equality in the enjoyment of all civil,
political and public rights, should be established and maintained
throughout the Union by efficient and appropriate State and federal
legislation."

If that means anything, it is that Congress should pass a law to require
the States to protect women in their equal political rights, and that
the States should enact laws making it the duty of inspectors of
elections to receive women's votes on precisely the same conditions they
do those of men.

Judge Stanley Mathews--a substantial Ohio democrat--in his preliminary
speech at the Cincinnati convention, said most emphatically:

"The constitutional amendments have established the political
equality of all citizens before the law."

President Grant, in his message to Congress March 30th, 1870, on the
adoption of the fifteenth amendment, said:

"A measure which makes at once four millions of people voters, is
indeed a measure of greater importance than any act of the kind
from the foundation of the Government to the present time."

How could _four_ millions negroes be made voters if _two_ millions were
not included?

The California State Republican convention said:

"Among the many practical and substantial triumphs of the
principles achieved by the Republican party during the past twelve
years, it enumerated with pride and pleasure, the prohibiting of
any State from abridging the privileges of any citizen of the
Republic, the declaring the civil and political equality of every
citizen, and the establishing all these principles in the federal
constitution by amendments thereto, as the permanent law."

Benjamin F. Butler, in a recent letter to me, said:

"I do not believe anybody in Congress doubts that the Constitution
authorizes the right of women to vote, precisely as it authorizes
trial by jury and many other like rights guaranteed to citizens."

And again, General Butler said:

"It is not laws we want; there are plenty of laws--good enough,
too. Administrative ability to enforce law is the great want of the
age, in this country especially. Everybody talks of law, law. If
everybody would insist on the enforcement of law, the government
would stand on a firmer basis, and questions would settle
themselves."

And it is upon this just interpretation of the United States
Constitution that our National Wom