was combating the argument that this right was conferred on
all citizens, and therefore upon women as well as men.(!)

In opposition to that idea it was said the Constitution adopts,
as the qualification for voters for members of Congress, that
which prevails in the State where the voting is to be done;
therefore, said the opinion, the right is not definitely
conferred on any person or class of persons by the Constitution
alone, because you have to look to the law of the State for the
description of the class. But the Court did not intend to say
that, when the class or the person is thus ascertained, his right
to vote for a member of Congress was not _fundamentally based
upon the Constitution which created the office of member of
Congress_, and declared it should be elective, and pointed to the
means of ascertaining who should be electors.

The Fifteenth Amendment of the Constitution, by its limitation of
the power of the States in the exercise of their right to
prescribe the qualifications of voters in their own elections,
and by its limitation of the power of the United States over that
subject, clearly shows that the right of suffrage was considered
to be of supreme importance to the National Government and _was
not intended to be left within the exclusive control of the
States_.

In such cases this Fifteenth Article of amendment does _proprio
vigore_ [by its own force] substantially _confer on the negro the
right to vote_, and Congress has the power to protect and enforce
that right. In the case of _United States vs. Happersett_, so
much relied on by counsel, this Court said, in regard to the
Fifteenth Amendment, that it has invested the citizens of the
United States with a new constitutional right which is within the
protecting power of Congress. That right is an exemption from
discrimination in the exercise of the elective franchise on
account of race, color or previous condition of servitude.

This new constitutional right was mainly designed for [male]
citizens of African descent. The principle, however, that the
protection of the exercise of this right _is within the power of
Congress_, is as necessary to the right of other citizens to vote
in general as to the right to be protected against
discrimination.

This legal hair-