he petition of the ten thousand foreign-born
citizens of Rhode Island who were denied equality of rights in
Rhode Island simply because of their foreign birth; and in that
report held that the amendments were enacted and attached to the
Constitution simply for men of color, and therefore that their
provisions could not be so construed as to bring within their
purview the men of foreign birth in Rhode Island. Then the House
Committee on the Judiciary, with Judge Bingham, of Ohio, at its
head, made a similar report upon our petitions, holding that
because those amendments were made essentially with the black men
in view, therefore their provisions could not be extended to the
women citizens of this country or to any class except men citizens
of color.

I voted in the State of New York in 1872 under the construction
of those amendments, which we felt to be the true one, that all
persons born in the United States, or any State thereof, and under
the jurisdiction of the United States, were citizens, and entitled
to equality of rights, and that no State could deprive them of
their equality of rights. I found three young men, inspectors of
election, who were simple enough to read the Constitution and
understand it in accordance with what was the letter and what
should have been its spirit. Then, as you will remember, I was
prosecuted by the officers of the Federal court, And the cause was
carried through the different courts in the State of New York,
in the northern district, and at last I was brought to trial at
Canandaigua.

When Mr. Justice Hunt was brought from the supreme bench to sit
upon that trial, he wrested my case from the hands of the jury
altogether, after having listened three days to testimony, and
brought in a verdict himself of guilty, denying to my counsel even
the poor privilege of having the jury polled. Through all that
trial when I, as a citizen of the United States, as a citizen of
the State of New York and city of Rochester, as a person who had
done something at least that might have entitled her to a voice in
speaking for herself and for her class, in all that trial I not
only was denied my right to testify as to whether I voted or not,
but there was not one single woman's voice to be heard nor to be
considered, except as witnesses, save when it came to t