On a Woman’s Right to Vote
Susan B. Anthony
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 tranquillity, 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.
1873