with petitions no longer. Here is our
declaration and pledge, issued a year ago this day, signed
already by thousands of women, and eager names are coming every
day. (Mrs. H. read the pledge and exhibited the great autograph
book.)

We did hope to present this to Congress itself in the Senate
Chamber to-day. We believe that women, being unrepresented in
that body, are entitled to appear there by their memorialists in
person, and we have so asked. But Congress has referred us to
you, and you have declined even to submit our proposition
officially to that body. You find no precedent for this, you
say--forgetting, gentlemen, that history makes its own
precedents. The men of America made theirs in 1776; the women of
America are making theirs to-day, and may God prosper the right.

Mrs. STANTON said: _Gentlemen of the Judiciary Committee_: We
appear before you at this time to call your attention to our
memorial asking for a "declaratory act" that shall protect women
in the exercise of the right of suffrage. Benjamin F. Butler,
early in the session, presented a bill in the House to this
effect that may soon, in the order of legislation, come before
you for consideration in the Senate of the United States. As you
well know, women are demanding their rights as citizens to-day
under the original Constitution, believing that its letter and
spirit, fairly interpreted, guarantee the blessings of liberty to
every citizen under our flag. But more especially do we claim
that our title deed to the elective franchise is clearly given in
the XIV. and XV. Amendments. Therein for the first time, the
Constitution defines the term citizen, and, in harmony with our
best lexicographers, declares a citizen to be a person possessed
of the right to vote. In the last year the question of woman's
political status has been raised from one of vague generalities
to one of constitutional law.

The Woodhull memorial, and the able arguments sustaining it made
by Mr. Riddle and Mrs. Woodhull herself, and the exhaustive
minority report of Messrs. Butler and Loughridge, have been
before the nation for one year, and yet remain unanswered; in
fact, the opinions of many of our most learned judges and lawyers
multiplying on all sides, sustain the positions taken in the
"