had been decided in favor of the sovereignty of the nation. Under our republican form of government the sovereignty is lodged in the masses of the people. If, therefore, it is not in the man who votes by virtue of his membership in the association of the people known as the United States, then there is no sovereignty there. ....
As the law now is, in the Federal Constitution there must always have been such a voter of the United States, for in the second clause of the first article it is provided that there shall be a House of Representatives "elected by the people in the States." Where that provision is made it says that the electors shall have the qualifications of the electors in the States. But it does not say that they shall be the same individuals; it does not say that they are to act in the same capacity. They might vary in different portions of the country, in different States; but nevertheless, in giving to the people of the States the right to specify the qualifications which should belong to the electors of the United States, the Constitution did not give up the power to create electors itself. ....
Take the Fifteenth Amendment. There is the first instance in the entire Constitution where we find the franchise declared to be a "right," and in specific terms alluded to as such. And there it is provided that a right already recognized as existing shall not be abridged by the United States or by the States—a right already existing, not established. And by virtue of that amendment and the provision that this existing right shall not be denied or abridged on account of "race, color or previous condition of servitude," either by the United States or by the States, the national existence of the voter is established. ....
I think our great difficulty about this is that women perhaps do not, to the extent that they should, place their cause upon the platform that it is a right; that to uphold that it is not a right is a wrong greater than any which has been perpetrated in the past; that freedom to half the human race is a glorious achievement which it still remains for mankind to accomplish. ....
There is no way in which you can do so much for this world as by giving liberty to those who are the mothers of the generations past and to come; so that freedom to think, freedom to formulate opinions, freedom to decide by the majority of the whole of mature human nature, shall be the universal boon as far as the human race extends. ....Miss Anthony then read a letter from Mrs. Stanton which embodied that spirit of independence possessed by her almost. beyond all other women:
