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The Federal Suffrage Association

of thought in this matter. Every citizen of the United States is possessed of a dual citizenship, and is a member of two sovereignties; and yet these two conditions of citizenship, although entirely distinct, are united or blended in the same individual. Suffrage is an attribute of citizenship under the federal constitution; no limitation or restriction whatever is made as to the sex of the elector, while under the State constitution there is; and as there has been no assertion by the federal government of its reserved right to make and alter regulations as to the times, places and manner of holding elections for representatives in Congress, the matter has gone by default, as it were, and been left entirely to the control of the states. And this has been the case so long, that the impression is almost universal, that the states have supreme control over the federal as well as the state right of suffrage. This was the opinion of the Supreme Court itself when the subject was formerly under consideration in the case of Minor vs. Happersett, (21 Wallace), for the Court was then unanimously of the opinion that the United States has no voters of its own creation, and that the constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one. Subsequent reflection, however, has led the Court to change its views, and it now declares (in the Yarborough decision) that

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