ON September 12, 1876, the following address was issued at the Woman-Suffrage Convention in Boston.
The woman suffragists of Massachusetts in delegate convention assembled respectfully submit to the people of the Commonwealth the reasons which compel them for the first time to make independent nominations for State officers.
For many years they have appealed to both political parties of the State to rectify the injustice which taxes and governs women without their consent, and which subjects them to cruel legal disabilities as wives, mothers, and widows. But their appeals have been disregarded. The Republican party of Massachusetts, after repeatedly indorsing [sic] woman-suffrage in its platform and repudiating it in the Legislature, has just refused to invite Republican women to take part in the nomination of their candidates, and has framed a platform which they declare has a double meaning on the suffrage issues. The Democratic party of the State has refused to any action on the subject. The Prohibitory party of the State, on the contrary, has invited women take part in its primary meetings with an equal voice and vote in the nomination of candidates the transaction of business. It has made the establishment of woman-suffrage one of its avowed objects, and has nominated candidates all of whom are suffragists.
State governments have jurisdiction over with which the national Government has no concern. We maintain that State officers should be elected upon State issues, independent of national politics. And, whereas woman-suffrage is purely a question State policy, it is the duty of the woman-suffragists of Massachusetts so to cast their ballots next November as to represent their principles in the of State officers.
Believing that “governments are just only when they rest on the consent of the governed,” and that the establishment of a truly representative government is vastly more important than the success of Rice or Adams, we commend the nominees of this Woman-Suffrage State Convention to the suffrages the people, irrespective of party, as the candidates who represent impartial suffrage and equal rights all.
Resolutions were also adopted as follows:
Whereas, Neither the Republican nor Democratic party cares for the cause of woman-suffrage; whereas, the Republican party through the chairman of its convention Committee on Resolutions, the Hon. John D. Long, has made the declaration that its resolutions for woman-suffrage meant nothing; and whereas, the Prohibitory, party national and State, has adopted woman-suffrage as one of its cardinal principles:
Resolved, That we send hearty greeting to the Prohibitionists.
Resolved, That we hereby urge our friends to vote for that long tried friend of woman-suffrage the Hon. John I. Baker, for Governor of Massachusetts, and for the other nominees of this convention.
Resolved, That we pledge ourselves as suffragists to vote for no person for Senator or Representative to the General Court who is not fully committed to the suffrage-movement, and that the State Central Committee be instructed to take measures to enable suffragists to carry out the resolution at the polls.
Source:
The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events. Embracing Political, Civil, Military, and Social Affairs: Public Documents; Biography, Statistics, Commerce, Finance, Literature, Science, Agriculture, and Mechanical Industry. New York: D. Appleton, 1862. 514-15. Google Books. Google.