Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/106

 What class or portion of the whole people of any State should be admitted to suffrage, and should, by virtue of such admission, exert the active and potential control in the direction of its affairs, was a question reserved exclusively for the determination of the State.

[The report loses sight entirely of the point that this question was not and never has been left to "the people" of a State, but that men alone usurped the right to decide who should be admitted to the suffrage, arbitrarily excluded women and have kept them excluded.]

Under the influence of a just fear that without suffrage as a protective power to the newly-acquired rights and privileges guaranteed to the former slave he might suffer detriment, and with this dominant motive in view, originated the Fifteenth Amendment. It will be noted that by this later amendment the privilege of suffrage is not sought to be conferred on any class; but an inhibition is placed upon the States from excluding from the privilege of suffrage any class on account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

[The Fifteenth Amendment does not mention the "privilege" of suffrage. It says expressly, "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged." But whether it be a "right" or a "privilege," where did the negro get that which the States are forbidden to deny or abridge, if it does not inhere in citizenship? The report is incorrect in saying that the State is prohibited from excluding any "class;" it is only the "males" of any class who are protected from exclusion. The same right or privilege belongs to women, but they are not protected in the exercise of it. Women never have asked Congress to grant them any "new" right or privilege, but only to prohibit the States from denying or abridging what is already theirs, as it did in the case of negro men. ]

Woman's true sphere is not restricted, but is boundless in resources and consequences. In it she may employ every energy of the mind and every affection of the heart, while within its limitless compass, under Providence, she exercises a power and influence beyond all other agencies for good. She trains and guides the life that is, and forms it for the eternity and immortality that are to be. From the rude contact of life, man is her shield. He is her guardian from its conflicts. He is the defender of her rights in his home, and the avenger of her wrongs everywhere.

[That is, what man considers her true sphere is not restricted, but she is not allowed to decide for herself what shall be its