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 possess
the right to vote under the fourteenth amendment.
Judge Underwood, of Virginia, in noticing the recent decision of Judge
Carter, of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, denying to
women the right to vote, under the fourteenth and fifteenth 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 and local
constitutions, and thereby raise millions of our most ignorant
fellow-citizens to all of 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 and local
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 fourteenth amendment does not secure to all citizens the right to
rote, 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 thirteenth 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.
Pages:
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229