position. The traditions of
Amazons and the conduct of savage women give room to believe that
the instinct for war was primitively very much the same in both
sexes. Though the earliest division of labor among savages known
to us is that of assigning war and the chase to men, yet we have
no reason to believe that this was done by way of privilege to
women; but in the struggle for tribal supremacy that tribe must
have ultimately survived and succeeded best which exposed its
women the least. Polygamy, universal among primitive races, could
in a degree sustain population against the ravages among men of
continual warfare, but any large destruction of women must
extinguish a tribe that suffered it. So those tribes which
earliest engrafted among their customs the exclusion of women
from war were the ones that finally survived....

Military genius among women has appeared in all ages and people,
as in Deborah, Zenobia, Joan of Arc and our own Anna Ella
Carroll. The prowess of women has often been conspicuous in
besieged cities. Our early history of Indian warfare recounts
many of their valiant deeds. It is well known that in the late
war many women on both sides eluded the vigilance of recruiting
officers, enlisted and fought bravely. Who knows how many of such
women there might have been if their enlistment had been desired
and stimulated by beat of drum and blare of trumpet and "all the
pomp and circumstance of glorious war?" But no State can afford
to accept military service from its women, for while a nation may
live for ages without soldiers, it could exist but for a span
without mothers. Since woman's exemption from war is not an
un-bought privilege, it is evident that in justice men have no
superior rights as citizens on that account.

It is an equally fallacious idea that sound expediency demands
that every ballot shall be defended by a bullet. The theory of
representative government does not admit of any connection
between military service and the right and duty of suffrage, even
among men. It is trite to point out that the age required for
military service begins at eighteen years, when a man is too
young to vote, and ends at forty-five years, when he is usually
in the prime of his usefulness as a citizen. Some very slight
physical d