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^ 321 of the announced determination of Miss Susan B. Anthony to withdraw from the presidency of this Association, we tender her our heartfelt expression of appreciation and regard. We congratulate her upon her eightieth birthday, and trust that she will add to her past illustrious services her aid and support to the younger workers for woman’s enfranchisement. We shall continue to look to her for advice and counsel in the years to come. May the new century witness the full fruition of our labors!” ••••••••• 146 • Testimony by ECS to the House Committee on Judiciary Editorial note: Anna Shaw managed the hearing before the House Committee on the Judiciary on 13 February 1900 and introduced Harriet Mills to read a paper prepared by ECS. Although the hearing met to consider the usual sixteenth, woman suffrage amendment to the Constitution , ECS had her own proposal for federal action. Two versions of her message exist, this one, sent to Clara Colby and published in the Woman’s Tribune, and a variant published by the Government Printing Office.If custom prevailed,the latter derived from a stenographic record of what Mills said to the committee and reflects adjustments made by Mills while reading ECS’s text. Notes indicate where the Government Printing Office version differs significantly from the Tribune. (Woman Suffrage. Hearing before the Committee on Judiciary . . . February 13, 1900, pp. 5–7, and ECS to C. B. Colby, 11, 13, 20 February, 6 March 1900, Film, 40:938–40, 943–48, 1001ff, 41:23–25, 50–52.) [13 February 1900] Honorable Gentlemen:—In adjusting the rights of citizens in our newly acquired possessions,the whole question of suffrage is again fairly open for discussion in the House of Representatives; 1 and as some of the Southern States are depriving the colored man of the right of suffrage, and all the States, North and South, deny to women the exercise of that right, we ask Congress to pass an amendment to the National Constitution, covering all these classes, declaring that citizens not allowed a voice in the government shall not be counted in the basis of representation. 2 To every fair mind, such an amendment would appear pre-eminently just; to count disfranchised classes in the basis of representation compels citizens to aid in swelling the number of Congressmen to legislate against their most sacred interests. 12 february 1900 322 & Many Southern States are now passing laws to disfranchise their colored men in violation of the XIV and XV amendments, passed at the close of the Civil War, when the moral sense of the Nation was roused, through suffering, to a new appreciation of the principles embodied in our “Declaration of Rights,” that all the citizens of a republic have an equal right to Life,Liberty and Happiness. 3 If the Southern States,guilty of their present injustice toward the colored man, found that it limited their power in Congress that only those citizens who voted could be counted in the basis of representation,they would see that the interests of the races lay in the same direction. A Constitutional Amendment to this effect would also rouse the Northern States to their danger, for the principle applied to the North, in excluding all women from the basis of representation, would reduce their members of Congress by one half. And if the South should continue her suicidal policy toward women as well as colored men, these States would be at a still greater disadvantage. We have long asked Congress for an amendment to the National Constitution , forbidding the States to disfranchise any of their citizens on the ground of sex.The amendment now proposed seems more far-reaching,as it makes it to the direct interest of the ruling classes,both North and South, to carry out the spirit of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth amendments. 4 Leading statesmen and lawyers were of the opinion that women as well as the slaves were enfranchised by these amendments, and made able arguments to that effect, 5 but the Supreme Court decided that they had no effect on the status of woman; 6 hence we now make our demand on a broader basis, wisely appealing to the selfish interests of the ruling classes. The degradation of disfranchisement is keenly felt by the class of citizens most highly developed—and the principles of government will apply equally to the women in the islands that have lately come into our possession ; as many of these women are well educated and...

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