ation.

[Footnote 1: _Bradwell v. Illinois_, 16 Wall., 130.]

The failure of these attempts to turn the Fourteenth Amendment to the
advantage of the woman suffrage movement in no wise checked the
movement or discouraged its leaders. They redoubled their efforts among
the separate states, and worked to such good purpose that the opposition
presently began to take on the aspect of a forlorn hope. "Votes for
Women" became an accomplished fact in many states, and appeared on the
verge of accomplishment in most of the others. Some states, however,
were still holding out when the leaders of the movement, impatient of
further delay and determined to coerce the recalcitrants, took the
matter into the national arena and procured the proposal and
ratification of an amendment to the Federal Constitution. The amendment
provides:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not
be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on
account of sex.

In other words, it adopts verbatim the phraseology of the Fifteenth
Amendment, merely substituting the word "sex" for the words "race,
color, or previous condition of servitude."

So much for the historical background of the so-called Susan B. Anthony
Amendment. It remains to consider just how far the amendment
constitutes an encroachment by the Federal Government on the powers of
the states.

In so far as it affects the qualifications of voters at national
elections (i.e., for president, senators, representatives) the
encroachment is more apparent than real. As has already been pointed
out, this is essentially a national question, and the Constitution
adopted the suffrage qualifications prescribed by state law, not as a
matter of principle, but for reasons of expediency and convenience.

In so far, however, as the amendment imposes woman suffrage on the
states in elections of state and local officials the situation is
entirely different. That staunch advocate of national power, Alexander
Hamilton, said in the _Federalist_:[1]

Suppose an article had been introduced into the Constitution,
empowering the United States to regulate the elections for the
particular states, would any man have hesitated to condemn it,
both as an unwarrantable transposition of power, and as a
premeditated engine for the destruction of the state
governments?

[Footnote 1: _Federalist_ LIX.]

What Hamilton scouted as impossible has been