Thoughts On Female Suffrage And In Vindication Of Woman's True Rights
By Mrs. Madeline Vinton Dahlgren (1871)
Important Quote:
“We acknowledge no inferiority to men. We claim to have no less ability to perform the duty God has imposed upon us, than they [men] have to perform those imposed upon them. We believe that God has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of the duties of each. We believe our trusts to be as important and sacred as any that exist.
It is our fathers, brothers, husbands and sons who represent us at the ballot-box. Our fathers and husbands love us. Our sons are what we make them. We are content that they represent us in the corn-field, the battle-field and the ballot-box, and we them in the school-room, at the fireside, and at the cradle; believing our representation, even at the ballot-box, to be thus more full and impartial that it could possibly be were all women allowed to vote.”
“We hold that the new status will prove to be the worst kind of communism. The relations between the sexes, so carefully guarded by religion and by parents, by law and by society, will become common and therefore corrupt. The family, the foundation of the State, will disappear. The mothers, sisters and daughters of our glorious past will exist no more and the female gender will vanish into epicene. “