Since, therefore, all citizens have the RIGHT TO VOTE under this act or participation by the Legislatures of the several States, all State Laws which abridge the right are inoperative, null and void, and the exclusion of women who are citizens from the right to vote, was repealed and must stand repealed until the Legislatures of the several States shall again pass an act positively excluding her. If we again examine Art XV. we shall see that this right shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or any State on account of RACE, COLOR, or PREVIOUS CONDITION OF SERVITUDE; it is left to be inferred that it might be on account of SEX, but this denial has not yet been attempted, nor could it be accomplished if it were, for here the XIV. Amendment again comes to our relief saying, “That no State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States.”
Again, the Constitution is assuredly a contract between States and citizens, and Sec. 10, Art I., provides that no State shall pass any law impairing contracts.
Art I., Sec. 4,¶ I, provides that:
“The times, places 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,” while the judiciary of the United States has acquired complete jurisdiction over this matter by the authority of Art III., Sec. 2,¶ 1, which provides that: “The judicial power shall extend to all cases in law and equity arising under this Constitution, the laws of the United States, and treaties made, or which shall be made, under their authority.”
And for all these reasons, the State Legislatures having, by the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, abrogated all previously existing, conflicting laws on the subject of suffrage, are now forever precluded by the Fourteenth Amendment from re-establishing any restriction to apply to women, whom the authorities of the United States, in their support of the Constitution, are in duty bound to protect in their right to vote.
Now what was the fruit of the late war, which threw the entire nation into such convulsive throes, unless it is found in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Constitution, namely: that grand change in the fundamental laws which declares who are citizens and what are their rights, privileges and immunities, which cannot be abridged? Will any one pretend that these great enactments can be understood to mean less than the language thereof plainly conveys? Or will any one claim that the old, absurd State laws, which were sunk in oblivion by the adoption of these amendments to the Constitution, are still in force? Who will dare to say, in the face of these plainly worded amendments, which have such an unmistakable meaning, that the women of America shall not enjoy their emancipation as well as the black slave?
Women have the right to vote! It is the duty of the Government to see that they are not denied the right to exercise it, and, to secure the necessary action of Congress in the premises, I did, on the 21st day of December, 1870, memorialize Congress as recorded in the Congressional Globe, December 22, 1870.
In the Senate:
Mr. Harris presented the memorial of Victoria C. Woodhull, praying for the passage of such laws as may be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the right vested by the Constitution in the citizens of the United States to vote without regard to sex; which was referred to the Committee on the Judiciary and ordered to be printed.
In the House: