orce the
results of a ballot? Is there any one of us who believes that? Is
there anybody here who would be glad to see a woman in the
train-band, on the muster-field, at the cannon's mouth, or on the
decks of your war-ships? That is what your argument means, if it
means anything logically.

But sir, I am not going to argue the proposition at all. I am
going to vote against it because the right of suffrage is that
rugged and severe service which man has no right to devolve upon
woman. It is enough to say that when the American women want the
ballot, when they come to hanker for it, and fall in love with
the exercise of the ballot at the polls, I am in favor of their
voting, but not until then; and I am not in favor of that
sentimental sort of stuff which is gotten up somewhere or other
by portions of the people who would force it upon the American
women as a general proposition. Whenever they come to desire it,
whenever the American women come to ask it, and particularly when
they come to demand it, or even to solicit it, there will be no
question as to what the American Congress will do; but until that
time comes I shall vote steadily against it.

Nobody will be surprised at these sentiments from me who has had
occasion to know the sentiments that I have expressed on this
same subject on former occasions. I will send to the desk and ask
to have read a paragraph or two from a speech made by me some
years ago on the subject of suffrage.

The CHIEF CLERK read as follows:

Universal suffrage is affirmed by its advocates as among the
absolute or natural rights of man, in the sense of mankind,
extending to females as well as males, and susceptible of no
limitation unless as opposed to child or infant. It is
supposed to originate in rights independent of citizenship;
like the absolute rights of liberty, personal security, and
possession of property, it is natural to man. It exists, of
course, independent of sex or condition, manhood or
womanhood. To admit it in the adult and deny it to the youth
would be to abridge the right and ignore the principle. Now,
sir, in practice its extension to women would contravene all
our notions of the family; "put asunder" husband and wife,