actly as it was
claimed we were prior to the recent war. We thought the war
established the fact that we were a nation; that the controversy
which led up to the war had been decided in favor of the
sovereignty of the nation. Under our republican form of
government the sovereignty is lodged in the masses of the people.
If, therefore, it is not in the man who votes by virtue of his
membership in the association of the people known as the United
States, then there is no sovereignty there....

As the law now is, in the Federal Constitution there must always
have been such a voter of the United States, for in the second
clause of the first article it is provided that there shall be a
House of Representatives "elected by the people in the States."
Where that provision is made it says that the electors shall have
the qualifications of the electors in the States. But it does not
say that they shall be the same individuals; it does not say that
they are to act in the same capacity. They might vary in
different portions of the country, in different States; but
nevertheless, in giving to the people of the States the right to
specify the qualifications which should belong to the electors of
the United States, the Constitution did not give up the power to
create electors itself....

Take the Fifteenth Amendment. There is the first instance in the
entire Constitution where we find the franchise declared to be a
"right," and in specific terms alluded to as such. And there it
is provided that a right already recognized as existing shall not
be abridged by the United States or by the States--a right
already _existing_, not _established_. And by virtue of that
amendment and the provision that this existing right shall not be
denied or abridged on account of "race, color or previous
condition of servitude," either by the United States or by the
States, the _national existence_ of the voter is established....

I think our great difficulty about this is that women perhaps do
not, to the extent that they should, place their cause upon the
platform that it is a right; that to uphold that it is not a
right is a wrong greater than any which has been perpetrated in
the past; that freedom to half the human race is a glorious
achievement which it still remains fo