Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/140

122 all these things, I have stood here, and appeal to my fellow-Senators to know if any one of them can say that at any time I have manifested the smallest disposition to yield in any one particular. I scorn the imputation; I would rather have the approval of my own conscience, I would rather walk in the star-light and look up to them and to the God who made me free and independent, than to seek the highest station upon the earth by truckling to any man or to any set of people, or giving up my free opinions.

And yet I propose not to be irrational in this matter. As I said yesterday, and as I said to-day, I have struggled against change; but if it is to be made I wish to direct it properly. I made in my own person, two or three years ago, a motion which passed this body by, I think, a vote of precisely two to one—I believe it was 28 to 14—that the voters of the District of Columbia should be confined to white males; but upon that occasion I stated—and the debates will bear me out, I think—that if the door of the franchise was to be opened, if it was thought that the safety of the country required more people to cast ballots, more people to enjoy this privilege, I would open it to the women of the country sooner than I would open it to the negroes. I say so to-day. You are determined to open it to the negroes. I appeal to you to open it to the women. You say there is no danger in opening it to the negroes. I say there is no danger then in opening it to the women. You say that it is safe in the hands of the negroes. I say it is equally safe in the hands of our sisters, and more safe in the hands of our wives and our mothers. I say more to you. I say you have not demonstrated that it is safe to confer the franchise upon men just emerged from the barbarism of slavery; I say you have not demonstrated that it is safe to give the ballot to men who require a Freedmen's Bureau to take care of them, and who it is not pretended anywhere have that intelligence which is necessary to enable them to comprehend the questions which agitate the people of this nation, and of which the people are supposed to have an intelligent understanding. I say you have not demonstrated all that; but you have expressed your determination. You are determined to do it, and when you are determined to do it I want to put along with that element, that doubtful element, that ignorant element, that debased element, that element just emerged from slavery, I want you to put along with it into the ballot-box, to neutralize its poison if poison there be, to correct its dangers if danger there be, the female element of the country.

That is my position. If you abandon the whole project I have no objection. I am willing to rest the safety of the country where it is and has been so far. I am open to conviction, open to argument, open to reason even upon that subject; but I am willing to leave this question of suffrage where our fathers left it, where the world leaves it today, where all wise men leave it. If, however, it is to be opened, if there is to be a new era, if political power is to be distributed per capita according to a particular age, then I am for extending it to women as well as men. Let me tell the honorable Senator I am not alone in this opinion; the Senator from Ohio with me is not alone; one of the first intellects of this age, perhaps the first man of the first country of the earth, is of the same