p>Debate on Woman Suffrage in the Senate of the United States, / 2d Session, 49th Congress, December 8, 1886, and January 25, 1887
Wednesday, December 8, 1886.
On the joint resolution (S.R. 5) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States extending the right of suffrage to women.
Mr. BLAIR said:
Mr. PRESIDENT: I ask the Senate to proceed to the consideration of Order of Business 122, being the joint resolution (S.R. 5) proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States extending the right of suffrage to women.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDENT pro tempore. The joint resolution will be read.
The Chief Clerk read as follows:
Joint resolution proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States extending the right of suffrage to women.
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States; which, when ratified by three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be valid as part of said Constitution, namely:
ARTICLE—.
SECTION 1. The rights 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 sex.
SEC. 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce the provisions of this article.
Mr. BLAIR. Mr. President, the question before the Senate is this: Shall a joint resolution providing for an amendment of the national Constitution, so that 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 sex, and that Congress shall have power to enforce the article, be submitted to the Legislatures of the several States for ratification or rejection?
The answer to this question does not depend necessarily upon the reply to that other question, whether women ought to be permitted to exercise the right or privilege of suffrage as do men. The Legislatures of the several States must decide this in ratifying or rejecting the proposed amendment.
Upon solemn occasions concerning grave public affairs, and when large numbers of the citizens of the country desire to test the sentiments of the people upon an amendment of the organic law in the manner provided to be done by the provisions of that law, it may well become the duty of Congress to submit the proposition to the amending power, which is the same as that which created the original instrument itself—the people of the several States.
It can hardly be claimed that two-thirds of each branch of Congress must necessarily be convinced that the Constitution should be amended as proposed in the joint resolution to be submitted before it has discretion to submit the same to the judgment of the States. Any citizen has the right to petition or, through his representative, to bring in his bill for redress of grievances, or to promote the public good by legislation; and it can hardly be maintained that, before any citizen or large body of citizens shall have the privilege of introducing a bill to the great legislative tribunal, which alone has primary jurisdiction of the organic law and power to amend or change it, the Congress, which under the Constitution is simply the moving or initiating power, must by a two-thirds vote approve the proposition at issue before its discussion shall be permitted in the forum of the States. To hold such a doctrine would be contrary to all our ideas of free discussion, and to lock up the institutions and the interests of a great and progressive people in fetters of brass.
It is only essential that two-thirds of each House of the Congress shall deem it necessary for the public good, that the amendment be proposed to the States for their action. But two-thirds of the Congress will hardly consider it "necessary" to submit a joint resolution proposing an amendment of the National Constitution to the States for consideration, unless the subject matter be of grave importance, with strong reasons in its favor, and a large support already developed among the people themselves.
If there be any principle upon which our form of government is founded, and wherein it is different from aristocracies, monarchies, and despotisms, that principle is this:
Every human being of mature powers, not disqualified by ignorance, vice or crime, is the equal of and is entitled to all the rights and privileges which belong to any other such human being under the law.
The independence, equality, and dignity of all human souls is the fundamental assertion of those who believe in what we call human freedom. This principle will hardly be denied by any one, even by those who oppose the adoption of the resolution. But we are informed that infants, idiots, and women are represented by men. This cannot reasonably be claimed unless it be first shown that the consent of these classes has been given to such representation, or that they lack the capacity to consent. But the exclusion of these classes from participation in the Government deprives them of the power of assent to representation even when they possess the requisite ability; and to say there can be representation which does not presuppose consent or authority on the part of the principal who is represented is to confound all reason and to assert in substance that all actual power, whether despotic or otherwise, is representative, and therefore free. In this sense the Czar represents his whole people, just as voting men represent women who do not vote at all.
True it is that the voting men, by excluding women and other classes from the suffrage, by that act charge themselves with the trust of administering justice to all, even as the monarch whose power is based upon force is bound to rule uprightly. But if it be true that "all just government is founded upon the consent of the governed," then the government of woman by man, without her consent, given in her sovereign capacity, if indeed she be an intelligent creature, and provided she be competent to exercise the power of suffrage, which is the sovereignty, even if that government be wise and just in itself, is a violation of natural right and an enforcement of servitude and slavery against her on the part of man. If woman, like the infant or the defective classes, be incapable of self-government, then republican society may exclude her from all participation in the enactment and enforcement of the laws under which she lives. But in that case, like the infant and the fool and the unconsenting subject of tyrannical forms of government, she is ruled and not represented by man.
Thus much I desire to say in the beginning in reply to the broad assumption of those who deny women the suffrage by saying that they are already represented by their fathers, their husbands, their brothers, and their sons, or to state the proposition in its only proper form, that woman whose assent can only be given by an exercise of sovereignty on her part is represented by man who denies and by virtue of power and possession refuses to her the exercise of the suffrage whereby that representation can be made valid.
The claim, then, of the minority of the committee that woman is represented by the other sex is not well founded, and is based upon the same assumption of power which lies at the base of all government anti-republican in form. It can not be claimed that she is as a free being already represented, for she can only be represented according to her will by the exercise of her will through the suffrage itself.
As already observed, the exclusion of woman from the suffrage under our form of government can be justified upon proof, and only upon proof, that by reason of her sex she is incompetent to exercise that power. This is a question of fact.
The common ground upon which all agree may be stated thus: All males having certain qualifications are in reason and in law entitled to vote. Those qualifications affect either the body or the mind or both.
First, the attainment of a certain age. The age in itself is not material, but maturity of mental and moral development is material, soundness of body in itself not being essential, and want of it alone never working forfeiture of the right, although it may prevent its exercise.
Age as a qualification for suffrage is by no means to be confounded with age as a qualification for service in war. Society has well established the distinction, and that one has no relation whatever to the other; the one having reference to physical prowess, while the other relates only to the mental and moral state. This is shown by the ages fixed by law for these qualifications,