have
improved upon this argument in its array of authorities, its keen logic
and its impressive plea for justice.[78]

The decision was adverse, the opinion of the court being delivered
March 29, 1875, by Chief-Justice Waite, himself a strong advocate of
the enfranchisement of women. The court admitted that "women are
persons and citizens," but found that the "National Constitution does
not define the privileges and immunities of citizens. The United States
has no voters of its own creation. The National Constitution does not
confer the right of suffrage upon any one, but the franchise must be
regulated by the States. The Fourteenth Amendment does not add to the
privileges and immunities of a citizen; it simply furnishes an
additional guarantee to protect those he already has. Before the
passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the States had the
power to disfranchise on account of race or color. These amendments,
ratified by the States, simply forbade that discrimination, but did not
forbid that against sex."

This is in direct contradiction to the decision of Chief-Justice Taney
in the Dred Scott case: "The words 'people of the United States' and
'citizens' are synonymous terms and mean the same thing; they describe
the _political body who, according to our republican institutions, form
the sovereignty and hold the power, and conduct the government through
their representatives_. They are what we familiarly call the sovereign
people, and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent
member of this sovereignty."

Although Miss Anthony and her co-workers still believed that, with a
true interpretation, women were voters under these amendments, they
were obliged to accept the decision of the highest court of appeal.
They then returned to the work of petitioning Congress for a Sixteenth
Amendment to the National Constitution which should prohibit
disfranchisement on account of sex. They continued also the original
plan of endeavoring to secure amendments to the constitutions of the
different States abolishing the word "male" as a qualification for
voting.[79] Bitterly disappointed at the decision of the Supreme Court,
it was nevertheless a source of pride to the women that they had made
their claim for representation in the government, carried it to the
highest tribunal and gone down in honorable defeat.

[Illustration HW: Yours truly Virginia L. Minor]

Miss Anthony never hesitated to ask the m