U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting

Alice Stone Blackwell
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage – Feb. 21, 1894
February 21, 1894
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: As we were coming along the corridors of the Capitol on our way to this hearing I overheard a gentleman who, I think, is a member of Congress, say: “We shall have to let the women vote. This is what we are coming to.” I suppose he meant that this perpetual procession of women through the halls of the Capitol will go on until their efforts are crowned with success. That gentleman was a true prophet. We will continue to come here until […]
Anna Howard Shaw
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Hearing before the Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage - Feb. 21, 1894
February 21, 1894
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen of the Committee: I have not been present during the whole sitting and therefore do not know what points have been brought up before this body. I wish to impress one thought which oftentimes seems to me to be overlooked; that is, the fact that woman suffrage is no longer a theory, but is a fact in many places and in many parts of the world. Woman suffrage is a fact in England and in New Zealand. The reports from New Zealand have been exceedingly fine […]
Anna Howard Shaw
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage – Jan. 24, 1889
January 24, 1889
Mr. Chairman, and gentlemen of the committee, I suppose Miss Anthony has introduced me that I may vouch for the orthodoxy of the body that has been gathered together here. We are orthodox on the woman suffrage question, and although they do not all agree with me on matters of faith in religion, they do agree with me on matters of faith in government. We have no apology to offer for being here. We have come to the conclusion that if women are to be free they must strike the […]
Alice Stone Blackwell
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage – Jan. 24, 1889
January 24, 1889
Gentlemen of the committee, I feel that I come before you a very inadequate representative of the Woman's Journal and the American Woman Suffrage Association; but at the same time I am glad of the opportunity which Miss Anthony's kindness has afforded me to say a word in behalf of the proposed constitutional amendment giving suffrage to women, because while what I can say may not be of much value in itself, it gives me an opportunity to show which side I am on in desiring suffrage to be granted […]
Isabella Beecher Hooker
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Hearing before the U.S. Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage – Jan. 24, 1889
January 24, 1889
Gentlemen of the committee, Miss Anthony says that I have a thought to present to you. I have two thoughts, and the first is this: women of this country have been deprived of the right of trial by jury simply because they have no vote. This was exemplified in the case of Miss Anthony in 1873, when Judge Ward Hunt, of the supreme bench, took the case from the jury, allowed them no consultation in their seats or out of them, and directed the clerk to enter up a verdict […]
Ida Husted Harper
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage – March 3, 1908
March 3, 1908
Gentlemen and members of the committee: Since the representatives of the National Woman Suffrage Association last appeared before this committee, two years ago, two nations of Europe have conferred the complete franchise on their women and one has practically granted municipal suffrage. Finland in 1906 enfranchised all women on exactly the same terms as men and made them eligible to all offices including the parliamentary. This measure was the result of great deliberation and careful procedure, decided upon by a carefully selected commission, passed by all the four chambers of […]
Belva Lockwood
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage – March 3, 1908
March 3, 1908
Gentlemen, you compose a committee, the last of 71 on the list, appointed and selected to discuss, consider, and report the matters referred to you, pertaining to the subject and object of your committee, “woman suffrage,” which you are supposed by your appointment not only to favor but thoroughly understand; a question that has been agitated before the country, and before the honorable body which you have the honor to represent, for the last half a century, and a question involving, according to the last United States Census, the welfare […]
Lucy Stone
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the Senate Committee on Women Suffrage – Feb 20, 1892
February 20, 1892
I come before this committee with the sense which I always feel, that we are handicapped as women in what we try to do for ourselves by the single fact that we have no vote. This cheapens us. You do not care so much for us as if we had votes, so that we come always with that infinite disadvantage. But the thing I want to say particularly is that we have our immortal Declaration of Independence and the various bills of rights of the different States ( George Washington […]
Virginia Minor
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the U.S. Senate Committee on Woman Suffrage - Jan. 24, 1889
January 24, 1889
Minor's remarks included a statement prepared by her husband, Francis Minor, who pleaded her case before the Supreme Court in 1875. Gentlemen, in 1884 the chairman of your committee (Mr. Cockrell) declared "that suffrage belonged entirely to the States so long as no class of citizens were disfranchised." I hold that women are a class of citizens in the different States who are disfranchised. But I am happy to say the Senator must have changed his opinion on that subject, because I notice that he has voted in Congress to […]
Susan B. Anthony
categories: Speeches, U.S. Senate Committee/Subcommittee Meeting
Statement before the Select Committee on Woman Suffrage, U.S. Senate - March 7, 1884
March 7, 1884
Miss ANTHONY. I wish I could state the avocations and professions of the various women who have spoken in our convention during the last three days. I do not wish to speak disparagingly in regard to the men in Congress, but I doubt if a man on the floor of either House could have made a better speech than some of those which have been made by women during this convention. Twenty-six States and Territories are represented with live women, traveling all the way from Kansas, Arkansas, Oregon, and Washington […]