previous condition of servitude."

Section 2. "The Congress shall have power to enforce this article by
appropriate legislation."

By reference to the provisions of the original Constitution, here
recited, it appears that prior to the thirteenth, if not until the
fourteenth, amendment, the whole power over the elective franchise, even
in the choice of Federal officers, rested with the States. The
Constitution contains no definition of the term "citizen," either of the
United States, or of the several States, but contents itself with the
provision that "the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the
privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States." The States
were thus left free to place such restrictions and limitations upon the
"privileges and immunities" of citizens as they saw fit, so far as is
consistent with a republican form of government, subject only to the
condition that no State could place restrictions upon the "privileges or
immunities" of the citizens of any other State, which would not be
applicable to its own citizens under like circumstances.

It will be seen, therefore, that the whole subject, as to what should
constitute the "privileges and immunities" of the citizen being left to
the States, no question, such as we now present, could have arisen under
the original constitution of the United States.

But now, by the fourteenth amendment, the United States have not only
declared what constitutes citizenship, both in the United States and in
the several States, securing the rights of citizens to "all persons born
or naturalized in the United States;" but have absolutely prohibited the
States from making or enforcing "_any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States_."

By virtue of this provision, I insist that the act of Miss Anthony in
voting was lawful.

It has never, since the adoption of the fourteenth amendment, been
questioned, and cannot be questioned, that women as well as men are
included in the terms of its first section, nor that the same
"privileges and immunities of citizens" are equally secured to both.

What, then, are the "privileges and immunities of citizens of the United
States" which are secured against such abridgement, by this section? I
claim that these terms not only include the right of voting for public
officers, but that they include that right as pre-eminently the most
important of all the privileges and