lly:
"The constitutional amendments have established the political equality
of all citizens before the law."

President Grant, in his message to Congress, March 30, 1870, on the
adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment, said, "A measure which makes at
once four millions of people voters, is indeed a measure of greater
importance than any act of the kind from the foundation of the
government to the present time."

How could _four_ million negroes be made voters if two million out of
the four were women?

The California Republican platform of 1872 said:

Among the many practical and substantial triumphs of the principles
achieved by the Republican party during the past twelve years, it
enumerates with pride and pleasure the prohibiting of any State
from abridging the privileges of any citizen of the republic, the
declaring the civil and political equality of every citizen, and
the establishing all these principles in the Federal Constitution,
by amendments thereto, as the permanent law.

Benjamin F. Butler, in a recent letter to me, said: "I do not believe
anybody in Congress doubts that the Constitution authorizes the right of
women to vote, precisely as it authorizes trial by jury and many other
like rights guaranteed to citizens."

It is upon this just interpretation of the United States Constitution
that our National Woman Suffrage Association, which celebrates the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the woman's rights movement next May in New
York City, has based all its arguments and action since the passage of
these amendments. We no longer petition legislature or Congress to give
us the right to vote, but appeal to women everywhere to exercise their
too long neglected "citizen's right." We appeal to the inspectors of
election to receive the votes of all United States citizens, as it is
their duty to do. We appeal to United States commissioners and marshals
to arrest, as is their duty, the inspectors who reject the votes of
United States citizens, and leave alone those who perform their duties
and accept these votes. We ask the juries to return verdicts of "not
guilty" in the cases of law-abiding United States citizens who cast
their votes, and inspectors of election who receive and count them.

We ask the judges to render unprejudiced opinions of the law, and
whereever there is room for doubt to give the benefit to the side of
liberty and equal rights for women, remembering that, as S