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Speeches by Suffragettes Contents SHE S A I D SPEECHES BY SUFFRAGETTES CONTENTS Emmeline Pankhurst • Freedom or Death ....................................................... 5 Elizabeth Cady Stanton • The Destructive Male ................................................ 12 Susan B. Anthony • On Women’s Right to Vote ......................................... 16 Carrie Chapman Catt • Address to Congress .................................................. 19 Christabel Pankhurst • On Women’s Suffrage ................................................ 25 PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS BOOKLET DESIGNED BY DIANA VROEGINDAY 3 INTRO EMMELINE PANKHURST freedom or death On Election Day in 1920, millions of American women exer- cised their right to vote for the first time. It took activists and reformers nearly 100 years to win that right, and the campaign was not easy: Dis- agreements over strategy threatened to cripple the movement more than once. But on August 26, 1920, the 19th Amendment to the Constitution was finally ratified, enfranchising all American women and declaring for the first time that they, like men, deserve all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship. The campaign for women’s suffrage began in earnest in the decades before the Civil War. During the 1820s and 30s, most states had extended the franchise to all white men, regardless of how much money or property they had. At the same time, all sorts of reform groups were proliferating across the United States–temperance clubs, religious movements and moral-reform societies, anti-slavery organizations–and in many of these, women played a prominent role. Meanwhile, many American women were beginning to chafe against what historians have called the “Cult of True Womanhood”: that is, the idea that the only “true” woman was a pious, submissive wife and mother concerned exclusively with home and family. Put together, all of these contributed to a new way of thinking about what it meant to be a Pankhurst, known for her theatrics, addressed crowds from a stretcher, broke out woman and a citizen in the United States. of prison, got smuggled into lecture halls to avoid the police, and spoke from automobiles and pretty much any venue she could find. Her “Freedom or Death” speech, considered her most famous, happened in Hartford, Connecticut, on a fundraising tour of the United States that took place late in 1913. She traveled there with a warrant on her head. 4 5 I do not come here as an advocate, trying to make our case clear, always they couldn't wait any longer, when is fed. Well, we know perfectly well because whatever position the suffrage have to make as part of our argument, they laid all the arguments before an which baby is attended to first. That is movement may occupy in the United and urge upon men in our audience obstinate British government that the whole history of politics. You have States of America, in England it has the fact — a very simple fact — that they could think of, and when their to make more noise than anybody else, passed beyond the realm of advocacy women are human beings. arguments were absolutely disregard- you have to make yourself more ob- and it has entered into the sphere of ed, when every other means had failed, trusive than anybody else, you have to practical politics. It has become the Suppose the men of Hartford had a they began by the tea party at Boston, fill all the papers more than anybody subject of revolution and civil war, and grievance, and they laid that griev- and they went on until they had won else, in fact you have to be there all the so tonight I am not here to advocate ance before their legislature, and the the independence of the United States time and see that they do not snow woman suffrage. American suffragists legislature obstinately refused to listen of America. you under. can do that very well for themselves. to them, or to remove their grievance, what would be the proper and the It is about eight years since the word When you have warfare things happen; I am here as a soldier who has constitutional and the practical way militant was first used to describe what people suffer; the noncombatants temporarily left the field of battle in of getting their grievance removed? we were doing. It was not militant at suffer as well as the combatants. And order to explain — it seems strange it Well, it is perfectly obvious at the next all, except that it provoked militancy so it happens in civil war. When your should have to be explained general election the men on the part of those who were opposed forefathers threw the tea into Boston — what civil war of Hartford would to it. When women asked questions Harbour, a good many women had is like when turn out that in political meetings and failed to get to go without their tea. It has always civil war is legislature answers, they were not doing any- seemed to me an extraordinary waged by “I am here and elect a thing militant. In Great Britain it is a thing that you did not follow it up by women. new one. custom, a time-honoured one, to ask throwing the whiskey overboard; you I am not questions of candidates for parliament sacrificed the women; and there is a only here as a soldier But let and ask questions of members of the good deal of warfare for which men as a soldier the men government. No man was ever put out take a great deal of glorification which temporari- of Hartford of a public meeting for asking a ques- has involved more practical sacrifice ly absent from imagine that they tion. The first people who were put out on women than it has on any man. the field at battle; I were not in the position of a political meeting for asking ques- It always has been so. The grievanc- am here — and that, I think, is the of being voters at all, that they were tions, were women; they were brutally es of those who have got power, the strangest part of my coming — I am governed without their consent being ill-used; they found themselves in jail influence of those who have got power here as a person who, according to the obtained, that the legislature turned an before 24 hours had expired. commands a great deal of attention; law courts of my country, it has been absolutely deaf ear to their demands, but the wrongs and the grievances of decided, is of no value to the what would the men of Hartford do We were called militant, and we were those people who have no power at all community at all; and I am adjudged then? They couldn't vote the legislature quite willing to accept the name. We are apt to be absolutely ignored. That because of my life to be a dangerous out. They would have to choose; they were determined to press this question is the history of humanity right from person, under sentence of penal would have to make a choice of two of the enfranchisement of women to the beginning. servitude in a convict prison. evils: they would either have to submit the point where we were no longer to indefinitely to an unjust state of affairs, be ignored by the politicians. Well, in our civil war people have suf- It is not at all difficult if revolutionaries or they would have to rise up and fered, but you cannot make omelettes come to you from Russia, if they come adopt some of the antiquated means You have two babies very hungry without breaking eggs; you cannot to you from China, or from any other by which men in the past got their and wanting to be fed. One baby is a have civil war without damage to part of the world, if they are men. But grievances remedied. patient baby, and waits indefinitely something. The great thing is to see since I am a woman it is necessary until its mother is ready to feed it. The that no more damage is done than is to explain why women have adopted Your forefathers decided that they other baby is an impatient baby and absolutely necessary, that you do just revolutionary methods in order to win must have representation for taxation, cries lustily, screams and kicks and as much as will arouse enough feeling the rights of citizenship. We women, in many, many years ago. When they felt makes everybody unpleasant until it to bring about peace, to bring about an 6 7 honourable peace for the combatants; it at all: instead of the women giving and that is what we have been doing. it up, more women did it, and more We entirely prevented stockbrokers in and more and more women did it London from telegraphing to until there were 300 women at a time, stockbrokers in Glasgow and vice who had not broken a single law, only versa: for one whole day telegraphic "made a nuisance of themselves" as the communication was entirely stopped. politicians say. I am not going to tell you how it was done. I am not going to tell you how Then they began to legislate. The the women got to the mains and cut British government has passed more the wires; but it was done. It was done, stringent laws to deal with this and it was proved to the authorities agitation than it ever found necessary that weak women, suffrage women, during all the history of political as we are supposed to be, had enough agitation in my country. They were ingenuity to create a situation of that able to deal with the revolutionaries of kind.
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