The History of the Women's Suffrage: The Flame Ignites. Susan B. Anthony

relied on by counsel, this Court said, in regard to the Fifteenth Amendment, that it has invested the citizens of the United States with a new constitutional right which is within the protecting power of Congress. That right is an exemption from discrimination in the exercise of the elective franchise on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

      This new constitutional right was mainly designed for [male] citizens of African descent. The principle, however, that the protection of the exercise of this right is within the power of Congress, is as necessary to the right of other citizens to vote in general as to the right to be protected against discrimination.

      This legal hair-splitting is beyond the comprehension of the average lay mind and will be viewed by future generations with as much contempt as is felt by the present in regard to the infamous decision of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case in 1857. If it decides anything it is that the right to vote for Congressional Representatives is a Federal right, vested in all the people by the National Constitution, and one which it is beyond the power of the States to regulate. Therefore, no State has the power to deprive women of the right to vote for Representatives in Congress.

Those who hold that women are already entitled to Federal Suffrage under the National Constitution, further support their claim by a series of decisions as to the citizenship of women and the inherent rights which it carries. They quote especially the case of the United States vs. Kellar. The defendant was indicted by a Federal grand jury in Illinois for illegal voting in a Congressional election, as he never had been naturalized. He and his mother were born in Prussia, but came to the United States when he was a minor, and she married a naturalized citizen. The case was tried in June, 1882, in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of Illinois, by Associate Justice Harlan of the U. S. Supreme Court, who discharged the defendant. He held that the mother, having become a citizen by marriage while the son was a minor, transferred citizenship to him. In other words she transmitted a Federal Citizenship including the right to vote which she did not herself possess, thus enfranchising a child born while she was an alien. The whole matter was settled not by State but by Federal authority.8 If a mother can confer this right on a son, why not on a daughter? But why does she not possess it herself? The clause of the National Constitution which established suffrage at the time that instrument was framed, does not mention the sex of the elector.

      The argument for Federal Suffrage was presented in a masterly manner before the National Convention of 1889 by U. S. Senator Henry W. Blair (N. H.); and it was discussed by Miss Anthony and Mrs. Minor. See present volume, Chap. IX.

      From this bare outline of the claim that women already possess Federal Suffrage, or that Congress has authority to confer it without the sanction of the States, readers can continue the investigation. Notwithstanding its apparent equity, the leaders of the National Association, including Miss Anthony herself, felt convinced after the decision against Mrs. Minor that it would be useless to expect from the Supreme Court any interpretation of the Constitution which would permit women to exercise the right of suffrage. They had learned, however, through the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, that it had been possible to amend this document in such a way as to enfranchise an entire new class of voters—or in other words to protect them in the exercise of a right which it seemed that in some mysterious way they already possessed. As the Fourteenth Amendment declared the negroes to be citizens, and the Fifteenth forbade the United States or any State to deny or abridge "the right of citizens of the United States to vote, on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude," it was clearly evident that this right inhered in citizenship. This being the case women must already have it, but as there was no national authority prohibiting the States from denying or abridging it, each of them did so by putting the word "male" in its constitution as a qualification for suffrage; just as many of them had used the word "white" until the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment by a three-fourths majority made this unconstitutional. Therefore, since the Minor vs. Happersett decision, the National Association has directed its principal efforts to secure from Congress the submission to the several State Legislatures of a Sixteenth Amendment which should prohibit disfranchisement on account of "sex," as the Fifteenth had done on account of "color."

      The association does not discourage attempts in various States to secure from their respective Legislatures the submission of an amendment to the voters which shall strike out this word "male" from their own constitutions. On the contrary, it assists every such attempt with money, speakers and influence, but having seen such amendments voted on sixteen times and adopted only twice (in Colorado and Idaho), it is confirmed in the opinion that the quickest and surest way to secure woman suffrage will be by an amendment to the Federal Constitution. In other words it holds that women should be permitted to carry their case to the selected men of the Legislatures rather than to the masses of the voters.

      From 1869 until the decision in the Minor case in 1875, the National Association went before committees of every Congress with appeals for a Declaratory Act which would permit women to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment. Since that decision it has asked for a Sixteenth Amendment. In both cases it has been supported by petitions of hundreds of thousands of names.

The ablest women this nation has produced have presented the arguments and pleadings. Many of the older advocates have passed away, but new ones have taken their place. It is the unvarying testimony of the Senate and House Committees who have granted these hearings, that no body of men has appeared before them for any purpose whose dignity, logic and acumen have exceeded, if indeed they have equaled, those of the members of this association. They have been heard always with respect, often with cordiality, but their appeals have fallen, if not upon deaf, at least upon indifferent ears. They have asked these committees to report to their respective Houses a resolution to submit this Sixteenth Amendment. Sometimes the majority of the committee has been hostile to woman suffrage and presented an adverse report: sometimes it has been friendly and presented one favorable; sometimes there have been an opposing majority and a friendly minority report, or vice versa; but more often no action whatever has been taken. During these thirty years eleven favorable reports have been made—five from Senate, six from House Committees.9

      In the History of Woman Suffrage, Vols. II and III, will be found a full record of various debates which occurred in Senate and House on different phases of the movement to secure suffrage for women previous to 1884, when the present volume begins. In 1885 Thomas W. Palmer gave his great speech in the United States Senate in advocacy of their enfranchisement; and in 1887 occurred the first and only discussion and vote in that body on a Sixteenth Amendment for this purpose, both of which are described herein under their respective dates.

      In the following chapters will be found an account of the annual conventions of the National Suffrage Association since 1883, and of the American until the two societies united in 1890, with many of the resolutions and speeches for which these meetings have been distinguished. They contain also portions of the addresses, covering every phase of this subject, made at the hearings before Congressional Committees, and the arguments advanced for and against woman suffrage in the favorable and adverse reports of these committees, thus presenting both sides of the question. Readers who follow the story will be obliged to acknowledge that the very considerable progress which has been made toward obtaining the franchise is due to the unceasing and long-continued efforts of this association far more than to all other agencies combined; and that the women who compose this body have demonstrated their capacity and their right to a voice in the Government infinitely beyond any class to whom it has been granted since the republic was founded.

3 The part of this record with which Miss Anthony herself was directly connected, and which comprises by far the greater portion of the whole, is given with many personal incidents in her Life and Work. [Husted-Harper.]

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      ARTICLE XIV.

       Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States and