Sisters in Spirit: Iroquois Influence on Early Feminists by Sally Roesch Wagner Page B
Authors: Sally Roesch Wagner
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could use in the white nation to gain their rights. They believed suffrage was their inherent right in a Republic based upon the consent of the governed. The government believed otherwise. State laws denied women suffrage and, in 1874, the United States Supreme Court ruled that they had the constitutional right to do so. Women did not achieve a recognition of their constitutional right to vote in the United States of America until the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally enacted in 1920, seventy-two years after the struggle began. EuroAmerican women came from an age-old tradition of political slavery, as Stanton charged in “The Declaration of Sentiments”:
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.... Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen ... he has oppressed her on all sides. 1
Suffragists waged a campaign of civil disobedience during which they broke the law (by voting), refused to pay their taxes (no taxation without representation), and accused the government of failing to live up to its founding principle—a government based on the consent of the governed.
“I am a citizen of the United States and the state of New York, and demand the right to vote for the rulers and laws by which I am governed,” wrote Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the Centennial Autograph Book at the Philadelphia Commemoration on July 4, 1876. Twenty-eight years after their first call for the vote, the suffragists of the National Woman Suffrage Association chose their words carefully. Women already had the right to vote, they argued. Were they not citizens of a Republic based on the consent of the governed? Did they not pay taxes? How wrong it would be to ask for a right denied them; no, they demanded that the federal government protect them in exercising that right.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, the movement’s foremost theoretician, outlined their position in her “Woman’s Rights Catechism”:
Q: From whence do governments derive their just powers?
A: From the consent of the governed. (Declaration of Independence)
Q: Are rights granted people by governments or through constitutions?
A: No. Rights existed before governments are founded or constitutions created.
Q: Of what use then are governments and institutions? A: To protect people in the exercise and enjoyment of their natural and fundamental rights, which existed before governments or constitutions were made. (Declaration of Independence and Constitution)
Q: What is a citizen?
A: In the United States, a citizen is a person, native or naturalized, who has the privilege of exercising the elective franchise. (Webster)
Q: What persons are citizens of the United States?
A: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside. (14th Amendment)
Q: What right has a citizen of the United States?
A: The right to vote ...
Q: Are those persons who, under color of law, forbid woman the ballot, law-keepers or law-breakers?
A: They are law-breakers, acting in defiance to both National and State law, in thus refusing to women citizens the exercise of a right secured to them by the Constitution of the United States; and they render themselves liable to prosecution thereby. 2
In this interpretation, each state was therefore a law-breaker for having laws that denied women their legal right to vote. Schooled in the anti-slavery movement, the suffragists knew that unjust laws must not be obeyed. Just as they had refused to obey the Fugitive Slave Act, they now broke the law that denied them citizenship. Gage’s “catechism” laid the groundwork for a brilliant campaign of civil disobedience.
From Maryland to Washington Territory,
The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her. He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective franchise.... Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen ... he has oppressed her on all sides. 1
Suffragists waged a campaign of civil disobedience during which they broke the law (by voting), refused to pay their taxes (no taxation without representation), and accused the government of failing to live up to its founding principle—a government based on the consent of the governed.
“I am a citizen of the United States and the state of New York, and demand the right to vote for the rulers and laws by which I am governed,” wrote Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the Centennial Autograph Book at the Philadelphia Commemoration on July 4, 1876. Twenty-eight years after their first call for the vote, the suffragists of the National Woman Suffrage Association chose their words carefully. Women already had the right to vote, they argued. Were they not citizens of a Republic based on the consent of the governed? Did they not pay taxes? How wrong it would be to ask for a right denied them; no, they demanded that the federal government protect them in exercising that right.
Matilda Joslyn Gage, the movement’s foremost theoretician, outlined their position in her “Woman’s Rights Catechism”:
Q: From whence do governments derive their just powers?
A: From the consent of the governed. (Declaration of Independence)
Q: Are rights granted people by governments or through constitutions?
A: No. Rights existed before governments are founded or constitutions created.
Q: Of what use then are governments and institutions? A: To protect people in the exercise and enjoyment of their natural and fundamental rights, which existed before governments or constitutions were made. (Declaration of Independence and Constitution)
Q: What is a citizen?
A: In the United States, a citizen is a person, native or naturalized, who has the privilege of exercising the elective franchise. (Webster)
Q: What persons are citizens of the United States?
A: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the State wherein they reside. (14th Amendment)
Q: What right has a citizen of the United States?
A: The right to vote ...
Q: Are those persons who, under color of law, forbid woman the ballot, law-keepers or law-breakers?
A: They are law-breakers, acting in defiance to both National and State law, in thus refusing to women citizens the exercise of a right secured to them by the Constitution of the United States; and they render themselves liable to prosecution thereby. 2
In this interpretation, each state was therefore a law-breaker for having laws that denied women their legal right to vote. Schooled in the anti-slavery movement, the suffragists knew that unjust laws must not be obeyed. Just as they had refused to obey the Fugitive Slave Act, they now broke the law that denied them citizenship. Gage’s “catechism” laid the groundwork for a brilliant campaign of civil disobedience.
From Maryland to Washington Territory,
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