Savannah courier. (Savannah, Tenn.) 1885-1979, 1888-03-08
WOMAN'S DEPARTMENT.
ONLY A WOMAN.

bA4 ea la ONEt - VS"T'H Ia
Hut why Not Give Her the Ballot?-Her
Sex Should BE No Bar to All the Rights
of Citizenship.
At the annual banquet of the Granite
State Club, in honor of the memory OF
Andrew Jackson, MIR. Oliver vi +.
Branch, of Weare, responded to the
toast, Woman as a Factor in Poll
tics"
woman as factor in politics"
Well, us the Irishman said of the Mag
ara Falls: whats to hinder itg''
And who would, if he could, UNDER
take to prevent it? The pages of his
tory are all aglow with incidents that
reveal the presence of woman in poll
tics; not in politics as headlong race
and rush for Office, but politics as the
instrument and means by which gov
eminent is carried forward, civiliza-
ton advanced, and the world made
better dwelling-place. And the
emergence of the human race from
garments of goatskins to those of
silk and linen, from the mud hut to
the modern home, from the sodden
brutality of Gurth to the luminous
genius of Gladstone or Emerson, has
marked the decadence of the barbaric
notion that the test of superiority is
Drawn and muscle. and the gradual
recognition by man of woman's right
to be his equal and of the fact that she
is his equal in its best and truest sense.
She asks why she may not vote; and
with fine logic she is told that it is
because she is woman. She suggests
that this Government is founded
upon the theory of equal rights for
ALL and the conclusive reply is; "Oh,
yes; but you are a woman" She
turns to the Declaration of 1ndepend-
ence, and reads that governments
'derive their just powers from the
consent of the governed" and once
more she is answered: THAT is true,
but then, you are only woman. !"
She insists that she is "a citizen as well
as a subject and as such, if she
chooses, has right to say what laws
shall bind her, what taxes burden her,
who shall rule over her, what magis-
trates shall Judge her, who shall in
struct her children, what kind of police
shall be set to protect her life and prop
erty, and whether vice and villainy,
temptation and crime. in all their hid
eous and protean forms, shall surround
her and her sons and daughters, and
no weapon be put into her hands ia
strike them down. ~ -R19G q p
In reply to these propositions, the
perfectly unanswerable argument is
made, that these questions are the
senseless talk of cranks, these sug.
gestions the insane fancies of dream.
ors and fanatics like Rufus Choate
and Emerson, Wendell, Phillips and
John D. Long, George F. Hoar and
George William Curtis. But these
questions seem likely, at no distant
B day, to result in making an tissue
! in politics. an issue, that will not be
waived aside, nor laughed down, mol
sneered away. The entirely sane,
rational, radiant-mnded part of man
kind, who have no nonsense about
them, and who have a fine, cultivated
scorn Of any thing like sentiment ii
politics, are going to be compelled tt
decide, by and by, positively and def
nitely, whether woman, as an lntelli
gent, capable, responsible, account
able citizen of the State, shall be per
mitted to use and enjoy those politica
rights that the genius and spirit of oul
constitutions and governments indubi
tably guarantee to her. Woman
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