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[Illustration: Phoebe W. Couzins.]




  HISTORY

  of

  WOMAN SUFFRAGE.


  EDITED BY


  ELIZABETH CADY STANTON,
            SUSAN B. ANTHONY, AND
                        MATILDA JOSLYN GAGE.


  ILLUSTRATED WITH STEEL ENGRAVINGS.


  _IN THREE VOLUMES._


  VOL. III.

  1876-1885.


  "WOMEN ARE CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES, ENTITLED TO ALL
       THE RIGHTS, PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES GUARANTEED
          TO CITIZENS BY THE NATIONAL CONSTITUTION."


  SUSAN B. ANTHONY,
  17 MADISON ST., ROCHESTER, N. Y.


  Copyright, 1886, by SUSAN B. ANTHONY.




PREFACE.


The labors of those who have edited these volumes are not only
finished as far as this work extends, but if three-score years and
ten be the usual limit of human life, all our earthly endeavors
must end in the near future. After faithfully collecting material
for several years, and making the best selections our judgment has
dictated, we are painfully conscious of many imperfections the
critical reader will perceive. But since stereotype plates will not
reflect our growing sense of perfection, the lavish praise of
friends as to the merits of these pages will have its antidote in
the defects we ourselves discover. We may however without egotism
express the belief that this volume will prove specially
interesting in having a large number of contributors from England,
France, Canada and the United States, giving personal experiences
and the progress of legislation in their respective localities.

Into younger hands we must soon resign our work; but as long as
health and vigor remain, we hope to publish a pamphlet report at
the close of each congressional term, containing whatever may be
accomplished by State and National legislation, which can be
readily bound in volumes similar to these, thus keeping a full
record of the prolonged battle until the final victory shall be
achieved. To what extent these publications may be multiplied
depends on when the day of woman's emancipation shall dawn.

For the completion of this work we are indebted to Eliza Jackson
Eddy, the worthy daughter of that noble philanthropist, Francis
Jackson. He and Charles F. Hovey are the only men who have ever
left a generous bequest to the woman suffrage movement. To Mrs.
Eddy, who bequeathed to our cause two-thirds of her large fortune,
belong all honor and praise as the first woman who has given alike
her sympathy and her wealth to this momentous and far-reaching
reform. This heralds a turn in the tide of benevolence, when,
instead of building churches and monuments to great men, and
endowing colleges for boys, women will make the education and
enfranchisement of their own sex the chief object of their lives.

The three volumes now completed we leave as a precious heritage
to coming generations; precious, because they so clearly
illustrate--in her ability to reason, her deeds of heroism and her
sublime self-sacrifice--that woman preeminently possesses the three
essential elements of sovereignty as defined by Blackstone:
"wisdom, goodness and power." This has been to us a work of love,
written without recompense and given without price to a large
circle of friends. A thousand copies have thus far been distributed
among our coadjutors in the old world and the new. Another thousand
have found an honored place in the leading libraries, colleges and
universities of Europe and America, from which we have received
numerous testimonies of their value as a standard work of reference
for those who are investigating this question. Extracts from these
pages are being translated into every living language, and, like so
many missionaries, are bearing the glad gospel of woman's
emancipation to all civilized nations.

Since the inauguration of this reform, propositions to extend the
right of suffrage to women have been submitted to the popular vote
in Kansas, Michigan, Colorado, Nebraska and Oregon, and lost by
large majorities in all; while, by a simple act of legislature,
Wyoming, Utah and Washington territories have enfranchised their
women without going through the slow process of a constitutional
amendment. In New York, the State that has led this movement, and
in which there has been a more continued agitation than in any
other, we are now pressing on the legislature the consideration
that it has the same power to extend the right of suffrage to women
that it has so often exercised in enfranchising different classes
of men.

Eminent publicists have long conceded this power to State
legislatures as well as to congress, declaring that women as
citizens of the United States have the right to vote, and that a
simple enabling act is all that is needed. The constitutionality of
such an act was never questioned until the legislative