Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to the male inhabitants of such State, being 21 years of age and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged except for participation in rebellion or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens 21 years of age in such State.
Up to this time there was no mention of suffrage in the Federal Constitution except the provision for electing members of the Lower House of Congress but now for the first time it actually discriminated against women by imposing a penalty on the States for preventing men from voting but leaving them entirely free to prohibit women. When even this penalty proved insufficient to protect negro men in their attempts to vote, Congress in 1869 submitted a 15th Amendment which was declared ratified the following year: "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."
Those who had been striving for two decades to obtain suffrage for women protested by every means in their power against this second discrimination. They implored and demanded that the word "sex" should be included in this amendment, which would have forever settled the question, just as the omission of the word "male" in the 14th Amendment would have settled it. The most of the men who had stood by them in their early struggles for the vote, when both were working together for the freedom of the slaves, now sacrificed them rather than imperil the political rights of the negro men. Some of the women themselves were persuaded to abandon their opposition to these amendments by the promise of the Republican leaders that as soon as they were safely intrenched in the constitution another should be placed there providing for woman suffrage. This promise they did not try to keep and it remained unfulfilled over fifty years. Miss Anthony and Mrs. Stanton were never for one moment deceived or silenced but in their paper, The Revolution, they opposed these amendments as long as they were pending.
Although the protests were in vain the women had learned that they might be relieved of the intolerable burden of having to obtain the suffrage State by State through permission of a majority of the individual voters. They had seen an entire class enfranchised through the quicker and easier way of amending the Federal Constitution and they determined to invoke this power in their own behalf. From the office of The Revolution in New York in the autumn of 1868 went out thousands of petitions to be signed and sent to Congress for the submission of an amendment to enfranchise women. Immediately after its assembling in December, 1868, Senator S. C. Pomeroy of Kansas introduced a resolution providing that "the basis of suffrage shall be that of citizenship and all native or naturalized citizens shall enjoy the same rights and privileges of the elective franchise but each State shall determine the age, etc." A few days later Representative George W. Julian of Indiana offered one in the House which declared: "The right of suffrage shall be based on citizenship ... and all citizens, native or naturalized, shall enjoy this right equally ... without any distinction or discrimination founded on sex." These were the first propositions ever made in Congress for woman suffrage by National Amendment.
In order to impress Congress with the seriousness of the demand, a woman's convention—the first of its kind to meet in the national capital—was held in Washington in January, 1869. It continued several days with large audiences and an array of eminent speakers, including Lucretia Mott, Clara Barton, Mrs. Stanton, a number of men and Miss Anthony, the moving spirit of the whole. In response Congress the next month submitted the 15th Amendment with even a stronger discrimination against women than the 14th contained.
The annual gatherings of the Equal Rights Association had been growing more and more stormy while the 14th and 15th Amendments were pending and the point was reached where any criticism of them made by the women was met by their advocates with hisses and denunciation. Finally at the meeting of May 12, 1869, in New York City, with Mrs. Stanton presiding, an attempt was made, led by Frederick Douglass, to force through a resolution of endorsement. Miss Anthony opposed it in an impassioned speech in which she said: "If you will not give the whole loaf of justice to the entire people, then give it first to women, to the most intelligent and capable of them at least.... If Mr. Douglass had noticed who applauded when he said black men first and white women afterwards, he would have seen that it was only the men."
The men succeeded in wresting the control of the convention from the women, who then decided that the time had come for them to have their own organization and endeavor to have the question of their enfranchisement considered entirely on its own merits. Three days later, at the Women's Bureau in East 23rd Street, where now the Metropolitan Life Building stands, with representatives present from nineteen States, the National Woman Suffrage Association was formed. Mrs. Stanton was made president, Miss Anthony chairman of the executive committee. One hundred women became members that evening and here was begun the organized work for an Amendment to the Federal Constitution to confer woman suffrage which was to continue without ceasing for half a century.[134] Its constitution declared the object of the association to be "to secure the ballot to the women of the Nation on equal terms with men." On June 1 its executive board sent a petition to Congress for "a 16th Amendment to be submitted to the Legislatures of the States for ratification which shall secure to all citizens the right of suffrage without distinction of sex."
Before the work for a 16th Amendment was fairly organized a number of members of Congress and constitutional lawyers took the ground that women were already enfranchised by the first clause of the 14th Amendment. At the convention held in St. Louis in the autumn of 1869, Francis Minor, a prominent lawyer of that city, presented this position so convincingly that the newly formed National Association conducted an active campaign in its favor for several years. In 1872 women tried to vote in a number of States and in a few of them were successful. Miss Anthony's vote was accepted in Rochester, N. Y., and later she was arrested, charged with a crime, tried by a Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court and fined $100. The inspectors in St. Louis refused to register Mrs. Francis Minor, she brought suit against them, and her husband carried the case to the Supreme Court of the United States (Minor vs. Happersett). He made an able and exhaustive argument but an adverse decision was rendered March 29, 1875.[135]