4. Two examples will suffice:
"EDITOR COLONIST: I have read with a feeling of thankfulness the letter of 'A Male Biped,' in this day's Colonist. The writer deserves the thanks of every good woman in the land for the bold and able manner in which he has administered a shaking to a shrewish old mischief-maker who, having failed to secure a husband herself, is tramping the continent to make her more fortunate sisters miserable by creating dissensions in their households. O, why do not some of our divines or lawyers upset this woman's sophistries, and convince even her that woman's true sphere is in 'submitting herself to her husband,' and religiously fulfilling the marriage vows the wise organizers of society have prescribed?
A WIFE AND A MOTHER."
"MR. EDITOR: America, the home of many humbugs, which produced Brigham Young, Barnum, Home, the medium, and many others, has, it appears, another human curiosity in Miss Anthony. This specimen from over the way comes amongst us, and because our ladies fail to recognize or encourage her in her vagaries, she gets very rabid and snarls and snaps at the 'women of Victoria who had so sunk their womanhood that they were happy even in their degradation.' The degradation referred to is that of whipping, which this female firebrand appears to believe is the rule hers. Surely the complete immunity from castigation of such a noxious creature as Miss Anthony is sufficient answer to this libel. Men in British Columbia no more countenance bad husbands than do the women a quack apostle in petticoats. They look upon such persons as sexual mistakes, like the two-headed lady or the four-legged baby, and as safe guides on social questions as George Francis Train is in politics.
AN INSULTED HUSBAND."
And yet during the few days she was in Victoria no leas than half a dozen women came to her to protest against the law which allowed the husband to whip his wife.
5. During Mr. Sargent's candidacy for the Senate, a California newspaper objected that he was in favor of woman suffrage, and called for a denial of the truth of the damning charge. He took no notice of it until a week or two later, when a suffrage convention met in San Francisco; he then went before that body and delivered a radical speech in favor of woman's rights, taking the most advanced grounds. When he was through he remarked to a friend, "They have my views now, and can make the most of them. I would not conceal them to be senator."—History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II.
Chapter XXIV:
Republican Splinter—Miss Anthony Votes
(1872)
National Convention declares women enfranchised under Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments; Miss Anthony sustains this position before Senate Judiciary Committee; friends in Rochester present testimonial; she reads in Woodhull and Claflin's Weekly call to form New Party under auspices of National Suffrage Association; her indignant remonstrance; hastens to New York and prevents coalition; Liberal Republican Convention at Cincinnati refuses to adopt Suffrage resolution; Miss Anthony's comment; Republican Convention at Philadelphia makes first mention of Woman; Mr. Blackwell's and Miss Anthony's letters regarding this; Democratic Convention at Baltimore ignores Woman; Hon. John Cochran tells how not to do it; Miss Anthony and Mrs. Gage urge women to support Republican ticket; Miss Anthony states her Political Position; her delight and Mrs. Stanton's doubts; letter from Henry Wilson; Republican Committee summons her to Washington; she arranges series of Republican rallies; sustains party only on Suffrage plank; Miss Anthony Votes; newspaper comment; she is arrested; examination before U.S. Commissioner; Judge Henry R. Selden and Hon. John Van Voorhis undertake her case; Rochester Express defends her; letter on case from Benjamin F. Butler.
The leading women in the movement for suffrage, supported by some of the ablest constitutional lawyers in the country, continued to claim the right to vote under the following:
URTEENTH 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.
FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, MARCH 30, 1870.
SECTION 1. The right of citizens of the United States 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.
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