Because, as women, we find a full measure of duties, cares, and responsibilities, devolving upon us, and we are therefore unwilling to bear other and heavier burdens, and those unsuited to our physical organization.
Because we hold that an extension of suffrage would be adverse to the interests of the working-women of the country, with whom we heartily sympathize.
Because these changes must introduce a fruitful element of discord in the existing marriage relation, which would tend to the infinite detriment of children, and increase the already alarming prevalence of divorce throughout the land.
Because no general law, affecting the condition of all women, should be framed to meet exceptional discontent.
For these, and many more reasons, do we beg of your wisdom that no law extending suffrage to women may be passed, as the passage of such law would be fraught with danger so grave to the general order of the country.
We acknowledge no inferiority to men. We claim to have no less ability to perform the duties which God has imposed upon us, than they have to perform those imposed upon them. We believe that God has wisely and well adapted each sex to the proper performance of the duties of each. We believe our trusts to be as important and sacred as any that exist. We feel that our present duties fill up the whole measure of our time and abilities; and that they are none but ourselves can perform. Their importance requires us to protest against all efforts to compel us to assume those obligations which cannot be separated from suffrage; but which cannot be performed by us without the sacrifice of the highest interests of our families and of society." - Thoughts on Female Suffrage and in Vindication of Woman's True Rights By: Mrs. Madeline Vinton Dahlgren, 1871
(Emphasis mine)
See also The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness
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