An Unauthorized Interview

Between the Suffragists and the Statue of
Liberty

THE SUFFRAGISTS

LADY robed in light,
At our harbour standing,
Equal law and right
Promising, demanding,
Can you tell us, do you know,
Why you treat your daughters so?

Do no think us pert
Insolent or teasing,
But you seem a flirt,
Only bent on pleasing
That one-half of human kind
Who made Sister Justice blind.

THE STATUE

Be not deceived, my daughters, I'm not
she-
The wingèd Goddess, who sets nations free.
I am that Liberty, which when men win
They think that others' seeking is a sin;
I am that Liberty which men attain
And clip her wings lest she should fly again:
I am that Liberty which all your brothers
Think good for them and very bad for
others.
Therefore they made me out of bronze, and
hollow,
Immovable, for fear that I might follow
Some fresh rebellion, some new victim's
plea;
And so they set me on a rock at sea,
Welded my torch securely in my hand
Lest I should pass it on, without command.
I am a milestone, not an inspiration;
And if my spirit lingers in this nation,
If it still flickers faintly o'er these waters,
It is your spirit, my rebellious daughters.

Alice Duer Miller, Women are People!, 1917

HI HO, HI HO, IT'S OFF TO VOTE I GO


Susan B. Anthony contended that she wanted to test the constitutionality of the woman's suffrage question for several years before she actually cast her ballot. Until the fall of 1872, Anthony's travel schedule for her woman's rights campaign had been so demanding, that for years she could not meet the qualification of residency in her home state of New York. The year 1872, however, was different. She had been residing at the house she and her sister kept in Rochester for one of those few extended stays during the course of her long career.

Voter apathy was an issue in the 19th Century, just as it is today. It was with special interest that on November 1, 1872, Miss Anthony read an article in the Rochester newspaper:

"Now register! To-day and to-morrow are the only remaining opportunities. If you were not permitted to vote, you would fight for the right, undergo all privations for it, face death for it. You have it now at the cost of five minutes' time to be spent in seeking your place of registration, and having your name entered. And yet, on election day, less than a week hence, hundreds of you are likely to lose your votes because you have not thought it worth while to give the five minutes. To-day and to-morrow are your only opportunities. Register now!"

Anthony gathered several female friends and relatives together and succeeded in having their names entered into the voter registry. The women who voted with Anthony were Mary S. Anthony, Guelma Anthony McLean, Hannah Anthony Mosher, Rhoda De Garmo, Sarah Truesdale, Mary Pulver, Lottie B. Anthony, Nancy M. Chapman, Susan M. Hough, Hannah Chatfield, Margaret Leyden, Mary Culver, Ellen S. Baker, and Mary L. Hebard.

On election day, Anthony wrote to Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

I'VE BEEN AND GONE AND DONE IT!


Rochester, November 5, 1872.


"Dear Mrs. Stanton: Well, I have been and gone and done it! Positively voted the Republican ticket - straight - this A. M. at seven o'clock, and swore my vote, in, at that; was registered on Friday and fifteen other women followed suit in this ward, then in sundry other wards some twenty or thirty women tried to register, but all save two were refused. All my three sisters voted - Rhoda De Garmo, too. Amy Post was rejected, and she will immediately bring action against the registrars; then another woman who was registered, but vote refused, will bring action for that - similar to the Washington action. Hon. Henry R. Selden will be our counsel; he has read up the law and all of our arguments, and is satisfied that we are right, and ditto Judge Samuel Selden, his elder brother. So we are in for a fine agitation in Rochester on this question.

"I hope the morning telegrams will tell of many women all over the country trying to vote. It is splendid that without any concert of action so many should have moved here.

"Thanks for the Hartford papers. What a magnificent meeting you had! Splendid climax of the campaign - the two ablest and most eloquent women on one platform and the Governor of the State by your side. I was with you in spirit that evening; the chairman of the Committee had both telegraphed and written me all about the arrangements.

"Haven't we wedged ourselves into the work pretty fairly and fully, and not that the Republicans have taken our votes - for it is the Republican members of the board; the Democratic paper is out against us strong, and that scared the Democrats on the registry boards.

"How I wish you were here to write up funny things said and done. Rhoda De Garmo told them she wouldn't swear nor affirm, "but would tell them the truth," and they accepted that. When the Democrats said that my vote should not go in the box, one Republican said to the other, "What do you say, March?" "I say put it in." "So do I," said Jones; "and we'll fight it out on this line if it takes all winter. " Mary Hallowell was just here. She and Sarah Willis tried to register, but were refused; also Mrs. Mann, the Unitarian minister's wife, and Mary Curtis, sister of Catharine Stebbins. Not a jeer, not a word, not a look disrespectful has met a single woman.

"If only now all the Woman Suffrage women would work to this end of enforcing the existing Constitutional supremacy of National law over State law, what strides we might make this very winter! But I'm awfully tired; for five days I have been on the constant run, but to splendid purpose; so all right. I hope you voted too.
Affectionately, Susan B. Anthony."

LET IT BE DONE


A few days ago, I saw in a morning paper a statement to the effect that warrants had been issued for the arrest of Miss Anthony and her fourteen bold followers, who, undismayed, had marched up to the polls in Rochester, N. Y., on the 5th of November, and deposited their ballots for Presidential electors. The report may not be true, but I sincerely hope that it is.

Oh, ye manly officials! Arrest these pioneers of universal liberty and equality, bring them before the so-called bar of justice, aye! Imprison them, if ye will, as perhaps the law of the State, interpreted by the lords of your small part of creation, may allow you to do. The Woman Suffragists of the State, the nation, and the world, will rise up and bless you.

What was it that kindled the flames of liberty in old Boston, the birthplace of American freedom? The tyrannical deeds of British rulers, goading the people to rebellion! What was it that caused the bells of Philadelphia to peel forth the glad tidings of our country's independence? The continued acts of oppression which aroused at last, not only the patriots of Massachusetts, but the people of the whole country, from the rugged hills of New Hampshire and Vermont to the sunny vales of the Carolinas.

What ever made the blood of the free North boil with fiercer indignation that the passage of that odious, execrable, and infernal Fugitive Slave Act? What, in any age of the world, has been more instrumental in advancing the eternal principles of truth, liberty, and justice, than the deeds of darkness, cruelty, and wrong, which have immediately preceded the great upheavals of the past?

In the light of these records, what could be more beneficial to the cause of universal freedom and equality, than the arrest, trial, and imprisonment of a few noble women, because they have dared to exercise their God-given rights?

They say that women have no desire to vote. Ask the registrars and selectmen of Boston, Springfield, Hartford, New Haven, Norwalk, and many other cities. With countenances sad and wo-begone by reason of abundant experience, they will be willing to stake their officials lives on the falsehood of the assertion.

Whether the fifteen strong-minded, unterrified, and resolute women of Rochester be arrested or not, the record of their triumph will descend to posterity, and the enfranchised women of the future will chant in unison with the children of Great Britain,
"Remember, Remember,
The fifth of November!"
M. S. Wilson.
The Woman's Journal, December 7, 1872

In the case of Susan B. Anthony and fourteen other women, under examination for voting illegally at the last general election in Rochester, N. Y., Hon. William C. Storrs, United States Commissioner, has rendered a decision, holding each to bail in the sum of $500, to appear before the United States District Court at its next session at Albany, on the third Tuesday of January. Beverly W. Jones and Edwin T. Marsh, the inspectors of election who received the vote of Susan B. Anthony, were also held to bail by United States Commissioner Ely, for their appearance at the next term of the Court.
The Woman's Journal, January 4, 1873


EDUCATING THE JURY POOL

While Anthony was neither the first, nor the only woman to attempt to vote, she did succeed in getting arrested for voting. Anthony was elated. She intended to bring the case to the Supreme Court. It was an enormous gamble. If the Supreme Court ruled that all persons were citizens, and all citizens were protected under the 14th Amendment, women would win the vote. If she failed, it would cement a precedent for women's legal status not only in regards to their right to vote, but also in determining how women's legal issues would be addressed that would take untold years to overcome.

After Anthony’s arrest, she spent the time before her trial speaking in Ontario County and the post-districts of Monroe in New York where her trial was to take place. She was aided in this effort to educate the local population of the issues involved in her case by Matilda Joslyn Gage, who also spoke on Anthony’s behalf. The following speech was given by Anthony forty times during the period before her trial on June 17, 1873.

IS IT A CRIME FOR A U.S. CITIZEN TO VOTE?

"FRIENDS AND FELLOW CITIZENS: I stand before you to-night, under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted illegally at the last Presidential election. I shall endeavor this evening to prove to you that in voting, I not only committed no crime, but simply exercised my "citizen’s right," guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the National Constitution, beyond the power of any State to deny.

"Our democratic republican government is based on the idea of the natural right of every individual member thereof to a voice and a vote in making and executing the laws. We assert the province of government to be to secure the people in the enjoyment of their inalienable rights. We throw to the winds the old dogma that governments can give rights. Before governments were organized, no one denies that each individual possessed the right to protect his own life, liberty, and property. And when 100 or 1,000,000 people enter into a free government, they do not barter away their natural rights; they simply pledge themselves to protect each other in the enjoyment of them, through prescribed judicial and legislative tribunals. They agree to abandon the methods of brute force in the adjustment of their differences, and adopt those of civilization. The Declaration of Independence, the National and State Constitutions, and the organic laws of the Territories, all alike propose to protect the people in the exercise of their God-given rights. Not one of them pretends to bestow rights.

"All men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

"Here is no shadow of government authority over rights, nor exclusion of any class from their full and equal enjoyment. Here is pronounced the rights of all men, and "consequently," as the Quaker preacher said, "of all women," to a voice in the government. And here, in this very first paragraph of the Declaration, is the assertion of the natural right of all to the ballot; for, how can "the consent of the governed" be given, if the right to vote be denied. Again"

"That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundations on such principles, and organizing its powers in such forms as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

"Surely, the right of the whole people to vote is here clearly implied. For, however destructive to their happiness this government might become, a disfranchised class could neither alter nor abolish it, nor institute a new one, except by the old brute force method of insurrection and rebellion. One half of the people of this Nation to-day are utterly powerless to blot from the statute books an unjust law, or to write there a new and a just one. The women, dissatisfied as they are with this form of government, that enforces taxation without representation,-that compels them to obey laws to which they have never given their consent-that imprisons and hangs them without a trial by a jury of their peers-that robs them, in marriage, of the custody of their own persons, wages, and children-are this half of the people left wholly at the mercy of the other half, in direct violation of the spirit and letter of the declarations of the framers of this government, every one of which was based on the immutable principle of equal rights to all. By those declarations, kings, priests, popes, aristocrats, were all alike dethroned, and placed on a common level, politically, with the lowliest born subject or serf. By them, too, men, as such, were deprived of their divine right to rule, and placed on a political level with women. By the practice of those declarations all class and caste distinction will be abolished, and slave, serf, plebeian, wife, woman, all alike, will bound from their subject position to the proud platform of equality.

"The preamble of the Federal Constitution says:

"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

"Is was we, the people, not we, the white male citizens, nor yet we, the male citizens, but we, the whole people, who formed this Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people-women as well as men. And it is downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic republican government-the ballot.

"The early journals of Congress show that when the Committee reported to that body the original Articles of Confederation, the very first article which became the subject of discussion was that respecting equality of suffrage. Article 4 said:

"The better to secure and perpetuate mutual friendship and intercourse between the people of the different States of this Union, the free inhabitants of each of the States (paupers, vagabonds, and fugitives from justice excepted), shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the free citizens of the several States.

"Thus, at the very beginning, did the fathers see the necessity of the universal application of the great principle of equal rights to all-in order to produce the desired result-a harmonious union and a homogeneous people. Luther Martin, Attorney-General of Maryland, in his report to the Legislature of that State of the convention that framed the United States Constitution, said:

"Those who advocated the equality of suffrage took the matter up on the original principles of government; that the reason why each individual man in forming a State government should have an equal vote, is because each individual, before he enters into government, is equally free and equally independent.

"James Madison said:

'Under every view of the subject, it seems indispensable that the mass of the citizens should not be without a voice in making the laws which they are to obey, and in choosing the magistrates who are to administer them.'

"Also,

'Let it be remembered, finally, that it has ever been the pride and the boast of America that the rights for which she contended were the rights of human nature.'

"And these assertions of the framers of the United States Constitution of the equal and natural rights of all the people to a voice in the government, have been affirmed and reaffirmed by the leading statesmen of the nation, throughout the entire history of our Government.

"Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, said in 1866:

'I have made up my mind that the elective franchise is one of the inalienable rights meant to be secured by the Declaration of Independence.'

"Gratz Brown, of Missouri, in the three days’ discussion in the United States Senate in 1866, on Senator Cowan’s motion to strike 'male' from the District of Columbia suffrage bill, said:

'Mr. President, I say here on the floor of the American Senate, I stand for universal suffrage; and as a matter of fundamental principle, do not recognize the right of society to limit it on an ground of race or sex. I will go further, and say that I recognize the right of franchise as being intrinsically a natural right. I do not believe that society is authorized to impose any limitations upon it that do not spring out of the necessities of the social state itself.'

"Charles Sumner, in his brave protests against the XIV. and XV. Amendments, insisted that, so soon as by the XIII. Amendment the slaves became free men, the original powers of the United States Constitution guaranteed to them equal rights-the right to vote and to be voted for:

'I do not hesitate to say that when the slaves of our country became 'citizens,' they took their place in the body politic as a component part of the 'people,' entitled to equal rights, and under the protection of these two guardian principles: First, that all just governments stand on the consent of the governed; and second, that taxation without representation is tyranny; and these rights it is the duty of Congress to guarantee as essential to the idea of a Republic.'

"The preamble of the Constitution of the State of New York declares:

'We, the people of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure its blessings, do establish this Constitution.'

"Here is not the slightest intimation, either of receiving freedom from the United States Constitution, or of the State conferring the blessings of liberty upon the people; and the same is true of every one of the thirty-six State Constitutions. Each and all alike declare rights God-given, and that to secure the people in the enjoyment of their inalienable rights, is their one and only object in ordaining and establishing government. And all of the State constitutions are equally emphatic in their recognition of the ballot as the means of securing the people in the enjoyment of these rights. Article 1 of the New York State Constitution says:

'No member of this State shall be disfranchised or deprived of the rights or privileges secured to any citizen thereof, unless by the law of the land oar the judgment of his peers.'

"And so carefully guarded is the citizen’s right to vote, that the Constitution makes special mention of all who may not vote:

'Laws may be passed excluding from the right of suffrage all persons who have been or may be convicted of bribery, larceny, or any infamous crime.'

"In naming the various employments that shall not affect the residence of voters, the 3d section of Article 2d says:

'That being kept at any almshouse or other asylum, at public expense, nor being confined at any public prison, shall deprive a person of his residence, and hence his vote.'

"Thus is the right of voting most sacredly hedged about. The only seeming permission in our constitution for the disfranchisement of women is in section 1st of Article 2d:

'Every male citizen of the age of twenty-one years, etc., shall be entitled to vote.'

"But I insist that in view of the explicit assertions of the equal rights of the whole people, both in the preamble and previous article of the constitution, this omission of the adjective 'female' in the second, should not be construed into a denial; but, instead, counted as of no effect. Mark the direct prohibition:

'No member of this State shall be disfranchised, unless by the ‘law of the land,’ or the judgment of his peers.'

"'The law of the land,' is the United States Constitution; and there is no provision in that document that can be fairly construed into a permission to the States to deprive any class of their citizens of their right to vote. Hence New York can get no power from that source to disfranchise one entire half of her members. Nor has "the judgment of their peers" been pronounced against women exercising their right to vote. No disfranchised person is allowed to be judge or juror-and none but disfranchised persons can be women’s peers; nor has the Legislature passed laws excluding them on account of idiocy or lunacy; nor yet the courts convicted them of bribery, larceny, or any infamous crime. Clearly, then, there is no constitutional ground for the exclusion of women from the ballot-box in the State of New York. No barriers whatever stand to-day between women and the exercise of their right to vote save those of precedent and prejudice.

"The clauses of the United States Constitution, cited by our opponents as giving power to the States to disfranchise any classes of citizens they shall please, are contained in sections 2d and 4th of article 1st. The second says:

"The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States; and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature.

"This can not be construed into a concession to the States of the power to destroy the right to become an elector, but simply to prescribe what shall be the qualifications, such as competency of intellect, maturity of age, length of residence, that shall be deemed necessary to enable them to make an intelligent choice of candidates. If, as our opponents assert, the last clause of this section makes it the duty of the United States to protect citizens in the several States against higher or different qualifications for electors for Representatives in Congress, than for members of Assembly, then must the first clause make it equally imperative for the national government to interfere with the States, and forbid them from arbitrarily cutting off the right of one half of the people to become electors altogether. Section 4th says:

'The times, places, and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but Congress may at any time, by law, make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.'

"Here is conceded the power only to prescribe times, places, and manner of holding the elections; and even with these Congress may interfere, with all excepting the mere place of choosing Senators. Thus you see, there is not the slight4est permission in either section for the States to discriminate against the right of any class of citizens to vote. Surely to regulate can not be to annihilate! Nor to qualify to wholly deprive! And to this principle every true Democrat and republican said amen, when applied to black men by Senator Sumner in his great speeches for EQUAL RIGHTS TO ALL from 1865 to 1869, and when, in 1871, I asked that Senator to declare the power of the United States Constitution to protect women in their right to vote-as he had done for black men-he handed me a copy of all his speeches during that reconstruction period, saying:

"Miss Anthony, put 'sex' where I have 'race' or 'color,' and you have here the best and strongest argument I can make for woman. There is not a doubt but women have the constitutional right to vote, and I will never vote for a XVI. Amendment to guarantee it to them. I voted for both the XIV. And XV. under protest; would never have done it but for the pressing emergency of that hour; would have insisted that the power of the original Constitution to protect all citizens in the equal enjoyment of their rights should have been vindicated through the courts. But the newly made freedmen had neither the intelligence, wealth, nor time to wait that slow process. Women possess all these in an eminent degree; and I insist that they shall appeal to the courts, and through them establish the powers of our American magna charta, to protect every citizen of the Republic.

"But, friends when in accordance with Senator Sumner’s counsel, I went to the ballot-box, last November, and exercised my citizen’s right to vote, the courts did not wait for me to appeal to them-they appealed to me, and indicted me on the charge of having voted illegally. Senator Sumner, putting sex where he did color, would have said:

"Qualifications can not be in their nature permanent or insurmountable. Sex can not be a qualification any more than size, race, color, or previous condition of servitude. A permanent or insurmountable qualification is equivalent to a deprivation of the suffrage. In other words, it is the tyranny of taxation without representation, against which our revolutionary mothers, as well as fathers, rebelled.

"For any State to make sex a qualification that must ever result in the disfranchisement of one entire half of the people, is to pass a bill of attainder, or an ex post facto law, and is therefore a violation of the supreme law of the land. By it, the blessings of liberty are forever withheld from women and their female posterity. To them, this government has no just powers derived from the consent of the governed. To them this government is not a democracy. It is not a republic. It is an odious aristocracy; a hateful oligarchy; the most hateful ever established on the face of the globe. An oligarchy of wealth, where the rich govern the poor; an oligarchy of learning, where the educated govern the ignorant; or even an oligarchy of race where the Saxon rules the African, might be endured; but surely this oligarchy of sex, which makes the men of every household sovereigns, masters; the women subjects, slaves; carrying dissension, rebellion into every home of the Nation, can not be endured. And yet this odious aristocracy exits in the face of Section 4, of Article 4, which says:

'The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government.'

"What, I ask you, is the distinctive difference between the inhabitants of a Monarchical and those of a Republican form of government, save that in the Monarchical the people are subjects, helpless, powerless, bound to obey laws made by superiors-while in the Republican, the people are citizens, individual sovereigns, all clothed with equal power, to make and unmake both their laws and their law makers. And the moment you deprive a person of his right to a voice in the government, you degrade him from the status of a citizen to that of a subject, and it matters very little to him whether his monarch be an individual tyrant, as is the Czar of Russia, or a 15,000,000 headed monster, as here in the United States.

"But, it is urged, the use of the masculine pronouns he, his, and him, in all the constitutions and laws, is proof that only men were meant to be included in their provisions. If you insist on this version of the letter of the law, we shall insist that you be consistent, and accept the other horn of the dilemma, which would compel you to exempt women from taxation for the support of the government, and from penalties for the violation of laws.

"A year and a half ago I was at Walla Walla, Washington Territory. I saw there a theatrical company, the "Pixley Sisters," playing before crowded houses every night of the whole week of the Territorial fair. The eldest of those three fatherless girls was scarce eighteen. Yet every night a United States officer stretched out his long fingers, and clutched six dollars of the proceeds of the exhibitions of those orphan girls, who, but a few years before, were starvelings in the streets of Olympia, the capital of that far-off north-west territory. So the poor widow, who keeps a boarding-house, manufactures shirts, or sells apples and peanuts on the street corners of our cities, is compelled to pay taxes from her scanty pittance. I would that the women of this republic at once resolve, never again to submit to taxation until their right to vote be recognized. Miss Sarah E. Wall, of Worcester, Mass., twenty years ago, took this position. For several years, the officers of the law distrained her property and sold it to meet the necessary amount; still she persisted, and would not yield an iota, though every foot of her lands should be struck off under the hammer. And now, for several years, the assessor has left her name off the tax list, and the collector passed her by without a call. Mrs. J. S. Weeden, of Viroqua, Wis., for the past six years has refused to pay her taxes, though the annual assessment is $75. Mrs. Ellen Van Valkenburg, of Santa Cruz, Cal., who sued the County Clerk for refusing to register her name, declares she will never pay another dollar of tax until allowed to vote; and all over the country, women property holders are waking up to the injustice of taxation without representation, and were long will refuse, en masse, to submit to the imposition.

"There is no she, or her, or hers, in the tax laws. The statute of New York reads:

'Every person shall be assessed in the town or ward where he resides when the assessment is made, for the lands owned by him, etc. Every collector shall call at least once on the person taxed, or at his usual place of residence, and shall demand payment of the taxes charged on him. If any one shall refuse to pay the tax imposed on him, the collector shall levy the same by distress and sale of his property.'

"The same is true of all the criminal laws:

'No person shall be compelled to be a witness against himself, etc.'

"In the law of May 31, 1870, the 19th section of which I am charged with having violated; not only are all the pronouns masculine, but everybody knows that that particular section was intended expressly to hinder the rebels from voting. It reads:

'If any person shall knowingly vote without his having a lawful right, etc.'

"Precisely so with all the papers served on me-the U. S. Marshal’s warrant, the bail-bond, the petition for habeas corpus, the bill of indictment-not one of them had a feminine pronoun printed in it; but, to make them applicable to me, the Clerk of the Court made a little carat at the left of "he" and placed an 's' over it, thus making she out of he. Then the letters 'is' were scratched out, the little carat placed under and 'er' over, to make her out of his, and I insist if government officials may thus manipulate the pronouns to tax, fine, imprison, and hang women, women may take the same liberty with them to secure themselves their right to a voice in the government.

"So long as any classes of men were denied their right to vote, the government made a show of consistency, by exempting them from taxation. When property qualification of $250 was required of black men in New York, they were not compelled to pay taxes, so long as they were content to report themselves worth less than that sum; but the moment the black man died, and his property fell to his widow, the black woman’s name would be put on the assessor’s list, and she be compelled to pay taxes on the same property exempted to her husband. The same is true of ministers in New York. So long as the minister lives, he is exempted from taxation on $1,500. So much for the special legislation in favor of women. In all the penalties and burdens of the government (except the military), women are reckoned as citizens, equally with men. Also, in all the privileges and immunities, save those of the jury-box and ballot-box, the two fundamental privileges on which rest all the others. The United States government not only taxes, fines, imprisons, and hangs women, but it allows them to pre-empt lands, register ships, and take out passport and naturalization papers. Not only does the law permit single women and widows to the right of naturalization, but Section 2 says:

'A married woman may be naturalized without the concurrence of her husband. (I wonder the fathers were not afraid of creating discord in the families of foreigners); and again: When an alien, having complied with the law, and declared his intention to become a citizen, dies before he is actually naturalized, his widow and children shall be considered citizens, entitled to all rights and privileges as such, on taking the required oath.

"If a foreign-born woman, by becoming a naturalized, citizen, is entitled to all rights and privileges of citizenship, is not a native-born woman by her National citizenship, possessed of equal rights and privileges?

"The question of the masculine pronouns, yes and nouns too, has been settled by the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Silver vs. Ladd, December, 1868, in a decision as to whether a woman was entitled to lands under the Oregon donation law of 1850. Elizabeth Cruthers, a widow, settled upon a claim and received patents. She died, and her son was heir. He died. Then Messrs. Ladd & Nott took possession, under the general pre-emption law, December, 1861. The administrator, E. P. Silver, applied for a writ of ejectment at the land office in Oregon City. Both the Register and Receiver decided that an unmarried woman could not hold land under that law. The Commissioner of the General Land Office, at Washington, and the Secretary of the Interior, also gave adverse opinions. Here patents were issued to Ladd & Nott, and duly recorded. Then a suit was brought to set aside Ladd’s patent, and it was carried through all the State Courts and the Supreme Court of Oregon; each, in turn, giving adverse decisions. At last, in the United States Supreme Court, Associate Justice Miller reversed the decisions of all the lower tribunals, and ordered the land back to the heirs of Mrs. Cruthers. The Court said:

'In construing a benevolent statute of the government, made for the benefit of its won citizens, inviting and encouraging them to settle on its distant public lands, the words 'single man,' and 'unmarried man' may, especially if aided by the context and other parts of the statue, be taken in a generic sense. Held, accordingly, that the fourth section of the Act of Congress, of September 27th, 1850, granting by way of donation, lands in Oregon Territory, to every white settler or occupant, American half-breed Indians included, embraced within the term single man an unmarried woman.'

"And the attorney, who carried this question to its final success, is now the Senator elect from Oregon, Hon. J. H. Mitchell, in whom the cause of equal rights to women has an added power on the floor of the United States Senate.

"Though the words persons, people, inhabitants, electors, citizens, are all used indiscriminately in the National and State constitutions, there was always a conflict of opinion, prior to the war, as to whether they were synonymous terms, as for instance:

'No persons shall be a representative who shall not have been seven years a citizen, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that State in which he is chosen. No person shall be a senator who shall not have been a citizen of the United States, and an inhabitant of that State in which he is chosen.'

"But, whatever room there was for a doubt, under the old regime, the adoption of the XIV. Amendment settled that question forever, in its first sentence:

'All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.'

"And the second settles the equal status of all persons-all citizens:

'No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.'

"The only question left to be settled now, is: Are women persons? And I hardly believe any of our opponents will have the hardihood to say they are not. Being persons, then, women are citizens, and no State has a right to make any new law, or to enforce any old law, that shall abridge their privileges or immunities. Hence, every discrimination against women in the constitutions and laws of the several States, is to-day null and void, precisely as is every one against negroes. Is the right to vote one of the privileges or immunities of citizens? I think the disfranchised ex-rebels, and the ex-state prisoners will all agree with me, that it is not only one of them, but the one without which all the others are nothing. Seek first the kingdom of the ballot, and all things else shall be given thee, is the political injunction.

"Webster, Worcester and Bouvier all define citizen to be a person, in the United States, entitled to vote and hold office. And prior to the adoption of the XIII. Amendment, by which slavery was forever abolished, and black men transformed from property to persons, the judicial opinions of the country had always been in harmony with these definitions. To be a person was to be a citizen, and to be a citizen was to be voter. Associate Justice Washington, in defining the privileges and immunities of the citizen, more than fifty years ago, said:

'They included all such privileges as were fundamental in their nature. And among them is the right to exercise the elective franchise and to hold office.'

"Even the 'Dred Scott' decision, pronounced by the Abolitionists and Republicans infamous, because it virtually declared "black men had no rights white men were bound to respect," gave this true and logical conclusion, that to be one of the people was to be a citizen and a voter. Chief Judge Daniels said:

'There is not, it is believed, to be found in the theories of writers on government, or in any actual experiment heretofore tried, an exposition of the term citizen, which has not been considered as conferring the actual possession and enjoyment of the perfect right of acquisition and enjoyment of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political.'

"Associate Justice Taney said:

'The words 'people of the United States' and 'citizens,' are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body, who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty, and who hold the power and conduct the government, through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the sovereign people, and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty.

"Thus does Judge Taney’s decision, which was such a terrible ban to the black man while he was a slave, now that he is a person, no longer property, pronounce him a citizen, possessed of an entire equality of privileges, civil and political. And not only the black man, but the black woman, and all women as well. And it was not until after the abolition of slavery, by which the negroes became free men, hence citizens, that the United States Attorney-General Bates rendered a contrary opinion:


'The Constitution uses the word 'citizen' only to express the political quality (not equality, mark) of the individual in his relation to the nation; to declare that he is a member of the body politic, and bound to it by the reciprocal obligations of allegiance on the one side, and protection on the other. The phrase 'a citizen of the United States,' without addition or qualification, means neither more nor less than a member of the nation.'

"Then, to be a citizen of this Republic, is no more than to be a subject of an Empire. You and I, and all true and patriotic citizens must repudiate this base conclusion. We all know that American citizenship, without addition or qualifications, means the possession of equal rights, civil and political. We all know that the crowning glory of every citizen of the United States is, that he can either give or withhold his vote from every law and every legislator under the government. Did 'I am a Roman citizen,' mean nothing more than that I am a 'member' of the body politic of the Republic of Rome, bound to it by the reciprocal obligations of allegiance on the one side, and protection on the other? When you, young man, shall travel abroad among the monarchies of the old world, and there proudly boast yourself an 'American citizen,' will you thereby declare yourself neither more nor less than a "member of the American nation?

"And this opinion of Attorney-General Bates, that a black citizen was not a voter, made merely to suit the political exigency of the Republican party in that transition hour between emancipation and enfranchisement, was no less infamous, in spirit or purpose, than was the decision of Judge Taney, that a black man was not one of the people, rendered in the interest and at the behest of the old Democratic party, in its darkest hour of subjection to the Slave power. Nevertheless, all of the adverse arguments, adverse congressional reports and judicial opinions, thus far, have been based on this purely partisan, time-serving opinion of General Bates, that the normal condition of the citizen of the United States is that of disfranchisement. That only such classes of citizens as have had special legislative guarantee have a legal right to vote. And if this decision of Attorney-General Bates was infamous, as against black men, but yesterday plantation slaves, what shall we pronounce upon Judge Bingham, in the House of Representatives, and Carpenter, in the Senate of the United States, for citing it against the women of the entire nation, vast numbers of whom are the peers of those honorable gentlemen themselves, in morals, intellect, culture, wealth, family-paying taxes on large estates, and contributing equally with them and their sex, in every direction, to the growth, prosperity, and well-being of the Republic? And what shall be said of the judicial opinions of Judges Carter, Jameson, McKay, and Sharswood, all based upon this aristocratic monarchical idea, of the right of one class to govern another?

"I am proud to mention the names of two United States judges who have given opinions honorable to our Republican idea, and honorable to themselves-Judge Howe, of Wyoming Territory, and Judge Underwood, of Virginia. The former gave it as his opinion a year ago, when the Legislature seemed likely to revoke the law enfranchising the women of that Territory, that, in case they succeeded, the women would still posses the right to vote under the XIV. Amendment. Judge Underwood, of Virginia, in noticing the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, denying to women the right to vote, under the XIV. Amendment, says:

'If the people of the United States, by amendment of their Constitution, could expunge, without any explanatory or assisting legislation, an adjective of five letters from all State constitutions, and thereby raise millions of our most ignorant fellow-citizens to all the rights and privileges of electors, why should not the same people, by the same Amendment, expunge an adjective of four letters from the same State constitutions, and thereby raise other millions of more educated and better informed citizens to equal rights and privileges, without explanatory or assisting legislation?'

"If the XIV. Amendment does not secure to all citizens the right to vote, for what purpose was that grand old charter of the fathers lumbered with its unwieldy proportions? The Republican Party, and Judges Howard and Bingham, who drafted the document, pretended it was to do something for black men; and if that something was not to secure them in their right to vote and hold office, what could it have been? For, by the XIII. Amendment, black men had become people, and hence were entitled to all the privileges and immunities of the Government, precisely as were the women of the country and foreign men not naturalized. According to Associate Justice Washington, they already had the protection of the Government, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the right to acquire and possess property of every kind, and to pursue and obtain happiness and safety, subject to such restraints as the Government may justly prescribe for the general welfare of the whole; the right of a citizen of one State to pass through or to reside in any other State for the purpose of trade, agriculture, professional pursuit, or otherwise; to claim the benefit of the writ of habeas corpus, to institute and maintain actions of any kind in the courts of the State; to take, hold, and dispose of property, either real or personal, and an exemption from higher taxes or impositions than are paid by the other citizens of the State.

"Thus, you see, those newly-made freed men were in possession of every possible right, privilege, and immunity of the Government, except that of suffrage, and hence, needed no constitutional amendment for any other purpose. What right, I ask you, has the Irishman the day after he receives his naturalization papers that he did not possess the day before, save the right to vote and hold office? And the Chinamen, now crowding our Pacific coast, are in precisely the same position. What privilege or immunity has California or Oregon the constitutional right to deny them, save that of the ballot? Clearly, then, if the XIV. Amendment was not to secure to black men their right to vote, it did nothing for them, since they possessed everything else before. But if it was meant to be a prohibition of the States to deny or abridge their right to vote-which I fully believe-then it did the same for all persons, white women included, born or naturalized in the United States, for the amendment does not say all male persons of African descent, but all persons are citizens.

"The second section is simply a threat to punish the States, by reducing their representation on the floor of Congress, should they disfranchise any class of male citizens, and does not allow of the inference that the states may disfranchise from any, or all other causes; nor in anywise weaken or invalidate the universal guarantee of the first section. What rule of law or logic would allow the conclusion, that the prohibition of a crime to one person, on severe pains and penalties, was a sanction of that crime to any and all other persons save that one? But, however much the doctors of the law may disagree, as to whether people and citizens, in the original constitution, were one and the same, or whether the privileges and immunities in the XIV. Amendment include the right of suffrage, the question of the right of the citizen to vote is settled forever by the XV. Amendment:

'The citizen’s right to vote shall not be denied by the United States, nor any State thereof; on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.'

"How can the State deny or abridge the right of the citizen, if the citizen does not possess it? There is no escape from the conclusion, that to vote is the citizen’s right, and the specifications of race, color, or previous condition of servitude can in no way, impair the force of the emphatic assertion, that the citizen’s right to vote shall not be denied or abridged. The political strategy of the second section of the XIV. Amendment, failing to coerce the rebel States into enfranchising their negroes, and the necessities of the Republican party demanding their votes throughout the South, to insure the re-election of Grant in 1872, that party was compelled to place this positive prohibition of the XV. Amendment upon the United States and all the States thereof.

"If we once establish the false principle, that United States citizenship does not carry with it the right to vote in every State in the Union, there is no end to the petty freaks and cunning devices that will be resorted to, to exclude one and another class of citizens from the right of suffrage. It will not always be men combining to disfranchise women; native-born men combining to abridge the rights of naturalized citizens, as in Rhode Island; it will not always be the rich and educated who may combine to cut off the poor and ignorant; but we may live to see the poor, hard-working, uncultivated day laborers, foreign and native born, learning the power of the ballot and their vast majority of numbers, combine and amend State constitutions so as to disfranchise the Vanderbilts and A. T. Stewarts, the Conklings and Fentons. It is a poor rule that won’t work more ways than one. Establish this precedent, admit the right of the States to deny suffrage, and there is no power to foresee the confusion, discord, and disruption that may await us. There is, and can be, but one safe principle of government-equal rights to all. And any and every discrimination against any class, whether on account of color, race, nativity, sex, property, culture, can but embitter and disaffect that class, and thereby endanger the safety of the whole people. Clearly, then, the national government must not only define the rights of citizens, but it must stretch out its powerful hand and protect them in every State of this Union.

"But if you will insist that the XV. 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 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 to 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. In some of the States, also, there have been laws passed giving to the mother a joint right with the father in the guardianship of the children. But twenty years ago, when our woman’s rights movement commenced, by the laws of the State of New York, and all the States, the father had the sole custody and control of the children. No matter if e were a brutal, drunken libertine, he had the legal right, without the mother’s consent, to apprentice her sons to rum sellers, or her daughters to brothel keepers. He could even will away an unborn child, to some other person than the mother. And in many of the States the law still prevails, and legal mothers are still utterly powerless under the common law.

"I doubt if there is, to-day, a State in this Union where a married woman can sue or be sued for slander of character, and until quite recently there was not one in which she could sue or be sued for injury of person. However damaging to the wife’s reputation any slander may be, she is wholly powerless to institute legal proceedings against her accuser, unless her husband shall join with her; and how often have we heard of the husband conspiring with some outside barbarian to blast the good name of his wife. A married woman can not testify in the courts in cases of joint interest with her husband. A good farmer’s wife near Earlville, Ill;. Who had all the right s she wanted went to the dentist of the village, who made her a full set of false teeth, both upper and under. The dentist pronounced them an admirable fit, and the wife declared they gave her fits to wear them; that she could neither chew nor talk with them in her mouth. The dentist sued the husband; his counsel brought the wife as witness; the judge ruled her off the stand, saying:

"A married woman can not be a witness in matters of joint interest between herself and her husband.

"Think of it, ye good wives, the false teeth in your mouths a joint interest with your husbands, about which you are legally incompetent to speak! If in our frequent and shocking railroad accidents a married woman is injured in her person, in nearly all of the States, it is her husband who must sue the company, and it is to her husband that the damages, if there are any, will be awarded. In Ashfield, Mass., supposed to be the most advance of any State in the Union in all things, humanitarian as well as intellectual, a married woman was severely injured by a defective sidewalk. Her husband sued the corporation and recovered $13,000 damages. And those $13,000 belong to him bona fide; and whenever that unfortunate wife wishes a dollar of it to supply her needs she must ask her husband for it; and if the man be of a narrow, selfish, niggardly nature, she will have to hear him say, every time:

'What have you done, my dear, with the twenty-five cents I gave you yesterday?'

"Isn’t such a position, I ask you, humiliating enough to be called 'servitude'? That husband, as would any other husband, in nearly every State of this Union, sued and obtained damages for the loss of the services of his wife, precisely as the master, under the old slave regime, would have done, had his slave been thus injured, and precisely as he himself would have done had it been his ox, cow, or horse instead of his wife. There is an old saying that 'a arose by any other name would smell as sweet,' and I submit if the deprivation by law of the ownership of one’s own person, wages, property, children, the denial of the right as an individual, to sue and be sued, and to testify in the courts, is not a condition of servitude most bitter and absolute, though under the sacred name of marriage?

"Does any lawyer doubt my statement of the legal status of married women? I will remind him of the fact that the old common law of England prevails in every State in this Union, except where the Legislature has enacted special laws annulling it. And I am ashamed that not one State has yet blotted from its statute books the old common law of marriage, by which Blackstone, summed up in the fewest words possible, is made to say: 'Husband and wife are one, and that one is the husband.'

"Thus may all married women, wives, and widows, by the laws of the several States, be technically included in the XV. Amendment’s specification of 'condition of servitude,' present or previous. And not only married women, but I will also prove to you that by all the great fundamental principles of our free government, the entire womanhood of the nation is in a 'condition of servitude' as surely as were our revolutionary fathers, when the rebelled against old King George. Women are taxed without representation, governed without their consent, tried, convicted, and punished without a jury of their peers. And is all this tyranny any less humiliating and degrading to women under our democratic-republican government to-day than it was to men under their aristocratic, monarchical government one hundred years ago? There is not an utterance of old John Adams, John Hancock, or Patrick Henry, but finds a living response in the soul of every intelligent, patriotic woman of the nation. Bring to me a common-sense woman property holder, and I will show you one whose soul is fired with all the indignation of 1776, every time the tax-gatherer presents himself at her door. You will not find one such but feels her condition of servitude as galling as did James Otis when he said:

'The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not represented appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights, and if continued, seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right. For, what one civil right is worth a rush after a man’s property is subject to be taken from him at pleasure without his consent? If a man is not his own assessor in person, or by deputy, his liberty is gone, or he is wholly at the mercy of others.'

"What was the three penny tax on tea, or the paltry tax on paper and sugar to which our revolutionary fathers were subjected, when compared with the taxation of the women of this Republic? The orphaned Pixley sisters, six dollars a day; and even the women who are proclaiming the tyranny of taxation without representation, from city to city throughout the country, are often compelled to pay a tax for the poor privilege of protesting against the outrage. And again, to show that disfranchisement was precisely the slavery of which the fathers complained, allow me to cite to you old Ben Franklin, who in those olden times was admitted to be good authority, not merely in domestic economy, but in political as well:

'Every man of the commonalty, except infants, insane persons and criminals, is, of common right and the law of God, a freeman and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty. That liberty or freedom consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who are to frame the laws, and who are to be the guardians of every man’s life, property, and peace. For the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another; and the poor man has an equal right, but more need to have representatives in the Legislature than the rich one. That they who have no voice or vote in the electing of representatives do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and to be subject to laws made by the representatives of others, without having had representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.'

"Suppose I read it with the feminine gender:

"That women who have no voice nor vote in the electing of representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to men who have votes and their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom men have set over us, and to be subject to the laws made by the representatives of men, without having representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.

"And yet one more authority; that of Thomas Paine, than whom not one of the Revolutionary patriots more ably vindicated the principles upon which our government is founded:

'The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected. To take away this right to reduce man to a state of slavery; for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another; and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case. The proposal, therefore, to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away property.'

"Is anything further needed to prove woman’s condition of servitude sufficiently orthodox to entitle her to the guarantees of the XV. Amendment? Is there a man who will not agree with me, that to talk of freedom without the ballot, is mockery-is slavery-to the women of this Republic, precisely as New England’s orator, Wendall Phillips, at the close of the late war, declared it to be to the newly emancipated black men?

"I admit that prior to the rebellion, by common consent, the right to enslave, as well as to disfranchise both native and foreign born citizens, was conceded to the States. But the one grand principle, settled by the war and the reconstruction legislation, is the supremacy of national power to protect the citizens of he Unites States in their right to freedom and the elective franchise, against any and every interference on the part of the several States. And again and again, have the American people asserted the triumph of this principle, by their overwhelming majorities for Lincoln and Grant. The one issue of the last two Presidential elections was, whether the XIV. And IV Amendments should be considered the irrevocable will of the people; and the decision was, they shall be-and that it is not only the right, but the duty of the National government to protect all United States citizens in the full enjoyment and free exercise of all their privileges and immunities against any attempt of any State to deny or abridge. And in this conclusion Republicans and Democrats alike agree.

" Senator Frelinghuysen said-'The heresy of State rights has been completely buried in these amendments, that as amended, the Constitution confers not only National but State citizenship upon all persons born or naturalized within our limits.'

"The Call for the National Republican Convention said-Equal suffrage has been engrafted on the National Constitution; the privileges and immunities of American citizenship have become a part of the organic law.

"The National Republican Platform said-'Complete liberty and exact equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political, and public rights, should be established and maintained throughout the Union by efficient and appropriate State and Federal legislation.'

"If these assertions mean anything, it is that Congress should pass a law compelling the States to protect women in their equal rights, and that the States should enact laws making it the duty of inspectors of election to receive women’s votes on precisely the same conditions they do those of men.

"Judge Stanley Matthews-a substantial Ohio Democrat-in his preliminary speech at the Cincinnati Convention, said most emphatically:

'The Constitutional Amendments have established the political equality of all citizens before the law.'

"President Grant, in his message to Congress March 30, 1870, on the adoption of the XV. Amendment, said:

'A measure which makes at once four millions of people voters, is indeed a measure of greater importance than any act of the kind from the foundation of the Government to the present time.'

"How could four million negroes be made voters if the two million women were not included?

"The California State Republican Convention said:

'Among the many practical and substantial triumphs of the principles achieved by the Republican party during the past twelve years, we may enumerate with pride and pleasure, the prohibiting of any State from abridging the privilege of any citizen of the Republic, the declaring the civil and political equality of every citizen, and the establishing of all these principles in the Federal Constitution by amendments thereto, as the permanent law.'

"Benjamin F. Butler, in a recent letter to me said:

'I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that the Constitution authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as it authorizes trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to citizens. And again, it is not laws we want; there are plenty of laws-good enough, too. Administrative ability to enforce law is the great want of the age, in this country especially. Everybody talks of law, law. If everybody would insist on the enforcement of law, the government would stand on a firmer basis, and questions would settle themselves.'

"And it is upon this just interpretation of the United States Constitution that our National Woman Suffrage Association, which celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the woman’s rights movement, in New York on the 6th of May next, has abased all its arguments and action the past three years. We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote. We appeal to women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected "citizen’s right to vote." We appeal to the inspectors of election everywhere to receive the votes of all United States citizens, as it is their duty to do. We appeal to United States commissioners and marshals to arrest the inspectors who reject the names and votes of Unites States citizens, as it is their duty to do, and leave those alone who, like our eighth ward inspectors, perform their duties faithfully and well. We ask the juries to fail to return verdicts of 'guilty' against honest, law-abiding, tax-paying United States citizens for offering their votes at our elections; for receiving and counting such citizens’ votes. We ask the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law, and wherever there is room for a doubt to give its benefit on the side of liberty and equality to women, remembering that the true rule of interpretation under our National Constitution, especially since its Amendments, is that anything for human rights is constitutional, everything against human rights unconstitutional.

"And it is on this line that we propose to fight our battle for the ballot-peaceably, but nevertheless persistently to complete triumph, when all United States citizens shall be recognized as equals before the law."

JUSTICE POSTPONED

"The trial of Susan B. Anthony for illegal voting was to have come on the fifteenth of May, but was again postponed, last Friday being the day mentioned. Probably this also was but a blind. Monroe county is pretty well educated upon the subject of woman suffrage, Miss Anthony having lectured every night for a month through the different townships. The U. S. Attorney now asserts that it is impossible to get an impartial jury in that county-that is, one which is so ignorant as to have no knowledge of the Constitution and Amendments and the principles of free government."

The Woman's Journal, June 7, 1873