the United States to protect citizens in the
several States against higher or different qualifications for electors
for representatives in Congress than for members of the Assembly, then
it must be equally imperative for the national government to interfere
with the States, and forbid them from arbitrarily cutting off the right
of one-half the people to become electors altogether. Section 4 says:

The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and
representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the
legislature thereof; but Congress may at any time, by law, make or
alter such regulations, except as to the places of choosing
senators.

Here is conceded to the States only the power to prescribe times, places
and manner of holding the elections; and even with these Congress may
interfere in all excepting the mere place of choosing senators. Thus,
you see, there is not the slightest permission for the States to
discriminate against the right of any class of citizens to vote. Surely,
to regulate can not be to annihilate; to qualify can not be wholly to
deprive. To this principle every true Democrat and Republican said amen,
when applied to black men by Senator Sumner in his great speeches from
1865 to 1869 for equal rights to all; and when, in 1871, I asked that
senator to declare the power of the United States Constitution to
protect women in their right to vote--as he had done for black men--he
handed me a copy of all his speeches during that reconstruction period,
and said:

Put "sex" where I have "race" or "color," and you have here the
best and strongest argument I can make for woman. There is not a
doubt but women have the constitutional right to vote, and I will
never vote for a Sixteenth Amendment to guarantee it to them. I
voted for both the Fourteenth and Fifteenth under protest; would
never have done it but for the pressing emergency of that hour;
would have insisted that the power of the original Constitution to
protect all citizens in the equal enjoyment of their rights should
have been vindicated through the courts. But the newly-made
freedmen had neither the intelligence, wealth nor time to await
that slow process. Women do possess all these in an eminent degree,
and I insist that they shall appeal to the courts, and through them
establish the powers of our American magna charta to protect every