But if you will insist that the fifteenth amendment’s emphatic interdiction against robbing United States citizens of their right to vote, “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” is a recognition of the right, either of the United States, or any state, to rob citizens of that right, for any or all other reasons, I will prove to you that the class of citizens for which I now plead, and to which I belong, may be, and are, by all the principles of our government, and many of the laws of the states, included under the term “previous condition of servitude.”

First.—­The married women and their legal status.  What is servitude?  “The condition of a slave.”  What is a slave?  “A person who is robbed of the proceeds of his labor; a person who is subject to the will of another.”

By the law of Georgia, South Carolina, and all the states of the South, the negro had no right to the custody and control of his person.  He belonged to his master.  If he was disobedient, the master had the right to use correction.  If the negro didn’t like the correction, and attempted to run away, the master had a right to use coercion to bring him back.

By the law of every state in this Union to-day, North as well as South, the married woman has no right to the custody and control of her person.  The wife belongs to her husband; and if she refuses obedience to his will, he may use moderate correction, and if she doesn’t like his moderate correction, and attempts to leave his “bed and board,” the husband may use moderate coercion to bring her back.  The little word “moderate,” you see, is the saving clause for the wife, and would doubtless be overstepped should her offended husband administer his correction with the “cat-o’-nine-tails,” or accomplish his coercion with blood-hounds.

Again, the slave had no right to the earnings of his hands, they belonged to his master; no right to the custody of his children, they belonged to his master; no right to sue or be sued, or testify in the courts.  If he committed a crime, it was the master who must sue or be sued.

In many of the states there has been special legislation, giving to married women the right to property inherited, or received by bequest, or earned by the pursuit of any avocation outside of the home; also, giving her the right to sue and be sued in matters pertaining to such separate property; but not a single state of this Union has ever secured the wife in the enjoyment of her right to the joint ownership of the joint earnings of the marriage copartnership.  And since, in the nature of things, the vast majority of married women never earn a dollar, by work outside of their families, nor inherit a dollar from their fathers, it follows that from the day of their marriage to the day of the death of their husbands, not one of them ever has a dollar, except it shall please her husband to let her have it.