ollowing; also much more in detail in the
Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, p. 423, with her great
Constitutional Argument delivered in fifty of the postoffice districts
of the two counties before the trial, p. 977 and following.

The vote of Mrs. Virginia L. Minor was refused in St. Louis and she
brought suit against the inspectors of election. The case was decided
against her in the Circuit Court of the county and the Supreme Court
of Missouri. She then carried it to the Supreme Court of the United
States--_Minor vs. Happersett et al._ No. 182, October term, 1874. The
case was argued by her husband, Francis Minor, and after the lapse of
a quarter of a century it is still believed that his argument could
not have been excelled. The decision was delivered by Chief Justice
Waite, March 29, 1875, and was in brief: "The National Constitution
does not define the privileges and immunities of citizens. The United
States has no voters of its own creation. The Constitution does not
confer the right of suffrage upon any one, but the franchise must be
regulated by the States. The Fourteenth Amendment does not add to the
privileges and immunities of a citizen; it simply furnishes an
additional guarantee to protect those he already has. Before the
passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments the States had the
power to disfranchise on account of race or color. These Amendments,
ratified by the States, simply forbade that discrimination but did not
forbid that against sex."

The full text of argument and decision will be found in the History of
Woman Suffrage, Vol. II, p. 715 and following. In making this decision
the Court was compelled to reverse absolutely its own finding of three
years previous in what was known as the _Slaughter House Cases_ (16
Wallace) which said: "The negro having by the Fourteenth Amendment
been declared to be a citizen of the United States, _is thus made a
voter_ in every State in the Union."

The Fifteenth Amendment says: "The right of citizens of the United
States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or
by any State on account of race, color or previous condition of
servitude." No right is conferred by this amendment. It simply
guarantees protection for a right already existing in the citizen, and
the negro having been declared a citizen by the Fourteenth Amendment
is thus protected in his right to vote. But whence did he obtain this
right unless from the National Consti