delicacy of
the sex; for she provides, in express terms, that she shall go to
the ballot-box in person, or by proxy, as she pleases. It is the
first drop of the coming storm--it is the first ray of light in
the rising sun.

Civilization can not defend itself, on American principles,
against this claim. My friend of Brooklyn claims the right to
make political speeches, as well as sermons, because he is a
citizen. Well, woman is a citizen too: and if a minister can
preach politics because he is a citizen, woman can meddle in
politics and vote, because she is a citizen too. When Mr. Beecher
based his right, not on the intellect which flashes from Maine to
Georgia, not on the strength of that nervous right arm, but
solely on his citizenship, he dragged to the platform twelve
millions of American women to stand at his side. But the
difficulty is, no man can defend his own right to vote, without
granting it to woman. The only reason why the demand sounds
strange, is because man never analyzed his own right. The moment
he begins to analyze it, he can not defend it without admitting
her. Our fathers proclaimed, sixty years ago, that government was
co-equal with the right to take money and to punish for crime.
Now, all that I wish to say to the American people on this
question is, let woman go free from the penal statute--let her
property be exempt from taxation, until you admit her to the
ballot-box--or seal up the history of the Revolution, make
Bancroft and Hildreth prohibited books, banish the argument of
'76, and let Mr. Simms have his own way with the history of all
the States, as well as South Carolina. Yes, the fact is, women
make opinion for us; and the only thing we shut them out from is
the ballot-box.

I would have it constantly kept before the public, that we do not
seek to prop up woman; we only ask for her space to let her grow.
Governments are not made; they grow. They are not buildings like
this, with dome and pillars; they are oaks, with roots and
branches, and they grow, by God's blessing, in the soil He gives
to them. Now man has been allowed to grow, and when Pharaoh tied
him down with bars of iron, when Europe tied him down with
privilege and superstition, he burst the bonds and grew strong.
We ask the same for woman.