Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/365

Rh to the Convention by the President, ex-Governor Horatio Seymour, read by the clerk in a loud, clear voice, received a most respectful and enthusiastic hearing, and was referred to the Committee on Resolutions.

As our readers would, no doubt, like to know what radical doctrines the Democratic party are now sufficiently developed to applaud, we give the letter below. Let no one say that our devotion to the education of this party for the last four years has been in vain:


 * —I address you by letter to ask the privilege of appearing before you during the sittings of this Convention, to demand the enfranchisement of the women of America, the only class of citizens wholly unrepresented in the Government, the only class (not guilty of crime) taxed without representation, tried without a jury of their peers, governed without their consent. And yet in this class are found many of your most noble, virtuous, law-abiding citizens, who possess all the requisite qualifications of voters. Women have property and education. We are not "idiots, lunatics, paupers, criminals, rebels," nor do we "bet on elections." We lack, according to your constitutions, but one qualification—that of sex—which is insurmountable, and, therefore, equivalent to a deprivation of the suffrage; in other words, the "tyranny of taxation without representation."

We desire to lay before you this violation of the great fundamental principle of our Government for your serious consideration, knowing that minorities can be moved by principles as majorities are only by votes. Hence we look to you for the initiative step in the redress of our grievances.

The party in power have not only failed to heed our innumerable petitions, asking the right of suffrage, poured into Congress and State Legislatures, but they have submitted a proposition to the several States to insert the word "male" in the Federal Constitution, where it has never been, and thereby put up a new barrier against the enfranchisement of woman. This fresh insult to the women of the Republic, who so bravely shared the dangers and sacrifices of the late war, has roused us to more earnest and persistent efforts to secure those rights, privileges, and immunities that belong to every citizen under Government. As you hold the Constitution of the fathers to be a sacred legacy to us and our children forever, we ask you to save it from this desecration, which deprives one-half our citizens of the right of representation in the Government. Over this base proposition the nation has stood silent and indifferent. While the dominant party has with one hand lifted up two million black men and crowned them with the honor and dignity of citizenship, with the other it has dethroned fifteen million white women—their own mothers and sisters, their own wives and daughters—and cast them under the heel of the lowest orders of manhood.

We appeal to you, not only because you, being in a minority, are in a position to consider principles, but because you have been the party heretofore to extend the suffrage. It was the Democratic party that fought