Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/680

646 that the States should enact laws making it the duty of inspectors of election to receive women's votes on precisely the same conditions they do those of men.

Judge Stanley Matthews—a substantial Ohio Democrat—in his preliminary speech at the Cincinnati Convention, said most emphatically:

President Grant, in his message to Congress March 30, 1870, on the adoption of the XV. Amendment, said:

How could the four million negroes be made voters if the two million women were not included?

The California State Republican Convention said:

Benjamin F. Butler, in a recent letter to me said:

And it is upon this just interpretation of the United States Constitution that our National Woman Suffrage Association, which celebrates the twenty-fifth anniversary of the woman's rights movement, in New York on the 6th of May next, has based all its arguments and action the past three years. We no longer petition Legislature or Congress to give us the right to vote. We appeal to the women everywhere to exercise their too long neglected "citizen's right to vote." We appeal to the inspectors of election everywhere to receive the votes of all United States citizens, as it is their duty to do. We appeal to United States commissioners and marshals to arrest the inspectors who reject the names and votes of United States citizens, as it is their duty to do, and leave those alone who, like our eighth ward inspectors, perform their duties faithfully and well. We ask the juries to fail to return verdicts of "guilty" against honest, law-abiding, tax-paying United States citizens for offering their votes at our elections; or against intelligent, worthy young men, inspectors of election, for receiving and counting such citizens' votes. We ask the judges to render true and unprejudiced opinions of the law, and wherever there is room for a doubt to give its benefit on the side of liberty and equality to women, remembering that

And it is on this line that we propose to fight our battle for the ballot-