Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/61

 The Fourteenth Amendment was declared adopted July 28, 1868, and the women felt that the ground had been swept from 'beneath their feet, as now the barriers opposed to their enfranchisement by all the State constitutions had been doubly and trebly strengthened by sanction of the National Constitution. The first ray of encouragement came in October, 1869, when, at a State woman suffrage convention held in St. Louis, Mo., Francis Minor, a leading attorney of that city, declared that this very Fourteenth Amendment in enfranchising colored men had performed a like service for all women. His argument was embodied concisely in the following resolutions, which were adopted by that convention with great enthusiasm,. and by the National Association at its annual convention in Washington, D. C., the next January:

, All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside; therefore be it

Resolved,. That the immunities and privileges of American citizenship, however defined, are national in character and paramount to all State authority.

2. That while the Constitution oi the United States leaves the qualification of electors to the several States, it nowhere gives them the right to deprive any citizen of the elective franchise which is possessed by any other citizen—to regulate not including the right to prohibit.

3. That, as the Constitution of the United States expressly declares that no State shall make or enforce any laws that shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States, those provisions of the several State constitutions which exclude women