t of
suffrage, fundamental in its character as to the use which they
will make of it as to one-half of the people who are in this bill
presumed to be the objects of your especial care. The marriage
relation was alluded to by Mrs. Gage. "When the positive order
was sent to me to compel the marriage of the colored people
living together, the women came to me with tears, and said, 'We
don't want to be married in the church, because when we are
married in the church our husbands treat us just as old massa
used to, and whip us if they think we deserve it; but when we
ain't married in the church they knows if they tyrannize over us
we go and leff 'em.'"

That is the class of male, gentlemen, to whom you propose to give
suffrage. These poor women who have to be whipped if the males
think they deserve it, are the people to whom you deny it. These
are the gentlemen who are to fabricate and make your laws of
marriage, who are to fix the causes of divorce in these several
States. These are the men, in other words, who are to enact, if
it so please them, that upon the marriage the husband becomes
seized of all his wife's property, of the personalty absolute and
the realty as tenant by courtesy; or perhaps they will have no
courtesy about it--and I should not wonder if they had not--and
give it to him in fee.

"And the men"--I beg the Senate to remember that I am reading the
testimony of Mrs. Gage; unexceptionable testimony: "And the men
came to me and said: 'We want you to compel them to be married,
for we can't manage them unless you do.'"

I am not certain whether they can always be managed even after
they are married. [Laughter]. But this is worse a great deal than
before: "'They goes and earns just as much money as we does, and
then they goes and spends it, and never asks no questions. Now we
wants 'em married in the church, 'cause when they's married in
the church we makes em mind.' So in San Domingo establishing the
laws of marriage made tyranny for these redeemed slave women."

Mrs. Gage continues: "I would not say one word against marriage,
God forbid. It is the noblest institution we have in this
country. But let it be a marriage of equality. Let the man and
woman stand as equals before the law. Let the freedwoman of the
South own