138 



CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. 



ing through the problem we are obliged to 

 solve, to fling in this additional mass of igno- 

 rance upon the suffrage of the country. "Why, 

 sir, a rich corporation or a body of men of 

 wealth could buy them up for fifty cents apiece, 

 and they would vote without knowing what 

 they were doing for the side that paid most. 

 Yet we are asked to confer suffrage upon them, 

 and to have a committee appointed as favora- 

 ble to that view as is possible, so as to get a 

 favorable report upon it ! 



"I want the Committee on the Judiciary to 

 tell the Congress and the country whether they 

 think it is good policy now to confer suffrage 

 on all the colored women of the South, igno- 

 rant as they are known to be, and thus add to 

 the ignorance that we are now struggling with, 

 and whether the republic can be sustained 

 upon such a basis as that." 



Mr. Morgan, of Alabama : " Inasmuch as 

 this measure, I understand, has been made a 

 party measure by the decree of a caucus, I pro- 

 pose to make some little inquiry into the past 

 legislation of the Congress of the United States 

 under Republican rule in respect of the exten- 

 sion of the right of suffrage to certain classes 

 of people in this country. I will take up first 

 the Territories. A system has prevailed in the 

 organization of the Territories, I believe, uni- 

 formly the same as that which obtained in the 

 case of the organization of the Territory of 

 Utah. Under the fifth section of the act or- 

 ganizing the Territory of Utah, which was 

 passed in 1850, it is provided : 



That every free white male inhabitant above the 

 age of twenty-one years, who shall have been a resi- 

 dent of said Territory at the time of the passage of 

 this act, shall be entitled to vote at the first election, 

 and shall be eligible to any office within the said Ter- 

 ritory ; but the qualifications of voters and of hold- 

 ing office, at all subsequent elections, shall be such as 

 shall be prescribed by the Legislative Assembly: 

 Provided, That the right of suffrage and of holding 

 office shall be exercised only by citizens of the United 

 States, including those recognized as citizens by the 

 treaty with the Kepublic of" Mexico, concluded 'Feb- 

 ruary 2, 1848. 



" I believe that every Territorial government 

 is modeled upon this system, so far as it con- 

 cerns the right of suffrage. We have put it in 

 the power of the Territorial Legislature, after 

 the first vote has been cast under the laws of 

 the United States organizing the Territory, to 

 prescribe the qualifications of voters, and after 

 the qualification has been regulated by the law 

 of the Territory, the remaining power in Con- 

 gress is only to repeal or modify such legisla- 

 tion. So, sir, we have put it in the power of 

 these Territorial Legislatures to provide for 

 female suffrage, and if they should undertake 

 to establish the right of women to vote, in or- 

 der to correct that if we think it needs cor- 

 rection, we should have to repeal the act or 

 modify it. A Territorial Legislature has the 

 absolute right of legislation under such circum- 

 stances, and we only have the right to repeal 

 or modify what they may do. 



" Let us look for a moment at the result of 

 woman suffrage in some of the Territories. I 

 have read to you the act of 1850, organizing 

 the Territory of Utah. The Territorial Legis- 

 lature has gone forward and conferred the 

 right of suffrage upon the women of Utah Ter- 

 ritory. The population of Utah Territory in 

 the last decade has reached from 64,000, I be- 

 lieve, to about 150,000 ; I can not state the 

 figures exactly. The Territorial Legislature of 

 Utah conferred upon the females of that Ter- 

 ritory the right of suffrage, and how have they 

 exerted that right ? Sir, I am ashamed to say 

 it, but it is known to the world that the power 

 of Mormonism and polygamy in Utah Territory 

 is sustained by female suffrage. You can not 

 get rid of those laws. Ninety per cent of the 

 legislative power of Utah Territory is Mormon 

 and polygamous. If female suffrage is to be 

 incorporated into the laws of our country with 

 a view to the amelioration of our morals or 

 our political sentiments, we stand aghast at 

 the spectacle of what has been wrought by its 

 exercise in the Territory of Utah. There stands 

 a power supporting the crime of polygamy 

 through what they call a divine inspiration, or 

 teaching from God, and all the power of the 

 judges of the United States, and of the Con- 

 gress of the United States, has been unavailing 

 to break it down. Who have upheld it? Those 

 who in the family circle represent one husband 

 to fifteen women. 



"We have now 10,000,000 voters in the 

 United States, who represent 50,000,000 peo- 

 ple. What is the attitude of an American 

 voter in reference to the non-voting popula- 

 tion? It is that of a representative. One 

 man in our political policy represents five peo- 

 ple in voting, whether in a local election or in 

 the most important election to which his fran- 

 chise extends. He stands in our system as a 

 representative of five people and votes for 

 them ; and by necessity it must remain so, 

 because every child and every woman can not 

 vote, and there must be some line of demarka- 

 tion which fixes the boundary of the franchise 

 of voting. That boundary was wisely fixed 

 with reference to the supposed condition of 

 families and the necessities of families, so that 

 when a child became twenty-one years of age, 

 if he were a son, or, being the head of a family 

 and twenty-one years of age and over, he could 

 represent that family in casting a ballot ; and 

 it adds much to the dignity and the value of 

 the position of the American citizen that in all 

 the different departments in which he is al- 

 lowed to exercise the power of the ballot he is 

 attended with the responsibility of this repre- 

 sentative character. We must not discard 

 that. 



" Where is the necessity of raising the num- 

 ber of voters in the United States from 10,000,- 

 000 to 20,000,000? That would be the direct 

 effect of conferring suffrage upon the women, 

 for they have at least one half, if not a little 

 more than one half, of the entire population of 



