susan b. anthony speech :: essays research papers

"Fellow concourse in this here world" I live on before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my start this evening to prove to you that me thus voting, I not only act no crime, scarce, instead, simply exercised my citizens rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National ecesis, beyond the power of any state to deny. The preamble of the Federal Constitution says "We, the plurality of the United States, in order to form a more rattling bad union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, pass on the general welf ar, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." It was we, the people not we, the white masculine citizens nor yet we, the male citizens but we, the whole people, who formed th e Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as women. And it is a downright bad to lecturing to wmen of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only delegacy of securing them provided by this democratic-republican regimen - the ballot. For any state to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one ideal half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or, an ex post facto law, and is thusly a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them this determinement has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy a hateful oligarchy of sex the most hateful aristocracy ever rea lized on the face of the globe an oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor. An oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant, or even an oligarchy of race, where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured but this oligarchy of sex, which