a citizen of the United States, is thus made a voter in every State in the Union."
The Fifteenth Amendment says: "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 race, color or previous condition of servitude." No right is conferred by this amendment. It simply guarantees protection for a right already existing in the citizen, and the negro having been declared a citizen by the Fourteenth Amendment is thus protected in his right to vote. But whence did he obtain this right unless from the National Constitution, which the Supreme Court in the Minor decision declares "does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one"? Volume II of this History of Woman Suffrage, containing nearly 1,000 pages, is devoted mainly to a recital of the efforts on the part of women to obtain and exercise the franchise through the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. This decision of the Supreme Court destroyed the last hope, although it did not shake the belief of the leaders of this movement in the justice and legality of their claim.
A number of the women contended that, if the National Constitution did not confer Full Suffrage, it did at least guarantee Federal Suffrage the right to vote for Congressional Representatives and in this opinion they were sustained by eminent lawyers. The National Association, however, never made an issue of this question, considering that it would be useless, but it has a Standing Committee on Federal Suffrage empowered to make such efforts in this direction as it deems advisable.[1]
The assertion is made that if Congress had no authority over the election of its own members, it would be wholly unable to perpetuate itself should the States at any time decide that they no longer care to be under the authority of a central governing body, and refuse to elect Representatives. Many able reports have been made by this Standing Committee, and the question "was clearly stated in an article in The Arena, December, 1891, by Francis Minor, who gave the question of woman suffrage a
- ↑ The most earnest advocates of the constitutional right of women to Federal Suffrage are Mrs. Sallie Clay Bennett, Ky.; Mrs. Clara B. Colby, D. C.; Mrs. Martha E. Root. Mich.; Miss Sara Winthrop Smith, Conn. They have done a large amount of persistent but ineffectual work in the endeavor to obtain a recognition of this right.
