of freedom
without the ballot is mockery to the women of this republic, precisely
as New England's orator, Wendell Phillips, at the close of the late war
declared it to be to the newly emancipated black man? I admit that,
prior to the rebellion, by common consent, the right to enslave, as well
as to disfranchise both native and foreign born persons, was conceded to
the States. But the one grand principle settled by the war and the
reconstruction legislation, is the supremacy of the national government
to protect the citizens of the United States in their right to freedom
and the elective franchise, against any and every interference on the
part of the several States; and again and again have the American people
asserted the triumph of this principle by their overwhelming majorities
for Lincoln and Grant.

The one issue of the last two presidential elections was whether the
Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments should be considered the irrevocable
will of the people; and the decision was that they should be, and that
it is not only the right, but the duty of the national government to
protect all United States citizens in the full enjoyment and free
exercise of their privileges and immunities against the attempt of any
State to deny or abridge. In this conclusion Republicans and Democrats
alike agree. Senator Frelinghuysen said: "The heresy of State rights has
been completely buried in these amendments, and as amended, the
Constitution confers not only National but State citizenship upon all
persons born or naturalized within our limits."

The call for the National Republican Convention of 1872 said: "Equal
suffrage has been engrafted on the National Constitution; the privileges
and immunities of American citizenship have become a part of the organic
law." The National Republican platform said: "Complete liberty and exact
equality in the enjoyment of all civil, political and public rights,
should be established and maintained throughout the Union by efficient
and appropriate State and Federal legislation."

If that means anything it is that Congress should pass a law to protect
women in their equal political rights, and that the States should enact
laws making it the duty of inspectors of elections to receive the votes
of women on precisely the same conditions as they do those of men.

Judge Stanley Matthews, a substantial Ohio Democrat, in his preliminary
speech at the Cincinnati Liberal Convention, said most emphatica