Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 April 1875 — The Constitution and Woman Suffrage Decision of the Supreme Court. [ARTICLE]

The Constitution and Woman Suffrage Decision of the Supreme Court.

The recent decision of the United States Supreme Court in regard to the constitutional right of women to vote, as delivered by Chief Justice Waite, and unanimously concurred in by the other Judges of the court, is as follows: Miner vs. Hoppersatt; error to the Supreme Court of Missouri. This is the case presenting the question whether under the Fourteenth Amendment a woman, who is a citizen of the United States and of a State, is a voter in the State notwithstanding the provisions of the Constitution and the laws of that State confine the right of suffrage to men alone. It is said that women are citizens. They are persons, and are, under the Fourteenth Amendment, declared to be citizens of the State wherein they reside. But it did not require that amendment to make them such. They were before persons and people, and were not in terms excluded from citizenship by the Constitution. The Federal Constitution was ordained by the people of the United States, composed of the people of the several States, and whoever at the time of the adoption was one of the people became a citizen. All children of parents within the jurisdiction are themselves citizens. The Naturalization laws are reviewed to show that women have always been considered citizens the same as men; also the laws giving jurisdiction in Federal cases. It is then said that the Fourteenth Amendment did not affect the citizenship of any woman any more than it did of men, and thus Mrs. Miner’s rights do not depend upon it. She has also been a citizen from her birth, entitled to all the privileges, immunities, etc., of citizenship. The amendment prohibited the State in which she lives from abridging any of those rights. The right of suffrage is not made in terms one of the privileges of the citizen. The United States has no voters, and no one can vote for Federal without being competent to vote for State officers. The elective officers of the United States are chosen directly or indirectly by the voters of the States. The amendment did not add to the privileges or immunities of the citizen; it simply furnishes an additional guarantee for the protection of such as he already had. Nor is the right of suffrage coextensive with the citizenship of the States. When the Federal Constitution was adopted all the States but Rhode Island had Constitutions of their own, in not one of which were all citizens recognized as entitled to this right. And under all these circumstances it cannot be for a moment doubted that, if it had been intended to make citizens of the United States voters, the framers of the Constitution woul;’ have so expressed that intention, and not have left so important a change, in the condition of citizenship, as it then existed, to implication. But if further evidence is needed it is to be found in the provisions of the Constitution. If suffrage is .recessarily a part of citizenship, then the provisions of the Constitution which gave citizens of each State all the privileges and immunities of citizenship in the several States would entitle the @itizens of each State to the right to vote in the several States, precisely as the citizens of those States are. Other provisions, among them that relating to the apportionment of Representatives, were cited to the same point. But still again, after the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment it was found necessary to use in the Fifteenth Amendment the following language: “. 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.” The Fourteenth Amendment had provided against any abridgment of the privileges or immunities of citizens, and if the right of suffrage is one of them, why amend the Constitution further to prevent its being denied on account of race, color, etc.? The duty of the United States to guarantee to the State a republican form of government is discharged in protecting those governments which were recognized as being republican in form by the Constitution when adopted. The Governments of the States being then accepted, it must be assumed that they are such as are to be guaranteed. The admission of new States is then considered, and it is found that there is nothing to favor the idea that suffrage is a right of citizenship, but everything to repel it; also, the restoration of the States to the Union after the war, none of them having provided for female suffrage. Besides, a person who has simply declared his intentions to become a citizen of the United States may vote under certain circumstances in Missouri and other States, and this could not be if suffrage depended upon the right of citizenship. The court are unanimous in the opinion that the Constitution of the United States does not confer the right of suffrage upon anyone, and that the Constitutions of the several States which commit the trust to men alone are not necessarily void.