The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account... of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. Suffragists, hear this last call to a suffrage convention! The officers of the National American Woman Suffrage Association hereby call their State auxiliaries, through their elected delegates, to meet in annual convention at Chicago, Congress Hotel, February 12th to 18th, inclusive. In other days our members and friends have been summoned to annual conventions to disseminate the propaganda for their common cause, to cheer and encourage each other, to strengthen their organized influence, to counsel as to ways and means of insuring further progress. At this time they are called to rejoice that the struggle is over, the aim achieved and the women of the nation about to enter into the enjoyment of their hard-earned political liberty. Of all the conventions held within the past fifty-one years, this will prove the most momentous. Few people live to see the actual and final realization of hopes to which they have devoted their lives. That privilege is ours.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The clause which lived twenty-four hours in the Alabama Constitution, granting to taxpaying women owning $500 worth of property th...e suffrage on questions of bonded indebtedness, was killed by a disease peculiar to the genus homo known as chivalry. In the case in point, the diagnosis revealed that the fairest, purest and brightest jewels that ever shone under the brilliant rays of God's shining sun would be immeasurably lowered by voting upon questions relating to the taxation of their own property. Yet, under the vagaries of this disease, this same convention conferred on husbands the right to vote on their wives' property. This is the same character of chivalry which gives the wages of the brightest, fairest jewels to the husband, which makes impossible equal pay for equal work and which classes the jewels with the idiots, insane and criminals in that and other States.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Freedom to think our own thoughts, freedom to utter them, freedom to live out the promptings of our inner life ultimated in this c...onvention, was termed a monstrosity of the 19th century. What was it?--the legitimate out-birth of the eternal law of progress. This reformation underlies every other; it is the only healthful centre around which hope of humanity can revolve.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
WHEREAS: It is our conviction that had the women of the countries of Europe, with their deep instinct of motherhood and desire for... the conservation of life, possessed a voice in the councils of their governments, this deplorable war would never have been allowed to occur; therefore, be it RESOLVED: That the National American Woman Suffrage Association, in convention assembled, does hereby affirm the obligation of peace and good will toward all men and further demands the inclusion of women in the government of nations of which they are a part, whose citizens they bear and rear and whose peace their political liberty would help to secure and maintain.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
... women are supposed to be unfit to vote because they are hysterical and emotional and of course men would not like to have emot...ion enter into a political campaign. They want to cut out all emotion and so they would like to cut us out. I had heard so much about our emotionalism that I went to the last Democratic national convention, held at Baltimore, to observe the calm repose of the male politicians. I saw some men take a picture of one gentleman whom they wanted elected and it was so big they had to walk sidewise as they carried it forward; they were followed by hundreds of other men screaming and yelling, shouting and singing the "Houn' Dawg".... I saw men jump up on the seats and throw their hats in the air and shout: "What's the matter with Champ Clark?" Then, when those hats came down, other men would kick them back into the air, shouting at the top of their voices: "He's all right!!"... No hysteria about it--just patriotic loyalty, splendid manly devotion to principle. And so they went on and on until 5 o'clock in the morning--the whole night long. I saw men jump up on their seats and jump down again and run around in a ring. I saw two men run towards another man to hug him both at once and they split his coat up the middle of his back and sent him spinning around like a wheel. All this with the perfect poise of the legal male mind in politics! I have been to many women's conventions in my day but I never saw a woman leap up on a chair and take off her bonnet and toss it up in the air and shout: "What's the matter with" somebody. I never saw a woman knock another woman's bonnet off her head as she screamed, "She's all right!".... But we are willing to admit that we are emotional. I have actually seen women stand up and wave their handkerchiefs. I have even seen them take hold of hands and sing, "Blest be the tie that binds." Nobody doubts that women are excitable.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is twenty-eight years ago to-day since the first woman's rights convention ever held assembled in the Wesleyan chapel at Seneca... Falls, N.Y. Could we have foreseen, when we called that convention, the ridicule, persecution, and misrepresentation that the demand for woman's political, religious and social equality would involve; the long, weary years of waiting and hoping without success; I fear we should not have had the courage and conscience to begin such a protracted struggle, nor the faith and hope to continue the work.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The American mind exasperated the European as a buzz-saw might exasperate a pine-forest. The English mind disliked the French mind... because it was antagonistic, unreasonable, perhaps hostile, but recognized it as at least a thought. The American mind was not a thought at all; it was a convention, superficial, narrow, and ignorant; a mere cutting instrument, practical, economical, sharp and direct. The English themselves hardly conceived that their mind was either economical, sharp or direct; but the defect that most struck an American was its enormous waste in eccentricity. Americans needed and used their whole energy, and applied it with close economy; but English society was eccentric by law and for sake of the eccentricity itself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our discussion will be adequate; if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of; for precision is not to be sought fo...r alike in all discussions, and more than in all the products of the crafts. Now fine and just actions, which political science investigates, exhibit much variety and fluctuation, so that they may be thought to exist only by convention, and not by nature. And goods also exhibit a similar fluctuation.... We must be content, then, in speaking of such subjects and with such premises, to indicate the truth roughly and in outline.... In the same spirit, therefore, should each of our statements be received; for it is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits: it is evidently equally foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand from a rhetorician demonstrative proofs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates--the inhabitants of marketing zones in the con...sumer goods society, television audiences and news magazine readerships... vote with money at the cash counter rather than with the ballot paper at the polling booth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »