Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/359

Rh pitying eyes of angels see the holocaust of womanhood no journal ever notes. In thought I trace the slender threads that link these hideous, overt acts to creeds and codes that make an aristocracy of sex. When a mighty nation, with a scratch of the pen, frames the base ideas of the lower orders into constitutions and statute laws, and declares every serf, peasant and slave the rightful sovereigns of all womankind, they not only degrade every woman in her own eyes, but in that of every man on the footstool. A cultivated lady in Baltimore writes us a description of a colored republican reunion, held in that city a few evenings since, in which a colored gentleman offered the following toast: "Our wives and daughters—May the women of our race never unsex themselves by becoming strong-minded."

11, 1869.

—If the fifteenth article of Constitutional Amendments ever gets ratified and becomes the rule of suffrage, it will have at least one good effect. Woman will then know with what power she has to contend. It will be male versus female, the land over. All manhood will vote not because of intelligence, patriotism, property, or white skin, but because it is male, not female. All womanhood will be newly outraged and debased, not for ignorance, disloyalty, poverty, or a black skin, but because it is female, not male. Julia Ward Howe, of Boston, has some good thoughts in the Galaxy for March on this subject, in part as below:

"The Irish or German savage, after three years' cleansing, is admitted to the general enrollment of the community. The colored man, cleaner at the start than these, the natural ally of republican principles, trained to an understanding of freedom by a long experience of its opposite, stands next upon the record. Voting to him is a military necessity. It is the only weapon with which he can meet those whom law, custom, and prejudice have hitherto trebly armed against him. This admitted right of elective franchise to all men, brings one scarcely anticipated condition. It arrays now the whole male and female sexes in a new and unforeseen condition. The right of the elective franchise is now the recognition of the inalienable right of all men to the proper administration of their interests, and in America this right is founded upon the right of human intelligence to its own exercise, the right of human labor to its own recompense. The generous culture which allows woman in this country so large an extension of thought, and the social necessities which place in her hands so many of the nicer tasks hitherto kept for those of the other sex, alike commission her to claim and make good her right to the most simple, general and explicit method of expressing her will in the arena where wills are counted and respected."

—"The adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment will put an end to further agitation of the subject, for a long time at least, and thus leave the government of the country free to deal with its material interests, and with the more pressing questions of public policy and administration which will arise from time to time. We do not concur with those who predict that the question of suffrage for women will speedily demand public action or engross public attention, or that the right of men to hold office without distinction of color or race, will absorb any great degree of public time or public thought for a long while to come. Until some decided practical advantage is to be gained by a dominant political party,