ng Secretary_.
_Centennial Headquarters_,
1,431 Chestnut street, _Philadelphia_, June 10, 1876.

_To the President and Members of the National Democratic
Convention assembled at St. Louis, June 27, 1876_:

GENTLEMEN: In reading the call for your convention, the National
Woman Suffrage Association was gratified to find that your
invitation was not limited to voters, but cordially extended to
all citizens of the United States. We accordingly send delegates
from our association, asking for them a voice in your
proceedings, and also a plank in your platform declaring the
political rights of women.

Women are the only class of citizens still wholly unrepresented
in the government, and yet we possess every qualification
requisite for voters in the several States. Women possess
property and education; we take out naturalization papers and
passports; we preempt lands, pay taxes, and suffer for our own
violation of the laws. We are neither idiots, lunatics, nor
criminals; and, according to your State constitutions, lack but
one qualification for voters, namely, sex, which is an
insurmountable qualification, and therefore equivalent to a bill
of attainder against one-half the people; a power no State nor
congress can legally exercise, being forbidden in article 1,
sections 9, 10, of our constitution. Our rulers may have the
right to regulate the suffrage, but they can not abolish it
altogether for any class of citizens, as has been done in the
case of the women of this republic, without a direct violation of
the fundamental law of the land.

As you hold the constitution of the fathers to be a sacred legacy
to us and our children forever, we ask you to so interpret that
_Magna Charta_ of human rights as to secure justice and equality
to all United States citizens irrespective of sex. We desire to
call your attention to the violation of the essential principle
of self-government in the disfranchisement of the women of the
several States, and we appeal to you, not only because as a
minority you are in a position to consider principles, but
because you were the party first to extend suffrage by removing
the property qualification from all white men, and thus making
the political status of the richest and poorest citizen the same.
T