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92 & 20 august 1896 7. ECS means to say Zintka, the Lakota infant who survived the Massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 and was carried away by Clara Colby’s husband to be raised by the couple. SBA objected to Colby’s style of imposing her toddler on meetings and hostesses. On Zintka’s life, see Renée Sansom Flood, Lost Bird of Wounded Knee: Spirit of the Lakota (New York, 1995). ••••••••• 36 • Article by ECS [26 August 1896] Specially Inspired Men. In Hardship and Suffering They Dig Down to Hardpan. Some persons object that it was not the “intention” of the framers of the original constitution, nor of its amendments, to enfranchise women.1 When ordinary men,in their ordinary condition,talk of the “intentions”of great men specially inspired to utter great political truths, they talk of what they cannot know or understand. When by some moral revolution men are cut loose from all their old moorings and get beyond the public sentiment that once bound them, with no immediate selfish interest to subserve—as, for instance, our fathers in leaving England—in hardship and suffering they dig down to the hard pan of universal principles, and in their highest inspirational moments proclaim justice, liberty, equality for all. Visiting Chicago soon after the fire there,2 I saw great pieces of rock of the most wonderful mineral combination—gold, silver, glass, iron, layer after layer, all welded beautifully together, and that done in the conflagration of a single night which would have taken ages of growth to accomplish in the ordinary rocky formations. Just so revolutions in the moral world suddenly mold ideas, clear, strong, grand, that centuries might have slumbered over in silence—ideas that strike minds ready for them with the quickness and vividness of the lightning’s flash. It is in such ways and under such conditions that constitutions and great principles of jurisprudence are written. The letter and spirit are ever on the side of liberty, and highly organized minds, governed by principle, invariably give true interpretations; while others, whose law is expediency, coarse and material in all their conceptions, will interpret law, constitution, everything in harmony with the public sentiment of their class and condition. And here is the reason why men differ in their interpretations of law. They differ in their organizations. They see everything from a different standpoint. ^ 93 It is an insult to those revolutionary heroes to say that, after seven years’ struggle with the despotic ideas of the old world,in the first hour of victory, with their souls all on fire with newfound freedom, they sat down like so many pettifogging lawyers and drew up a little instrument for the express purpose of robbing women of their inalienable rights. But able jurists tell us that the “intention” of the framers of a document must be judged by the letter of the law. With or without intent, a law stands as it is written—“Lex ita scripta est.”3 The true rule of interpretation, says Charles Sumner, under the national constitution, especially since its additional amendments, is that anything for human rights is constitutional. “No learning in the books, no skill in the courts, no sharpness of forensic dialectics, no cunning in splitting hairs, can impair the vigor of the constitutional principle which I announce. Whatever you enact for human rights is constitutional, and this is the supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding.”4 U Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Y “The New Citizen,” San Francisco Evening Post, 26 August 1896. 1. As part of the statewide effort to use the press in support of the amendment campaign, the San Francisco Evening Post put Elizabeth Sargent in charge of a column entitled “The New Citizen.” To fill her space, Sargent often took excerpts from classic statements about woman suffrage, probably found in the History of Woman Suffrage. By this means, ECS published four articles in the Post during the campaign. For the column dated August 26, Sargent picked a passage from testimony ECS delivered to the House Judiciary Committee in 1872 in support of a declaratory act for woman suffrage. It is not known if the small changes made to the text were solicited from ECS or initiated by Elizabeth Sargent. See History, 2:511–13,for the passage reprinted,and Film,35:953,1049,1097,for other columns by ECS. 2. In 1871. 3. The Latin phrase usually functions...

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