source of the large mass of the morality and virtue of man
and of the world. The benignant and humanizing and important
influence which she exercises upon the whole race of man in the
proper discharge of her functions and duties can not be
overestimated; but that woman should properly perform these great
duties, this inappreciably valuable task, it is necessary that
she should be kept pure. The domestic altar is a sacred fane
where woman is the high and officiating priestess. This priestess
should be virtuous, she should be intelligent, she should be
competent to the performance of all her high duties. To keep her
in that condition of purity, it is necessary that she should be
separated from the exercise of suffrage and from all those stern
and contaminating and demoralizing duties that devolves upon the
hardier sex--man.

What is the proposition now before the Senate? To make pure,
cultivated, noble woman a partisan, a political hack, to lead her
among the rabble that surround and control by blackguardism and
brute force so many of the hustings of the United States. Mr.
President, if one greater evil or curse could befall the American
people than any other, in my judgment it would be to confer upon
the women of America the right of suffrage. It would be a great
step in the line of mischief and evil, and it would lead to other
and equally fatal steps--in the same direction. Sir, if ever in
the depths and silence of night I send up my secret orisons to my
Maker, one of the most fervent of my prayers would be that the
women of my country should be saved and sheltered by man from
this great contamination. It is not necessary to the proper
influence and to the legitimate power of woman. A cultivated,
enlightened, delicate, refined, and virtuous woman at the family
altar is the persuasive and at the same time plastic power that
sways and fashions the principles and character of her children,
and thus makes her impress upon the future men of America, the
Phocians, the Timoleons, the Washingtons, who are the honor of
the race, and whose destiny it is to elevate and ennoble it. Mr.
President, in proportion as man becomes civilized so increases
the power and the influence of woman. In the tribes and nations
of the lowest ignorance and barbarism this in