There is not a doubt but women have the constitutional right to
vote, and I will never vote for a sixteenth amendment to guarantee
it to them. I voted for both the fourteenth and fifteenth 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 Summer'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, said:
"Qualifications cannot be in their nature permanent or
insurmountable.
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