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 that means anything, it is that Congress should pass a law to require
the States to protect women in their equal political rights, and that
the States should enact laws making it the duty of inspectors of
elections to receive women's votes on precisely the same conditions they
do those of men.
Judge Stanley Mathews--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.
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