Universal male suffrage

“ She then passed to the United States and to the persistent charge that its experiment in universal male suffrage had been a failure, to which she replied : "Although the United States has gathered a population which represents every race ”

“ So that at present the basis of government in the United States is manhood or male suffrage in all the States with the addition in some of them of female suffrage; or in other words, ignoring the negro situation, we have manhood suffrage in thirty-two and universal suffrage in sixteen States. ”

“ The property qualifications making a man eligible to vote should be altogether abolished and universal suffrage be introduced instead. Every adult, both male and female, should have the right to vote. ”

“ In our system a man without a vote is but half a man. So long as women are forbidden political equality, the laws and feelings of society will be unjust to them.
I have no more superstitious notions about the ballot than about any other method of social improvement and progress. But all experience shows that my neighbor's ballot is no protection for me. We see that voters may be bribed, dazzled, coerced; and, where there is practically universal suffrage among men, we often see, indeed, corruption, waste, and bad laws. ”

“ In truth, it deserves consideration by those who think on human affairs, and the probable form of government which may be expected to prevail in future among men, whether universal suffrage is the real evil to be dreaded; and whether equality of suffrage is not the real poison which destroys society. ”

“ President, I say here on the floor of the American Senate, I stand for universal suffrage; and as a matter of fundamental principle, do not recognize the right of society to limit it on any ground of race or sex. ”

“ They who have the responsibility of action are usually more timid in counsel than those who can exert only an indirect influence. Hence the statesmen of that period did not dare to trust their own principles to their logical results, and instead of the broad demand of equal rights for all, they proposed reconstruction on the basis of "manhood suffrage"; a half-way measure that satisfied nobody, glossed over by the party in power as "universal suffrage," "equal suffrage," "impartial suffrage," until compelled to call the proposition by its true name, "manhood suffrage." ”

“ He knew of no reason why a man should vote and a woman not. The republic needed the good qualities of its citizens to help it, and recognizing the intelligence and heart of women he was in favor of opening every avenue by which their moral worth could be utilized for the benefit of the country. It was an injury to keep any person in this country from the ballot when suffrage was universal. It was a degradation. If you want to keep a man out of the mud, black his boots. If you want to develop woman's best qualities, give her the ballot. ”

“ But if universal suffrage ever fails here for a time,—permanently it cannot fail,—it will not be incapable civil service, nor an ambitious soldier, nor Southern vandals, nor venal legislatures, nor the greed of wealth, nor boy statesmen rotten before they are ripe, that will put universal suffrage into eclipse: it will be rum intrenched in great cities and commanding every vantage ground. ”

“ The nation is ready for a long step in the right direction; party lines are obliterated, and all men are thinking for themselves. If our rulers have the justice to give the black man suffrage, woman should avail herself of that new-born virtue to secure her rights; if not, she should begin with renewed earnestness to educate the people into the idea of universal suffrage. ”

“ Thoughtful men everywhere are beginning to realize the humbug and menace of manhood suffrage. Writing in the North American Review for March, 1920, Hanford Henderson says of universal suffrage that “it harms even those whom it is supposed to benefit. To give every man and woman a vote and to declare these votes equally important and significant is both unsound and mischievous.... Universal suffrage is a characteristic example of the democratic failure in discrimination.... An electorate not properly qualified is an ever present public danger.” ”

“ There is no more a literal universal suffrage, than a literal equality. All these terms must be received in a limited sense, their meaning amounting merely to a comparison with other and older conditions of society. One half of every population is excluded from the suffrage on account of sex, and more than half of the remainder on account of age. ”

“ Among the electresses were all the same types of vote as cast by men, except that those sold for a glass of beer were not so frequent; and as civilisation climbs higher, universal suffrage, and the better methods of administration to which it will give birth, will be exercised for the adjustment of the great human question now so trivially divided into squabbles of sex and class. ”

“ We come to-day to demand—first an extension of the right of suffrage to every American citizen, of whatever race, complexion or sex. Manhood or male-hood suffrage is not a remedy for evils such as we wish removed. ”

“ If, then, there be a distinction between the souls of human beings resulting from sex, I claim that, by the report of the minority and the universal testimony of all men, woman is better fitted for the exercise of the suffrage than man.
It is claimed by some that the suffrage is an inherent natural right, and by others that it is merely a privilege extended to the individual by society in its discretion. ”

“ What if their mothers on this platform be angular, old, wrinkled, and gray? They, too, have fought a good fight for freedom, and proudly bear the scars of the battle. We alone have struck the key-note of reconstruction. While man talks of "equal, impartial, manhood suffrage," we give the certain sound, "universal suffrage." While he talks of the rights of races, we exalt the higher, the holier idea proclaimed by the Fathers, and now twice baptized in blood, "individual rights." To woman it is given to save the Republic. ”

“ The same already made to extend suffrage to all white men in this country, the same John Bright makes for the working men of England, the same made for the emancipation of 22,000,000 Russian serfs, are all we have to make for black men and women. As the greater includes the less, an argument for universal suffrage covers the whole question, the rights of all citizens. In thus relaying the foundations of government, we settle all these side issues of race, color, and sex, end class legislation, and remove forever the fruitful cause of the jealousies, dissensions, and revolutions of the past. ”

“ We believe that the principle of universal suffrage stands to-day stronger than ever in the judgment of mankind. Some eminent and accomplished scholars, alarmed by the corruption and recklessness manifested in our great cities, deceived by exaggerated representations of the misgovernment of the Southern States by a race just emerging from slavery, disgusted by the extent to which great numbers of our fellow-citizens have gone astray in the metaphysical subtleties of financial discussion, have uttered their eloquent warnings of the danger of the failure of universal suffrage. ”

“ This is what happens, and happens always, if you give the election into the hands of all the men who can bear arms. If any party is outnumbered it knows it is.
Second, If you intrust to universal suffrage the ultimate direction in an ultimate appeal, as all civilized America has done, you intrust yourself, of course, to the impression at the moment of the average man. You have no right to expect the best men in a nation to be at the head of its administration. ”

“ There is no one—either American or foreign-born—who has observed the workings of our institutions and the progress of our country, who will say that we must stand still. We must either go forward in our work of extending suffrage until we finally reach universal suffrage, or go back to a one-man power. The victims of the slave power are to-day standing erect in the possession of equal citizenship on the basis of absolute legal equality with the white men of the country. ”

“ Now during that time, by the votes of the people, with a great party to back up the opposition, with all the old predilections in favor of the South, and the natural unwillingness of men to burden themselves with taxation, this country, in which there was substantially a universal manhood suffrage, voted to burden itself until three thousand millions of debt was rolled up. There is an instance of what men will do with universal suffrage. ”

“ And is it not your duty, by securing a republican form of government to every State, to see that these "respective numbers" are made up of enfranchised citizens? Thus bringing your legislation up to the Constitution—not the Constitution down to your party possibilities!! The only tenable ground of representation is Universal Suffrage, as it is only through Universal Suffrage that the principle of "Equal Rights to All" can be realized. All prohibitions based on race, color, sex, property, or education, are violations of the republican idea ”

“ Whenever the popular party can agree upon and bring forward any plan which shall include the equal voting of women, they will not only obtain an alliance of which most men know the importance, but they will relieve the theory of universal suffrage from the stigma its enemies never fail to draw upon it, of making its first step a wholesale disqualification of half the universe concerned. ”

“ The problem for the American statesmen to-day is no narrow question of races, but how to embody in our institutions a guarantee for the rights of every citizen. The solution is easy. Base government on the consent of the governed, and each class will protect itself. Put this one great principle of universal suffrage, irrespective of sex or color, into the foundation of our temple of liberty, and it will rise in fair and beautiful proportions, "without the sound of a hammer or the noise of any instrument," to stand at last "perfect and entire, wanting nothing." ”

“ I have no hesitancy in saying that if the conditions which surround the women of this nation to-day were the conditions of the male citizens of the country, they would rise up and pronounce them the exact definition of civil and political slavery, instead of the true interpretation of natural justice and civil equity.
Many persons claim that men are born with the right to vote, as they are to the right of life, liberty and happiness; that suffrage is the gift of the State, and that the State has a right to regulate it in any way that it may deem best for the common good. ”

“ A limited suffrage secures governmental efficiency, if at all, at the expense of the political education and training of the disfranchised class, and at the expense, also, of a permanent and radical popular political grievance. A substantially universal suffrage merely places the ultimate political responsibility in the hands of those for whose benefit governments are created; and its denial can be justified only on the ground that the whole community is incapable of exercising the responsibility. ”

“ Again, I do not shut my eyes to the evils of universal suffrage, when extended not only to the educated and prosperous American, owning property or receiving high wages, and fully competent to exercise all the powers of a citizen, but to the ignorant and penniless emigrant, Irish or German. This is a mischief which has arisen from the desire in each state to create a large number of voters, that it may be largely represented in the central government. ”

“ The plainer men are the greater is their political interest. Our naturalized citizens, shut out in their native land from all participation in government, and hence appreciating citizenship here, are among the most alert. These are they who crowd the halls during the recurring canvasses, and who are always early at the polls. And is it possible to overrate the instruction they get at meetings where they hear great questions discussed by master minds, when issues are torn open and riddled with light? Thus universal suffrage is itself a normal school, the people's college. ”

“ Even universal suffrage, even the handing over of political predominance to the numerical majority of the whole people, would not then extinguish minorities. Even dissentient opinion would have the opportunity of making itself heard, and heard through the very best and most effective organs it was able to procure. We should not find the rich or the cultivated classes retiring from politics, as we are so often told they do in America, because they cannot present themselves to any body of electors with a chance of being returned. ”

“ Under universal suffrage the legislature is the true mirror of the people that has chosen it, reflecting its defects, but its progress also, for which it affords unlimited expression and development.
The people must therefore always regard direct universal suffrage as its indispensable political weapon, as the most fundamental and weightiest of its demands. And we need not fear that they will abuse their power ”

“ Let us by our action to-day indorse, if we do not initiate, a movement which, in the development of our race, shall guarantee liberty to all without distinction of sex, even as our glorious Constitution already grants the suffrage to every male citizen without distinction of color or race. ”