dered.

Mr. MORGAN: Mr. President, I stand in a different relation to
this question from that of the senator from Kentucky [Mr. Beck],
who said yesterday that he had received a number of
communications from very respectable ladies in his own State upon
this very important subject, and yet felt constrained by a sense
of duty to deny the action which they solicited at the hands of
congress. I am not informed that any woman from Alabama has ever
sent a petition to the Senate, or to either house, upon this
matter. Indeed, it is my impression that no petitions or letters
have ever been addressed by any lady in the State of Alabama to
either house of congress upon this question. It may be that that
peculiar type of civilization which drives women from their homes
to the ballot-box to seek redress and protection against their
husbands has never yet reached the State of Alabama, and I shall
not be disagreeably disappointed if it should never come upon our
people, for they have lived in harmony and in prosperity now for
many years. Besides the relief which the State has seen proper to
give to married women in respect of their separate estates, we
have not thought it wise or politic in any sense to go further
and undertake to make a line of demarkation between the husband
and wife as politicians. On the contrary, according to our
estimate of a proper civilization, we look to the family relation
as being the true foundation of our republican institutions.
Strike out the family relation, disband the family, destroy the
proper authority of the person at the head of the family, either
the wife or the husband, and you take from popular government all
legitimate foundation.

The measure which is now brought before the Senate of the United
States is but the initial measure of a series which has been
urged upon the attention of States and territories, and upon the
attention of the Congress of the United States in various forms
to draw a line of political demarkation through a man's
household, through his fireside, and to open to the intrusion of
politics and politicians that sacred circle of the family where
no man should be permitted to intrude without the consent of both
the heads of the family. What picture could be more disagreeable
or more disgustin