will be gratified with the
profound respect which the gentleman from Texas has expressed for
the Constitution of the country. The last distinguished act with
which he was connected was its attempted overthrow; and a man who
was engaged in an enterprise of that kind can fight a class to
whom his mother belonged. I desire to know whether a woman is a
citizen of the United States or an outcast without any political
rights whatever....

What is the proposition presented by the gentleman from Ohio?
That we will constitute a committee to whom shall be referred all
petitions presented by women. Is not the right of petition a
constitutional right? Has not woman, in this country at least,
risen above the horizon of servitude, discredit and disgrace, and
has she not a right, representing as she does in many instances
great questions of property, to present her appeals to this
National Council and have them judiciously considered? I think it
is due to our wives, daughters, mothers and sisters to afford
them an avenue through which they can legitimately and judicially
reach the ear of this great nation.

Moved by Mr. Reagan's attacks, Mr. Keifer made a strong plea for the
rights of women, which deserves a place in history, saying in part:

We must remember that we stand here committed in a large sense to
the matter of woman suffrage. In the Territories of Wyoming and
Utah for fifteen years past women have had the right to vote on
all questions which men can vote upon; and the Congress of the
United States has stood by without disapproving the legislative
acts of those Territories. And we now have before us a law passed
at the last session of the Legislature of Washington, giving to
its women the right to vote. We have not passed upon the question
one way or the other, but we have the right to pass upon it.
This, I think, seems to dispose sufficiently of the question of
constitutional legislative power without trampling upon the toes
of any State-rights man.

The right of petition belongs to all persons within the limits of
our republic, and with the right of petition goes the right on
the part of the Congress through constitutional means to grant
relief. Do gentlemen claim it is unconstitutional to amend the
Constitution? I know that claim was made at one