ng care
of themselves until they have the right to vote." Another, "that
the question was being considered by a large portion of the
people of the United States." When the discussion was concluded
and the vote taken, twenty-two senators recorded their votes for
woman suffrage in that distant territory. During the debate
several senators publicly declared their intention of voting for
woman suffrage in the District of Columbia whenever the
opportunity was presented. These senators recognize the fact that
the ballot is not only a right, but that it is opportunity for
woman; that it is the one means of helping her to help herself.
In asking you to secure the ballot to the women of the District
we do not ask you to create a right. That is beyond your power.
We ask you to protect them in the exercise of a right.

Mrs. SARA ANDREWS SPENCER, Secretary of the District of Columbia
Woman's Franchise Association, said: For no legal or political
right I have ever claimed in the District of Columbia do I ask a
stronger, clearer charter than the Declaration of Independence,
and the constitution of the United States as it stood before the
fourteenth amendment had entered the minds of men. A judicial
decision, rendered by nine men, upon the rights of ten millions
of women of this republic, need not, does not, change the
convictions of one woman in regard to her own heaven-endowed
rights, duties, and responsibilities.

We have resorted to all the measures dictated by those who rule
over us for securing the freedom to exercise rights which are
sacredly our own, rights which are ours by Divine inheritance,
and which men can neither confer nor take away. We are not only
daughters of our Father in heaven, and joint heirs with you
there; but we are daughters of this republic, and joint heirs
with you here. Every act of legislation which has been placed as
a bar in our way as citizens has been an act of injustice, and
every expedient to which we have resorted for securing
recognition of citizenship has been with protest against the
existence of these acts of unauthorized power.

When any man expresses doubt to me as to the use that I or any
other woman might make of the ballot if we had it, my answer is,
What is that to you? If you have for years defrauded m