act which shall secure us at once in
the exercise of this right."

Miss Anthony and other leaders officially asked the privilege of
addressing the Senate and House upon this momentous question. This was
refused, as contrary to precedent, but a hearing was granted before the
Senate Judiciary Committee,[63] Friday morning, January 12. Not only
the committee room but the corridors were crowded. Mrs. Stanton and
Mrs. Hooker spoke grandly,[64] and as usual Miss Anthony was chosen to
clinch the argument, which she did as follows:

You already have had logic and Constitution; I shall refer,
therefore, to existing facts. Prior to the war the plan of
extending suffrage was by State action, and it was our boast that
the National Constitution did not contain a word which could be
construed into a barrier against woman's right to vote. But at the
close of the war Congress lifted the question of suffrage for men
above State power, and by the amendments prohibited the deprivation
of suffrage to any citizen by any State. When the Fourteenth
Amendment was first proposed in Congress, we rushed to you with
petitions praying you not to insert the word "male" in the second
clause. Our best friends on the floor of Congress said to us: "The
insertion of that word puts up no new barrier against woman;
therefore do not embarrass us but wait until we get the negro
question settled." So the Fourteenth Amendment with the word "male"
was adopted.

Then, when the Fifteenth was presented without the word "sex," we
again petitioned and protested, and again our friends declared that
the absence of that word was no hindrance to us, and again begged
us to wait until they had finished the work of the war. "After we
have enfranchised the negro we will take up your case." Have they
done as they promised? When we come asking protection under the new
guarantees of the Constitution, the same men say to us that our
only plan is to wait the action of Congress and State legislatures
in the adoption of a Sixteenth Amendment which shall make null and
void the word "male" in the Fourteenth, and supply the want of the
word "sex" in the Fifteenth. Such tantalizing treatment imposed
upon yourselves or any class of men would have caused rebellion and
in the end a bloody revolution. It is only the close relations
existing between the sexes which have p