If we would rouse new respect for womanhood in the hearts of the
masses, we must place woman in a position to respect herself,
which she can never do as long as her political status is beneath
that of the most degraded, ignorant classes of men. To make women
the political equals of their sons, or even of their gardeners
and coachmen, would add new dignity to their position; and to
change our laws and constitutions in harmony with the new status
would have its influence on the large class of young men now
devoting themselves to the study of the law. Lord Brougham said
long ago that the Common Law of England for women, and all the
statutes based on such principles, were a disgrace to the
Christianity and civilization of the nineteenth century. Do you
think our sons can rise from such studies with a high ideal of
womanhood? And with what feelings do you suppose women themselves
read these laws, and the articles in the State constitutions,
rating them with the disreputable and feeble-minded classes? Can
you not understand the dignity, the pride, the new-born
self-respect which would thrill the hearts of the women of this
nation in their enfranchisement? It would elevate their sphere of
action and every department of labor in which they are occupied;
it would give new force to their words as teachers, reformers and
missionaries, new strength to their work as guardians of the
young, the wayward and the unfortunate. It would transform them
from slaves to sovereigns, crowned with the rights of
citizenship, with the ballot, that scepter of power, in their own
right hands....

If there are any who do not wish to vote, that is the strongest
reason for their enfranchisement. If all love of liberty has been
quenched in their souls by their degraded condition, the duties
of citizenship and the responsibility of self-government should
be laid upon them at once, for their pitiful indifference is
merely the result of their disfranchisement. Would that I could
awake in the minds of my countrywomen the full significance of
this demand for the right of suffrage; what it is to be queens in
their own right, intrusted with the power of self-government,
possessed of all the privileges and immunities of American
citizens....

Whoever heard of an heir app