"
The words "him" and "his," are three times mentioned in this amendment,
yet no one can be found wild enough to say women were not intended to be
included in its benefits. Miss Anthony, herself, has already come under
its provisions, and were she denied a speedy and open trial, she could
appeal to the protection of this very amendment, which not only does not
say women, or her, but does alone say _him_ and _his_, and this,
notwithstanding the other legal adage, that laws stand as they are
written. This whole question of constitutional rights, turns on whether
the United States is a nation. If the United States is a nation, it has
_national_ powers. What is the admitted basis of our nation? We reply,
equality of political rights. And what, again, is the basis of political
rights? Citizenship. Nothing more, nothing less. National sovereignty is
only founded upon the political sovereignty of the individual, and
national rights are merely individual rights in a collective form. The
acknowledged basis of rights in each and every one of the thirty-seven
States, is citizenship,--not State citizenship alone, as that alone
cannot exist, but first, national citizenship. _National_ rights are the
fundamental basis of _State_ rights. If this is not true, we are then no
nation, but merely a confederacy, held together by our own separate
wills, and the South was right in its war of secession.
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