Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 5.djvu/658

 most intelligent and capable of them at least If Mr. Douglass had noticed who applauded when he said black men first and white women afterwards, he would have seen that it was only the men."

The men succeeded in wresting the control of the convention from the women, who then decided that the time had come for them to have their own organization and endeavor to have the question of their enfranchisement considered entirely on its own merits. Three days later, at the Women's Bureau in East 23rd Street, where now the Metropolitan Life Building stands, with representatives present from nineteen States, the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed. Mrs. Stanton was made president, Miss Anthony chairman of the executive committee. One hundred women became members that evening and here was begun the organized work for an Amendment to the Federal Constitution to confer woman suffrage which was to continue without ceasing for half a century. Its constitution declared the object of the association to be "to secure the ballot to the women of the Nation on equal terms with men." On June 1 its executive board sent a petition to Congress for "fa 16th Amendment to be submitted to the Legislatures of the States for ratification which shall secure to all citizens the right of suffrage without distinction of sex."

Before the work for a 16th Amendment was fairly organized a number of members of Congress and constitutional lawyers took the ground that women were already enfranchised by the first clause of the 14th Amendment. At the convention held in St. Louis in the autumn of 1869, Francis Minor, a prominent lawyer of that city, presented this position so convincingly that the newly formed National Association conducted an active campaign in its favor for several years. In 1872 women tried to vote in a number of States and in a few of them were successful. Miss Anthony's vote was accepted in Rochester, N. Y., and later she was arrested,— charged with a crime, tried by a Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court and fined $100. The inspectors in St. Louis refused to