"It is too late to question the intellectual and moral capacity of woman to understand political issues and intelligently decide them at the polls. Indeed the pretense is no longer advanced that woman should not vote because of her mental or moral unfitness to perform this legislative function; but the suffrage is denied to her because she can neither hang criminals, suppress mobs nor handle the enginery of war. We have already seen the untenable nature of this assumption, because those who make it bestow the suffrage upon very large classes of men who, however well qualified they may be to vote, are physically unable to perform any of the duties which appertain to the execution of the law and the defense of the State. Scarcely a Senator on this floor is liable by law to perform military or other administrative duty, yet this rule set up against the right of women to vote would disfranchise nearly this whole body.
"But it is unnecessary to grant that woman can not fight. History is full of examples of her heroism in danger, of her endurance and fortitude in trial, of her indispensable and supreme service in hospital and field. .... It is hardly worth while to consider this trivial objection—that she is incompetent for purposes of national murder or of bloody self-defense—as the basis for denying a fundamental right, when we consider that if this right were given to her she would by its very exercise almost certainly abolish this great crime of the nations, which has always inflicted upon woman the chief burden of woe."Mr. Blair then demonstrated the intellectual ability of the woman of the present day, proving in this respect her capacity and fitness to vote. He quoted from the minority report of the Senate Committee, which had been submitted by Senators Brown and Cockrell, saying:
