d nothing
for them, since they possessed everything else before. But if it
was meant to be a prohibition of the States to deny or abridge
their right to vote--which I fully believe--then it did the same
for all persons, white women included, born or naturalized in the
United States, for the amendment does not say all male persons of
African descent, but all persons are citizens.

The second section is simply a threat to punish the States, by
reducing their representation on the floor of Congress, should
they disfranchise any class of male citizens, and does not allow
of the inference that the States may disfranchise from any, or
all other causes; nor in anywise weaken or invalidate the
universal guarantee of the first section. What rule of law or
logic would allow the conclusion, that the prohibition of a crime
to one person, on severe pains and penalties, was a sanction of
that crime to any and all other persons save that one? But,
however much the doctors of the law may disagree, as to whether
people and citizens, in the original constitution, were one and
the same, or whether the privileges and immunities in the XIV.
Amendment include the right of suffrage, the question of the
right of the citizen to vote is settled forever by the XV.
Amendment:

The citizen's right to vote shall not be denied by the
United States, nor any State thereof; on account of race,
color, or previous condition of servitude.

How can the State deny or abridge the right of the citizen, if
the citizen does not possess it? There is no escape from the
conclusion, that to vote is the citizen's right, and the
specifications of race, color, or previous condition of servitude
can, in no way, impair the force of the emphatic assertion, that
the citizen's right to vote shall not be denied or abridged. The
political strategy of the second section of the XIV. Amendment,
failing to coerce the rebel States into enfranchising their
negroes, and the necessities of the Republican party demanding
their votes throughout the South, to insure the re-election of
Grant in 1872, that party was compelled to place this positive
prohibition of the XV. Amendment upon the United States and all
the States thereof.

If we once establish the false principle, that Unit