Syracuse University Library
Special Collections Research Center
Gerrit Smith Broadside and Pamphlet Collection

Gerrit Smith to Susan B. Anthony.

Smith, Gerrit, 1797-1874.

Digital Edition.

This digitization project was supported by Regional Bibliographic Databases and Interlibrary Resources Sharing Program funds, awarded by the New York State Library.

Call number: Smith 571

GERRIT SMITH TO SUSAN B. ANTHONY.

[p. 1, col. 1]

PETERBORO FEBRUARY 5th 1873.

MISS ANTHONY,

DEAR FRIEND,

So the men talk of putting you in prison for your having voted! They vote; and feel that, in doing so, they discharge a high duty. But they hold that you, notwithstanding your conceded abilities and virtues, and merely because you are a woman, may not vote. Why men have the ballot and women hav'nt it, and why they have so much else in which they refuse to let women share, originates in the simple fact, that the superior physical strength is on the side of man. I confess that such things go somewhat toward making me ashamed of being a man. Nevertheless, I am consoled by the thought that when men shall have become wiser and better, and exchanged their barbaric pride in their stronger and rougher sex for a sense of what they owe to the weaker and gentler one, they will be glad to do justice to women - yes, a full, generous, chivalrous measure of justice.

We are constantly told that suffrage is but a conventional and therefore an inferior right. It is, however, an eminently natural and transcendently important one - for it is the right protective of all rights. The chief use of suffrage is in the selection of rulers. Hence, as the office of the rulers is to protect the persons and properties of the people, it follows that they, who have no voice in the choosing of the rulers, have no voice in the question of the protection of their own lives and properties. The disfranchised lie, with their possessions and their lives, at the mercy of those, who have usurped the exclusive franchise.

The question is not whether men shall confer the right of suffrage on women. Men assumed it for themselves - and properly so. But they are mean and base tyrants for not suffering women also to assume it for themselves.

Nor should the question have been raised whether women have the right of suffrage in the Constitution. Man's claim to this right was prior to and far above all Constitutions ; and the like claim to this right he should have been prompt to recognize in woman. But, alas, Constitutions, being man-made, are made, almost universally, in the interest of defeating and ignoring this claim on the part of woman!

What tyranny and what hypocrisy then for men to say that the Constitution settles it whether women have the right to vote! You have not forgotten how indignantly unwilling a few of us were to have it made a Constitutional question whether our millions of slaves should be set free. The question of their freedom rose heaven-high above all parchments and papers: and so does the question of woman's equal right with man's to participate in choosing the guardians of the rights of person and property - rights certainly no less sacred in woman than in man. Let Constitutions settle questions which fall within their sphere - but let them not presume to decide that one man may own another, nor that men alone may wield the ballot, and thus have the absolute disposal of women. Lord Brougham's grandly eloquent outburst against the possibility of law for slavery applies with scarcely less force to the outrage of man's assuming to be exclusively the maker of laws for woman. I do not say that I would not have Constitutions speak out against slavery and against this oppression of woman: but I would have them do so simply as registering the antecedent decrees of heaven and of every true soul against these abominations.

Rightly interpreted however - interpreted according to the accepted canon of interpretation - the Constitution interposes no hinderance in the way of woman's assertion of her right to the ballot. All this talk about what the framers of the Constitution intended is idle; and so also is all this talk about the intentions of its adopters, save only as they are gathered from the simple words - from the bare text - of the instrument. Moreover, we are to bear in mind, that, whilst, on the one hand, we are to admit no interpretations in behalf of injustice but such as are irresistibly plain, on the other we are allowed and required to wring, if need be, from the Constitution whatever in

[p. 1, col. 2]

it makes for justice - especially for such clear and commanding justice as the ballot for woman.

But are the friends of this vital justice to woman driven to the necessity of wringing any thing from the Constitution in order to maintain their cause ? Certainly not - for nothing in it is plainer than that every one of our native or naturalized women is a citizen. Then, if we follow this up with looking into our standard American Dictionaries and into the utterances at this point of not a few of our most eminent jurists, we find that suffrage is amongst the privileges and immunities of a citizen.

Let what will be said to the contrary, the moment that the first section of the fourteenth Amendment became a part of the Constitution, our women became Constitutional voters - and, this too, beyond the power of a State to disfranchise them.

But the enemies of this indispensable justice for woman assail her from the seeming vantage-ground of the first section of the fifteenth Amendment. They ask - why, if woman shall not be denied the right to vote, this section does not say she shall not ? The answer is that, at the time of the adoption of this section, the absorbing concern of the American people was to make sure, doubly and trebly sure, the protection of the black man - in other words, his right to the ballot. We admit that woman was not thought of in this section. If, however, it be said that she was, then are we at liberty to say that she was thought of not for the purpose of excluding her from its provisions, but thought of only as needing no further Constitutional expression against her disfranchisement. At any rate, there is nothing in this section which can go to defeat the positive grants to woman derived from other parts of the Constitution.

This mere outline of my argument will suffice. I need not fill it up and fortify it at points where it is open to criticism, and where it could easily be filled up and fortified.

But be not discouraged, even though Congress and the Courts shall decide that another Amendment to the Constitution (the Julian Amendment) is necessary ere woman can vote. In that event such an Amendment will be forthcoming. The Republican party, with that wise and honest, brave but modest man at its head, is in power for another four years. It came originally into power by being a reform party. By continuing to be such, it has continued in power: and only by remaining a reform party can it remain in power. The Democratic party, which was the reform party in the early life of the Republic, came, at last, to kill itself by refusing to be a reform party, and by clinging to its sins and crimes. The Republican party has, just now, abolished the franking privilege: and it will, doubtless, soon follow up that much needed reformatory work by according entirely equal civil rights to the black man. (For his social rights he must be left to fight his own battles.) Then there are two other reforms with which the Republican party cannot afford to delay identifying itself. One of them is the recognition in woman of all the political rights exercised by man. The other is the arresting of the dramshop ruin of our country by no loner licensing or suffering the dramshop, that great manufactory of all sorts and sizes of criminals. The mighty city of New York lies to-day a helpless victim of the dramshop. From that devil's den comes the far greater share of her thieves and murderers: and hence, also, comes that chief corruption of the public sentiment through which these offenders so generally escape punishment. Dramshop voters and dramshop jurors! - how little safety for either life or property where such wretches abound ! Whether America shall preserve her free institutions turns mainly on the question whether she shall stay the rising floods of intemperance. The sole office of Government is to protect person and property: and the dramshop confessedly does more than all things else to peril them. It is then a very plain duty that we ask Government to discharge, when we ask it to suppress dramselling. Let Government do this its simple duty, and the friends of temperance will then be able to do what shall be lacking to save the land from being destroyed by intemperance. Would that this division of the labor might be acquiesced in!

GERRIT SMITH.