate because of custom, for men alone to make all the regulations and stipulations concerning it.
A letter was read from Mrs. Matilda Joslyn Gage (N. Y.) urging women individually to petition Senators and Representatives for the removal of their political disabilities, because by this means these men were compelled to think on the question.
Mrs. Virginia L. Minor (Mo.) addressed the convention on The Law of Federal Suffrage, a legal argument on the right to vote conferred by the Constitution. Miss Anthony supplemented Mrs. Minor's argument with a history of the Fourteenth Amendment, in which she said:
We at once asserted our right to vote under this amendment: "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." Our first trial was on civil rights, when Mrs. Myra Bradwell of Chicago, who had been for some time publishing a law journal which every lawyer in the State said he could not afford to do without, applied for admission to the bar, and these same lawyers denied it. She appealed to the Illinois Supreme Court and it confirmed the denial, because she was not only ​italic a woman but a married woman. Then she appealed her case to the Supreme Court of the United States, and a majority of this court decided that the right to be a lawyer was not especially a citizen's right and that therefore the State of Illinois could legally abridge the privileges and immunities of its women by denying them admission to the bar.
I shall never forget how our hearts sank when in 1871 that decision came, declaring the powerlessness of the Federal Constitution to protect women in their civil right of being eligible to the legal profession. When we said if these rights which it is meant to. protect are not civil they must be political rights, we thought we had the Supreme Court in a corner. But when my trial for voting came on, Justice Hunt said that the right to vote was a special right belonging to men alone. We didn't believe that this decision could be confirmed, but it was, when Mrs. Minor, who attempted to vote at the same election in her State of Missouri, appealed her case to the Supreme Court of te United States. It was argued by her husband, the ablest of lawyers, and when the Judges brought in their decision it was to the effect that the Constitution of the United States has no voters. Thus it is that we have two Supreme Court decisions relative to the powers of the Fourteenth Amendment to protect women, and in both cases they have been excluded absolutely from its provisions.
The address on The Coming Sex by Mrs. Eliza Archard Connor, a well-known journalist of New York, was declared by the press to be in its delivery "the gem of the convention." She said in part:
Wherever you go, wake women 'up, tell them to learn everything. Tell them to study with all their might history, civil government, political economy, social and industrial science—for the time is coming when they will need them all. ....
This is the work before us. This is the meaning of the desperate ​unrest and unhappiness of women. It is this that has drawn us here to enter our protest against the wicked, old, one-legged order of things. Our honored Miss Anthony has gone through fire and hail while she worked for her convictions. All of us have wrought as best we might for the higher education of women, for their pecuniary independence, for their civil and political rights, fighting the world, the flesh and the devil.
The enrollment committee reported a list of about one hundred thousand names of persons asking for woman suffrage. The treasurer announced the receipts for 1888 to be $12,510. All of the expenses of the great International Council had been paid and a balance of nearly $300 remained.
The resolutions might be described as an epitomized recital of wrongs and a Bill of Rights.
Whereas, They were deprived of this right by the arbitrary Acts of successive State Legislatures in violation of the original compact as seen in the early constitutions; therefore,
Resolved, That it is the duty of the several States to make prompt restitution of these ancient rights, recognized by innumerable precedents in English history, and to-day by the gradual extension of the suffrage over vast territories.
Whereas, Woman's title deed to an equal share in the inheritance left her by the fathers of the Republic has been examined and proved by able lawyers; and,
Whereas, This right is already exercised in some form in one hundred localities in different parts of the world; therefore,
Resolved, That sex is no longer considered a bar to the exercise of suffrage by civilized nations.
Resolved, That it is the duty of Congress to pass a declaratory act, compelling the several States to establish a "republican form of government" within their borders by securing to women their ​right to vote, thus nullifying the fraudulent Acts of Legislatures and making our Government homogeneous from Maine to Oregon.
Resolved, That the question of enfranchising one-half the people is superior to that of Indian treaties, admission of new States, tariff, international copyright or any other subject before the country, and that it is the foremost duty of the Fiftieth Congress at this, its last session, to submit an amendment to the Constitution forbidding States to disfranchise citizens on account of sex.
Resolved, That as a question of ethics the difference between putting a fraudulent ballot in the box and keeping a rightful ballot out is nothing, and that we condemn the action which prevents women from casting a ballot at any election as a shameful evidence of the corruption of dominant political parties in this country.
Whereas, The Legislature of Washington Territory has twice voted for woman suffrage—women for the most part having gladly accepted and exercised the right, Governor Squire in his report to the Secretary of the Interior in 1884 having declared that it met the approval of a large majority of the people; and,
Whereas, In 1887, after the women had voted for three and a half years, the Territorial Supreme Court pronounced the law invalid on the ground that the nature of the bill must be described in the title of the act; and,
Whereas, In January, 1888, another bill passed by the Legislature gave to this law an explicit title; and the bill, again granting suffrage to women, was signed by Governor Semple, thus triumphantly showing the approval of the people, the Legislature and the Governor; and,
Whereas, The Territorial Supreme Court, in August, 1888, again rendered a decision against the right of the women of the Territory to vote, basing their decision upon the false assumption that Congress had never delegated to the Territories the right to define the status of their own' voters; and,
Whereas, This decision strikes a blow at the fundamental powers of the United States Congress, confounding laws delegated to the Territories by the Organic Act of 1852, which vests in their Legislatures the power to prescribe their qualifications for voting and holding office—with State governments which limit legislative enactments by constitutions of their own making—thus setting at naught the will of the people; therefore,
Resolved, That we earnestly and respectfully petition Congress that in passing an enabling act or acts for the admission of the other Territories there be incorporated a clause allowing women to vote for delegates to their constitutional conventions, and at the election for the adoption of the constitution, in every one where the Legislature has granted woman suffrage and such law has not been repealed by a subsequent Legislature.
Resolved, In the year 1873 our leader, Susan B. Anthony, was deprived of the right of trial by jury, by a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, simply because she was a woman, it is the duty of all women to resent the insult thus offered to woman​hood and demand of the men of this closing century of constitutional government such condemnation of this infamous decision of Judge Ward Hunt as shall teach the coming generation of voters that the welfare of the republic demands that women be protected equally with men in the exercise of citizenship; and,
Whereas, In the great Centennial Celebration of 1876 women were denied all participation in the public proceedings commemorating the birth of the Declaration of Independence, though they sought earnestly and respectfully to declare their sentiments of loyalty to the great principles of liberty and responsibility there enunciated, they should now demand official recognition by Congress and the State Legislature on all the Boards of Commissioners which, at the public expense, are to initiate and carry out the august ceremonials of the coming Constitutional Celebration in New York in April, 1889, to the end that taxation without representation shall no longer be acknowledged a just and constitutional policy in this government nominally of the people, therefore,
Resolved, That a committee be appointed by the National W. S. A. to memorialize Congress on this subject, and to take such other action as shall bring before the enlightened manhood of our country their duty of chivalry no less than justice in this important matter.
Whereas, The question of woman's enfranchisement is fundamental and of paramount importance; therefore,
A hearing was granted by the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage the morning of January 24. Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Minor, Mrs. Duniway, Mrs. Johns, the Rev. Olympia Brown, the Rev. Miss Shaw and Miss Alice Stone Blackwell were introduced to the committee by Miss Anthony, and each from a different standpoint-presented the arguments for the submission of a Sixteenth Amendment enfranchising women.
On February 7, Senator Blair reported for the committee— Senators Charles B. Farwell (Ill.), Jonathan Chace (R. I.), Edward O. Wolcott (Col.), in favor of the amendment. After an able and exhaustive argument the report closed as follows:
The ballot is withheld from women because men are not willing to part with one-half the sovereign power. There is no other real cause for the continued perpetration of this unnatural tyranny.
The women of the nation are deeply indebted to Senator Blair for his able and persistent efforts in their behalf. Year after year, in the midst of the great pressure of duties connected with his office, he carefully prepared these constitutional' and legal reports knowing that they could have only the indirect results of educating public sentiment and contributing to the history of this great movement for the political rights of half the race.
The other members of the committee, Senators Zebulon B. Vance (N. C.), Joseph E. Brown (Ga.), J. B. Beck (Ky.), announced that they should present a minority report in opposition, but as "Letters from a Chimney Corner," by Mrs. Caroline F. Corbin, and "The Law of Woman Life," by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, apparently had been exhausted, and as no other woman had provided them with the necessary ideas, the report never materialized. Senator Vance, however, as chairman of this Select Suffrage Committee asked for a clerk at this time, to be paid out of the contingent fund.
The House Judiciary Committee granted a hearing January 28, which was addressed by Miss Anthony, Mrs. Hooker, Mrs. Duniway, Mrs. Minor, the Rev. Olympia Brown, Mrs. Colby, Miss Lavina A. Hatch (Mass.) and Mrs. Ella M. Marble (Minn.). The committee took no action.
* ↑ It is a loss to posterity that Miss Shaw never writes her addresses. She is beyond question the leading woman orator of this generation; and is not surpassed in power by any of the men.
* ↑ See History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 647.
* ↑ This was done, but no representation was allowed women in the celebration.