on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.
Many of the Republican leaders admitted that these amendments might be construed to include women, but were silenced by the cry of "party expediency." The fear of defeating the attempt to enfranchise the colored male citizen made them refuse to add the word "sex" to the Fifteenth Amendment, which would have placed this question beyond debate and put an end to the agitation that has continued for thirty years. The women insisted that the exigency which compelled the ratification of the Fifteenth Amendment by the various State legislatures was strong enough to carry it, even with the word "sex" included. Having failed to gain this point, the National Association determined to maintain the position that women were already enfranchised, and embodied it in the call for the Washington convention of 1872: "All those interested in woman's enfranchisement are invited to consider the 'new departure'—women already citizens, and their rights as such secured by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of the Federal Constitution."
The same position was re-asserted in the resolutions adopted at that meeting, which declared that "while the Constitution of the United States leaves the qualifications of electors to the various States, it nowhere gives them the right to deprive any citizen of the elective franchise which is possessed by any other citizen; the right to regulate not including the right to prohibit the franchise;" that "those provisions of the several State constitutions which exclude women from the franchise on account of sex, are violative alike of the letter and spirit of the Federal Constitution;" and that "as the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution have established the right of women to the elective franchise, we demand of the present Congress a declaratory act which shall secure us at once in the exercise of this right."
Miss Anthony and other leaders officially asked the privilege of addressing the Senate and House upon this momentous question. This was refused, as contrary to precedent, but a hearing was granted before the Senate Judiciary Committee,1 Friday morning, January 12. Not only the committee room but the corridors were crowded. Mrs. Stanton and Mrs. Hooker spoke grandly,2 and as usual Miss Anthony was chosen to clinch the argument, which she did as follows:
You already have had logic and Constitution; I shall refer, therefore, to existing facts. Prior to the war the plan of extending suffrage was by State action, and it was our boast that the National Constitution did not contain a word which could be construed into a barrier against woman's right to vote. But at the close of the war Congress lifted the question of suffrage for men above State power, and by the amendments prohibited the deprivation of suffrage to any citizen by any State. When the Fourteenth Amendment was first proposed in Congress, we rushed to you with petitions praying you not to insert the word "male" in the second clause. Our best friends on the floor of Congress said to us: "The insertion of that word puts up no new barrier against woman; therefore do not embarrass us but wait until we get the negro question settled." So the Fourteenth Amendment with the word "male" was adopted.
Then, when the Fifteenth was presented without the word "sex," we again petitioned and protested, and again our friends declared that the absence of that word was no hindrance to us, and again begged us to wait until they had finished the work of the war. "After we have enfranchised the negro we will take up your case." Have they done as they promised? When we come asking protection under the new guarantees of the Constitution, the same men say to us that our only plan is to wait the action of Congress and State legislatures in the adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment which shall make null and void the word "male" in the Fourteenth, and supply the want of the word "sex" in the Fifteenth. Such tantalizing treatment imposed upon yourselves or any class of men would have caused rebellion and in the end a bloody revolution. It is only the close relations existing between the sexes which have prevented any such result from this injustice to women.
Gentlemen, I should be sure of your decision could you but realize the fact that we, who have been battling for our rights now more than twenty years, feel precisely as you would under such circumstances. One of the most ardent lovers of freedom (Senator Sumner) said to me two winters ago, after our hearing before the committee of the District: "I never realized before that you or any woman could feel the disgrace, the degradation of disfranchisement precisely as I should if my fellow-citizens had conspired to deprive me of my right to vote." Although I am a Quaker and take no oath, yet I have made a most solemn "affirmation" that I will never again beg my rights, but will come to Congress each year and demand the recognition of them under the guarantees of the National Constitution.
What we ask of the Republican party is simply to take down its own bars. The facts in Wyoming show how it is that a Republican party can exist in that Territory. Before women voted, there was never a Republican elected to office; after their enfranchisement, the first election sent one Republican to Congress and seven to the Territorial Legislature. Thus the nucleus of a Republican party there was formed through the enfranchisement of women. The Democrats, seeing this, are now determined to disfranchise them. Can you Republicans so utterly stultify yourselves, can you so entirely work against yourselves, as to refuse us a declaratory law? We pray you to report immediately, as Mrs. Hooker has said, "favorably, if you can; adversely, if you must." We can wait no longer.
The committee reported adversely on the question of woman's right to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.
At the close of the convention, Miss Anthony hastened to her home in Rochester, which she had not seen since her departure to California eight months before. Soon after her arrival she was invited to meet a number of her acquaintances at the home of her dear friend, Amy Post, and give them an account of her experiences on the Pacific slope. At its conclusion she was surprised by the presentation of a purse containing $50, with a touching address by Mrs. Post asking her to accept it as a testimonial of the appreciation in which her friends and neighbors held her work for woman and humanity. At the same time she received a gift of money from Sarah Pugh, in an envelope marked, "For thine own dear self." In her acknowledgment she says:
The tears started when I read your sweet letter. Were it not for the loving sympathy and confidence of the little handful of ever-faithful such as you, my spirit, I fear, would have fainted long ago. There are yourself, dear Lucretia and her equally dear sister, Martha, who never fail to know just the moment when my purse is drained to the bottom and to drop the needed dollar into it. It is really wonderful how I have been carried through all these years financially. I often feel that Elijah's being fed by the ravens was no more miraculous than my being furnished with the means to do the great work which has been for the past twenty years continuously presenting itself—yes, presenting itself, for it has always come to me. My thought has been to escape the hardships but they come ever and always, and so I try to accept the situation and work my way through as best I can.
She was soon off again, lecturing in various cities and towns, going as far west as Nebraska. Early in April, while waiting at a little railroad station in Illinois, a gentleman came in and handed her a copy of Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly containing this double-leaded announcement:
The undersigned citizens of the United States, responding to the invitation of the National Woman Suffrage Association, propose to hold a convention at Steinway Hall, in the city of New York, the 9th and 10th of May. We believe the time has come for the formation of a new political party whose principles shall meet the issues of the hour and represent equal rights for all. As women of the country are to take part for the first time in political action, we propose that the initiative steps in the convention shall be taken by them.... This convention will declare the platform of the People's party, and consider the nomination of candidates for President and Vice-President of the United States, who shall be the best possible exponents of political and industrial reform....
| ELIZABETH CADY STANTON, | SUSAN E. ANTHONY, |
| ISABELLA B. HOOKER, | MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE. |
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