. The Constitution confers, by express grant upon
Congress, "exclusive jurisdiction in all cases whatsoever," for
the purposes of government. Under this grant Congress, by the
first section of the act of January 8, 1867, enacted that each
and every male person of the age of twenty-one years, who shall
have been born or naturalized in the United States, who shall
have resided in the said District for the period of one year, and
three months in the ward or election precinct in which he shall
offer to vote, shall be entitled to the elective franchise, and
shall be deemed an elector, and entitled to vote. This act, you
perceive, recognizes the pre-existing right of all persons, and
excludes women only by the use of the word male, unless, as
Hamilton says, "silence on that point is not abolition."

It is fitting that here, under the shadow of the national
capitol, under the control of the Federal Government, where the
black man was first emancipated and enfranchised, that the
experiment of a true republicanism should be tried, by securing
to woman, too, the rights of an American citizen.

SUSAN B. ANTHONY addressed the Committee as follows: We are here
for the express purpose of urging you to present in your
respective bodies, a bill to strike the word "male" from the
District of Columbia Suffrage Act, and thereby enfranchise the
women of the District. We ask that the experiment of woman
suffrage shall be tried here, under the eye of Congress, as was
that of negro suffrage. Indeed, the District has ever been made
the experimental ground of each step toward freedom. The
auction-block was here first banished, slavery was here first
abolished, the newly-made freemen were here first enfranchised;
and we now ask that the women shall here be first admitted to the
ballot. There was great fear and trepidation all over the country
as to the results of negro suffrage, and you deemed it right and
safe to inaugurate the experiment here; and you all remember that
three days discussion in 1866 on Senator Cowan's proposition to
amend the Senate bill by striking out the word "male;" the able
speeches of Cowan, Anthony, Gratz Brown, Wade, and the Senate's
nine votes for the amendment. Well do I remember with what
anxious hope we watched the daily reports of that d