Women’s Suffrage – Object #5

From the date of their historic existence there has been a cloud of repression and gloom over the female half of the human family…The contemptuous opinion of woman entertained by those of the past, has found expression, not only in literature, but in unjust laws and customs. In the married state she has ever been a serf, as a mother she has been robbed of her children. In public instruction she has been overlooked. She has been a menial in labor and then inadequately paid. There are only two conditions under which she became man’s equal, that was when punishment and the payment of taxes were in question….The present age is moving steadily to the ‘redressing of wrong, to the righting of every form of error and injustice, and a tireless and prying philanthropy, which is almost omniscient, is one of the most hopeful characteristics of the times.’ Doors that have shut women out for ages are now being opened to them, colleges and professional schools now take women through the same course of study that is taught their male students. Our government recognizes largely woman’s capacity for public affairs. Women are now filling the offices of ‘county clerk, register of deeds, pension agent, prison commissioner, State librarian, overseer of the poor, school supervisor, school superintendent, executors and administrators of estates, trustees, guardians, engrossing clerks of State legislatures, superintendents of woman’s State prisons, college principals and professors, and members of boards of State charities, lunacy and correction. And in all these positions they serve with men, who acknowledge most graciously the practical wisdom and virtue they bring to their duties…The laws relative to women are being amended every year, and yet they fail to keep up with the advance made by civilization on this woman question…To all who watch the movements of the times it must be evident that full suffrage will be given in the near future, not alone to America’s women, but to all civilized people on the globe. The same general unrest throbbing in the hearts of women against a government under which they are ruled, yet have no voice, that throbbed in the hearts of those who sealed with their heart’s blood, that grand American principle, ‘no taxation without representation.’…If the ballot is given to protect man’s life liberty and property, why not to woman also, as she has the same life, liberty and property to protect. The evolution of the past fifty years has changed their condition from a slave to that of a disfranchised citizen, though ‘every step of her advance from slavery to her present partial freedom has been hotly contested by men, and sometimes women, who in selfish luxury and unthinking ignorance have been subsidized by demagogues and used as flails to beat back their struggling sisters from the attainment of their aims…
Men claim that we are represented by them, as if a man could represent a woman…Only by a complete enfranchisement which will place us on an equal legal footing with our husbands, sons, and brothers, will we ever be satisfied. When the popular vote is reinforced by the moral reserve force of the ‘wives and mothers in the homes, and the women in the schools and churches,’ then, and not till then, will the great reform be accomplished, which now seems so far away in the future, but will then be a success in a few brief years.”