BETTER By: Melissa B. Carrasco
Egerton, McAfee, Armistead & Davis, P.C.
NEVER STOP SPEAKING “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” This was the text of Senate Resolution 12, introduced on January 10, 1878, by the Republican Senator from California, Aaron Augustus Sargent.1 Senator Sargent was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts.2 He met his wife, Ellen, when they were teenagers, and he vowed to marry her as soon as he had the financial means to do so.3 For a budding newspaper reporter, that was easier said than done; so when gold was discovered in California, twenty-two-year-old Aaron borrowed some money, kissed Ellen goodbye, and headed West.4 Mining didn’t exactly work out, so Aaron did what any young newspaperman would do: he started a newspaper—the Nevada Journal in Nevada City, California. After three years, he returned to Massachusetts, married Ellen, and they headed back to start their new life in California.5 The next several years were busy for the Sargents. After Ellen became acclimated to her new life in California, she began speaking up in support of women’s rights—particularly the right to vote.6 She became good friends with fellow Massachusetts native Susan B. Anthony, and in 1869, Ellen founded the Nevada County Women’s Suffrage Association. Later that year, Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton founded the National Women’s Suffrage Association, and Ellen became its treasurer.7 In the meantime, Aaron was quite busy. In addition to running the newspaper, Aaron started studying the law, and he was admitted to the California bar two years later.8 Then, he entered politics, was elected District Attorney, and in 1860, he became the vice president of the Republican National Convention. That was the year that the Republicans selected Abraham Lincoln as its presidential candidate after three contentious votes.9 In 1872, three years after the National Women’s Suffrage Association was founded, Aaron was elected Senator, and the couple moved their family of five – 2 daughters and a son – to Washington D.C.10 By that time, Susan B. Anthony was such a good friend that she took the long train ride with them.11 In fact, Ellen and Aaron made sure their home in Washington D.C. was always open for Ms. Anthony, Ms. Stanton, and other advocates for women’s rights. By 1872, it had been twenty-four years since the Seneca Falls Convention formally launched the women’s suffrage movement, and these leaders needed a place to stay in D.C.—close to the people who could cast the deciding votes. The Sargents did more than just open their home. Aaron (now Senator Sargent) put on his lawyer hat yet again and advocated for the release of Ms. Anthony after she was arrested for refusing to pay a fine for illegally registering to vote.12 He went all the way to President Grant, and Ms. Anthony was released. Then, in 1878, the last year of his term, Senator Sargent introduced Senate Resolution 12.13 This was not the first time anyone had introduced a proposal which would give women the right to vote. Bills, resolutions, and petitions had been introduced periodically for over a March 2022
decade.14 However, this time, Senator Sargent went further. When he introduced Senate Resolution 12, he made a statement—really a request, “We ask that women may be permitted in person, and on behalf of the thousands of women who are petitioning Congress . . . to be heard . . . before the Senate and House.”15 He asked that women finally be allowed to have a voice in Congress, which ironically, is essentially what the right to vote would provide. The Senate agreed, and several women were permitted to testify before the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections. They were given only two hours.16 The Senators listened, and then they voted to postpone Senator Sargent’s resolution indefinitely.17 It would be another 41 years before Sargent’s resolution would be passed by the Senate and then sent to the states for ratification as the Nineteenth Amendment.18 Neither Aaron nor Ellen lived to see it. Aaron died nine years later in 1887. Ellen returned to California, settling in San Francisco, where she continued speaking up for women’s rights in general, founding the Century Club, which was San Francisco’s first, private women’s club.19 But, most of all, she never stopped advocating for women’s right to vote. When she was seventy-four, she began filing tax protest lawsuits— after all, “taxation without representation” dates back to the American Revolution.20 In 1911, she campaigned for a referendum to amend the California constitution to give women the right to vote. Ellen died a few days before California passed the referendum, so she was never able to see her dream realized.21 But, as word of her passing spread throughout California, flags were lowered to half-staff in recognition of Ellen’s indelible mark upon the state.22 It was the first time that a woman had receive such an honor. On June 4, 1919, nearly eight years after Ellen passed away, the Susan B. Anthony Amendment, originally introduce by Ellen’s husband Aaron Sargent, finally passed in the Senate and was signed by VicePresident Thomas Marshall.23 Its language was exactly as Aaron had penned it forty-one years earlier: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Aaron and Ellen Sargent did not live to see the Nineteenth Amendment ratified. But, what they did see is the future that we have enjoyed for over a century—that having both a voice and a vote is necessary to give any person the opportunity to achieve their highest potential. And so, they worked to leave us something better. 1
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DICTA
United States Senate, Woman Suffrage Centennial, https://www.senate.gov/ artandhistory/history/People/Women/Nineteenth_Amendment_Vertical_Timeline. htm, last visited Feb. 5, 2022. Gary Noy, Area Couple Fought for Women’s Rights; Sen. Aaron Sargent Wrote Words that Became 19th Amendment to U.S. Constitution, The Union (Jun. 17, 2004), available at https://www.theunion.com/news/area-couple-fought-for-womensrights-sen-aaron-sargent-wrote-words-that-became-19th-amendment-to-u-sconstitution/. Id. Id.
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