people?" So women are a much larger and more important part of
"the people."

The right to vote shall not be denied on account of race, color,
or previous condition of servitude, was not used to make the
right sacred in male negroes alone, while the rights of all
others were left to political caprice, or to be controlled
hereafter by these same colored males mayhap; but this amendment
was aimed fully at the mischief of the second section of the XIV.
Amendment, and there its force is expended. It fossilizes the
second section of that amendment. While the broad language of its
first section secures, beyond the abridging hand of the States,
the great rights it secures--rights which Congress can not
abridge on any pretext, for it can exercise no power not granted,
and the Constitution confers on it no power to abridge the
"privileges or immunities of the citizen" in any instance.

And here I rest this solemn argument. I have brought this cause
of woman, and of man as well--of the race--into the presence of
the court, surrounded by the severe atmosphere of the law, beyond
the reach of chronic ribaldry, and into the region of argument,
where it must be estimated by its legal merits. I have applied to
it the rules of law. I have pushed away the dead exfoliations
that cumber the path; and have gone to the foundations, to the
ever fresh and preserving spirit of the rules of the common law,
and have sought to apply them with candor....

FRANCIS MILLER following Mr. Riddle, said: May it please the
Court; ... Clearly the XV. Amendment does not confer any right of
suffrage. Clearly, prior to the XIV. Amendment, colored men had
no right to vote. The XIII. Amendment, which emancipated them,
did not give them the right of suffrage, because the States had
the constitutional power to say they should not vote. But between
the XIII. and XV. Amendments, in some way or other, the colored
man came into possession of this right of suffrage; and the
question is, where did he get it? If he did not get it under the
XIV. Amendment, by what possible authority are they voting by
hundreds of thousands throughout this country? The legislative
and constitutional provisions that prohibit their voting still
remain unrepealed upon the statute books of many of the States,