AN APPEAL TO THE WOMEN OF THE UNITED STATES BY THE NATIONAL WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND EDUCATION COMMITTEE, WASHINGTON, D.C.

Hartford: Case, Lockwood & Brainard, Printers, 1871.. 4pp. on a single folded quarto sheet. Light edge wear. Near fine. An important publication by the National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee, published in Hartford just after the group's national convention in Washington, D.C. and ahead of the group's next national convention on May 11, 1871 in New York City. The text boldly "calls upon all women who love their children and their country" to take up the cause of suffrage, asserting: "This is pre- eminently the birth-day of womanhood."

The main thrust of the text argues for women's suffrage on a Constitutional basis, asserting that women were already granted full citizenship and the right to vote under the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. The authors call for women to assert their right to vote by going to the polls and, if necessary, by suing in court. This last point was a strategy developed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and other suffragists to seek remedy for the right to vote through the judicial system, a strategy that came to be known as the "New Departure." The National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee was formed, in large part, to carry out this new strategy.

The present text calls for "some test case be brought upon full consultation with the National Committee, that the ablest counsel may be employed and the expenses paid out of the public fund." The most notable test case of the New Departure came the next year, when Susan B. Anthony registered to vote in Rochester, New York and then cast a ballot in the 1872 presidential election. She was arrested for her "crime," and the resulting trial saw Anthony convicted of illegally voting, for which she was ordered to pay a $100 fine. Anthony never paid the fine, nor was she ever penalized further for refusing to do so. The text also prints the group's "Declaration and Pledge of the Women of the United States concerning their Right to and their Use of the Elective Franchise," which was adopted at their first national convention in January 1871. The declaration reads, in part:

"We, the undersigned, believing that the sacred rights and privileges of citizenship in this Republic were guaranteed to us by the original Constitution, and that these rights are confirmed and more clearly established by the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, so that we can no longer refuse solemn responsibilities thereof, do hereby pledge ourselves to accept the duties of the franchise in our several States, so soon as all legal restrictions are removed."

The text continues by reporting the creation of the board of the National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee, with an office in Washington, D.C., "proposed to make the centre of all action upon Congress and the country," and a call to distribute "thousands and thousaads [sic] more" suffrage-related publications across the country. The text ends with a fundraising call, specifically for women to send in their names, recorded by the Secretary in a Pledge Book, and suggested donations of $1, along with a request for donations to establish a printing fund, to publish "a series of tracts on subjects vitally affecting the welfare of the country."

The text is dated April 19, 1871 and signed in print at the end by the officers and notable members of the National Woman Suffrage and Educational Committee. These include Isabella Beecher Hooker (President), Josephine S. Griffing (Secretary), Mary B. Bowen (Treasurer), Paulina Wright Davis, Ruth Carr Denison, and Susan B. Anthony.

A fundamental document in the women's suffrage movement. KRICHMAR 1866. Stanton, et al, HISTORY OF WOMAN SUFFRAGE II, p.485.