Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 2.djvu/990

952 chooser or voter shall be twenty-one years old, a resident of the State for one year, of the county or town for thirty days, etc.—these are properly qualifications and such as the Constitution intends. Every State Constitution limits the right to a part only of the people, which is denial of right to the other portion of the people, and not regulation or the right by way of adjective qualifications, as illustrated above. Can sex either qualify or disqualify a chooser, one of the people to cast a ballot for President? All the States, in unchecked nullification, pronounce in the affirmative and write it in their constitutions—the masculine qualifies, the feminine disqualifies—and this has just now been echoed by the Supreme Court of the United States! My mind and reason forbid my acceptance of such postulate.

The term "people" comprehends and includes female persons as well as male persons. It is impossible, therefore, that sex, either the one or the other, is contemplated by the Constitution as a qualification or disqualification for suffrage. There must be National officers, President, etc., else no government; they are to be chosen—this calls for choosers or voters; the "people" are to choose—the people are a majority of persons—these persons are, some male, some female—no limitation is indicated as to which shall belong the right to vote; sex, it seems, is out of the question, as the people are of both sexes, so both male and female must vote or choose at the polls. Let the States regulate the approaches to the ballot-box, but not deny the right of user, by the people of the Nation. The Constitution exacts all this—it is plain, it is positive—there is no hint in the same that there shall be had at the polls any preference on account of sex. Expulsion of woman from the polls by State nullification is a gigantic wrong—a villainous usurpation.

Again, some things carry in their very face the absurd, the incongruous, the ridiculous; States enacting laws and forming constitutions which are interpreted as warrants of right to vote—the masculine gender, this qualifies for voting—the feminine, this disqualifies the voter. How ridiculous! Virility the distinguishing qualification of voters in the United States! How queer this looks and sounds. Sex is elemental—inherent in all the people, and should never be deemed ground of qualification or disqualification to vote, any more than the height or weight of person. But the Supreme Court of the United States wink at the wickedness of the States as nullifiers, and allow the masculine usurpation to remain. Perhaps this grave body of learned Justices look upon the question of qualification in a broader or other sense than that taught by Dr. Webster. Their decision, it seems, turns upon the use and meaning of that word. This, then, is the solemn conclusion of the embodied justice of the land—qualification to vote, masculine gender!—and not things in common belonging to every person of the entire population, no matter what the sex; such as age, residence, etc.

Madam, you have no available political rights—the Constitution intends you shall have and exercise them, and it has made provisions accordingly—but the false interpretations of the courts, and the trespassing State Constitutions have hitherto hindered you. But I believe a day of revolution, call it reckoning if you please, is at hand—fast approaching. President Lincoln liberated by proclamation, three or four millions of chattel slaves. President Grant has the power, Constitutional power, to liberate, to-day, twenty millions of political slaves, of which, I am sorry to say, you are one. Let politicians and political parties beware how they treat this question of woman suffrage. What became of the old Whig Party, in consequence of its alliance with chattel slavery. Illium fuit.

Sincerely yours, etc.,

The New York Evening Post has a long article relative to the decision of the Supreme Court regarding the right of women to vote under the Constitution of the United States, coinciding in the decision. It closes by saying: "The advocates of woman suffrage will scarcely be disappointed by this judgment. We do not believe that sincere friends of the proposed reform will regret the failure to secure it by trickery."

There are few who have maintained that the XIV. and XV. Amendments secured suffrage to women as well as to colored men, who would be willing to admit that they desired to obtain suffrage through trickery? Either it is, or is not, conveyed through the Constitution and the Amendments. Certainly if it is, they have a right to avail themselves of it; and even if it is not, it is nevertheless, a right. The woman suffragists believe that the withholdal from women of the right of suffrage is a fraud and an imposition. To secure them what is already their right, can not involve trickery. Every day and every hour that the right of suffrage is withheld from women, a monstrous wrong is practiced upon them. As long as there were no women who demanded the ballot, and by tacit consent it was relinquished, the fraud practiced by debarring them from it was merely of a negative character—but the privilege should have been left open; but from the moment that one woman demanded it, an outrage was practiced upon her by the entire people in denying it her, and the plea that it is not woman's sphere, which is sometimes made, is the most shallow subterfuge of any, for it is not for men, but for woman alone, to determine what that sphere is, or is not.