right to vote, thus nullifying the fraudulent Acts of Legislatures and making our Government homogeneous from Maine to Oregon.
Resolved, That the question of enfranchising one-half the people is superior to that of Indian treaties, admission of new States, tariff, international copyright or any other subject before the country, and that it is the foremost duty of the Fiftieth Congress at this, its last session, to submit an amendment to the Constitution forbidding States to disfranchise citizens on account of sex.
Resolved, That as a question of ethics the difference between putting a fraudulent ballot in the box and keeping a rightful ballot out is nothing, and that we condemn the action which prevents women from casting a ballot at any election as a shameful evidence of the corruption of dominant political parties in this country.
Whereas, The Legislature of Washington Territory has twice voted for woman suffrage—women for the most part having gladly accepted and exercised the right, Governor Squire in his report to the Secretary of the Interior in 1884 having declared that it met the approval of a large majority of the people; and,
Whereas, In 1887, after the women had voted for three and a half years, the Territorial Supreme Court pronounced the law invalid on the ground that the nature of the bill must be described in the title of the act; and,
Whereas, In January, 1888, another bill passed by the Legislature gave to this law an explicit title; and the bill, again granting suffrage to women, was signed by Governor Semple, thus triumphantly showing the approval of the people, the Legislature and the Governor; and,
Whereas, The Territorial Supreme Court, in August, 1888, again rendered a decision against the right of the women of the Territory to vote, basing their decision upon the false assumption that Congress had never delegated to the Territories the right to define the status of their own' voters; and,
Whereas, This decision strikes a blow at the fundamental powers of the United States Congress, confounding laws delegated to the Territories by the Organic Act of 1852, which vests in their Legislatures the power to prescribe their qualifications for voting and holding office—with State governments which limit legislative enactments by constitutions of their own making—thus setting at naught the will of the people; therefore,
Resolved, That we earnestly and respectfully petition Congress that in passing an enabling act or acts for the admission of the other Territories there be incorporated a clause allowing women to vote for delegates to their constitutional conventions, and at the election for the adoption of the constitution, in every one where the Legislature has granted woman suffrage and such law has not been repealed by a subsequent Legislature.
Resolved, In the year 1873 our leader, Susan B. Anthony, was deprived of the right of trial by jury, by a Judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, simply because she was a woman, it is the duty of all women to resent the insult thus offered to woman-
