In all the penalties and burdens of the government, (except the military,) women are reckoned as citizens, equally with men.  Also, in all the privileges and immunities, save those of the jury box and ballot box, the two fundamental privileges on which rest all the others.  The United States government not only taxes, fines, imprisons and hangs women, but it allows them to pre-empt lands, register ships, and take out passport and naturalization papers.  Not only does the law permit single women and widows to the right of naturalization, but Section 2 says:  “A married woman may be naturalized without the concurrence of her husband.” (I wonder the fathers were not afraid of creating discord in the families of foreigners); and again:  “When an alien, having complied with the law, and declared his intention to become a citizen, dies before he is actually naturalized, his widow and children shall be considered citizens, entitled to all rights and privileges as such, on taking the required oath.”  If a foreign born woman by becoming a naturalized citizen, is entitled to all the rights and privileges of citizenship, is not a native born woman, by her national citizenship, possessed of equal rights and privileges?

The question of the masculine pronouns, yes and nouns, too, has been settled by the United States Supreme Court, in the Case of Silver versus Ladd, December, 1868, in a decision as to whether a woman was entitled to lands, under the Oregon donation law of 1850.  Elizabeth Cruthers, a widow, settled upon a claim, and received patents.  She died, and her son was heir.  He died.  Then Messrs. Ladd & Nott took possession, under the general pre-emption law, December, 1861.  The administrator, E.P.  Silver, applied for a writ of ejectment at the land office in Oregon City.  Both the Register and Receiver decided that an unmarried woman could not hold land under that law.  The Commissioner of the General Land Office, at Washington, and the Secretary of the Interior, also gave adverse opinions.  Here patents were issued to Ladd & Nott, and duly recorded.  Then a suit was brought to set aside Ladd’s patent, and it was carried through all the State Courts and the Supreme Court of Oregon, each, in turn, giving adverse decisions.  At last, in the United States Supreme Court, Associate Justice Miller reversed the decisions of all the lower tribunals, and ordered the land back to the heirs of Mrs. Cruthers.  The Court said: 

“In construing a benevolent statute of the government, made for the benefit of its own citizens, inviting and encouraging them to settle on its distant public lands, the words ‘single man,’ and ‘unmarried man’ may, especially if aided by the context and other parts of the statute, be taken in a generic sense.  Held, accordingly, that the Fourth Section of the Act of Congress, of September 27th, 1850, granting by way of donation, lands in Oregon Territory, to every white settler or occupant, American half-breed Indians included, embraced within the term single man an unmarried woman.”

And the attorney, who carried this question to its final success, is now the United States senator elect from Oregon, Hon. J.H.  Mitchell, in whom the cause of equal rights to women has an added power on the floor of the United States Senate.