Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 3.djvu/505

462 zen to vote was as absolute as that of the male citizen; and woman's disfranchisement became a wrong inflicted upon her by usurped power. Men became voters by reason of their citizenship, having first complied with certain police regulations imposed within and by the respective States. The Citizens' Suffrage Association demanded the same political rights for all citizens, nothing more, nothing less. It repudiated the idea that one class of citizens should ask of another class rights which that other class never possessed, and which those who were denied them never had lost. This society held that the right to give implied the right to take away; and further, that the right to give implied a right lodged somewhere in society, which society had never acquired by any direct concession from the people.

This society held also, that the theory of the right to the franchise, as a gift, bore with it the power somewhere to restrict the male citizen's suffrage, and to strike at the principle of self-government. They had seen this doctrine earnestly advanced. They knew that there was a growing class in the country who were inimical to universal suffrage. In view of this they chose the name of citizen suffrage, as the highest and broadest term by which to designate their devotion to the political rights of all citizens. They held that the political condition of the white women of the United States was totally unlike that of the slave population in this; that while the slaves were not considered citizens until the adoption of the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments, white women had always been citizens, and always entitled to all the political rights of citizenship. The colored male citizen became a voter—subject to the police regulations of the different States—upon acquiring citizenship. No constitutional enactment denied equal political rights to women as citizens. No constitutional enactment was therefore required to enable them to exercise the right to vote, which became the right of male slaves upon their securing citizenship under the law. The first legal argument on the subject of woman's right to the ballot as a citizen of the United States, was made by Jacob F. Byrnes before the Pennsylvania Society. Had it been published as soon as written, instead of being circulated privately, surprising person after person with the position taken, it would have antedated the report of General Benjamin F. Butler in the House of Representatives in the winter of 1871.

Edward M. Davis, president for many years, was one of the most active and untiring officers of this association, giving generously of his time and money not only to its support but to the general agitation of the suffrage question in every part of the country. The meetings were held regularly at his office, 333 Walnut street, as were also those of the Radical Club. This was composed largely of the same members as the suffrage society, but in this organization they had a greater latitude in discussion, covering all questions of political, religious and social interest. As the division in the National Society produced divi-