pers, Library of Congress.

[260] To E. A. Studwell, Sept. 15, 1870, Radcliffe Women's Archives,
Cambridge, Massachusetts.

[261] To Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Oct. 15, 1871, Lucy E. Anthony
Collection

A NEW SLANT ON THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

While Susan was lecturing in the West, hoping to earn enough to pay
off _The Revolution's_ debt, she was pondering a new approach to the
enfranchisement of women which had been proposed by Francis Minor, a
St. Louis attorney and the husband of her friend, Virginia Minor.

Francis Minor contended that while the Constitution gave the states
the right to regulate suffrage, it nowhere gave them the power to
prohibit it, and he believed that this conclusion was strengthened by
the Fourteenth Amendment which provided that "no State shall make or
enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of
citizens of the United States."

To claim the right to vote under the Fourteenth Amendment made a great
appeal to both Susan and Elizabeth Stanton. Susan published Francis
Minor's arguments in _The Revolution_ and also his suggestion that
some woman test this interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment by
attempting to vote at the next election; while Mrs. Stanton used this
new approach as the basis of her speech before a Congressional
committee in 1870.

With such a fresh and thrilling project to develop, Susan looked
forward to the annual woman suffrage convention to be held in
Washington in January 1871. So heavy was her lecture schedule that she
reluctantly left preparations for the convention in the willing hands
of Isabella Beecher Hooker, who was confident she could improve on
Susan's meetings and guide the woman's rights movement into more
ladylike and aristocratic channels, winning over scores of men and
women who hitherto had remained aloof. At the last moment, however,
she appealed in desperation to Susan for help, and Susan, canceling
important lecture engagements, hurried to Washington. Here she found
the newspapers full of Victoria C. Woodhull and her Memorial to
Congress on woman suffrage, which had been presented by Senator Harris
of Louisiana and Congressman Julian of Indiana. Capitalizing on the
new approach to woman suffrage, Mrs. Woodhull based her arguments on
the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, praying Congress to enact
legislation to enable women to exercise the right to vote vested in
them by these amendments. A hearing was scheduled bef