Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/1151

 

The following list is so incomplete as to make the advisability of using it a matter of grave doubt. No name is given except upon what is believed to be unimpeachable authority, but it is unavoidable that scores should be omitted which are entitled to a place. The list will indicate, however, the character of those who have espoused the cause of woman suffrage, and it is published with the request that readers will forward to the editors additional names which can be used, and mention any which should be omitted, in the second edition of this volume. There has been no attempt to give all in any profession, but only a few of those who may fairly be considered representative. The names, for instance, of clergymen alone who are in favor of the enfranchisement of women would fill many pages, while those of prominent lawyers in every community would require almost unlimited space, as it is a question which appeals especially to the sense of equity. The following list will indicate sufficiently that this is not a movement of ultra-radical and irresponsible extremists.

The only President of the United States who declared himself publicly and unequivocally for woman suffrage was Abraham Lincoln, who said as early as 1836, "I go for all sharing the privileges of the Government who assist in bearing its burdens by no means excluding women," and later utterances indicated that he did not change his position. Rutherford B. Hayes never hesitated to express his approval in private conversation, and in 1872 he assisted materially in placing in the Republican National Platform the nearest approach to an indorsement which the movement ever has received from that party. James A. Garfield said: "Laugh as we may, put it aside as a jest if we will, keep it out of Congress and political campaigns, still the woman question is rising on our horizon larger than a man's hand; and some solution ere long that question must find." Theodore Roosevelt, when a member of the New York Legislature, voted for a woman suffrage bill, saying he had been converted by seeing how much the women accomplished with their school ballot at Oyster Bay, his home. When Governor he said in his message to the Legislature of 1899: "I call your attention to the desirability of gradually enlarging the sphere in which the suffrage can be extended to women." There is reason to believe other Presidents would have expressed themselves favorably had political exigencies permitted.

The only Vice-Presidents on record as advocating and voting for woman suffrage are Hannibal Hamlin, Schuyler Colfax, Henry Wilson and William A. Wheeler. Such action is likely to mean the personal loss of votes and injury to one's party, with no compensation other than the consciousness of