Amendment XIV had settled the status of citizenship.  “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”  Now came the next measure to protect the citizen’s right to vote, which proposed to guard against any discrimination on account of race, of color, of previous condition, but by the omission of the one word “sex,” all women still were left disfranchised.  At this time the leading Republicans believed in universal suffrage.  Garrison, Phillips, Greeley, Sumner, Tilton, Wilson, Wade, Stevens, Brown, Julian and many others had publicly declared their belief in the right of woman to the ballot, but now driven by party necessity, they repudiated their principles, and deferred the day of her freedom for generations.  Yet it was not forgotten still carefully to include her in the basis of representation, fully to make her amenable to the laws, and strictly to hold her to her share of taxation.  In reference to this The Revolution said: 

The proposed amendment for “manhood suffrage” not only rouses woman’s prejudices against the negro, but on the other hand his contempt and hostility toward her....  Just as the Democratic cry of a “white man’s government” created the antagonism between the Irishman and the negro, which culminated in the New York riots of 1863, so the Republican cry of “manhood suffrage” creates an antagonism between black men and all women, which will culminate in fearful outrages on womanhood, especially in the Southern States.  While we fully appreciate the philosophy that every extension of rights prepares the way for greater freedom to new classes and hastens the day of liberty to all, we at the same time see that the immediate effect of class enfranchisement is greater tyranny and abuse of those who have no voice in the government.  Had Irishmen been disfranchised in this country, they would have made common cause with the negro in fighting for his rights, but when exalted above him, they proved his worst enemies.  The negro will be the victim for generations to come, of the prejudice engendered by making this a white man’s government.  While the enfranchisement of each new class of white men was a step toward his ultimate freedom, it increased his degradation in the transition period, and he touched the depths when all men but himself were crowned with citizenship.

Just so with woman, while the enfranchisement of all men hastens the day for justice to her, it makes her degradation more complete in the transition state.  It is to escape the added tyranny, persecutions, insults, horrors which will surely be visited upon her in the establishment of an aristocracy of sex in this republic, that we raise our indignant protest against this wholesale desecration of woman in the pending amendment, and earnestly pray the rulers of this nation to consider the degradation of disfranchisement.  Our Republican leaders