Photo: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs
Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
On Woman's Right to Vote
Friends and fellow citizens: I stand before you tonight under indictment
for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election,
without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to
prove to you that in thus voting, I not only committed no crime, but,
instead, simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all
United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any
state to deny.
The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:
"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect
union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the
common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of
liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America."
It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens; nor yet we, the
male citizens; but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed
it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the
half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people -
women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of
their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of
the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican
government - the ballot.
For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the
disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of
attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the
supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld
from women and their female posterity.
To them this government has no just powers derived from the consent of
the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a
republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy of sex; the most
hateful aristocracy ever established on the face of the globe; an oligarchy
of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where
the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the
Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but this oligarchy of sex, which
makes father, brothers, husband, sons, the oligarchs over the mother and
sisters, the wife and daughters, of every household - which ordains all men
sovereigns, all women subjects, carries dissension, discord, and rebellion
into every home of the nation.
Webster, Worcester, and Bouvier all define a citizen to be a person in
the United States, entitled to vote and hold office.
The only question left to be settled now is: Are women persons? And I
hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are
not. Being persons, then, women are citizens; and no state has a right to
make any law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges
or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the
constitutions and laws of the several states is today null and void,
precisely as is every one against Negroes.
Susan B. Anthony - 1873
Resources:
http://ecssba.rutgers.edu/resources/sbabio.html
© Gloria M. Boone 2002-2007
