Page:History of Woman Suffrage Volume 4.djvu/143

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CHAPTER VI.

FIRST DISCUSSION AND VOTE IN THE U. S. SENATE — 1887.

Although the Senate Select Committee on Woman Suffrage had reported several times in favor of a Sixteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution which should prohibit disfranchisement on account of sex, and although Thomas W. Palmer, in 1885, had delivered a speech on the question in the Senate, it never had been brought to a discussion and vote.^[1] Urged by the members of the National Association, and by his own strong convictions as to the justice of the cause, Senator Henry W. Blair (N. H.), on Dec. 8, 1886, called up the following, which he had reported for the majority of the committee on February 2 of that year:

joint resolution proposing an amendment to the constitution of the united states extending the right of suffrage to women.

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled (two-thirds of each House concurring therein), That the following article be proposed to the Legislatures of the several States as an amendment to the Constitution of the United States; which, when ratified by three-fourths of the said Legislatures, shall be valid as part of said Constitution, namely:

Section 1. The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have power, by appropriate legislation, to enforce the provisions of this article.

Senator Blair supported this resolution in a long and com-

↑ The only time the direct question of woman suffrage ever had been discussed and voted on in the U. S. Senate was in December, 1866, on the Bill to Regulate the Franchise for the District of Columbia History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 102; and in May, 1874, on the Bill to Establish the Territory of Pembina the same, p. 545; but these were entirely distinct from the submission of a constitutional amendment.

[1] The only time the direct question of woman suffrage ever had been discussed and voted on in the U. S. Senate was in December, 1866, on the Bill to Regulate the Franchise for the District of Columbia History of Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 102; and in May, 1874, on the Bill to Establish the Territory of Pembina the same, p. 545; but these were entirely distinct from the submission of a constitutional amendment.

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