Jasper Republican, Volume 2, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 October 1875 — An Important Decision on the Right of Women to Vote. [ARTICLE]

An Important Decision on the Right of Women to Vote.

In the Supreme Court of the United States at Washington, Oct. 4, in the case of Virginia L. Minor and Francis Minor, her husband, plaintiffs in error, v». Reese Happersett, in error to the Superior Court of the State of Missouri, Chief-Justice Waite delivered the opinion of the court to the effect that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution does not confer upon women the right to vote. The court affirms in the decision that women have always been considered citizens under the Constitution and entitled to all the privilegesand immunities of citizenship, but in the admission of this general point the court decides that suffrage is not one of the privileges and immunities of the citizen, and that it is nowhere made so in express terms, and even further than this, that suffrage was not coextensive with the citizenship of the States at the time of its adoption. Applying these general facte to the constitutional amendments, the court shows that the framers of the Fourteenth Amendment never contemplated that it conferred the right of suffrage even upon the colored persons because it invested them with citizenship, and, taking this view, they framed the Fifteenth Amendment to prevent any State denying

them the right of suffrage because of race, color, or previous condition of servitude. Upon this point the court said: “ The Fourteenth Amendment had already provided that no State should make or enforce any law which should abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. If suffrage was one of these privileges or immunities why amend the Constitution to prevent its being denied on account of race, etc. ? Nothing is more evident than that the greater must include the less, and if all were already protected why go through with the form of amending the Constitution to protect a part?”

The decision closes with the following statement: “ Certainly if the courts can consider any question settled this is one. For nearly ninety years the people have acted upon the idea that the Constitution, when it conferred citizenship, did not necessarily confer the right of suffrage. If uniform practice long continued can settle the construction of so important an instrument as the Constitution of the United States confessedly is, most certainly it has been done here. Our province is to decide what the law is, not to declare what it should be. We have given this casethe careful consideration its importance demands. If the law is wrong it ought to be changed, but the power for that is not with us. The arguments addressed to us bearing upon such a view of the subject may perhaps be sufficient to induce those having the power to make the alteration, but they ought not to be permitted to influence our judgment in determining the present rights of the parties litigating before us. No argument as to woman’s need of suffrage can be considered. We can only act upon her rights as they exist. It is not for us to look at the hardship of withholding. Our duty is at an end if we find it is within the power of a State to withhold.”