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 guaranties of the fifteenth
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 Wendell 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 the United 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
fourteenth and fifteenth 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.
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