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.[6]

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 more thorough legal examination, perhaps, than any other man. He prepared the following bill which was presented in the House of Representatives, April 25, 1892, by the Hon. Clarence D. Clark, member from Wyoming:

AN ACT TO PROTECT THE RIGHT OF CITIZENS OF THE UNITED STATES TO REGISTER AND TO VOTE FOR MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.

Whereas, The right to choose Members of the House of Representatives is vested by the Constitution in the people of the several States, without distinction of sex, but for want of proper legislation has hitherto been restricted to one-half of the people; for the purpose, therefore, of correcting this error and of giving effect to the Constitution:

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled: That at all elections hereafter held in the several States of this Union for members of the House of Representatives, the right of citizens of the United States, of either sex, above the age of twenty-one years, to register and to vote for such Representatives shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, or by any State, on account of sex.

The argument for the authority of Congress to pass this law is based partly on Article I of the Federal Constitution:

Section 2. The House of Representatives shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States; and the electors in each State shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of the State Legislature.

Section 4. The time, place and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof, but the Congress may at any time by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing Senators.[7]

Congress is here endowed unquestionably with the right to regulate the election of Representatives. James Madison, one of the framers of the Constitution, when asked the intention of this clause, in the Virginia convention of 1788, called to ratify this instrument, answered that the power was reserved to Congress because "should the people of any State by any means be deprived of the right of suffrage, it was judged proper that it should be remedied by the General Government." [Elliott's Debates, Vol. II, p. 266.]

Again Madison said in The Federalist (No. 54), in speaking of the enumeration for Representatives:

The Federal Constitution, therefore, decides with great propriety in the case of our slaves when it views them in the mixed character of persons and property. This is in fact their true character. It is the character bestowed on them by the laws under which they live; and it will not be denied that these are the proper criteria; because it is only under the pretext that the laws have transformed the negroes into subjects of property, that a place is disputed them in the computation of numbers; and it is admitted that, if the laws were to restore the rights which have been taken away, the negroes could no longer be refused an equal share of representation.

Therefore, as women are counted in the enumeration on which the Congressional apportionment is based, they are legally entitled to an equal share in direct representation.

In 1884 the case of Jasper Yarbrough and others who had been sentenced to hard labor in the penitentiary in Georgia for preventing a colored man from voting for a member of Congress, was brought to the U. S. Supreme Court by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The decision rendered March 2, virtually nullified that given by this court in the case of Mrs. Minor in 1875, as quoted above, which held that "the National Constitution has no voters," for this one declared: