Let us look at the Preamble of that instrument.  It reads thus: 

“We, the PEOPLE of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Here we have a statement as to who established the Constitution.  It was not the thirteen States as States, not the government in its sovereign capacity, but the people:  not the white people alone, not the native born alone, not the male people alone, but the people in a collective sense.  Justice was not established by this Constitution if one half the people were left out from its provisions, neither was the common welfare considered unless all people in common, equally shared the benefits of the Constitution.  And moreover, the posterity of the people of that time are female as well as male.  Therefore not only by our knowledge of the course of argument taken by the framers of the Constitution, not only by our knowledge that women as well as men helped elect delegates to that convention,—­not only from the original principles proclaimed in the Declaration, but also by and through this Preamble to the Constitution do we find woman equally with man, recognized as part of the governing power.

Although women do not rest their claim to self-government upon any human instrument, it is well to show that even in the Declaration, and the original Constitution, the “Constitution as it was,” the rights of all people were most emphatically and truly recognized.

Judge Story in his commentaries upon the Constitution, says, “The importance of examining the Preamble for the purpose of expounding the language of a Statute has always been felt and universally conceded in all judicial proceedings.”

          Com. on Const., 1, 443-4.

Chief Justice Jay regarded the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States as an authoritative guide to a correct interpretation of that instrument.

          2 Dallas, 414.

Coke says, “The Preamble of a Statute is a good means to find out the meaning of the Statute, and as it were, a key to the understanding thereof.”

Blackstone lays it down as a fundamental principle, that we “must argue from generals down to particulars.”  Here is good legal authority.  I have cited men whose opinions are accepted.  We have thus argued down from the generals of the Declaration and Constitution to the particulars which appertain to each individual alike, and what is the result?  Freedom for all; equal rights.  We have read the Preamble of the Constitution, and quoted authorities to show in what light it must be read in reference to its following provisions.  By its Preamble, the Constitution is shown to make no distinction in favor of sex.  From secret debates of the convention which framed it, we find the motives and the arguments of its framers.