or civil rights, if they
deemed there was any abridgment of those rights. But I repeat
what I said a while ago, the number who have thus memorialized
Congress and the State governments, compared with those who have
not opened their mouths on this subject, is as a drop in the sea
compared to the waste of waters. They have yielded their assent
to this system of government; they have ratified it by every
means in their power outside of exercising the political right to
vote. I know that there are a few women in the country who
complain, but those who complain, compared with those who do not
complain, are as one to a million.

But to get back to the point. Those who established the
Declaration of Independence gave an exposition to their view of
it in the formation and administration of the several State
governments they adopted. For years in those State governments
they provided civil and political distinctions and
discriminations; they provided that certain classes of white men
should enjoy certain classes of rights, that certain other men
should not enjoy the same rights. They provided that the male
population should enjoy rights that the female should not enjoy.
They provided that the white race should be free and that the
black race should be slaves. They did that, and according to
their action and the organic laws which they adopted, they said
in the most solemn manner they could, that that system of
government carried out the purposes they meant to declare and
define in the Declaration of Independence. They not only did
that, but they had a right to do it, nor was it inconsistent with
the declaration, for it referred only to natural rights, and when
they instituted governments they provided civil and political
rights, and therefore there was no contradiction and no practical
absurdity as is suggested. Their theory was practical and adapted
to the comprehension and protection of human rights. They were
not visionary theorists but practical statesmen. They were not
radical but conservative in their notions of government. Not only
the State governments did at first what I have indicated, but
when the American people came to establish the Constitution of
the United States they again provided in the Constitution a
distinction and discrimin