“Every man of the commonalty, except infants, insane persons and criminals, is of common right and the law of God, a freeman and entitled to the free enjoyment of liberty.  That liberty or freedom consists in having an actual share in the appointment of those who are to frame the laws, and who are to be the guardians of every man’s life, property and peace.  For the all of one man is as dear to him as the all of another; and the poor man has an equal right, but more need to have representatives in the Legislature than the rich one.  That they who have no voice or vote in the electing of representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to those who have votes and their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom other men have set over us, and to be subject to laws made by the representatives of others, without having had representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.”

Suppose I read it with the feminine gender: 

“That women who have no voice nor vote in the electing of representatives, do not enjoy liberty, but are absolutely enslaved to men who have votes and their representatives; for to be enslaved is to have governors whom men have set over us, and to be subject to the laws made by the representatives of men, without having representatives of our own to give consent in our behalf.”

And yet one more authority; that of Thomas Paine, than whom not one of the Revolutionary patriots more ably vindicated the principles upon which our government is founded: 

“The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which other rights are protected.  To take away this right is to reduce man to a state of slavery; for slavery consists in being subject to the will of another; and he that has not a vote in the election of representatives is in this case.  The proposal, therefore, to disfranchise any class of men is as criminal as the proposal to take away property.”

Is anything further needed to prove woman’s condition of servitude sufficiently orthodox to entitle her to the guaranties of the fifteenth amendment?

Is there a man who will not agree with me, that to talk of freedom without the ballot, is mockery—­is slavery—­to the women of this Republic, precisely as New England’s orator Wendell Phillips, at the close of the late war, declared it to be to the newly emancipated black men?

I admit that prior to the rebellion, by common consent, the right to enslave, as well as to disfranchise both native and foreign born citizens, was conceded to the States.  But the one grand principle, settled by the war and the reconstruction legislation, is the supremacy of national power to protect the citizens of the United States in their right to freedom and the elective franchise, against any and every interference on the part of the several States.  And again and again, have the American people asserted the triumph of this principle, by their overwhelming majorities for Lincoln and Grant.