now waging will settle the question of the power of the United States over the rights of citizens.  By the civil war, the United States was proven to be stronger than the States.  It was proven we were a nation in so far that States were but parts of the whole.  The woman question, of which in this pending trial, Miss Anthony stands as the exponent, is to settle the question of United States power over the individual political rights of the people; it is a question of a monarchy or a republic.  The United States may usurp power, as did the States, but it has no rights in a sovereign capacity, not given it by the Constitution, or in other words, BY THE PEOPLE.  By the Preamble we have discovered who are its people, and for what purpose its Constitution was instituted.  Each and every amendment—­the first ten, the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth, are only parts of the grand whole, and must, each and every one, be examined in the light of the Preamble.

Each added amendment makes this change in the status of the People, in that it gives new guaranties of freedom, and removes all pretense of right from any existing usurped power.  People are slow to comprehend the change which has been effected by the decision as to State rights.  One, claims that only the negro, or persons of African descent, were affected by it.  Others claim, and among them, some prominent Republicans, that every civil right is by these amendments, thrown under national control.  Recently, two or three suits have come before the United States on this apprehension.  One of these, known as the Slaughter House Case, came up from New Orleans in the suit of certain persons against the State of Louisiana.  A permit had been given certain parties to erect sole buildings for slaughter, and in other ways control that entire business in the city of New Orleans for a certain number of years.  A suit upon it was appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, on the ground of the change in the power of States, by, and through the last three amendments, and on the supposition that all the civil power of the States had thus been destroyed.

The Court decided it had no jurisdiction, though in its decision it proclaimed the far-reaching character of these amendments.  In reference to the Thirteenth Amendment, the Court used this language: 

“We do not say that no one else but the negro can share in this protection.  Both the language and spirit of these articles are to have their full and just weight in any question of construction.  Undoubtedly while negro slavery alone was in the minds of the Congress which proposed the thirteenth article, it forbids any kind of slavery, now, or hereafter.  If Mexican peonage, or the Chinese cooley labor system shall develop slavery of the Mexican or Chinese race within our territory, this amendment may be safely trusted to make it void.”

This is the language used by the Supreme Court of the United States in reference to this thirteenth amendment; prohibiting any, all, and every kind of slavery, not only now, but in the hereafter, and this, although the decision, also acknowledges the fact that only African slavery was intended to be covered by this amendment.