The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) / Including Public Addresses, Her Own Letters and Many From Her Contemporaries During Fifty Years

by Ida Husted Harper

The decision was adverse, the opinion of the court being delivered March 29, 1875, by Chief-Justice Waite, himself a strong advocate of the enfranchisement of women. The court admitted that "women are persons and citizens," but found that the "National Constitution does not define the privileges and immunities of citizens. The United States has no voters of its own creation. The National Constitution does not confer the right of suffrage upon any one, but the franchise must be regulated by the States. The Fourteenth Amendment does not add to the privileges and immunities of a citizen; it simply furnishes an additional guarantee to protect those he already has. Before the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the States had the power to disfranchise on account of race or color. These amendments, ratified by the States, simply forbade that discrimination, but did not forbid that against sex."

This is in direct contradiction to the decision of Chief-Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case: "The words 'people of the United States' and 'citizens' are synonymous terms and mean the same thing; they describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty and hold the power, and conduct the government through their representatives. They are what we familiarly call the sovereign people, and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of this sovereignty."

Although Miss Anthony and her co-workers still believed that, with a true interpretation, women were voters under these amendments, they were obliged to accept the decision of the highest court of appeal. They then returned to the work of petitioning Congress for a Sixteenth Amendment to the National Constitution which should prohibit disfranchisement on account of sex. They continued also the original plan of endeavoring to secure amendments to the constitutions of the different States abolishing the word "male" as a qualification for voting.[79] Bitterly disappointed at the decision of the Supreme Court, it was nevertheless a source of pride to the women that they had made their claim for representation in the government, carried it to the highest tribunal and gone down in honorable defeat.

Virginia L. Minor

Miss Anthony never hesitated to ask the most distinguished men to speak on the woman suffrage platform, and Henry Wilson writes from the chamber of the Vice-President his regrets that he can not accept her invitation. Benjamin F. Butler replies: "As a rule I have refused to take part in any convention in the District of Columbia about any matter which might come before Congress. I have gone farther out of my way in that regard in the matter of woman suffrage than in any other. Having given evidence that I am most strongly committed to the legality, propriety and justice of granting the ballot to woman, I do not see how I can add anything to it. Hoping that your cause may succeed, I have the honor to be, very truly yours."

Her cousin, Elbridge G. Lapham, M. C., of New York, says in a letter: "I am persuaded the time is fast hastening when woman will be accorded the exercise of the right your association demands. With that secured, many other advantages, now denied, will surely and speedily follow. I can see no valid objection to the right of suffrage being conferred, while there are many and very cogent reasons in favor of it. As has been said, you may go on election day to the most degraded elector you can find at the polls, who would sell his vote for a dollar or a dram, and ask him what he would take for his right to vote and you couldn't purchase it with a kingdom."

Elbridge G. Lapham

She found it possible even to interview the President of the United States on this question. During a conversation with General Grant one day on Pennsylvania Avenue, she said, "Well, Mr. President, what are you going to do for woman suffrage?" In a hearty, pleasant way he answered, "I have already done more for women than any other President, I have recognized the right of 5,000 of them to be postmasters." There were always distinguished men to champion this cause, but the chief drawback was expressed in a letter from that staunch supporter, Hon. A.G. Riddle, in 1874: