Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/535

Rh will present a few facts and general principals showing the need of some speedy action on this whole question.

Gentlemen hold seats in Congress to-day by the votes of women. The legality of the election of Mr. Garfield, of Washington Territory, and Mr. Jones, of Wyoming, involves the question whether or not their constituents are legal voters. Ultimately, this question, involving the fundamental rights of citizens, must be considered in the Senate as well as the House. Women have voted in the general elections in several of the States, and if legislators chosen by women choose Senators, their right to their seats can not be decided until it is first decided whether women are legal voters. Some speedy action on this question is inevitable, to preserve law and order.

In some States women have already voted; in others they are contesting their rights in the courts, and the decisions of judges differ as widely as the capacities of men to see first principles.

Judge Howe, Judge Cartter, and Judge Underwood have given their written opinions in favor of woman's citizenship under the XIV. and XV. Amendments. Even the majority report of the Judiciary Committee, presented by John A. Bingham, though adverse to the prayer of Victoria Woodhull, admits the citizenship of woman. In the late cases of Sarah Spencer against the Board of Registration, and Sarah E. Webster against the superintendent of election, the judge decided that under the XIV. Amendment women are citizens.

We do not ask to vote outside of law, or in open violation of it, nor to avail ourselves of any strained interpretations of constitutional provisions, but in harmony with the Federal Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and our American theory of just government. The women of this country and a handful of foreign citizens in Rhode Island, the only disfranchised classes, ask you to-day to secure to them a republican form of government to protect them against the oppression of State authorities, who, in violation of your amendments, assume the right not merely to regulate the suffrage, but to abridge and deny it to these two classes of citizens. The Federal Constitution, in its Amendment, clearly defines, for the first time, who are citizens: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the States wherein they reside."

No one denies that "all persons," in the XIV. Amendment, is used without limitation of sex, or in other words, that not men only, but women also are citizens. Whether in theory the citizenship of women is generally admitted or not, it certainly is in practice. Women pre-empt land; women register ships; women obtain passports; women pay the penalty of their own crimes; women pay taxes, sometimes work out the road tax. In some States, even married women can make contracts, sue and be sued, and do business in their own names; in fact, the old Blackstone idea that husband and wife are one, and that one the husband, received its death blow twenty years ago, when the States of New York and Massachusetts passed their first laws securing to married women the property they inherited in their own right.

You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a