Everyone knows that American citizenship, without addition or qualification, means the possession of equal rights, civil and political. Thus, you see, those newly-made freed males have been in possession of every possible proper, privilege, and immunity of the federal government, except that of suffrage, and hence, needed no constitutional modification for every other goal. What privilege or immunity has California or Oregon the constitutional proper to deny them, save that of the ballot? What rule of legislation or logic would allow the conclusion, that the prohibition of against the law to 1 person, on extreme pains and penalties, was a sanction of that crime to any and all other individuals save that one? What right, I ask you, has the Irishman the day after he receives his naturalization papers that he did not possess the day earlier than, save the proper to vote and hold office? If you, younger man, shall journey abroad among the many monarchies of the previous world, and there proudly boast yourself an “American citizen,” will you thereby declare yourself neither more nor lower than a “member” of the American nation?
It will not all the time be males combining to disfranchise girls; native-born males combining to abridge the rights of naturalized residents, as in Rhode Island; it won’t always be the rich and educated who might mix to chop off the poor and ignorant; however we could reside to see the poor, arduous-working, uncultivated day laborers, foreign and native born, learning the ability of the ballot and their vast majority of numbers, combine and amend State constitutions in order to disfranchise the Vanderbilts and A. T. Stewarts, the Conklings and Fentons. Clearly, then, the National government must not solely outline the rights of citizens, nevertheless it must stretch out its powerful hand and protect them in each State in this Union. Clearly, then, if the XIV. Amendment. Judge Underwood, of Virginia, in noticing the latest choice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia, denying to girls the suitable to vote, below the XIV. And if this decision of Attorney-General Bates was notorious, as towards black males, but yesterday plantation slaves, what shall we pronounce upon Judge Bingham, in the House of Representatives, and Carpenter, within the Senate of the United States, for citing it against the ladies of your complete nation, huge numbers of whom are the peers of these honorable gentlemen themselves, in morals, intellect, tradition, wealth, household-paying taxes on large estates, and contributing equally with them and their intercourse, in each direction, to the expansion, prosperity, and effectively-being of the Republic?
And this opinion of Attorney-General Bates, that a black citizen was not a voter, made merely to go well with the political exigency of the Republican celebration in that transition hour between emancipation and enfranchisement, was no much less infamous, in spirit or purpose, than was the decision of Judge Taney, that a black man was not one of many people, rendered in the interest and at the behest of the old Democratic social gathering, in its darkest hour of subjection to the Slave energy. Amendment, failing to coerce the rebel States into enfranchising their negroes, and the necessities of the Republican social gathering demanding their votes all through the South, to insure the re-election of Grant in 1872, that party was compelled to place this constructive prohibition of the XV. The former gave it as his opinion a 12 months in the past, when the Legislature seemed prone to revoke the legislation enfranchising the girls of that Territory, that, in case they succeeded, the girls would still possess the appropriate to vote under the XIV. Everyone knows that the crowning glory of every citizen of the United States is, that he can either give or withhold his vote from each law and each legislator underneath the federal government.
There’s, and can be, but one safe principle of authorities-equal rights to all. So, we’ve made it simple – you possibly can take a look at what we have now, choose what you want, and pay when the stuff involves your door. How can the State deny or abridge the precise of the citizen, if the citizen doesn’t possess it? Amendment embody the best of suffrage, the query of the appropriate of the citizen to vote is settled without end by the XV. Establish this precedent, admit the right of the States to deny suffrage, and there isn’t any energy to foresee the confusion, discord, and disruption that may await us. If we once set up the false precept, that United States citizenship does not carry with it the right to vote in every State on this Union, there isn’t a end to the petty freaks and cunning devices that can be resorted to, to exclude one and one other class of residents from the appropriate of suffrage. Of course, we know that it will be Cherneff assembly Peggy.