He [Man] has never
permitted her [Woman] to exercise her inalienable right to the elective
franchise [i.e., the right to vote].
He has compelled her
to submit to laws in the formation of which she had no voice. . . .
He has taken from her
all right in property, even to the wages she earns.
. . . In the covenant
of marriage, she is compelled to promise obedience to her husband, he
becoming, to all intents and purposes, her master--the law giving him
the power to deprive her of liberty, and to administer chastisement. .
. .
He has monopolized
nearly all the profitable employments. . . . He closes against her all
the avenues to wealth and distinction which he considers most honorable
to himself. As a teacher of theology, medicine, or law, she is not
known.
He has denied her the
facilities for obtaining a thorough education, all colleges being
closed to her.
He has created a
false public sentiment by giving to the world a different code of
morals for men and women, by which moral delinquencies which exclude
women from society, are not only tolerated, but deemed of little
account in man. . . .
Now, in view of this
entire disenfranchisement of one-half the people of this country, in
view of their social and religious degradation, in view of the unjust
laws above mentioned, and because women feel aggrieved, oppressed, and
fraudulently deprived of their most sacred rights, we insist that they
have immediate admission to all the rights and privileges which belong
to them as citizens of the United States. . . .
Address at a Women's
Rights meeting, reported by Frances Gage (May 29, 1851)
Sojourner Truth had been a slave for
the first forty of her sixty four years when she gave this address.
". . . Dat man ober dar say dat womin
needs to be helped into carriages, and lifted ober ditc hes, and to hab
de best place everywhar. Nobody eber helps me into carriages, or ober
mud-puddles, or gibs me de best place!" And raising herself to he full
height, and her voice at a pitch like rolling thunder, she asked, "And
a'nt I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! (and she bared her right
arm to the shoulder showing tremendous muscular power). I have
ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head
me! And a'nt I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a
man--when I could get it--and bear the lash as well! And a'nt I a
woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen 'em mos' all sold off
to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus
heard me! And a'nt I a woman? . . . ."
"Artemus
Ward"(pseudonym of Charles Farrar Browne; Browne's character "Artemus
Ward" is a travelling medicine show man)
"Woman's Rights" (1865)
I pitcht my tent in a small town in
Injianny one day last seeson, & w hile I was standin at the
dore takin money, a deppytashun of ladies came up & sed they
wos members of the Bunkumville Female Moral Reformin & Wimin's
Rite's Associashun, and they axed me if they cood go in without
payin./p>
"Not exactly," sez I, "but you can
pay without goin in."
"Dew you know who we air? said one of
the wimmin--a tall and feroshus lookin critter, with a blew kotton
umbreller under her arm--"do you know who we air Sir?"
"My impreshun is," sed I, "from a
kersery view, that you air females."
"We air, Sur," said the feroshus
woman--"we belong to a Society whitch beleeves wimin has rites--whitch
beleeves in razin her to her proper speer--whitch beleeves she is
indowed with as much intelleck as man is--whitch beleeves she is
trampled on and aboozed-- & who will resist hens4oth &
forever the incroachments of proud & domineerin men."
During her discourse, the exsentric
female grabed me by the coat-kollor & was swingin her umbreller
wildly over my hed.
quot;I hope, marm, " sez I, starting
back, "that your intensions is honorable? I'm a lone man hear in a
strange place. Besides, I've a wife to hum."
"Yes," cried the female, "&
she's a slave! Doth she never dream of freedom--doth she never think of
throwin of the yoke of tyrrinny & thinkin & votin for
herself?--Doth she never think of these here things?"
"Not bein a natral born fool," sed I,
by this time a little riled, "I can safely say that she dothunth."
"O whot--whot!" screamed the female,
swingin her umbreller in the air. "O what is the price that woman pays
for her expeeriunce."
"I don't know," sez I; "the price of
my show is 15 cents pur individooal."
"Can't our Sosiety go in free?" asked
the female.
"Not if I know it," sed I.
"Crooil, crooil man! she cried,
& burst into tears.
"Won't you let my darter in?" sed
anuther of the exsentric wimin, taken me afeckshunitely by the hand.
"O, please let my darter in--she's a gushin child of natur."
"Let her gush!" roared I, as mad as I
cood stick at their tarnal nonsense; "let her gush!" Where upon they
all sprung back with the simultanious observashun that I was a Beest.
"My female friends," sed I, "be4 you
leave, Ive a few remarks to remark; wa them well [. . .heed them well].
The female w oman is one of the great institushuns of which this land
can boste. It's onpossible to get along without her. Had there bin no
female wimin in the world, I should scarcely be here with my unparaleld
show on this occashun. She is good in sickness--good in wellness--good
all the time. O, woman, woman!" I cried, my feelins worked up to hi
poetick pitch, "you air a angle when you behave yourself; but when you
take off your proper appairel & (mettyforicaly speaken)--get
into pantyloons--when you desert your firesides, & with your
heds full of wimin's rites noshuns go round like rorin lyons, seekin
whom you may devour somebody--in short, when you undertake to play the
man, you play the devil and air an emfatic noosance." My female
friends," I continnered, as they were indignantly departin, "wa well
what A. Ward has sed!"
Report
[to the United States Senate] of theCommittee on Privileges and
Elections June 14, 1878
The Committee on Privileges and
Elections, to whom was referred the Resolution (Senate Resolution 12)
proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States [which
would forbid the U.S. or any State to deny or limit the right to vote
to women]. . . makes the following Report:
. . . If adopted it will make several
million of the female voters, totally inexperienced in political
affairs, quite generally dependent upon the other sex, all incapable of
performing military duty and without the power to enforce the laws
which their numerical strength may enable them to make, and
comparatively few of whom wish to assume the irksome and responsible
political duties which this measure thrusts upon them. An experiment so
novel, a change so great, should only be made slowly and in respons e
to a general public demand, of which there is no evidence before your
Committee.
[About 30,000 petitions from various
parts of the country have been presented to the congress, but these
petitions have been gathered by woman suffrage societies, which are]
thoroughly organized, with active and zealous managers. The ease with
which signatures may be procured for any petition is well known. The
small number of petitioners, when compared with that of the intelligent
women in the country, is stiking evidence that there exists among them
no general desire to take up the heavy burden of governing, which so
many men seek to evade. It wopuld be unjust, unwise, and impolitic to
impose that burden on the great mass of women throughout the country
who do not wis h for it, to gratify thye comparatively few who do.
It has been strongly urged that
without the right of suffrage, women are, and will be, subjected to
great oppression and injustice.
But every one who has examined the
subject at all knows that, without female suffrage, legislation for
years has improved and is still improving the condition of women. The
disabilities imposed upon her by common law have, one by one, been
swept away, until in most States she has the full right to her property
and all, or nearly all, the rights which can be granted without
impairing or destroying the marriage relation. These changes have been
wrought by the spirit of the age, and are not, generally at least, the
result of any agitation by women in their own behalf.
Nor can women unjustly complain of
any partiality in the administration of justice. They have the sympathy
of judges and particularly of juries to an extent which would warrant
loud complaint on the part of their adversaries of the sterner sex.
Their appeals to legislatures against injustice are never unheeded, and
there is no doubt that that when any considerable part of the women of
any State really wish for the right to vote, it will be granted without
the intervention of congress.
Any State can grant the right of
suffrage to women. Some of them have done so to a limited extent, and
perhaps with good results. It is evident that in some States public
opinion is much more strongly in favor of it than in others. Your
committee regard it as unw ise and inexpedient to enable three-fourths
in number of States, through an amendment to the national constitution,
to force woman suffrage upon the other fourth. . . .
For these reasons, [the committee
recommended a vote in the negative, with the further recommendation
that such legislation henceforth be indefinitely postponed].
