Danver Steven L. (Edited). Revolts, Protests, Demonstrations, and Rebellions in American History: An Encyclopedia (ENG)

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Therefore, Believing ﬁrmly in the right of citizens to freely approach those in whose

hands their destiny is placed under the Providence of God, your memorialist has frankly,

but humbly, appealed to you, and prays that the wis dom of Congress may be moved to

action in this matter for the beneﬁt and the increased happiness of our beloved country.

Source: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of

Woman Suffrage, vol. 2 (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881), 444–448.

The Comstock Law, Enacted to End the Circulation

of Obscene and Immoral Literature (1873)

The Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of

Immoral Use was known as the Comstock Law becaus e Congress pas sed it largely du e to

political pressure from an intense anti-obscenity campaign led by Anthony Comstock (1844–

1915) during the 1870s. When many states followed the federa l exampl e, the Comstock

Law limited access to birth control information and other materials that were considered por-

nographic. The measure was also a reaction to the increase in abortions since the 1840s, a

trend that threatened the demographic balance between the socially and economically estab-

lished, who were seeking to limit childbearing, and newly arriving immigrants, who often had

many children. The law also reflected the view that abortion contradicted God’s will and the

natural function of w omen as mother s and homemakers. Finally, it was part of an attem pt

by men to gain control of the practice of abortion, which was then dominated by women,

who could interfere with male ability to prevent or control abortion. Reproduced here is part

of the text of the Comstock Law.

Be it enacted ...That whoever, within ...the jurisdiction of the United State s ...shall

sell, ...or shall offer to sell, or lend, or give away, or in any ma nner to exhibit, or shal l

otherwi se publish or offer to publish in any manner, or shall have in hi s possessio n, for

any such purpose or purposes, an obscene book, pamphlet, paper, writing, advertise-

ment, circular, pr int, picture, drawing ...or other article of an immoral nature, or any

drug or medicine, or any article, whatever, for the prevention of conception, or for caus-

ing unlawful abortion, or shall advertise the same for sale, or shall write or print, or cause

to be written or printed, any card, circular, book, pamphlet, advertisement, or notice of

any kind, stating when, where, how, or of whom, or by what means, any of these articles

in this section ...can be purchased or obtained, or shall manufacture, draw, or print, or

in any wise make any of such articles, shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and, on

conviction thereof ...shall be imprisoned at hard labor in the penitentiary for not less

than six months nor m ore th an ﬁve years for each offense, or ﬁned not less than one

hundred dollars nor more than two thousand dollars, with costs of court.

Source: “An Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature

and Articles of Immoral Use,” in Acts and Resolutions of the United States of America Passed

at the Third Session of the Forty-Second Congress, December 2, 1872–March 3, 1873

(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1873), 234–236.

496 Women’s Movement (1870s)

U.S. v. Susan B. Anthony: The Sentencing of Anthony

for Voting Illegally (1873)

In 1872, Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906), a leader of the women’s rights movement, violated

the law by voting in Rochester, New York. Arrested and charged with voting illegally , which car-

ried a potential jail term of three years, Anthony argued that under the Fourteenth Amendment,

all “persons born and naturalized in the United States ...are citiz ens of the United States,”

and thus women were eligible to vote. The judge did not allow her to testify and, at the conclusion

of her attorney’s defense, read an opinion prepared before the trial to the all- male jury, which

was instructed to bring in a g uilty verd ict. When Anthony’s attorney protested and asked that

the jurors be polled, the judge dismissed the jurors. Reproduced here are excerpts from the trial

transcript that indicate what happened the next day when the judge imposed sentence. In 1875,

in the case of Minor v. Happersett (88 U.S. 162), the Supreme Court decided that women are

citizens and thus entitled to “the privileges and immunities of citizens,” but the right to vote was

not considered part of those privileges and immunities.

Judge Hunt [ordering the defendant to stand up]: Has the pris oner anything to say why

sentence shall not be pronounced?

Miss Anthony: Yes, your honor, I have many things to say; for in your ordered

verdict of guilty you have trampled under foot every vital

principle of our government. My natural rights, my civil rights,

my political rights, my judicial rights, are all alike ignored.

Robbed of the fu ndamental privilege of citizenship, I am

degraded from the status of a citizen to that of a subject; and

not only myself individually but all of my sex are, by your honor’s

verdict, doomed to political subjection under this so-called

republican form of government.

Judge Hunt: The Court can not listen to rehearsal of argument which the

prisoner’s counsel has already consumed three hours in

presenting.

Miss Anthony: May it please your honor, I am not arguing the question, but

simply stating the reasons why sentence can not, in justice, be

pronounced against me. Your denial of my citizen’s right to vote,

is the denial of my right of consent as one of the governed, the

denial of my right of representation as one of the taxed, the

denial of my right to a trial by a jury of my peers as an offender

against law; therefore, the denial of my sacred right to life,

liberty, property and—

Judge Hunt: The Court can not allow the prisoner to go on.

Miss Anthony: But your honor will not deny me this one and only poor

privilege of protest against this high-handed outrage upon my

citizen’s rights. May it please the Court to remember that, since

Women’s Movement (1870s) 497

the day of my arrest last November, this is the first time that

either myself or any person of my disfranchised class has been

allowed a word of defense before judge or jury—

Judge Hunt: The prisoner must sit down—the Court can not allow it.

Miss Anthony: Of all my prosecutors, from the corner grocery politicians who

entered the complaint, to the United States marshal, commis-

sioner, district-attorney, district-judge, your honor on the

bench—not one is my peer, but each and all are my political

sovereigns; and had your honor submitted my case to the jury, as

was clearly your duty, even then I should have had just cause of

protest, for not one of those men was my peer; but, native or

foreign born, white or black, rich or poor, educated or ignorant,

sober or drunk, each and every man of them was my political

superior; hence, in no sense, my peer. Under s uch circum-

stances a commoner of England, tried before a jury of lords,

would hav e far less cause to complainthanhaveI,awoman,tried

before a jury of men. Even my counsel, Hon. Henry R. Selden,

who has argued my cause so ably, so earnestly, so unanswerably

before your honor, is my political sovereign. Precisely as no

disfranchised person is entitled to sit upon a jury, and no woman

is entitled to the franchise, so none but a regularly admitted

lawyer is allowed to practice in the courts, and no wom an can

gain admission to the bar—hence, jur y, judge, counsel, all must

be of the superior class.

Judge Hunt: The Court must insist—the prisoner has been tried according

to the established forms of law.

Miss Anthony: Yes, your honor, but by forms of law all made by men, interpreted

by men, administered by men, in favor of men and against women;

and hence your honor’s ordered verdict of guilty, against a United

States citizen for the exercise of the “citizen’s right to vote,”

simply because that citizen was a woman and not a man. But

yesterday, the same man-made forms of law declared it a crime

punishable with $1,000 fine and six months’ imprisonment to give

a cup of cold water, a crust of bread or a night’s shelter to a panting

fugitive tracking his way to Canada; and every man or woman in

whose veins coursed a drop of human sympathy violated that

wicked law, reckless of consequences, and was justified in so

doing. As then the slaves who got their freedom had to take it over

or under or through the unjust forms of law, precisely so now

must women take it to get their right to a voice in this government;

and I have taken mine, and mean to take it at every opportunity.

Judge Hunt: The Court orders the prisoner to sit down. It will not allow

another word.

498 Women’s Movement (1870s)

Miss Anthony: When I was brought before your honor for trial, I hoped for a

broad and liberal interpretation of the Constitution and its

recent amendments, which should declare all United States

citizens under its protecting aegis—which should declare

equality of rights the national guarantee to all persons born or

naturalized in the United States. But failing to get this justice—

failing, even, to get a trial by a jury not of my peers—I ask not

leniency at your hands but rather the full rigor of the law.

Judge Hunt: The Court must insist [Here the prisoner sat down.] ...The

prisoner will stand up. [Here Miss Anthony rose again.] The

sentence of the Court is that you pay a fine of $100 and the

costs of the prosecution.

Miss Anthony: May it please your honor. I will never pay a dollar of your unjust

penalty. All the stock in trade I possess is a debt of $10,000,

incurred by publishing my paper—The Revolution—the sole

object of which was to educate all women to do precisely as I

have done, rebel against your man-made, unjust, unconstitutional

forms of law, which tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, while

denying them the right of representation in the government; and I

will work on with might and main to pay every dollar of that

honest debt, but not a penny shall go to this unjust claim. And I

shall earnestly and persistently continue to urge all women to the

practical recognition of the old Revolutionary maxim, “Resistance

to tyranny is obedience to God.”

Judge Hunt: Madam, the Court will not order you to stand committed until

the fine is paid.

Source: Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage, eds., History of

Woman Suffrage, vol. 2 (New York: Fowler and Wells, 1881), 687–689.

Bradwell v. Illinois: The Rights and Privileges

of a Citizen (1873)

On April 15, 1873, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case of Bradwell v.

Illinois. An excerpt from that opinion is reproduced here. Myra Bradwell, a suffragist and wom-

en’s rights advocate, had passed the Illinois examination for admission to the bar in 1869, but

was not allowed to practice law by the Illinois courts solely because she was a woman. Arguing

that t he equal protection clause of th e Fourteenth Amendment, which says that no state shall

“deny to any person under its jurisdiction the equ al protection of the law” or “shall make or

enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States,”

made such a sex-based prohibition unconstitutional. She appealed the Illinois decision to the U.S.

Supreme Court, which also denied her the right to practice, on the grounds that such a right was

not one of the privileges or immunities of national citizenship.

Women’s Movement (1870s) 499

The civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the

respective spheres and destinies of man and woman. Man is, or should b e, women’s

protector and defender. The natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs

to the female sex evidently unﬁts it for many of the occupations of civil life. The

constitution of the family organization, which is founded in the divine ordin ance, a s

well as in the nature of things, indicates the domestic sphere as that which properly

belon gs to the domain and functions of womanhood. The harmony, not to say iden-

tity, of interests and views which belong, or should belong, to the family institution

is repugnant to the idea of a woman adopting a distinct and independent career from

that of her husband. So ﬁrmly ﬁxed was this sentiment in the founders of the common

law that it became a maxim of that system of jurisprudence that a woman had no legal

existence separate from her husband, who was regarded as her head and

repre sentative in the social state; and, no twithstanding some recent modiﬁca tions of

this civil status, many of the special rules of law ﬂowing from and dependent upon this

cardinal principle still exist in full force in most States. One of these is, that a married

woman is incapable, wi thout her h usba nd’s consent, of making contracts which shall

be binding on her or him. This very incapacity was one circumstance which the

Supreme Court of Illinois deem ed important in rendering a married woman incompe-

tent fully to perform the duties and trusts that belong to the ofﬁce of an attorney and

counsellor.

It is true that many women are unmarried and not affected by any of the duties, com-

plications, and incapacities arising out of the married st ate, but these are exceptions to

the general rule. The paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulﬁll the noble

and benign ofﬁces of wife and mother. This is the law of the Creator. And the rules of

civil society mus t be adapted to the general constitution of things, and cannot be based

upon the exceptional cases.

The humane movements of modern society, which have for their object the multipli-

cation of avenues for woman’s advancement, and of occupations adapted to her condi-

tion and sex, have my heartiest concurrence. But I am not prepared to say that it is

one of her fundamental rights and privileges to be admitted into every ofﬁce and position,

including those which require highly special qualiﬁcations and demanding special respon-

sibilities. In the nature of things it is not every citizen of every age, sex, and condition that

is qualiﬁed for every calling and position. It is the prer ogative of the legislator to pre-

scri be regulations founded on nature, reason, and experience f or the due admission of

qualiﬁed persons to professions and callings demanding special skill and conﬁdence. This

fairly belongs to the police power of the State; and, in my opinion, in view of the peculiar

characteristics, destiny, and mission of woman, it is within the province of the legislature

to ordain what ofﬁces, positions, and callings shall be ﬁlled and discharged by men, and

shall receive the beneﬁt of those energies and responsibilities, and that decision and ﬁrm-

ness which are presumed to predominate in the sterner sex.

Source: 83 U.S. 130 (1873).

500 Women’s Movement (1870s)

Excerpts from Susan B. Anthony’s “Social Purity”

Speech (1875)

Speaking in Chicago in 1875, women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) argued

that the widespread social ills that affected women, such as spousal abuse, prostitution, and rape

and other sex crimes stemmed from women’s dependence on men. The best way to overcome

these evils, said Anthony, was to grant women equal rights, and particularly the right to vote.

Reproduced here are excerpts from that address, which was entitled “Social Purity.”

Though women, as a class, are much less addicted to drunkenness and licentiousness

than men, it is universally conceded that they are by far the greater sufferers from these

evils. Compelled by their position in society to depend on men for subsistence, for food,

clothes, shelter, for every chance even to earn a dollar, they have no way of escape from

the besotted victims of appetite and passion with whom their lot is cast. They must

endure, if not e ndorse, these twin vices, embodied, as they so often are, in the person

of father, brother, hu sband, son, employer. No one can doubt that the sufferings of the

sober, virtuous woman, in legal subjection to the mastership of a drunken, i mmoral

husband and father over herself and children, not o nly from physical abuse, but from

spiritual shame and humiliation, must be such as the man himself can not possibly

comprehend. ...

The roots of the giant evil, intemperance, are not merely moral and social; they

extend deep and wide into the ﬁnancial and political structure of the govern ment ; and

whenever women, or men, shall intelligently set themselves about the work of uprooting

the liquor trafﬁc, they will ﬁnd something more than tears and prayers needful to t he

task. Financial and political power must be combined with moral and social inﬂuence,

all bound together in one earnest, energetic, persistent force. ...

The prosecutions in our courts for breach of promise, divorce, adultery, bigamy,

seduction, rape; the newspaper reports every day of every year of scandals and outrages,

of wife murders and paramour shootings, of abortions and infanticides, are perpetual

reminders of men’s incapacity to cope successfully with this monster evil of society.

The statistics of New York show the number of professional prostitutes in that city to

be over twenty thousand. Add to these the thousands and tens of thousands of Boston,

Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, and all our cities,

great and small, from ocean to ocean, and what a holocaust of the womanhood of this

nation is sacriﬁced to the insatiate Moloch of lust. And yet more: those myriads of wretched

women, publicly known as prostitutes, constitute but a small portion of the numbers who

actually tread the paths of vice and crime. For, as the oft-broken ranks of the vast army of

common drunkards are steadily ﬁlled by the boasted moderate drinkers, so are the ranks

of professional prostitution continually replenished by discouraged, seduced, deserted

unfortunates, who can no longer hide the terrible secret of their lives. ...

Nor is it womanhood alone that is thus fearfully sacriﬁced. For every betrayed

woman, there is always the betrayer, man. For every abandoned woman, there is always

Women’s Movement (1870s) 501

one abandoned man and oftener many more. It is estimated that there are 50,000 profes-

sional prostitutes in London, and Dr. Ryan calculates that there are 400,000 men in that

city directly or indirectly connected with them, and that this vice causes the city an

annual expenditure of $40,000,000. ...

Man’s legislative attempts to set back this fearful tide of social corruption have proved

even more futile and disastrous than have those for the suppression of intemperance—as

witness the Contagious Diseases Acts of England and the St. Louis experiment. And yet

efforts to establish similar laws are constantly made in our large cities, New York and

Washington barely escaping last winter. ...

The wor k of woma n is not to lessen the severity or the certainty of the penalty for

the violation of the moral law, but to prevent this violation by the removal of the causes

which lead to it. These causes are said to be wholly different with the sexes.

The acknowledged incentive to this vice on the part of man is his own abnormal passion;

while on the par t of women, in the great majority o f cases, it is co nceded to be

destitution—absolute want of the necessaries of life. ...

In the olden times, when the daughters of the family, as well as the wife, were occu-

pied with useful and proﬁtable work in the household, getting meals and washing the

dishes three times in every day of every year, doing the baking, the brewing, the washing

and the ironing, the whitewashing, the butter and cheese and soap making, the mending

and the making of clothes for the entire family, the carding, spinning and weaving of the

cloth—when everything to eat, to drink and to wear was manufactured in the home,

almost no young women “went out to work.” But now, when nearly all these handicrafts

are turned over to men and to machinery, tens of thousands, nay, millions of the women

of both hemispheres are thrust into the world’s outer market of work to earn their own

subsistence. Society, ever slow to change its conditions, presents to these millions but

few and meager chances. Only the barest necessaries, and oftentimes not even t hose,

can be purchased with the proceeds of the most excessive and exhausting labor. ...

Clearly, then, the ﬁrst step toward solving this problem is to lift this vast army of

poverty-stricken women who now crowd our citie s, above the temptation, the neces-

sity, to sell themselves, in marriage or out, f or bread and shelter. To do that, girls, like

boys, must be educated to some lucrative employment; women, like men, m ust have

equal chances to earn a living. If the plea that poverty is the cause of woman’s prostitu-

tion be not true, perfect equality of chances to earn honest bread will demonstrate the

falsehood by removing that pr etext and placing her on the same plane with man. Then,

if she is found in the ranks of vice and crime, she will be there for the same reason that

man is and, from an object of pity, she , like him, will become a ﬁt subject of contempt.

From being the party sinned against, she will become an equal sinner, if not the greater

of the two. Women, like men, must not only have “fair play” in the world of work and

self-support, but, like men, must be eligible to all the honors and emoluments of society

and government. Marriage, to women as to men, must be a luxury, not a necessity; an

incident of life, not all of it. And the only possible way to accomplish this great change

is to accord to women equal power in the making, shaping and controlling of the circum-

stances of life. That equality of rights and privileges is vested in the ballot, the symbol of

502 Women’s Movement (1870s)

power in a republic. Hence, our ﬁrst and most urgent demand—that women shall be

protected in the exercise of their inherent, personal, citizens’ rights to a voice in the

government, municipal, state, national.

Alexander Hamilton said one hundred years ago, “Give to a ma n the right over my

subsistence, and he has power over my whole moral being.” No one doubts the truth of

this assertion as between man and man; while, as between man and woman, not only does

almost no one believe it, but the masses of peopl e deny it. And yet it is the fact of man’s

possession of this right over woman’s subsistence which gives to him the power to dictate

to her a moral code vastly higher and purer than the one he chooses for himself. Not less

true is it, that the fact of woman’s dependence on man for her subsistence renders her

utterly powerless to exact from him the same high moral code she chooses for herself. ...

Whoever controls work and wa ges, controls morals. Therefore , we must have

women employers, superintendents, committees, legislators; whenever girls go to se ek

the means of subsistence, there must be some woman. Nay, more; we must have women

preachers, lawyers, doctors—that wherever women go to seek counsel—spiritual, legal,

physical—there, too, they will be sure to ﬁnd the best and noblest of their own sex to

minister to them. ...

Fathers should be most particular about the men who visit their daughters, and, to

further this reform, pure women not only must refuse to meet intimately and to marry

impure men, but, ﬁnding themselves deceived in their husband, they must refuse to con-

tinue in the marriage relation with them. We have had quite enough of the sickly senti-

mentalism which counts the woman a heroine and a saint for remaining the wife of a

drunken, un moral husband , incurring t he risk of her own health and poisoning the l ife-

blood of the young beings that result from this unholy alliance. Such company as ye keep,

such ye are! must be the maxim of married, as well as unmarried, women. ...

In a western city the wives conspired to burn down a house of ill-fame in which their

husbands had placed a half-dozen of the demimonde. Would it not have shown much

more womanly wisdom and virtue for those legal wives to have refused to re cognize

their husbands, instead of wreaking their ven geance on the heads o f those wretched

women? But how could they without ﬁnding themselves, as a result, penniless and home-

less? The person, the services, the children, the subsistence, of each and every one of

those women belonged by law, not to herself, but to her unfaithful husband. ...

It is worse than folly, it is madness, for women to delude themselves with the idea that

their children will escape the terrible penalty of the law. The taint of their birth will surely

follow them. For pure women to continue to devote themselves to their man-appointed

mission of visiting the dark purlieus of society and struggling to reclaim the myri ads of

badly-born human beings swarming there, is as hopeless as would be an attempt to ladle

the ocean with a teaspoon; as unphilosophical as was the undertaking of the old Ameri-

can Colonization Society, which, with great labor and pains and money, redeemed from

slavery and transported t o Liberia annually 400 negroes, or the Fugitive Slave Societies,

which succeeded in running off to Canada, on their “under-ground railroads,” some

40,000 in a whole quarter of a century. While those good men were thus toiling to res-

cue the 400 or the 40,000 individual victims of slavery, each day saw hundreds and each

Women’s Movement (1870s) 503

year thousands of human beings born into the terrible condition of chattelism. All see

and admit now what none but the Abolitionists saw then, that the only effectual work

was the entire overthrow of the system of slavery; the abrogation of the law which sanc-

tioned the right of property in man. ...

[W]herever you go, you ﬁnd the best women, in and out of the churches, all absorbed

in establis hing or maintain ing benevo lent o r reform i nstitut ions; charitable societies,

soup-houses, ragged schools, industrial schools, mite societies, mission schools—at

home and abroad—homes and hospitals for the sick, the aged, the friendless, the found-

ling, the fallen; asylums for the orphans, the blind, the deaf and dumb, the insane, the

inebriate, the idiot. The women of this century are neither idle nor indifferent . They

are working with might and main to mitigate the evils which stare them in the face on

every side, but much of their work is without knowledge. It i s aimed at the effects, not

the cause. ...

The tap-root of our social [ills] lies deep down at the very foundations of society. It is

woman’s dependence. It is woman’s subjection. Hence, the ﬁrst and only efﬁcient work

must be to emancipate woman f rom her enslavement. The wife must no longer echo

the poet Milton’s ideal Eve, when she adoringly said to Adam, “God thy law; thou, mine!”

She must feel herself accountable to God alone for every act, fearing and obeying no man,

save where his will is in line with her own highest idea of divine law. ...

I am a full and ﬁrm believer in the revelation that it is through woman that the race is

to be redeemed. And it is because of this faith that I ask for her immediate and uncondi-

tional emancipation from all political, industrial, social and religious subjection. ...

Ralph Waldo Emerson says, “Men are what their mother s made them.” But I say, to

hold mothers responsible for the character of their sons while you deny them any con-

trol over the surroundings of their lives, is worse than mockery, it is cruelty! Responsibil-

ities grow out of rights and powers. Therefore, before mothers can be held responsible

for the vices and crimes, the wholesale demoralization of men, they must possess all pos-

sible rights and powers to control the conditions and circumstances of their own and

their children’s lives.

Source: Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, vol. 2 (Indianapolis:

Hollenback Press, 1898), 1004–1012.

Declaration of Rights for Women (1876)

During the centennial summer of 1876, the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA)

sought a way to incorporate its ideas into the national commemoration. At a large Fourth of July

celebration in In depen dence Hal l in Phil adelp hia, wher e no woman was sc hedule d to speak,

women’s rights activist and NWSA representative Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906) handed the

following document, the Declaration of Rights for Women, to the program chairperson, Thomas

W. Ferry, president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate. Later, Anthony read the declaration outside

Independence Hall to a growing throng of listeners.

504 Women’s Movement (1870s)

While this nation is buoyant with patriotism, and all hearts are attuned to praise, it is with

sorrow we come to strike the one discordant note, on this one-hundredth anniversary

of our country’s birth. When subjects of kings, emperors, and czars, from the old world

join in our national jubilee, shall the women of the republic refuse to lay their hands with

benedictions on the nation’s head? Surveying America’s exposition, surpassing in magniﬁ-

cence those of London, Paris, and Vienna, shall we n ot rejoice at the success of the

youngest rival among the nations of the earth? May not our hearts, in unison with all,

swell with pride at our great achievements as a people; our free speech, free press, free

schools, free church, and the rapid progress we have made in material wealth, trade,

commerce and the inventive arts? And we do rejoice in the success, thus far, of our

experiment of self-government. Our faith is ﬁrm and unwavering in the broad principles

of human rights proclaimed in 1776, not only as abstract truths, but as the corner stones

of a republi c. Yet we cannot forget, even in this glad hour, that while all men of every

race, and clime, and condition, have been invested with the full rights of citizenship under

our hospitable ﬂag, all women still suffer the degradation of disfranchisement.

The history of our country the pa st hundred years has been a series of assumptions

and usurpations of power over woman, in direct opposition to the principles of just

government, acknowledged by the United States as its foundation, which are:

First—The natural rights of each individual.

Second—The equality of these rights.

Third—That rights not delegated are retained by the individual.

Fourth—That no person can exercise the rights of others without delegated authority.

Fifth—That the non-use of rights does not destroy them.

And for the viola tion of these fundamental principles of our government, we arraign

our rulers on this Fourth day of July, 1876, —and these are our articles of impeachment:

Bills of attainder have been passed by the introduction of the word “male” into all the

State constitutions, denying t o women the right of suffrage, and thereby making sex a

crime—an exercise of po wer clearly forbidden in article I , sec tions 9, 10, of the United

States constitution.

The writ of habeas corpus, the only protection against lettres de cachet and all forms of

unjust imprisonment, which the constitution declares “shall not be suspended, except

when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety deman ds it,” is held inoperative

in every State of the Union, in case of a married woman against her husband—the marital

rights of the husband being in all cases primary, and the rights of the wife secondary.

The right of trial by a jury of one’s peers was so jealously guarded that States refused to

ratify the original constitution until it was guaranteed by the sixth amendm ent. And yet

the women of this nation have never been allowed a jury of their pe ers—being tried in

all cases by men, native and foreign, educated and ignorant, virtuous and vicious. Young

girls have been arraigned in our courts for the cr ime of infanticide; tr ied, convicted,

hanged—victims, perchance, of judge, jurors, advocates—while no woman’s voice could

be hea rd in their def ense. And not only are women denied a jury of their peers, but in

Women’s Movement (1870s) 505